Evidentialism and Patient Testimony.

Abstract

In this article, I argue that patients' testimonial knowledge is assessed with a default evidentialist approach. I primarily support this claim by drawing from work on physicians' accounts of assessing the trustworthiness of patients' testimony. Furthermore, I explicate a three-tiered evidence-ranking approach within these physician accounts and detail how it resembles existing hierarchical evidence-ranking frameworks in medicine. I then discuss the role that aperspectival objectivity plays in this evidentialist approach and highlight some tensions that emerge. Next, I identify some practical, epistemic, and ethical consequences of said evidentialist approach and end on potential strategies for mitigating the potential negative consequences. The account I detail ultimately reveals much of the epistemic complexity surrounding patients' testimonial knowledge as a kind of evidence.