THE 2011 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
By

Professor Marie Mcginn (UEA): On the Idea of Non-Inferential Knowledge

Abstract

In investigating non-inferential knowledge, I’m concerned with statements which, in appropriate circumstances, for example, in response to some relevant enquiry, I am in a position to make ‘straight off’, ‘immediately’, not only in the sense that I do not have to engage in reasoning, but in the sense that there is no prior belief from which what I state could be presented as an inference. The kinds of things we can state in this way include observational judgements, perceptual statements, memory statements, statements about my current bodily posture, statements about my intentions for the future, and so on. All these kinds of statement are distinctive, not only because I am often in a position to make them straight off, or immediately, but also because, made in response to a relevant enquiry, the question, ‘How do you know?’, would not normally arise for them. Not only that, but the question, ‘How do you know?’, would, in normal circumstances, be odd, in the sense that it is very unclear what I should, or could, say in reply to it. The problem that my apparent capacity to state all these kinds of thing straight off, immediately, without any prima facie justification, poses is this: what is the nature of my entitlement to make them? How can a judgement that I make straight off be one to which I am entitled?

This event has been recorded and is available as a podcast at the following URL:

http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2011/10/marie-mcginn-on-the-idea-of-non-inferential-knowledge/