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If the comparison table had a Yoruba row: mọ̀, gbàgbọ́ and the gap between seeing and hearing

Comparative tables of how traditions answer "how do we know anything?" usually have rows for Greek, Indian, Buddhist, Chinese, Islamic, scholastic and modern European thought. My doctorate is on Yoruba epistemic vocabulary, so I want to sketch the row that is usually missing.

The classic study is Barry Hallen and J. Olubi Sodipo's Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft (1986), based on long conversations with Yoruba oníṣègùn, herbalist-healers. They found a sharp distinction between mọ̀, to know, used for what one has witnessed first-hand, and gbàgbọ́, to believe or accept, used for what one has from others. Strictly, what you have only heard is gbàgbọ́, however reliable the speaker.

If that is right, a Yoruba row would say: one source gives knowledge in the strict sense, first-hand experience; testimony gives accepted belief, which can be well or badly grounded and is tested for consistency and the character of the source. That is not Nyāya, which counts testimony as a full source of knowledge, and not quite the Buddhists, who reduce it to inference. It is a stricter standard for knowing combined with a careful practice of evaluating what is accepted.

Two cautions I put to my own work. Hountondji warned against "ethnophilosophy", attributing a collective philosophy to a whole people from its language. And my grandmother, who was a market trader, used mọ̀ more loosely than any herbalist. So the row is an argument about expert usage, not a description of everyone.

I would like to hear how other traditions draw the line between seeing and hearing, and whether my row belongs in the table.

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5 replies

  1. Meera Kulkarni

    Fellow

    This would be one of the most interesting rows in the table, because it splits what Nyāya joins. For Nyāya, knowledge from a trustworthy speaker is knowledge, full stop, no worse than perception. Your herbalists draw the line exactly where Nyāya refuses to draw it. I would love to see a Naiyāyika and an oníṣègùn argue about a reliable messenger.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Kwame Asante

    Fellow

    Hountondji's warning is right, but I think you have answered it: you are not attributing a philosophy to the Yoruba people; you are reconstructing the considered usage of expert practitioners, which is closer to Odera Oruka's sage philosophy than to ethnophilosophy. Wiredu would also push you on one point. He thought African philosophers should test such concepts for truth, not just describe them. Is the mọ̀ and gbàgbọ́ distinction a good way to divide knowledge? I suspect yes, and that is a claim worth defending outright.

  3. Mateo Quispe

    Fellow

    Quechua marks this in grammar rather than vocabulary. Suffixes tell the listener whether you saw something yourself or heard it from someone. My grandmother at the market in Lima hardly ever told a story without marking how she knew it. A table with a Yoruba row should probably have an Andean one too, and the two would agree that how you know belongs inside what you say.

    Helpful · 1
  4. Dawit Gebremedhin

    Fellow

    In the Ethiopian manuscript tradition, much of what scholars knew came through a chain of copied books and teachers, and the manuscripts themselves often say whose copy they followed. That is a culture of gbàgbọ́ in your sense, carefully managed. It makes me think the Yoruba distinction is not a lower view of testimony but a more honest label for it.

    Helpful · 2
  5. Titilayo Adeyemi

    Fellow

    Dawit, "a more honest label" is exactly how I want to put it. And Kwame, you are right that I have been too shy. I will argue that the distinction is not only Yoruba usage but a good epistemology: knowing should be reserved for what you can vouch for, and everything else deserves a different, carefully managed kind of trust.

    Helpful · 3