INTRODUCTION TO PART II

In chapter 1 I presented three conditions as necessary conditions on testimonial knowledge: the hearer must rely epistemically on what in fact was reliable testimony; the hearer must reliably comprehend the testimony; and the hearer's acceptance of the testimony must be grounded in her capacity for reliably discriminating reliable from unreliable testimony. Chapters 2–4 then focused on the reliable comprehension condition, as a way to motivate several semantically anti-individualistic results. Here I begin the first of four chapters that will explore factors more standardly discussed in connection with the epistemological dimension of knowledge communication. In particular, I will be focusing on the testimonial reliability and reliable discrimination conditions. In doing so, I will be assuming that the subjects I discuss have attained a reliable comprehension of the testimony they observed. The question, rather, will be: What else must be the case, if such subjects are to count as having attained justified belief and/or knowledge through their acceptance of the testimony?

In addressing questions such as these, my ambition in Part II is two-fold. Narrowly, I want to argue that the three conditions, presented so far as necessary conditions on testimonial knowledge, are also sufficient. Here I drop the pretense of epistemic neutrality, as I aim to endorse and defend something like a reliabilist account of knowledge and justification in connection with testimonial belief. As a reliabilist account, the position is an instance of epistemic externalism regarding both knowledge and justification.