University of California San Diego Philosophy Questions

Answer 12 short answer questions + 10 multiple choice on topic of different philosophers. Readings are attached and more information can be sent if requested!

1. Lackey is a
a. A non-reductionist, credulist about testimony
b. A complete and total skeptic about all testimony
c. A hedonist about testimony
d. None of the above
2. Fagan defines collective knowledge as that which is produced
a. through testimony
b. with maximum parsimony
c. by a reliable process
d. by a process that is irreducible group-involving
3. On a modest foundationalist account, a basic belief:
a. Must be absolutely certain
b. Must not depend on another belief for support
c. Must be theoretically interesting
d. Changes frequently
4. According to Paul, an epistemically transformative experience is one that
a. changes our preferences
b. that involves information to which we currently lack access
c. involves probabilities
d. has bad consequences
5. Lackey’s view of testimony is that:
a. We should only trust people we know very well
b. There is no single kind of testimony
c. We should never defer to experts
d. Testimonial knowledge reduces to a kind of inference
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6. According to Russell, when we perceive a table, we are most directly aware of:
a. A sensation
b. Sense-data
c. The a priori
d. The table itself
7. Consider the following three claims (where p is any mundane proposition and H is some skeptical
hypothesis):
1. I know that p
2. I can know p only if I know not-H
3. I do not know not-H
Now, if global skepticism is true, then:
a. (2) must be false
b. (3) must be true
c. (1) must be false
d. None of the above.
8. Rinard’s argument against skepticism is that:
a. Skepticism is psychologically implausible
b. No one in history has actually been a genuine skeptic
c. There are no valid skeptical arguments
d. Skepticism is self-refuting
9. Wilson’s argument against skepticism is what kind of argument?
a. Regress
b. Inference to the best explanation
c. Begging the question
d. Reductio ad absurdum
10. According to Carruthers
a. the 3rd person account of self-knowledge is most plausible
b. the 1st person account of self-knowledge is most plausible
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c. There is no plausible account of self-knowledge
d. Both the 1st and 3rd person accounts should be accepted
Short Answer (5-10 sentences) (5pts each)
11. Briefly, why does Paul think we cannot rationally decide to have children?
12. Why does Barnes think we CAN rationally decide NOT to have children?
13. Summarize the distraction theory of choking.
14. What are two reasons Gottleib gives against Dreyfus’s theory of choking?
15. Describe the Paradox of Dual Belief.
16. Describe the Paradox of Intention
17. What is the difference, according to Lackey, between TestimonyS and TestimonyH?
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18. Why does Wilson think the skeptical regress is vicious?
19. What are the downsides to the partition strategy for deflating the paradoxes of self-deception?
20. Lackey gives a primary argument against Graham’s Moderate View of Testimony, one that
immediately leads to her division of testimony into separate kinds. Here is MVT. What is Lackey’s
problem with it?
MVT: S testifies by making some statement that p if and only if:
M1. S’s stating that p is offered as evidence that p.
M2. S intends that his audience believe that he has the relevant competence, authority or credentials
to state truly that p.
M3. S’s statement that p is believed by S to be relevant to some question that he believes is disputed
or unresolved (which may or may not be whether p) and is directed at those whom he believes to be
in need of evidence on the matter.
Slight Longer Answer (10-15 sentences). Please answer two of the following three
(10pts each):
21. Both Russell and Descartes offer compelling skeptical arguments. Why do you think we find such
skeptical worries so compelling and concerning? Describe the consequences if skepticism turns out
to be true? (Assuming we could make sense of such a view being “true”).
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22. Paul, Barnes, and Gottlieb all discuss issues about how we make decisions and act skillfully in the
world. Pick one of these readings, and describe an important practical lesson about making decisions
that you gleaned from the text and describe why you think it is important.
23. Self-Knowledge is threatened by the possibility of Self-Deception. Using the readings as a guide,
do you think we can actually deceive ourselves? If so, how can this be possible without paradox?
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Collective Scientific Knowledge
Melinda Fagan*
Department of Philosophy, Rice University
Abstract
Philosophical debates about collective scientific knowledge concern two distinct theses: (1) groups
are necessary to produce scientific knowledge, and (2) groups have scientific knowledge in their
own right. Thesis (1) has strong support. Groups are required, in many cases of scientific inquiry,
to satisfy methodological norms, to develop theoretical concepts, or to validate the results of
inquiry as scientific knowledge. So scientific knowledge-production is collective in at least three
respects. However, support for (2) is more equivocal. Though some examples suggest that groups
have scientific knowledge independently of their individual members, these cases are also
explained in terms of relational complexes of members’ beliefs.
1. Introduction
Is there collective scientific knowledge? The traditional answer is no. Philosophical
accounts of science and knowledge tend to emphasize individuals, treating groups as epistemic epiphenomena. However, these individualistic assumptions are increasingly questioned.1 The following sections survey these questions, focusing on two collectivist claims:
(1) groups produce scientific knowledge, and (2) groups have scientific knowledge. Section
2 introduces key concepts and distinctions. Section 3 examines support for thesis (1),
describing three ways groups may be required for scientific knowledge-production.
Section 4 examines support for thesis (2), which rests on the premise that scientific groups
have irreducibly collective beliefs. This premise does not follow from thesis (1), but
requires further argument. The most significant argument for this premise rests on Margaret Gilbert’s idea of a ‘plural subject.’ Section 5 sketches Gilbert’s general theory and its
application to scientific belief. But an alternative view, that group belief is a relational
complex of individual beliefs, better accounts for social aspects of science. This alternative,
though compatible with much of plural subjects theory, undercuts support for thesis (2).
Section 6 summarizes the results of this survey, and indicates their broader significance.
2. Preliminaries
Discussions of science and the social are rife with ambiguity and misunderstanding. Some
basic distinctions will be helpful, in navigating this contested theoretical terrain. The traditional analysis of knowledge as justified true belief, though notoriously inadequate, indicates three conditions widely considered necessary for knowledge. Accordingly, a
tripartite distinction of aspects of knowledge can be drawn at the outset:
i) knowledge-producing practices;
ii) knowledge had by a subject; and
iii) what is known (i.e., the content of knowledge).2
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Nearly all contemporary philosophical discussions of knowledge assume that (iii) is propositional knowledge; that what is known is some proposition p. In this framework, which
I assume throughout, there are three senses in which knowledge could be collective:
ic) knowledge that p is collectively produced;
iic) subject S collectively knows that p; and
iiic) p’s content is collective.
‘Collective’ here means, roughly, ‘irreducibly group-involving.’ Reduction, and therefore
irreducibility, can be understood in different ways; I discuss these concepts further below.
The notion of a group assumed here is more intuitive: a collection of two or more persons acting together for some shared purpose.3 There are evidently groups in this sense,
in scientific and other contexts. The question at issue is how such groups relate to scientific knowledge.
Exactly what is collective differs for each of (ic)-(iiic): the process of acquiring knowledge (ic), epistemic attitude of knowing (iic), or content of a proposition (iiic). The last,
which hinges on the nature of reference, propositional content and social metaphysics, is
beyond the scope of this essay.4 This leaves two theses to consider:
(1) Groups are necessary for producing (some) scientific knowledge.
(2) Some scientific knowledge is irreducibly had by groups.
For brevity, I will refer to the process by which scientific knowledge is produced as
‘inquiry.’5 So thesis (1) could be restated as ‘Groups are necessary for inquiry,’ where
inquiry is understood more narrowly than in common usage. Note that neither collectivist thesis is universal. So, if true, (1) and (2) do not rule out scientific knowledge for individuals. Though some (notably Nelson 1990) have defended the idea that groups rather
than individuals are the primary scientific knowers, most collectivists take it for granted
that individuals have and produce scientific knowledge. Many also treat theses (1) and (2)
as closely connected (e.g., Wray 2007). If the two are conflated, evidence for collective
inquiry is taken as evidence that groups have knowledge in their own right. But it is
important to distinguish theses (1) and (2), for reasons brought out in the following sections.
3. Collective scientific inquiry
In order for a process of inquiry to produce scientific knowledge, at least three conditions
must be satisfied:
(1a) inquiry is properly performed;
(1b) the result of inquiry (p) is true; and
(1c) p is accepted as scientific knowledge.6
If involvement of a group (or groups) is necessary to satisfy any of (1a)-(1c), then inquiry
is collective and thesis (1) is true. Philosophical, historical and social studies of science
suggest that, in many cases, groups are necessary to satisfy all three conditions. I consider
each in turn.
Whether groups are necessary for condition (1a) to be satisfied is difficult to say, as we
lack a general account of scientific method. Methodological standards in science vary
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enormously across disciplines, locales and historical periods, and new standards and methods of obtaining evidence are continually invented. However, several very broadlyapplied norms for inquiry do demand the involvement of groups. For example, hypotheses must be confirmed by evidence. In fields such as genomics, high-energy physics,
nanotechnology, biomedicine, and many others, assembling evidence sufficient to test a
hypothesis is beyond the ability of any single researcher. A collaborative team is therefore
required to satisfy the norm (Staley 2007, Wray 2002). This holds a fortiori for the norm
that multiple independent lines of evidence are needed to establish a hypothesis. Assembling diverse bodies of evidence and establishing convergence among them is, in many
cases, a job requiring multiple researchers (Galison 1997). More generally, the robustness
and reliability of results is enhanced by diverse perspectives on an object of inquiry,
which interact to reveal implicit, hitherto unquestioned, background assumptions (Longino
2002). So in many (if not all) episodes of inquiry, groups are required to satisfy (1a).
