Justification Of Testimony

Testimonial epistemology is a important field in contemporary epistemology,today many studies about knowledge have to consider testimony.Because,in daily life,most of knowledge that each person possesses comes from the testimony of others.It is extremely common fact that people acquire knowledge through testimony.However,how do people form knowledge through testimony?or how is the testimony justified?This problem is the core issue in testimonial epistemology.This article focuses on this issue.This paper is mainly divided into two parts.The first part,concentrat on the analysis of existing theories of testimonial justification and point out their shortcomings.The second part,rethink these existing theories and put forward a new and better theory.Specifically speaking:Firstly,The testimonial reductionism represented by David Hume and the anti reductionism represented by Thomas Reid constitute the two basic lines of testimonial justification.On the one hand,the reductionism argued that testimony is a derived source of knowledge.So if testimony is to be justified,the listener must have positive reasons,especially the non-testimonial reasons,such as perception,inference and memory.On the other hand,anti reductionism argued testimony is an independent and basic source of knowledge.It is not necessary to reduce the testimony to other sources of knowledge.Therefore,testimonial justification does not need the listener to have positive reasons and emphasis on the rationality of credulity.However,there are obvious deficiencies in both of the two theories.In terms of reductionism,the main difficulty is that the requirements are too high and too much emphasis on the autonomy of knowledge.In the case of the anti reductionism,the main shortcoming is to give too much credit to the testimony,facing the irrational problem.The common shortcoming of both is unrealistic,that is,it is impossible to explain the various testimonial phenomenon in reality.In view of the difficulties of reductionism and anti-reductionism,the theory of trying to overcome both defects and combining the two basic ideas,namely,the Hybrid Theory,has emerged.At present,there are Duncan Pritchard’s Quasi Reductionism,Jennifer Lackey’s Dualism,Paul Faulkner’s Trust Theory and Axel Gelfert’s Testimonial Inference to The Best Explanation.Unfortunately,in general,these Hybrid Theories are either biased towards reductionism or anti-reductionism,and consequently,they end up in a dilemma.Secondly,in view of the difficulties encountered by these theories of testimonial justification,through the discussioning of "Limit of Testimony" and"Credulity Right",this paper reaffirms the rationality and necessity of reductionism and reductionism in testimonial justification.Therefore,the unification of them should not be a matter of preference,but should be placed in the balance place,giving full play to their respective advantages to complement each other.The way to achieve this goal is to introduce the Interest or Stakes(loosely understood as "good and bad").Because a normal person is inevitably affected by Interest when making a decision,there are some assessments of the interest of them when they chose to accept or reject the testimony.Then the listeners choose different ways of justification,according to the different interests between their own and testimony,which can be reductive or non-reductive.In short,in testimonial justification,the interest principle and epistemic principle inevitably intertwined.Under the guidance of the principle of interest,reductionism and reductionism do not interfere with each other,but do their respective duties and complement each other.Then there are four strategies,namely"credulity strategy","reduction strategy","trust strategy",which based on reductionism and anti-reductionism can explain the various specific testimonial justification properly.