Assertion

First published Mon Jan 22, 2007; substantive revision Thu Jun 26, 2025

Asserting is the act of claiming that something is the case—forinstance,that oranges are citruses, orthat there is atraffic congestion on Brooklyn Bridge (at some time). We makeassertions to share information, coordinate our actions, defendarguments, and communicate our beliefs and desires. Because of itscentral role in communication, assertion has been investigated inseveral disciplines. Linguists, philosophers of language, andlogicians rely heavily on the notion of assertion in theorizing aboutmeaning, truth and inference.

The nature of assertion and its relation to other speech acts andlinguistic phenomena (implicatures, presuppositions, etc.) have beensubject to much controversy. This entry will situate assertion withinspeech act theory and pragmatics more generally, and then go on topresent the current main accounts of assertion.^[1]

By anaccount of assertion is here meant a theory ofwhata speaker does (e.g.,expresses a belief) in making anassertion. According to such accounts, there are deep properties ofassertion: specifying those properties is specifying what assertingconsists in. There must also be surface properties, which arethe properties by which a competent speaker can tell whether anutterance is an assertion, for instance that it is made by means ofuttering a sentence in the indicative mood.

We shall classify accounts according to two parameters. Firstly, wedistinguish betweennormative anddescriptiveaccounts. Normative accounts rely on the existence of norms ornormative relations that are essential to assertoric practice.Descriptive accounts don’t. Secondly, we distinguish betweencontent-directed andhearer-directed accounts.Content-directed accounts focus on the relation between the speakerand the content of the proposition asserted, while hearer-directedaccounts focus on the relations between speaker and hearer. Sometheories have both normative and descriptive components. The entry isstructured as follows

1. Speech Acts

Consider typical utterances made by means of the followingsentences

(1)

a.: There is beer in the fridge.
b.: Is there a beer in the fridge?
c.: I wish there were a beer in the fridge.
d.: Put a beer in the fridge!

Sentence (1a) would typically be used to make an assertion. Thespeaker wouldtell orinform a hearer that there isa beer in the fridge. Such an utterance of is calledassertoric, orassertive. By contrast, (1b) would beused to ask a question (and the utterance would then beinterrogative), (1c) to express a wish (optative),and (1d) to make a command, or a request (imperative). Thisentry is about utterances of the first kind, and about the speech actsperformed by means of them.

Gottlob Frege emphasized the distinction between judging a thoughtcontent (what Frege called aThought) to be true, and merelythinking/entertaining that content. Both are distinct from the contentitself. Analogously, he distinguished between utteranceswithassertoric quality, orforce (see below), and utteranceswithout assertoric force. For instance, an assertoricutterance of

(2): If it is raining, there will be umbrella salesmen in thestreet.

as a whole, by which the conditional proposition is asserted, containsas a proper part an utterance or the antecedent ‘it israining’. But the utterance of “it is raining” isnot itself assertoric. The conditional can be true whether theantecedent is true or false, and hence the speaker’s beliefabout rain is left open by the assertion

Like Frege, C.S. Peirce stressed the importance of distinguishing“between a proposition and what one does with it”. He alsoadopted, albeit implicitly, a distinction betweenforce andcontent:

one and the same proposition may be affirmed, denied, judged, doubted,inwardly inquired into, put as a question, wished, asked for,effectively commanded, taught, or merely expressed, and does notthereby become a different proposition (Peirce [NEM]: 248).^[2]

Frege characterized the assertoric quality of an utterance as anassertoricforce (“behauptende Kraft”;Frege 1918a [TFR: 330]) of the utterance. This idea was later takenover by J. L. Austin (1962 [1975: 99–100]), the founding fatherof the general theory of speech acts. Austin distinguished betweenseveral levels of speech act, including these: the locutionary act,the illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act. The locutionary actis the act of “ ‘saying something’ in the fullnormal sense” (1962 [1975: 94]), which is the utterance ofcertain words with certain meanings in a certain grammaticalconstruction, such as uttering ‘I like ice’ as a sentenceof English.

The notion of an illocutionary act was introduced by Austin by meansof examples (1962 [1975: 98–102]), and that is the normalprocedure. Illocutionary acts are such acts as asserting, asking aquestion, warning, threatening, announcing a verdict or intention,making an appointment, giving an order, expressing a wish, making arequest. An utterance of a sentence, i.e., a locutionary act, by meansof which a question is asked is thus an utterance withinterrogative force, an if an assertion is made, it hasassertoric force.

The perlocutionary act is made by means of an illocutionary act, anddepends entirely on the hearer’s reaction. For instance, bymeans of arguing the speaker mayconvince the hearer, and bymeans of warning the speaker mayfrighten the hearer. Inthese examples, convincing and frightening are perlocutionaryacts.

The illocutionary act does not depend on the hearer’s reactionto the utterance. Still, according to Austin (1962 [1975:116–7]) it does depend on the hearer’s being aware of theutterance and understanding it in a certain way: I haven’twarned someone unless he heard what I said. In this sense, theperformance of an illocutionary act depends on the “securing ofuptake” (Austin 1962 [1975: 117]). However, althoughAustin’s view is intuitively plausible for speech acts verbswith speaker-hearer argument structure (likex congratulatesy) or speaker-hearer-content argument structure (xtellsy thatp), it is less plausible when thestructure is speaker-content (“Bill asserted thatp”). It may be said that Bill failed to tellLisa that the station was closed, since she had already leftthe room when he said so, but that Bill stillasserted thatit was closed, since Bill believed she was still there.^[3]

Austin had earlier (1956) initiated the development of speech acttaxonomy by means of the distinction betweenconstative andperformative utterances. Roughly, whereas in a constativeutterance you report an already obtaining state of affairs—yousay something—in a performative utterance you createsomething new: youdo something (Austin 1956 [1979: 235]).Assertion is the paradigm of a constative utterance. Paradigm examplesof performatives are utterances by means of which actions such asbaptizing, congratulating and greeting are performed. However, whendeveloping his general theory of speech acts, Austin abandoned theconstative/performative distinction, the reason being that it is notso clear in what sense something isdone for instance bymeans of an optative utterance, whereas nothing is done by means of anassertoric one.

Austin noted, e.g., that assertions are subject both to infelicitiesand to various kinds of appraisal, just like performatives (Austin1962 [1975: 13–66]). For instance, an assertion isinsincere in case of lying as a promise is insincere when theappropriate intention is lacking (Austin 1962 [1975: 40]). This is aninfelicity of theabuse kind. Also, an assertion is,according to Austin,void in case of a failed referentialpresupposition, such as in Russell’s

(3): The present King of France is bald

(Austin 1962 [1975: 20]). This is then an infelicity of the samekind—flaw-type misexecutions—as the use of thewrong formula in a legal procedure (Austin 1962 [1975: 36]), or of thesame kind—misinvocations—as when the requirementsof a naming procedure aren’t met (Austin 1962 [1975: 51]).

Further, Austin noted that when it comes to appraisals, there is not asharp difference between acts that are simply true and false, and actsthat are assessed in other respects (Austin 1962 [1975: 140–7]).On the one hand, a warning can be objectively proper or improper,depending on the facts. On the other hand, assertions (statements) canbe assessed as suitable in some contexts and not in others, and arenot simply true or false.^[4]

As an alternative to the constative/performative distinction, Austinsuggested five classes of illocutionary types (or illocutionaryverbs):verdictives,exercitives,commissives,behabitives andexpositives(Austin 1962 [1975: 151–64]). You exemplify a verdictive, e.g.,when as a judge you pronounce a verdict; an exercitive by appointing,voting or advising; a commissive by promising, undertaking ordeclaring that you will do something; a behabitive by apologizing,criticizing, cursing or congratulating; an expositive by actsappropriately prefixed by phrases like ‘I reply’, ‘Iargue’, ‘I concede’ etc., of a general expositorynature.

In this classification, assertion would best be placed underexpositives, since the prefix “I assert” is or may be ofan expository nature. Austin explicitly includes the verbs“affirm”, “deny”, and “state”, inhis first group of expositives (1962 [1975: 162]). Marina Sbisà(2020) argues that assertion belongs to both expositives and toverdictives, insofar as assertion expresses a judgment/verdict.

Other taxonomies have been proposed, for instance by Stephen Schiffer(1972), John Searle (1975b), Kent Bach and Robert M. Harnish (1979),Francois Recanati (1987), and William P. Alston (2000).^[5]

2. Pragmatics

Assertion is generally thought of being open, explicit and direct, asopposed for instance to implying something without explicitly sayingit. In this respect, assertion is contrasted withpresupposition andimplicature. The contrast is,however, not altogether sharp, partly because of the idea of indirectspeech acts, including indirect assertions.

