%0 Journal Article
%T The cognitive importance of testimony
%A Jim Davies
%A David Matheson
%J Principia : an International Journal of Epistemology
%D 2012
%I Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brasil
%X As a belief source, testimony has long been held by theorists of the mind to play a deeply important role in human cognition. It is unclear, however, just why testimony has been afforded such cognitive importance. We distinguish three suggestions on the matter: the number claim, which takes testimony¡¯s cognitive importance to be a function of the number of beliefs it typically yields, relative to other belief sources; the reliability claim, which ties the importance of testimony to its relative truth-conduciveness; and the scope claim, according to which testimony¡¯s importance is a function of its relative representational power, non-numerically conceived. After laying out these three suggestions, we go on to argue that there is little hope of grounding testimony¡¯s cognitive importance in either the number claim or the reliability claim. We conclude with a tentative exploration of the basis and plausibility of the scope claim.
%K Belief
%K epistemology
%K inference
%K testimony
%U http://www.periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/principia/article/view/1808-1711.2012v16n2p297/24096