Both sides now …

… Take My Word for It: On Testimony | 1000-Word Philosophy. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In claiming that testimony is a basic source of justification for the hearer, Reid isn’t denying that testimony can work only in conjunction with other sources of knowledge. Just as memory extends pre-existent knowledge across time, testimony transfers pre-existent knowledge from one person to another. Testimony, unlike other sources of knowledge, is irreducibly social and morally significant. It cannot operate without trust on the part of the hearer and honesty on the part of the speaker.

Note the relevance of this to the previous post.



See also this piece, indirectly linked to yesterday:  The Restless Heart of Darkness – Part One.

Modern thought oddly claims to be scientific and to rely on the certainty of empiricism, but in fact takes everything on authority, and on anonymous authority at that.

Anonymous means no modern man would dream of discovering the qualifications of the members of the UN panel on climate change, nor has modern man any impulse to question the findings of bribed bureaucrats or political appointees drawing conclusions about the relative dangers of DDT. The modern man is ironically proud of skepticism, but has no ability to question the authority of experts utterly nameless, utterly faceless, utterly immune from question or contradiction. The Middle Ages, taking on faith some dogma decided at the Council of Ephesus, would know the name of the defenders of the faith, and the heretic had their names affixed to their beliefs; and the dogma were all carefully written down, not merely a drift of opinion.