Abstract
Hearsay or indirect testimony receives little discussion even today in epistemology, and yet it represents one of the cardinal modes for the transmission of knowledge and for human cognitive development. It suffices to think of school education whereby a student listens to teachers reporting knowledge acquired, often indirectly, from the most varied sources such as text books, newspapers, personal memory, television, etc… Or let us consider the importance of oral tradition in the social and cultural development of civilisations. Or even let us call to mind the learning process of infants who, only thanks to the knowledge learned from others, succeed in learning the language. Finally, with the emerging digital technology, the information gleaned from third parties is influencing the creation of knowledge in a full gamut of fields, in a quasi-comprehensive manner. This leads us to claim that hearsay, despite the reductionist conceptual scheme to which epistemology has confined it in that indirect testimony, is in any case quintessential in the dissemination of knowledge. This work fully expounds upon the basic mechanism of indirect testimonial transmission and provides an epistemologically founded explanation of the cognitive possibilities of hearsay by investigating, in the light of the anti-reductionist paradigm, three mutually connected epistemic properties, namely trust, reputation and coherence, that are key in the epistemic justification of the truth acquired via an indirect testimony.
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Notes
An even simpler chain is represented by a subject directly testifying a proposition to another subject. With respect to an indirect testimony, it is somewhat trivial to observe that at least three elements are necessary: a source, an intermediate transmission node and a recipient.
The term information is used as a synonym of proposition in this context. In actual fact it would be more accurate to define a proposition as a compilation of information to which a truth value may be associated. It will be clear from the context, on a case-by-case basis, to which of the two meanings reference is made.
In relation to the foregoing, the approach used in this work as regards the study of hearsay will be precisely aimed at the analysis of the simpler chain of indirect testimony, also according to what is outlined by Coady (1992, Chap. 11).
Particular consideration should be given to the fact that the production of any knowledge does not necessarily coincide with the production of new knowledge in the sense of the general progress of knowledge. In fact, somebody learning new knowledge does not necessarily learn something that some other individual did not already know about, or something that its epistemic community of reference or even the entire human race was not aware of.
By epistemological framework is implied that epistemology is a prescriptive discipline, namely it sets forth the truth of a de facto situation prescribing criteria for its appraisal.
Even in Anglo-Saxon case law there is a similar mechanism for the control of evidence confirmed by an indirect testimony or hearsay evidence, known as hearsay rule according to which an indirect testimony cannot be used to appraise the truth of what is reported but only as evidence of what is reported, cf. Coady (1992, pp. 28–29).
For an analysis of reductionism in the epistemology of testimony, please refer to, for instance, Adler (2002, (2006), Audi (1997, (2002, (2004, (2006), Coady (1992), Faulkner (2000), Fricker (1987, (1994, (1995, (2002, (2006), Gelfert (2014), Kusch (2002), Lackey (2003, (2006), Lehrer (1994), Root (2001).
In the epistemic appraisal of a direct testimony, the reductionist approach contrasts with another paradigm, referred to as anti-reductionism (in this respect see Adler 2006; Burge 1993 and 1997; Coady 1992; Dummett 1993; Gelfert 2014; Goldberg 2006; McDowell 1998; Stevenson 1993; Strawson 1994; Weiner 2003), that accords to testimony the same epistemic dignity as the other four sources of knowledge. In this sense, a direct testimony will be deemed valid if it will not be possible to set out any evidence to the contrary, whether testimonial in nature or not, in relation to what is attested by it.
This clarification is not irrelevant as, for instance, in continental gnoseology further sources of knowledge are taken into account such as imagination, emotion, supersensible dimension, etc. ... Besides, at times, memory is interpreted as equivalent to testimony and excluded from the list of primary sources in that considered able only to transmit but not generate knowledge, cf. Dummet (1993, pp. 420–422).
From now on, ‘evidence’ will also refer to ‘reason’, ‘memory’ and ‘awareness’, namely the term ‘evidence’ will also incorporate all those manifestations of the sources of knowledge considered as primary from the reductionist viewpoint.
The same objectivity which, however, also in the course of the advancement of modern science, frequently emerged not so much from perceptive, inferential, introspective or mnemonic individual evidence, as from an agreement to sets of doctrines codified according to modi operandi widespread in the diverse epistemic communities of reference. For instance, in seventeenth century England, the developing scientific practice adjusted to the objectivity standards codified within the gentlemen philosophers sociocultural category, cf. Shapin (1994).
Suffice to think that anthologies attest content ascribable to subjects sometimes other than their scholars.
A teacher may relate to its students arguments learned from a former University professor.
The symbol ‘\(\sim \)’ denotes the direct acquisition relation of a given proposition p by a subject, that is to say it indicates that a subject has developed a true and substantiated belief in p thanks to non-testimonial evidence and/or reasons. Instead, the symbol ‘—’ describes the relation of testimonial transmission that holds between any two subjects of the chain. ‘Aap’ indicates that a subject A attests the truth of p, namely ‘A attests that p’, cf. Coady (1992, p. 211).
