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The relationship between testimony and reliability is central to epistemological debates, where reliability serves as the primary criterion for justifying belief in testimony [1], [2]. Various theories, such as reductionism and Humean approaches, explicitly link the credibility of testimony to the inductive evidence or track records of a testifier's reliability [3], [4], [5], [6].
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Epistemology of Testimony | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu 7 facts
claimPeter Graham (2000c) argues that it is possible for testifiers to be generally unreliable even if they successfully interpret each other's statements, challenging the view that interpretation requires an assumption of reliability.
claimThe 'Not-Testimony' response posits that a hearer's belief is not based solely on a testifier's testimony, but also on additional signs or knowledge that indicate the testifier's reliability or unreliability.
perspectiveEpistemologists debate whether a recipient of testimony must possess beliefs or inductive support regarding the reliability of the testifier to be justified in their belief, or if the testifier's actual reliability is sufficient.
quoteRobert Audi states: "[W]e cannot test the reliability of one of these basic sources [that is, for Audi, a source like perception or memory, but not testimony] or even confirm an instance of it without relying on that very source. … With testimony, one can, in principle, check reliability using any of the standard basic sources."
claimThe hypothesis that testimony is reliable receives tacit confirmation whenever observations match expectations that are based on the credibility of testimony, creating a cumulative effect that justifies trust in testimony.
claimThe Humean approach to testimony holds that individuals infer the reliability of a present instance of testimony from the reliability of earlier instances.
claimPeter Graham (2000c) provides a counter-example to the necessity of reliability in interpretation by imagining a group of people who are honest and skilled at interpreting each other, but who hold mostly false beliefs about the world due to perceptual or memory failures.
Social Epistemology – Introduction to Philosophy - Rebus Press press.rebus.community 2 facts
referenceShogenji (2006) argues that the reliability of testimony is tacitly confirmed as children learn to associate words, contexts of utterance, and truth.
claimThe reductionist view of testimony asserts that a person S1 is justified in believing a person S2's testimony that p if and only if S1 receives the testimony, S1 has inductive evidence based on observation that S2's testimony is reliable, and the proposition p is not defeated by other evidence S1 possesses.
Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2019 Edition) plato.stanford.edu 1 fact
claimOne argument for the reasonableness of trusting testimony is that individuals accumulate a long track record of personal experiences with testimonial sources that serves as a sign of reliability.