The epistemic role of trust

It is commonly assumed that either testimony is credulously taken on trust or it is accepted with good reason and trust plays no role. I argue that this opposition is ill judged. Trust should not be aligned with credulity and its absence with reason. Rather, the acquisition of testimonial knowledge always presupposes trust: to trust a speaker is simply to treat them as a source of knowledge. The question of whether and what justifies this attitude of trust remains open.