Testimony, Knowledge, and Epistemic Goals

STEVEN L. REYNOLDS

TESTIMONY, KNOWLEDGE, AND EPISTEMIC GOALS

(Received 30 May 2002)

ABSTRACT. Various considerations are adduced to show that we require that atestifier know her testimony. Such a requirement apparently improves testimony.It is argued that the aim of improving testimony explains why we have and useour concept of knowledge. If we were to introduce a term of praise for testimony,using it at first to praise testimony that apparently helped us in our practicalprojects, it would come to be used as we now use the word “know”.

Recent discussion of testimony focuses on the justification we some-times have for believing it.1 Do we have an inferential justification,based on an empirical assessment of the trustworthiness of theparticular informant? Or based on an empirical assessment of thetrustworthiness of informants in general? Or do we have an “apriori” justification for believing it (relying on our senses to discoverthat it is testified), which may be undermined in particular casesby empirical evidence of untrustworthiness (Coady, 1992; Burge,1993)? This is an important issue, but I bring it up only to distin-guish it from the question about testimony that I want to discuss:What epistemic relation to p do we require of those who testifythat p?2 This question is not hard to answer, and it may not be veryinteresting in itself, but I think it suggests a useful way to think aboutthe nature of knowledge.

1. TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW

Suppose someone who wants to visit Sam’s Deli asks a servicestation attendant “Where is Sam’s Deli?” The attendant answers,“It’s on the south side of Main Street, three blocks east of Rose”.What epistemic relation should3 the service station attendant haveto what he says?

Philosophical Studies 110: 139–161, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

140 STEVEN L. REYNOLDS

Some epistemic relations are clearly inadequate. We should nottestify to what we believe to be false. Nor should we testify to whatwe do not believe. (I take it that these are prima facie ‘should’sthat may be outweighed by other reasons in particular circum-stances.) But what epistemic relation to p is good enough to make itpermissible to assert that p?

A truck driver once told me, rather emphatically, that a servicestation attendant should give directions to a place only if he knowswhere it is. I think he was right. We often ask where things areby saying “Do you know where . . .?” If the answer is “No”, therespondent is not merely refusing to say, but also giving a reason fornot saying: She doesn’t know. “What is that student’s name?” “Is thelibrary open late tonight?” “When was Spinoza’s Ethics published?”“What date is the second Wednesday this December?” “Do you havea first edition of Dickens’ Bleak House?” In every case someonewho truthfully says “I don’t know” gives an acceptable reason fornot answering. We expect that people who don’t know won’t try toanswer.

On the other hand, we often want to tell people what we think,even when we realize that we don’t know. We can do that by saying“I think that . . .” or “I believe that . . .” By so saying, we still complywith a requirement to testify only to what we know, since we doknow what we think or believe.

Here is more evidence that we require knowledge of those whotestify: In response to a bit of testimony, it is usually in order,although sometimes impolite, to ask, “How do you know?” Weknow what is being asked, and what would count as an acceptableanswer to it, even if we think it was impolite to ask the question. Thisquestion presupposes that the testifier represents herself as knowing,even if she did not explicitly say so.

Teachers of theory of knowledge find it difficult to persuadestudents to set aside the assumption that the skeptic who says“We have no knowledge” is representing herself, inconsistently, asknowing that we have no knowledge. The students take it for grantedthat anyone who asserts that p represents herself as knowing thatp, and they disapprove of the skeptic’s claim to be speaking onlyaccording to appearances and with no (conversational) implicationthat she knows.

TESTIMONY, KNOWLEDGE, AND EPISTEMIC GOALS 141

I take these observations to be pretty good evidence that werequire someone who testifies that p to know that p. But it mightbe suggested that we really require only a reasonable belief that oneknows. It is possible to believe with good reason that one knows,without actually knowing. The service station attendant may fail toknow the whereabouts of Sam’s Deli because it has moved in themonth since he visited it. His testimony does not express knowledge,but he reasonably believes that it does, and it would not be fair toblame him for giving the mistaken directions.

On the view that knowledge is required, we would then seem toneed a distinction such as moral theorists sometimes make betweenright actions and blameless actions. An act is right only if it satisfiessome objective criterion of rightness. But it may be blameless ifthe agent reasonably believed it would satisfy that criterion, even ifit didn’t actually satisfy it. Thus an act may be blameless, althoughnot right. Similarly, if knowledge is required for testimony we mighthold someone who reasonably believes that she knows that p, butdoesn’t, blameless in testifying that p. But we wouldn’t need thiscumbersome distinction between blameworthy and improper testi-mony if we held that testifying requires only a reasonable belief thatone knows.

But it seems that we do require knowledge for testimony. Forexample, if a bystander thinks the station attendant has not heardthat Sam’s deli has moved, she should produce this informationbefore the attendant testifies. She could correct the service stationattendant’s assertion afterward, but he would still be embarrassed(“Oh. I hadn’t heard they moved” he mutters). He believed withgood reason that he knew where it was located, and so he would notbe embarrassed for testifying without reasonably believing that heknew. His excuse would remove the need for embarrassment. Whathe lacks is knowledge. So I think there is good evidence that werequire knowledge of those who testify to us, not merely that theyhave reasonable belief, nor even that they have reasonable belief thatthey know. Even if the testifier is not to blame, testimony withoutknowledge is defective.

