Testimony, Justification and Coherence

Abstract

Are we justified in accepting what others tell us? How important is the answer to this question in epistemology? Thomas Reid provided us with a positive answer to the first question backed by a theory to defend the answer.¹ We are justified in accepting what others tell us because we are naturally disposed to do so by our faculties and because we are naturally disposed to speak the truth. Since we are all naturally disposed to speak the truth, accepting what others tell us is a good strategy for accepting what is true. These contentions are explicit in Reid. There is a only slightly concealed premise that the objective of justification is to accept something if and only if it is true. It is clear that Reid held that the justification that we have for believing what others tell us is usually immediate, that is, is usually not the result of reasoning about their testimony. We must allow for the possibility that others, though speaking the truth as they see it, are in error and for the possibility that they might dissemble. When, however, we have no reason to think that they err or that they dissemble, we are justified in accepting what they say without any reasoning to support so doing. Acceptance of what others say is, in contemporary formulation, the default mode of mental operation.