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Philosophical Explorations
Vol. 15, No. 2, June 2012, 121 132
Analytic Theology Projekt, University of Innsbruck, Karl Rahner Platz 1, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
I
Sandy Goldberg begins his recent book, Relying on Others, by afrming his condence in
one core idea: the fact that we rely on others for so much of what we know about the world
should prompt a reconsideration of the individualistic orientation of traditional epistem-
ology (2010, 1). In this paper, I will show that one may be in complete agreement with
this core idea and even develop it in a way that is nearly identical to Goldbergs treatment,
while endorsing a credit theory of knowledge. This should be a surprising claim. One might
well think that credit theories of knowledge are exemplars par excellence of exactly the
kind of orientation Goldberg takes himself to be excluding when he endorses what he
calls anti-individualistic epistemology.
To identify the tension between anti-individualistic epistemology and credit theories, let
us rst attend to the way in which Goldberg develops the idea that we are radically depen-
dent on other persons. His contention is that the cognitive processes that occur in the minds
of others can count as being part of ones own belief-forming processes.
Focusing on testimony to make his case for anti-individualism in epistemology,
Goldbergs rst step is to argue for the ERTK principle (epistemic reliance in cases of
testimonial knowledge).
Email: adam.green@uibk.ac.at
In order to support this claim, Goldberg asks us to imagine a situation in which a generally
trustworthy speaker attempts to mislead someone for whom he has been a highly reliable
informant previously. He succeeds in delivering his testimony in what appears to be a
sincere and competent manner despite his intent to deceive. Unbeknownst to the informant,
however, he has accidentally spoken the truth (2010, 15). There is something epistemically
subpar about this situation. When contrasted with a case in which the same speaker and reci-
pient converse in the same manner but the truth is told on purpose, one sees that there is
something wrong with the rst case that is remedied in the second case. Nonetheless, the
cognitive processes going on within the hearer are type identical in the two scenarios,
hence ERTK.
As Goldberg is quick to point out, ERTK by itself can be interpreted in keeping with an
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individualistic epistemology.
On such a view [an individualistic process reliabilism], testimony that is apparently reliable but
de facto unreliable . . . can constitute a Gettier condition, and so can undermine a subjects
claim to knowledge; but this exhausts the epistemic signicance of the testimony. (2010,
367)
The diagnosis of what is wrong with Gettier cases that Goldberg is working with is that they
are cases in which a generally reliable process is not locally reliable (2010, 55). The process
whereby one forms the belief that a barn is present before one is reliable in general but unre-
liable when employed within the context of barn facade county. Goldberg, however,
believes that our epistemic reliance in testimony cases is more profound than the
traditional conception [that testimony is only a potential Gettier condition] allows
(2010, 57). Rather, the cognitive process-type implicated in the production of testimony
. . . [is a] part of the very cognitive process by which that testimonial belief was formed
(2010, 58).
He sees the contribution of the cognition of the testier to the belief-forming process as
relevantly similar to intrapersonal processes such as inference and memory (2010, 65). An
inference is only as good as the premises used in that inference. These premises are not
simply supplied by the environment, however. What premises an agent has available to
reason with are the result of cognitive processes just as much as the conclusions that
agent reaches through inference. Thus, both are subject to epistemic evaluation. In fact,
ones evaluation of an inference will at best identify the conditional reliability of the con-
clusion of the inference absent a further evaluation of the quality of the premises. Testimony
is similar to inference in that in both cases one is dependent on a representation-deploying
information source (2010, 66), and an evaluation of the receipt of testimony can yield only
the conditional reliability of the output belief absent a further epistemic assessment of the
quality of the testimony.
It is important to distinguish Goldbergs proposal from a close cousin. The contention
that Goldberg makes is not that the evaluation of someones belief-forming process, in a
case of testimony for example, is conditional upon ones prior evaluation of the informant.
Such a claim would still be individualistic in a way Goldberg means to reject. Goldbergs
claim goes beyond this evaluative claim to make a stronger constitutive claim. What is
being evaluated when one discusses whether x knows that p includes the cognitive pro-
cesses of the informant that led to the act of testifying that p to x. The anti-individualist
Extending the Credit Theory of Knowledge 123
claims that what is evaluated is a process that begins in the mind of an informant with what-
ever cognitive event or events render a piece of testimony reliable, that covers the act(s) of
testifying, and that proceeds through the formation and sustenance of a belief in the ultimate
recipient of the testimony.
