Conversational Silence

This chapter argues for a distinctive kind of conversational pressure bearing distinctly on audiences to a mutually observed statement or assertion: the normative pressure to signal when one disagrees. The argument for this conclusion appeals to two main claims: first, that conversational participants are entitled to expect cooperation from other participants; and second, that silent rejection of a public statement is marked as uncooperative. The result is that conversational participants are (presumptively but defeasibly) entitled to expect no silent rejection of a mutually observed statement, and this expectation gives participants a (practical) reason to indicate any disagreement or doubts when they observe such a statement. This argument avoids objections levelled against Pettit’s account of the significance of conversational silence. The chapter concludes by addressing the variety of contexts in which the entitlement to expect no silent rejection is itself defeated (including but not limited to conditions of oppression or ‘silencing’).

Does Friendship Exert Pressure on Belief?

It has been alleged that we should be epistemically partial to our friends, that is, that there are cases in which the demands of friendship would require one to give a friend the benefit of the doubt, and thereby come to believe something in violation of ordinary epistemic standards on justified or responsible belief. The burden of this chapter is to argue against this idea. It argues that the impression of epistemic partiality in friendship dissipates once we acknowledge the sorts of practical and epistemic reasons that are generated by our values: value-reflecting reasons. Unlike other proposals seeking to resist the arguments for epistemic partiality, the present proposal has the virtue of remaining neutral with respect to two controversial epistemic doctrines (Uniqueness and Pragmatic Encroachment); and it has the further virtue of being able to offer a unified account of the various forms of normative pressure in play when we consider information regarding a friend or loved one.

Your Attention Please!

There are various ways through which we try to capture another person’s attention. One of these ways is to address them. After trying to highlight what it is to address another person, the chapter argues that doing so generates a reason (for you, as addressee) to attend to the act. When the act of address is a speech act, matters are further complicated by the expectations parties bring, and are entitled to bring, to an (anticipated) speech exchange. If this is correct, then the act of address itself generates the most basic form of conversational pressure: in cooperative exchanges speakers who address an audience have a claim on the audience’s attention. To fail to attend to a speaker who addresses you and whose claim on your attention is part of a (would-be) cooperative exchange, the chapter argues, is to disrespect her as a rational subject.

Silence Misinterpreted

In conversations that take place under conditions of oppression, an audience’s silence typically reflects many things other than acceptance. This chapter argues that this point can be accommodated by an account that postulates a prima facie entitlement to regard another’s silence as indicating acceptance. What is more, the postulation of a prima facie entitlement (as part of our conversational practices) can be defended in two ways. First, the entitlement itself is part of the best explanation of the pervasiveness of the oppression, as well as of the nature of the wrongs of silencing that such oppression brings in its wake. Second, the entitlement is part of the solution to the problem of silencing itself: though the costs of silencing are disproportionately (and unfairly) borne by those who are silenced, these costs affect all of us; and the best way to address the problem involves seeing its source in (a misapplication of) the normative features of our conversational practices themselves.

Conclusion

This chapter draws together the various lessons in the previous chapters. It concludes that speech exchanges exhibit two fundamental sorts of normativity—epistemic and interpersonal—and that the relationship between them is more complicated than has heretofore been appreciated.

The Epistemic Costs of Politeness

This chapter aims to assess the distinctly epistemic costs of politeness. These include not only the loss of opportunities to acquire true beliefs when knowledgeable people self-censor owing to politeness, but also the loss of silence’s epistemic significance as a signal. The chapter does not claim that these costs should prompt us to give up our commitment to politeness; only to recognize the cost, in the spirit of an honest accounting.

The Social Epistemology of Public Uptake

Others’ public reactions to a mutually observed assertion are a significance source of evidence: the fact that our trusted fellows have accepted an assertion can provide us with additional (higher-order) evidence of the acceptability of the assertion. This chapter argues that this familiar phenomenon has implications that are much more far-reaching than has heretofore been recognized. Some of the news is good: the uptake of public uptake underwrites something in the vicinity of a kind of legitimate epistemic bootstrapping, in that there can be cases in which one’s own epistemic position with respect to a proposition improves on observing that others have accepted one’s assertion of that proposition. But other news is not good: some of the very same features that give rise to the possibility of legitimate epistemic bootstrapping also explain several unhappy aspects of our group life as epistemic subjects, such as groupthink and group polarization.

How to Treat a Testifier

This chapter offers a positive account of the speaker’s expectation of proper treatment (when she testifies that p). It does so in terms of the job that the speaker purports to be performing qua testifier, and the expectations she is entitled to have in virtue of the purport of that act. After noting that assertion is the speech act tailor made to enable a speaker to perform the type of job associated with acts of testifying, the chapter argues that it is the expectations one is entitled to have in making an assertion that generate the relevant conversational pressures. This makes clear how the pragmatic and interpersonal dimensions of this type of act interact with the epistemological dimension of testimonial transactions.

The Speaker’s Expectation of Trust

Given a speaker who tells one that p, there are ways of responding to what one is told whereby one wrongs (or does an injustice to) the speaker. This motivates the idea that a speaker is entitled to expect that her say-so not be responded to in those ways. Chapter 3 argued that this sort of normative expectation is the key to understanding the conversational pressure that bears on an audience who is told that p. Chapter 4 considers recent attempts to understand the source and scope of the speaker’s normative expectation. It argues that all extant attempts fail in this regard. The lesson that it takes from these failures concerns the main challenge of providing what is wanted: our account must illuminate how the interpersonal and pragmatic dimensions of the speech acts of telling and testifying interact with the epistemological dimension of testimony.

The Phenomenon of Conversational Pressure

This chapter aims to characterize the nature of what the author calls ‘conversational pressure’. It conceives of such pressure in terms of a distinctive class of normative expectations that are generated by the performance of speech acts in the course of a speech exchange. After making the case that this constitutes a distinctive phenomenon in its own right, the chapter argues that such pressure bears not only on audiences but on speakers as well. It goes on to provide the framework in terms of which the author pursues this topic in the remainder of the book.