Pathologies of Testimony, C. A. J. Coady
Coady, C. A. J. (2006), Pathologies of Testiomy in Jennifer Lackey & Ernest Sosa, ed.,’The Epistemology of Testimony’, Oxford University Press, chapter 11, pp. 253-271.
p. 253 – Gossip is standardly sincere, rumour may be true but may have little justification and urban myths are like rumours but frozen and immune to refutation.
[Do CTs pass themselves off as explanations (true explanations) when really they are not?]
p. 254 – Testimony begins with some kind of witnessing [or does it, as I have previous surmised?].
p. 255 – Gossip is packaged as idle chatter.
Gossip starts in small groups; it is not shouted from the roof-tops.
p. 256 – Content of gossip need not be bad per se but, presumably, the subject of it would not want the information conveyed.
p. 261-2 – ‘After all, since the subject does not want the information spread at all, he or she is most likely to deny it or refuse confirmation, whether the facts are reported or not.’
p. 262 – Gossip is not a pathology of testimony but a normal form of it.
‘The typical way to introduce a rumour is to say, “Have you heard…?” whereas the typical introductory mode of delivering gossip is, “Did you know…?”’
p. 263 – Whilst gossip is usually true rumours can be deliberate lies [propaganda?].
Gossip is about persons, rumours can be about institutions.
p. 264 – ‘One thing that might be noted as an epistemic merit is the power of rumour in providing hypotheses for further exploration. By itself a rumour may be poor epistemic coin, but investigating it may lead to expanding one’s knowledge in direct and indirect ways. The direct route is that of confirmation or falsification of the rumour’s content. The indirect rooute may be the discovery of interesting information that explains the rumour’s genesis, or it may be the discovery of a genuine truth that the rumour misleadingly presents.’
[Is this the genesis of CTs?]
p. 265 – ‘So is rumour pathological testimony? It seems that it is a form of testimony because it involves the transmission of propositions from one or more persons to others, but it lacks what I have elsewhere claimed to be definitive of testimony. There are sometimes no original sources in even the attentuated senses that I noted in my book since rumour will often have no competence with regard to the “information” conveyed and may well be aware of that. If we think some degree of authority or competence, no matter how minimal, is a precondition for giving testimony then quote a lot of rumour will be disqualified as testimony.’
[Rumour as testimony and not as testimony...]
p. 266 – Rumour as a misfire of testimony:
‘…we might say that the rumour-monger’s lack of credentials makes his testimony void, as testimony, but he has nonetheless gone through a form of testimony…’
p. 268-9 – Urban myth as pathological-qua-rumour.
p. 269 – Sometimes misfired testimony can still hit upon the truth.