For Goldberg, then, when one forms a belief on the say-so of others, the cognitive
process that led to one being testied to constitutes part of ones own belief-forming
process so far as epistemic evaluation is concerned. For the purposes of this paper, I will
take on board Goldbergs contention.
II
Goldbergs immediate aim in his book is to convince other process reliabilists that they
should modify their position (2010, 1). As the aim of this paper is to explore the prospects
for a different kind of extended epistemology, it is worthwhile to see how Goldbergs view
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contrasts with the virtue epistemology of John Greco. Grecos view is an especially clear
example of a view according to which knowledge implies the presence of a kind of individ-
ual excellence in the possessor of that knowledge.
According to Greco,
. . .[I]n cases of knowledge S deserves credit for believing the truth. This is because, necessarily,
a special sort of credit accrues to success from ability. And on the present account, knowledge
is an instance of success from ability. (Greco 2010, 140)
Thinking of knowledge as a kind of success through ability goes hand in hand with the idea
that we give people credit for their successes when they succeed because of ability (cf.
Greco 2003). The soccer player who intentionally kicks the ball into the goal receives a
kind of praise that is not granted to the player who scores in some accidental, bumbling
manner. We give the rst, but not the second, player credit for having achieved something,
and there is no achievement without putting ones abilities to work in the world.1
At least since the time of Plato, epistemic enquiry has concerned itself with the question
of what makes for the difference between mere true belief and knowledge. The credit the-
orist has an intuitively satisfying answer to this question. Knowledge is like intentionally
scoring a goal; it is success through ability, success for which one deserves credit.
Merely true belief is like a goal scored by having the ball accidentally bounce off of one
into the goal. In Gettier cases, for instance, ability and success are both present, but they
do not link up in the appropriate way. Gettier cases are successes where ability is also
present, but they are not success through or because of ability (Greco 2002, 2003, 2010,
73ff). To abuse the soccer analogy, it is not hard to imagine a player exhibiting a great
deal of skill in executing a shot that is still, ultimately, lucky to nd the back of the net.
Likewise, credit theories can give a commendable answer to the question of why we
care about knowledge. Just as we care more about succeeding through ability than
winning simpliciter when it comes to athletics, so we care more about knowledge than
merely true or Gettierized belief (Greco 2007, 2010, 91ff).
If the above description of credit theory were sufcient, then there need be no conict
with anti-individualistic epistemology. The anti-individualistic credit theorist could main-
tain (i) that an interpersonally extended process that includes the cognitive doings of
other agents must be reliable for one to come to know through doxastic sources like testi-
mony and (ii) that the part of the process that is contained within the head of the recipient
of testimony must be successful due to relevant abilities of the recipient. Although many
124 Adam Green
epistemologists would object to (ii), it is not in any obvious tension with (i). Matters are not
so simple, however.
The complication comes when we try to clarify what it means for something to be credi-
table to an individual and concomitantly what it means for success to be through or because
of ability. It is not any old display of ability that licenses the conclusion that one has suc-
ceeded because of ability and that one gets credit for success. Even the bumbler who acci-
dentally kicks home a goal may display a good deal of ability in the process. He may stay on
sides, maintain proper distancing from his other teammates and the goal, and may even try
to kick a goal. It may be that success is conditional upon some of the abilities of the bumbler
(e.g. if he had gone offsides, there would not have been a goal). Nonetheless, one can still
easily imagine the bumblers goal not qualifying as the right kind of success for credit due
to lacking the right kind or degree of ability. The question, then, is what picks out the right
kind and the right degree.
A standard rst pass at answering this question employs the notion of primary credit
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(cf. the explication and critique of this view in Pritchard 2010, 27ff which interacts with
Greco 2007). On this way of parsing things, knowledge is primarily creditable to the abil-
ities of the agent being evaluated. Although the abilities of the bumbler may well play some
ineliminable role in the causal nexus that explains why he scores a goal, it is not plausible
that his abilities can play the same sort of central role in explanations of his success that the
competent goal scorers abilities do. The ability of the knower plays a central explanatory
role in explaining why a particular belief is true and also why its being true is not an acci-
dent. The explanatory role lled by the abilities of the knower is not duplicated in cases of
merely true or Gettierized beliefs.
