Similarly, if we really believe Ernie that the argument he gave is the best argument he could give, which includes all of the inferential steps that Ernie executed, and all of the support that Ernie took into account - citing any authorities that Ernie may have listened to himself - then we can pretty much ignore any information about Ernie's credentials.
It might take an intellectual life-time (or much more) to get all the relevant background. For example, mathematicians (and other people in very technical domains) develop very good intuitions about whether or not certain statements hold. They might be quite sure that something is true long before they are able to give... (read more)
Similarly, if we really believe Ernie that the argument he gave is the best argument he could give, which includes all of the inferential steps that Ernie executed, and all of the support that Ernie took into account - citing any authorities that Ernie may have listened to himself - then we can pretty much ignore any information about Ernie's credentials.
It might take an intellectual life-time (or much more) to get all the relevant background. For example, mathematicians (and other people in very technical domains) develop very good intuitions about whether or not certain statements hold. They might be quite sure that something is true long before they are able to give... (read more)