1 INTRODUCTION

Many artifacts that are part of the public landscape—including monuments, memorials, murals, and many viewing towers, arches, gardens, public sculptures, and buildings—are designed to communicate knowledge. It is common to describe such public artifacts as speech,¹ and also to describe them as transmitting knowledge of one sort or another.² But the claim that these artifacts can be knowledge-transmitting speech is not typically developed as the complex claim in philosophy of language and social epistemology that it is. I will argue that such public artifacts can be testimony. This raises several philosophically important questions: How can public artifacts be speech, and more specifically, how can they testify? Whose testimony are they? To whom and about what are they testifying? And what is the epistemological status of this testimony—when should it be trusted? Surely if public artifacts can testify, then they can also mislead; it would be strange for them to be a form of testimony that is always trustworthy. Taking seriously their status as testimony means taking seriously as well the ways in which they can communicate false or unentitled claims. I hope that the idea that public artifacts not only communicate but testify is prima facie plausible; it certainly seems like monuments, memorials, and public artworks, for instance, tell us things, and that they can tell the truth or lie to us.

In the philosophical literature on monuments and memorials, one often runs across the claim that such artifacts “speak.”³ But typically, there is no careful distinction drawn between the claim that the artifacts themselves are speakers, and the more quotidian claim that they are speech, spoken by a more traditional speaker such as an individual person, institution, corporation, or collective. There is a small literature on whether artifactual objects can be speakers, and in particular whether they can assert and testify.⁴ But in this essay, I am not trying to argue that artifacts can themselves speak; I am interested only in the second, less spooky claim, that they can be speech. That they can be speech is no more metaphysically suspect than that writing on a page can be speech.

I am especially interested in public artifacts that at least appear to function as collective testimony, communicating collective knowledge. I will call such artifacts collective material testimony. Some communicative public artifacts, like murals that are designed and created by a particular artist expressing personal themes, can function as individual testimony. A private memorial may be personal testimony to one individual's grief and memories. But other artifacts speak in a collective voice—that is, in the voice of a group whose members share a ‘we’ identity and participate in collective action.⁵ When a public artifact testifies in a purportedly collective voice, it raises epistemological questions about whether it is reliable speech along at least two dimensions. We might ask, should we trust the content of what it says? Is it in fact transmitting knowledge? But we might also ask, should we trust that the speaker is who it appears to be? Is it in fact speaking in the voice of the collective who it purports to be representing?

I will argue that collective material testimony is risky in both these senses. Artifacts can easily mislead us by presenting false, but compelling, content. They may also easily mislead us by presenting themselves as speaking in the voice of someone or some collective that does not actually authorize them. Most of the classic literature on testimony assumes that the epistemological questions are about the reliability of the content of testimony and the trustworthiness of its speaker, but not about the identity of the speaker. But material collective testimony makes vivid that there can be epistemic risks of both sorts, as we will see. I will end by thinking about how such testimony can be more trustworthy, and how we, as epistemic agents, ought to take it up responsibly.

中文翻译：

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公共人工制品与集体物质见证的认识论

1 简介

许多属于公共景观的人工制品——包括纪念碑、纪念馆、壁画和许多观景塔、拱门、花园、公共雕塑和建筑物——都是为了传播知识而设计的。将此类公共人工制品描述为语音¹以及将它们描述为传播某种知识是很常见的。²但是，关于这些人工制品可以是传播知识的语音的说法通常并不像语言哲学和社会认识论中的复杂说法那样得到发展。我会争辩说，这样的公共文物可以作为证词. 这就提出了几个哲学上重要的问题：公共人工制品如何成为言语，更具体地说，它们如何作证？他们是谁的见证？他们在向谁作证，为什么作证？这个证词的认识论地位是什么——什么时候应该相信它？当然，如果公共文物可以作证，那么它们也可以误导；如果它们成为一种始终值得信赖的证词形式，那将是很奇怪的。认真对待他们作为证词的身份意味着认真对待以及他们传达虚假或无正当理由的主张的方式。我希望公共文物不仅可以交流而且可以作证的想法表面看来是合理的；例如，纪念碑、纪念馆和公共艺术品当然看起来像是在告诉我们一些事情，而且它们可以告诉我们真相或对我们撒谎。

在关于纪念碑和纪念馆的哲学文献中，人们经常会遇到这样一种说法，即这些人工制品会“说话”。^{3但通常情况下，人工制品}本身是说话者的说法与更常见的说法是它们是语音，由更传统的说话者（例如个人、机构、公司或集体）说出，但通常没有仔细区分。关于人造物体是否可以作为说话者，特别是它们是否可以断言和作证，有少量文献。^4个但在这篇文章中，我并不是要论证人工制品本身会说话；我只对第二个不那么令人毛骨悚然的说法感兴趣，即它们可以是言语。从形而上学的角度来看，它们可以是言语并不比纸上的文字可以是言语更令人怀疑。

我对至少看起来像集体证词、交流集体知识的公共文物特别感兴趣。我将此类文物称为集体物质见证。一些交流性的公共文物，如由特定艺术家设计和创作的表达个人主题的壁画，可以作为个人见证。私人纪念馆可能是个人悲伤和回忆的见证。但其他人工制品以集体的声音说话——也就是说，以一个成员共享“我们”身份并参与集体行动的群体的声音。^5个当一个公共人工制品以据称是集体的声音作证时，它会引发认识论问题，即它是否至少在两个维度上是可靠的言论。我们可能会问，我们应该相信它所说的内容吗？它实际上是在传播知识吗？但我们也可能会问，我们应该相信说话者就是它看起来的那个人吗？它实际上是在代表它所代表的集体的声音吗？

我将争辩说，集体物质证词在这两个意义上都是有风险的。人工制品很容易通过呈现虚假但引人注目的内容来误导我们。他们也可能很容易误导我们，因为他们表现得像是在用实际上并未授权他们的某人或某个集体的声音说话。大多数关于证词的经典文献都假设认识论问题是关于证词内容的可靠性和说话者的可信度，而不是关于说话者的身份。但物质集体证词生动地表明，这两种认知风险都可能存在，正如我们将要看到的那样。最后，我将思考这样的证词如何更值得信赖，以及我们作为认知代理人应该如何负责任地接受它。