ABSTRACT
Experience is a source of reasons to believe. It seems a platitude to say so. Someone who’s had a visual experience of a fact is in a unique epistemic position. Contrast this with other epistemic vantage points with regard to the fact-having heard testimony or having inferred something about it. Not only is the experience primary, in the sense that in order for the testimony to be grounded or for the inference to be relevant there have to be certain sorts of experiences, but the experience is autonomous. One doesn’t have to defer to someone else or infer something else to have an experience. One just has it and thereby one is given something one can appeal to as a reason to believe.
