Loose talk, the context of assessment, and skeptical invariantism

ABSTRACT

Russell ([2022]. “Fancy Loose Talk About Knowledge.” Inquiry 65: 789–820.) defends a novel form of skeptical invariantism, according to which knowledge ascriptions are hardly ever true because they are so demanding, but nonetheless are ordinarily used loosely to communicate truths, where the felicity of loose talk is relative to the context of assessment as well as the context of use. I argue that while there is very good reason to believe that ‘know’ is a demanding term commonly used loosely, we need not and should not conclude that loose use is assessment relative or that knowledge ascriptions are hardly ever true.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge
• loose talk
• context of assessment
• skeptical invariantism
• Gilian T. Russell

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I thank the referees for extensive comments that greatly improved this paper.

2 Russell (2022, 818). See also Unger’s (1971, 1975); BonJour (2010, 73); Stoutenberg (2016); Dinges (2021, §§1–3).

3 I modify them a bit.

4 Carter (2021, 174) claims that the communicated and literal content of a sentence with an LT strengthener coincide. This overlooks something Lasersohn (1999, 529) and Russell (2022, 795) recognize: LT strengtheners can be used loosely too, just not as loosely in the same context.

5 Hawthorne (2004, 115–118); Davis (2007, 410, 2019, §3.2); DeRose (2009, 15ff); Stoutenberg (2021, §3.3). Contrast (Schaffer 2004); Russell 2022, 801–802).

6 Grice (1989, 34–35); Davis (2019, §3.2); Russell (2022, 794, fn 14; 797).

7 Note that if (5) referred to a lottery, it could naturally be interpreted as either hyperbole or loose use.

8 Indeed, Stoutenberg’s (2021, §4.1) own “pragmatic error” theory maintains that speakers “implicitly” believe ordinary knowledge attributions are false. Contrast also Stoutenberg (2016, 159, 161–162).

9 Cf. MacFarlane’s (2005, 207) similar objection and Davis’s (2015, 405–406) response.

10 Russell (2022, 804) notes that viewing felicity as assessment relative does not require holding that truth is assessment relative. That view is problematic because a proposition is a claim about the way the world is, and it is true or false depending on whether the world is the way it says it is or not. The way things are does not similarly depend on the context of assessment.

11 This sense of ‘communicate’ is discussed in Davis (2003, Ch. 5).

12 MacFarlane’s (2014) assessment-relative theory has a parallel problem. See Davis (2021).

13 The reason may be that Russell equates ‘felicitous’ with ‘acceptable’, which is a synonym of ‘permissible’. See the abstract, for example, where Russell (2022, 789) says she will argue that the “acceptability” of knowledge-attributing sentences varies with the context of assessment, and later where Russell (2022, 793) explains her claim that (1) is felicitous by saying that it is “an acceptable thing to say”. As commonly used in linguistics, ‘felicity’ is a more restrictive term requiring such things as relevance, sincerity, and appropriate uptake that do not make an utterance unacceptable. See e.g. (Green 2021, §2.2).

14 Compare and contrast the retraction rule MacFarlane (2014, 108–116, 191–192) formulates as a supplement to his relativist semantics.

15 On the second interpretation, for example, is S permitted to utter a sentence if S reasonably expects the utterance to be assessed by a person who in fact does not exist? Or if S reasonably expects it to be assessed by some reader, but not by any particular reader?

16 Russell’s Teenage Tim case is also one that can be explained at least as well by the special properties of Tim’s context of use (posting on Facebook).

17 Russell gave an example of a politician who says something knowing that it will communicate something false to those on the other side because it will increase rapport and support among his people. In a Gricean vein, she describes this as “flouting … the maxim” as a method of communication. But if the politician’s utterance was supposed to be permissible, the example shows that (14)(b) is false.

18 I defend the claim elsewhere. See Davis (forthcoming).