Unlike Coady (1992) who always uses the ‘Aap’ notation to indicate any type of attestation of the subject A in regard to the proposition p, these three new symbols have been introduced for ease of notation.
The concept of reputation is more often analysed in terms of trustworthiness, namely of reliability, ability to be worthy of trust, considered as an epistemic property associated with the cognitive attitude of trust, cf. Burge (1993), Faulkner (2011), Fricker (2006), Hardwig (1985, (1991), Mcleod (2011) and Origgi (2004, (2007, (2012). Besides, the themes of reputation and trust have given rise to in-depth studies focusing on psychology and the sphere of cognitive sciences, but especially on economy and economic sociology, cf. Akelrof (1970), Axelrod (1984), Craik (2009), Karpik (2007) and Podolny (2005).
It is possible to attribute the epistemic property of coherence to the truth or to the justification of a given belief. To the first case is ascribed what is commonly referred to as coherence theory of truth, categorised under the umbrella of the so-called epistemic theories. Instead, to the second case is attributed the discussion on the epistemic validity of coherence as regards what is referred to as coherentism, namely the coherence theories of justification, according to which a coherent belief is legitimate in epistemic terms. For an introductory bibliography on the topic see Blanshard (1939), Bradley (1914), Bonjour (1985, (1999), Harman (1973), Lehrer (1986, (1990, (1994), Olsson (2014), Young (2015). The works of Thagard (1989, (2000, (2004, (2007, (2012) on the analysis of coherence within scientific explanation deserve to be referenced separately.
This is, quite simply, the reason why in all the professional or academic paths aimed at the development of specific expertise, the formative moments dedicated to updating are key.
More trivially, let us think about the “likes” on Facebook profile pictures.
Let us consider paid advertising campaigns via AdWords web page indexing on Google’s search engine.
On the issue of authority associated with sources of knowledge see Popper (1969).
In actual fact, in the case of substitute teaching things are slightly different although the reasoning remains valid in any case.
With reference to conditions 3 and 4 of the anti-reductionist analysis, the “confidence that such a person is endowed with a certain knowledge” may be explicated in the “confidence that no evidence or reasons exist against the fact that this person is endowed with a certain knowledge”.
The fact that the number of beliefs held by a subject is finite is not sufficient to prevent the infinite regress of the justification. In order to be convinced, it suffices to consider that the belief 1 of a subject whereby knowledge C is justified by another belief A is in turn a belief that may be defined as 2. Now, belief 2 also needs to be justified via a belief 3 that may be defined as the belief of a given subject that believes in 2 to justify knowledge C on the basis of belief 1. Clearly, the process is repeatable as desired any number n of times whereby n in theory has no upper limit, cf. Moser (1989, pp. 174–176).
In epistemology, coherentism (Young 2015) is defined as the conceptual orientation whereby knowledge is a set of coherent beliefs held by a subject.
This is not to say that out of two sets that differ by one belief, only the quantitatively greater one is identifiable as the most coherent. Comprehensiveness in this sense is not a merely quantitative factor, as it also provides for a qualitative element that varies according to the epistemic connections of each belief. In this sense, an additional belief may introduce an element of greater uncertainty in the belief structure of an individual that would come into possession of an altogether less coherent system.
There is no shortage in literature of supporters of the position whereby epistemic monitoring is a process necessarily entailing the adoption of the reductionist paradigm. In this regard please see, for instance, Fricker (1994).
For the purposes of this work, let us assume that the schoolteacher is able to transmit the knowledge of the evolutionist theory even if s/he does not personally believe in it. In this sense, by following what is referred to as the orthodox perspective (Graham 2006, pp. 105–127)—whereby memory and testimony can only transmit but not engender knowledge—it is sufficient that in the chain of testimonies through which the educator has acquired the evolutionist theory, there be at least one node that has direct knowledge of it, meaning that there is someone that has developed an authentic and substantiated belief in it in a non-testimonial manner.
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Acknowledgments
The author wishes to extend his heartfelt thanks to all the people who contributed, with their discussions and comments, to the development of this paper, including to two anonymous journal reviewers for their precious suggestions. The author also wishes to thank Lorenzo Magnani, philosopher and cognitive scientist, full professor at the University of Pavia (Italy) and the director of its Computational Philosophy Laboratory, and Giuliano Pancaldi, full professor of the History of Science, Head of International Centre for the History of Universities and Science and coordinator of the Doctoral Programme in Philosophy, Science, Cognition, and Semiotics (PSCS) at the University of Bologna (Italy).
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Martini, F. Hearsay viewed through the lens of trust, reputation and coherence. Synthese 194, 4083–4099 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1128-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1128-7