[SydPhil] NEW DATE: USyd Philosophy Postgraduate Colloquium August 22: Mara Bollard, Testimony, transmission, and assertion: Making sense of Lackey's creationist teacher"

[Elena Walsh]

Dear all,

As the Muniment room is booked on August 18, the next postgrad colloquium
has been moved to August 22 @ 2pm which is a Friday (it will still be held
in the Muniment room).

We will have an afternoon tea straight after as per usual, however I have
been informed that we are again running a little bit low on communal funds
for treats and tea. It would be much much appreciated if you wanted to
bring something with you to share (biscuits, tea, cake etc.).  Look forward
to seeing you then.

Elena


On 14 August 2014 12:01, Elena Walsh <elenawalsh at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
>
> The next USyd Postgraduate Colloquium for semester 2 will be held this
> Monday, August 18 @ 2pm in the Muniment room, Quadrangle building.  All
> welcome!
>
>
> As usual, we will have an afternoon tea immediately after the talk at 3pm,
> in the common room.
>
>
> *Speaker:  Mara Bollard*
>
>
> *Title:  Testimony, transmission, and assertion: Making sense of Lackey's
> creationist teacher*
>
>
>
> In *Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge, *Jennifer
> Lackey (2008) argues that it is possible for a hearer to acquire knowledge
> of some proposition p on the basis of a speaker’s testimony, even if the
> speaker does not herself know that p. Lackey motivates her account with the
> case of Stella, a creationist teacher, who asserts to her students the
> proposition that “modern-day Homo sapiens evolved from Homo erectus.”
> Though Stella neither believes nor knows this proposition, her students
> nevertheless acquire knowledge of the proposition from her testimony. On
> the basis of this case, Lackey concludes that the transmission view, which
> holds that testimony involves a speaker transmitting her belief (and its
> epistemic properties, such as justification or warrant) to a hearer, is
> false. Call this upshot 1. Lackey also holds that though Stella is
> criticisable qua believer, she is in no way criticisable qua asserter. Call
> this upshot 2.
>
>
>
> In this talk, I aim to make sense of how the students can gain knowledge
> of p from Stella’s testimony, and to better understand the undeniably weird
> doxastic state Stella is in. I will offer 3 interpretations of the case
> that I take to be more plausible than Lackey's and conclude that at least
> one, and possibly both, of the above upshots are false.
>
>
>
>
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