I assume that a proposition’s truth or falsity is independent of processes by which it is
established as scientific knowledge.7 But this does not rule out a necessary role for
groups in satisfying (1b). This is because scientific results are articulated in terms of theoretical concepts. Where those results are true, there is a good fit or mapping between
conceptual and worldly domains (Giere 1988). Developing a conceptual domain such
that good fit can be achieved requires effort. As a matter of historical fact, this effort
involves groups in many cases. In at least some of these, such as the concepts of
induced radioactivity, nuclear fission, and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, it is difficult to imagine how conceptual developments could have occurred without interactions
among distinct groups of scientists (Andersen 2009, Bouvier 2004). Insofar as collaboration is necessary to develop theoretical concepts, which figure in true theories, groups
are needed to satisfy (1b).
Validation of a result as scientific knowledge marks the end of a process of inquiry. 8
‘Acceptance’ in condition (1c) is thus to be understood as an action which closes an episode of inquiry, not an attitude had by an epistemic subject (see §4). 9 It is tempting to
suppose that such an act of acceptance can only be accomplished by a scientific community. The idea that scientific knowledge is essentially public, and that the end of inquiry
involves community-level acceptance, is deeply-entrenched in our contemporary understanding of science, and embodied in practices of publication and peer review. If this is
correct, then groups are necessary to satisfy (1c). However, given the diversity and flexibility of scientific practices, and their perennially fuzzy boundaries, it seems too strong an
assumption that group acceptance is a universal requirement for producing scientific
knowledge. There may be cases of genuine scientific knowledge in which individual
acceptance suffices to validate a result as scientific knowledge. But at least in many contexts, it takes a scientific community to satisfy (1c).
So thesis (1) is supported by at least three conditions for inquiry. Though to claim that
all inquiry is collective via (1a)-(1c) goes too far, there is good reason to think that some
inquiry is collective, in one or more respects. For thesis (2), however, matters are otherwise. Some collectivists are likely to object at this point that thesis (2) follows automatically from community-level acceptance of scientific knowledge (1c). If a scientific
community accepts a result as scientific knowledge, so the thought goes, then surely the
community itself has that knowledge. However, knowledge that a scientific community
has upon acceptance of a result as scientific knowledge can be interpreted in several ways,
not all of which are collective in an interesting sense. A scientific consensus that p might
simply be the aggregate of individual scientists’ beliefs, or some more sophisticated combination of their attitudes (Tuomela 1992, Corlett 1996, Niiniluoto 2003). Thesis (2)
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asserts something stronger: that scientific groups have irreducibly collective knowledge. The
latter concept must now be considered more closely.
4. Collective scientific belief
Irreducibly collective scientific knowledge had by a group is, in a sense to be specified,
independent of knowledge had by its individual members. By analogy with the individual
case, necessary conditions for a group S to collectively know that p include:
(2a) S believes that p;
(2b) p is true; and
(2c) S’s belief that p is appropriately based on properly-performed inquiry.
I assume that any further conditions required for S to know that p are independent of
collective aspects of knowledge, and that satisfaction of condition (2b) is similarly independent.10 The two sets of conditions associated with theses (1) and (2) display a kind of
complementarity, with linkages between (1a) and (2c), (2a) and (1c). But these paired
conditions are distinct.
Conditions (1a) and (2c) are both about properly-performed inquiry. Suppose properly-performed inquiry is necessarily collective, in that only a group can accomplish it.11
Then knowledge-production is collective, via condition (1a). It does not follow that
knowledge thereby produced is irreducibly had by a group via (2c). Condition (2c)
demands that a subject’s belief that p be appropriately based on the inquiry that yielded p
as an item of scientific knowledge. But, unless ‘appropriate basing’ requires direct experience or a complete representation of the entire process of inquiry, (2c) does not constrain
the nature of the epistemic subject. And it is implausible that appropriate basing requires
so much.12 If it did, then scientific knowledge would be restricted to those with intimate
experience of the evidential practices involved in its production. However, scientific
knowledge is famously unrestricted in this respect. For example, experiments in highenergy physics are performed by thousands of researchers, and involve evidential practices
that no single individual comprehends in detail (Galison 1997, Knorr Cetina 1999, Staley
2007). This does not, however, prevent individuals from knowing that an experiment has
a certain outcome (Giere 2007).
Appropriate basing does plausibly require that certain social epistemic relations (e.g.,
trust and authority) hold between those involved in inquiry and those who know the
result. And the former include groups, at least in some cases (§3). But this does not mean
that groups are knowing subjects in these cases. For all that has been said so far, of
course, they might be. The point is that, given thesis (1), further argument is needed to
establish thesis (2) via condition (2c). The question of who has scientific knowledge must
be considered in its own right. Condition (2a) is therefore the crux for thesis (2). If
groups cannot have scientific beliefs in their own right, then thesis (2) must be false.
Conditions (2a) and (1c) are similarly connected, though their tie is complicated by the
vexed issue of belief and acceptance. The belief ⁄ acceptance distinction is motivated by
two uncontroversial premises: first, that groups lack the neurological structures and psychological mechanisms characteristic of individual epistemic agents; and second, that
groups can endorse viewpoints distinct from the views of individual members, as in committee decisions, jointly-authored reports, election results, and many other familiar examples. Taken together, these two premises suggest that, while groups cannot have beliefs in
exactly the same way that individuals do, they can be subjects of an epistemic attitude like
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belief. ‘Acceptance’ is the usual term for this epistemic attitude, which is available to both
individuals and groups (Cohen 1992, Pettit 1992, Wray 2001, Gilbert 2002). It is not
self-evident, however, that groups cannot have beliefs, full-stop. This issue is extensively
debated in philosophy of mind (Schmitt 2003; see Mathiesen 2006 for references). What
is clear is that if ‘belief’ is understood as a psychologically rich concept, making individual
psychology essential, then groups cannot have beliefs. Such a ‘thick’ construal of belief
necessitates an attitude of acceptance that can be attributed to groups. But a psychologically ‘thin’ construal of belief does not.
The term ‘belief’ in condition (2a) refers to a psychologically thin conception, which
does not by definition prohibit groups from having this attitude. A sufficiently-thin conception of belief subsumes thicker concepts of both belief and acceptance, thereby bracketing the question of their relation.13 So my examination of thesis (2) does not take the
belief ⁄ acceptance contrast as a point of departure. This is the approach used by Staley
(2007) to examine collective scientific belief, and recommended by Mathieson (2006) for
epistemology more generally. An alternative approach is to take collective scientific
knowledge as hinging on the contrast between these two ‘thick’ epistemic attitudes,
which differ in aims, mechanisms of formation, shaping influences, and guiding ideals
(Mathiesen 2007, 210–213). But this has the disadvantage of complicating analysis by
multiplying attitudes and encouraging conflation of theses (1) and (2).14
The connection of (1c) and (2a) can now be seen. Suppose the subject that accepts p
as scientific knowledge must be a group; e.g., a scientific community. Then inquiry is
collective, via (1c). It does not thereby follow that knowledge produced by such inquiry
is had by the accepting group, via (2a). Recall that a group’s acceptance of p is an
action that concludes an episode of inquiry (§3). Condition (2a) requires that the group
have an epistemic attitude toward p, belief in the ‘thin’ sense, that is irreducibly collective – i.e., not reducible to analogous epistemic attitudes had by individual members of
the group. This follows from (1c) only given the further premise that a group’s act of
acceptance is or entails an irreducibly collective epistemic attitude: belief that p. It is
plausible that an act of acceptance entails some attitude attributable to the group (Staley
2007, Schmitt forthcoming).15 But establishing that this attitude is irreducibly collective
requires further argument; it does not follow directly from (1c). So although the two
sets of conditions (a-c) are linked, support for (1) does not automatically accrue to (2).
Studies of collective scientific belief that do not explicitly distinguish theses (1) and (2),
but argue from collective features of scientific inquiry such as consensus statements and
jointly-authored papers (Beatty 2006, Wray 2006, 2007, Staley 2007) offer direct support only for the former.16
Arguments for collective knowledge had by scientific groups do not cite features of
inquiry. Instead, they focus on examples in which an epistemic attitude (belief in the psychologically thin sense) is attributed to a group but not its individual members (e.g.,
Gilbert 2000, Beatty 2006, Rolin 2008). This line of argument aims to establish thesis (2)
via (2a), by demonstrating that some scientific groups have beliefs that cannot be reduced
to members’ beliefs. The most straightforward cases of reduction are summative; i.e., a
group’s belief is just the sum or aggregate of individual members’ beliefs. For group G to
summatively believe that p, it is necessary and sufficient that all or most of G’s members
believe that p. Summative group belief is reducible to the beliefs of individual members, in
the sense that the latter provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the former. This is
a classic sense of reduction, though not the only one that bears on questions of scientific
knowledge (Fagan 2011, forthcoming). Scientific consensus is often interpreted as summative. It is common to suppose, for example, that there is consensus in the molecular
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biology community that biological information flows only from DNA to RNA to protein
(i.e., the Central Dogma), just in case most molecular biologists believe this.17
This example is instructive, because in fact there is no summative consensus on molecular biology’s Central Dogma. Exceptions to the one-way flow of biological information
from DNA to RNA to protein are well-documented, such as reverse transcription from
RNA to DNA and protein-mediated epigenetic processes that impact development and
evolution. Most molecular biologists today do not believe the Central Dogma, in a strict
sense. Yet the idea that biological information follows a linear track from DNA to RNA
to protein is still prevalent, though few molecular biologists would endorse it if pressed.
