Abstract

Ernest Sosa has recently argued that the knowledge we get from instruments and the knowledge we get from testimony is similar in important ways. Most importantly, the justification that supports it is similar in kind – both instrumental justification and justification from testimony is to be understood in terms of reliability. I argue that Sosa’s theory is problematic. Specifically, I argue that we can take certain attitudes towards people that we cannot coherently take towards instruments. This, I argue, grounds a distinction between the kind of justification that testimony can make available and the kind of justification that instruments can make available. The result is that reliability cannot provide a complete explanation of the justification that testimony makes available