Peter Lipton’s epistemology of testimony.
Introduction
The
basic discourse in epistemology centres on whether or not knowledge is
possible. This debate on possibility of knowledge has led many philosophers to
propound different theories on the approaches in acquiring knowledge and in
affirming its possibility. Among the various ways (sources) human beings can
authentically acquire knowledge is through testimony. In fact, every human
being likes to authenticate its acquired knowledge through justification by the
provision of evidence. That is why, testimony is justifiably considered to be
one of the epistemological sources in acclaiming that knowledge is possible.
For from testimony we obtain knowledge that could not be obtained from any
other sources;[1]since,
it is the case that, man accepts the testimony of another man either to affirm
or deny what is considered to be true.
Notably,
if all men were to refuse absolutely and in all cases to believe the testimony
of others, then society would be an utter impossibility. But testimony apprises
us of many facts not falling under our personal observation, whether they
happen in our own time or had taken place before we were born. The truth is
simply believed upon the authority of the witness giving testimony. Therefore,
testimony is the communication of knowledge by a witness.[2]This testimony is not only about
a reference to an external person bearing witness to a known fact, but also
about a person who experiences a thing, bears witness directly to such an object.
Consequently, it is our aim in this
paper to critically expose Peter Lipton’s epistemology of testimony. To achieve
this, we shall start with clarification of terms; then, present testimony as a
source of human knowledge. Afterward, we shall do a criticism of the topic wherein
we shall present arguments for and against.
Clarification of Term
Testimony
Testimony is a testament upon which
knowledge is communicated by a witness. To acquire knowledge of P through
testimony is to come to know that P on the basis of someone’s saying that P.
“Saying that P” must be understood broadly, as including ordinary utterances in
daily life, postings by bloggers on their web-logs, articles by journalists.
So, when one asks the person next to him/her what time it is, and she tells us,
and one thereby comes to know what time it is, that is what it means to have a
testimony.[3] For externalists who
believe on factual and empirical evidence in claiming their knowledge,
testimony is a source of knowledge if and only if it comes from a reliable
source.
The word ‘testimony’ commonly evokes
images of the courtroom, where formal testimony is given. Someone sworn in
testifies, offering information supposed to represent what the person knows or
believes. Often such testimony recounts what was witnessed first-hand, but our
testimony can be an expression of what we believe about something we did not
witness, such as the implications of a scientific theory or the potentials of
human character.[4]
However,
internalists will find this unsatisfactory, because suppose one hears someone
saying P, and suppose further that person is in fact utterly reliable with
regard to the question of whether P is the case or not. One may argue that,
testimony is reliable source of knowledge because, personal experiences with
testimonial sources which one has accumulated a long track record can be taken
as a sign of reliability. However, when we think of the sheer breadth of the knowledge
we derive from testimony, one wonders whether one’s personal experiences
constitute an evidence base rich enough to justify the attribution of
reliability to the totality of the testimonial sources one tends to trust.[5]Here, we use “testimony”
broadly, to include all cases in which a person asserts something, and another
person hears, reads, or otherwise witnesses the assertion. In this sense, my
beliefs that China is in Asia, that the Earth orbits the sun, and that my
friend’s birthday is on June 29, are all based on testimony.
Types of Testimony
1.
Formal testimony: This is a testimony or attestification given
in a court and other recognised structural institutions.
2.
Informal testimony: This is a casual way
of disseminating information. For instance; in telling someone where one was
last night, ‘testimony’ is too heavy a word. We could speak of informing, but
this is also too narrow, both in suggesting a prepared message (as in ‘yesterday
she informed me of her plan to attend’) and in implying that what is conveyed
is true. However, we might regard all testimony as a kind of saying. But not
all saying, even apart from what is said in fiction is testimony. Someone who
says, ‘Ah, what a magnificent tree!’ is expressing a sense of the magnificence
of the tree, but not giving testimony that it is magnificent, as where an
arborist cites features of shape and colour in supporting a claim that the tree
is magnificent and worth the high cost of pruning and feeding.[6]
However, one may reason why
epistemologists neglect this aspect of knowledge source (testimony)? The answer
to this question may lie in the traditional views developed by some thinkers as
Locke and Hume, about the probative value of testimony. Locke has particularly
disparaging words to say about the practice of relying on testimony. He thinks
both that other people are a highly unreliable source of information and that,
even when they speak truthfully, one cannot gain true knowledge merely by
taking someone else’s word. This sort of attitude was largely a reaction to the
over-reliance in medieval philosophy on appeals to authority.