This and many indicate examples indicate that science involves non-summative group
beliefs that p, for which it is neither necessary nor sufficient that all or most of members
believe that p (Gilbert 2000). Collective belief is often identified with non-summative
belief (e.g., Gilbert 1989, 288–292). This identification presupposes that the summative ⁄ non-summative distinction coincides with the reducible ⁄ irreducible distinction. If
the two distinctions coincide, then non-summative beliefs (for which it is neither necessary nor sufficient that all or most individual members believe that p) are just those group
beliefs that are irreducible to members’ beliefs. Identification of these as collective beliefs
naturally follows, and therefore thesis (2) via (2a). However, the summative ⁄ non-summative and reducible ⁄ irreducible distinctions do not necessarily coincide in this way.
The concept of reduction is notoriously resistant to unequivocal characterization. Even
assuming the classic notion, reduction by necessary and sufficient conditions, there are
other relations than simple summation by which individual and group beliefs can be connected, such that the former provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the latter
(Corlett 1996). For example, a group’s belief may be the belief had by the greatest number of members, the intersection of all members’ beliefs, the belief had by the most
authoritative members, the average or median belief of members (for beliefs with quantitative content), the belief had by representatives of all G’s members after deliberation in
accordance with norms most members of G endorse, etc. Therefore, not all non-summative
group beliefs are irreducible in the classic sense. Furthermore, on a collective interpretation, the Central Dogma example is confusing: the molecular biology community
believes the Central Dogma, though most molecular biologists do not. Unlike stock
collectivist examples of juries and hiring committees, in which a group’s viewpoint is
clearly identified, it is not obvious that the molecular biology community really has a
viewpoint here. Yet the Central Dogma does play some role on the scientific stage. The concept of collective belief irreducibly had by a scientific group does not illuminate it, however.
A more general and fruitful way to think about group belief is relational. The basic idea
is that a group belief is not just a heap of individual beliefs, but includes relations among
them as well: trust, authority, and the like. So relational group beliefs are not simple
things, but systems of members’ beliefs and social epistemic relations among them
(Niiniluoto 2003, 271–273). Tuomela’s ‘positional group belief’ (1995), Corlett’s ‘sophisticated summative belief’ (1996), Ernst & Chant’s ‘equilibrium view’ (2007) and Fagan’s
‘interactive belief’ (2011) are all refinements of this basic relational view. Despite being
framed in terms of groups having irreducibly collective knowledge, Wray’s (2007)
account of epistemic interdependence among members of scientific groups also falls into
this category.18 The relational view provides a plausible account of the Central Dogma:
its persistence in molecular biology today is fully determined by molecular biologists’
beliefs, together with relations of epistemic authority that structure the molecular biology
community. In this case, teaching practices are important. All or most students of molecular biology are taught, by experts whose authority they accept, that the Central Dogma
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is (basically) correct. So the idea persists, though students who go on to become practicing molecular biologists later learn that it is, strictly speaking, false. So we are not faced
with the stark discontinuity of the collectivist interpretation: the molecular biology community believes the Central Dogma, though most molecular biologists do not. Instead,
the relational view of group belief reveals connections among individual beliefs, and the
role of these connections in the group at issue.
Summative group belief may be treated as a special, limiting case of relational group
belief. For a group to summatively believe that p, it is necessary and sufficient that all or
most members of a group believe that p. For a group to relationally believe that p, it is
necessary and sufficient that belief that p derives from members’ beliefs concerning p and
social epistemic relations among those beliefs. Summative cases are just those involving
minimal social epistemic relations. More typically, relational group belief involves aspects
of social life, which knit the members together into a group. So there is a sense in which
relational beliefs are group-involving. But this does not entail that relational belief is had
by a group as such, as thesis (2) requires. Nothing more than beliefs of individual members, singly or arranged in relations, is posited. The sense in which relational belief is collective is that of thesis (1).19 So the relational account does not support thesis (2) via (2a).
An argument for the latter must support the idea of a group believer, over and above the
individual members.
5. Plural subjects
Examples of both summative and non-summative group belief, as we have seen, are readily interpreted in relational terms. And the relational view has many other attractions: it
avoids introducing a new mode of epistemic agency, dovetails with socio-historical
accounts of scientific inquiry, and encourages investigation of social epistemic systems that
can impact scientific consensus. The collective interpretation, on the other hand, introduces a new epistemic agent, characterizing the group itself as a ‘‘locus of power and
knowledge’’ (Tollefsen 2004). But, so far, this idea has been specified only negatively:
non-summative, irreducible, not determined by members’ beliefs. There is no positive
account of or motivation for a group’s having collective scientific knowledge. Margaret
Gilbert’s theory of ‘‘plural subjects’’ transforms this situation. This theory not only defines
collective scientific belief had by a group, but also provides the ‘missing link’ between
conditions (1c) and (2a). Understandably, then, many studies of collective scientific
knowledge presuppose that there are plural subjects with collective beliefs, in Gilbert’s
sense (e.g., Bouvier 2004, Wray 2006, 2007, Staley 2007, Rolin 2008). Plural subjects
theory is the primary support for thesis (2). So it merits careful consideration.
Gilbert’s central concept is joint commitment.20 Joint commitments, on her view, are
created by two or more individuals mutually expressing willingness to enter into a commitment to believe, intend, or act, in some way, together. So joint commitments depend
on individuals’ attitudes, with respect to their formation. But, once created, a joint commitment constitutes a group as a plural subject: its unity fuses members into a ‘‘corporate
body,’’ whose members have interlocking obligations and entitlements. A group’s joint
commitment is a simple whole – not a complex combination of members’ personal commitments or attitudes. This distinguishes Gilbert’s version of collectivism from relational
group belief (§4). However, Gilbert’s account includes the latter as well, conceived as a
web of obligations and entitlements among members of a plural subject. A consequence
of the simple irreducibility of joint commitment is that individual members of a plural
subject cannot ‘opt out.’ Failure to conform to the obligations imposed by a joint
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commitment incurs a cost: expulsion from the group, or loss of status, etc. If individuals
tend to prefer to avoid costs, minimize risk, and avoid direct conflicts between personal
and group viewpoints (all plausible assumptions), it follows that joint commitments stabilize human belief and action.
Collective belief is one form of joint commitment. If ‘‘some persons are jointly committed to believe as a body that p,’’ then there is a collective belief that p, had by the
group composed of those persons (Gilbert 2000, 39–41). A joint commitment to believe
that p constitutes a group as a plural subject with the belief that p. Gilbert’s theory
extends to collective action as well: activities performed by a group rather than individuals, such as walking together or jointly writing a paper (1989, 2003, 2006). Indeed, on
this theory, collective belief entails joint acceptance, and vice versa: a group is jointly
committed to believe that p if and only if that group jointly accepts that p (1989,
194–195). So a group’s act of joint acceptance entails an irreducibly collective belief that
p. Because of these conceptual ties, rooted in the concept of joint commitment, condition (2a) follows from (1c) on Gilbert’s theory (see §4). In this way, plural subjects theory
runs theses (1) and (2) together: both stem from joint commitment.
Joint commitments also impose constraints on individual members: to support the
group’s belief that p, either explicitly (asserting ‘‘we believe that p’’) or tacitly (not calling
p into question or expressing doubt that p). Costs of failing to provide such support discourages dissent or questioning of collective belief, and imposes epistemic conformity on
individual members of a group. Given these definitions, conceptual ties and empirical
assumptions about individual behavior, Gilbert’s theory makes the following predictions
about scientific change (Gilbert 2000, Fagan 2011):
(P1) Consensus tends to persist, while doubts or heterodox ideas tend to be suppressed.
(P2) Ideas that challenge scientific consensus tend to come from outsiders or new group
members, for whom costs are less.
(P3) Shift to a new consensus is marked by expressions of support by prestigious scientists.
Gilbert’s theory can therefore be evaluated in the same way as scientific theories that posit
theoretical entities. Collective scientific belief, like classic theoretical entities such as the
electron, is an unobservable theoretical construct, which (realists claim) has important
concrete effects. Perhaps the realist strategies that succeeded with the electron could be
deployed on behalf of a putative social entity. 21
Inference to the best explanation (IBE) is widely used throughout the natural and
social sciences to argue for the existence of unobservable entities and processes. 22 For
an IBE argument to succeed, a theory must not just explain phenomena of interest
(here, features of scientific change), but explain them better than available alternatives.
The relevant alternative in this case is relational group belief. If P1-P3 are borne out by
actual patterns of scientific change, which the relational account of group belief cannot
explain as well, then IBE supports thesis (2), via (2a) and (1c), which are linked on
Gilbert’s theory. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that P1-3 are genuine patterns of
scientific change. 23 Which account of group belief better explains them? Though it is
difficult to say in general what makes one explanation better than another, here there is
a clear answer. The very features that render joint commitment irreducible – its simplicity, unity, and independence from a complex of individuals’ epistemic attitudes – make
its connection to those attitudes mysterious. This is not to say that plural subjects theory
provides no explanation whatsoever of social phenomena. But it cannot provide a better
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explanation than an alternative that omits the concept of joint commitment. Any social
phenomenon that can be explained in terms of plural subjects of joint commitment can
be explained more simply without irreducible joint commitment, in terms of the network of obligations and entitlements that structures relations of members’ beliefs to one
another – that is, in terms of relational belief. Irreducibly collective scientific belief is
not supported by IBE.
