Testimony and trust

This entry discusses how issues to do with trust engage with the epistemology of testimony. The entry is structured as follows. It starts, in section 25.1, with a discussion of the epistemology of testimony, and argues that trust only matters to the assurance theory of testimony. Section 25.2 outlines the assurance theory of testimony and shows how trust figures in it. Section 25.3 raises some problems for the assurance theory and points to an incompleteness in it: some further account is needed as to how trust can provide an epistemic reason for belief. Section 25.4 introduces the distinction between doxastic and non-doxastic conceptions of trust, where this distinction determines the kind of account that can be provided of how trust provides an epistemic reason for belief. Section 25.5 discusses what conception of trust best fits the testimonial context and argues that there is no decisive consideration. Sections 25.6 and 25.7 then respectively show how the assurance theory might be coupled with doxastic and non-doxastic views of trust; these sections present accounts of how each conception of trust allows an answer to the question of how trust provides an epistemic reason for belief. The balance of argument is presented as favoring the non-doxastic view.