Online research in philosophy

We show that the contemporary debate surrounding the question “What is the norm of assertion?” presupposes what we call the quantitative view, i.e. the view that this question is best answered by determining how much epistemic support is required to warrant assertion. We consider what Jennifer Lackey ( 2010 ) has called cases of isolated second-hand knowledge and show—beyond what Lackey has suggested herself—that these cases are best understood as ones where a certain type of understanding , rather than knowledge, constitutes the required epistemic credential to warrant assertion. If we are right that understanding (and not just knowledge) is the epistemic norm for a restricted class of assertions, then this straightforwardly undercuts not only the widely supposed quantitative view, but also a more general presupposition concerning the universalisability of some norm governing assertion—the presumption (almost entirely unchallenged since Williamson’s 1996 paper) that any epistemic norm that governs some assertions should govern assertions—as a class of speech act—uniformly.

Adequate epistemic justification is best conceived as the appearance, over time, of knowledge to the subject. ‘Appearance’ is intended literally, not as a synonym for belief. It is argued through consideration of examples that this account gets the extension of ‘adequately justified belief’ at least roughly correct. A more theoretical reason is then offered to regard justification as the appearance of knowledge: If we have a knowledge norm for assertion, we do our best to comply with this norm when we express as assertions only beliefs that appear to us to be knowledge. If we are doing our best, there is little point in further sanctions. So a norm of knowledge for assertion would lead to a secondary norm of justified belief as the appearance of knowledge, marking a point at which our assertions may be corrected but should not be blamed.

Keith DeRose has recently argued that the contextual variability of appropriate assertion, together with the knowledge account of assertion, yields a direct argument that ’knows’ is semantically contextsensitive. The argument fails because of an equivocation on the notion of warranted assertability. Once the equivocation is removed, it can be seen that the invariantist can retain the knowledge account of assertion and explain the contextual variability of appropriate assertion by appealing to Williamson’s suggestion that practical and conversational considerations can influence the extent to which adherence to the constitutive norm of assertion matters.

John Turri has recently provided two problem cases for the knowledge account of assertion (KAA) to argue for the express knowledge account of assertion (EKAA). We defend KAA by explaining away the intuitions about the problem cases and by showing that our explanation is theoretically superior to EKAA.

It is often argued that the general propriety of challenging an assertion with 'How do you know?' counts as evidence for the Knowledge Norm of Assertion (KNA). Part of the argument is that this challenge seems to directly challenge whether a speaker knows what she asserts. In this paper I argue for a re-interpretation of the data, the upshot of which is that we need not interpret 'Hod do you know?' as directly challenging a speaker's knowledge; instead, it's better understood as challenging a speaker's reasons. Consequently, I argue that reasons-based norms can equally well explain this data.

Abstract: Some recent arguments against the classical invariantist account of knowledge exploit the idea that there is a ‘knowledge norm’ for assertion. It is claimed that, given the existence of this norm, certain intuitions about assertability support contextualism, or contrastivism, over classical invariantism. In this paper I show that, even if we accept the existence of a knowledge norm, these assertability-based arguments fail. The classical invariantist can accommodate and explain the relevant intuitions about assertability, in a way that retains the idea that knowledge is the epistemic norm for assertion. When we consider the role of assertion as a conversational act, it becomes plausible that a subject's epistemic warrant to assert can be defeated even though she has knowledge. This defeasibility thesis is what allows the classical invariantist to accommodate and explain the kinds of intuitions on which assertability-based arguments depend.

A common view in the recent philosophical literature is that knowledge is the norm governing proper assertion. Thus, according to Keith DeRose, “…one is positioned well-enough to assert that P iff one knows that P” (DeRose 2002, p. 180). Let us call the thesis expressed here the Knowledge Norm of Assertion, or the KNA, and formulate it as follows.

I am currently examining the suggestion that assertion and practical reasoning are subject to specifically epistemic norms, and the consequences of this suggestion for the correct account of knowledge. One currently popular view is that knowledge is the epistemic norm of both assertion and practical reasoning (see DeRose, Hawthorne, Stanley and Williamson). If assertion and practical reasoning are governed by the knowledge norm, then one criterion for an account of knowledge is that it should respect the ties between knowledge, assertion and practical reasoning. In this way, the knowledge norm is at the heart of contemporary debate about the correct account of knowledge, e.g. the debate between contextualism and invariantism (see Hawthorne.

The Knowledge Account of Assertion (KAA) has received added support recently from data on prompting assertion (Turri 2010) and from a refinement suggesting that assertions ought to express knowledge (Turri 2011). This paper adds another argument from parenthetical positioning, and then argues that KAA’s unified explanation of some of the earliest data adduced in its favor recommends KAA over its rivals.

According to the knowledge account of assertion, an assertion that p is correct just in case the speaker knows that p. This is so because of a norm that governs assertion and uniquely characterizes it. Recent opposition to the knowledge account accepts that assertion is governed by a norm, but proposes alternatives to the knowledge norm. In this paper I focus on some difficulties for normative accounts of assertion.