Talk: Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern)

Title:

Talking, Listening, and Learning

Abstract:

A standard view in epistemology is that all knowledge is essentially the same—what matters is that one knows, not how one knows it. So long as one has the knowledge in question, one can act on it and make assertions grounded in it. But this assumption has recently been challenged—in many cases of knowledge, it has been argued that it is important that it was acquired at firsthand, through one’s direct engagement with the truth to be known. In this paper, I would like to extend this line of inquiry by discussing an entirely ignored matter: the distinctive epistemic benefits of secondhand knowledge, with the moral domain as a paradigmatic case. I will argue that (1) there are epistemic disadvantages to firsthandedness in certain areas of the moral domain; (2) there are epistemic benefits to secondhandedness in these same domains; and, (3), talking and listening, especially in communities, can themselves be epistemically generative.