2.1 Presupposition

A sentence such as

(4): Kepler died in misery.

is not true unless the singular term ‘Kepler’ hasreference. Still, Frege argued that a speaker asserting that Keplerdied in misery, by means of (4) does not also assert that‘Kepler’ has reference (Frege 1892 [TPW: 69]). That Keplerhas reference is not part of the sense of the sentence. Frege’sreason was that if it had been, the sense of its negation

(5): Kepler did not die in misery.

would have beenthat Kepler did not die in misery or‘Kepler’ does not have reference, which is absurd.According to Frege, that ‘Kepler’ has reference is ratherpresupposed, both in an assertion of(4) and in an assertion of its negation.

The modern treatment of presupposition has followed Frege in treatingsurvival under negation as the most important test for presupposition.That is, if it is implied thatp, both in an assertion of asentences and in an assertion of the negation ofs,then it is presupposed thatp in those assertions (unlessthatp is entailed by all sentences). Other typical examplesof presupposition (Levinson 1983: 178–181) include

(6): John managed [didn’t manage] to stop in time.

implying that John tried to stop in time, and

(7): Martha regrets [doesn’t regret] drinking John’s homebrew.

implying that Martha drank John’s home brew.

In the case of(4), the presupposition is clearly of a semantic nature, since thesentence “Someone is identical with Kepler”, which is truejust if ‘Kepler’ has reference, is a logical consequenceof(4) and (under a standard interpretation) of (5). By contrast, in thenegated forms of(6) and(7), the presupposition can be canceled by context, e.g., as in

(8): John didn’t manage to stop in time. He didn’t eventry.

This indicates that in this case the presupposition is rather apragmatic phenomenon; it is the speaker or speech act rather than thesentence or the proposition expressed that presupposes something.

However, the issue of separating semantic from pragmatic aspects ofpresupposition is complex, and regarded differently in differentapproaches to presupposition (for an overview, see Simons 2006).^[6]

2.2 Implicature

Frege noted (1879: [TPW:10]) that there is no difference in truthconditional content between sentences such as

(9)

a.: John works with real estate and likes fishing.
b.: John works with real estate but likes fishing.

“and” and “but” contribute the same way totruth and falsity. However, when using(9b), but not when using(9a), the speaker indicates that there is a contrast of some kind betweenworking with real estate and liking fishing. The speaker is notasserting that there is a contrast. We can test this, forinstance, by forming a conditional with(9b). The antecedent of (10) preserves the contrast rather than make ithypothetical, showing that the contrast is not asserted:

(10): If John works with real estate but likes fishing, I think we canbring him along.

It is usually said that the speaker in cases like(9b) and(10)implicates that there is a contrast. These are examples ofimplicature. H. Paul Grice (1975, 1989) developed a generaltheory of implicature. Grice called implicatures of the kindexemplifiedconventional, since it is a standing feature ofthe word “but” to give rise to them.

Most of Grice’s theory is concerned with the complementing kind,theconversational implicatures. These are subdivided intotheparticularized ones, which depend on features of theconversational context, and thegeneralized ones, whichdon’t (Grice 1975: 37–8). The particularizedconversational implicature rely on general conversational maxims, noton features of expressions. These maxims are thought to be in force inordinary conversation. For instance, the maximBe orderly!requires of the speaker to recount events in the order they tookplace. This is meant to account for the intuitive difference incontent between

(11)

a.: John took off his shoes and sat down.
b.: John sat down and took off his shoes.

According to Grice’s account, the speaker doesn’t assert,only implicates that the events took place in the order recounted.What is asserted is just that both events did take place.

Real or apparent violations of the maxims generate implicatures, onthe assumption that the participants obey the over-archingCooperative Principle. For instance, in the conversation

(12)

A:: Where does John spend the summer?
B:: Somewhere in Canada.

B implicates that he doesn’t know where in Canada Johnspends the summer. The reasoning is as follows:B violatesthe Maxim of Quantity to be as informative as required. SinceB is assumed to be cooperative, we can infer that he cannotsatisfy the Maxim of Quantity without violating some other maxim. Thebest candidate is the sub-maxim of the Maxim of Quality, whichrequires you not to say anything for which you lack sufficientevidence. Hence, one can infer thatB doesn’t know.Again,B has not asserted that he doesn’t know, butstill managed to convey it in an indirect manner.^[7]

2.3 Indirect assertions

The distinction between assertion and implicature is to some extentundermined by acknowledgingindirect assertion as a kind ofassertion proper. A standard example of an indirect speech act isgiven by

(13): Can you pass the salt?

By means of uttering an interrogative sentence the speaker requeststhe addressee to pass the salt. The request is indirect. The question,literally concerning the addressee’s ability to pass the salt,is direct. As defined by John Searle (1975b: 59–60), and also byBach and Harnish (1979: 70), an indirect illocutionary act issubordinate to another, more primary act and depends on the success ofthe first. An alternative definition, given by Sadock (1974: 73), isthat an act is indirect just if it has a different illocutionary forcefrom the one standardly correlated with the sentence-type used.

Examples of indirect assertions by means of questions andcommands/requests are given by

(14)

a.: May I tell you that, obviously, the square root of a quarter is ahalf?
b.: Let me tell you that, obviously, the square root of a quarter is ahalf!

(Levinson 1983: 266). Rhetorical questions also have the force ofassertions:

(15): Is not Switzerland a peace-loving nation?

Another candidate type is irony:

(16): Switzerland is known for its aggressive foreign policy.

assuming the speaker does mean the negation of what is literally said.However, although in a sense the act is indirect, since the speakerasserts something different from what she would do on a normal, directuse of the sentence, and relies on the hearer to realize this, it isnot an indirect assertion by either definition. It isn’t on thefirst, since the primary act (the literal assertion) isn’t evenmade, and it isn’t on the second, since there is no discrepancybetween force and sentence type.^[8]

The very idea of indirect speech acts is, however, controversial. Itis not universally agreed that an ordinary utterance of(13) is indirect, since it has been denied, e.g., by Levinson (1983:273–6) that a question has really been asked, over and above therequest. Similarly, Levinson have questioned the idea of a standardcorrelation between force and sentence form, by which a request wouldcount as indirect on Sadock’s criterion.

Common to all conceptions of indirect assertions is that they are notexplicit: what is expressed, or literally said, is not the same aswhat is asserted. One question is whether an utterance is an assertionproper thatp if that content is not exactly what isexpressed, or whether it is an act of a related kind, perhaps an implicature.^[9]

2.4 Explicitness

A related question is how far an utterance may deviate fromexplicitness and yet be counted as an assertion, proper or indirect.According to one intuition, as soon as it is not fully determinate tothe hearer what the intended content of an utterance is, or what forceit is made with, the utterance fails to be assertoric.Underdetermination is the crucial issue. This has been argued byElizabeth Fricker (2012). But the issue is controversial, andobjections of several kinds have been made, for instance by JohnHawthorne (2012), Andrew Peet (2015, 2021) and ManuelGarcía-Carpintero (2016, 2019b).^[10]

3. Descriptive Accounts, Content-Directed

Descriptive accounts characterize assertion in terms of itspsychological, social, and linguistic features, without appeal tonormative notions. The content-directed accounts focus on therelations between the speaker and content and between hearer andcontent.

3.1 Relation to truth

Frege (1918a [TFR: 329]) held that an assertion is an outward sign ofajudgment (Urteil). Ajudgment in turn, inFrege’s view, is a step from entertaining aThought toacknowledging its truth (Frege 1892 [TPW: 64]).^[11] The subject first merely thinks the Thought thatp, andthen, at the judgment stage, moves on to acknowledge it as true. Sincefor Frege, the truth value is the reference (Bedeutung) of asentence, a judgment is an advance from the sense of a sentence to itsreference. In case the subject makes a mistake, it is not the actualreference, but the reference the subjecttakes it tohave.

For Frege, truth is not relative. There is exactly one point ofevaluation of a Thought, the world itself. If instead we accept morethan one point of evaluation, such as different possible worlds, truthsimpliciter is equated with truth at theactual world. We canthen adapt Frege’s view to say that judging thatp isadvancing to referenceat the actual world, or again,evaluating as true in the actual world.

On this picture, what holds for judgment carries over to assertion. Itis in the force of an utterance that the step is taken from thecontent to the actual point of evaluation. This view has been statedby Recanati with respect tothe actual world:

[…] a content is not enough; we need to connect that contentwith the actual world, via the assertive force of the utterance, invirtue of which the content is presented as characterizing that world.(Recanati 2007: 37)

In Pagin (2016a: 276–278), this idea is generalized. If contentsare possible-worlds propositions, the points of evaluation arepossible worlds. All actual judgments are then applications ofpropositions to theactual world. If contents aretemporal propositions, true or false with respect toworld-time pairs, then all actual judgments are applications to theordered pair of the actual world and a relevant time, usually the timeat which the judgment is made. This is the point with respect to whicha sentence, used in a context of utterance, has its truth value (cf.Kaplan 1989: 522). Again, the relation is general: if the content of ajudgment is a function fromindices of some type to truthvalues, then a judgment is the very step of taking the content to betrue at the actual/current index, or againapplying thecontent to that index. Theforce of an assertion, on thisview, connects the content of the assertion with the relevant index.The assertion indicates that the content istrue at theindex.

