LEMMings@Northwestern

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Pre-Central APA Epistemology Conference Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

On Not Being Able To Believe What One Is Told
Elizabeth Fricker
ABSTRACT

Testimony is the principal means by which individuals who speak a common language are able to share their knowledge. By means of the speech act of telling one is able to let others know at second-hand what one has learned for oneself – for instance (though not only), what one has directly witnessed. When a speaker S tells something, say that P, to a hearer H , S by her act vouches to H for the truth of P; she offers H the epistemic right to believe that P on her say-so. When H takes S’s act at face-value, as an expression of knowledge, H trusts S, and forms belief that P on trust in S’s testimony.
But sometimes this spreading of knowledge is blocked: a speaker S truly as well as purportedly expresses her knowledge in a telling; but others, though they understand and appreciate the force of her act, do not believe her. Circumstances may be such that, although S knows whereof she speaks, others lack reason to trust her, and may have reason to distrust her. In this paper I investigate a more subtle difficulty in believing what one is told. Certain kinds of context-dependence in the semantics of some linguistic expressions mean that, even when a hearer understands and trusts a telling, she is unable to store her own belief in what is told, due to lack of an appropriate representational vehicle in which to encode it.

 

Testimony as Speech Act, Testimony as Source

Peter Graham

ABSTRACT

In Learning from Words Jennifer Lackey argues for a "disjunctive" theory of when a speaker testifies that P is the case. I shall criticize this theory as both too broad and too narrow. As a theory of the speech act it is too broad, for it relies on unintended effects to classify a speech act as testimony. As a theory of the classification of beliefs in the epistemology of "testimony" it is too narrow, for it counts a belief that P as "testimony-based" only if the speaker stated that P. I defend my alternative account of the speech act against her criticisms, and offer an alternative classification of the category of "testimony-based" beliefs as beliefs based on the exercise of our capacity to comprehend assertive speech acts.

 

Two Approaches to Norms of Assertion

Jonathan Kvanvig

ABSTRACT

The question before us concerns a particular type of speech act, an act of asserting, and the norms that govern this particular type of act, and the nature of the norms that govern this particular type of act. Upon casual reflection, one’s initial thought would likely have been that the norms of assertion are just the usual kinds of norms that govern any action at all–don’t say things that are rude or insulting or cause hurt feelings or ... That is, casual reflection would likely suggest that the norms of assertion are fundamentally ethical norms.

If we combine this perspective with the perspective of value-driven epistemology, it would seem that there should be no more interest among epistemologists in discussing norms of assertion than there is for discussing the norms of joke-telling or, for that matter, the norms related to any particular action whatsoever. Do we have any special reason as epistemologists to investigate the norms of bikeriding, or successful fishing? Closer to the home territory for assertion, what interest do we, as epistemologists, have in reflecting on the norms for insinuation, or implicature, or hints, or any of the vast array of speech acts typically arising out of the indicative mood? So my question is how to explain why there should be an special epistemological interest in assertion as such, and I will be arguing that there is no such reason. Jennifer and I have defended very similar views on the proper answer to defenders of the knowledge norm of assertion, but I now suspect the topic is little more than a tempest in a teapot, and my goal is to explain my deflationary attitude toward this entire body of literature. More circumspectly, I’ll argue against two approaches to a positive answer to the question of why assertion deserves special attention from epistemologists. The first is a broadly Williamsonian approach, and I will argue that it devolves into a second approach, one focusing on the nature of fundamental epistemic normativity. Regarding this latter approach, I’ll remind us of why the approach Jennifer and I recommend have quite a bit to recommend them, but then turn to the deflationary result again. On the second approach, there is an important and worthwhile project for epistemologists to engage, but it has hardly anything special to do with assertion itself.

Is there an "I" in epistemology?

Ted Poston

ABSTRACT

Epistemic conservatism is the thesis that the mere holding of a belief confers some positive epistemic status on its content. Conservatism is widely criticized on the grounds that it conflicts with the main goal in epistemology to believe truths and disbelieve falsehoods. In this paper I defend and argue for conservatism. First, I argue that the objection to conservatism from the truth goal in epistemology fails. Second, I develop an argument for conservatism from the perspectival character of the truth goal. Finally, I examine several forceful challenges to conservatism and argue that these challenges are unsuccessful. The upshot of the paper is that conservatism is an important and viable epistemological thesis.