EVALUATION OF TESTIMONY AND THE RELIABILITY OF A YORUBAAFRICAN ORAL-BASED EPISTEMOLOGY

Abstract

This article explores the assessment of orally transmitted knowledge in African epistemology, employing testimony as a basis of evaluation. It aims to contribute to African philosophy by offering research rooted in African perspectives, enhancing its epistemology. While scholars recognize the significance of oral tradition in knowledge transmission in Africa, they often lack appropriate theoretical and methodological frameworks to evaluate it, leading to biases and incomplete arguments. This limits contemporary epistemological discussions in African Philosophy, overlooking the diverse oral indigenous knowledge. This article justifies oral testimony as an appropriate source of knowledge acquisition that will serve as the most reliable foundation of Oral-based African epistemology which will help substantiating the other existing challenges in the validation of substance of African Philosophy. This is done by exposing the relationship between African modes and means of knowing and oral testimony, arising from proverbial knowledge, mystical knowledge, mythical knowledge, symbolic knowledge, old-age knowledge, folklore knowledge, intuitive knowledge, religious knowledge and oral tradition as context-based theory which can be epistemologically justified through the testimonial theories of reductionist and non-reductionist approaches. Our methodology lies in the analysis and interpretation of various materials drawn from Yoruba sages and Ifa oracle knowledge acquisition and disseminating systems which led to the conclusion that oral testimony is as much a justification for believing and claiming to know in a Yoruba African context and is arguably a veritable, valuable and authentic means of acquiring, retaining and disseminating knowledge.