On Testifying and Giving Evidence

Abstract

In criminal trials, testimony can be admitted as evidence. Recent work in the epistemology of testimony, however, has sought to contest the idea that testimony constitutes evidence of the truth of what is said. Unlike the ordinary evidence provided by instruments or natural signs, testimony is produced deliberately, with the intention of bringing someone to believe the truth of what is said. In the case of ordinary evidence, the discovery that it was produced in this way would immediately disqualify it as evidence. But the case with testimony is different. Unlike ordinary evidence, a speaker's testimony constitutes an indication of the truth of what is said precisely because it is produced in this way. In light of this difference, it is difficult to see how testimony can constitute evidence. In this discussion, I take up the question of how testimony can constitute evidence of the truth of what is said. I clarify what is at stake in the existing debate over the evidential status of testimony and argue that, whilst testimony differs in important ways from the kind of evidence constituted by natural signs and the deliverances of instruments, it nonetheless constitutes evidence of the truth of what is said. I then go on to argue that this clarification shows why objections to the view that testimony is a fundamentally different epistemic source to instruments or natural signs fail.