Anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony contrasted with authority and information-source markers in natural languages
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15633/lie.30105Keywords:
testimony, belief, anti-reductionism, evidentiality, conjunct/disjunct markingAbstract
The paper aims to show that anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony is difficult to reconcile with the existence of grammatical categories such as egophoricity (conjunct/disjunct) or evidentiality, whose markers (obligatory in many languages) encode the speaker’s access to the direct information source, or lack thereof. Markers of these categories set apart the information which is based on the speaker’s perception, or his/her direct experience, from someone else’s testimony. Thus, egophoric and evidential markers do not allow for regarding testimony as basic and direct justification for belief on a par with perception – in the way anti-reductionists deem correct. This results in a paradoxical situation as anti-reductionism draws support from the philosophy of common sense and Thomas Reid’s “first principles of cognition”, which are said to be reflected in the structure of natural languages. However, the anti-reductionist stance is clearly incompatible with the grammatical structure of at least a quarter of all languages.
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