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cussions of the epistemology of testimony are not much more
common in our century than they were in Reid s.2 Something else
is going on.
2
Perhaps things are changing. Significant recent discussions of testimony include the fol-
lowing: Robert Audi, The Place of Testimony in the Fabric of Knowledge and Justifica-
tion, American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1997); Tyler Burge, Content Preservation,
The Philosophical Review, 102, Issue 4 (Oct. 1993); and C. A. J. Coady, Testimony: A Philo-
sophical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). A rather different treatment, from the
continental tradition, is Paul Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Testimony, in Paul
Ricoeur, Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. Lewis S. Mudge (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1980).
The Epistemology of Testimony 165
I suggest that an additional factor is that the great fathers of
modern Western epistemology, Descartes and Locke, were, each
in his own way, very much opposed to tradition and to the accep-
tance of things on testimony which tradition presupposes; and
that the course which they set for philosophy has not been sig-
nificantly altered. Descartes insisted that if scientia is to be prop-
erly practiced, the individual must begin by doubting everything
anybody has ever told him or her, and continue that doubt for a
very long time how long, is not clear. Locke insisted that when
we are required to do our best to determine the truth or false-
hood of some proposition we must set believing on testimony off
to the side and go to the things themselves.
This explanation invites the further question: Why has the
course Descartes and Locke set not been altered? To this ques-
tion, I have no satisfactory answer. The image of the human being
which inhabits and shapes modern epistemology in the analytic
tradition is that of a solitary individual sitting mute and immobile
in a chair, receiving perceptual inputs and reflecting on his own
inner life. For the continental tradition replace receiving per-
ceptual inputs with reading a text. The significance of Reid s
discussion of testimony is that in this discussion there s a differ-
ent image at work an image of the person as a social being. It
would be natural to supplement our discussion of Reid s account
of perception with a discussion of his account of memory; the
latter account fits closely with the former account in fascinating
ways. But because Reid, in his discussion of testimony, breaks
with the epistemological tradition at a fundamental level, I have
chosen instead to look at that. My judgment is that Reid did not
think through his account of testimony as carefully as he thought
through his account of perception; nonetheless, it s a fascinating
and provocative treatment.
natural signs
Just now I spoke of the close fit of Reid s account of memory to
his account of perception. The fit is almost as close for his account
of testimony. Reid remarks that the objects of human knowledge
are innumerable, but the channels by which it is conveyed to the
mind are few. Among these, the perception of external things
by our senses, and the informations that we receive upon human
166 Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology
testimony, are not the least considerable: and so remarkable is the
analogy between these two, and the analogy between the prin-
ciples of the mind, which are subservient to the one, and those
which are subservient to the other, [that] without further apology
we shall consider them together (IHM VI, xxiv [194b; B 190]).
It s the pursuit of this analogy that shapes Reid s discussion. Recall
the distinction between original and acquired perception; add a
distinction between natural language and artificial language.
Reid s thesis will be that between acquired perception, and arti-
ficial language, there is a great analogy; but still a greater between
original perception and natural language (IHM VI, xxiv [195a;
B 190]).
What Reid will show, in the first place, is the rather close simi-
larity of the structure of testimony, and of believing on testimony,
to the structure of perception on the standard schema. The core
of the analogy will be seen to lie in the role of signs in both
phenomena, and of immediate, noninferential interpretation of
signs. Second, what Reid will show is the close similarity of the
principles operative in believing on testimony to those opera-
tive in perception.
Distinguish, says Reid, artificial signs from natural signs; and
then, within the latter, distinguish three types (IHM V, iii
[121b 122b; B 59 60]). The standard schema for perception
deals with one type of natural sign. In those cases of perception
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