On the more social side, it is often said that in asserting aproposition the speaker “presents the proposition as true”(cf. Wright 1992: 34).Prima facie, this characterizesassertion well. However, there are problems with the idea. One is thatit should generalize to other speech act types, but does not seem todo so. For instance, does a question present a proposition as one thespeakerwould like to know the truth value of? If so, it doesnot seem that this way of presenting the proposition distinguishesbetween the interrogative force in(17a), the optative force in(17b), and the imperative force in(17c).

(17)

a.: Is Elsa at home?
b.: I would like to know whether Elsa is at home.
c.: Inform me whether Elsa is at home!

If other speech act types could be characterized in ways analogous toassertion, that would strengthen the proposal. If not, it appears tobe a weakness.

Another problem is that it remains unclear what“presenting” amounts to. It must be a sense of the worddifferent from that in which the proposition is presented as true inthe sentence

(18): The proposition that snow is white is true.

even if the sentence isnot uttered assertorically. That is,“present as true” must not refer to a feature simply ofcontent. Since there is a sense of “present assuch-and-such” thatdoes refer to representationalcontent, there is a need to specify, in a non-question-begging way,the other sense of “present” that is relevant.

In addition, there is a question of distinguishing the assertoric wayof presenting something as true from weaker illocutionaryalternatives, such as guesses and conjectures, which also in somesense present their contents as being true.

There are therefore weaker senses of “present as true”,which do not require that the presentation itself is made withassertoric force (like an obsolete label on a bottle), and thesesenses are too weak. There is clearly also a stronger sense thatdoes require assertoric force (for cases when the label istaken to apply), but that is just what we want to have(non-circularly) explained. Simply using the phrase “present astrue” does not by itself help.

Another idea for characterizing assertion in terms of truth-relatedattitudes is that assertionaims at truth. This is stated forinstance both by Bernard Williams (1966), by Michael Dummett (1973[1981]), and more recently by Marsili (2018). The notion of“aiming at truth” can be understood in rather differentways (for some ways of understanding what it could be forbelief to aim at truth, see Engel 2004 and Glüer &Wikforss 2013).^[12]

Williams (1966) characterizes assertion’s aim in differentterms. For him, the property of aiming at truth is what characterizesfact-stating discourse, as opposed to, e.g., evaluative ordirective discourse. It is natural to think of

(19): The moon is about 384.000 km from the Earth.

as stating a fact, and of

(20): Bardot is good.

as expressing an evaluation, not corresponding to any fact of thematter. On Williams’s view, to regard a sincere utterance of

(21): It is wrong to steal.

as a moralassertion, is to take arealisticattitude to moral discourse: there are moral facts, making moralstatements objectively true or false. This view again comes in twoversions. On the first alternative, the existence of moral factsrenders the discourse fact-stating, whether the speaker thinks so ornot, and the non-existence renders it evaluative, again whether thespeaker thinks so or not. On the second alternative, an utterance of(21) is an assertion if the speaker has a realistic attitude towards moraldiscourse and otherwise not.

On these views, it is assumed that truth is a substantial property(Williams 1966: 202), not a concept that can be characterized in somedeflationary way. As a consequence, the sentence

(22): “Bardot is good” is true.

is to be regarded as false, since(22) is objectively neither true nor false; there is no fact of the matter.^[13]

3.2 Cognitive models of communication

Perhaps the best way of capturing the cognitive nature of assertion isto give a theory of the cognitive features of normal communication bymeans of assertion. A classic theory is Stalnaker’s (1974,1978). Stalnaker provides a model of a conversation in which assertionand presupposition dynamically interact. On Stalnaker’s model,propositions are presupposed in a conversation if they are on recordas belonging to the common ground between the speakers. When anassertion is made and accepted in the conversation, its content isadded to the common ground, and the truth of the proposition inquestion will be presupposed in later stages. What is presupposed at agiven stage has an effect on the interpretation of new utterances madeat that stage. For Stalnaker, the common ground is a set ofpropositions. He models this with the set of worlds in which allcommon ground propositions are true, thecontext set.

In this framework Stalnaker (1978: 88–89) proposes three rulesfor assertion:

(Stal)

i.: A proposition is always true in some but not in all of thepossible worlds in the context set.
ii.: Any assertive utterance should express a proposition, relative toeach possible world in the context set, and that proposition shouldhave truth value in each possible world in the context set.
iii.: The same proposition is expressed relative to each possible worldin the context set.

Stalnaker comments on the first rule:

To assert something incompatible with what is presupposed isself-defeating […] And to assert something which alreadypresupposed is to attempt to do something that is already done.

On such an approach, the satisfaction of a presupposition is anadmittance condition of an assertion (cf. Karttunen 1974;Heim 1988). This idea connects with Austin’s more general ideaof felicity conditions of speech acts.^[14] Does Stalnaker offer an account of assertion itself? The answer isno, for the role of assertion is shared by other speech acts such asassuming andconjecturing (Stalnaker 1978: 153).What is added to the common ground is only for the purpose ofconversation, and need not be actuallybelieved by theparticipants. It is only required that it beaccepted (cf.Stalnaker 2002: 716).

Stalnaker has not (as far as we are aware) attempted to add adistinguishing feature of assertion to the model. This has, however,been attempted by Schaffer (2008), Kölbel (2011: 68–70),and Stokke (2013).^[15]

Another cognitive account is offered by Pagin (2011, 2020). Theaccount is summarized by the phrase: “an assertion is anutterance that is prima facie informative”. For an utterance tobe informative is for it to be made in part “because it istrue”. What this amounts to is different, but complementary, forspeaker and hearer. For the speaker, part of thereason forusing a particular sentence is that it is true (in context); that is,the speaker believes, with a sufficient strength, that the sentenceexpresses a true proposition, and utters it partly because of that.For the hearer, taking the utterance as informative, means, bydefault, to update their credence in the proposition as a response tothe utterance, both in the upwards direction and to a level above0.5.

Theprima facie element of the account means that the typicalproperties on the speaker and hearer side are onlydefaultproperties associated with surface features of the utterance: thedeclarative sentence type, a typical intonation pattern, etc. Thereare many possible reasons why a speaker may utter such a sentencewithout believing the proposition, and why a hearer may not adjusttheir credence in the typical manner. For example, the speaker may belying, the hearer may distrust the speaker, or may already have giventhe proposition a very high credence before the utterance. OnPagin’s picture, it is the cognitive patterns associated withsurface features, on the production and comprehension sides, thatcharacterize assertion. This way of dividing the account betweenspeaker and hearer is somewhat controversial.

Yet another cognitive account is elaborated in Jary (2010).Jary’s account is situated withinRelevance Theory, amore general account of cognition and communication. As a typicalingredient of this general framework, when an assertion is made, theproposition expressed by the utterance is presented as “relevantto the hearer” (2010: 163), where ‘relevant’ is atechnical term (Sperber & Wilson 1986 [1995: 265]).

What distinguishes assertion from other speech act types is somethingdifferent:

Assertion cannot be defined thus, though. In order for an utterance tohave assertoric force, it must also be subject to the cognitive andsocial safeguards that distinguish assertion. […] It is theapplicability of these safeguards that distinguishes assertion bothfrom other illocutionary acts and from other forms of informationtransfer. (Jary 2010: 163–164)

Social safeguards consist in sanctions against misleading assertions,while cognitive safeguards consist in the ability of the hearer to notsimply accept what is said but meta-represent the speaker asexpressing certain beliefs and intentions (2010: 160). It is part of afull account of assertion, according to Jary, that assertions aresubject to these safeguards. This also distinguishes assertions frompromises and commands, where the proposition is not presented assubject to the hearer’s safeguards; “rejection is notpresented as an option for the hearer” (2010: 73).

4. Descriptive Accounts, Hearer-Directed

Hearer-directed accounts of assertion are primarily concerned with thespeaker’s thoughts and intentions about their audience.

4.1 Self-representation

According to Frege (1918a [TFR: 329]), as noted, an assertion is anoutward sign of ajudgment (Urteil). The term“judgment” has been used in several ways. If it is used tomean eitherbelief, oract by which a belief is formed orreinforced, then Frege’s view is pretty close to the viewthat assertion is the expression ofbelief.

This idea, that assertion is the expression of belief, has a longerhistory, going back to at least Kant. How should one understand theidea of expressing here? It is natural to think of a belief state,that is, a mental state of the speaker, as causally co-responsible forthe making of the assertion. The speaker has a belief and wants tocommunicate it, which motivates an assertoric utterance. But whatabout the cases when the speaker does not believe what he asserts? Canwe still say, even of insincere assertions, that they express belief?If so, in what sense?

Within the communicative intentions tradition, Bach and Harnish haveemphasized that an assertion gives the hearerevidence forthe corresponding belief, and that what is common to the sincere andinsincere case is the intention of providing such evidence:

ForS toexpress an attitude is forS toR-intend the hearer to takeS’s utterance asreason to thinkS has that attitude. (Bach & Harnish1979: 15, italics in the original)

(‘R-intend’ is, as above, short for “reflexivelyintend”). On this view, expressing is wholly a matter ofhearer-directed intentions.

