What Is a Speaker Owed? Or: The Ethics and Epistemology of #BelieveWomen

Pre-read session. 

Abstract: Under what conditions do you owe it to a speaker to accept what she’s said?  After clarifying what is at issue and arguing that (so understood) this question is philosophically significant, I argue for what I call a hybrid answer.  Its hybridity is seen in the fact that there are both epistemic and ethical or justice-based parameters governing when an audience owes it to a speaker to accept her say-so.   This can seem curious, as it implies that there are ethical or justice-based parameters on the proper acceptance of another’s testimony – something usually taken to be the exclusive domain of epistemology.   But I argue that acknowledging such parameters is the cost of having an adequate account of what speakers are owed on those occasions on which they testify.  I conclude by briefly suggesting how this case is both different from and stronger than another case for such parameters, from the allegation of the phenomenon of “doxastic wronging”.