A minimal expression of non-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony

What is required in order for a hearer to acquire knowledge from either the spoken or written word of a speaker? Otherwise put, what are the requisite conditions for testimonial knowledge? This question is at the center of the epistemology of testimony, and it is nearly received wisdom in the current philosophical literature that there is only one tenable option for answering it; namely, a non-reductionist view of testimonial knowledge.' Non-reductionists maintain that testimony is just as basic a source of knowledge as sense perception, memory, inductive inference, and the like and, moreover, that hearers can acquire knowledge from the reports of speakers, albeit defeasibly, merely on the basis of a speaker's testimony.2 For instance, Robert Audi claims that "...gaining testimonially grounded knowledge normally requires only having no reason for doubt about the credibility of the attester."3 In a similar spirit, Tyler Burge maintains that "[a] person is entitled to accept as true something that is presented as true and that is intelligible to him, unless there are stronger reasons not to do so."4 The thought underlying non-reductionism, therefore, is that acquiring testimonial knowledge is an extremely simple epistemic process that functions well between speakers and hearers unless it is interrupted by the presence of a defeater. In this paper, however, I shall argue that non-reductionism, as it stands, is a wholly inadequate view of testimonial knowledge. Specifically, I shall argue that, in addition to the absence of defeaters, there are at least three further conditions that need to be added to this view to render it plausible. Thus, I intend to show that acquiring knowledge from the word of others is a process that is far more complicated and easily interrupted than proponents of non-reductionism maintain.