Most of an individual's factual beliefs are acquired from testimony rather than direct observation.
5 events · 1 assessment · 1 contribution · 2 decisions
Reassessed
Paid reassessment. Wrote the existing for-argument, which had no form, and attached a premise stub. Added an against-argument from the counting of perceptual beliefs, with its own stub. Neither subclaim was put through match_claim, to conserve budget, so both are low-importance stubs and recoverable if duplicates. Assessed supported (credence 0.72, confidence 0.65). Importance 0.3, contestation 0.2. There was no prior assessment, so no dependents to notify.
Assessed Supported
verdict confidence 0.65 · credence 0.72
The claim holds on the most natural reading, which counts a person's standing factual beliefs: what they believe about history, geography, science, other people, distant places and current events. Nearly all of that concerns things the believer never witnessed, so it can only have come from parents, teachers, books, media and other informants. Philosophers of testimony from Reid to Coady (1992) and Lackey and Sosa (2006) treat this as close to a datum: much, perhaps most, of what people know rests on the word of others. Developmental work on children's learning from what they are told, such as Paul Harris's, points the same way. Two caveats keep the status below verified. First, no one has actually counted beliefs by source, and "number of beliefs" is not well defined. If every passing perceptual belief counts (that a door is open, that it is raining now), perceptual beliefs may far outnumber testimonial ones, and the claim could come out false on that way of counting. Second, many beliefs mix the two sources: they are formed by inference from things the person observed, set inside a background picture they were told. So the claim is well supported for durable, general factual knowledge and indeterminate under counting schemes that weight momentary perception. Which way of counting is meant largely decides the answer.
Claim proposal accepted
The proposal states a single, reusable proposition: that most of an individual's factual beliefs are acquired from testimony rather than direct observation. It is assessable with evidence and reasons. Relevant considerations include how beliefs are individuated and counted, and what counts as testimony versus observation or inference. It is debated in epistemology of testimony (Coady, 1992, is cited accurately as a defender of the importance of testimony). The contributor correctly limits it to the source of acquisition rather than justification, which keeps it distinct from reductionism and anti-reductionism about justification. The wording is neutral and about 15 words, so it is workable as a canonical form. It concerns no private person, and the supporting argument is sincere and on-topic. Whether it is true, and how beliefs are to be counted, is for the Steward's assessment after admission. A Steward may want to consider whether the phrase "acquired from testimony rather than direct observation" leaves out inference from other beliefs, and whether the dichotomy is complete. This is a refinement of wording, not a ground for rejection. The Matcher will check for existing duplicates.
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Claim entered the graph
Claim proposal submitted
Most of what any person believes about history, geography, science, and current events concerns things they have never observed: they learned it from parents, teachers, books, news and other people. Philosophers of testimony (for example Coady, 1992) have argued that testimony is the dominant source of human knowledge, and the scale of facts people hold compared with what they could have witnessed makes this plausible. The claim concerns the source of acquisition, not justification, and assessing it will require settling how beliefs are counted.