Testimony, Trust, and Authority, by Benjamin McMyler. * Knowledge on Trust, by Paul Faulkner.

Abstract

A natural defence of an assertion is as follows: ‘She told me so, and I trust her.’ Trust has hitherto played no significant role in the epistemology of testimony. Two monographs now use the notion in novel accounts of how testimony works. Benjamin McMyler and Paul Faulkner concur that knowledge based on testimony is irreducibly social — that whether I know by believing someone’s testimony depends on properties of the speaker, and not on mine only. They disagree on the nature of trust and so ascribe it different justificatory roles. Trust is a normative notion. It arises out of interpersonal relations in which one party has expectations about the other’s action. A significant recent development in the epistemology of testimony has been Richard Moran’s articulation of his Assurance view. On this, a speaker freely and explicitly offers her promissory assurance that p; in normal cases of testimony this assurance...