Knowledge on Affective Trust
Abstracta, 6 (3):
33-46 (2012)Abstract
Epistemologists of testimony widely agree on the fact that our reliance on other people's testimony is extensive. However, they have not always paid enough attention to the fact that our reliance on testimony is not only extensive, but also varied. That is, there is more than one way in which we can rely on a speaker's testimony to form a belief: Sometimes we treat a person's testimony that p as we treat any other piece of evidence. At other times, we just trust the speaker for the truth of what she says. Arguably, the latter is the normal way of forming a belief on the basis of other people's testimony. And while Paul Faulkner's important book presents an account of how we can obtain knowledge in both these ways, its focus, as its title suggests, is on knowledge obtained through trust.