This proposal has the advantage of covering both the sincere and theinsincere case, but has the drawback of requiring a high level ofsophistication. By contrast, Bernard Williams (2002: 74) has claimedthat a sincere assertion is simply thedirect expression ofbelief, in a more primitive and unsophisticated way. Insincereassertions are different. According to Williams (2002: 74), in anassertion, the speakereither gives a direct expression ofbelief,or he intends the addressee to “take it”that he has the belief (cf. Owens 2006).

Presumably, the intention mentioned is an intention about what thehearer is to believe about the speaker. In this case the objectionthat too much sophistication is required is less pressing, since itonly concerns insincere assertions. However, Williams’s idea (asin Grice 1969) has the opposite defect of not takingmoresophistication into account. The idea, that the alternative tosincerity is the intention to make the hearer believe that the speakerbelieves what he asserts, is not general enough. For instance, thereis double bluffing, where the speaker asserts what is true in order todeceive the hearer, whom the speaker believes will expect the speakerto lie. Again, an insincere speakerS who asserts thatp mayknow that the hearerA knows thatS does not believe thatp, but may still intend tomakeA believe thatS doesnot know aboutA’s knowledge, precisely by making the assertion thatp. There is no definitive upper limit to the sophisticationof the deceiving speaker’s calculations. In addition, thespeaker may simply be stonewalling, reiterating an assertion withoutany hope of convincing the addressee of anything.

A more neutral way of trying to capture the relation between assertionand believing was suggested both by Max Black (1952) and by Davidson(1984: 268): in asserting thatp the speakerrepresents herself as believing thatp. Thissuggestion appears to avoid the difficulties with the appeal tohearer-directed intentions.

A somewhat related approach is taken by Mitchell S. Green (2007), whoappeals to “expressive conventions”. Grammatical moods canhave such conventions (2007: 150). According to Green (2007: 160), anassertion thatp invokes a set of conventions according towhich the speaker “can be represented as bearing thebelief-relation top”.

As one can represent oneself as believing, one can also representoneself as knowing. Inspired by Davidson’s proposal, Peter Unger(1975: 253–270) and Michael Slote (1979: 185) made the strongerclaim that in asserting thatp the speakerrepresentsherself as knowing that p. To a small extent this idea had beenanticipated by G. E. Moore when claiming that the speakerimplies that she knows thatp (1912 [1966: 63]).

However, it is not so clear what representing oneself amounts to. Itmust be a sense different from that in which one representstheworld as having certain features. The speaker who asserts

(23): There are black swans.

does not also claim that shebelieves that there are blackswans. It must apparently be some weaker sense of“represent”, since it isnot just a matter ofbeing, as opposed to not being, fully explicit. If I am asked what Ibelieve and I answer by uttering(23), I do represent myself as believing that there are black swans, justas I would have done by explicitly saying that Ibelieve thatthere are black swans. I do represent myself as believing that thereare black swans, equivalently with asserting that I do. What I assertthen is false if I don’t have the belief, despite the existenceof black swans.

On the other hand, it must also be stronger than the sense of“represent” by which an actor can be said to representhimself as believing something on stage. The actor says

(24): I’m in the biology department.

thereby representing himself as asserting that he is in the biologydepartment, since he represents himself as being a man who honestlyasserts that he is in the biology department. By means of that, he inone sense represents himself as believing that he is in the biologydepartment. But the audience not invited tobelieve that thespeaker, that is, the actor, has that belief.

Apparently, the relevant sense of “represent” is not easyto specify. That it nevertheless tracks a real phenomenon is oftenclaimed to be shown by Moore’s Paradox. This is the paradox thatassertoric utterances of sentences such as

(25): It is raining but I don’t believe that it is raining.

(the omissive type of Moorean sentences) are distinctly odd, and evenprima facie self-defeating, despite the fact that they maywell be true. Among the different types of account of Moore’sParadox, Moore’s own emphasizes the connection between assertingand believing. Moore’s idea (1944: 175–176; 1912 [1966:63]) was that the speaker in some senseimplies that shebelieves what she asserts. So by asserting(25) the speaker induces a contradiction between what she asserts and whatshe implies. This contradiction is then supposed to explain the oddity.^[16]

4.2 Communicative intentions

Typically, the speaker who makes an assertion has hearer-directedintentions in performing a speech act. The speaker may intendthe hearer to come to believe something or other about the speaker, orabout something else, or intend the hearer to come to desire or intendto do something. Such intentions can concern institutional changes,but need not. Intentions that are immediately concerned withcommunication itself, as opposed to ulterior goals, are calledcommunicative intentions.

The idea of communicative intentions derives from Grice’s (1957)article ‘Meaning’, where Grice defined what it is for aspeaker tonon-naturally mean something. Although Grice didnot explicitly attempt to define assertion, his ideas can bestraightforwardly transposed to provide a definition:

(Gr-A)

S asserts thatp by the utteranceu iffthere is a hearerH such that

i.: S intendsu to produce inH the beliefthatp
ii.: S intendsH to recognize thati
iii.: S intendsH to believe thatp at leastpartly for the reason thati

In the early to mid 1960s Austin’s speech act theory andGrice’s account of communicative intentions began to merge. Theconnection is discussed in Strawson 1964. Strawson inquired whetherillocutionary force could be made overt by means of communicativeintentions. He concluded that when it comes to highly conventionalizedutterances, communicative intentions are largely irrelevant, but thaton the other hand, convention does not play much role for ordinaryillocutionary types. Strawson also pointed out a difficulty withGrice’s analysis: it may be the case that all three conditions(i-iii) are fulfilled, but that the speaker intends the hearer tobelieve that they aren’t (for instance, if the speakerwants the hearer to believe thatp for reasons altogetherindependent from his making the statement).

Such intentions to mislead came to be calledsneakyintentions (Grice 1969), and they constituted a problem forspeech act analyses based on communicative intentions. The idea wasthat genuine communication is essentially open: the speaker’scommunicative intentions are meant to be fully accessible to thehearer. Sneaky intentions violate this requirement of openness, andtherefore apparently they must be ruled out one way or another.Strawson’s own solution was to add a fourth clause about thespeaker’s intention that the hearer recognize the thirdintention. However, that solution only invited a sneaky intention onelevel up (cf. Schiffer 1972: 17–42; Vlach 1981; Davis 1999).

Another solution was to make the intentionreflexive. Thiswas proposed by Searle (1969), in the first full-blown analysis ofillocutionary types made by appeal to communicative intentions. Searlecombined this with an appeal to social institutions as created byrules. We return to these insection 5.1.

Searle criticized Grice for requiring the speaker to intendperlocutionary effects, such as what the speaker shall cometo do or believe, pointing out that such intentions aren’tessential (1969: 46–7). Instead, according to Searle, thespeaker intends to beunderstood, and also intends to achievethis by means of the hearer’s recognition of this very intentionitself. Moreover, if the intention is recognized, it is alsofulfilled: “we achieve what we try to do by getting our audienceto recognize what we try to do” (Searle 1969: 47). Thisreflexive intention is formally spelled out as follows:

(Srl-I)

S utters sentenceT and means it (i.e., meansliterally what he says) =S uttersT and

a.: S intends (i-1) the utteranceU ofT toproduce inH the knowledge (recognition, awareness) that thestates of affairs specified by (certain of) the rules ofTobtain. (Call this the illocutionary effect, IE)
b.: S intendsU to produce IE by means of therecognition of i-1
c.: S intends that i-1 will be recognized in virtue of (bymeans of) H’s knowledge of (certain of) the rules governing (theelements of)T (Searle 1969: 49–50).

The illocutionary effect IE is the effect of generating the statespecified in the constitutive rule. In the case of assertion, thespeakerintends that her utterance counts as an undertakingthatp represents an actual state of affairs, depending onthe constitutive rule (cf.section 5.1).

Bach and Harnish follow Searle in appealing to reflexive communicativeintentions. On their analysis (1979: 42), assuming a speakerS and a hearerH,

(BH-A)

S asserts thatp iffS expresses

i.: the belief thatp, and
ii.: the intention thatH believe thatp.

According to Bach and Harnish’s understanding, a speakerSexpresses an attitude just in caseSR-intends (reflexively intends) the hearer to takeS’s utterance as reason to thinkS has thatattitude. They understand the reflexive nature of the intention prettymuch like Searle. They say (1979: 15) that the intended effect of anact of communication is not just any effect produced by means ofrecognition of the intention to produce a certain effect, it isthe recognition of that intention.

These appeals to reflexive intentions were later criticized, inparticular by Sperber and Wilson (1986 [1995:256–257]). Theirpoint is that if an intentionI has as sub-intentions boththe intentionJ and the intention that the hearer recognizeI, this will yield an infinitely long sequence: the intentionthat:J and the hearer recognize the intention that:J and the hearer recognize the intention that:J and…). If this is an intention content at all, it is not humanly graspable.^[17]

Apart from the communicative intentions accounts of assertion, thereare more general questions about what intentions are required of aspeaker in order for his utterance to qualify as an assertion. Forinstance, must he intend it tobe an assertion? Must it bemade voluntarily?

