Trust, testimony, and transmission: Essays in social virtue epistemology

Ólafsson, Ísak Andri (2025) Trust, testimony, and transmission: Essays in social virtue epistemology. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This thesis consists of five distinct essays within social virtue epistemology, each of which can stand independently, yet all engage with fundamental ideas surrounding trust, testimony, and knowledge transmission. The first two chapters explore knowledge transmission and testimony through a virtue epistemological lens, emphasising the challenges of accounting for testimonial knowledge while maintaining a connection between knowledge and credit. I introduce types of knowledge transmission that do not rely on joint agency or shared intentions, challenging a prominent view in virtue epistemology. I present a type of a credit view that can defend one of the fundamental doctrines of credit views, that knowledge always entails credit, from challenging counterexamples. Trust and testimony both facilitate connections between individuals, making them central to our understanding of how knowledge is shared in social contexts. The third chapter aims to further our understanding of the nature of trust by placing the spotlight on trust features that have gone largely unnoticed, namely, their temporal elements. By expanding on these features, we can make meaningful distinctions between instances of trust that have generally been considered interchangeable. These distinctions and related concepts highlight the subtle differences that meaningfully impact how we approach trust. In the fourth chapter, the focus shifts to epistemic groups in the context of gatekeeping. Epistemologists should be interested in trust, testimony, and transmission as they relate to individuals, but groups are an interesting epistemic subject in their own right. This chapter examines the distinct epistemic roles groups play in shaping the beliefs of their members, and how individuals can benefit from being part of a collective. I then present conditions for justified epistemic gatekeeping and consider what kinds of groups are most capable of fulfilling those conditions. In the last chapter, I consider how to define general artificial intelligence. It is difficult to place large language models within epistemology. At times, they act like epistemic agents, seemingly capable of producing and transmitting knowledge, yet they often appear incompetent and incapable of performing simple tasks. I propose a virtue-theoretic distinction between narrow and general artificial intelligence, in the hopes that it can contribute to our understanding of what makes AI trustworthy, and whether we should think of their predictions as knowledge.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Additional Information: Supported by funding from the Leverhulme Trust.
• Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > Philosophy
• Funder's Name: Leverhulme Trust (LEVERHUL)
• Supervisor's Name: Carter, Professor Adam, Simion, Professor Mona and Kelp, Professor Christoph
• Date of Award: 2025
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2025-85024
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 10 Apr 2025 07:32
• Last Modified: 10 Apr 2025 10:26
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.85024
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/85024

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