The Place of Justification in the Fabric of Testimonial Knowledge

2018 ◽  
pp. 71-97
Author(s):  
Isabelle Keßels ◽  
David Lambert ◽  
Christian Quast
Keyword(s):  
Testimonial Knowledge

Testimony and Assertion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Owens
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Epistemic Norms ◽  
Testimonial Knowledge ◽  
Epistemology Of Testimony ◽  
Ethical Norms

Two models of assertion are described and their epistemological implications considered. The assurance model draws a parallel between the ethical norms surrounding speech acts like promising and the epistemic norms that govern the transmission of testimonial knowledge. This model is rejected in favour of the view that assertion transmits knowledge by (intentionally) expressing belief. The expression of belief is distinguished from the communication of belief. The chapter goes on to compare the epistemology of testimony with the epistemology of memory, arguing that memory and testimony are mechanisms that can preserve the rationality of the belief they transmit without preserving the evidence on which the belief was originally based.

PHOTOGRAPHICALLY BASED KNOWLEDGE

Episteme ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Cavedon-Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Testimonial Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic Utility ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
Foundational Issue ◽  
Do So

AbstractPictures are a quintessential source of aesthetic pleasure. This makes it easy to forget that they are epistemically valuable no less than they are aesthetically so. Pictures are representations. As such, they may furnish us with knowledge of the objects they represent. In this article I provide an account of why photographs are of greater epistemic utility than handmade pictures. To do so, I use a novel approach: I seek to illuminate the epistemic utility of photographs by situating both photographs and handmade pictures among the sources of knowledge. This method yields an account of photography's epistemic utility that better connects the issue with related issues in epistemology and is relatively superior to other accounts. Moreover, it answers a foundational issue in the epistemology of pictorial representation: ‘What kinds of knowledge do pictures furnish?’ I argue that photographs have greater epistemic utility than handmade pictures because photographs are sources of perceptual knowledge, while handmade pictures are sources of testimonial knowledge.

METAPHYSICS AND TESTIMONIAL KNOWLEDGE IN THE SUPER IOHANNEM OF ALBERT THE GREAT

Traditio ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 255-289
Author(s):  
JULIE CASTEIGT
Keyword(s):  
Human Being ◽  
John 1 ◽  
Testimonial Knowledge ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
Albert The Great ◽  
The Senses

This article examines Albert the Great's interpretation of John 1:7 concerning John the Baptist: “He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him.” Commenting on this verse, Albert develops the idea that the metaphysical approach to God, according to which the notion of God is purified of all sensory images, must be completed by a method that is more connatural to the human being: testimonial knowledge, that is, relying on the senses and imagination, using the metaphors that God himself has suggested through his revelation. Albert's reading of John 1:7 is found to be in continuity with key ideas elsewhere in his oeuvre.

Discrimination and Testimonial Knowledge

Episteme ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Greco
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Interesting Problem ◽  
Testimonial Knowledge

ABSTRACTSanford 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.

Testimonial Knowledge: A Unified Account

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Graham
Keyword(s):  
Testimonial Knowledge

Believing the Incomprehensible God

2018 ◽  
Vol 92 ◽  
pp. 111-122
Author(s):  
James Dominic Rooney ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Related Area ◽  
Epistemological Problem ◽  
Testimonial Knowledge ◽  
Epistemology Of Testimony ◽  
Do So

There has been recent epistemological interest as to whether knowledge is “transmitted” by testimony from the testifier to the hearer, where a hearer acquires knowledge “second-hand.” Yet there is a related area in epistemology of testimony which raises a distinct epistemological problem: the relation of understanding to testimony. In what follows, I am interested in one facet of this relation: whether/how a hearer can receive testimonial knowledge without fully understanding the content of the testimony? I use Thomas Aquinas to motivate a case where, in principle, the content of received testimony cannot be understood but nevertheless constitutes knowledge. Aquinas not only argues that we can receive testimonial knowledge without understanding the content of that testimony, but that we have duties to do so in certain cases.

Communication in online fan communities: The ethics of intimate strangers

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTINE A. JAMES
Keyword(s):  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
Knowledge Transmission ◽  
Testimonial Knowledge ◽  
Track Record ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
Belief States ◽  
Special Case

Dan O'Brien gives an excellent analysis of testimonial knowledge transmission in his article 'Communication Between Friends' (2009) noting that the reliability of the speaker is a concern in both externalist and internalist theories of knowledge. O'Brien focuses on the belief states of Hearers (H) in cases where the reliability of the Speaker (S) is known via 'intimate trust', a special case pertaining to friendships with a track record of reliable or unreliable reports. This article considers the notion of 'intimate trust', specifically in the context of online fan communities, in which the amount of time as a member of an online fan community and the extent of one's posting history often results in something like 'intimate trust' between fans who are, for all other purposes, strangers. In the last two years, Twitter has provided a number of celebrities with a place to update fans and 'tweet' back and forth an innumerable number of times in any given day. This accentuates the intimacy to such a level that it becomes a 'caricature of intimacy' - the minute-to-minute updates accentuate the illusion that the fan 'knows' the celebrity, but the distance and mediation are still carefully maintained. This is an issue with both ethical and epistemological implications for fan-fan and fan-celebrity relationships online, considering ethics of care and ethics of justice, whether fans 'owe' celebrities a certain amount of distance and respect, and whether stars owe the fan something in return, either in the sense of reciprocal Kantian duties or Aristotelian moderation.

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