5. Normative Accounts, Content-Directed

5.1 Norms of assertion

Most of the discussion on assertion during the past twenty years hasconcerned norms of assertability. Simply put, philosophers aim todetermine under which conditions it is epistemically permissible (orproper, warranted, correct, appropriate) to make an assertion.

5.1.1 Modern approaches: correctness and warranted assertability

Philosophers have long been interested in analyzing what we mean whenwe characterize an assertion as “correct”,“justified”, “proper”,“warranted”, “assertible”, or“warrantedly assertible”. The latter notion was taken onboard in pragmatism, and in later forms of anti-realism. Dewey (1938)seems to have been the first to characterize truth in terms ofassertoric correctness, with his notion ofwarrantedassertibility, even though this idea had a clear affinity withthe verifiability principle of Moritz Schlick (1936). Dewey, followingPeirce, regarded truth as the ideal limit of scientific inquiry (1938:345), and a proposition warrantedlyasserted only when knownin virtue of such an inquiry. Warranted assertibility is the propertyof a proposition for which such knowledgepotentially exists(1938: 9). Dewey was later followed by, notably, Dummett (1976) andPutnam (1981). Common to them is the position that there cannot beanything more to truth than being supported by the best availableevidence. In these early discussions, the strategy was that of gettinga handle ontruth by means of an appeal to the notion of thecorrectness of an assertion, which was taken as more fundamental. OnDummett’s view, we do get a notion of truthdistinctfrom the notion of a correct assertion only because of thesemantics ofcompound sentences (1976: 50–52). Thequestion of what the correctness of an assertion consists in was notitself much discussed in earlier work, but became subject ofdiscussion already in the 1980s, with the work of Boghossian andothers.

5.1.2 Contemporary approaches: the norm of assertion

The contemporary wave of discussion about assertoric normativity isalmost exclusively content-directed; the norms concern the epistemicrelation between the speaker and the content of their assertion.^[18] Williamson (1996, 2000) initiated this debate by proposing thatassertion is governed by a singlenorm, of the format:

(N): One must: assertp only ifp hasC.

According to this hypothesis, you are entitled to assert a propositiononly if that proposition has a certain unspecified propertyC. The (N)-schema formalizes the key philosophical questionabout assertability: which epistemic propertyC that makes aproposition assertable?

Williamson’s answer is that propertyC must beknowledge, i.e., being known by the speaker. If this isright, you can properly assert only what you know: assertion isgoverned by the knowledge-norm(KNA):

(KNA): One must: assertp only if one knowsp.

(Williamson 2000: 243). (KNA) is proposed as part ofan account ofassertion. Other norms have been proposed: the most prominentalternatives are the truth norm (TNA), the justification norm (JNA)and the belief norm (BNA):

(TNA): One must: assertp only ifp.
(JNA): One must: assertp only if one is epistemically justifiedin believingp.
(BNA): One must: assertp only if one believesp.

Determining which of these norms governs assertion depends (at leastin part) on what we mean by hypothesizing that assertion is governedby a simple norm byN. In the next section (5.1.3), we clarify what philosophers typically mean when they say thatN governs assertions. In the subsequent section (5.1.4), we review the various accounts of which specific norm governsassertion (i.e., the different views as towhich propertyC makes a proposition assertable).

5.1.3 What kind of norm?

Williamson’s initial framing of the debate on the norm ofassertion takes for granted a number of assumptions: for instance,that there is a single norm, that it is constitutive of assertion,that all and only assertions are subject to it. In subsequent work,some of these assumptions have been questioned. Here we limitourselves to list each assumption (ignoring the numerous objectionsthat affect them). The interested reader will find a discussion of thecase for and against each assumption in the supplementary documentWhich Kind of Norm?.

(A1): Specificity:N applies specifically toassertion: only assertions are subject toN.
(A1*): Directness: Assertions are subject toNdirectly, qua assertions.

BySpecificity,N is a norm that regulates only onespecies of action: asserting. In this sense, it is specific toassertion. It governs the making of assertions in general, and nothingelse.Directness is closely connected toSpecificity. It clarifies that assertions are subject toN only in virtue of the fact that they are assertions.

(A2): Uniqueness: There is only one norm of assertion:assertion is only subject toN
(A2*): Indirectness: Assertions are subject to other normativestandards, but only indirectly (not in virtue of the fact that theyare assertions).

The “uniqueness assumption” holds that assertion issubject to a single norm.Indirectness specifies thatUniqueness is compatible with recognizing that there areother norms that apply to assertion, albeit only indirectly(Williamson 1996: 489). For instance, an assertion can followN (e.g., satisfy the Justification Norm JNA) and violatestandard of politeness, morality, legality, etc. UnlikeN,these other normative standards are not specific to assertion, sincethey apply also to other actions (questions, orders, as well asnon-linguistic actions).

An important corollary ofIndirectness is that whether anassertion is all-things-considered permissible or not may depend onfactors that are independent ofN. When you say somethingoffensive, or reveal a secret that you agreed to keep, you may followN and yet make an (all-things-considered) impermissibleassertion. And when you lie to save a life, you may violateNand make an assertion that is (all-things-considered) permissible.

(A3): Individuation:N uniquely identifies assertion:assertion is the only speech act that is only subject toN.

According to theIndividuation assumption, the norm ofassertion is individuating: assertion can be defined as the uniquespeech act who is subject to this unique norm (Williamson 2000: 241;Goldberg 2015: 25; Montminy 2013a). It should be emphasized here thatit isbeing subject to the norm that characterizes assertion,notconforming to the norm. An assertion that violates thenorm is still an assertion. A definition of assertion in terms of itsnorm would read as:

(D): S asserts thatp iff in sayingp,S is subject to the obligation imposed byN.

If(A3) holds, an important motivation for identifyingN is that itwill provide us with a definition of assertion. Once we determine whatN is (say, JNA), we can disambiguate the content of thisdefinition (say, “the only speech act who is only subject toJNA”).

(A4): Essentiality: Being subject toN is essential toassertion as an action type: Necessarily, assertion is subject toN.

TheEssentiality assumption goes beyondIndividuation:Individuation allows that assertionis only actually individuated byN, and that it could havebeen governed by some other norm. By contrast,(A4) holds that assertions could not exist and be governed by a differentnorm: if assertion were subject to a different norm, it would be adifferent speech act. Nothing but an assertion could violate the norm,if the(A3) and(A4) properties hold.

(A5): Permissibility:N establishes a condition forpermissible assertion:p is permissible to assert only ifp meetsC.

By(A5), an assertion is permissible (appropriate, epistemically proper,warranted, correct—depending on one’s favoriteterminology) only if it meets conditionC, and impermissibleif it does not meetC. Permission is related to the negativeevaluation of assertions: assertions who violateN areprima facie faulty, and criticizable (qua violations ofN). Permissibility only establishes what isnecessary for permissible assertion, not what issufficient.^[19]

Most theorists take for granted thatN is the“constitutive” norm of assertion, and some explicitlyadvocate(A6).^[20]

(A6): Constitutivity:N is the constitutive norm ofassertion.

However, there is substantial (and often unacknowledged) disagreementabout what constitutivity amounts to (for more the debate surroundingeach of these assumptions, see the supplementary documentWhich Kind of Norm?).

5.1.4 Which Norm of Assertion?

For the most part, the literature on norms of assertion has concernedthe question ofwhich specific norm governs assertion, andwhat are the reasons for favoring one candidate norm over another.Below, we briefly go through the main candidates from theliterature.

The knowledge norm

(KNA): One must: assertp only if one knowsp.

Over and above Williamson,(KNA) has been favored by DeRose (2002), Reynolds (2002), Adler (2002:275), Hawthorne (2004), Stanley (2005), Engel (2008), Schaffer (2008),and Turri (2010), among others.

In addition to direct intuitions about the appropriateness of specificsentences, proponents of the knowledge norm have adduced indirectevidence in the form of intuitions about conversational patterns,claiming that these patterns are best explained by the acceptance ofthe knowledge norm. Williamson himself appeals to such patterns, suchas those arising from Moorean Assertions(26), Lottery Assertions(27), and Challenges(28):

(26): It is raining, but I don’t know that it is raining.
(27): Your ticket did not win.
(28): How do you know that?

Concerning the first, Williamson (2000: 253) claims that an utteranceof(26) is just as odd as any ordinary Moorean sentence involving belief,such as(25) above. The oddity of(26) can be explained by appeal to the knowledge norm, and this is takenby supporters of(KNA) to be a datum in its favor. By(KNA),(26) is proper only if the speaker knows that the propositionexpressed by(26) is true. Since knowledge distributes over conjunction, this meansthat the speaker should know that it is raining and also that she doesnot know that it is raining. Since knowledge is factive, thisgenerates a contradiction: it follows that an assertion of(26) cannot be proper, and this explains its oddity.