What purpose does this requirement serve? There are otheroptions: We might instead require justified belief for testimony, andqualify it when we have something better, saying “I know . . .” or “It


is certain . . .”, when we are justified in believing that we know orthat it is certain. So it seems that there must be some reason why werequire knowledge rather than merely justified belief.

One purpose of requiring knowledge might be to encourage testi-mony that can produce knowledge in the recipients. It seems that ifyou tell me that p, I can thereby come to know that p only if youalready know it.4 Requiring knowledge for testimony would thusprobably produce more knowledge. But a justified belief require-ment would probably produce more justified beliefs, which are alsovaluable. It seems that we need a reason to prefer knowledge as theoutcome of testimony above other valuable outcomes that might bebetter achieved by a different requirement.

There seems to be something ethically questionable about testi-fying that p when one is aware that one doesn’t know that p.5 Suchtestimony need not be a lie, if the testifier believes his testimony,so it seems that this ethical dubiousness is to some extent inde-pendent of the prohibition on lying. But it is not clear that it isindependent of the requirement we are trying to explain. If thereis a widespread understanding that we have an obligation to knowbefore testifying, then someone who testifies knowing that she lacksknowledge misrepresents herself as knowing. But such misrepre-sentation apparently depends on a previously accepted requirementof knowledge, so it cannot explain that requirement.

It would be natural here to consider the advantages for testi-mony of some of the features that are currently widely acceptedas characterizing knowledge. A fairly standard list includes truth,belief, justification, and some condition designed to rule out theGettier cases (Gettier, 1963). If we found that these conditions wereparticularly desirable for testimony, that would give a reason whywe should require that they be satisfied for testimony. However, Ithink this approach would obscure the true relation between know-ledge and acceptable testimony, because it would wrongly suggestthat we developed the concept of knowledge for other reasons, andmore or less independently chose to require that it be satisfied byany testimony that we would find acceptable.


2. WHY WE SAY PEOPLE KNOW

In what follows I hope to make plausible the following two theses:1) The primary purpose of saying that people know is to encouragegood testimony (where “good testimony” is characterized in away that avoids presupposing that such testimony expresses know-ledge). 2) An interesting way to explore the meaning of the word“know” is to consider how our use of the term might advance thisprimary purpose. I take an exploration of the function or goals of acertain kind of discourse to be a way of exploring meaning that isdifferent from the most traditional philosophical method, of tryingto state and test definitions, but one that is familiar to philosophers,especially from the discussions of the point or purpose of moraldiscourse.6 I do not attempt to state a definition of knowledge in thispaper, and I don’t claim that the sorts of considerations I give belowwill eventuate in such a definition. But I think it is possible to givean interesting explanation of why we use the word “know” as we do,and perhaps also to see a direction in which to look for refinementsof the attempted accounts of how we use it, by considering how apractice of publicly classifying people as knowing or not knowingcould improve the quality of testimony.

A kindred project in epistemology tries to explain our interestin the concept of knowledge by reference to an individual goal ofobtaining true beliefs (Williams, 1978; BonJour, 1985). We aim toavoid false beliefs and acquire useful true beliefs, and the best wayto do that is to believe only in circumstances where the proposedbelief would satisfy the other conditions of knowledge. That’s whywe use the concept of knowledge. I agree that the best way ofseeking true beliefs for ourselves is to try to believe only where itseems to us that the proposed belief would satisfy the conditionsof knowledge. But I shall argue that the features of our talk ofknowledge are better explained, not by a goal each of us has, as anindividual, of believing only the truth, but instead by a social goalof improving testimony.

Let me emphasize that I am only claiming that improving testi-mony is our primary purpose in classifying people as knowing, notthat it is our only purpose. Classifying people as knowing or notknowing also helps us to gain knowledge for ourselves and to decidewhom to ask for assistance. We also care about who is on top and, as


knowing is one way to be superior, we learn something about whois on top when we are told who knows. But I think that improvingtestimony is our primary purpose in classifying people as knowing,and the purpose that most nearly explains why we do it the way wedo.

I am not claiming that the improvement of testimony is aconscious goal of our use of “knows”. Most of those who classifyothers as knowing or not knowing probably do not realize that thepurpose of this activity is to improve testimony. But it is a goal thatcan very plausibly be attributed to us on the basis of the way we usethe word “know”. I would guess that we tend to be unaware of thisgoal, not because of repression, but just because we were introducedto the practice of classifying people as knowing in ways that did notreflectively consider the benefits that encourage and maintain thatpractice. This seems to be true of many socially inculcated prac-tices. Money, to take an obvious example, exists because it servescertain purposes. Yet of the billions who use money relatively feware capable of articulating the purposes that sustain the institution,although they will gladly mention some of the personal goals theycould achieve if they had a little more.

How would a goal of improving testimony be advanced by sayingthat people know or don’t know, and so praising the former andblaming the latter for testifying? Such a practice would provide asmall but steady incentive to testify acceptably. We talk a lot andmuch of it we don’t care very much about. Laziness, distractions,temptations to deceive, and sheer incapacity will inevitably lead tofrequent violations of any standards for testimony, and so to a needfor similarly frequent sanctions for the violators. These sanctionsshould be inexpensive in time and energy to those who supply them.Expressions of approval and disapproval are inexpensive.

