Knowledge is good, ignorance is bad. So it seems, anyway. But in this dissertation, I argue that some ignorance is epistemically valuable. Sometimes, we should suspend judgment even though by believing we would achieve knowledge. In this apology for ignorance (ignorance, that is, of a certain kind), I defend the following four theses: 1) Sometimes, we should continue inquiry in ignorance, even though we are in a position to know the answer, in order to achieve more than mere knowledge (e.g. (...) understanding) while minimizing the effects of confirmation bias. 2) It’s false that we should believe every proposition such that we are guaranteed to be right about it (and even such that we are guaranteed to know it) if we believe it. 3) Being in a position to know is the norm of assertion: importantly, this does not require belief or (thereby) knowledge, and so proper assertion can survive speaker-ignorance. 4) It can be permissible and conversationally useful to tell audiences things that it is logically impossible for them to come to know: Proper assertion can survive (necessary) audience-side ignorance. Cumulatively, this project suggests that, properly understood, ignorance has an important role to play in the good epistemic life. (shrink)

This paper defends a new norm of assertion: Assert that p only if you are in a position to know that p. We test the norm by judging its performance in explaining three phenomena that appear jointly inexplicable at first: Moorean paradoxes, lottery propositions, and selfless assertions. The norm succeeds by tethering unassertability to unknowability while untethering belief from assertion. The PtK‐norm foregrounds the public nature of assertion as a practice that can be other‐regarding, allowing asserters to act in the (...) best interests of their audience when psychological pressures would otherwise prevent them from communicating the knowable truth. (shrink)

Speech acts are governed by a variety of illocutionary norms. Building on Sbisà’s (2019) work, this chapter attempts to develop a common framework to study them. Four families of illocutionary rules are identified: (i) Validity rules set conditions for (actual) performance; (ii) Cooperative rules set conditions for cooperative performance; (iii) Illocutionary goals set conditions for successful performance; (iv) Illocutionary obligations set conditions for compliance. Illocutionary rules are often taken to play a constitutive role: speech acts are said to be constituted (...) by the unique set of rules that regulates them. Against this view, it is argued that many illocutionary rules are instead best construed as rationally derivable expectations of cooperation. This alternative paradigm provides fertile ground to reconcile scholarly disagreement between speech act theorists, and yields a promising explanation of how illocutionary norms are learned and evolve through time. (shrink)

How should we undertand the role of norms—especially epistemic norms—governing assertive speech acts? Mitchell Green (2009) has argued that these norms play the role of handicaps in the technical sense from the animal signals literature. As handicaps, they then play a large role in explaining the reliability—and so the stability (the continued prevalence)—of assertive speech acts. But though norms of assertion conceived of as social norms do indeed play this stabilizing role, these norms are best understood as deterrents and not (...) as handicaps. This paper explains the stability problem for the maintenance of animal signals, and so human communication, for we are animals too, after all; the mechanics of the handicap principle; the role of deterrents and punishments as an alternative mechanism; and the role of social norms governing assertion for the case of human communication. (shrink)

Assertions are speech acts by means of which we express beliefs. As such they are at the heart of our linguistic and social practices. Recent research has focused extensively on the question whether the speech act of assertion is governed by norms, and if so, under what conditions it is acceptable to make an assertion. Standard theories propose, for instance, that one should only assert that p if one knows that p (the knowledge account), or that one should only assert (...) that p if p is true (the truth account). In a series of four experiments, this question is addressed empirically. Contrary to previous findings, knowledge turns out to be a poor predictor of assertability, and the norm of assertion is not factive either. The studies here presented provide empirical evidence in favour of the view that a speaker is warranted to assert that p only if her belief that p is justified. (shrink)

I define a social norm as a regularity in behavior whose persistence is causally explained by the existence of sanctioning attitudes of participants toward violations—without these sanctions, individuals have motive to violate the norm. I show how a universal precept "When in circumstances S, do action F" can be sustained by the conditional preference of each to conform, given that others do, of a convention, and also reinforced by the sanctions of a norm. I observe that a precept with moral (...) force can be reinforced by a social norm. I then consider constitutive norms and show by means of an example, competitive figure skating, how a type of activity or practice G can have a constitutive norm NG. An ongoing activity in a community is engagement in that practice only if NG is reinforced as a social norm by participants. I apply this to the case of assertion: the speech act type Assertion has a constitutive norm NA, and a practice of making speech acts in a community is one of making assertions only if it is controlled by NA enforced by the sanctions of a social norm. (shrink)

Generalisation, universal knowledge claims, and recommendations within disaster studies are problematic because they lead to miscommunication and the misapplication of actionable knowledge. The consequences and impacts thereof are not often considered by experts; forgone as irrelevant to the academic division of labour. There is a disconnect between expert assertions for disaster risk reduction (DRR) and their practical suitability for laypersons. Experts currently assert independently of the context within which protective action measures (PAMs) are to be used, measures unconnected to the (...) people for whom they are developed. This has knock-on effects for DRR: much expert-generated science and policy remains unused, unimplemented, and sometimes misapplied. I use philosophical accounts of assertion and epistemic blame to highlight the epistemic relationship between experts and laypersons. This relationship includes responsibilities and agreements between epistemic agents. Since multilevel DRR knowledge still transfers top-down from experts to laypersons, if experts impair the epistemic relationship, they can be held epistemically blameworthy. To address the pervasiveness of top-down systems, I analyse the epistemic framings and narratives currently shaping DRR, and more specifically PAMs and campaigns. I deconstruct universal perspectives that dominate the epistemic processes of generating, disseminating, and implementing DRR knowledge and specifically for co-seismic landslide PAMs for Nepal. I argue for more inclusive, contextual, and epistemically responsible DRR. Co-production of knowledge should begin from the standpoints of marginalised persons who may have an epistemic advantage due to their socio-politically marginalised positions. Often these epistemic contributions are left out of DRR efforts because marginalised persons are rarely afforded equal, if any, epistemic agency, which results in epistemic gaps and a large pool of relevant knowledge remaining unincorporated and unused in DRR research and policy. (shrink)

In a series of articles (Pagin, 2004, 2009), Peter Pagin has argued that assertion is not a social speech act, introducing a method (which we baptize ‘the P-test’) designed to refute any account that defines assertion in terms of its social effects. This paper contends that Pagin's method fails to rebut the thesis that assertion is social. We show that the P-test is both unreliable (because it overgenerates counterexamples) and counterproductive (because it ultimately provides evidence in favor of some social (...) accounts). Nonetheless, we contend that assertion is not fully social. We defend an intermediate view according to which assertion is only a partly social speech act: assertions both commit the speaker to a proposition (a social component) and present their propositional content as true (a non-social component). The upshot is that assertion is in some important respect social, although it cannot be defined solely in terms of its social effects. (shrink)

In this paper, I spell out a new challenge for epistemic internalism that emerges out of the current debate on testimonial justification. Based on recent developments within this debate, one might argue as follows: Epistemic internalism can’t account for the justification of our testimony-based beliefs, because (1) we should conceive of testimonial justification along anti-reductionist lines and (2) anti-reductionism is incompatible with epistemic internalism. In response to this challenge, I show that, despite initial appearances, epistemic internalism and anti-reductionism are compatible (...) after all. Therefore, being an anti-reductionist with regard to testimonial justification doesn’t force one to reject epistemic internalism. In order to argue for this result, I will make use of resources provided by speech act theory. (shrink)