The philosophy of testimony (also, epistemology of testimony) considers the nature of language and knowledge's confluence, which occurs when beliefs are transferred between speakers and hearers through testimony. Testimony constitutes words, gestures, or utterances that convey beliefs. This definition may be distinguished from the legal notion of testimony in that the speaker does not have to make a declaration of the truth of the facts. The role of

testimony In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. Etymology The words "testimony" and "testify" both derive from the Latin word ''testis'', referring to the notion of a disinterested third-party witness. ...

in acquiring belief and knowledge has been a relatively neglected philosophical issue.

CAJ (Tony) Coady Cecil Anthony John Coady, more commonly publishing as C. A. J. Coady and less formally known as Tony Coady (born 18 April 1936), is a prominent Australian philosopher with an international reputation for his research, particularly in epistemolo ...

believes that this is because traditional

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epi ...

has had a distinctly

individualist Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-relianc ...

flavour. However, it seems that many of the beliefs that we hold have been gained through accepting testimony. For example, one may only know that

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

is a county of

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

or that

David Beckham David Robert Joseph Beckham (; born 2 May 1975) is an English former professional footballer, the current president and co-owner of Inter Miami CF and co-owner of Salford City. Known for his range of passing, crossing ability and bending ...

earns $30 million per year because one has learned these things from other people. A more striking example is the belief about one's own birthdate. If you know your birthdate, the evidence for your belief was almost certainly received through testimony. One of the problems with acquiring knowledge through testimony is that it does not seem to live up to the standards of knowledge (see justification of knowledge in philosophy ). As Owens notes, it does not seem to live up to the Enlightenment ideal of rationality captured in the motto of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

– ‘Nullius in verba (no man's word)’. Crudely put, the question is: 'How can testimony give us knowledge when we have no reasons of our own?' Coady suggests that there are two approaches to this problem: *Reductivism, which seeks to ‘reduce’ or re-describe our behaviour such that it is not at odds with the traditional view of knowledge and *Anti-reductivism, which seeks to fit our behaviour in with a different concept of knowledge. For example, we may compare it to an account of how

perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...

gives us knowledge or how

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remember ...

gives us knowledge directly.

Hume Hume most commonly refers to: * David Hume (1711–1776), Scottish philosopher Hume may also refer to: People * Hume (surname) * Hume (given name) * James Hume Nisbet (1849–1923), Scottish-born novelist and artist In fiction * Hume, ...

is one of the few early philosophers to offer anything like a sustained account of testimony, this can be found in his ''‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’'' in the section on miracles. The basic idea is that our justification for believing what people tell us comes from our experience of the ‘...constant and regular conjunction’Hume, 1993, p. 74 between the state of affairs as people describe it and the actual state of affairs (i.e. our observation that they match). On Coady's schema he is a reductivist. Coady offers an anti-reductivist account of testimony. He claims that testimony is like perception, we don't have to have reasons for believing it, only an absence of reasons not to believe it. On Coady's account we are justified in being credulous. Proponents of anti-reductivism in the history of philosophy include

Augustine of Hippo Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...

and

Thomas Reid Thomas Reid (; 7 May ( O.S. 26 April) 1710 – 7 October 1796) was a religiously trained Scottish philosopher. He was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1783 he wa ...

. Perhaps also significant is that

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, a ...

argued that

knowledge by acquaintance In philosophy, a distinction is often made between two different kinds of knowledge: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Whereas knowledge by description is something like ordinary propositional knowledge (e.g. "I know that ...

played an important part in epistemology. Locke on Testimony This article needs reference to two recent papers: - Joseph Shieber, 'Locke on Testimony: A Reexamination' History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Jan., 2009), pp. 21-41 - Mark Boespflug (2019): Locke on testimony, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, DOI: 10.1080/09608788.2019.1566692 The abstract of the second runs as follows: "There is good reason to regard John Locke’s treatment of testimony as perhaps the most important of the early modern period. It is sophisticated, well developed, pioneering, and seems to have given shape to the later debate that would occur between Hume and Reid. I attempt to do three things in this essay. First, I argue that Hume’s landmark treatment of testimony is an appropriation of that developed by Locke. Second, I suggest that understanding Locke’s view of testimony is of critical importance to Locke’s broader epistemology. Finally, I claim that Locke’s reflection on testimony is valuable in its own right in that it is not confined to isolating the conditions under which testimonial beliefs are warranted or justified. Locke’s interest is, rather, in a variety of doxastic states, or degrees of assent, that testimony may serve to ground"

Notes

References

* Coady, C.A.J. (1992), ''‘Testimony; A Philosophical Study’'', Clarendon Press, Oxford. * Gelfert, A. (2014), ''‘A Critical Introduction to Testimony’'', Bloomsbury Academic, London. * Owens, D. (2000), ''‘Reason without Freedom: The Problem of Epistemic Normativity’'', Routledge, London. * Shieber, J. (2015), "Testimony: A Philosophical Introduction", Routledge, London. * Hume, D. (1748), ''‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’'', Hackett Publishing Company, Cambridge.

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