But we pursue a variety of ends by voicing approval anddisapproval of the behavior of others, ranging from amusement,comfort, and convenience to aesthetic satisfaction, honest dealing,and abstention from violence. So we need ways to signal to otherswhich aspect of their behavior we approve or disapprove on a givenoccasion. For testimony we need an efficient way to indicate that weapprove of a bit of testimony, not as beautifully phrased, or witty,or inspiring, but as acceptably informative.7 “Damn good!” isn’t


good enough. To avoid confusion and to focus attention on what weare trying to improve, the indication of approval should not indicatemuch more than that the testimony is acceptable as testimony.

There are some other obvious desiderata. The approval shouldn’tbe so hard to obtain, or the disapproval so hard to avoid, as todiscourage people from trying to obtain the former and avoid thelatter. It should also be easy to decide whether someone merits thissort of praise or blame so that people will provide it frequently.“Knows” and “doesn’t know” may be only words, but their cost willbe too high if it takes a lot of work to decide when to say them.

However, we should keep in mind that criteria that are easy toapply may not be easy to articulate, and those that are easy to articu-late may not be easy to apply. It is easy to recognize faces, hard tosay how we do it. It would be easy to say that bald people are thosewho have less than five thousand hairs, but not so easy to tell whois bald by that test. Our criteria for acceptable testimony may thusturn out to be hard to state, even though it is usually easy for us todecide whether someone should testify. I take the state of the Gettierliterature to be evidence that it is relatively easy, in most cases, torecognize knowledge, and yet hard to describe how we do it.

We should also be prepared to find that our criteria for acceptabletestimony have been influenced by a variety of reasonable but noteasily reconcilable goals, so that they may not appear rational tosomeone who has an overly simple picture of what we should beaiming at (e.g., that testimony should aim at reliability in conveyingthe truth). I have in mind something like the apparent irrationa-lities of English spelling. One aim of English spelling is to reflectthe way good speakers say the words, in order to make it easyfor native speakers to learn to read and to spell and to pronouncenew words encountered while reading. But English spelling poorlyreflects current pronunciation, perhaps because those who madedecisions about how to spell and standardized those spellings inearly dictionaries had a variety of pronunciations to consider, andalso aimed to indicate foreign derivations. Attempts to reformspelling to better reflect current standard pronunciation make littleheadway, because the benefits seem small to those who have alreadylargely surmounted the problems of the existing spelling (And wewant to be able to read old books easily, in spite of the changes in


pronunciation). Attempts to reform our standards for testimony mayalso run into an entirely rational preference for existing standards,for similar reasons. That is, we may prefer existing standards notbecause they would satisfy us better than their proposed rivals ifwe were already equally expert in applying both, but because wehave spent many years learning what counts as acceptable testimony,and are disinclined (or perhaps even unable) to learn very differentstandards.8

3. STANDARDS FOR GOOD TESTIMONY

When we want to indicate that S’s actual or potential testimonythat p meets our standards for good testimony, let us say that Sgnows that p. When we think a bit of actual or potential testimonyis substandard, we can say S does not gnow that p, adding disap-proving looks, stern tone of voice and so on, as seems appropriate.“Gnow” is at present only our proposed expression of approval oftestimony or potential testimony. To say that someone gnows that pis to express approval of her testifying that p.

That “gnows” expresses approval of testimony is compatible withits having a factual component as well as a praising component. Itmay be a “thick” evaluative concept, in Bernard Williams’s termino-logy. When we approve of things having certain qualities, andeveryone knows we do, saying that something has those qualitiesis regarded as praise. That doesn’t make the question whether it hasthe approved qualities any less factual.

With these points in mind, I will now argue that if we were toset out to improve testimony by praising acceptable testimony withsome such term, we would probably end up expressing our currentconcept of knowledge. That is, we would end up using “gnow” forjustified true beliefs that lack the sorts of deficiencies that appear inthe Gettier examples.9 I conjecture that something like this probablyactually happened in our ancestors’ coming to use the concept ofknowledge. Of course I don’t have any genuine history. I will talkas if we were developing such a concept now, and try to show thatwhat we usually want from testimony would probably develop into


something pretty close to the sophisticated conception of acceptabletestimony that is indicated by the requirement of knowledge.

We usually seek testimony to assist us in some project, such asfinding Sam’s deli, or obtaining a first edition of Dickens’ BleakHouse, or doing an acceptable job of refinishing the floor. So wewould initially praise the testimony that helped us succeed in ourprojects. I take it that the notion of success in our projects doesn’tpresuppose the concept of knowledge. I want to do a good job offinishing the floor. I can come to believe that I have done that, andbelieve that a certain bit of testimony helped me to do it or hinderedme from doing it, without making any judgments about whether Iknow anything. Likewise for the other projects listed – I can findSam’s deli, or acquire a first edition of Dickens’ Bleak House, andevaluate whether I have succeeded in those projects, and whether abit of testimony helped me or not, without arriving at any opinionwhether I have knowledge.