Credit theorists often do not want to endorse a claim so bald as that a knower always
deserves primary credit for what they know. Greco, for example, has come to prefer the
more exible notion of salience (Greco 2008, 2010, 74). The ability of an agent must
be salient enough to the context of evaluation that an agent can get credit for a successful
belief. One suspects that alternatives to primary credit should be mild dilutions of that
notion, however. In Jennifer Lackeys well-known critique of credit theory, for instance,
she reasons to the conclusion that the most plausible Greco-style account will require
that an agents reliable cognitive faculties are the most salient part of the total set of
causal factors that give rise to [an agents] believing the truth (Lackey 2007, 351; italics
inserted).
Salience cannot be gotten too cheaply; otherwise the notion of credit will not be able to
do the epistemic work it is supposed to do (cf. Lackey 2007). If there was some possible
context of evaluation wherein the abilities of a victim of a Gettierized scenario or
wishful thinking or guessing made contributions to a successful belief that counted as
salient, the credit theory would be a failure. More tellingly perhaps, if there are cases of
knowledge where factors of the situation other than the abilities of the agent are most
salient in explaining the agents success, then it ceases to be clear that epistemic evaluations
are answers to an implicit question about who deserves credit for bringing about that
success. Moreover, there are some good candidates for cases of this kind, such as expert
testimony or testimony to children.
The intuitive appeal of credit theories lies in the idea that the credit theory gives one the
key to explaining what knowledge is and why we value it. It is not a theory about a necess-
ary condition on knowledge but about what the necessary condition on knowledge is that
denes the epistemic enterprise. For the credit theorist, epistemology just is the normative
discipline concerned with the skills we evince in processing information, weighing evi-
dence, forming beliefs, and the like.
Extending the Credit Theory of Knowledge 125
It is in light of the credit theorists appeal to a notion in the ballpark of primary credit
that we see what an unhappy marriage results from combining Goldbergs anti-individual-
ism and a credit theory of knowledge like Grecos. Consider the following two theses.
CREDIT: If x knows that p, then the abilities of x used in the formation and sustenance of the
belief that p deserve primary credit (or something relevantly close to that notion) for x
knowing p.
case that
(1) x knows that p in virtue of the reliability of a process constituted by (a) the cogni-
tive doings of t relevant to asserting p, (b) ts asserting p, and (c) xs forming and
sustaining a belief that p on the basis of ts testimony that p and also that
(2) the abilities of x used in stage (c) of this process deserve primary credit (or some-
thing close to it) for x knowing that p.
III
In what follows, I will explicate and evaluate what I take to be the most friendly option to
anti-individualism for improving conditions in the otherwise unhappy marriage of a
Goldberg-style extended epistemology and a credit theory in the spirit of Greco.3 On this
option, one alters CREDIT so that it would apply to the whole of (a) (c) instead of just
(c), thereby predicating primary credit or some close cousin of that notion to (a) (c).
Consider the following revised version of CREDIT.4
CREDIT FOR US: If x knows that p, then the abilities that contribute to the formation and
sustenance of xs belief that p deserve primary credit (or something close to it) for x
knowing p whether those abilities are contributed solely by x or also by other agents.
126 Adam Green
Revising the domain of skill being evaluated in testimony cases to include the skills of the
testier would exactly parallel Goldbergs strategy for reforming process reliabilism, only
using the credit theory.5 Both options take the conceptual apparatus that is usually applied
to an intrapersonal process and apply that very same conceptual apparatus to an interperson-
ally extended process.
What the credit theorist cares about is the link between skill and ability on the one hand,
and cognitive success on the other hand. The skill that explains a given cognitive success,
however, often cannot be accounted for without including the skills of the testier. When a
child learns from its parent, there is a kind of cognitive outsourcing that occurs. The child
learns from its parent truths that it could not acquire on its own and truths that it could not
check up on even if it were to have the desire to do so. The child does not acquire true
beliefs by luck in any ordinary sense of that term. Rather, the child is dependent on its
parents to interface skillfully with the world on its behalf and to translate information for
the child into a developmentally appropriate form. Arguably, epistemologists often under-
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estimate the skill that children have as recipients of testimony, but even a more psycholo-
gically realistic appraisal of the situation cannot make sense of the childs skill apart from a
recognition of how that skill allows the child to defer to the greater skill set of caretakers.
