ABSTRACT
Testimonial knowledge is then knowledge arrived through believing another’s testimony because the sender had knowledge to transmit. Michael Dummett says testimonial knowledge “is the transmission from one individual to another of knowledge.” Jennifer Lackey has offered a number of cases where the speaker would otherwise have knowledge to transmit but for a defeater. In her examples the defeater is a believed undercutting defeater that the relevant belief-forming mechanism is unreliable, or insufficient for knowledge. Peter J. Graham shifted the focus further, from the speaker’s assertion to the hearer’s representation of the speaker’s assertion, and whether it provided the goods required for the hearer’s knowledge. Lackey and Graham reacted differently to the counterexamples to sufficiency and necessity. Harman thinks the recipient does not acquire knowledge; a speaker’s knowledge can fail to transmit to the hearer because the hearer lacks “accessible” but misleading evidence that would defeat her justification.
