This chapter argues that reading doesn't reduce to attending to testimony (given the accounts of testimony offered by C. A. J. Coady, Robert Audi, Elizabeth Fricker, and Jennifer Lackey) nor to visual perception (not to Fred Dretske’s simple seeing, nor to Thomas Reid’s acquired perception, nor to Dretske’s primary and secondary epistemic seeing). This paves the way for considering reading as a source of knowledge in its own right.

This chapter offers a comprehensive characterization of reading as a source of knowledge. It is argued that a distinction should be made between factive and nonfactive reading. Factive reading is reading that p. Nonfactive reading is an activity. An analysis of nonfactive reading is offered. Next, it is argued that two kinds of factive reading must be distinguished: (1) knowing through reading that what a text (or its author) says is p, and (2) knowing through reading that what a text (or its author) says, viz. p, is true. In addition, it is argued that a third kind of reading knowledge must be distinguished: knowing through reading a text that p, where p is not something that the text (or its author) says. Finally, it is argued that the source that reading is, is both a transmission and a generation source; that it is a nonbasic source; that it is in certain respects an essential source; and that sometimes, it is a unique source.