TESTIMONIAL KNOWLEDGE IN AFRICAN INDIGENOUS THOUGHT SYSTEM
This paper examined testimony as a primary mode of knowledge transmission and justification, and a complex epistemic practice in African Indigenous Knowledge System (AIKS), where justificatory status is appropriated to elders’ testimony. Using the tool of conceptual and comparative analyses, the paper examined how testimony is considered in mainstream epistemology vis-a-vis its portrait in African philosophy. It also employed a modest form of ethnolysis; a linguistic and cultural analysis of key Yoruba epistemic expressions such as 8m= (knowlegde), ìgbàgbó (belief), and gbo (hear), in order to ground the philosophical reflection in the lived language and categories of a people. The endeavour revealed that in testimonial exchange between the testifier and the receiver, the credibility of an elder’s testimony is tested against his intellectual and moral qualities. This showed that epistemological activities in AIKS are not one directional affair, but one which involves the crucial place of the testifier and the receiver, and that testimonial knowledge in AIKS has some credible values such as; interconnectivity in knowledge and epistemic dependence. Thus, it is emphasized that testimonial knowledge in AIKS is a reliable and adequate model of socially embedded epistemological enterprise that balances the position of individual agents with communal epistemic traditions.
Keywords: African Indigenous Knowledge