What epistemologists of testimony should learn from philosophers of science

Abstract

The thesis of this paper is that, if it is construed individualistically, epistemic justification does not capture the conditions that philosophers of science would impose on justified belief in a scientific hypothesis. The difficulty arises from beliefs acquired through testimony. From this I derive a lesson that epistemologists generally, and epistemologists of testimony in particular, should learn from philosophers of science: we ought to repudiate epistemic individualism and move towards a more fully social epistemology.