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The cover page of "Wikipedia and the Epistemology of Testimony"

Wikipedia and the Epistemology of Testimony

Wikipedia and the Epistemology of Testimony is a 2009 philosophy paper written by Dr. Deborah Tollefsen. In the paper, Tollefsen explores the issue of group testimony and seeks to characterize the testimonial nature of Wikipedia given its uniqueness as a website and the controversy surrounding its reliability. In the article, she highlights four possible theories of testimony as a method to determine the trustworthiness of Wikipedia as a source. The first theory involves the speaker's intention to convey that certain information is true. Second, someone verifying that the information is true. Third, disjunctivism, an act of communication that constitutes testimony if that act is reasonably taken as conveying that P is true or if the speaker intends to communicate that P. Lastly, assurance a testimony that is interpersonal and normative. Tollefson ultimately concludes that Wikipedia meets all of the requirements needed to be considered a source of group testimony.

Author

Deborah Perron Tollefsen is a Professor of Philosophy & Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Memphis. She has been a member of the philosophy department at the University of Memphis since 2002. Tollefsen received her BA in philosophy from Saint Anselm College, followed by an MA in philosophy from the University of South Carolina and a PhD in philosophy from Ohio State University. She has published articles and research in journals like Episteme, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Philosophical Explorations, and Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Throughout her academic career, Tollefsen has worked on a number of philosophical topics; a few examples include group testimony, collective moral responsibility, joint action, co-authorship, and group knowledge.

Argument

1. Testimony

The first section of Tollefsen's argument focuses on what testimony is, and considers whether Wikipedia articles count as testimony. Ultimately, she concludes that Wikipedia articles do count as testimony. In order to come to this conclusion, she first outlines four possible definitions of testimony. The first definition contends that a speaker must be intending to convey evidence or a belief to their listener. In contrast, the second definition claims that testimony is anything someone tells someone else. The third definition falls in between these two. It states that any act of communication whose speaker intends to convey a point, or whose listener could reasonably assume the act is conveying a point, is testimony. The last potential definition of testimony mentioned in Tollefsen's paper describes it as something that requires interaction. The listener must be able to question, rebuke, or reward the speaker based on the accuracy of what they tell the listener.

According to Tollefsen, Wikipedia would count as testimony under all of these definitions. Wikipedia articles tell their readers information and they are published with the intent to convey information about a topic. People who read the articles on Wikipedia are often reading to gain knowledge about something and perceive the articles to be conveying that information to the reader. While the way Wikipedia satisfies the fourth definition is slightly less intuitive, Wikipedia articles do maintain a level of interaction between the writers and the readers. Readers and editors can question and criticize the articles posted on Wikipedia and particularly good articles can be flagged as "Featured" or "Good" articles.

With this information established, Tollefsen moves on to defining who the testifier is and, based on that identity, outlines the mechanisms readers can use to determine its trustworthiness.

2. Group Testimony

In this section, Tollefsen establishes a working definition of group testimony for later use throughout the paper. This is accomplished by strongly engaging with her own 2007 paper “Group Testimony”, as well as John Beatty’s 2006 paper “Masking Disagreement Among Experts” and “Group Speech Acts” by Justin Hughes (1984). These supplement her definition by providing detail, an example, and a counterexample. She begins with the clarification that group testimonies cannot be considered summative representations of the testimony of all of the members of said group, and that when a group testifies something, it cannot be said with certainty that all members, or any one member, agrees. She continues by citing an example from Beatty’s paper - an occasion when a group of geneticists from the US National Academies of Science disagreed heavily on a study, but eventually all signed the group's report to demonstrate a “paradigm case of group testimony”. She then begins to investigate how a group can give a piece of testimony. This is achieved by first presenting the definition given by Justin Hughes in “Group Speech Acts”. The definition presented by Hughes contains the important elements that: the group intends to provide a certain testimony, the speaker giving the testimony is aware of the testimony that the group intends to give and believes their testimony represents those intentions, the group intends for the speaker to give the testimony, and the speaker is aware of that fact, and that the speaker gives the testimony because of those reasons. Tollefsen declares that this definition is too narrow, as Hughes neglects to include groups that do not use consensus as their means of decision-making; the fact that group testimonies are not always necessarily given by a spokesperson; and the different institutional and social contexts in which a testimony is given.

To demonstrate this, Tollefsen gives the example that if every NAS geneticist offered their individual report on something, it would not be a report by NAS. Thus, NAS itself must serve as an institutional context for the testimony, but not necessarily a consensus. To include such instances, Tollefsen offers a new condition to Hughes' version of group speech acts. Her new definition adds that the act must reflect the will of the group in the proper normative institutional and social context, and that the group can testify in a written document. By extending the definition to include the institutional and social context, and by including written group speech acts instead of only ones done by a speaker, she offers a definition that broadens the scope to include more forms of group testimony, like the NAS example. To extend the definition of group speech acts to that of group testimony, Tollefsen includes the following points: 1. for a group that testifies certain information through an act of communication, the communication matches the testimony, and 2. the speaker or the written communication conveys the testimony accurately and in the right social and normative context, ensuring that the group assures that the testimony is true.

3. Wikipedia as Group Testimony

Tollefsen concludes that Wikipedia articles are, in fact, examples of group testimony. She claims that to make group testimony, group members must share goals with each other and have a structured manner of decision-making. She maintains that Wikipedia satisfies both of these criteria, because the goal of most Wikipedia contributors is to provide free and reliable information, and because discussion boards provide a method of decision-making within the Wikipedia community. Tollefsen adds that there must be a "settling of the group mind" to create testimony, as we an institution would not be trusted if it continually changed its opinion on something. Featured articles represent a settling of the group mind, leading Tollefsen to conclude that all three criteria for group testimony have been met. Nevertheless, Tollefsen maintains that people should be vigilant about using Wikipedia as it is a relatively young source, but that they can simply use background knowledge when deciding whether or not to believe a claim.