Testimony, Credulity, and Veracity

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter concerns the nature of testimony, its relation to belief, justification, and knowledge, and its status as a source of all three. It argues that testimony-based beliefs are non-inferential and, in that special sense, psychologically basic. Some of those non-inferential beliefs also constitute basic knowledge. Testimony is not, however, a basic source of knowledge. It has a kind of dependence on perception that precludes this. Testimony is also a source of justification, though it is non-basic for justification as well as for knowledge; but the chapter indicates some ways in which its role in giving us justification differs from its role in giving us knowledge. These and other ideas are then developed in comparison with Thomas Reid's theory of testimony. The chapter finally shows how testimony differs from such basic sources of knowledge and justification as perception and reason, but is nonetheless essential for human knowledge as we know it.