Testimony and Assertion, David Owens
Owens, D. (2006), ‘Testimony and Assertion’, Philosophical Studies 130, 105-106.
p. 105 – ‘According to the Assurance model, we can learn that p when someone tells us that p; telling someone that p involves asserting that p with a view to providing them with an assurance that p is true.’
p. 106 – ‘According to the Belief Expression model of testimony, we can learn p when we hear someone assert that p. On this view, to sincerely assert that p is to express (in a distinctive way) your belief in p, where expressing a belief differs both from indicating to others than you have it and from giving them an assurance that it is true. When such an expression of belief has an audience, and that audience believes what the speaker says, that audience may acquire a belief with the same justificational status. And when the belief expressed constitutes knowledge, they may thereby learn what the speaker knows.’
Distinguishes between indicating (provide evidence for) and expressing (sincere assertion) belief.
p. 108 – People can assert things that they (perhaps unknowingly) not believe.
p. 109 – In re above, we could show this to be the case in respect to compartmentalised beliefs.
Believers have the goal of expressing their beliefs.
p. 110 – We intend ‘something’ when we assert.
‘So why does a sincere person decide on occasion not to express their belief but rather to indicate it?’
p. 111-2 – ‘To sum up, the expression of a belief is directly motivated by the belief expressed and directly motivates the adoption of that belief by others.’
p. 113 – ‘The real asymmetry here is the one noted earlier: sincere assertions can be made simply to express the relevant belief but you must have some further motive for deciding to present yourself as expressing a belief i.e., for making an insincere assertion.’
p. 116 – Assertions as promises… (ala Shapin?)
p. 117 – ‘I agree with the assurance that the effect of testimony is to transfer certain responsibilities involved in having a belief from hearer to speaker. But it is a mistake to take promising as our model here. The promisor intends to take on the responsibility of making a certain proposition true, a duty that is owed to the promisee. By contrast, the kind of epistemic responsibilities at stake in testimony are duties owed to anyone; testimony can be presented quite unintentionally to an audience who thereby learn that it true because they are entitled to depend on the speaker for justification.’
p. 118 – Is the promise analogy meant to be taken so strictly?
p. 119 – Memory as justification preserving but not evidence preserving.
Memory is a rationality preserving mechanism for belief (as is testimony).
p. 120 – ‘Testimony does not literally preserve belief, rather it creates a new belief in another.’
Makes the connection between proper functioning of testimony (no deceit, et al) and proper functioning of memory and claims that in neither case is the proper working of the mechanism part of the justification for the belief.
p. 122 – Testimony is rationality preserving only because assertions are intentional.
‘To make testimony a rationality preserving mechanism, we need to ensure that the rationality of the belief which the hearer ends up with reflects the rationality of the quite distinct belief the speaker expresses.’
p. 123 – Sincere assertions reflects the rationality of the belief it expresses. Such an assertion transmits a belief with those epistemic credentials to its hearers who are convinced by it.
p. 125 – ‘On my account, what is crucial to the transfer of responsibility is not what intention the speaker expresses but rather what belief he (intentionally) expresses. Since both the insincere and the misunderstood fail to give expression to the belief their hearer acquires, they can’t transmit it to the hearer (as opposed to inducing it in him) and so can’t assume a believer’s responsibility for it.’
p. 126 – ‘I have proposed that the act of assertion expresses belief and thereby enables its audience to acquire not knowledge of the speaker’s belief but a belief with the same content and epistemic credentials and thus knowledge of the fact testified to.’
