engleski

Communication, Implicature and Testimony

Conversational implicatures, as a widely examined instance of indirect communication, can enrich philosophical pursuits in many domains. Applied to the field of the epistemology of testimony, the theoryof conversational implicatures raises many questions that could in turn provide novel insights about howwe should treat other people’s testimonies. The problem is not whether people acquire knowledge and formtheir beliefs on the basis of other people’s words or on the basis of their beliefs – the problem lies in beingable to detect those cases in which beliefs and words do not match. I suggest that the use and the decodingof implicatures is a rational process and that correctly formed implicature-based beliefs are justified because of their rationality. I also suggest that minor differences between the speaker’s and the hearer’scommunicative moves can generate cases of epistemic (bad) luck that can be treated as predictableoutcomes of a communicational faux pas

communication, conversational implicature, testimony, justification, rationality, epistemick luck

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