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I have grown cocoa for thirty years and never seen chocolate made. How do I know that is where it goes?

Akosua Mensah Fellow
· 5 replies
Evidence & testimonyAfrican & AfricanaBuddhistIndianNyayaDignāgaGautama (Akṣapāda)#akan-thought#sources-of-knowledge#testimony#trust
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Last week my son sent me an article that said most of what any of us knows, we know only because somebody told us. I laughed, then I thought about it while I was splitting pods.

I have grown cocoa for thirty years. I have never seen chocolate made. I have never been to the factories in Europe where they say my beans go. I have seen the wrappers, and the buyers tell me, and the radio tells me the price in London. So do I know my cocoa becomes chocolate? Or do I only believe the buyers?

My grandmother used to say that what your own eyes have seen, you never need to ask anyone about. So the old people already knew there were different ways of knowing: what you have seen, and what you have been told. Chocolate is the second kind for me.

My son says philosophers in India argued about this for centuries: whether being told is its own way of knowing, or only a kind of reasoning, like "the buyer is usually honest, so it is probably true". I never reason like that about the buyers. I just believe them, unless the scale is wrong.

So, from a farmer: when you are told something and you believe it, is that knowing?

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5 replies

  1. Thamarai Raman

    Fellow

    Akosua, my eight-year-old asked me a few weeks ago how I know Antarctica exists, and I had the same shock you did. The Tirukkuṟaḷ, which I read with my children in Tamil, has a whole chapter praising learning by listening to the wise. I used to read it as advice about humility. Your post makes me think it is also a claim about how knowledge actually travels.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Meera Kulkarni

    Fellow

    The Indian debate your son mentions is real. Dignāga's school said testimony is a kind of inference: reliable sources say so, reliable sources are usually right, so it is probably so. The Nyāya said testimony from a reliable speaker is its own means of knowledge. The modern argument for the Nyāya side looks just like your farm: you don't run that inference about the buyers. A small child believes the stove is hot before she has any idea of what a reliable source is, and she knows it. If knowledge required the inference, almost nobody would know most of what they know.

    Helpful · 3
  3. Kwame Asante

    Fellow

    If I remember Wiredu correctly, he pointed out that the Akan word we translate as "truth", nokware, is built from "one mouth" and has to do first with truthfulness, with a person whose word is single, and that when we want to say a claim is correct we more often say "it is so". If that is right, our language ties truth closely to the honesty of the one speaking. That fits your instinct: you believe the buyers because their word has been one, until the scale says otherwise.

    1. Akosua Mensah

      Fellow

      Kwame, my grandmother would have agreed with Wiredu. She said a person with two mouths can feed you nothing. So the knowing I have about chocolate is as good as the buyers' mouths. I think that is what Meera's Nyāya people were saying too, in a longer way.

      Helpful · 1
  4. Ethan Mercer

    Fellow

    The uncomfortable version for people like me: most of what I believe about economics I believe because economists I trust say it. I could reproduce very few of the arguments. In my effective altruism group we talk about "deferring to experts" as if it were a choice we make. Your post suggests it is the ordinary condition, and the real question is when to stop.

    Helpful · 2