Abstract
This paper takes issues with a couple of recent arguments due to Ernest Sosa according to which (i) knowledge is the norm of assertion and (ii) the thesis that knowledge is specially valuable is equivalent to the thesis that knowledge is the norm of assertion. It is argued that while both of these arguments fail, an argument that knowledge is the norm of belief and that the thesis that knowledge is specially valuable is equivalent to the thesis that knowledge is the norm of belief may yet be defensible.
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Notes
In fact, Sosa also needs the converse of Assertion/affirmation parallel. However, given the definition of affirmation the converse seems no less plausible than Assertion/affirmation parallel itself.
Notice that Sosa’s argument falls just short of establishing the entailment of the knowledge norm of assertion by the special value of knowledge. The converse of Assertion/affirmation parallel in conjunction with (xiv) will fill the gap.
One might think that there are problems with this claim. Suppose I know that my watch is running 10 min late. I look at it and see that it reads 5:00. Since I know that my watch is running 10 min late, I infer that it is 5:10. Intuitively, I come to know that it is 5:10. Hence, my watch is a source of knowledge for me. At the same time, it evidently isn’t a source of knowledge for many other people. Now, what does that mean concerning the epistemic non-defectiveness of my watch? This kind of difficulty can be avoided by further restricting the notion of source of knowledge at issue here. One (perhaps not the only) way of achieving this is by requiring the source to be a source of non-inferential knowledge in the sense that competent users of the source can acquire non-inferential knowledge from this source. What we get, then, is that being a source of non-inferential knowledge is a way of being an epistemically non-defective source. It is easy to see that this avoids the problem of the watch case. At the same time, it still serves to generate the problem for the sincerity norm. After all, the testimonial knowledge \(S_7\)’s audience acquires from \(S_7\)’s assertion is non-inferential. Hence, \(S_7\)’s assertion is a source of non-inferential knowledge and so, by the revised version of the above claim, epistemically non-defective.
References
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Ernest Sosa and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on this paper.
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Kelp, C. Sosa on Knowledge, Assertion and Value. Erkenn 80, 229–237 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9622-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9622-0