Kant and the testimony

Abstract

This article intends to approach Kant’s theory with a contemporary debate marked by reductionist and non-reductionist positions in Epistemology of Testimony. In this field of study, these two positions differ in the way that we can believe in other people's words justifiably. Reductionists argue that we can believe justifiably the testimony, just reducing it to other sources of justification beliefs, as the perception or reasoning. Non-reductionist, on the other hand, claim that this reduction is not necessary because we already have prior reasons to believe justifiably in testimony. First, we will make a brief presentation of two fundamental positions in this debate, of Coady (1992) and Fricker (1995), then we intend to relate a Kantian epistemological perspective of testimony to such positions.