Indeed, much of Gilbert’s account, including the formation of joint commitment and
aspects of joint action, conforms to the relational account (Beatty 2006, Staley 2007,
Wray 2007). This suggests that irreducible joint commitment is something of an idle
wheel in Gilbert’s own theory. Plural subject explanations of social phenomena invoke
obligations and entitlements of members to one another. It is through these networks of
mutual constraint that costs of defaulting on joint commitment are imposed. Irreducible
joint commitment could be jettisoned, and the plural subjects theory would do the same
explanatory work, with fewer stipulations and assumptions. 24 But this trades the idea of
irreducibly collective belief had by groups, for that of a relational system of individuals’
beliefs. Again, the overall result is support for thesis (1), but not thesis (2).
6. Conclusion
While there is good reason to think that production of scientific knowledge is a collective
process (thesis 1), the idea that scientific groups have knowledge of their own (thesis 2)
remains dubious. There are at least three ways groups can be necessary for scientific
knowledge-production: satisfaction of methodological norms, development of theoretical
concepts, and validation of results as scientific knowledge. Historical, sociological and
philosophical studies of science suggest that groups do play these roles in many (if not all)
cases. So there is strong support for thesis (1). But it does not follow, from the involvement of groups in inquiry, that groups are knowers in their own right. Support for thesis
(2) is equivocal at best. Arguments for this thesis presuppose that groups have beliefs. At
least three senses of group belief can be distinguished: summative, relational, and collective. But only the last of these allows for scientific knowledge that is collective in a philosophically interesting sense distinct from thesis (1). The relational alternative undercuts
arguments for (2) based on non-summative examples and Gilbert’s sophisticated plural
subjects theory. These considerations do not definitively prove that groups cannot have
scientific knowledge, and that thesis (2) is false. They show, however, that there is little
reason to accept it.
This conclusion does not, however, vitiate the importance of collective conceptions of
science. A ‘deflated,’ relational modification of plural subjects theory is useful in explicating social aspects of key scientific episodes: engagements with the public (Beatty 2006),
collaborative research (Staley 2007), and conceptual innovation (Andersen 2009). The
moral is not to abandon the idea of collective scientific knowledge, but to focus on
aspects of inquiry that include epistemically significant interactions among individuals.
Crucial roles of groups in scientific knowledge-production can be illuminated without
supposing that groups themselves have scientific knowledge.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Hanne Anderson, Michael Bratman, Margaret Gilbert, Frank Hindriks,
Gerhard Preyer, Bill Rehg, Fred Schmitt, Hanoch Sheinman, Brad Wray, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful discussion and comments on the ideas in this essay.
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830 Collective Scientific Knowledge
Short Biography
Melinda Bonnie Fagan is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rice University in Houston, Texas, where she teaches philosophy of science, theory of knowledge and social
epistemology. She has PhDs in Biological Sciences (Stanford University, 1998) and
History and Philosophy of Science (Indiana University, Bloomington, 2007) and has
published over twenty articles and book chapters on biology and philosophy of science.
Her biological research focused on colonial organisms (plants and protochordates) and the
evolution of histocompatibility. Her current research focuses on interrelations of experiment, modeling, and social interaction in biomedicine. She has recently completed a
book on philosophy of science and stem cell research (forthcoming, Palgrave-Macmillan).
Notes
* Correspondence: Department of Philosophy, Rice University, MS 14, PO Box 1892, Houston, TX, USA,
77251-1892. Email: mbf2@rice.edu.
1
For discussions of general social epistemology and group belief, see: Synthese 73 (1987); Episteme 1 (2004); Social
Epistemology 21 (2007), and Schmitt (1994, 2003).
2
These conditions follow Longino (2002, 77).
3
The notion of ‘acting together’ can be analyzed in various ways (e.g., Bratman 1999, Gilbert 2003). Note that
groups so defined are small, face-to-face assemblages; it is possible that enduring social institutions do not qualify as
groups in this sense.
4
The associated collectivist thesis is that the content of (some) scientific knowledge makes ineliminable reference
to groups. Whether this is so depends on the nature of reference and propositional content, as well as social metaphysics. These issues are beyond the scope of this essay.
5
The referent here might be more accurately described as ‘successful inquiry.’
6
These conditions are, again, modeled on the traditional analysis of knowledge as justified true belief.
7
Excepting propositions about those processes or their novel material products.
8
In principle, investigation can always be re-opened, but in practice every episode of inquiry terminates at some point.
9
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.
10
With the possible exception of cases where p’s content refers to collective aspects of knowledge. These cases,
though important in some areas of social science, can be put aside for the purposes of this essay.
11
As a universal claim, this is too strong (see §3). I assume it here only to exhibit the independence of theses (1) and (2).
12
Knorr Cetina (1999) seems to endorse this view; critiqued in Giere (2007).
13
See Schmitt (forthcoming) for more discussion of this issue.
14
Conflation is encouraged because accounts of belief and acceptance use features of inquiry to characterize attitudes had by epistemic agents, effectively running theses (1) and (2) together.
15
Staley’s (2007) concept of ‘‘group belief’’ is just such an attitude: a basis for actions such as issuing a group statement (333, note 1). Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this point to my attention.
16
The situation is actually more complicated, as most collectivists endorse Gilbert’s plural subjects theory, which
links conditions (1c) and (2a) in a different way. Section 5 addresses Gilbert’s account, and argues against this line
of support of thesis (2).
17
This is Crick’s version of the Central Dogma (a term he coined, perhaps ironically).
18
Wray argues that only groups that are functionally organized to achieve the goal of scientific knowledge such
that members are mutually interdependent can have scientific knowledge, and that research teams, but not sub-fields
or the scientific community as a whole, meet this condition (2007, 340–343). His arguments are therefore, like
other defenses of the relational view, concerned with knowledge-production (thesis 1).
19
Relational group belief therefore meshes with the considerations in §3. For example, groups of interacting scientists (research teams, sub-fields, or whole disciplines) often issue statements derived from member individuals’ beliefs
and social epistemic interactions among them (Wray 2006, Staley 2007).
20
For details, see Gilbert (1989) Chapter 4; also Gilbert (2000, 39–41; 2006, 7).
21
The IBE argument is not explicit in Gilbert (2000). Instead Gilbert, understandably, proceeds on the assumption
that her theory is correct. The IBE argument is, however, easily reconstructed if this assumption is relaxed (details
in Fagan 2011, forthcoming).
22
See Psillos (1999) for a systematic defense of scientific realism based on IBE.
23
In fact, none of P1-P3 have been independently confirmed by empirical studies of science (Wray 2006, Fagan
2011, Fagan forthcoming). So it is premature, at least, to think they need explaining.
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Collective Scientific Knowledge
24
831
More detailed versions of this explanatory argument appear in Fagan (2011, forthcoming).
Works Cited
Andersen, Hanne. ‘Modeling Collective Belief in Science.’ 2nd Biennial Conference of the Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice, University of Minnesota, June 18–20, 2009.
Beatty, John. ‘Masking Disagreement Among Experts.’ Episteme 3 (2006): 52–67.
Bouvier, Alban. ‘Individual Beliefs and Collective Beliefs in Science and Philosophy: The Plural Subject and the
Polyphonic Subject Accounts.’ Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (2004): 382–407.
Bratman, Michael. Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
Cohen, L. J. An Essay on Belief and Acceptance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Corlett, J. Angelo. Analyzing Social Knowledge. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996.
Ernst, Zachary and Sara Chant. ‘Collective Action as Individual Choice.’ Studia Logica 86 (2007): 413–34.
Fagan, Melinda Bonnie. ‘Is there Collective Scientific Knowledge? Arguments from Explanation.’ The Philosophical
Quarterly 61 (2011): 247–69, 2011.
——. ‘Do Groups have Scientific Knowledge?’ From Individual to Collective Intentionality. Eds. Sara Chant, Frank
Hindriks, Gerhard Preyer. Oxford UP, forthcoming.
Galison, Peter. Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1997.
Giere, Ronald. Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1988.
——. ‘Distributed Cognition Without Distributed Knowing.’ Social Epistemology 21 (2007): 313–20.
Gilbert, Margaret. On Social Facts. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989.
—— .Sociality and Responsibility: New Essays in Plural Subject Theory. Ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
——. ‘Belief and Acceptance as Features of Groups.’ Protosociology: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research
Vol. 16 (2002): 35–69.
——. ‘The Structure of the Social Atom: Joint Commitment as the Foundation of Human Social Behavior.’ Socializing Metaphysics: The Nature of Social Reality. Ed. Fred Schmitt. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, 39–64.
Knorr Cetina, Karin. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999.
Longino, Helen. The Fate of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2002.
Mathiesen, Kay. ‘The Epistemic Features of Group Belief.’ Episteme 2 (2006): 161–75.
——. Ed. ‘Special Issue on ‘‘Collective Knowledge and Collective Knowers’’.’ Social Epistemology 21 (2007):
209–347.
Nelson, Lynn H. Who Knows: From Quine to Feminist Epistemology. Philadelphia: Temple UP. 1990.
Niiniluoto, Ilkka. ‘Science as Collective Knowledge.’ Realism in Action. Eds. M. Sintonen, P. Ylikoski, K. Miller.
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press, 2003. 269–78.
Pettit, Philip. The Common Mind: An Essay on Psychology, Society and Politics. Oxford: Oxford UP. 1992.
Psillos, Stathis. Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth. Oxford: Routledge, 1999.
Rolin, Kristina. ‘Science as Collective Knowledge.’ Cognitive Systems Research 9 (2008): 115–24.
Schmitt, Fred Ed. Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994.
——, Ed. Socializing Metaphysics: The Nature of Social Reality. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
——. ‘Collective Belief and Acceptance.’ From Individual to Collective Intentionality. Eds. Sara Chant, Frank Hindriks,
Gerhard Preyer. Oxford UP.
