Philosophy of testimony captured in the motto of the Royal Society – ‘Nullius in verba (no man's word)’. Crudely put, the question is: 'How can testimony give us knowledge when we have no reasons of our own?' Coady suggests that there are two approaches to this problem: and Hume is one of the few early philosophers to offer anything like a sustained account of testimony, this can be found in his "‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’" in the section on miracles. The basic idea is that our justification for believing what people tell us comes from our experience of the ‘...constant and regular
Res nullius hived. An exception is the mute swan: the Monarch retains the right to assert ownership of unmarked mute swans, which she currently does on stretches of the Thames and its tributaries. Likewise in English law, abandoned things are generally the property of the owner of the land in which they are found. Exceptions include treasure trove, for which specific law applies, generally making it Crown property; and some types of shipwreck: see Flotsam, jetsam, lagan, and derelict. The law is different in Scotland. A concept derived from "res nullius" by allegory is "terra nullius". Using it, a state may assert