Knowing what is said & other essays on knowledge, understanding, and communication

Abstract

This dissertation consists of five separate papers, an introduction, and a conclusion. Chapter 1 introduces the issues to be discussed and provides an overview of the dissertation. Chapter 2 provides an account of how we come to know what other people say to us on particular occasions. Your friend utters the sentence ‘butterflies have taste receptors on their feet’ in your presence, and you come to know right away that she said that butterflies have taste receptors on their feet. How do you come to know this fact? It is argued that we know facts about what a speaker has said in making an utterance partly in virtue of knowing other facts, including facts about what words mean, and facts about the context of the utterance. Chapter 3 defends an account of what it is to understand an utterance. What does it take for you to understand your friend’s utterance about butterflies? And what is the relation between utterance understanding and knowledge? It is argued that understanding cannot be understood in terms of knowledge of what is said, because such knowledge is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding. It is suggested that understanding must be understood in terms of a notion closely related to that of knowledge, namely cognitive achievement. Chapter 4 turns to testimonial justification. Suppose you adopt the belief that butterflies have taste receptors on their feet on the basis of your friend’s utterance. What does it take for you to be justified in this belief? It is argued that testimonial justification cannot be understood as a kind of immediate or non-inferential justification. Chapter 5 provides a positive account of testimonial justification. It defends a middle ground between reductionism and anti-reductionism. Chapter 6 turns from issues concerning communication to issues concerning our capacity to understand the world more generally. What does it take to understand why something is the case, for instance why the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed? A common answer is that understanding why something is the case is a matter of knowing a fact about why it is the case. It is argued that if knowledge is stakes sensitive, this answer cannot be true, since understanding is not stakes sensitive. There will be cases in which knowledge and understanding come apart.

Date of Award	17 Sept 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Oslo University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Herman Cappelen (Supervisor), Katherine Hawley (Supervisor) & Matthew McGrath (Supervisor)