That may seem to bias the account of knowledge toward grubbypractical goals, and away from the noble intellectual projects thatphilosophers admire. But curiosity surely existed before an articu-lated concept of knowledge, and it must have led to many of theprojects for which our ancestors sought testimonial assistance. Mycat has curiosity and satisfies it without (presumably) ever thinking,or being able to think, that she has knowledge. It is most naturalfor us now to describe curiosity as a desire to know, and thatmay be roughly correct. But we should not forget that our actualcuriosity is often satisfied without judging that we know – perhapsjudging instead only that we have read it in the Times, or seen itfor ourselves, or thought of a convincing argument for it. That weshould know is not usually part of the specific content of the desiresthat we call curiosity.

So suppose “gnow” has been introduced as a term with whichto praise testimony or potential testimony. People would noticecircumstances that tended to make a person’s testimony helpful intheir projects, practical or intellectual, and subsequently they wouldpraise a person’s testimony as gnowledge when they noticed thatit was made in those circumstances. The relevant circumstanceswould presumably include whether the person had perceived or beentold what they testified, circumstances that conduce to reliability of


memory, and how much and in what ways they had thought aboutwhat they perceived or were told before testifying.

The first rough descriptions of which circumstances tended toproduce helpful testimony would presumably be refined with expe-rience. Later generations would notice the circumstances in whichtheir elders praised someone as gnowing. They would also hearvaguely formulated rules, with many exceptions: “You gnow it ifyou’ve seen it yourself”, “You gnow it if you’ve heard it fromsomeone trustworthy”. Over time a rule such as “You gnow it if yourelders have said it” might fragment into a variety of rules, each withits own host of exceptions, such as “You gnow it if the scientists whosaid it were speaking for a consensus of the scientific community ordescribing the results of a well designed study . . .” None of theserules would adequately describe all of the features people would feelthey ought to attend to in deciding whether someone gnows. Theywouldn’t need to in order to serve their purpose of helping peoplelearn how to tell whether someone’s testimony should be praised.The rules that would more exactly capture inclinations to use theterm “gnow” would probably be too complicated to use effectivelyin teaching the standards to the next generation.

Still, although hopeless as a teaching aid, a sufficiently sophisti-cated and detailed set of rules for using “gnow” might neverthelesscapture the community’s idealized inclinations to use it. Let uscall the rules that would express those inclinations “testimonialnorms”.10 Those who were thought to comply with the testimonialnorms for potential testimony that p would usually be said to “gnow”that p.

But “gnows” doesn’t mean the same as “complies with generallyaccepted testimonial norms” because one standard way of urgingimprovement in the norms would be to deny or attribute gnowledgein circumstances where such denial or attribution is believed to becontrary to the existing norms. Such attempts at reform by examplewill presumably be effective in changing norms to the extent thatthe audience can see how the speaker proposes to change them, andthat such a change would be likely to produce better testimony inthe future.


4. TRUTH?

Would we be likely to praise testimony as an expression of gnow-ledge only if it were (thought to be) true? Truth is often helpful, buta capacity for expressing non-truths has its uses too, as when wethink about actions we won’t perform in the course of deliberatingabout what to do. For beliefs however we almost always prefertruth. False beliefs make failure to achieve our ends more likely. Afalse belief about the location of Sam’s deli, if used in an attemptto visit it, would probably result in failure in that project. Since wewant testimony to help our projects succeed, we would probablypraise it as gnowledge only if we thought it was true.

But it may be objected that helpful testimony need not be true.For example, the service station attendant’s description of the loca-tion of Sam’s deli, “on the south side of Main Street, three blockseast of Rose”, is a quarter block off, and so, strictly speaking,false. But someone who gets that close to Sam’s deli isn’t likelyto miss it, so few would complain about that testimony from theservice station attendant. I don’t take this to be a counter examplehowever, since the advice is still approximately true. His statement,interpreted approximately (about three blocks), expresses a truth,even though, interpreted strictly (exactly three blocks), it expressesa falsehood. We know better than to interpret testimony strictlywhen seeking directions, so we successfully receive the usefultruth.11

So we would praise people by saying that they gnow that p onlyif we thought that their testimony that p was true. However, just asa goal of believing only the truth, if not tempered by other goals,could lead to believing very little, so a rigorous determination toallow only true testimony could lead to allowing very little testi-mony. But we don’t want people to withhold too much potentiallyuseful testimony. So we would expect potential testimony to beoften said to be gnowledge even though the recommender does nothave a reliable guarantee of its truth. Testimony will be praised ina fallibilistic way. Given the tendency to overestimate the proba-bility of a salient possibility, we should also expect people to beuncomfortable praising the testimony of someone when they areconscious that she might be mistaken. We should thus expect to findthe same tension between fallibilistic practice in using “gnow” and


disapproval of that same practice when we are made aware of it thatwe find in our uses of “know”.12

