Testimony in communtarian epistemology, Kusch
Kusch, M. (2002), ‘Testimony in communtarian epistemology’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 33, 335-354.
p. 335 – Epistemological communtarianism: communities, rather than individuals, are the primary bearers of knowledge.
p. 337 – Testimony is equated with epistemic interdependence.
p. 338 – Is testimony like perception or is it inferential?
p. 339 – Kusch’s view is neither inferentialist(/reductivist) nor anti-inferentialist(/anti-reductivist).
p. 340 – Different kinds of testimony, different practices towards them (which, Kusch argues, most other theorists kludge over).
p. 343-4 – Coady focuses on a communality of constitution (agents are importantly similar in respect to language use) and this underwrites the belief in the reliability of testimony.
p. 346 – Kusch’s thesis:
‘A performative speech-act, on the other hand, has been successfully executed if the world ‘fits’ the content of the utterance. … The world fits the registrar’s utterance (‘I hereby declare you husband and wife’) insofar as the couple and the witnesses hear him make the utterance. Their knowledge of the utterance creates, or is, a new social fact, the fact of the couple possessing the social status of being legally recognized as a married couple.’
p. 348 – ‘In the case of performative testimony there is no better way for the recipient to find out that p than being told that p. There is no other way, and thus no better way of getting married than to be declared married by an appropriate official. It is only via the performative telling (‘I hereby declare you…’ and so on) that one enters into the relationship. Performative testimony is thus a generative source of knowledge: the knowledge that p simply does not exist prior to the telling.’
p. 349 – Claims all testimony is, at least partly, performative.
p. 351 – Knowledge, in communitarian epistemology, is social and constituted performatively.
