John Greco

Sanford Goldberg has called our attention to an interesting problem: How is it that young children can learn from the testimony of their caregivers (their parents, teachers, and nannies, for example) even when the children themselves are undiscriminating consumers of testimony? Part One describes the importance and scope of the problem, showing that it generalizes beyond tots and their caregivers. Part Two considers and rejects several strategies for solving the problem, including Goldberg's own. Part Three defends a solution, positing a previously unnoticed social dimension to knowledge

Recent interest in the epistemology of testimony can be traced to C. A. J. Coady's Testimony: A Philosophical Study (1992) and then a collection of papers edited by Bimal Krishna Matilal and Arindam Chakrabarti, Knowing from Words (1994). These two volumes framed several issues in the epistemology of testimony and largely set the agenda for work in that area over the next two decades. One major issue in this literature is whether testimonial knowledge can be "reduced" to some other kind of knowledge: Is testimonial knowledge sui generis, requiring its own distinctive treatment, or is testimonial knowledge merely an instance of, for example, inductive knowledge, requiring no special epistemology over and above that required for inductive knowledge in general? One way that testimonial knowledge might be special is that it involves social elements that make it distinctive. This possibility raises further issues that have been prominent in the literature: In what ways is testimonial knowledge a social phenomenon, and what are the consequences of this for the epistemology of testimony and for epistemology more generally?

In this paper I offer a solution to scepticism about the world which neither embraces idealism, nor ends in a stalemate, nor begs the question against the sceptic. In the first part of the paper I explicate the sceptical argument and try to show why it has real force. In the next part of the paper I propose a version of the relevant possibilities approach to scepticism. The central claim of the proposed solution is that a sceptical possibility undermines knowledge only if the possibility is true in some close possible world. But since there is no reason to believe that I am deceived by an evil demon or that I am a brain in a vat in some close possible world, there is no reason to accept an essential premise of the sceptical argument, i.e. that the sceptical scenarios are relevant possibilities. Finally, I argue that the solution proposed does not embrace idealism, end in a stalemate, or beg the question.

Alvin Plantinga charges classical foundationalism with self-referential incoherence, meaning that that doctrine employs criteria for rationally acceptable propositions which exclude the criteria themselves. More specifically, the charge is that the criteria are neither properly basic nor supported by properly basic propositions. In section 1 the doctrine of classical foundationalism is briefly explained. In section 2, a defense against Plantinga's objection is provided showing how the foundationalist can provide arguments which ground the criteria in question in properly basic propositions.

Almost everyone believes that testimony can transmit knowledge from speaker to hearer. What some philosophers mean by this is ordinary and pedestrian-- they mean only that, in at least some cases, a speaker S knows that p, S testifies that p to a hearer H, and H comes to know that p as a result of believing S's testimony. There is disagreement about how this occurs, but that it does occur is sufficient for the transmission of knowledge in the intended sense. On this understanding of transmission, the natural questions are these: (1) What conditions, in addition to speaker knowledge and speaker testimony, are sufficient for the hearer to gain testimonial knowledge?; and (2) Is speaker knowledge always necessary for testimonial knowledge? That is: Is all testimonial knowledge transmitted knowledge?