5. GETTIER AND JUSTIFICATION

Since people evaluate others’ testimony, and recommend it for thebenefit of third parties, testimonial norms are likely to refer, on occa-sion, to things that the person whose testimony is being evaluatedhasn’t had any opportunity to observe or be told. For example, thosewho know about a peculiar local custom of constructing convincingbarn facades will not recommend the testimony of newcomers whohave observed barns from the highway, judging that the newcomerswon’t be aware of this local custom and so won’t have taken steps tomake sure they were not observing barn facades (Goldman, 1976).The newcomers may be complying with all testimonial norms so faras they can tell, and yet they may still not have gnowledge becausethey are violating some norms unwittingly. A rough statement ofthe general rule in cases like this one might be that one shouldn’ttestify regarding observed X’s unless one’s observations are such asto reliably distinguish them from non-X’s that are somewhat likelyto be observed in the circumstances. Old residents and newcomersalike will accept the testimonial norms this vague rule gestures at,but they will judge a newcomer’s compliance with them differentlyin the barn façade case. The newcomer will think that she gnows thatthat building she sees is a barn, and so she will confidently testifythat it is. Old residents will realize that she can’t tell the differencebetween a barn and a barn façade from where she is standing, and sowill not approve of her testimony. But they may still recognize thatshe is not to blame for so testifying. They may say that she is justi-fied in testifying, although they will not recommend her testimonyby saying that she gnows.

As Gettier cases are presented in the literature, there seems tobe a considerable difference between features of the circumstancesthat affect justification and features, such as the presence of barnfacades, that undermine claims to know while not affecting justi-fication. Call the latter features “Gettier features”. On the side ofjustification there are subjectively available features such as beliefs,sensations, experiences and reasonable inferences from them. On


the Gettier side we find features that may not be readily available tothe subject, such as appropriate causal connections, the local reliabi-lity of particular methods of coming to believe, and the existence ofevidence not yet apprehended by the subject.

As my introduction to the topic is meant to suggest, I think thisway of discussing Gettier features and justificational features exag-gerates and distorts their differences. If the subjects of the Gettierstories were aware of the circumstances described in those stories,that awareness would undermine their justification for their beliefs.If S had seen that there were convincing barn facades in the area, hisbelief that that is a barn he is looking at would no longer be justi-fied. The same holds for other familiar Gettier examples: If Smithhad heard that Brown had sold his Ford, then he would no longerbe justified in believing that someone in the office owns a Ford. Ifanother Gettier case protagonist had recently seen a large white dogin the neighborhood, and noticed that it looks like a sheep from adistance, he would no longer be justified in believing that there is asheep on the hill where he seems to see one.

Dividing the factors that distinguish true belief from knowledgeinto Gettier features on the one hand and justificational features onthe other obscures the essential similarity of these features. It wouldbe less misleading to say that we have two perspectives on know-ledge. Justification is what knowledge looks like from inside.13 Theaudience for a Gettier story receives a description of the objectivecircumstances of the subject’s belief from which it is clear that itdoes not qualify as knowledge, and a description of the subject’sbeliefs and experiences from which it is clear that she could reaso-nably see that same belief as knowledge. Justificational featuresand Gettier features seem very different to us only because whendescribing the justificational side we focus on how the knowledge-relevant features are represented to the subject (as beliefs andexperiences regarding her knowledge-relevant circumstances), andwhen describing the Gettier side we focus instead on the objectivenature of those features. There really are barn facades in the area (anobjectively described feature of the subject’s circumstances), but shedoesn’t know it and the barn facades would look just like real barnsto her (the subjective side). I suggest that we really have just onekind of thing to consider here, compliance with testimonial norms.


The subject and others who consider her testimony may reasonablyhave different opinions about whether she has complied with thosenorms.

Thinking of justification as the appearance of knowledge to thesubject may seem to lead to a problem however. Lack of justificationimplies lack of knowledge (on the standard accounts of knowledgethat I am following). But from what we have seen of the nature ofgnowledge so far, lack of justification might not imply lack of gnow-ledge. I might in fact be in compliance with the relevant testimonialnorms, even though it appears to me that I am not in compliance, andso, according to the suggestion, I am not justified. Due to my actualcompliance with the norms, I will gnow, even though it appears tome that I do not gnow. If so, justification will not be a necessarycondition for gnowledge.

I think justification will be necessary for gnowledge however.For we are not allowed to testify that p when we don’t gnow thatp. (As we have introduced the term “gnow”, this is analytic – onewho does not gnow that p cannot acceptably testify that p.) Andwe can intentionally comply with this prohibition only by refrainingfrom testifying when our potential testimony appears to us not tobe gnowledge. As we want people to intentionally comply withthe testimonial norms it seems we would thus require justificationfor gnowledge. The reason is not anything essentially subjectiveabout compliance with testimonial norms, but rather the function,for me, of my judgments whether I gnow as indicating for me whichpropositions I may acceptably testify to.

6. TESTIMONIAL NORMS AND GETTIER STORIES

It may be possible to find out a bit more about the character oftestimonial norms from the Gettier stories themselves. We hear abrief story about S’s potential testimony, and on the basis of this wearrive at rather firm opinions about whether S knows. But the brevityof the Gettier stories may mislead us about the complexity of thephenomena we classify on hearing them. The stories probably haveassumed backgrounds that are hard to make explicit. That manyapparently simple stories have such backgrounds has been vividly


indicated by the history of efforts to program computers to respondacceptably to questions about simple stories.