David Hume is a bit more
conciliatory: he regards testimony as simply one form of inductive evidence
among others. In his essay “Of Miracles” (mainly a criticism of the belief in
miracles), he lays down the basic principles of inductive evidence, including
testimonial evidence: the probability one should assign to a given kind of
event happening in a given circumstance is proportional to the frequency with
which events of that kind have, in one’s past experience, happened in such
circumstances. The reason that we are often justified in believing the
testimony of others is simply that in the past, when we have been able to
check, we have usually found the statements made by others to be true.
Thomas Reid noticed that, if one had
to rely solely upon induction as Hume proposed, one would have little ground
for believing the majority of the things that we in fact believe on the
testimony of others.[7]In addition, what Hume
claim to be inductively is in actual fact sustained by testimony. To make a
logical deduction of an event through investigation must in fact base on what
others say concerning it. And for Locke who says that we cannot find a reliable
testimony because it is devoid of truth, we may ask how a society with moral
suspicious can survive without believing in one another’s testimony? Whichever
may be the case we cannot avoid or banish testimony in all the human
endeavours, but what we could do in our entertainment of testimony we must
exercise critical caution in order to avoid deception.
The
Epistemology of Testimony
Whatever knowledge we claim to
have, we get a great number of our beliefs from what others tell us. The
epistemology of testimony is about concerns on how we should evaluate these
beliefs. Epistemologists inquire into the nature of our belief through
testimony by asking these questions: when are the beliefs justified, and why?
When do they amount to knowledge, and why?
Lipton’s
Idea of Testimonial Knowledge
Peter Lipton begins his treatise on
testimony by posing a question with an answer thus: Is there anything you know
entirely off your own bat? Your knowledge depends pervasively on the word of
others.[8]For him, if our only sources
of knowledge and justified belief were perception, consciousness, memory, and
reason, we would be at best impoverished. We do not even learn to speak or
think without the help of others, and much of what we know depends on what they
tell us. Children in their first years of life depend almost entirely on others
in learning about the world.
In talking about the dependence of
our knowledge and justification on what other people say to us, philosophers
have commonly spoken of our reliance on testimony.[9] If perception, memory,
consciousness, and reason are our primary individual sources of knowledge then
justification, testimony is our primary social source of them. This is why it
is a primary concern of social epistemology. Knowledge of events before one was
born or outside our immediate neighbourhood is the obvious cases, but our
epistemic dependence on testimony goes far deeper than this.
Mundane belief is such that the
earth is round or that one thinks with his/her brain, this almost invariably depends
on testimony. Even quite personal facts such as one’s birthday or the identity
of one’s biological parents can only be known with the help of others. At least,
most of the theories that a scientist accepts are base on what others say. The
same goes for almost all the data, since he/she didn’t perform those
experiments him/herself. Even in those experiments he/she did perform, he/she
relied on testimony hand over fist: just think of all those labels on the
chemicals. Even her personal observations may have depended on testimony, if
observation is theory laden, since those theories with which it is laden were
themselves accepted on testimony.
Further, Lipton in his work titled Inference to the best explanation
propounds that Science depends on judgments of the bearing of evidence on
theory. Scientists must judge whether an observation or the result of an
experiment supports, disconfirms, or is simply irrelevant to a given
hypothesis.[10]
Similarly, scientists may judge that, given all the available evidence, a
hypothesis ought to be accepted as correct or nearly so, rejected as false, or
neither. Occasionally, these evidential judgements can be made on deductive
grounds. If an experimental result strictly contradicts a hypothesis, then the
truth of the evidence deductively entails the falsity of the hypothesis.[11] In the great majority of
cases, however, the connection between evidence and hypothesis is
non-demonstrative or inductive. Further, Thomas Reid concludes that it is right
in thinking that the beliefs we form by way of credulity or testimony are
typically held in the basic way, not by way of inductive or abductive evidence
from other things he believes.[12]
Testimony, Knowledge and Justification
Testimony is a means of the creation
of knowledge. From an individualistic perspective this is obvious, since what
we learn from others is new knowledge for us; but it is almost as obvious from
a social perspective, as one can see by trying to imagine science without
communication. Testimony can give knowledge to its hearers only under certain conditions.
