Lenient Accounts of Warranted Assertability

Some assertions are epistemically defective. True story: Shortly after moving to South Bend, Malou mentioned that she was surprised to see so many gulls around town. I thought for a moment, then replied: “You know, those birds fly all the way over here from Lake Michigan.” Unfortunately, knowledgeable Mark overheard my assertion, and promptly said: “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Our gulls aren’t from Lake Michigan; they live on the St. Joseph River.”Mark had just pointed out that my assertion about the gulls was epistemically defective. Say that you warrantedly assert P iff your assertion that P is epistemically proper. A theory of warranted assertability tells us when you have warrant to assert P—i.e., when you’re positioned to warrantedly assert P. Strict accounts of warranted assertability entail that you have warrant to assert P only if you know P. Lenient accounts allow that you could have warrant to assert things you don’t know. Much of the recent literature on warranted assertability focuses on the following strict account: