Knowledge norms: assertion, action, and belief

Over the last decade epistemology has seen an explosion of interest in the idea that knowledge provides a normative constraint on actions or mental state (such as belief). Typically, appeal is made to a norm or rule of permission such that knowledge is required, as a necessary condition, for permissibly acting or being in that state: one must act, or be in that state, only if one knows a relevantly specified proposition. The three most prominent proposals have been that knowledge is the norm of assertion, the norm of action generally, and the norm of belief. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 center on assertion: chapter 1 considers the literature for and against the Knowledge Account of Assertion (KAA), on which one may assert that p only if one knows that p. I argue for it and defend it against prominent objections. Chapter 2 examines how we should understand the nature of KAA’s knowledge-norm by contrasting the early "descriptivist" view of G.E. Moore and Peter Unger with the recent "prescriptivist" and constitutive view of Timothy Williamson. Chapter 4 considers the assertability conditions for epistemic modals such as “might” and “possible.” Recently some philosophers have argued that knowledge normatively governs actions more generally: that is, that one may act on a proposition p only if one knows that p. I take up this view in Chapter 3, alongside a related and interesting "action-rule" for assertion. Finally, knowledge as a norm of belief has been lately endorsed by several prominent philosophers; on most formulations of the view, one may believe that p only if one knows that p. I argue against (most versions of) this view in Chapters 5 and 6.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Matthew Aaron Bento