Testimonial knowledge through unsafe testimony, Sanford Goldberg
Goldberg, S. (2005), ‘Testimonial knowledge through unsafe testimony’, Analysis 64.4, 302-311.
p. 302 – Runs a story about testimony that goes like this: Tim has a peculiar habit of buying milk every day and then, no matter the circumstances, pouring it down the drain the following morning and then putting the empty carton back in the fridge before he sets to work in the kitchen. Staying with him are Jo and her son Davy. One morning Jo goes to get some orange juice and sees the milk carton. By pure accident Tim has forgotten to perform his usual disposal and thus there is, actually, milk in the fridge. Jo tells this to Davy when Davy asks if there is milk in the fridge. Goldberg claims that this is a case of unsafe transmission.
p. 303-4 – ‘Had there been no milk in the fridge, this would have been because Frank dumped it (and put the empty milk carton back in the fridge.) As noted above, in such a situation Mary would still have testified as she did; but Frank (who is a fixture in the kitchen, and so who is in the kitchen in most or all of the nearest possible worlds) would have immediately spoken up against the testimony, informing his uninitiated guests of his strange practice. In that case Soony would not have consumed Mary’s testimony and so would have refrained from forming the testimonial belief that there was milk in the fridge. This establishes that Sonny’s testimonial belief is sensitive. Now, had Sonny formed the testimonial belief that there is milk in the fridge, this would have been a case in which Frank did not speak up against that testimony; but, given Frank’s scrupulousness, the only cases in which he would not speak up against that testimony (given that he was in the kitchen, as always) would be those cases, like the actual one, in which (upon hearing the testimony) he came to acknowledge that he failed to dump the milk from the previous evening. In all such cases, there would be milk in the fridge. In sum, had Sonny formed the testimonial belief that there is milk in the fridge, there would have been milk in the fridge: Sonny’s testimonial belief is reliable. Note, too, that any nearby world in which (a) Frank disposed of the milk and returned the empty carton to the fridge, yet (b) Mary – or someone else, for that matter – testified (on the basis of seeing the milk carton in the fridge) that there was milk in the fridge, will be a world in which Frank speaks up against that testimony, prompting Sonny to refrain from consuming that testimony. Sonny’s belief is safe.’
p. 304 – This is a reliabilist account.
p. 306 – ‘Trustworthiness is that property of testimony, the possession of which renders the testimony worthy of being trusted. Perhaps all parties can agree that a piece of testimony has this property if it is reliable. But I submit that this is a special case of a more general scheme: testimony is trustworthy when a hearer’s belief in it (acceptance of it) would yield a reliable belief.’
Crux of Goldberg’s thesis: if I come to find milk in the fridge because of somone’s unreliable (unsafe) testimony then my ‘knowledge’ that there was milk in the fridge is knowledge gained from testimony [i.e. Frank acts as a moderator on testimonial transmission].
p. 307 – Sonny’s belief is reliable because Mary told him that there was and Frank, the possible defeater, did not defeat Mary’s testimony with his own [Thus the conjoint process of Mary and Frank produce reliable belief for Sonny].
p. - 307 – Frank as a monitor.
Points out that reliability and trustworthiness are two different things.
p. 308 – Uncontentious sufficient condition: ‘H has the testimonial knowledge that p when H’s belief that p depends for its epistemic credentials on the epistemic credentials of some piece of testimony, together with whatever grounds H has for regarding that testimony as trustworthy.’
p. 309 – Argues that this schema works even if the person is unaware of a monitoring role by reference to the Cave example.
p. 310 – Frank is ‘local’ invariance; as a ficture in the story we can treat him as a normal operating condition for belief formation (in the kitchen) that any given agent (Say, Sonny) could be aware or unaware of.
