Epistemology of Testimony and Authority: Some Indian Themes and Theories

Abstract

That by far the greater part of the enormous mass of one’s belief and knowledge is acquired from what others tell is regarded by many philosophers as an obvious truth. A main epistemological problem, then, is to explain how one can acquire second-hand knowledge from others. To put the problem in this way, however, is to make many kinds of assumptions — metaphysical, epistemological, psychological. For example, subjective idealists who do not admit the existence of others,¹ or those who find the claim that others have minds totally unjustified, cannot formulate this problem at all. There are many other metaphysical assumptions behind this formulation of the problem about the nature of what one can possibly say or hear. The nature of the problem and its solution depend also upon the conception of knowledge, the nature of testimony, and other epistemological notions, such as competence of the speaker, trust of the hearer etc. Then there are psychological assumptions for explaining why the speaker should speak the truth. The motive might be to help the hearer to obtain knowledge out of compassion, and so on.