This is an instance of what philosophers call testimony. It’s similar to the sort of testimony given in a courtroom, but it’s less formal and much more frequent. Testimony happens any time you believe something because someone else vouched for the information. Most of our knowledge about the world is secondhand knowledge that comes to us through testimony. After all, we can’t each do all of our own scientific research, or make our own maps of distant cities.

~ Regina Rini from, How to Fix Fake News

This is a nice introduction to the idea of “testimony.” By saying or writing whatever-it-is-I’m-considering, would I be building up, or tearing down my reliability as a source of testimony?

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