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Epistemic Norms of Assertion and Their Intuitive Evaluation

Abdolazizi, Shahed | 2024

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 57203 (42)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Philosophy of Science
  6. Advisor(s): Taheri Khorramabadi, Ali
  7. Abstract:
  8. In this thesis I evaluate two rival accounts: the knowledge norm of assertion and the justification norm of assertion. The former posits that “S has warrant to assert P iff S knows P”, while the latter states that “S has warrant to assert P iff S justifiedly believes (or has justification for believing) P”. I conduct this evaluation by assessing their explanatory power in two types of cases. First, I examine cases that are allegedly evidence for the knowledge norm, such as: lottery cases, Moorean cases, and challenges. In this thesis I argue that justification norm can also account for these cases. Second, I consider cases that are purported counterexamples to the knowledge norm, such as: the selfless case, where one asserts a proposition without believing it but has justification; and the unlucky case, where one asserts a justified belief that turns out to be false due to factors beyond one’s control. Despite claims that in these cases one has warrant to assert even in the absence of knowledge, I argue that our intuitive judgment of assertability is consistent with the knowledge account in the selfless and unlucky cases. To achieve this, I introduce an economical norm, demonstrating that the utterance in the selfless case is appropriate but solely based on non-epistemic norms from an all-things-considered perspective. Nonetheless, it remains unwarranted (i.e., epistemically impermissible). But, this situation might trap us in confusion; incline us to a mistaken judgment that it is “intuitively warranted”. Additionally, through analogy with the rules of games, I show that the knowledge norm can accommodate the unlucky case as an instance of epistemically-blameless norm violation, and the error of deeming unlucky scenarios “intuitively warranted” stems from confusing a blameless case with one that conforms to the rule
  9. Keywords:
  10. Assertion Language ; Epistemic Values ; Selfless Case ; Unlucky Case ; Knowledge Account ; Epistemic Approach

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