Staley, Kent. ‘Evidential Collaborations: Epistemic and Pragmatic Considerations in ‘‘Group Belief’’.’ Social Epistemology 21 (2007): 321–35.
Tollefsen, Deborah. ‘Collective Epistemic Agency.’ Southwest Philosophy Review 20 (2004): 55–66.
Tuomela, Raimo. ‘Group Beliefs.’ Synthese 91 (1992): 285–318.
Wray, K. Brad. ‘Collective Belief and Acceptance.’ Synthese 129 (2001): 319–33.
——. ‘The Epistemic Significance of Collaborative Research.’ Philosophy of Science 69 (2002): 150–68.
——. ‘Scientific Authorship in the Age of Collaborative Research.’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 37
(2006): 505–514.
——. ‘Who has Scientific Knowledge?’ Social Epistemology 21 (2007): 337–47.
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THE NATURE OF
TESTIMONY
by
JENNIFER LACKEY
Abstract: I discuss several views of the nature of testimony and show how
each proposal has importantly different problems. I then offer a diagnosis
of the widespread disagreement regarding this topic; specifically, I argue
that our concept of testimony has two different aspects to it. Inadequate
views of testimony, I claim, result either from collapsing these two
aspects into a single account or from a failure to recognize one of them.
Finally, I develop an alternative view of testimony that captures both
aspects of the nature of testimony and thereby provides the basis for an
illuminating theory of testimony’s epistemological significance.
Is testimony a reliable source of belief ? When are we justified in accepting
the testimony of a speaker? Is testimony just as basic a source of knowledge as sense perception, memory, and reason? These sorts of questions
pervade the literature in the epistemology of testimony, and yet it is
seldom recognized that there is substantive disagreement about what
testimony even is, with theories being offered about what conditions
need to be met for a person to testify that scarcely resemble one another.
Even more importantly, when attempts are made at answering these questions, the epistemological consequences of competing views of the nature
of testimony are often ignored.
In this paper, I plan to remedy this by, first, clearing up much of the
current confusion about the nature of testimony and by, second, sketching an account of what it is to testify that is suitable for the epistemology
of testimony. I shall proceed as follows: I shall first discuss various substantively different views of testimony and show how each proposal has
importantly different problems. I shall then offer a diagnosis of why the
disagreement over the nature of testimony is so deep; specifically, I shall
argue that our concept of testimony has two different aspects to it.
Inadequate views of testimony, I claim, result either from collapsing
these two aspects into a single account or from a failure to recognize one
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (2006) 177–197
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PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
of them. Finally, I shall develop an alternative view of testimony that
captures both aspects of the nature of testimony and thereby provides
the basis for an illuminating theory of testimony’s epistemological
significance.
1.
Preliminary remarks
To begin, I should like to make several remarks about the topic with
which I shall be concerned in this paper. First, my central focus will be
on what C. A. J. Coady calls natural testimony. Unlike formal testimony,
the paradigm of which is a statement offered under oath in a courtroom
or commission of inquiry, natural testimony “. . . is to be encountered in
such everyday circumstances as exhibit the ‘social operations of mind’:
giving someone directions to the post office, reporting what happened in
an accident, saying that, yes, you have seen a child answering to that
description, telling someone the result of the last race or the last cricket
score.”1
Second, and related, I am not here specifically interested in characterizing the speech act of testifying but, rather, in carving out the domain of
testimony as a source of belief. Otherwise put, in addition to sense perception, memory, reason, and introspection, ‘natural testimony’ picks out the
other traditionally recognized epistemic source, the source whereby hearers acquire information from either the spoken or written word of others.2
Moreover, this is the same project that all of the authors considered in
this paper are engaged in – they all wish to capture what it is to testify for
the purposes of theorizing in the epistemology of testimony.
Third, my purpose in this paper is not to directly address how we
acquire justified belief or knowledge via the testimony of speakers. These
are extremely important questions – indeed, ones at which the epistemology of testimony ultimately aims.3 But here I am interested in the prior
question of what precisely testimony is. Moreover, it will become increasingly clear throughout the discussion that lasting progress in the epistemology of testimony can be made only after we have settled upon a
satisfactory account of the nature of testimony.
2.
Coady’s Narrow View of Testimony
With these points in mind, let us turn to the account of natural testimony
put forth by C. A. J. Coady, whose seminal book on testimony sparked
much of the recent interest in this topic. For reasons that will become
apparent later, I shall refer to his account as the Narrow View of Testimony (hereafter, the NVT), according to which:
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THE NATURE OF TESTIMONY
NVT:
179
S testifies by making some statement that p if and only if:
N1. S’s stating that p is evidence that p and is offered as evidence that p.
N2. S has the relevant competence, authority, or credentials
to state truly that p.
N3. S’s statement that p is relevant to some disputed or
unresolved question (which may or may not be whether p)
and is directed to those who are in need of evidence on the
matter.4
Now, according to Coady, the notion of evidence figuring in N1 is similar
to what Peter Achinstein calls potential evidence.5 Evidence in this sense
requires the truth of e and an objective connection between e and h,
where e is the putative piece of evidence and h is that for which it is evidence. However, e can be evidence for h even if h is false, since all that is
required is that there generally be an objective connection or association
between e and h. Furthermore, though e must be true in order to be
potential evidence, it cannot entail h: entailment is simply too good to be
evidence.6
So, let us now consider a case in which a speaker makes a statement but
it fails to satisfy all three conditions of the NVT: suppose that Alice sincerely believes that she is a clairvoyant and tells Rita that she can see that
Elvis Presley is not dead, but rather, that he is currently living in San
Diego. Suppose further that there is no disputed or unresolved question
in this context since Rita in fact knows that Elvis is dead and is therefore
not in need of evidence on the matter. Such a statement, according to the
NVT, is not a case of testimony since it fails all three conditions. With
respect to N1, Alice’s statement, though offered as evidence to Rita, is
not potential evidence since there is no objective connection between
Alice’s statement that Elvis is living in San Diego and the obtaining of
this state of affairs. Indeed, there is no such connection between anything
that Alice says on the basis of her purported powers of clairvoyance and
that for which it is offered as evidence. In this way, Alice’s statement also
fails N2 since she does not have the relevant competence, authority, or
credentials to state truly that Elvis is living in San Diego.7 Finally, Alice’s
statement fails both conjuncts of N3 since recall that, ex hypothesi, Rita
knows that Elvis is dead – hence, her statement is not relevant to some
disputed or unresolved question and is not directed at a hearer who is in
need of evidence on the matter.8
In spite of Alice’s failure to satisfy all three of the conditions for testifying found in the NVT, my intuitions are clear: her statement that Elvis
is currently living in San Diego is an instance of testimony. To defend this
intuition, I shall now raise three central problems with this account of testimony. The first is that Coady has confused the metaphysics of testimony
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with the epistemology of testimony. To see this, let us first consider N1. As
will be recalled, in addition to requiring that the speaker offer her statement that p as evidence, Coady argues that her statement that p must be
potential evidence in the sense specified above. This, however, conflates
two distinct aspects of testimony: on the one hand, there is the question,
“What is testimony, i.e. what are the conditions required for S to testify
that p?” and, on the other hand, there is the question, “What is the difference between good and bad testimony, i.e. what is required for testimony
to serve as an epistemically adequate source of belief ?”9 According to
Coady’s NVT, we need only ask the former question since a statement
will not count as a case of testimony unless it is potential evidence. Thus,
it is impossible to have an unreliable testifier on Coady’s model: a speaker
would simply fail to testify if there weren’t an objective connection
between the statement that p and that for which it is evidence.
This has the consequence that the work for epistemology is no longer
to show that testimony is an epistemically acceptable source of justified
belief but, rather, to inquire as to whether we do in fact have an institution
of testimony. For if testimony is, as Coady suggests, a reliable source of
knowledge by definition, then we need not give an account of the justification of testimonial beliefs. Instead, we need to show that we do have an
institution of testimony or that when speakers are making statements,
they are really testifying. Since this consequence is so unattractive, I take
it that such a requirement is not necessary for a speaker to testify. Surely,
the interesting epistemological question is how we are justified in accepting the testimony of others rather than whether we really do have an
institution of testimony.10 Furthermore, there is a natural sense in which
we say that speakers can testify about UFO sightings, alien encounters,
spontaneous human combustion, and the like. Certainly, we might not
and should not accept their statements as a source of our beliefs, but why
should this prevent the speakers themselves from testifying?
Similar remarks can be made regarding N2. For a speaker who states
that p in the absence of the relevant competence, authority, or credentials
to state truly that p may not be a reliable testifier and her testimony may
not be an epistemically good source of belief. But surely such a speaker is
a testifier nonetheless. To my mind, N2 is a distinctively epistemic condition that may be necessary for epistemically reliable or good testimony
but not for testimony simpliciter.11
The second problem with the NVT is that Coady fails to recognize the
sense in which testimony can be a source of belief or knowledge for a
hearer, regardless of the speaker’s intention to be an epistemic source. For
notice that many posthumous publications, especially of journals and
diaries, will fail the second conjuncts of both N1 and N3.12 For instance,
if a private journal in which it is clear that the author was writing only for
herself is posthumously published, then, according to Coady, we must
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THE NATURE OF TESTIMONY
181
deny that the thoughts expressed in the journal are instances of testimony.
