On knowing what we would say

Abstract

Philosophers, philosophising, sometimes ask themselves or their colleagues questions of the form ‘What would we say if…?’ where the blank is filled by a description, more or less circumstantial, of a state of affairs in which some philosophically interesting word might get used, and where ‘we’ are supposed to be fluent and judicious speakers of English with no philosophical axes to grind. I want to distinguish two quite different kinds of case in which philosophers seek answers to questions about what we would say, and to argue that in one of them there is no reason to suppose the answers they get are trustworthy.