Similarly,(KNA) seems well positioned to explain the oddity of asserting(27) merely on probabilistic grounds. Suppose that a (fair) lottery with alarge number of tickets has been held; only one ticket has won.B has a ticket, but neitherA norB knowsthe result.A asserts(27) on merely probabilistic grounds. Although the probability that theticket has won is very low (and one can get it arbitrarily low, shortof zero, by increasing the number of tickets in the lottery), it isintuitively incorrect forA to tell(27) toB (Williamson 2000: 246–249). No probability shortof 1 seems to authorizeA’s utterance of(27). SinceA does not know that(27) is true,(KNA) explains the unacceptability of A’s utterance.

Finally, in standard contexts, it is perfectly appropriate tochallenge an assertion with questions like(28), but(28) presupposes that the speaker knows that what she says is true.(KNA) is well positioned to explain why this presupposition is appropriate:if speakers are only entitled to assert what they know, then it iswithin the hearer’s conversational rights to assume (andpresuppose) that the speaker knows that what they say is true. Furtherconversational patterns supporting(KNA) have been proposed, e.g., by Benton (2011).

The claim that(KNA) is supported by these conversational patterns has been extensivelycriticized. The most common line is that the available data can beexplained equally well (if not better) by competing accounts. Forinstance, several authors argue that the oddity of Moorean Assertionsand Lottery Assertions can be explained by appeal to a justificationnorm.^[21] Others have noted that these conversational patterns may be explainedby appealing to more general principles, rather than assertoric normsspecifically. For instance, it has been argued that Lottery Assertionsand Moorean Assertions are improper because they violate more general(Gricean) conversational principles.^[22]

A different criticism comes from Sosa (2009), who notes that(KNA)’s explanation of Moorean assertions fails to generalize as it should,because(KNA) is unable to explain “dubious assertions”: cases in whichthe speaker assertsp while admitting that he doesn’tknow whether he knows thatp (but see Benton 2013, Montminy2013a). Finally, several authors have questioned the assumption thatit is always improper to assert that one’s ticket is a loser onpurely probabilistic grounds.^[23]

The argument from challenges like(28) is surely the least compelling. First, to meet the challenge raisedby(28), it would be sufficient for the speaker to show that she has goodreasons to believe that what she said is true (Lackey 2007:610; Kvanvig 2009: 143; McKinnon & Turri 2013). It does not seem,by contrast, that the speaker has to prove that she knows (rather thanmerely believe) that what she said is true. Second, taking theargument seriously proves too much. Consider(29):

(29): Are you sure?
(30): How can you be certain?

Since(29) and(30) are also natural ways to challenge an assertion, by the same logic,we should conclude that assertion is also governed by a certaintyrule. We could extend this to other challenges (Is that true?). So thechallenge argument doesn’t seem to show a primacy of knowledgeover alternative rules.

A general problem with the appeal to conversational patterns is thatthey don’t seem to favor specifically normative views overcorresponding non-normative views. For instance, it appears that anylinguistic phenomenon that can be explained by appeal to a knowledgenorm can be equally well explained by appeal to the view thatasserters represent themselves as knowing what they say, althoughthere is no norm (cf. Pagin 2016b; D. Black 2018). Combine this withextraneous, non-assertion-specific norms. That A’s lotteryassertion(27) is bad can then be explained by appeal to self-representation ofknowledge, together with the general moral norm that it is wrong tomislead hearers.

Many objections against(KNA) are based on the idea that its requirements are too strong. First,Gettiered assertions. Suppose that you have a justified truebelief that falls short of knowledge. For instance, you walk into acafé, look at the clock, and conclude that it’s 4.35; butyour belief is only accidentally true because (unbeknownst to you) theclock has been stuck at 4.35 for several days. If someone asks you thetime, it seems perfectly appropriate for you to respond “4.35pm”. However, by making such an assertion, you would beviolating(KNA), which intuitively speaks against it (Lackey 2007: 596; Kvanvig 2009:146–7; Coffman 2014: 36).

Similar objections arise in relation to the intuitive permissibilityofunlucky assertions: assertions that you have excellentreasons to believe to be true, but that happen to be false. Since theproblem with unlucky assertions is that(KNA) entails(TNA) (it only allows true assertions), we will discuss it below, as weconsider objections to(TNA).

Lackey objects that(KNA) fails to accommodateselfless assertions. She presentsseveral examples: one involves a teacher, Stella, who firmly believesin creationism, but is aware that the scientific consensus is thathumans evolved from apes. Stella recognizes that Darwinism issupported by stronger empirical evidence, but this is not enough toshake her firm belief in creationism. Suppose that she tells herstudents:

(31): Homo sapiens evolved from Homo erectus.

Intuitively, it would be appropriate for Stella, as a teacher, toassert(31). However,(KNA) predicts that(31) is incorrect, because Stella does not believe, and therefore does notknow, that(31) is true. Selfless assertion have generated a lively debate, mostlyinvolving attempts to explain their propriety within a(KNA)-framework (see Montminy 2013a, Turri 2015, Milić 2017).

Further objections concern so-calledunsafe assertions, wherethe speaker does know what is asserted, but would easily have made theassertion in a similar situationwithout knowledge.^[24]

A few authors who sympathize with(KNA) have emphasized the role of the hearer. Their proposals are similarto(KNA), but set the condition in relation to the transmission of knowledge tothehearer. An example is García-Carpintero (2004:156):

(KNA-T): One must: assertp only if one’s audience comesthereby to be in a position to know thatp.

Similar norms have also been proposed by Pelling (2013a) and byHinchman (2013). García-Carpintero suggests that his version ispreferable to Williamson’s because it brings out the social,communicative function of language (but see Willard-Kyle 2021 forobjections to KNA-T).^{^[25]}

The truth norm

Most alternatives to the knowledge norm that are weaker than(KNA): they require less than knowledge for proper assertion. Weiner (2005)and Whiting (2013, 2015) propose a truth norm (cf. also Alston2000):

(TNA): Assert thatp only ifp is true.

Just like the knowledge norm, the truth norm is factive: both entailthat you can assert a proposition only if it is true. This generates aproblem concerning the intuitive appropriateness ofunluckyassertions. To illustrate, imagine that you have had a cat forseveral years. During a conversation, a friend asks you if you haveany pets at home, and you reply:

(32): I have a cat at home.

Unbeknownst to you, however, some thieves broke into your house andstole everything you have, including your cat. Since you could notpossibly have foreseen the eventuality of such an absurd theft, itseems that your assertion is appropriate: in response to yourfriend’s question,(32) is simply the right thing to say. However,(KNA) and(TNA) give a different verdict: they predict that(32) is an inappropriate response. What’s more,(TNA) (but not(KNA)) predicts that the appropriate reply would have been to assert thenegation of(32), namely that you don’t have a cat at home. But again, such a“lucky assertion” would be intuitively inappropriate:since you have no reason to believe that your cat was stolen, insaying that you don’t have a pet you would be lying.^[26]

Proponents of(KNA) and(TNA) tend to concede that unlucky assertions (andGettieredassertions) are intuitively appropriate, and that lucky assertions areintuitively inappropriate. Their standard defense strategy is toinvoke some distinctions that explain away their incorrectpredictions. Williamson (2000: 256–257) suggests that makingunlucky and Gettiered assertions is reasonable, and this is whyassertions like(32) usually don’t warrant criticism. However, here the predictionthat uttering(32) is reasonable is made by general observations about rationality, andnot by(KNA) itself. If(KNA)’s job is to tell us which assertions are appropriate and which are not,it is not clear how these observations really help its case, sincethere are other norms (such as(JNA)) that are able to make this prediction without appeal to independentepistemic standards.

A parallel solution has been delineated by DeRose, who draws adistinction betweenprimary and secondary propriety. Primarypropriety is just what a rule says: when a rule prescribes tof only ifC, it is primarily proper tof ifC, and primarily improper tof if notC.Secondary propriety is dictated by whether you have reasons to thinkyou are following the rule. If youf because you reasonablybelieve thatC, butC is accidentally false, youraction is primarily improper but secondarily proper, and doesn’tdeserve blame. If youf although you reasonably believe thatC is false, butC is accidentally true, yourassertion is primarily proper but secondarily improper, anddoesn’t deserve praise. This strategy helps defend(TNA) and(KNA) against the devised counterexamples. Unlucky and Gettiered assertionsare primarily improper but secondarily proper, and that’s whythey don’t deserve blame. Lucky assertions are primarily properbut secondarily improper, and that’s why they don’tdeserve praise.