However, consider a case in which you learn from Sylvia Path’s posthumously published journal that she was deeply depressed, and then
someone asks you what the epistemic source of this knowledge is. Isn’t the
natural answer to this question testimony? For since you didn’t acquire
this information from sense perception, memory, reason, introspection,
or combinations thereof and, moreover, since you acquired this knowledge from an expression of someone’s thoughts, the intuitive conclusion
to draw is that the source of your knowledge is testimony. Or consider a
case in which you are talking on the phone and I overhear you say that
you were in a car accident. Wouldn’t we say that the source of my information is your testimony, despite the fact that you did not direct your
statement to me (and thus failed the second conjunct of N3)?
The third problem with the NVT is that Coady fails to recognize the
sense in which a speaker can testify, regardless of the epistemic needs of her
hearers. To see this, recall the case of Alice and her statement about Elvis
currently living in San Diego. The mere fact that Rita rightly knows that
Elvis is dead, and the context is therefore such that there is no disputed
or unresolved question about him (thus Alice’s statement fails the first
conjunct of N3), should not necessarily prevent Alice from testifying. For
a central aspect of our concept of testimony is that its purpose is, at least
quite often, for speakers to communicate their beliefs to others, whether
or not there is an open question about that which is being communicated.
For instance, consider a dinner party of devoutly committed atheists. Here,
there simply is no disputed or unresolved question since these atheists are
as certain as one can be that there is not a God. But shouldn’t it be at
least possible for a theist to sit down and communicate, via her testimony,
that there is a God? Couldn’t her statement, “There is a God” be an instance
of testimony, despite the epistemic needs or desires of her hearers?13
What these problems point to is that there are at least two aspects to
our concept of testimony. On the one hand, we often think of testimony
as a source of belief or knowledge for hearers, regardless of the speaker’s
intention to be such a source. On the other hand, we often think of testimony as involving the intention to communicate information to other
people, regardless of the needs or interests of the hearers. One of the fundamental problems with the NVT is that Coady requires the conjunction
of these features (i.e. the speaker’s intentions and the hearer’s needs)
rather than their disjunction.
It seems, then, that we need a broader notion of testimony than the
NVT, one that, first, doesn’t confuse the metaphysics and epistemology of
testimony and, second, adequately captures the two aforementioned aspects
of our concept of testimony. In what follows, we shall turn to several proposals that attempt to do just this and thus appear to provide more satisfying accounts of the nature of testimony.
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3.
The Broad View of Testimony
One of the main questions in the epistemology of testimony is how we are
justified in forming beliefs on the basis of what people say. This, rather
than what testimony is, is often taken to be the issue of central import
from an epistemic point of view. As we saw in the previous section,
Coady’s NVT has the unattractive consequence of reversing the priority
of these questions which, in turn, makes the important epistemological
question whether we do, in fact, have an institution of testimony. It is precisely to avoid these sorts of consequences that those who are interested
in the epistemology of testimony often embrace a very broad notion of
what it is to testify.
So, for instance, Elizabeth Fricker holds that the domain of testimony
that is of epistemological interest is that of “tellings generally” with “no
restrictions either on subject matter, or on the speaker’s epistemic relation
to it.”14 Following this view, Robert Audi claims that in accounting for
testimonial knowledge and justification, we must understand testimony as
“. . . people’s telling us things.”15 In a similar spirit, Ernest Sosa embraces
“. . . a broad sense of testimony that counts posthumous publications as
examples . . . [it] requires only that it be a statement of someone’s thoughts
or beliefs, which they might direct to the world at large and to no one in
particular.”16
In order to assess this broad approach to the nature of testimony, it
will be helpful to abstract away from some of the inessential differences
between these individual characterizations of testimony and focus on
what they all have in common. Since it is most natural to understand a
‘telling’ as an expression of one’s thought, let us say that the Broad View
of Testimony (hereafter, the BVT) is roughly:
BVT:
S testifies that p if any only if S’s statement that p is an expression of S’s thought that p.
As should be clear, such a broad view of testimony avoids the problems
afflicting the NVT. First, since a speaker can surely state her thought,
both without it being potential evidence and in the absence of the relevant
competence to state truly that p, such a view properly leaves the distinguishing feature between good and bad testimony a matter for epistemology to determine. Second, such a view allows for testimony to be a source
of belief or knowledge for a hearer, regardless of the speaker’s intention
to be such an epistemic source. For, as Sosa makes explicit above, one can
state one’s thought and thereby testify even if one’s statement is neither
offered as evidence nor directed at those who are in need of evidence.
Third, this account of the nature of testimony admits that a speaker can
testify, regardless of the needs or interests of her hearers. For, again, one
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183
can state one’s thought and thus testify, even if there is no unresolved or
disputed question.
Despite the significant advantages of this broad account of testimony,
however, there is reason to think that it is too broad. Specifically, the fundamental problem with the BVT is that it fails to recognize the distinction
between entirely non-informational expressions of thought and testimony.
For instance, suppose that we are walking down the street and I say, “Ah,
it is indeed a beautiful day.” Suppose further that such a statement,
though it expresses my thought that it is indeed a beautiful day, is neither
offered nor taken as conveying information; it is simply a conversational
filler, comparable to a sigh of contentedness.17 Or consider a case in which
Ned tells a joke among a group of our friends and I casually say, “He sure
has a great sense of humor.” Again, though I am stating my thought that
Ned has a great sense of humor, the context is such that we all know Ned
and we all know that he has a great sense of humor; thus, my statement is
simply a polite response to a friend’s joke. Since our concept of testimony
is intimately connected with the notion of conveying information, both
examples should fail to qualify as instances of testimony.18
Similarly, in my young daughter’s copy of The Secret Garden, Mary
tells Colin as he attempts to stand for the first time, “You can do it! You
can do it . . . I tell you, you can!”19 While Mary’s ‘telling’ is surely an
expression of her thought that Colin indeed has the capacity to stand, its
function in this context is merely to encourage her friend to accomplish a
task that is quite difficult for him, similar to clapping or cheering. There
is no intention on Mary’s part to convey information, nor is Colin apt to
acquire information, from her words of encouragement. Hence, once
again, this type of statement should not be regarded as testimony.
But perhaps the most decisive counterexample to the BVT is the
following type of case: suppose that in the middle of a dramatic theatrical
performance on stage, Edgar, an actor, delivers his line, “Life no longer
has any meaning for me.” Surely, Edgar’s line should not qualify as testimony, despite being an expression of his thought. Now, the response most
likely to be offered here by the proponent of the BVT is to deny that
Edgar’s delivering his line is truly an expression of his thought. In particular, since there is no sense in which Edgar believes that life no longer
has meaning for him, such a statement, the objection goes, fails to express
Edgar’s thought. There are, however, at least two reasons why this
response will not do. First, this criterion for expression of thought results
in paradigmatic instances of testimony failing the BVT: suppose, for
instance, that Clare testifies under oath that she saw the defendant in a
capital murder case at a local gas station on the date in question. Suppose
further, however, that she committed perjury on the stand. Despite the
fact that Clare does not in any sense believe what she is reporting to the
jury, it is widely agreed that she can nonetheless offer her testimony on
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the stand. Hence, it is unclear how a proponent of the BVT could exclude
Edgar’s statement as testimony while, at the same time, countenancing
Clare’s as such. Second, it is surely possible and, indeed, even likely that
there are times when an actor becomes so temporarily immersed in his
character that the delivering of lines in fact expresses the actor’s thoughts
at that moment. But even if an actor achieves this kind of character
immersion, it would still be quite odd to regard such lines as instances of
testimony in any reasonable sense of the word.
In all of the above cases, proponents of the BVT lack the resources to
exclude such non-informational expressions of thought from qualifying
as testimony. The upshot of these considerations is that if we embrace the
BVT, then any expression of thought, from conversational fillers and
polite responses to encouraging cheers and the reciting of acting lines,
turns out to be an instance of testimony. This is clearly an unacceptable
result. Hence, we need an account of testimony that is broader than the
NVT but more restrictive than the BVT.20
4.
Graham’s Moderate View of Testimony
Peter Graham offers an account of testimony that adequately represents
a moderate view of testimony.21 For it is broad enough to avoid many of
the problems afflicting Coady’s account and yet it places restrictions on
statements so that non-informational remarks are ruled out as instances
of testimony. In particular, according to Graham’s Moderate View of
Testimony (hereafter, the MVT):
MVT: S testifies by making some statement that p if and only if:
M1. S’s stating that p is offered as evidence that p.
M2. S intends that his audience believe that he has the relevant
competence, authority or credentials to state truly that p.
M3. S’s statement that p is believed by S to be relevant to
some question that he believes is disputed or unresolved (which
may or may not be whether p) and is directed at those whom
he believes to be in need of evidence on the matter.22
By amending Coady’s proposal so that the conditions for testimony are
subjective rather than objective, Graham avoids many of the problems
that were raised against the NVT. For instance, since Graham, first, does
not require that the statement in question be potential evidence and,
second, requires merely that S intends that her audience believe that she has
the relevant credentials to state truly that p (rather than that she actually
have such credentials), the MVT does not confuse the metaphysics and
the epistemology of testimony. Moreover, since he requires only that S
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believes that there is an unresolved question (rather than that there actually be an unresolved question), the MVT also enables speakers to testify,
regardless of the needs of the hearers. And, finally, since Graham places
restrictions on the kind of statements being offered, non-informational
remarks are distinguished from testimony. For the speaker must offer her
statement that p as evidence that p, she must at least believe that p is relevant to a question which she believes is unresolved, and she must direct
her statement to those whom she believes to be in need of evidence on the
matter. In this way, my casual statement that “Ah, it is indeed a beautiful
day,” my polite response that “Ned sure has a great sense of humor,”
Mary’s words of encouragement to Colin, and Edgar’s reciting of his acting lines all fail M3 and thus do not qualify as instances of testimony.
