The Recovery Problem’s Threat to Consent Testimony

Peet [2016] clarified that when we communicate testimony, this is not simply a matter of the speaker claiming some content and the hearer receiving it. He pointed out that some situations create epistemic difficulties with recovering the correct content of the speaker’s utterance. In such situations, testimonial knowledge cannot be attained. This is called the recovery problem. Davies [2018] responds that the so-called e-method can allow us safely to obtain testimonial knowledge even when the recovery problem arises. I argue that Davies’ e-method is limited and inapplicable to consent testimony, the “dual-function testimony” that, in addition to communicating propositional content, also serves as a speech act that alters the moral permissibility of a particular action. Therefore, the recovery problem still threatens such testimony. For now, we have no satisfactory solution to the recovery problem regarding consent testimony. We must therefore deal with such a testimony in a different way, for example by shifting our goal from fully recovering the testimonial content to acquiring knowledge of a more limited proposition.