If we do not know that the speaker at yesterday’s conference lost his temper,
then one cannot come to know it on the basis of his/her attesting to it. This
is obvious if one is mistaken and he/she in fact did not lose his temper. Suppose
one makes a lucky guess and is right, then one gives himself/herself credit for
conjecture information which he/she does not know; but he/she is also lucky to
be correct and also do not know that the speaker lost his temper. It is a fluke
that one gets it right; it is even more of a fluke that we get it right, since
in our contemporary there are misgiving of information, misheard of
information, as well as misinterpretation of information which end up
distorting the truth of reliable testimony.
There is a more common defect in
testimony that prevents its producing knowledge in the hearer. Imagine that I
do not guess at, but incautiously accept, the proposition that the speaker lost
his temper, from someone I know often lies about others. Again, I lack
knowledge that he lost his temper, even if this time the proposition is true; and
again, one cannot know it on the basis of my testimony, which is now
ill-grounded in another way. What I do not have, I cannot give it to someone
else.[13]
Even if one is not justified in
believing that the speaker lost his temper, I can be credible to you in such a
way that you can become justified in believing this on the basis of my
attesting it to you. To see this, consider the two facets of testimonial credibility: the sincerity
dimension, concerning the attester’s honesty, and second the competence
dimension, concerning the attester’s having experience or knowledge sufficient
to make it at least likely that if the attester holds a belief of the
proposition in question or of closely related ones, then they are true. Surely,
you can justifiably regard me as credible on the topic of whether the speaker
lost his temper if you have good reason to believe that I am honest, possess
normal acuity and memory, and was present and reasonably attentive on the
occasion.
It may seem that there is a further
asymmetry: I cannot give you testimony-based knowledge that something is so
without having knowledge that it is so, yet I can give you justification
without having it. But this conclusion is at best misleading; and it is false
if I cannot give what I do not have. In the case of my credible but false
testimony that gives you justification for believing what I attesting to, I do
not give you justification for believing what I say, that the speaker lost his
temper without having that justification. Rather, the way I attest to the
proposition together with your background justification regarding me and the
circumstances, gives you this justification, independently of whether I have it.[14]
To justify a testimonial belief, it
must depend on individual’s mind and what it accepts to be true. Steven Shapin
argues that the decision on what to believe is largely a question of what kind
of person to trust and, in the community of the Royal Society, of what he calls
a ‘liberal’ notion of truth, because it is a notion that equates truth and
consensual belief. He calls the notion ‘liberal’ since it allows that what is true
will vary between times and between communities, since consensual belief so varies.
He contrasts this relativism with what he calls the ‘restrictive’ notion of truth,
which distinguishes between truth and belief, and maintains that what is true does
not vary over time or space. The restrictive notion is naturally associated with
correspondence theory of truth, which makes what is true depends on the state
of a mind-independent reality.[15]
Testimony and Ethics
We turn from what is true to the good.
Steven Shapin encourages us to see the epistemology of testimony as a problem
in applied ethics.[16] He argues for testimony
from two perspectives: the global and the local. The global arguments are that
testimony is by its nature a moral issue, since accepting testimony is a matter
of trust, since the social order depends upon it and since giving testimony is
tantamount to making a promise that one’s word can be relied upon. Testimony
inherits the rich ethical content of placing trust, maintaining the social
order and keeping promises. The local arguments concern the criteria of credibility
that the seventeenth century gentlemen deployed. These criteria were moral
based as they were on the concepts of free action, honour, virtue, and civil
conversation.
The first universal argument is the
argument from trust. The institution of testimony is by its nature moral,
according to this argument, because the decision whether to accept someone’s
testimony is always a question of whether to trust the informant, and
judgements of trustworthiness are always moral judgements. On its own, this
argument is not persuasive. We may grant that the decision whether to accept
someone’s testimony can always be glossed as the decision whether to trust that
person, but we do not yet have a reason to suppose that trust in this sense is
always a moral issue. It seems rather to be a sense that includes scientists’
decisions whether to trust their theories, instrumentation and data.
