Silence and objecting

In her article, Lackey observes that there is a connection between silence and the duty we have to object to what we take to be false or unwarranted. She argues, however, that the central approach to explaining this connection is flawed. The flaw in what she calls “the cooperative conversation view” is that it excludes some non-ideal facts about the world, which leads it to make faulty assumptions about conversers and conversations. The solution is to begin with a non-ideal theory-one that focuses on features of the actual world like power and oppression. This kind of theory, as Lackey shows, demonstrates that, for many, objecting is a luxury.