Several authors reject this distinction between primary and secondary propriety.^[27] Most of them think that this distinction is spurious. If the job ofan epistemic norm is to identify the one epistemic standardCfrom which it is appropriate to assert, then it is not clear thatappealing to secondary propriety, epistemic excuses or reasonablenessis a legitimate move, given that more economic alternatives areavailable. Reasonably thinking that you are inC (secondarilyfollowing the rule) is itself an epistemic state; if being in such astate epistemically entitles you to assert, such permissibility shouldbe built into the norm.^[28]

Accepting the distinction between primary and secondary proprietyinduces a problem for the intuitive support for the various theories.A large part of the intuitions that serve to support one or the othernorm theory relies on raw intuitions about what one should orshouldn’t assert in some situation, or what is proper orimproper to assert there. If there are several ways an assertion canbe proper or improper, then it is not easy to see which concept ofpropriety is being tracked by these intuitions. The idea is that aparticular intuition that seems to disconfirm a particular normativetheory can be explained away by saying that it does not in fact trackthe primary propriety, but instead only some secondary propriety.Since intuitions don’t come labeled as “primary” and“secondary”, there is a risk of a substantialunderdetermination of theory by data (stressed by Pagin 2016b): twotheorists need not agree about whether or not an intuition about aparticular case supports a certain theory.

A problem persists even if we reject the primary/secondarydistinction. As noted, everyone agrees that assertions are governed byvarious norms: moral, prudential, conversational, rules of etiquette.When does an intuition track the intended notion of a properassertion, and when something else altogether? Kvanvig (2011: 235) andEngel (2008: 52–54) have drawn attention to this. According toKvanvig, intuitions typically concern whether assertions areall-things-considered appropriate. But an assertion may be“all-things-considered appropriate” without being“epistemic appropriate” (or the other way around). Sincewe do not have a reliable method for telling apart intuitions about“overall appropriateness” from intuitions about“epistemic appropriateness”, it is often unclear to whichextent a given set of intuitions supports or undermines a given theory(cf. Hawthorne & Stanley 2008: 585–6). To address thisproblem, Greenberg (2020) proposes to reframe the debate in terms ofepistemic norms constraining action, rather than assertion.

Complex refinements of(TNA) have been proposed, too. MacFarlane (2014: 103) adopts a truth norm,but requires it to be qualified as beingreflective. Thismeans, in the context of MacFarlane’srelativism, thatthe proposition should be true in the context of utterance, asassessed fromthe same context of utterance.^[29] According to MacFarlane, the truth norm needs to be complemented by aretraction rule that enjoins the speaker to retract theassertion if it turns out not be true (cf. Dummett 1991: 165), in acontext of assessment:

(RNA): Retract an (unretracted) assertion if it turns out not to betrue.

This rule is also stated in the context of MacFarlane’srelativism, with respect to a context of use and a context ofassessment. According to the resulting view, assertion is governedjointly by the (reflective) truth norm and the retraction rule.Rescorla (2009a), who defends a commitment account of assertion (seesection 6.1), argues there is no norm at all for propermaking ofassertions. There are only norms that govern later reactions. Heproposes three alternatives to(RNA), which share the idea that when a speaker is challenged with respectto an assertion he has made, he must either defend the assertion orelse retract it (Rescorla 2009a: 103–105; cf. Rescorla2009b).

The justification norms

Several authors have argued that assertability requires justification,rather than belief or knowledge. A standard formulation would be:

(JNA): Assert only that for which you have proper justification.

What “justification” is taken to refer to varies betweenauthors. Douven (2006, 2009) and Lackey (2007, 2008) argue for a normofrational belief. Note that(JNA) does not require that youbelieve what you say: all that itrequires is that it is (or would be)rational for you tobelieve it. As such,(JNA) classifiesselfless assertions (which are disbelieved, butrational to believe) as appropriate, a prediction that Lackey (2007)takes to be a crucial advantage of(JNA).

Different conversational contexts may require different degrees ofjustification. For instance, suppose that you are serving your frienda curry that you just defrosted. You remember that you prepared it fora vegan dinner over a month ago, but you’re not absolutely sure.If your friend has a mild dislike for cheese,(33) may be an appropriate thing to say; not so much if your friend has adeadly allergy to lactose:

(33): There is no cheese in this curry.

To accommodate this sort of intuitions, some authors have proposedcontext-sensitive versions of(JNA). Gerken (2012, 2014, 2017) says that an assertion must be based“on a degree of discursive justification for believing thatp that is adequate” relative to the conversationalcontext. He also argues that the notion of justification is bestunderstood in internalist terms: a speaker assertingp isjustified only if they would be able to consciously articulate theirreasons in support ofp. McKinnon (2013, 2015) also defends aversion of(JNA) that is context-sensitive. She argues that one may assert thatp only if (i) the speaker has supportive reasons forp, and (ii) the relevant conventional and pragmatic elementsof the context of assertion are present. On this view, the pragmaticfeatures of the context have an effect on which epistemic support isneeded. Pragmatic features can regard thestakes involved(how much depends practically on the truth of what is asserted) orpedagogical requirements (in case the speaker is a teacherwho is required to teach what is rational to believe; McKinnon 2015:Section 4.4).

If justification comes in degrees, perhaps some propositions are moreassertable than others. According to an influential view (Jackson1974, 565, cf. Lewis 1976, 297), the degree to which a proposition isassertable is a function of its probability. But Sam Carter (2022)shows that this view makes systematically incorrect predictions. Hesuggests that assertability is a matter ofnormality instead:“assertingp is more appropriate than assertingq, for a speaker in evidential state E, iff amongst theworlds compatible with E,p is more normal thanq” (in turn, normality has to do with what iscompatible with our evidence-based expectations; cf. Carter 2022:§5 for a formal definition).

(JNA) does not explicitly forbid insincere assertions (assertions that arebelieved to be false). Some find this feature unattractive, and preferto amend(JNA) so as to introduce a belief-requirement, as in(JBNA):

(JBNA): Assert thatp only if you justifiably believe thatp.

Since(JBNA) requires both justification and belief, it entails that both(JNA) and(BNA) are true. But how should we characterizejustification forthe purpose of this more demanding norm? For Kvanvig (2009, 2011), therelevant notion is knowledge-level justification: “the kind [ofjustification] that is sufficient for knowledge in the presence ofungettiered true belief” (2009: 156); a stronger version of thisrequirement (would-be-knowledge) is defended by Coffman (2014).

A datum that justification rules may have trouble explaining is thewrongness of false assertions. There seems to be something inherentlydefective about false assertions, and there is clearly a sense inwhich true, justified assertions are more valuable than false, equallyjustified ones. But(JNA) and(JBNA) have no resources to explain what is defective about falsity. Inresponse, Marsili (2018) notes that proponents of non-factive accountscan avail themselves of the notion of an assertion’s aim: whenwe make an assertion, we purport to describe the world as it is; ourassertion’s purported goal is met only if the assertion is true.On this view, false assertions are not impermissible, but are stilldefective, because they fail to meet their purported aim.

There are views that come very close to justification rules. Maitraand Weatherson (2010: 112) propose what they callThe EvidenceResponsiveness Rule: that one assert thatp only ifone’s attitude towardsp is properly responsive to theevidence (they also propose to complement it with anactionrule, that it is proper to assert thatp only if actingas ifp is “the thing for you to do”). Smithies(2012) defends the view thatp is assertable only if you havea justification to believe that you are in a position to know thatp (cf. Koethe 2009, Rosenkranz 2023). This version of(JNA) restores a guiding normative role for knowledge, while accommodatingmany of the intuitions that motivate a preference for(JNA) or(KNA) (for a critique, see M. Smith 2012).

Other proposals

Belief norms are the weakest norms on the market:

(BNA): Assert only what you believe.

The belief norm is explicitly stated by Bach (2008: 77). If onesubstitutes ‘say’ for ‘assert’, this is closeto a reformulations of Grice’s second submaxim of Quality(“Do not say what you believe to be false” (Grice 1989:27). Hindriks (2007) holds the related view that the norm of assertionderives from the norm of belief.

Intuitively,(BNA) is too permissive: it allows us to assert whatever we believe, evenif we have no evidence but a hunch to support our claim. To explainaway this prediction, advocates of(BNA) typically add that while(BNA) is the only norm that is specific to assertion (and regulatesassertion directly, cf.(A1) and(A2)), it is not theonly norm that regulates it. Since assertionsnecessarily express a belief, andappropriate belief (and/orpractical action) is allegedly governed by a knowledge-norm,(KNA) ultimately determines which assertions all-things-consideredappropriate (Hindriks 2007; Bach 2008; Montminy 2013a).

All the alternatives to the knowledge norm considered so far requireless than knowledge for proper assertion. A strongerrequirement has been suggested by Stanley (2008):

(EC-A): Assert only what is epistemically certain.

Here one is epistemically certain of a propositionp

if and only if one knows thatp (or is in a position to knowthatp) on the basis of evidence that gives one the highestdegree of justification for one’s belief thatp. (2008:35)

According to Stanley, since the certainty norm requires more than justknowledge, everything that can be explained by appeal to the knowledgenorm can also be explained by appeal to the certainty norm.^[30]

Goldberg (2015) argues that the norm of assertion hypothesis canexplain why we have a (pro tanto) epistemic entitlement believe whatwe are told. He identifies some requirements that are needed to meetthis desideratum. One is that the norm of assertion is robustlyepistemic, and strong enough to warrant testimonial belief (2015: 96).Another is that it must becommon knowledge between speakerand hearer that the speaker’s assertion is subject to this norm.A further requirement (2015: 8) is that the speakerauthorizes the hearer to defer back to the speaker theresponsibility of meeting challenges to the assertion. Together, theseassumptions should be able to explain why beliefs based on testimonyare pro tanto justified.

