Intellectual autonomy

Kant about enlightenment

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. … The motto of the enlightenment is therefore: Sapiere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding”.

Kant’s thought about testimony

"Kant argued that the path to enlightenment required one to be sceptical about testimony in the sense that Hume outlined, such that one always seeks an independent basis for trusting the word of another rather than taking that word at face value. That is, to be autonomous is to rationally determine one’s own fate rather than having this dictated by others.

Kant thus sides with Hume against Reid on the issue of testimony, and regards the general scepticism about testimony that Hume advocates as being a key element of the enlightenment spirit of individual intellectual endeavour."

The contemporary debate about testimony

"The epistemological debate we have witnessed here as regards testimony lives on in contemporary philosophy. The debate now divides between two camps, known as reductionism and anti-reductionism (credulism)."

Reductionism

"Reductionism takes its inspiration from Hume and argues for the importance of having an adequate non-testimonial basis for accepting testimonial claims. This is why the view is known as reductionism, in that in its strongest form it demands that one should always base one’s beliefs acquired via testimony on non-testimonial evidence, and in this sense testimony is ‘reduced’ to non-testimonial sources."

Anti-reductionism

"Anti-reductionism takes its inspiration from Reid and emphasizes the importance of trusting others and their word as a route to knowledge."

SOURCES

'Introduction to Philosophy' course (the University of Edinburgh)

https://www.coursera.org/learn/philosophy