Interlocution, Perception, and Memory

• Published in: Philosophical studies Vol. 86; no. 1; pp. 21 - 47
• Main Author: Burge, Tyler
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Heidelberg Kluwer Academic Publishers 01.04.1997; Sringer; University of Minnesota Press; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: A priori knowledge; Belief; Empiricism; Epistemic justification; Epistemology; Justified beliefs; Memory; Perception; Philosophical logics. Philosophy of language; Philosophy; Rationality; Reason; Reasoning; Truth; Belief; Rationalism; Testimony; A priori; Proof; Memory;Remembering; Perception; Justification; Mathematics; Understanding;Verstehen
• ISSN: 0031-8116; 1573-0883
• DOI: 10.1023/A:1004261628340

[...]we do not and are not entitled to understand its outputs as intelligible acts of assertion, or as any other expression of reason.The entitlement in interlocution rests on a prima facie conceptual relation between assertions, reason, and truth about a subject matter. The relation is not guided by reason. [...]putative understanding of the clocks output does not entitle us to rely upon a priori prima facie conceptual connections between understanding, reason, and truth (connections which we need not have mastered to have the entitlement, but which can be understood a priori). [...]preservative memory can be conscious as well as unconscious. [...]substantive memory can participate in an a priori justification, if its object is a past intellectual event (say if one remembers thinking the cogito). Since I do not mark the border this way, we will have to consider these reasons carefully.The first reason rests on the example of someones remembering a theorem, but not remembering how he or she acquired the belief. Perhaps there are cases where the entitlement is overridden by the bad reasons for the same belief. Since the individual cannot cite the prima facie entitlements, perhaps the bad reasons she can cite sometimes dominate.