Some accounts assign reason a more fundamental role in cognition while treating the senses and reports as instruments or routes. The question is what is accomplished by sensation alone and what further understanding or judgment is required for it to become knowledge.
Hearing a sound is a sensory event. Understanding it as a meaningful announcement, evaluating its reliability, and assenting to its claim involve additional cognition. Hearing a spoken claim does not itself guarantee belief in it.
This disagreement should not be confused with denying that knowledge is possible. It often concerns which layer of the process deserves the title “cause,” and which is better called an instrument or channel.