Abstract
This paper develops a descriptive and normative account of how people respond to testimony. It postulates a default pathway in which people more or less automatically respond to a claim by accepting it, as long as the claim made is consistent with their beliefs and the source is credible. Otherwise, people enter a reflective pathway in which they evaluate the claim based on its explanatory coherence with everything else they believe. Computer simulations show how explanatory coherence can be maximized in real-life cases, taking into account all the relevant evidence including the credibility of whoever is making a claim. The explanatorycoherence account is more plausible both descriptively and normatively than a Bayesian account.
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Thagard, P. (2006). Testimony, Credibility, and Eplanatory Coherence. In: Gähde, U., Hartmann, S. (eds) Coherence, Truth and Testimony. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5547-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5547-8_1
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