Locke on testimony

ABSTRACT

There is good reason to regard John Locke’s treatment of testimony as perhaps the most important of the early modern period. It is sophisticated, well developed, pioneering, and seems to have given shape to the later debate that would occur between Hume and Reid. I attempt to do three things in this essay. First, I argue that Hume’s landmark treatment of testimony is an appropriation of that developed by Locke. Second, I suggest that understanding Locke’s view of testimony is of critical importance to Locke’s broader epistemology. Finally, I claim that Locke’s reflection on testimony is valuable in its own right in that it is not confined to isolating the conditions under which testimonial beliefs are warranted or justified. Locke’s interest is, rather, in a variety of doxastic states, or degrees of assent, that testimony may serve to ground.     

The history of religions and francophone research in Europe: Main disciplinary trends in Switzerland, France, Belgium and Luxemburg

This article provides an overview (as of September, 2008) of the state of the field of l’histoire des religions in the four french-speaking countries of Europe. It discusses the pioneers, along with their followers and influence, the position of principle institutions regarding teaching in the field, and the general orientations of each university, along with distinct emphases that reflect recent socio-political and cultural developments. This detailed panorama brings to light the relative weakness of french-speaking research in the field of l’histoire générale des religions. It calls attention to tensions between the former high status of this academic area, more than half of a century ago, and the disrepute into which its comparativist project has fallen over the last decades. It asks how French secularism – and the growing secularization of western societies more generally – may have influenced perceptions of the discipline, its orientations, and its position in today's academic market academic market. It also considers the impact of declining comprehension of religious phenomena among younger generations and correlated concerns with popularisation.     

Why Reid was no dogmatist

According to dogmatism, a perceptual experience with p as its content is always a (defeasible) source of justification for the belief that p. Thomas Reid has been an extant source of inspiration for this view. I argue, however, that, though there is a superficial consonance between Reid’s position and that of the dogmatists, their views are, more fundamentally, at variance with one another. While dogmatists take their position to express a necessary epistemic truth, discernible a priori, Reid holds that if something like dogmatism is true, it is a mere contingent truth, discernible a posteriori. Owing to Reid’s epistemological naturalism, it might have been false that a perceptual experience is, by itself, a source of justification. On account of regarding something like dogmatism as only contingently true, then, Reid accepts the demand for a meta-justification of a sort that dogmatists squarely reject, and purports to meet it. Given that dogmatism essentially involves the rejection of the demand to meet this kind of meta-justification, it would seem that Reid should not be construed as endorsing dogmatism at all. I close by briefly considering how Reid’s view fits amongst dogmatism’s competitors.

     

The history of religions and francophone research in Europe: Main disciplinary trends in Switzerland,France, Belgium and Luxemburg

This article provides an overview (as of September, 2008) of the state of the field of l’histoire des religions in the four french-speaking countries of Europe. It discusses the pioneers, along with their followers and influence, the position of principle institutions regarding teaching in the field, and the general orientations of each university, along with distinct emphases that reflect recent socio-political and cultural developments. This detailed panorama brings to light the relative weakness of french-speaking research in the field of l’histoire générale des religions. It calls attention to tensions between the former high status of this academic area, more than half of a century ago, and the disrepute into which its comparativist project has fallen over the last decades. It asks how French secularism ‐ and the growing secularization of western societies more generally ‐ may have influenced perceptions of the discipline, its orientations, and its position in today's academic market academic market. It also considers the impact of declining comprehension of religious phenomena among younger generations and correlated concerns with popularisation.