Assurance: An Austinian View of Knowledge and Knowledge ClaimsClaiming to know is more than making a report about one's epistemic position: one also offers one's assurance to others. What is an assurance? In this book, Krista Lawlor unites J. L. Austin's insights about the pragmatics of assurance-giving and the semantics of knowledge claims into a systematic whole. The central theme in the Austinian view is that of reasonableness: appeal to a 'reasonable person' standard makes the practice of assurance-giving possible, and lets our knowledge claims be true despite differences in practical interests and disagreement among speakers and hearers. Lawlor provides an original account of how the Austinian view addresses a number of difficulties for contextualist semantic theories, resolves closure-based skeptical paradoxes, and helps us to tread the line between acknowledging our fallibility and skepticism. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 The speech act of assurance | 9 |
2 Austinian semantics | 54 |
3 Austinian semantics and linguistic data | 80 |
4 Paradox probability and inductive knowledge | 117 |
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Assurance: An Austinian View of Knowledge and Knowledge Claims Krista Lawlor No preview available - 2013 |
Common terms and phrases
assertion assurance giving Austin Austinian account Austinian proposition Austinian semantics Austinian view believe Ben’s claim brain-in-a-vat chain pickerel challenges claim to know closure principle commitment conclusive reasons consider context sensitivity denial DeRose disagreement epistemic probability exclusionary reasons external world skepticism fact fallibilism giver giving an assurance Here’s idiosyncratic scoreboard illocutionary act inductive knowledge inference information dependence instance Invariantist knowledge claims ledge Lewis linguistic lottery proposition meaning of knows metalinguistic claims norm one’s assurance one’s evidence one’s hearer one’s utterance oneself ordinary proposition position possible practical interests problem promise question reasonable alternatives reasonable person standard relevant alternatives theory requires response rule Russellian proposition says I know Semantic Contextualism Semantic Contextualist sense set of reasonable situation skeptical argument skeptical hypotheses skeptical paradox speaker and hearer speech act Stroud suppose things true or false truth conditions truth values type III propositions Vogel warrant Wright