Although much of what informs our judgments may be below thesurface, there are some fairly obvious points to notice about thesestories. It is clear for example that a Gettier story is a condensedhistory of the subject’s potential testimony. How to characterizewhich aspects of the subject’s history are relevant for these purposesis unclear. “How the person came to believe that p”, won’t do, evensetting aside doubts, which we will come to shortly, about whetherbelief is required for knowledge. The reason why it isn’t enough toknow how a person came to believe something is that a person whocame to believe that p on insufficient evidence may later come toknow it, by acquiring more evidence. I come to believe that Samis at this party by inferring, from gossip I have heard, that he lovesparties and never misses one. Later at the party I spend a few minutestalking to Sam. At that point it seems undeniable that I know that heis present at the party. But if the relevant history of my belief thatSam was at the party included only how I first came to hold thisbelief, my state after talking to him would still be classified as notknowing that Sam was at the party. So aspects of the history otherthan how I came to believe must be relevant.

Nor can we characterize the relevant bit of history that a Gettierstory tells as how the person came to believe it or how she wouldhave come to believe it if she had not already believed it. For thereare cases in which I come to know only because I first believedwithout having knowledge, and then, perhaps because my belief waschallenged, intentionally acquired evidence that I would otherwisenever have sought or obtained. It might be a little better to say thatit is an aspect of the person’s actual history which, if it had occurredwhen she did not believe, would have led her to believe. That stillseems overly restrictive however. Perhaps there are cases where sheshould count as knowing that p even though she would not, if shehad not already believed that p, have accepted that p as a result ofthe events that in fact put her in the position of complying with thetestimonial norms. She might be irrationally resistant to that sortof evidence for example, but willing to accept it for things that shealready believes. Perhaps there is no suitably brief description ofthe relevant bit of history that qualifies a bit of potential testimony


as knowledge, and we figure out what is relevant or irrelevant inparticular cases only by applying our (hard to articulate) grasp oftestimonial norms.

Let us return to the barn façade example. Harry is driving in thecountry, talking to his two year old son. He says “That’s a barn”.He sees it clearly, and he isn’t distracted, and it is a barn. Mostpeople who hear the story as so far told, and nothing more, wouldunhesitatingly classify Harry as knowing that that is a barn. Now weadd that there are numerous barn facades in the area, which look justlike real barns from the road, although Harry does not know this. Inresponse to this addition to the story most people would re-classifyHarry as not knowing, but as still having a justified belief that thatis a barn.

Consider further additions to the story: Harry stops the car. Hiswife gets out and walks across the field, until she is standing tenyards or so to the right of the barn, where she would certainly seethat it is a barn façade if it were one. She looks toward the barn andsays “Oh Harry, come see, it’s a darling little calf!” It seems that wewould judge that Harry does know that it is a barn now, in spite ofthe barn facades in the neighborhood, because his wife’s silence onthe subject in these circumstances would be a good reason for himto think it is not merely a barn façade.

Now consider another addition: The calf is in fact behind thebarn, where it has just wandered from over the hill. It would havebeen standing where it is even if there had been a barn façade thereinstead of a barn. Harry’s wife is pathologically uninterested inbarn facades, and would not have told Harry even if it were a barnfaçade. In response to this story, I think we would probably reviseour judgment and say that Harry does not know it is a barn.

There seems to be no obvious limit to how long or complex astory we can review in deciding whether or not Harry knows thatthat is a barn. We have little difficulty deciding whether an elementof the story is relevant. That Harry is carrying a picnic basket in hiscar is not relevant. That Harry’s wife is trying to get him to leave thecar so that his older son can prepare a practical joke may be relevanthowever, since it reflects on her motives in what she tells Harry.

So we have a large, but presumably finite variety of storyelements relevant to whether Harry has knowledge, and we can


evaluate combinations of those elements without any apparentlimit, except the limits usually set aside in considering humancognitive abilities, such as limits on attention span and short termmemory, and our related abilities to organize and remember therelevant elements of the story. It appears that our ability to clas-sify people as knowing is rather like our ability to determinewhether sentences of our native language are grammatical. As wecan evaluate a potential infinity of sentences for grammaticality,so we can evaluate a similarly open-ended collection of epistemichistories as indicating knowledge or its lack. The underlying patternthat we recognize in deciding whether a state counts as know-ledge may be as difficult to describe accurately as the grammaticalpatterns that we recognize in determining whether a sentence of ournative language is well formed. Still it is natural to suppose thatit might eventually be described by a system of rules that collec-tively characterizes the acceptable histories of potential testimony,as grammatical sentences of English may eventually be described bya system of rules. The rough characterizations of types of evidencein the epistemic literature – supporting evidence, defeaters, defeaterdefeaters – may be a beginning of systematizing this material intorules that would express our current testimonial norms.

It seems that we must also be able to apply the norms to historiesthat have not been formulated linguistically, for we do make judg-ments about our own knowledge without constructing narratives ofour recent epistemic history. From what we see and have seen, hearand remember hearing, and from other perceptions and rememberedperceptions, from our other beliefs, how we “feel” about it, and soon, we judge whether we know that so and so.

7. WHY WE SHOULD SAY ONLY WHAT WE BELIEVE

I have postponed the belief condition until last. Why would werequire someone to believe that p as a condition of gnowing thatp?

I think the reason we might require belief is that it is a reli-able, and relatively accessible, indication of the possession of goodevidence, or compliance with testimonial norms.