Let us return to the soccer analogies. There is a great difference between, on the one
hand, scoring a goal as a result of breaking away on ones own and outfoxing the
defense all by oneself and, on the other hand, scoring on a set play off of a corner kick.
This difference is reected in the credit attributions we make after each kind of goal. For
the breakaway goal, understanding why a goal was scored requires focusing on the skill
of the one who scored. One may comment on lapses on the part of the opponents
defense or on exemplary features of ones own defense that made the counterstrike possible,
but these are best thought of as background conditions to the achievement of the goal. In the
breakaway case, to give anyone the same kind of credit as the one who scored is generally to
make a mistake, to misunderstand why the goal was scored in a way that devalues the con-
tribution of the one who scored.
In contrast, to give credit only or primarily to the person who scores on a set play often
distorts the nature of achieving a goal in a cooperative manner. A good pass makes the same
sort of skillful contribution to a scoring effort that juking out ones defender does on a
breakaway and to privilege one over the other is to fall victim to an unjustied bias for indi-
vidualistic assessments of success. Furthermore, in a cooperative goal-scoring effort, it is a
contingent matter whether the scorer of the goal will display the most skill or will play the
most important role. The same can hold for epistemology.
The credit theorist can broaden the domain of skill considered relevant to knowledge
attributions without sacricing the connection between skill, credit, and knowledge. One
retains a principled way of distinguishing between merely true beliefs and knowledge.
Knowing involves success through either an individual or collective demonstration of infor-
mation-processing skill, and true belief that falls short of knowledge does not. Gettier cases
are ones in which individual or collective skill is manifested and a true belief is obtained,
but the success does not come about because of or through those skills in the Gettier case.
Individual success through ability is not the only thing we value over success simplici-
ter. We value participation in skillful cooperative efforts more than just succeeding.
Consider, for example, that even a minor role player may have plenty of reason to value
his teams succeeding through skill rather than succeeding due to biased refereeing or an
accidental score. One might ask why a role player takes this kind of ownership over activity
on the eld in which he may play a small part. He participates in the team and is thereby
given a reason to value the legitimate success of the team over illegitimate success, and
Extending the Credit Theory of Knowledge 127
the legitimacy of the success is a matter of whether the team deserves credit for the win due
to skill.
IV
An interpersonally extended credit theory is not only consistent, but it does a better job of
containing the consequences of extending ones epistemology than Goldbergs extended
process theory does. In Relying on Others, Goldberg makes a point of attempting to
draw a principled distinction between the contribution of a testier to a testimonial belief
and the contribution of an artifact like a clock to belief (Goldberg 2010, 39ff). After all,
no matter how reliable one may be in reading clocks, the quality of ones belief in the
time of day is dependent on the reliable operation of the clock. Prima facie, this is
exactly the sort of relationship that a recipient bears to a testier. No matter how reliable
one may be in taking up the testimony of another in forming a belief, the quality of
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co-constitute the belief-forming process so long as Goldberg does not have a principled
reason for drawing the line at the mental doings of other agents. This would be a rather
counterintuitive result.
Thus, one needs a way of drawing a line between what is and is not the subject of epis-
temic evaluation, and the most intuitive place for Goldberg to draw his line is at the cogni-
tion of others, preferably ones that are causally proximal to the formation of the doxastic
state being deemed knowledge. Even drawing the line at systems that convey information
would risk an explosion in what can constitute an epistemically evaluable state. The inter-
action of sunlight and medium-sized objects is a process that conveys information, and the
reliable operation of vision is dependent on the reliable operation of this irradiation process.
Goldbergs intention is to draw the line at the doings of other minds. Goldbergs
problem, however, is that the good-making property of cognitive processes relevant to
evaluation on process reliabilism is sheer reliability. Reliability comes in some different
avors, such as global and local reliability, but fundamentally, each type of reliability
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taken in a strict sense are inherently qualities of agents.8 As a result, the credit theorist has a
theoretically motivated reason to extend epistemology just to the cognitive doings of other
agents, especially those proximal enough to the believing agent to engage in cooperative
endeavors. The situation is much like playing a team sport. An athlete may depend on
the reliability of her sports equipment, but she gives credit to the teammates that help
her succeed.
