ABSTRACT

Virtually all contemporary discussions of testimony includes some requirement to the effect that, in Jennifer Lackey's formulation, 'For every speaker A and hearer B, B knows that p on the basis of A's testimony that only if B is a reliable or properly functioning recipient of testimony'. Call this requirement, for reasons that will become clear the personalist requirement, or PR. Lackey formulates the PR requirement as a necessary condition in the context of an account involving 'minimal requirements' on testimonial knowledge, intended to stake out what will count as common ground between presumptivists and non-presumptivists. The goal of this chapter is ultimately to suggest that even this 'minimal requirement' is too strong. If chapter succeeds in demonstrating this, and to the extent that Lackey's account indeed characterizes the common ground between non-presumptivists and presumptivists with respect to the epistemology of testimony, then people will, mutatis mutandis, have presented an argument against both theories.