Testimony
When reflecting on knowledge (in philosophy classes, for example) it is tempting to think that the only legitimate sources of knowledge are those available to individuals. Knowledge underpinned by perception, reasoning, whether inductive or deductive, and memory seems to be a matter of an individual perceiving, reasoning or remembering and thus, potentially, fits this assumption. By contrast putative knowledge which is socially mediated does not seem, under scrutiny, a proper candidate for knowledge. But pre-philosophically it seems that most of our knowledge is acquired second hand through the words of others: by testimony, which in philosophy (by contrast with the law) just means acquiring knowledge from others. If this really is a source of knowledge it may seem that it has to be justified first hand, by and for each individual knower.
Hume seems to think this when he says:
[Our trust in testimony derives from] no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses. It being a general maxim, that no objects have any discoverable connexion together, and that all the inferences, which we can draw from one to another, are founded merely on our experience of their constant and regular conjunction; it is evident, that we ought not to make an exception to this maxim in favour of human testimony, whose connexion with any event seems, in itself, as little necessary as any other... And as the evidence, derived from witnesses and human testimony, is founded on experience so it varies with the experience and is regarded either as a proof or a probability according as the conjunction between any particular kind of report and any kind of object has been found to be constant or variable.Hume, D. ([1748] 1975) Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, Oxford: Clarendon Press §88, 111-2.
But as a number of recent philosophers have argued, no such individualistic justification of testimony is possible. And if it is not, then it seems that at least some forms of knowledge are essentially social.
The lecture slides are here.
Coady, C. (1973) ‘Testimony and Observation’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 10: 149-155 (on Blackboard)
Other texts
Fricker, E. (1987) 'The epistemology of testimony' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 61: 57-81 (link to JStor)
Lipton, P. (1998) 'The epistemology of testimony’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 29: 1–31. (link to external site)
McDowell (1994) ‘Knowledge by hearsay’ in his Meaning, Knowledge and Reality, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press