American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

ONLINE FIRST

published on March 14, 2018

Matthew Kent Siebert

Testimonial Trustworthiness
Truthfulness and Trust

Believing someone is, as Elizabeth Anscombe said, “trusting him for the truth.” Recent accounts of how we trust speakers for the truth have given a central role to speaker trustworthiness but have said little about what speaker trustworthiness is. I argue that it is best to think of speaker trustworthiness as the virtue of truthfulness. I give an account of truthfulness, show how that account solves problems for other accounts of speaker trustworthiness, and then use my account to explain the epistemic benefits of trusting a truthful speaker.