Author: Spencer Case
Category: Epistemology
Word Count: 995
Consider two lives. Helen Keller was born blind and deaf, but her access to the written word enabled her to succeed as a writer and activist. Peter the Wild Boy, discovered near Hanover, Germany in 1719, possessed sight and hearing, but was innocent of language. He left the world as innocent as he came. “Without artifice, particularly the shared human artifice of speech, an unmeaning silence traps Peter in an unvarying bestiality.”[1]
The stark comparison illustrates the degree of our dependence on words, and the words of others. Without language, we cannot communicate with others, at least not about many typical human concerns. Without words, we cannot learn much from others or inform them of much: we cannot give or receive testimony. Without testimony, knowledge or reasonable beliefs gained from the written or spoken words of others, we cannot transcend the limitations of our individual faculties to borrow from the thoughts, observations, and experiences of others. The kind of knowledge that separates human beings from the rest of the animal world disappears. While a deficiency in one’s sensory faculties can perhaps be compensated for, inability to draw from the knowledge of others forecloses all possibility of higher knowledge.
The contemporary philosophical literature on testimony can be viewed as footnotes to the debate between the great rivals of the Scottish Enlightenment: David Hume and Thomas Reid.
The positions of Hume and Reid are not exhaustive, but the rift between them represents the continental divide in the intellectual landscape. The main point of dispute between them is whether testimony is a derivative source of knowledge (the “reductive theory”), or an irreducible, basic source of knowledge (the so-called “non-reductive theory”).
To the outsider, this debate might seem pedantic. Even most academic philosophers spend relatively little time on it. So what is the big deal? At stake is whether we should accept a vision of human knowledge that prioritizes autonomy, avoidance of gullibility, and skepticism of external authority, or one that prioritizes trust and acknowledges our inescapable dependence on authority and connection to others.
For Hume, we are justified in accepting testimony only to the extent that we have independent reasons for thinking the speaker is telling the truth.[2] We must have prior knowledge that the speaker is honest, or recognition that what is said coheres with other things we know. To believe testimony that has not been so accredited is to be guilty of the sin of gullibility.
Reid, by contrast, claims there is a standing entitlement to accept testimony, though the entitlement can be nullified by sufficient counter-evidence: beliefs gained from testimony are ‘innocent’ until found ‘guilty.’ This “Principle of Credulity” results in a more egalitarian relationship between testimony and the senses.[3] Being told by a fellow student that Professor Smith has just entered her office and seeing her enter her office are both sufficient reasons for believing that she is there, though they are not necessarily of equal weight.
In claiming that testimony is a basic source of justification for the hearer, Reid isn’t denying that testimony can work only in conjunction with other sources of knowledge. Just as memory extends pre-existent knowledge across time, testimony transfers pre-existent knowledge from one person to another. Testimony, unlike other sources of knowledge, is irreducibly social and morally significant. It cannot operate without trust on the part of the hearer and honesty on the part of the speaker.
In the contest between these two views, the reductive theory (Hume’s view) enjoys the advantage of simplicity. It postulates one fewer basic sources of knowledge. Theoretically, we don’t want to add sources of knowledge willy-nilly: each one must be explanatory or we’ll end up postulating psychic powers and the like. So the friend of the non-reductive theory is under pressure to explain how the additional basic source earns its keep.
C.A.J. Coady, whose work on testimony played a major role in reviving interest in the topic, claims the non-reductive theory of testimony is essential to avoiding skepticism. Few, if any, have witnessed the complete path of one letter, yet everyone knows how the postal service works. “Similarly,” Coady writes, “that babies are born of women in a certain way, is known to all of us and it is a fact of observation, but very many of us have not observed even one birth for ourselves.”[4]
We flatter ourselves by thinking knowledge comes by our own devices, and not though implicit reliance on the vast, un-vetted pool of collective experience we take on trust. Ronald Reagan said, “Trust, but verify.” The Gipper would probably concede Coady’s point, though, that we place our trust in far more things than we can possibly verify “off of our own bats.” Given our extensive dependence on trust, attempting that would lead us to skepticism about many ordinary beliefs: that we know very little. Positing testimony as a basic source of knowledge is justified because it is necessary to help us avoid this result.
In theory, defenders of the reductive theory could simply “bite the bullet” and embrace skepticism. In practice, that never happens. Philosophers hate to admit that they don’t know things. So instead, they retort that testimony can deliver the goods as a non-basic source of knowledge. Rational acceptance testimony doesn’t require vast amounts of fieldwork, only the recognition that human beings normally tell the truth—something that individual experience can establish.
Armed with that knowledge, we can infer that particular pieces of testimony are likely to be true without positing testimony as a basic source of knowledge. Variations of this line of response have been convincingly developed by many philosophers.[5]
Such replies serve to blunt the main offensive of the non-reductive theory, but at a cost. Once friends of the reductive theory endorse a norm of accepting what we are told, they are in less of a position to distance themselves from their rivals’ theory on the grounds that it sanctions gullibility. Neutralizing the observation argument does not win the game, it only resets the board. The reductive theorist’s starting advantage is the appeal to simplicity. Given the strength of both sides’ arguments, the game will probably continue for some time.
Notes
[1] Newton 2002, 44. Emphasis mine.
[2] Hume [1738] 1967, 196.
[3] Reid [1764] 1997, 195-200.
[4] Coady 1992, 81.
[5] E.g., Faulkner 2011, 32-39, Fricker 1994, pp. 125-161, and Lyons 1997, 171, among others
References
Coady, C.A.J. 1992. Testimony: a Philosophical Study. New York: Oxford University Press.
Faulkner, Paul. 2011 Knowledge on Trust. New York: Oxford University Press.
Newton, Michael. 2003. Savage Girls and Wild Boys. Thomas Dunne Books. 1st U.S. Edition.
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Indoctrination: What is it to Indoctrinate Someone? by Chris Ranalli
Conspiracy Theories by Jared Millson
External World Skepticism by Andrew Chapman
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About the Author
Spencer Case has a Ph.D. in in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Previously, he served as a public affairs specialist for the U.S. Army in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He also spent nine months in Egypt as a Fulbright Student Grant recipient to study Islamic philosophy. His main interests are ethics, meta-ethics, and comparative philosophy. SpencerCasePhilosophy.com
1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology 
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