Clocks, calculators, and the like may impact epistemology by giving one new or better
supported abilities. When other agents put their expertise and experience at our disposal,
they may also empower one with new or better supported abilities, but they may also
directly contribute their skills to a cooperative endeavor that requires an extended credit
attribution. Thus, since the credit theorist ties knowledge to evaluations of skill and
ability, the extended credit theorist, but not the extended process theorist, has the conceptual
resources to restrict the extension of epistemic evaluation in the manner that Goldberg
would like to do for his own theory.
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V
One might think that Goldberg could save his view by marrying it to the extended cognition
hypothesis, the idea that cognition is not always solely in the head but can incorporate
devices in the world that we depend on to get our thinking done. In fact, one might
think that Goldberg should welcome the idea that individualistic biases have kept theorists
from recognizing the way in which cognition is integrated with information processors in
ones environment. There is a certain kind of afnity between recognizing our dependence
on the reliability of others and recognizing our dependence on some non-agential devices.
Recall that Goldberg argues from the similarity between the cognitive processes of a
testier and recipient of testimony to his thesis that the cognition occurring in these different
minds can constitute a single process for the purposes of epistemic evaluation. He names
the similarity as that holding between representation-deploying information sources
(Goldberg 2010, 66). Goldberg distances his extended epistemology from the extended
cognition hypothesis (cf. Chalmers and Clark 1998; Clark 2008), denying any intimate con-
nection between the two (Goldberg 2010, 127ff).
Similarity, however, is a degreed notion, and surely there is a plain sense in which cal-
culators, computers, diaries, and, in short, all of the devices Clark and Chalmers refer to in
their thought experiments are representation-deploying information sources. Although
these devices may not deploy representations in the same manner as human minds, there
is a similarity relationship between these devices and the mind that is of the represen-
tation-deploying type.
It is open to Goldberg to combine his extended epistemology with the extended cogni-
tion thesis pace his reticence to do so. Arguments for the extended cognition thesis would
not entail extended process reliabilism, as it may be that epistemologies other than
Goldbergs would be consistent with the extended mind hypothesis. Nonetheless, there
would be some natural afnity between the two views attempts to eschew more limited
conceptions of cognition. Wherever the extended cognition hypothesis dictates that the
boundary lies between cognitive systems and the rest of the world is in a given case
would count as the domain of epistemic evaluation on this new version of Goldbergs
view, and arguments for the extended mind hypothesis would count as independent
grounds for taking the epistemic domain at least that far.
This version of Goldbergs theory would be stronger than the current one. It would
allow Goldberg to grant that reliance upon some processes that are traditionally thought
130 Adam Green
remove the more general problem of limiting epistemic evaluation to the cognitive in an
appropriate manner. Thus, making this move might help Goldberg some but does not
remove the fundamental problem.
One might at rst suppose that the truth of the extended cognition hypothesis would be
damaging to the extended credit theory, or at least that it would damage the case I have pro-
posed for it. I have stressed the way in which the extended credit theory can plausibly draw
the line of epistemic evaluation at the skill and ability of agents, and one might well think
that the truth of the extended cognition thesis would imply that there are non-cognitive pro-
cesses that deserve epistemic attention which are outside the scope of the extended credit
theory. Such an objection misses the mark, however, by failing to grasp the import of the
extended cognition hypothesis. This hypothesis only claims that an agents cognition can
include processes that do not go on in the head as it were. If the abilities of the agent
are extended beyond the head in some cases, then one simply must analyze those extended
abilities when determining whether success comes about through ability.
The credit theory is committed to the idea that success through ability is what matters
when it comes to knowledge, but it is an empirical matter what abilities one has. The theory
is not wedded to any particular folk conception of what abilities individuals have. Similarly,
an extended credit theory is committed to the idea that success through our abilities is what
matters when it comes to knowledge, but it is an empirical matter what abilities we,
together, have. If the extended cognition hypothesis is true, the extended credit theory
would maintain its advantage over its closest competitor.
