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Lexical norms, language comprehension, and the epistemology of testimony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Endre Begby
Endre Begby*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BCV5A 1S6, Canada
*
*Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

It has recently been argued (for instance by Sanford Goldberg, expanding on earlier work by Tyler Burge) that public linguistic norms are implicated in the epistemology of testimony by way of underwriting the reliability of language comprehension. This paper argues that linguistic normativity, as such, makes no explanatory contribution to the epistemology of testimony, but instead emerges naturally out of a collective effort to maintain language as a reliable medium for the dissemination of knowledge. Consequently, the epistemologies of testimony and language comprehension are deeply intertwined from the start, and there is no room for grounding the one in terms of the other.

Keywords

testimonylanguage comprehensionlinguistic normssocial epistemologyanti-individualism
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 44 , Issue 3-4 , August 2014 , pp. 324 - 342
Copyright
© 2014 Canadian Journal of Philosophy

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