The second global argument is that the
institution of testimony is by its nature moral, because it is a prerequisite
for the existence of any social order. The premise seems clearly correct: given
our ubiquitous dependence on the word of others, no society could exist without
testimonial practices. But, one might say, nor could a society exist in the
absence of sense perception or reasoning, yet this is hardly sufficient to show
that, the epistemology of perception or reasoning reduces to ethics: not every
prerequisite for a moral practice or concept is itself moral. If this objection
to Shapin’s argument is unconvincing, perhaps it is in part because the point
is not just that testimony is a prerequisite for social order, but that it
partially constitutes that order. Testimony is itself a social activity in a
way that perception and reasoning are not.
Promising is one of the examples
Kant uses to illustrate his first formulation of the Categorical Imperative,
according to which we should only act on a maxim that we could will to be a
universal law. Conveniently enough, Kant equates false promising with lying, so
that his claim is effectively also that we should not lie, since the attempt to
universalise a maxim that permitted lies would eliminate the practice of
testimony.
Argument in Favour of Testimony
The fact that testimony comes from a
person, rather than an inanimate object, is a reason to be more demanding on testimonial-based
beliefs than on perceptual-based beliefs.[17] For the matter testimony
“T” can lie, but the matter in our perceptual environment “T” cannot.[18] It is acknowledged on all
hands, says that learned prelate, that the authority, either of the scripture
or of tradition, is founded merely on the testimony of the Apostles, who were
eye-witnesses to those miracles of our Saviour, by which he proved his divine
mission.[19]
Our evidence, then, for, the truth
of the Christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our
senses; because, even in the first authors of our religion, it was no greater;
and it is evident it must diminish in passing from them to their disciples; nor
can anyone rest such confidence in their testimony, as in the immediate object
of his senses.[20]
Hume in his statement, points out that our belief in human testimony is based
on induction not in any other thing else. However, Hume, in describing the
inductive base for a belief in the reliability of testimony, actually uses
evidence drawn from other people.[21]
This can be said in summary that the
vast majority (or perhaps even the totality) of what passes for corroboration
of testimony itself relies on other
testimony. Testimony is a unique source of belief. It is unique in the
sense that many of our beliefs have been formed only through accepting
testimony. Examples are easy to enumerate; my belief that a major ocean current
flows from the Gulf of Mexico to North-West Europe and my belief that there
have been two World Wars in this century both depend on testimony. According to
Peter J. Graham in his article “Metaphysical
Libertarianism and the Epistemology of Testimony” said
that the presence of human freedom in testimonial cases is not a significant
reason to prefer a conservative approach. Further, if a libertarian approach to
human freedom undermines the predictability of human actions, then it would
also undermine a conservative approach to testimony. If T’s actions were
unpredictable, then S could never have a proper basis on which to believe that
T is likely to be honest.[22]So, the environments for
testimonial-based beliefs can in fact be as predictable as the environments for
perceptual-based beliefs.
However,
freedom that may lead to deception is not distinctive of testimonial-based
beliefs. For perceptual-based beliefs can also suffer from the influence of
deception. Fake objects, for example, can be the result of deception, and
perceptual-based beliefs about fake objects can obviously go awry because of
the influence of agency on a perceptual environment.[23]Hence,
Christopher Green states that a perceptual analogue to the alien case can be
constructed. S is suddenly transported to an unfamiliar perceptual environment
and seems to see certain objects outside what looks like a window. But S may
have no reason to think that the window is not, for instance, a television
screen showing a greatly magnified image of a scene far away, rather than a
window opening onto nearby ordinary-sized objects. If S’s perceptual-based
beliefs in that scenario do not require positive reasons to believe that his
perceptual environment and faculties are functioning normally, then it is not
clear why S need such reasons in the testimonial case.[24]
For
S is to be free from deception, it needs to caution what to belief and sensitive
to monitor the untrustworthiness of T.[25]Thus,
we have similar freedom to reject even perceptual-based beliefs. We can indulge
sceptical scenarios, like being a brain in a vat, without much difficulty.
Further, there might be beings who accept testimony as readily as we accept the
deliverances of our senses. There does not seem to be anything inherent about
testimony that makes us freer to reject it.
