Mona Simion, "Shifty Speech and Independent Thought: Epistemic Normativity in Context" (Oxford UP, 2021)
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What is the “shiftiness dilemma” that motivates the book?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello, and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor, professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa, and I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talese, Sarah Tyson, and Malcolm Keating. Together, we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books in a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Mona Simeon, lecturer in philosophy at the University of Glasgow. Her new book, Shifty Speech and Independent Thought, is just out from Oxford University Press. At the intersection of epistemology and philosophy of language is a puzzle. First, it seems we don't need less evidence for a claim that we know something if the practical importance of the knowledge claim shifts.
For example, if I have evidence that the bank will be closed on a particular day, my knowledge doesn't shift if it is more or less important for me to go to the bank. Second, it seems we shouldn't assert that we know something if we don't. And third, it seems that if the practical importance of a knowledge claim shifts, we should back up our claim with more evidence. So is knowledge really insensitive to shifts in the practical stakes? Or should the knowledge norm of assertion be abandoned? In her new book, Simeon critically considers various types of responses to this shiftiness dilemma before defending her own solution. On her view, assertions obey both epistemic and non-epistemic norms. and what is permissible to assert shifts depending on all things considered judgments that rely on a contextually determined mix of these norms.
She also generalizes her approach to other types of epistemically relevant speech acts, such as conjecturing and making moral assertions, and argues that only the latter require special treatment due to differences in audience understanding. This is an exciting interview that covers a lot of very interesting territory. Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Mona Simeon. Welcome to New Books and Philosophy. Hi, thanks a lot for having me. So exciting. This is a real opportunity to get up to date about what's going on at the intersection of philosophy of language and epistemology. But before we get to the book itself, can you maybe tell us a bit about yourself and how you discovered philosophy and then how you came to write this book?
Yeah, so it's a funny story, actually. I was a professional journalist before this, so philosophy was not my first career. And I was a foreign correspondent from Belgium. And You know, Belgium is a small country with only so much stuff to do. So at some point I thought, well, I need a new hobby since, you know, not much to do with my time. So I thought, well, how about I study something new? And I looked around and it turned out that the only programs offered in English in Belgium were theology and philosophy. And since I was not particularly interested in theology, I thought, well, Philosophy doesn't mean much to me, so I might as well just go and do that. Maybe it turns out to be very interesting. But I must say I had no idea what was actually going on in the field.
I come from an Eastern European country that was majorly dominated for a long time by Marxist thoughts. So that's one thing that I knew about philosophy. And for the rest, most of the studies I knew were about historical figures like Plato and Kant, and that was about it. And I started studying philosophy, and in my... first introduction to philosophy class I was supposed to go and we were all supposed to go and sign up for presentations in the beginning of the semester there was a list with topics for presentations we were all supposed to go and sign up for that And since I was an adult student, I felt a bit apprehensive to jump and sign up first on that list. So I just stayed towards the end. And by the time it got to me, the only presentation topic that was still available was epistemology, because probably people just didn't know what that meant.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the “shiftiness dilemma” that motivates the book?
0:00–8:12
2
How did Mona’s career shift from journalism to philosophy?
8:12–16:53
3
Why do we think knowledge should be insensitive to practical stakes?
16:53–25:50
4
What are the two main “maneuvers” (epistemic vs. pragmatic) for responding to the dilemma?
25:50–35:54
5
How does the prudential norm raise evidential requirements in high‑stakes cases?
35:54–43:16
6
Why is moral assertion treated differently from ordinary assertion?
43:16–52:59
7
What is Mona’s proposed normative framework for speech acts?
52:59–1:00:00
8
What projects and research directions is Mona pursuing after the book?
1:00:00–1:08:58
Speakers
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