Knowledge and loose talk

In Christos Kyriacou & Kevin Wallbridge (eds.), Skeptical Invariantism Reconsidered. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 272-297 (2021)
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Abstract

Skeptical invariantists maintain that the expression “knows” invariably expresses an epistemically extremely demanding relation. This leads to an immediate challenge. The knowledge relation will hardly if ever be satisfied. Consequently, we can rarely if ever apply “knows” truly. The present paper assesses a prominent strategy for skeptical invariantists to respond to this challenge, which appeals to loose talk. Based on recent developments in the theory of loose talk, I argue that such appeals to loose talk fail. I go on to present a closely related, more promising response strategy, which combines assumptions about the dynamics of pragmatic presuppostions from Blome-Tillmann (2014) with an appeal to conversational exculpature, a phenomenon recently studied by Hoek (2018, 2019).

Author's Profile

Alexander Dinges
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

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