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Experience and Testimony in Hume's Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Saul Traiger
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Abstract

The standard interpretation of Hume on testimony takes him to be a reductionist; justification of beliefs from testimony ultimately depends on one's own first-person experience. Yet Hume's main discussions of testimony in the Treatise and first Enquiry suggest a social account. Hume appeals to shared experience and develops norms of belief from testimony that are not reductionist. It is argued that the reductionist interpretation rests on an overly narrow view of Hume's theory of ideas. By attending to such mechanisms of the imagination as abstraction and fictions, it is shown that Hume's theory of ideas does not forestall a non-reductionist social epistemology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , February 2010 , pp. 42 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

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