Testimony, Knowledge and Belief

Abstract

Some philosophers of knowledge — a minority — hold that knowledge is categorially different from belief, so that it cannot be right to treat it as if it were some species of belief — justified, true belief, say. I count myself among these philosophers. I came to my view through reflections about testimony and the processes by which knowledge may be diffused through a community. (Much the same is true of Zeno Vendler though we end up with rather different theories). This position is apt to stir hostility on at least two counts. First, there is the power of prevailing orthodoxy. Many philosophers nowadays appear to find it incredible that anyone should think knowledge is not some kind of (superior, privileged) belief; contemporary epistemologists standardly conceive of their central task as that of unfolding what has to be true of a belief if it is to amount to knowledge. This notion of epistemology would be seriously off target if the minority view were right, so there is a good deal of intellectual capital invested in some version of the majority position. Secondly, there is a lot of resistance to the very idea that knowledge, which is conceived of as a grand thing, could possibly be obtained from mere say-so in the way I believe it can. Thus Jonathan Barnes:

No doubt we all do pick up beliefs in that second hand fashion, and I fear that we often suppose such scavengings yield knowledge. But that is only a sign of our colossal credulity: [it is] a rotten way of acquiring beliefs and it is no way at all of acquiring knowledge.