Argument against Testimony
As a source of knowledge,
testimony is comparable to perception and memory. Reductive responses claim
that testimonial beliefs are justified only because and insofar as reasons were
possessed for accepting whatever testimony caused their formation. The
justification of testimonial beliefs thereby reduces to the justification for
beliefs formed by other sources.[26]In justifying the
epistemic subject’s trust in testimony the reductionist cannot cite other
people’s perception and memory. For example; the reductionist cannot cite
perception and memory of the person who provides the testimony. Only
the epistemic subject’s own perception and memory are relevant to the
justification of her trust in testimony.[27]
Alvin Plantinga in his argument against
testimonial-based belief states that by analogy; “I am five years old; my
father tells me that Australia is a large country and occupies an entire continent
all by itself. I do not say to myself, “My father says thus and so; most of the
time when I checked what my father says, it turns out to be true; and this
leads me to conclude saying probably this is; so probably Australia is a very
large country that occupies an entire continent by itself.”[28]
If one could reason this way, it shows that in certain specialised
circumstances we do reason that way. But typically we do not. Typically we just
believe what we are told, and believe it in the basic way. I say one could
reason in the inductive way to what testimony testifies to; but of course one could
not have reasoned thus in coming to the first beliefs one held on the
basis of testimony.[29]
Another argument against demands on
testimonial-based beliefs is that, even if those demands might be able to be
satisfied by those who are particularly careful in considering earlier cases of
confirmation, it is improper to place too many intellectual demands on people’s
everyday beliefs. Graham puts it this way: “Even if the reduction is possible,
requiring it is overly demanding; the requirement to reduce hyper-intellectualises
testimonial justification.” Young children, for instance, lack the intellectual
capacity to consider complicated issues regarding the reliability of their
parents or others who give them testimonial-based beliefs, and so it is
improper to place epistemic demands on them.[30]
However, Jennifer Lackey restated Graham
argument against the infants and young children objection by considering
whether a similar problem could afflict any approach to testimonial-based
justification which includes a non-defeater condition.[31]
For her, no one can suggest that testimonial-based justification is
indefeasible; rather, S is only justified on the basis of T’s testimony if S
lacks a defeater for her belief that p. For instance, if T tells S
that p, but S already believes that q and if q then ~p,
she cannot just add the belief that p, rendering her beliefs
inconsistent. Therefore defeaters can be standardly divided into doxastic,
normative, and factual defeaters.[32]
Doxastic defeaters are like those in
the case we just considered: other beliefs that S has that make it improper for
her to believe p, or to accept testimony that p from T.
Normative defeaters are other beliefs that S would have, if she
performed her epistemic duties. Factual defeaters defeat S’s justification in
virtue of being true. The standard example is the fake barn; if S just happens
to see the one real barn amidst a country side full of fakes, S’s belief about
the barn is not justified, or at least does not count as knowledge. Similarly,
if S just happens to meet T, the one reliable testifier in a sea of unreliable
ones, then she has a factual defeater. Some epistemologists, though, are
fake-barn-case sceptics, and think that these cases are not obviously cases
where justification or knowledge fails.
Lackey’s argument is that if young
children, or animals, are not capable of satisfying a positive-reason demand on
testimonial-based beliefs because they are not capable of appreciating reasons,
then for the same reason they are likewise not capable of satisfying a
no-defeater condition, either regarding normative or doxastic defeaters. Those
who are not capable of understanding a reason for a belief presumably
also cannot understand either a conflict in belief, as required by an
appreciation of doxastic defeaters.
Conclusion
So far, we have seen that, testimony,
like memory, is an extremely pervasive source of knowledge that has traditionally
been neglected by epistemologists. The relegation of testimony by the
epistemologist could not abjectly reduce the importance and indefeasibility of
testimony in the acquisition of knowledge. Before any formal analysis of human
cognitional process, it is taken that testimony is the first hand information
through which we come to know reality and things around us.
Again, testimony occupies social and
moral role in the society. We rightly stated above that testimony is indispensable
either in the court or in the family even to the large extend in the community.
Before anyone on its own make an inquiry concerning certain thing, that thing
in one way or another has been said by another person, which means that is not
the case that we are the originator of information about a particular thing.
