Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-x2lbr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-08T23:55:52.157Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ANONYMOUS ASSERTIONS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 May 2013

Sanford C. Goldberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper addresses how the anonymity of an assertion affects the epistemological dimension of its production by speakers, and its reception by hearers. After arguing that anonymity does have implications in both respects, I go on to argue that at least some of these implications derive from a warranted diminishment in speakers' and hearers' expectations of one another when there are few mechanisms for enforcing the responsibilities attendant to speech. As a result, I argue, anonymous assertions do not carry the same ‘promise’ of the speaker's relevant epistemic authoritativeness that ordinary assertions do. If this is correct, the phenomenon of anonymity provides us with a lesson regarding ordinary assertions: their aptness for engendering belief in others, and so for communicating knowledge, depends in general on the very publicness of the act of assertion itself.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 10 , Special Issue 2: Privacy, Secrecy, and Epistemology , June 2013 , pp. 135 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Bach, K. and Harnish, R. 1979. Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Benton, M. 2011. ‘Two More for the Knowledge Account of Assertion.’ Analysis, 71(4): 684–7.Google Scholar
Burge, T. 1993. ‘Content Preservation.’ Philosophical Review, 102(4): 457–88.Google Scholar
Fallis, D. 2008. ‘Toward an Epistemology of Wikipedia.’ Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(10): 1662–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fricker, E. 1994. ‘Against Gullibility.’ In Matilal, B. K. and Chakrabarti, A. (eds), Knowing from Words, pp. 125–61. Amsterdam: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Fricker, M. 2007. Epistemic Injustice. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Goldberg, S. 2007. Anti-Individualism: Mind and Language, Knowledge and Justification. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Goldberg, S. 2011. ‘Putting the Norm of Assertion to Work: The Case of Testimony.’ In Brown, J. and Cappelen, H. (eds), Assertion: New Essays, pp. 175–96. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Goldberg, S. and Henderson, D. 2006. ‘Monitoring and Anti-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 72(3): 576–93.Google Scholar
MacFarlane, J. 2011. ‘What is Assertion?’ In Brown, J. and Cappelen, H. (eds), Assertion: New Essays, pp. 79–96. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Pagin, P. 2011. ‘Information and Assertoric Force.’ In Brown, J. and Cappelen, H. (eds), Assertion: New Essays, pp. 97–136. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Ross, A. 1986. ‘Why do We Believe What We are Told?’ Ratio, 28(1): 69–88.Google Scholar
Weiner, M. 2005. ‘Must We Know What We Say?’ Philosophical Review, 114: 227–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, T. 1996. ‘Knowing and Asserting.’ Philosophical Review, 105: 489–523.Google Scholar