In philosophical work on the ethics of conversational exchange, much has been written regarding the speaker side—i.e., on the rights and duties we have as speakers. This paper explores the relatively neglected topic of the duties pertaining to the listeners’ side of the exchange. Following W.K. Clifford, we argue that it's fruitful to think of our epistemic resources as common property. Furthermore, listeners have a key role in maintaining and improving these resources, perhaps a more important role than speakers. We develop this idea by drawing from Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber's “interactionist” picture of reason, which suggests that reasoning is essentially dialogical and relies on the epistemic vigilance of listeners. The paper defends an imperfect, prima facie duty to listen, one that is sufficiently strong to place substantial demands on individuals, but not so overly demanding as to be implausible.

中文翻译：

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 倾听的义务


在关于对话交流伦理的哲学著作中，已经写了很多关于说话方的文章——即我们作为说话者的权利和义务。本文探讨了与交换的听众方有关的职责这一相对被忽视的话题。遵循 W.K. Clifford 的观点，我们认为将我们的认知资源视为公共财产是富有成效的。此外，听众在维护和改进这些资源方面发挥着关键作用，也许比演讲者更重要。我们借鉴了雨果·梅西尔 （Hugo Mercier） 和丹·斯珀伯 （Dan Sperber） 的“互动主义”理性图景来发展这一观点，该图景表明推理本质上是对话式的，并且依赖于听众的认识警惕性。本文为一种不完美的、表面上的倾听义务辩护，这种义务足以对个人提出实质性要求，但又不会过于苛刻以至于令人难以置信。