Since we have been trained to testify, and so typically to believe,only when, so far as we can tell, we have complied with the relevanttestimonial norms, someone who does not believe that p will usuallylack good evidence that p. It is often easier to tell whether someonebelieves what they are saying than it is to find out, by othermeans, whether they have good evidence for it, since we can reli-ably tell whether someone believes what they are saying by theirmanner of speaking and by their facial expression. A convincinglytold lie is a difficult achievement. Finding out in some other waywhether they have evidence that p may require a much more diffi-cult, perhaps practically impossible, investigation of their relevantepistemic history. A system that aims to encourage good testimonyby praising and blaming people will thus probably have to use thisindirect but generally reliable indication of whether their testimonycomplies with the testimonial norms.

It is not only other people who have to use my apparent beliefor lack thereof to judge whether I am likely to have complied withtestimonial norms. For much of what I take myself to know, I amnow aware of no other justification than that I find myself believingit and perhaps that it is the sort of thing I would have had goodreason to believe at some time in the past (e.g., a fact of history orgeography that I might have learned in school, or of recent eventsreported in the news). My own belief that p indicates to me that Ionce had good evidence that p. (It is interesting that in many caseswhat indicates to me that I do believe that p is simply that I findmyself willing to testify that p.) Since beliefs tend to persist afterthe supporting evidence has been forgotten, a lack of belief wouldindicate to me that it is not very likely that I ever had good evidence.It may also happen that I recall some apparently good evidence fora proposition, but I find that I still do not quite believe it. This mayindicate that other evidence I no longer consciously recall undercutsthe evidence I now consciously remember.

It may be objected that this role of apparent belief as an indicationwhether someone has or once had good evidence could not grounda categorical requirement of belief for knowledge. Belief on thisview is only evidence, for the evaluator, that the potential testifierthat p has or once had good evidence that p. We probably wouldn’t


require it, particularly in cases where we had other indications thatthe potential testimony was based on good evidence.

But given the importance we give to the appearance that thesubject believes that p, on many occasions when we have to decidewhether her testimony that p is likely to be good, we might wellcome to regard belief as a requirement for gnowledge. It would beeasier to classify people as not knowing if we so treated it, and easeof classification is desirable, as we have seen.

These considerations may help explain our mixed intuitionsabout the following sort of case, which is sometimes offered as acounterexample to the belief condition (Woozley, 1952; Radford,1966; Lehrer, 1990, pp. 28–36) Imagine a game show contestantwho once learned in some respectable way that p. In answer to aquestion she decides to say that p, but in the pressure of the game shedoubts whether p, and so doesn’t really believe what she says. Whenher answer is accepted she may say, perhaps with some surprise,“I knew it!” Some of us agree with her that she knew; others saythat she didn’t really know. My account can explain this divergencein our judgments. Those who deny that she knew take belief to bean absolute requirement for knowledge. Those who agree that sheknew take belief to be relevant to attributions of knowledge mostlyas defeasible evidence that the testifier once had good evidence.The narrator’s assurance that the game show contestant properlylearned that p and that it is true that p tells us that she satisfies thoseconditions, and this assurance outweighs, for some of us, her failureto believe. I think that this explanation of the conflicting intuitionsis at least somewhat more illuminating than the usual responses tosuch examples, which claim that she does believe in spite of herstrongly felt doubts, or that our intuition that she knows concerns adegenerate sense of “know” (whatever that is).

It thus seems to me that my proposal explains the main featuresof our use of the word “know”, as they have been described in theepistemic literature. Note that the rival goal-of-true-belief explana-tion of the features of knowledge does not even try to explain whyknowledge requires truth or belief. It assumes that we have a goalof true belief, and then tries to explain why, as a means of achievingthat assumed goal, we should also desire justification and the satis-faction of some condition to rule out Gettier cases. To the extent that


my account succeeds in explaining all of the features of knowledge,rather than assuming some as a basis of explaining others, it is to bepreferred.

8. NON-PROPOSITIONAL OBJECTS OF KNOWLEDGE

Finally let us consider other uses of the word “know”, where itdoesn’t indicate the relation someone has to a bit of propositionalcontent which makes their testimony to that content acceptable.Some cases are perhaps not so difficult for my view to explain –if I ask “Do you know Sam?” I am likely to be in the market forsome commonly sought sorts of testimony regarding him – wherehe lives, what he looks like, what sort of occupation he follows, andso on. Someone who is said to know Sam is so described becauseshe is a good source of testimony regarding him, so the extensionof “knows” to this apparently different object of knowledge is notreally such a stretch. Likewise for knowledge of a subject matter:someone who knows eighteenth century English history is likely tobe good source of testimony about it.

A more difficult case is where we use “know” for the attribu-tion of skills, as in “Sam knows how to build cabinets”.14 Sammay be a master carpenter, and yet not be able to tell us muchabout it. If, as I have been arguing, the main function of our use of“know” is to indicate, and so to encourage, the production of accept-able testimony, why would we apply it to the inarticulate mastercraftsman?

