ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a theory that is apt to return the intuitively correct verdicts in the circular testimony cases involved in the argument against internalist approaches to testimony. Unlike internalist approaches to testimony, the proposed theory is able to distinguish between cases of circular testimony in which the original speaker's epistemic grounds are enhanced and cases in which they are not. Rather than thinking of testimony as constituting evidence of what is said, epistemologists have focused on the idea of a speaker's act of testifying as presenting an assurance. The proposed theory is not neutral between assurance-based approaches and evidence-based approaches. It is neutral with respect to the question of whether a listener merely has a right to believe what a speaker says in the absence of reasons against doing so, or has an obligation to do so.