However, although the MVT avoids these problems, it should be clear
that, by virtue of requiring various intentions and beliefs on the part of
the speaker, Graham’s account fails to capture the sense in which testimony can be a source of belief or knowledge for a hearer, regardless of the
speaker’s intention to be such a source. For instance, like Coady, Graham
will have to deny that many posthumous publications are instances of testimony, e.g. private journals where the author did not offer her reflections
as evidence. Similarly, consider a case in which Frank believes that I
already know the confidential piece of information that the President of
our university is resigning. Now, suppose that he casually makes a statement about this fact, though he does not offer this statement as evidence,
does not believe that his statement is relevant to some disputed question,
and does not direct his statement to someone whom he believes to be in
need of evidence on the matter. Frank’s statement, therefore, fails M1 and
M3 and is not a case of testimony according to Graham.
This, however, is an unwelcome consequence. For it is precisely because
we often acquire knowledge from speakers, regardless of their intentions,
that proponents of the BVT urge the necessity of placing “no restrictions
either on subject matter, or on the speaker’s epistemic relation to it.”23 If
we are to have an account of the nature of testimony that is epistemically
acceptable, it simply has to be acknowledged that we learn things from
the testimony of others even when they don’t intend for us to do so.
5.
General problems
Before turning to my account of testimony, I would like to briefly discuss
two general problems afflicting all of the views that have been discussed
thus far. First, notice that, in one form or another, all of the above proposals flesh out the notion of testimony in terms of statements. For
instance, Coady and Graham both explicitly say that “a speaker testifies
by making some statement p . . .” and Sosa claims that his account of
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PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
testimony “requires only that it be a statement of someone’s thoughts or
beliefs.” Similarly, Audi maintains that testimony is “saying or affirming
something” and Fricker holds that the domain of testimony is that of
“tellings generally.” The thought underlying these views is that an
instance of testimony is fundamentally a statement, either verbal or in
writing, of a speaker’s thoughts.
But consider a case where Randall asks me whether there is any coffee
left in the kitchen and I respond with a nod of my head. It is rather counterintuitive to say that a nod qualifies as a statement. In this context, however, it is an expression of a person’s thought that is intended to, and
successfully does, communicate information. Because of this, my nod does
indeed seem to be a case of testimony. Or consider a case where Natasha
asks me where the nearest coffee shop is and I, with a mouth filled with
biscotti, point to the north. Again, it is doubtful that we would regard
pointing as a statement, but, in this context, it does seem to qualify as testimony precisely because I intend to, and successfully do, convey information to another person. Other cases abound: winking, clapping, snapping,
and so on. It is at least arguable that, in certain contexts, people can testify about countless things of varying degrees of importance without
making statements. Thus, it seems that an adequate account of testimony
needs to be fleshed out in terms broader than those imposed by statements.
Another problem shared by many of the aforementioned proposals is
the assumption that there is always a one-to-one correspondence between
the explicit content of one’s testimony and that which is being testified to.
For instance, both Coady and Graham claim that “S testifies by making
some statement p if and only if S’s stating that p is offered as evidence that
p” and Sosa holds that “one ‘testifies’ that p if and only if one state’s one’s
belief [or thought] that p.” However, it is not uncommon for one to state
one’s belief that p as conveying the information that p and, e.g. that q and
r and so on. For instance, suppose you ask me, “Is it raining outside?” and
I say “There is an umbrella in the closet.” In this context, my statement
that there is an umbrella in the closet is meant to convey the information
both that there is an umbrella in the closet and that it is raining outside.24 I
am, therefore, testifying to both propositions, despite the fact that the content
of my testimony explicitly corresponds to only one of these propositions.25
In what follows, then, I shall offer an account of testimony that accommodates these features and avoids the problems afflicting Coady’s NVT,
the BVT endorsed by Fricker, Audi, and Sosa, and Graham’s MVT.
6.
Speaker testimony and hearer testimony26
The diagnosis that emerges from the previous sections is that our concept
of testimony is not univocal since there seem to be two distinct and often
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independent aspects to such a notion. On the one hand, testimony is
often thought of as an intentional activity on the part of the speaker. This
is captured by the NVT and, to a greater extent, by the MVT. So, for
example, both Coady and Graham require that the speaker offer her
statement27 as evidence that p and, in this way, non-informational remarks
fail to qualify as instances of testimony. The thought underlying these
conditions seems to be that a speaker cannot testify unless there is some
intention on the part of the speaker to convey information. On the other
hand, however, testimony is often thought of simply as a source of belief
or knowledge for the hearer or audience. For instance, even if a speaker
does not intend to convey information, as in the case of posthumous
publications of private journals or Frank’s statement about the President
of our university resigning, we often think of the speaker’s statement as
testimony in the sense that it provides the hearer with information. In this
sense, testimony does not depend on the intentions of the speaker but,
rather, it depends on the needs of the hearer or the receiver of the information in question. Indeed, it is my contention that inadequate accounts
of testimony result from a failure to recognize this distinction, that is,
from a failure to recognize the difference between testimony as an intentional activity on the part of the speaker and testimony as a source of belief
or knowledge for the hearer.
To begin, let me make some remarks on behalf of the concept on which
I shall be relying in order to flesh out the nature of testimony. I shall then
discuss how I wish to apply the distinction between what we may call
speaker testimony and hearer testimony (henceforth, testimonys and testimonyh, respectively). Finally, I shall show how both notions fall under the
general rubric of testimony and how such a distinction fares with respect
to the problems afflicting the rival views.
In my proposal, I shall focus on the notions of an act of communication, a, conveying the information that p. There are, however, some points
of clarification that are needed about how I am understanding these crucial notions. Let us begin with the concept of an act of communication.
In the previous section, I argued against views that use the notion of a
statement in order to flesh out the concept of testimony. In order to avoid
the difficulties with this approach, I am construing the concept of an act
of communication broadly so that it does not require that the speaker
intend to communicate to others; instead, it requires merely that the speaker
intend to express communicable content.28 A couple of examples should
make this distinction clear. Consider a case in which, unbeknownst to me,
Chloe has headphones on and is bopping her head to the beat of the music.
I walk into the room, ask her if there is any cake left, and, seeing her bop
her head, think that she has intended to communicate to me that there is
cake left in the kitchen. To my mind, this sort of case may be an example
of ostensible testimony, but it should not qualify as genuine testimony in
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any sense of the word. To use my terminology, I would say that Chloe’s
head-bopping is not an act of communication since she did not intend to
express communicable content.29
On the other hand, consider a case in which Davis is engaged in a
soliloquy in his room and, unbeknownst to him, someone in the next room
overhears what he is saying. Such a soliloquy, on my view, is an example
in which a speaker intends to express communicable content but does not
intend to communicate; accordingly, I would say that Davis’s soliloquy
qualifies as an act of communication. Similar considerations apply to
posthumous publications of journals, private diaries, and so on. Such
cases, I would argue, qualify as acts of communication since the speaker
intends to express thoughts with communicable content, despite the fact
that she does not intend to communicate them to anyone else.
Let us now turn to the concept of conveying information. What does it
mean for an act of communication, a, to convey the information that p?
Here are at least three clear instances in which this is the case:
1. Where a is the utterance of a declarative sentence such that it
expresses the proposition that p, a conveys the information that p.
2. Where is an obvious (uncancelled) pragmatic implication of
a, a conveys the information that p.
3. Where an act of communication a expresses the proposition that q,
and it is obvious (either to everyone in the exchange or to a normal
competent speaker) that entails , a conveys the information both that q and that p.
While I shall not defend 1–3 as capturing an exhaustive list of acts of
communication conveying information, they do represent paradigmatic
instances of such a process. This will suffice for introducing the crucial
distinction between speaker testimony and hearer testimony in what follows.
With these points in mind, let us now turn to the concept of speaker
testimony. My account of testimonys requires that a speaker intend to
convey information to her hearer and, in this sense, it requires that the act
of communication be offered as conveying such information. Since it is
possible for one to offer one’s act of communication as conveying the
information comprising multiple propositions, let us say that testimonys
requires only that the act of communication be offered as conveying
the information comprising some proposition(s).30 So, let us propose the
following:
Speaker Testimony: S testifiess that p by making an act of communication a if and only if S reasonably intends to
convey the information that p (in part) in virtue
of a’s communicable content.
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Two points should be noted about this account of testimonys. First,
notice that while there need not be a direct correspondence between the
content of the proffered act of communication and the content of the
proposition testified to – my saying that there are umbrellas in the closet,
for instance, may be offered as conveying the information both that it is
raining outside and that there are umbrellas in the closet – a reasonably
obvious connection must exist between such contents. Roughly, the connection between the proffered act of communication a and the information that p must be such that a normal speaker who offered a in similar
circumstances would intend to convey the information that p (in part) in
virtue of a’s communicable content. For instance, my intending to convey
the information that corn on the cob is yellow by virtue of saying that
grass is green fails to qualify as testimonys since, in the absence of rather
unusual circumstances, there fails to be a reasonably obvious connection
between the contents of these two propositions. Second, notice that I have
included the clause “(in part) in virtue of a’s communicable content.”
This clause is intended to rule out cases such as the following: suppose
that I sing “I have a soprano voice” in a soprano voice and I intend to
convey the information that I have a soprano voice in virtue of the perceptual content of this assertion.31 Such an act of communication does
not qualify as testimonys, on my view, because it was not offered as conveying information (in part) in virtue of its communicable content; rather,
it was offered as conveying information entirely in virtue of its perceptual
content.32 Testimonys, therefore, captures the sense in which testifying
requires some intention on the part of the speaker to convey information.
