Martians and Meetings: Against Burge’s Neo-Kantian Apriorism about Testimony

Abstract

Burge proposes the “Acceptance Principle”, which states that it is apriori that a hearer may properly accept what she is told in the absence of defeaters, since any giver of testimony is a rational agent, and as such one can presume she is a “source of truth”. It is claimed that Burge’s Principle is not intuitively compelling, so that a suasive, not merely an explanatory justification for it is needed; and that the considerations advanced by him are too weak to constitute a pers uasive case for the Principle. I t is further arg ued that Burge’s apriorist, neo-Kantian approach to testimony is mi staken, and that testim ony is best understood by examining the detailed context of the human socio-lin guistic institutions of languag e, including the speech act of telling. Normally socially skilled human ad ults have a background of relevant knowledge about human nature and social roles, which they deploy in assessing the likely veracity of particular acts of testimony, and its epistemology is to be understood by focussing on this.