However, we are able to understand that since testimony depends on people it
could be faulty, because human being is capable of lying. Therefore to children
who rely so much on testimony are misguided, since they do not have the
critical mind to discern what they are told.
Further, Testimony also plays a
crucial role in science, whereby scientific development depends on other
scientist testimonies who have constructed theories.[33] This statement suggest
that testimony as the case is cannot be avoided or marginalise in the formation
and dissemination of knowledge. For every field of endeavour there are first
people who begin it and further relate the experience and understanding to the
coming one. And in the same way the young one will necessarily need to depend
on the older or people before them for information concerning a particular
thing. Only that the information gotten from people needed a further
purification through the use of intellectual light.
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[1] Walter F. Cunningham, Note on Epistemology (New York: Fordham
University Press, 1930), pp.143-144.
[2] Walter F. Cunningham, Note on Epistemology, p. 144.
[3]Joseph T. Ekong, “A Critique of
Edmund Gettier’s Account of Knowledge”, in ChiedozieOkoro (ed.), Essays in Epistemology and Philosophy of History (Nigeria: Soladem Printers
Limited, 2008), p.
[4] Robert Audi, Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge, 2nd
edition (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 132.
[5]Joseph T. Ekong, “A Critique of
Edmund Gettier’s Account of Knowledge”, in ChiedozieOkoro (ed.), Essays in Epistemology and Philosophy of History (Nigeria: Soladem Printers
Limited, 2008), p.
[6] Robert Audi, Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge,
pp. 132-133.
[7] Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1975), chapter 2, art. 2.
[8] Peter Lipton, “The Epistemology of
Testimony” in Study in History and
Philosophy of science, Vol. 29, No. 1 (1998), pp. 1-31.
[9] Robert Audi, Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge,
p. 132.
[10] Peter Lipton, Inference
to the Best Explanation (London: Routledge, 1991), p.15.
[11] Peter Lipton, “Inference to the Best Explanation” in A Companion to the Philosophy of Science,
edited by H. W. Newton-Smith (New York: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 184-193.
[12] Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into
the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1975), p.24
[13] Robert Audi, Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge,pp.
137-138.
[14] Robert Audi, Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge,
p. 138.
[15] Steven Shapin, A Social History
of Truth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 4-7.
[16] Steven Shapin, A Social History
of Truth, p. 7.
[17]Paul Faulkner, “The social
character of testimonial knowledge,” Journal
of philosophy, vol. 97 (2000), pp.581-601.
[18]Jennifer Lackey, “The Nature of
Testimony,” Pacific Philosophical
Quarterly, vol. 87 (2006), p. 177- 197.
[19] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Other Writings,
edited by Stephen Buckle (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Bk. 10,
part 1, art. 1.
[20] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Other Writings,
edited by Stephen Buckle (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Bk. 10,
part 1, art. 1.
[21] C. A. J. Coady, Testimony: A
Philosophical Study (New York: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 79-82.
[22] Peter J. Graham, “Metaphysical
Libertarianism and the Epistemology of Testimony,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 41 (2004), pp. 37-50.
[23]Christopher R. Green, “The
Epistemic Parity of Testimony, Memory, and Perception,” Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Notre Dame, (2006), p.82.
[24]Christopher R. Green, “The
Epistemic Parity of Testimony, Memory, and Perception,” p. 67.
[25]Sanford
Goldberg and David Henderson, “Monitoring and Anti-Reductionism in the
Epistemology of Testimony,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 72 (2005), pp. 600-17.
[26]Paul Faulkner, “David Hume’s
Reductionist Epistemology of Testimony” in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly,
vol. 79, no. 4, (December 1998), pp. 302-313.
[27]TomojiShogenj, “A Defense of
Reductionism about Testimonial Justification of Beliefs,” inNoûs, vol. 40,(2006), pp.
331-46.
[28]Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and
Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press,1993), p. 79.
[29]Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and
Proper Function, p. 79.
[30] Peter J. Graham, 2006. “Liberal
Fundamentalism and Its Rivals,” in Lackey and Sosa 2006, p. 100.
[31]Jennifer Lackey, “Testimony and the Infant/Child
Objection,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 126 (2005), pp.163-90.
[33] Robert Audi, Epistemology: Contemporary Reading, edited by Michael Huemer
(London: Routledge, 2002), p. 217.
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