Shifty Speech and Independent Thought

This is an essay in epistemology and the philosophy of language. It concerns epistemology in that it is a manifesto for epistemic independence: the independence of good thinking from practical considerations. It concerns philosophy of language in that it defends a functionalist account of the normativity of assertion in conjunction with an integrated view of the normativity of constative speech acts. The book defends the independence of thought from the most prominent threat that has surfaced in the last twenty years of epistemological theorizing: the phenomenon of shiftiness of proper assertoric speech with practical context. It does four things: first, it shows that, against orthodoxy, the argument from practical shiftiness of proper assertoric speech against the independence of proper thought from the practical does not go through, for it rests on normative ambiguation. Second, it defends a proper functionalist knowledge account of the epistemic normativity of assertion, in conjunction with classical invariantism about knowledge attributions. Third, it generalizes this account to all constative speech. Last, it defends detailed normative accounts for conjecturing, telling, and moral assertion.

Knowledge Norms for Constative Speech Acts

This chapter is up to an ambitious task: it develops the first integrated account of the epistemic normativity of constatives. In order to do that, it argues for a generalized knowledge-based account of the epistemic normativity of constative speech, and it develops the corresponding accounts for, respectively, assertives, predictives, retrodictives, descriptives, ascriptives, informatives, confirmatives, concessives, retractives, assentives, dissentives, disputatives, responsives, suggestives, and suppositives. The chapter argues for a knowledge account from three different angles: (1) the nature of communicative speech acts, (2) the relation between assertion and other constatives, and (3) the normativity of belief together with constatives’ epistemic function.

Understanding

Chapter 4 moves on to inquiry into general phenomena and develops a non-reductive systematic knowledge account of understanding. According to this view, roughly, maximal understanding of a phenomenon is maximally comprehensive and well-connected knowledge of it, degrees of understanding are a function of distance from maximal understanding, and understanding a phenomenon can be truly attributed when one surpasses a contextually determined threshold on degrees of understanding. Chapter 4 discusses a number of objections to the account and compares it with the most prominent rival views in the literature, according to which understanding is, in essence, knowledge of explanations. Again, it is argued that the systematic knowledge account comes out on top.

Ignorance and Its Disvalue

It is commonly accepted – not only in the philosophical literature but also in daily life – that ignorance is a failure of some sort. As a result, a desideratum of any ontological account of ignorance is that it must be able to explain why there is something wrong with being ignorant of a true proposition. This article shows two things. First, two influential accounts of ignorance – the Knowledge Account and the True Belief Account – do not satisfy this requirement. They fail to provide a satisfying normative account of the badness of ignorance. Second, this article suggests an alternative explanation of what makes ignorance a bad cognitive state. In a nutshell, ignorance is bad because it is the manifestation of a vice, namely, of what Cassam calls “epistemic insouciance”.

Knowledge and Assertion in "Gettier" Cases

Assertion is fundamental to our lives as social and cognitive beings. By asserting we share knowledge, coordinate behavior, and advance collective inquiry. Accordingly, assertion is of considerable interest to cognitive scientists, social scientists, and philosophers. This paper advances our understanding of the norm of assertion. Prior evidence suggests that knowledge is the norm of assertion, a view known as “the knowledge account.” In its strongest form, the knowledge account says that knowledge is both necessary and sufficient for assertability: you should make an assertion if and only if you know that it is true. The knowledge account has been rejected on the grounds that it conflicts with our ordinary practice of evaluating assertions. This paper reports four experiments that address an important objection of this sort, which focuses on a class of examples known as “Gettier cases.” The results undermine the objection and, in the process, provide further evidence for the knowledge account. The findings also teach some important general lessons about intuitional methodology and the curation of genres of thought experiment.

Knowledge and the Norm of Assertion: A Simple Test

An impressive case has been built for the hypothesis that knowledge is the norm of assertion, otherwise known as the knowledge account of assertion. According to the knowledge account, you should assert something only if you know that it’s true. A wealth of observational data supports the knowledge account, and some recent empirical results lend further, indirect support. But the knowledge account has not yet been tested directly. This paper fills that gap by reporting the results of such a test. The knowledge account passes with flying colors

Assertion and Assurance: Some Empirical Evidence

I report three experiments relevant to evaluating Krista Lawlor's theory of assurance, respond to her criticism of the knowledge account of assertion, and propose an alternative theory of assurance.

Selfless Assertions: Some Empirical Evidence

It is increasingly recognized that knowledge is the norm of assertion. As this view has gained popularity, it has also garnered criticism. One widely discussed criticism involves thought experiments about “selfless assertion.” Selfless assertions are said to be intuitively compelling examples where agents should assert propositions that they don’t even believe and, hence, don’t know. This result is then taken to show that knowledge is not the norm of assertion. This paper reports four experiments demonstrating that “selfless assertors” are viewed as both believing and knowing the propositions they assert: this is the natural and intuitive way of interpreting the case. Thought experiments about selfless assertions do not threaten the knowledge account and they do not motivate weaker alternative accounts. The discussion also highlights a general lesson for philosophers: thought experiments intended to probe for mental state attributions should not conflict with basic principles that guide social cognition.

Irksome Assertions

The Knowledge Account of Assertion (KAA) says that knowledge is the norm of assertion: you may assert a proposition only if you know that it’s true. The primary support for KAA is an explanatory inference from a broad range of linguistic data. The more data that KAA well explains, the stronger the case for it, and the more difficult it is for the competition to keep pace. In this paper we critically assess a purported new linguistic datum, which, it has been argued, KAA well explains. We argue that KAA does not well explain it.

Knowledge and Suberogatory Assertion

I accomplish two things in this paper. First I expose some important limitations of the contemporary literature on the norms of assertion and in the process illuminate a host of new directions and forms that an account of assertional norms might take. Second I leverage those insights to suggest a new account of the relationship between knowledge and assertion, which arguably outperforms the standard knowledge account.