Reductionism and the Distinctiveness of Testimonial Knowledge, Sanford C. Goldberg
Goldberg, Sanford C. ‘Reductionism and the Distinctiveness of Testimonial Knowledge’ Jennifer Lackey & Ernest Sosa, ed.,’The Epistemology of Testimony’, Oxford University Press
p. 127 - Core thesis of his paper is that even if you deny that there are unique epistemic principles in re testimony that you should still admit that testimony is a unique kind of knowledge.
p. 128 - Definition of testimonial knowledge:
‘A has testimonial knowledge that p if and only if
(A) A knows that p;
(B) There is a speaker S whom A observed to offer testimony on occasion O, such that the proposition that p was understood by A to be presented-as-true in S’s testimony on O; and
(C) A’s knowledge that p depends for its status as knowledge on both (i) the reliability of S’s testimony and O, as well as (ii) A’s epistemic right to rely on that testimony.’
p. 129 - (A) through (C) state individually necessary and jointly sufficient consitions for an agent having testimonial knowledge that p.
p. 130 - ‘Contrast the anti-reductionist posiiton. For her part, the anti-reductionist will think that A has an epistemic right to rely on S’s say-so as long as A has no (doxastic, normative, or factual) defeaters for the claim that S’s say-so was reliable.’
p. 134 - What makes testimonial knowledge ‘unique’ is that the hearer gets to pass the (epistemic) buck in re testimony after her own justificatory resources have been exhausted.
p. 135-5 - Passing the buck should not offend the reductionist as the hearer has exhausted her resources by the time they make this move.
p. 136 - When we rely on instruments we rely on a mere offering whilst when we rely on an speaker we are reyling on a subject that shapes its own beliefs and thus has responsibility for them. Thus we can pass the buck to an gent in a way that we can’t to an instrument because the agent has to hold and express their belief for the right reasons.
