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(2021) Para conversar, dois: para uma epistemologia da conversação

2022, Procurando Razões

Abstract

In this essay, I deal with two characters in a conversation, the first person and the second person. In the first part of this chapter, I deal with the notion of "talking about oneself" as a linguistic performance of a person whose object is one's own beliefs, thoughts, desires. On this basis, I take the view that our understanding of our psychological states (such as believing and desiring) is fallible, incomplete, and not luminous, and that, strictly speaking, it does not constitute a form of knowledge. This, however, does not take away our legitimate right to produce first-person statements about our states for which we have authority and responsibility that other people do not. The second part of this chapter provides a commentary on the conception of the second person in Donald Davidson. For Davidson, what distinguishes a meaningful act and the possibility of the content of an attitude is the interaction between two agents driven by a primary intention: the speaker has the intention that his utterances be understood by another person. This section of the chapter follows three steps: In the first, I introduce the specific sense of the second person as a creature with whom the speaker currently interacts, regardless of whether they share a linguistic rule or convention beforehand. In the second, I expound on the triangulation thesis in Davidson, namely, that the individuation of beliefs and thoughts is established from systematic causal connections in the triangulation between the individual, another speaker with whom he interacts, and objects or events in the world. Finally, in the third step, I present my considerations about the idea of the "norm of conversation" as a theoretical tool for addressing epistemological issues: in conversation, when interlocutors try to understand each other, speakers engage in a kind of inquiry about the meaning and content of the phrases, beliefs, and intentions in dispute.