Joey Pollock

Most work in the epistemology of testimony is built upon a simple model of communication according to which, when the speaker asserts that p, the hearer must recover this very content, p. In this paper, I argue that this ‘Content Preservation Model’ of communication cannot bear the weight placed on it by contemporary work on testimony. It is popularly thought that testimonial exchanges are often successful such that we gain a great deal of knowledge through testimony. In addition, the testimonial knowledge so gained is thought to be informative: it closes off epistemic possibilities for the agent. However, in the literature on truth-conditional content, there is no theory of content that can underpin both of these commitments simultaneously if the Content Preservation Model is true. There is a minimal notion of content, which is commonly preserved in communication, but which is typically uninformative; there is a maximal notion of content, which is often informative, but which is not often preserved in communication; and, although there are moderate positions between these two extremes, these views cannot strike the right balance between informativeness and shareability. Thus, an epistemology of testimony that endorses the Content Preservation Model faces a dilemma: on the first horn, testimonial exchanges are rarely successful; on the second horn, testimonial content is rarely informative. I suggest that this dilemma motivates further exploration of alternative communicative foundations for the epistemology of testimony.

Traditional accounts of the conditions on communicative success are invariantist. For example, some authors claim that, for communication to succeed, a hearer must always grasp the very content that the speaker expressed with her utterance; others claim that success is always proportional to the degree to which the hearer understands this content. In this paper, I argue that these invariantist approaches cannot offer a comprehensive account of communicative success. When we attempt to communicate, it is usually with the intention to secure some perlocutionary effect beyond the communicative exchange itself (for example, to get our interlocutor to pass the salt, or to convince her to form a particular belief). I argue that, relative to these intentions, it may not matter whether a hearer perfectly understands the speaker; it may not even matter if the hearer’s understanding is quite poor overall. In place of invariantist conditions (or perhaps, in addition), I propose an approach that is context-dependent in the following sense: holding fixed the content expressed by the speaker, differences in features of the broad context of the speech exchange can determine differences in the standards for communicative success. On this approach, success requires that the hearer understand the content expressed by the speaker in ways that are relevant to the speaker’s perlocutionary intentions.

It is commonly assumed that content preservation is required for success in testimonial exchanges. Many content internalists, however, cannot endorse this assumption. They must claim instead that testimonial exchanges can often succeed when the content grasped by the hearer is not the content of the speaker’s testimony, p, but some merely similar content, p*. Goldberg (2007. Anti-Individualism: Mind and Language, Knowledge and Justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) argues that this internalist approach is epistemically problematic: it cannot maintain certain features thought to be characteristic of testimonial exchanges. I argue that, contrary to appearances, the internalist’s account is just as epistemically respectable as the traditional ‘same content’ approach favoured by externalists.

How much linguistic understanding is required for testimonial knowledge acquisition? One answer is that, so long as we grasp the content expressed by the speaker, it does not matter if our understanding of it is poor. Call this the ‘Liberal View’ of testimony. This approach looks especially promising when combined with the thesis that we share a public language that makes it easy to grasp the right content. In this paper, I argue that this picture is epistemically problematic. Poor linguistic understanding undermines our ability to recognise evidence and counterevidence for the testimonial content. Because of this, in many cases in which a hearer’s understanding is poor, her resultant testimonial belief will lack sufficient warrant to qualify as knowledge. Given that we often do not possess a sufficiently good understanding of the testimony we consume, I argue that we acquire far less knowledge through testimony than the Liberal View suggests.

Many ameliorative projects aim at moral goods such as social equality. For example, the amelioration of the concept MARRIAGE forms part of efforts to achieve equal rights for the LGBT+ community. What does implementation of such an ameliorated concept consist in? In this paper, I argue that, for some ameliorated concepts, successful implementation requires that individuals eschew semantic deference, at least with respect to relevant dimensions of the concept. My argument appeals to consideration of the aims of conceptual engineers engaged in this type of ameliorative project: they seek conceptual change in order to contribute to the dismantling of oppressive social structures, institutions, and systems of belief. I argue that, for such aims to be achieved, it must be the case that individuals who come to endorse the concept do so for the right reasons---because they have gained an understanding of why the ameliorated concept is morally preferable to its ancestor. Once they have acquired such reasons, however, they are no longer correctly described as semantically deferential; they will treat moral reasons to employ the concept as overriding of semantic considerations.

Cappelen proposes a radically externalist framework for conceptual engineering. This approach embraces the following two theses. Firstly, the mechanisms that underlie conceptual engineering are inscrutable: they are too complex, unstable and non-systematic for us to grasp. Secondly, the process of conceptual engineering is largely beyond our control. One might think that these two theses are peculiar to the Austerity Framework, or to metasemantic externalism more generally. However, Cappelen argues that there is no reason to think that internalism avoids either commitment. Cappelen argues that to do so she must provide arguments for 3 claims: there are inner states that are scrutable and within our control; concepts supervene on these inner states; and the determination relation from supervenience base to content is itself scrutable and within our control. In this paper, I argue that internalist conceptual role theories of content can meet Cappelen’s challenge.

Social externalism must allow that subjects can misunderstand the content of their own thoughts. I argue that we can exploit this commitment to create a dilemma for the view’s account of communication. To arrive at the first horn of the dilemma, I argue that, on social externalism, it is understanding which is the measure of communicative success. This would be a highly revisionary account of communication. The only way that the social externalist can salvage the claim that mental content is central to explaining communicative success is by adopting an account which gives unacceptable diagnoses as to the success of communicative exchanges. This is the second horn of the dilemma. Contrastingly, certain internalist views of content, which deny that subjects share thought content, do not face the dilemma. I argue that, as such, we should prefer accounts of communication which deny that subjects speak the same language