In this essay, I have shown that a credit theory of knowledge can embrace an anti-indi-
vidualistic epistemology. Contrary to what one might expect, an extended credit theory is
consistent with Goldbergs constitution thesis according to which the cognitions of others
can constitute part of ones own belief-forming processes. There is also reason to think that
an extended credit theory can do a better job than Goldbergs process reliabilism of restrict-
ing epistemic evaluation to cognitive processes in a theoretically motivated manner. Finally,
although Goldbergs view would be strengthened if combined with the extended cognition
hypothesis, an extended credit theory would still be preferable if the extended cognition
hypothesis turned out to be true.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to the participants of the philosophy summer seminar at the University of Cologne
for vigorous engagement with an earlier draft of this paper. I also thank two anonymous referees for
insightful comments.
Extending the Credit Theory of Knowledge 131
Notes
1. Greco is fond of using soccer and baseball analogies to illustrate the interaction of credit and
ability, especially in the context of social epistemology (cf. 2010, 76 78, 82 83). Ernest Sosa
makes a very similar use of archery as an example of his virtue theory (Sosa 2007, 22ff).
2. In point of fact, one will need some argument for holding (c) to different standards than (a) and
(b) in any case. For instance, (c) must satisfy a defeater condition, whereas (a) and (b) can be
satised when an undefeated defeater is present in the mind of the testier. Consider for
example Lackeys cases of generative knowledge via testimony. The teacher who does not
believe what she is testifying to may fail to so believe because she has undefeated defeaters.
Nonetheless, it would appear that she can facilitate testimonial knowledge in her hearers. This
complication for anti-individualism is not relevant to the point at hand, however (Lackey
1999, 2008, 48ff).
3. As I see it, there are ve options with some degree of plausibility. The four not covered explicitly
here are as follows. First, one could look for a functional role that (c) plays which is not played by
(a) or (b) such that (c) deserves primary credit for knowledge. Second, one could reject CONSTI-
TUTION in favor of a weaker principle that still rejected individualistic epistemology in keeping
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with Goldbergs core idea. Third, one could reject CREDIT, and rethink what it means to make
credit attributions. Perhaps, credit is based on skillful participation in a successful effort, and
perhaps one could explicate that notion without referring to anything in the vicinity of
primary credit. Fourth, one could restrict the scope of what ones abilities are supposed to
receive primary credit for. This option may be best combined with the rst strategy.
4. It is sometimes suggested that one can solve problems with the credit theory by allowing that, in
cases of testimony, credit is shared. It is left unclear, however, how it could be that credit is shared
if what knowledge is just is a credit attribution. I do not think this suggestion in the literature is
worth much if it is purely honoric and does not carry theoretical weight. The structure of the
epistemic theory must give teeth to a response in terms of shared credit, and I am not satised
that current invocations of this response do go far enough beyond an honoric bestowal of
credit on the testier (cf. Riggs 2009, 215; Sosa 2007, chap. 5).
5. In Goldberg 2009, Goldberg explores the possibility of a view similar to the one I develop in this
paper (though obviously not opting for it over a process reliabilist version), but by focusing more
on the notion of virtue than on the notion of credit, I think he misses the more intuitive way of
developing the idea. It is unintuitive, for instance, to think of virtues being socially extended but it
is more familiar and plausible to think of credit as being extended.
6. I thank an anonymous referee for sharpening this point.
7. Like belief because one could give a process reliabilist analysis of acquaintance knowledge and
know how as well as sub-doxastic propositional states like it seeming that x.
8. One sometimes talks about artifacts as if they have abilities. One says, The clock is able to tell
the time within a fraction of a second. I take it, however, that what the clock cannot do is intend
to convey information. Even if one were to deny that there is a sense of ability that is distinctly
agential, the clock does not intend to lend its abilities to the holder of the belief, but this is exactly
what a testier represents herself as doing when testifying. She is cooperating with ones infor-
mation-processing and not simply being made use of. It is plausible that it is this feature of tes-
timony that makes extending ones epistemology in a testimony case especially plausible.
Notes on contributor
Adam Green is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Templeton Foundations Analytic Theology
Projekt at the University of Innsbruck. His primary areas of research concern the nature of human
interdependence and its intersection with epistemology.
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