When we ask who knows how to do something we are perhapsnow most often looking for someone to do a certain kind of jobfor us. Or we may just be curious about who has a certain sort ofskill. But we live in an age of extremely specialized labor, where weexpect to hire an expert to treat our cats’ illnesses, paint our houses,or repair our cars. Perhaps in a simpler time, when the use of thesewords was developing, the main use of the phrase “know how” wasto indicate someone who could show others how to do something.That is still a very common use – “Can you show me how to . . .?”“Sorry, I don’t know how to . . .” Instead of testimony from someonewho knows how, we get a demonstration of how to do it. Thephrase “knows how” signals approval of potential demonstrations


as “knows that” signals approval of potential testimony. Approvedpotential demonstrations may have to satisfy conditions analogousto the conditions on approved potential testimony – instead of truth,evidence, and belief, we may have successful performance, propertraining, and confidence. I think what I have said suggests that thereis enough resemblance between knowing that and knowing howto make it not utterly mysterious why we would use such closelyrelated terms for them.

NOTES

1 Thanks to Michael White, Stewart Cohen and Jeffrie Murphy for helpfulcomments on an earlier version of this paper.2 The view that we require knowledge, which I shall defend here, was alsodefended by Peter Unger (Unger, 1975, pp. 250–271) and more recently byTimothy Williamson (Williamson, 1996) These authors urge rather differentreasons for being interested in the rule than I will suggest below. Unger arguesthat, when combined with general skepticism, which he also defended then, ithas the consequence that we should remain silent. Williamson uses the rule in anattempt to characterize the speech act of assertion.3 Some readers who are familiar with recent literature in epistemology will wantto know immediately what sort of “should” this is. Is it epistemic, moral, orpractical? I think it is none of the above. We make many normative demands thatdon’t fall neatly into just one of these much discussed categories. The exampleitself should give some sense of the nature of the “should” in question, and thelater discussion will indicate more precisely what I mean by it.4 For a contrary view, see (Lackey, 1999).5 “I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an asser-tion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and theaccidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him” (Lincoln, 1846).Lincoln was countering (but not exactly denying) a charge that he was not areligious believer. This “established maxim” strangely seems to have fallen outof favor among politicians and journalists.6 I would like to acknowledge here the influence of Allan Gibbard’s WiseChoices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (Gibbard, 1990), on thisproject, although I have not followed very closely his specific views on the topicof norms and normative judgments.7 Readers on the alert for hints of circularity should be aware that “acceptablyinformative” here is just a place holder for what I have to say later about what isacceptable in testimony. It is not a way of smuggling in the concept of knowledge.8 I take this, if it is true, to be a reason why we should continue to try to under-stand our traditional concept of knowledge, perhaps improving it in small ways,rather than just scrapping it in favor of something better, or Bayesian.


9 I am assuming that the traditional account of knowledge, incomplete though itis, still captures or almost captures some central features of the concept. That theyare still widely regarded as central features is indicated by the fact that people whoattempt non-standard accounts usually try to explain how their account capturesor almost captures the conditions claimed in justified true belief + something forGettier accounts (Goldman, 1967; Lewis, 1999).10 I would like to use the term “epistemic norms”, but there is a fairly wellestablished use of the term for rules that indicate what we ought to believe. Aswill become clear below, I think the two uses are approximately the same, but itis best to avoid confusion.11 It has been pointed out that in some contexts there are conventional indicationsat the time of an utterance about x’s of what counts as an x for purposes ofunderstanding that utterance. What counts as a bump on a road is not the sameas what counts as a bump on a table, and the context may indicate at the timeof utterance, in reliable ways shaped by custom, just what we have in mind. Idon’t think this is what is going on in the case of city blocks in the text. It is notsuggested that the blocks may be a bit longer or a bit shorter in this context. Theperson who follows the directions may be able to conclude that the advice wasapproximately right only after he locates the place, not having had any indicationof any unusual way to understand the testimony at the time he received it (Unger,1975, pp. 65–68; Lewis, 1979).12 For a nice description of this tension (one of many in the literature) see (Lewis,1999).13 Thanks to Keith DeRose for this re-formulation of an overly cautious statementof this idea in (Reynolds, 1998, p. 534).14 It has recently been argued that attributions of “know how” still attribute akind of propositional knowledge: knowledge that such and such is a way to dox (Stanley and Williamson, 2001). On their view, when Maurizio Pollini playsChopin and I listen, we both know that that is a way to play that piece. Weboth know how to play it. (!) How then do we differ? Pollini has a “practicalmode of presentation” of that way of playing it, and I have only a demonstrativemode. But we know the same proposition, under those different modes. It seemsto me that in cases such as this having the practical mode of presentation is a)non-propositional (apparently Stanley and Williamson agree) and b) importantlycognitive (Pollini knows something important that I don’t know). It’s that non-propositional cognitive state that raises our current problem. So in spite of thesyntactic arguments in favor of treating attributions of knowing how as attribu-tions of knowledge of a proposition, and Stanley and Williamson’s claim that thisundermines some philosophical uses to which the distinction between knowinghow and knowing that has been put (Stanley and Williamson, 2001, pp. 411, 442–444), I propose to continue to use the locution to indicate skills, such as thosein which Pollini and I differ. I gather that Stanley and Williamson would agreethat when I say “Pollini knows how to play Chopin and I don’t”. the conversa-tional correctness (if perhaps not the literal truth) of my claim depends upon aconversational implication (at least) that Pollini has skills that I don’t have.


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Arizona State UniversityTempe, ArizonaUSA

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Testimony, Knowledge, and Epistemic Goals