If, for instance, I make a casual remark, it will fail to be an instance of
testimonys because I am not offering such an act of communication as
conveying information.
Testimonyh, on the other hand, does not require any such intentional
activity on the part of the speaker.33 For this notion captures the sense in
which testimony can serve as a source of belief or knowledge for others,
regardless of the testifier’s intention to be such an epistemic source. In
this way, posthumous publications of private journals and Frank’s statement about the President of our university resigning will both qualify
as testimonyh so long as someone takes the acts of communication in
question as conveying information. Indeed, a speaker may testifyh even if
she positively intends for her statement or thought never to be taken as
conveying information to anyone. For example, suppose Lucy’s private
journal is found by the police. Suppose further that she wrote down that
her husband had committed the crime for which he is suspected, though
she intended such thoughts only for herself – in fact, she even encrypted
the entries in what she (mistakenly) thought was an unbreakable code and,
thus, in no way offered such thoughts as conveying information regarding
her husband’s guilt. Nonetheless, according to the current proposal,
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Lucy’s journal will qualify as testimonyh since it is taken as conveying
information by the police. Furthermore, just as in testimonys a speaker’s
act of communication may be offered as conveying the information comprising multiple propositions, so in the case of testimonyh a hearer may
take a speaker’s act of communication as conveying the information comprising multiple propositions. So, let us propose the following condition
for testimonyh:
Hearer Testimony:
S testifiesh that p by making an act of communication a if and only if H, S’s hearer, reasonably
takes a as conveying the information that p (in
part) in virtue of a’s communicable content.
Notice that I have again included the clauses “reasonably” and “(in part)
in virtue of a’s communicable content.” The former clause is included
to ensure that there is a relevant connection between the content of a
proffered act of communication and that of the belief formed by a hearer.
Roughly, reasonably taking a as conveying the information that p requires
that a normal hearer in similar circumstances would take a as conveying
the information that p (in part) in virtue of a’s communicable content.
For instance, while it would be reasonable for a normal hearer to take the
statement that there are umbrellas in the closet as conveying the information that it is raining outside, it would not be reasonable for a normal
hearer to take a speaker’s statement that bananas are yellow as conveying
the information that grass is green. Hence, adding “reasonably” prevents
such disconnected contents from qualifying as testimonyh. The addition
of the latter clause is intended to rule out cases such as the following: suppose that I say that ten people have spoken in this room today and you,
having counted the previous nine, come to believe that ten people have
spoken in this room today.34 Here, my statement may certainly be causally
relevant with respect to your forming this belief, but your belief is based
on your having heard and counted the speakers in the room today,
thereby rendering it perceptual in nature. Since you did not take my statement as conveying the information that ten people have spoken in this
room today in virtue of its communicable content, then, it does not qualify
as an instance of testimonyh.35
Now, notice that while the views of testimony considered earlier in this
paper – notably, the NVT and the MVT – focus on the notion of offering
evidence, I instead rely on the concept of conveying information. This is
an important substitution. For with respect to both testimonys and testimonyh, there is a crucial difference between an act of communication
either being reasonably offered or taken as conveying the information
that p and an act of communication being reasonably offered or taken
as evidence that p. In particular, there are clear instances of an act of
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communication intuitively failing to qualify as testimony in which the
latter is true of such an act even though the former is not. To see this
consider the following:
A. S reasonably offers an act of communication a, where the content
is extremely complex and such as only someone intelligent could
communicate, as evidence that she is intelligent.
B. H reasonably takes S’s act of communication a as evidence that S
had witnessed a certain episode, or had been at a certain locale,
where a has communicable content that would be unlikely to
occur to anyone who had not witnessed such an episode or visited
such a locale.
C. H reasonably takes S’s act of communication a as evidence that S
can communicate such a content.
D. H reasonably takes a as evidence that people of a certain sort – to
which S belongs – are prone to affirm things with that content.36
In each of the cases found in A–D, the following three things are true:
(i) intuitively, S is not testifying to the proposition in question, (ii) the act
of communication is either reasonably offered or taken as evidence for
the proposition in question, but (iii) the act of communication is neither
reasonably offered nor taken as conveying the information of the proposition in question. Let us begin with A: S is clearly not trying to convey the
information that she is intelligent, nor could her act reasonably be taken
to be conveying this information, even though she could reasonably offer
it, and one could reasonably take it, as evidence that she is intelligent.
Similarly, in B, S is not trying to convey, nor could reasonably be taken to
be conveying the information, that she was in a certain place,37 despite the
fact that one could reasonably take her act as evidence that she was in a
certain place. For notice that in both cases A and B, the propositions in
question are unlike any of the three instances of conveying information
discussed earlier, i.e. a is not the utterance of a declarative sentence such that
it expresses the proposition that p, is not an obvious (uncancelled)
pragmatic implication of a, and a does not express the proposition that q,
where it is obvious (either to everyone in the exchange or to a normal
competent speaker) that entails . The same is true of C and D:
in the former, a hearer could not reasonably take S’s act of communication to convey the information that S is capable of performing such an
act and, in the latter, a hearer could not reasonably take S’s act of communication to convey the information that she belongs to a type of creature that can perform an act with that content. For, again, in both cases
C and D, the acts of communication express propositions unlike those
found in the three instances of conveying information discussed earlier.
Nevertheless, in both cases, such acts could be taken as evidence for the
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propositions in question. This shows not only that conveying information
is importantly different than evidence, but also that the former, unlike the
latter, corresponds with our intuitions regarding acts of communication
that qualify as testimony and those that do not.
Both testimonys and testimonyh seem to fall under the general concept
of testimony. For as mentioned earlier, testimony is thought of not only
as an intentional act on the part of the speaker, but also as a source of
belief or knowledge for the hearer. Many of the problems that we saw in
the previous sections result from conflating these two notions. Once this
distinction is made, however, and we see that a speaker can testifys without testifyingh and vice versa, all of the desiderata for an adequate
account of testimony can be captured.
To see this, recall that the NVT includes restrictions on the speaker,
the hearer, and the nature of the statement being offered. In doing so,
Coady is conflating testimonys and testimonyh.38 Consequently, he fails to
adequately capture either notion since he must rule out both (i) cases in
which a speaker intends to convey information but her hearer is not in
need of it and (ii) cases in which a hearer takes an act of communication
as conveying information but the speaker does not offer it as such.
The MVT, on the other hand, shifts the emphasis away from the hearer
and focuses exclusively on the intentions and beliefs of the speaker. In this
way, though Graham is more successful than Coady in capturing testimonys, his account cannot sufficiently accommodate testimonyh. So, for
example, he must claim that Lucy did not testify about her husband’s
guilt since she did not direct her thoughts to those whom she believes to
be in need of evidence on the matter. But there is a clear sense in which
Lucy’s journal writings are testimony, namely, the sense in which they
serve as a source of information for the police. According to the above
distinction, Lucy’s journal writings are a case of testimonyh but not
testimonys.
Finally, if we endorse a view of testimony that relies on the distinction
between testimonys and testimonyh, we can also provide a more restrictive
account than the one put forth by proponents of the BVT. For recall that
the only condition needed for a speaker to testify on this view is that she
express her thought. This conception of testimony is too broad, however,
since there is nothing that distinguishes non-informational remarks from
genuine cases of testimony. The above distinction avoids such a problem
since, if the speaker does not reasonably intend to convey information
through her act of communication and if the hearer does not reasonably
take the act of communication as conveying information, then it will fail
to be a case of either testimonys or testimonyh. Instead, it is simply a casual
remark, conversational filler, or some other non-informational remark.
Thus, let us propose the following as a fully general definition of
testimony:
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THE NATURE OF TESTIMONY
T:
193
S testifies that p by making an act of communication a if and only
if (in part) in virtue of a’s communicable content, (1) S reasonably
intends to convey the information that p, or39 (2) a is reasonably
taken as conveying the information that p.40
According to T, then, testimony is afforded with certain features that distinguish it from everyday chatter. I take this to be a significant advantage
for the present account since not all expressions of thought are cases of
testimony. Moreover, a further virtue of the account of testimony found
in T is that it properly leaves the distinction between good and bad testimony for epistemology to delineate. For a speaker can surely reasonably
intend to convey the information that p through offering an epistemically inadequate act of communication and, accordingly, a hearer can
undoubtedly reasonably take an epistemically unacceptable act of communication as conveying the information that p. In this way, T allows for
an illuminating theory of the epistemology of testimony.41
Department of Philosophy
Northern Illinois University
NOTES
1
Coady 1992, p. 38.
Henceforth, ‘testimony’ should be understood as referring to natural testimony. It
should be noted, however, that while my focus is on natural testimony, the account that I
later offer will be general enough to subsume formal testimony (though a full account of
the latter will most likely include even further conditions). I should also mention that I
later argue that testimony need not involve any words at all. But for present purposes, this
rough characterization of testimony is sufficient.
3
I take up these questions in Lackey 1999, 2003, 2005, forthcoming A, forthcoming B.
4
Coady 1992, p. 42.
5
See Achinstein 1978 and 1983.
6
It should be noted that this has the consequence that no one could testify about
necessary truths, given that everything entails propositions that are necessarily true.
7
I am here assuming that clairvoyance is not a reliable belief-producing source and
hence that a speaker who offers a statement that p as evidence that p on the basis of her
purported powers of clairvoyance will invariably fail N2. If there are or coul…

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