Typing testimony

This paper argues that as a name for a speech act, epistemologists typically use ‘testimony’ in a specialist sense that is more or less synonymous with ‘assertion’, but as a name for a distinctive speech act type in ordinary English, ‘testimony’ names a unique confirmative speech act type. Hence, li...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Synthese (Dordrecht) 2021-12, Vol.199 (3-4), p.9463-9477
Main Author: Graham, Peter J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comprehension
Education
Epistemology
Logic
Metaphysics
New Directions in Social Epistemology
Nuclear weapons
Original Research
Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Science
Speech
Speech acts
Word meaning
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Summary:This paper argues that as a name for a speech act, epistemologists typically use ‘testimony’ in a specialist sense that is more or less synonymous with ‘assertion’, but as a name for a distinctive speech act type in ordinary English, ‘testimony’ names a unique confirmative speech act type. Hence, like any good English word, ‘testimony’ has more than one sense. The paper then addresses the use of ‘testimony’ in epistemology to denote a distinctive kind of evidence: testimonial evidence. Standing views of a hearer’s testimonial evidence see it as partly supervening on a speaker’s assertion that P. The paper argues for a broader account that sees a hearer’s (receiver’s) testimonial evidence as partly supervening instead on the hearer’s representation as of a speaker meaning that P. This broader account is the comprehension view of testimonial evidence. The upshot is that not all so-called “testimony-based beliefs” are caused by a speaker’s testimony.
ISSN:0039-7857
1573-0964
DOI:10.1007/s11229-021-03210-8