Topics Knowledge

Question In the larger epistemological sense, what role does the law of witnesses, e.g. Federal Rules of Evidence (http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/index.html#article_vi), play in our search for knowledge (and truth)? So much of our day-to-day life in modern society is based upon the law or rule of witnesses, e.g. the rule of law, scientific investigations, journalism (print and television news reports), to name just a few. And yet if we take the view of the skeptics -- and to a larger degree, much of philosophy -- nothing is really knowable (with respect to certainty). So how can so much of our daily life rest upon (be founded upon) a principle -- the law or rule of witnesses -- which may be without epistemological foundation? If there are any texts that specifically address this subject, I would appreciate references. Thanks in advance for any and all replies!

Accepted:
December 24, 2006

Comments

Almost everything we know we only know with the help of what others have told us. In that sense, testimony is our dominant source of knowledge. So it is somewhat surprising that the history of epistemology contains so little material on the epistemology of testimony. One reason for this neglect is the view that belief from testimony is fundamentally less secure than belief from reason or direct experience. Another is the view that, however important testimony may be, it is never the source of new knowledge, but only a way of distributing old knowledge. Both of these views are eminently disputable.

One famous discussion of the epistemology of testimony is David Hume's chapter On Miracles in his Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. For a good recent book, have a look at Tony Coady's Testimony.

The reliability of witnesses is a terribly interesting issue. You may find it surprising to learn that according to the directors of the Innocence Project at Northwestern University (a project that investigates cases of erroneous criminal conviction) the false testimony of eye witnesses is the single biggest reason for false convictions. How is it that so much of our life rests upon something so unreliable, something with no foundation? Well, perhaps we have no other choice. That is to say, we find ourselves subject to belief because it's our human nature or human condition to believe, not because we have what Descartes called a fundamentum inconcussum, an unshakeable foundation. (Hume would agree.) And perhaps there's a positive side to the skeptical insight. Perhaps we're better off acknoweldging that our beliefs may be (or are) without ultimate foundations. Why? Because those who believe that they have apprehended ultimate foundations tend to be dogmatists, and on the basis of absolute truths absolute conduct is justified. Dostoevsky wondered in The Brothers Karamazov about the question: if God doesn't exist, then is everything permissible? But Dostoevsky may have had the issue backwards. If one means by God an absolute foundation, perhaps a more salient question is this: isn't anything permissible to those who claim to have God's warrant for it? Skeptics aren't known to fly airplanes into skyscrapers.