Experimental evidence

Most authors who write about the norm of assertion appeal to their ownintuitions. However, this is an area where experimental data is highlyrelevant. If the aim is to describe a real-word communicative act,rather than a purely idealized philosopher’s construct, itfollows a good theory of assertion should make predictions that areconsistent with our actual practice: it should deem appropriate theassertions that ordinary speakers deem appropriate, and inappropriatethe ones that they criticize as inappropriate. If this is right,competing accounts can be tested empirically against the intuitions ofcompetent speakers of the language.

Empirical research on the norm of assertion was initiated by Turri.His (2013) study aims to determine whether people’sassertability judgments are better predicted by a factive norm, like(KNA) or(TNA), or a non-factive one, like(JNA) or(BNA). Turri reports the results of six experiments, primarily investigatingjudgments about unlucky assertions (false assertions that the speakerreasonably believes to be true). In the first experiment, Mariaincorrectly thinks that she has a 1990 Rolex in her watch collection,because this is what her inventory says. When a friend asks Maria ifshe has that particular Rolex, participants are asked: “ShouldMaria tell her guest that she has a 1990 Rolex in hercollection?” [Yes/No]. Participants overwhelmingly selected thenegative option (No), even when different factors were manipulated(the control questions, what is at stake, the response options, etc.),apparently providing robust evidential support for factive accounts.Turri has since conducted several more studies, accumulating animpressive body of evidence supporting factive accounts of assertionin general and the knowledge-norm in particular (for a review, seeTurri 2017), including studies on other potential counterexamples to(KNA), likeselfless assertions (2015a), andGettieredassertions (2016).

It seemed that the debate was settled in favor of the knowledge rule,until new studies came out that pointed in the opposite direction.Reuter and Brössel (2019) argue that two factors likely skewedthe results in favor of factive accounts in Turri’s (2013)seminal study. First, the protagonist (Maria) has a defeater againsther belief: she isaware that her inventory is occasionallymistaken. Second, participants were asked what Mariashouldsay, but it would seem more appropriate to ask whether her assertionwaspermissible. Manipulating these factors reverted theresults: a majority of participants gave responses aligning withnon-factive accounts. The authors then conducted new experimentsinvolving bothlucky assertions (true, but not justified) andunlucky assertions (false, but justified), finding that(JNA) was reliably a better predictor of assertability than any of itsfactive rivals (TNA,KNA).

Kneer (2017) also found solid evidence that(JNA) is a better predictor of assertability judgments than(KNA),TNA, and(BNA). In a first experiment, he testedGettiered assertions andunlucky assertions, measuring assertability with differentprompts: he asked whether the protagonist “should sayp”, whether she “is permitted to sayp”, and if sayingp is“appropriate”. In both theGettiered conditionand theunlucky condition, the overwhelming majority ofparticipants consideredp assertable, but not known. Kneerconcludes that “knowledge quite clearly doesn’t constitutethe norm of assertion”. The other experiments were thereforedesigned to verify whether(JNA)makes more reliable predictions. Experiments 2 and 3 found robust evidencethat(JNA)is a better predictor of assertability judgments than(KNA), both inGettier assertions andunlucky assertions,even when different factors (like the response options or the kind ofepistemic support) are manipulated. Experiment 4 shows that(JNA)is a better predictor of assertability judgments than(BNA): people judge that “having a hunch” thatp istrue is not good enough ground to assertp. Like Reuter andBrössel, Kneer concludes that(JNA), rather than(KNA), is better supported by the empirical evidence. In a subsequent study,Kneer (2021) found that these results are stable across differentcultures.

These results are at odds with the initial findings by Turri andcolleagues. Given the contrasting data available, how can we determinewhich account is best supported by empirical evidence? To answer thisquestion, Marsili and Wiegmann (2021) note that, in all theirdifferences, Turri’s studies share a central methodologicalaspect: they explore laypeople intuitions by asking a sample ofsubjects to judge what a particular agentshould do in agiven scenario,before the protagonist makes the assertion;Kneer, Reuter and Brössel adopt instead different prompts andtense structures. Marsili and Wiegmann argue that the divergentresults are the predictable bi-product of a flaw in the questioningmethod employed in the former set of studies. They note that“should” can be interpreted in two ways:teleologically (or instrumentally), when it indicates whatyou should do to achieve your aims, anddeontologically, whenit indicates what you should do to live up to some norms orobligations. The authors found experimental evidence that participantsin Turri’s studies interpreted the test questionsteleologically, which undermines a factive interpretation of theresults. Furthermore, they identify measures that can be introduced toprompt the intended (deontological) reading of the test question,finding that when these measures are implemented into Turri’svignettes, participants’ judgments overwhelmingly align withnon-factive views like(JNA).

It would therefore seem that the latest studies have tipped the scalein favor of non-factive views like(JNA). However, further research will be needed to settle the disagreementon empirical grounds.

5.2 Conventions

Austin held that illocutionary acts as opposed to perlocutionary actsareconventional, in the sense that they can be made explicitby the so-called performative formula (Austin 1962: 103). According toAustin, one can say “I argue that” or “I warn youthat” but not “I convince you that” or “Ialarm you that”. Presumably, the idea was that a speech act typeis conventional just if there exists a convention by which anutterance of a sentence of a certain kind ensures (if uptake issecured) that a speech act of that type is performed. Austin probablythought that in virtue of the performative formulas this condition ismet by illocutionary but not by perlocutionary act types.

The more general claim that illocutionary force is correlated byconvention with sentence type has been advocated by Dummett (1973[1981: 302, 311]). On this view, it is a convention that declarativesentences are used for assertion, interrogative for questions andimperative for commands and requests. Similar views have been putforward by Searle (1969) and Kot’átko (1998), and theidea has been more recently defended by Kölbel (2010). Accordingto Searle (1969: 38, 40), illocutionary acts are conventional, and theconventions in question govern the use of so-called force-indicatingdevices (Searle 1969: 64) specific to each language.^[31]

However, the view that illocutionary acts types are conventional inthis sense has met with much opposition. Strawson (1964:153–154) objected early on that ordinary illocutionary acts canbe performed without relying on any convention to identify the force,for instance when using a declarative sentence like “The iceover there is very thin” for a warning. This kind of criticism,directed against Dummett, has later been reinforced by Robert J.Stainton (1996, 2006), stressing that in appropriate contexts,sub-sentential phrases like “John’s father”(pointing at a man) or “very fast” (looking at a car) canbe used to make assertions, and gives linguistic arguments why not allsuch uses can be treated as cases of ellipsis (that is, as cases ofleaving out parts of a well-formed sentence that speaker and hearertacitly aware of). If Strawson and Stainton are right, conventionisn’t necessary for making assertions.

Moreover, Davidson (1979, 1984) stressed that no conventional signcould work as a force indicator in this sense, since any conventionalsign could be used (and would be used) in insincere utterances, wherethe corresponding force was missing, including cases of deception,jokes, impersonation and other theatrical performances. Basically thesame point is made by Bach and Harnish (1979: 122–127). IfDavidson, and Bach and Harnish are right, then conventions are alsonot sufficient (but see Kölbel 2010 for an argument against thisview).

Williamson (1996, 239) has argued that that speech acts defined byconstitutive rules (like assertion, in his own view) cannot beconventional. However, García-Carpintero (2019) has shown thatthis position is controversial. The situation is complicated by thefact that the general question of when a convention, or rule of anykind, isin force for a speaker, is substantial and complex(for more on the relation of assertion to convention, Green2020a).

6. Normative Accounts, Hearer-Directed

6.1 Commitment

Making an assertion has normative consequences. To characterize thesocial dimension of assertion, some authors focus on the distinctiveresponsibilities (“commitments”^[32]) that a communicator takes on when they claim that something is thecase. We shall begin by reviewing two main ways to understand whatassertoric commitment is.

A first view, that we may call “commitment asaccountability”, focuses on thesanctions that speakersaccept to face if what they claimed turns out to be false. Thischaracterization of assertion was first developed by Peirce:

an act of assertion […] renders [the speaker] liable to thepenalties of the social law (or, at any rate, those of the moral law)in case [the asserted proposition] should not be true, unless he has adefinite and sufficient excuse. ([CP]: 2.315)

William P. Alston (2000: 55) presents the idea as follows: a speakeraccepts responsibility for a contentp being true iff thespeaker

knowingly [takes] on the liability to ([lay] herself open to) blame(censure, reproach, being taken to task, being called to account), incase of not-p.^[33]

The notion ofliability at play here is normative: when youassert thatp, your audience acquires a (defeasible) right tocriticize you if what you say is false. On this view, to assert isakin to signing a contract by means of which you take responsibilityfor something (what you said) being true, and accept to pay theconsequences otherwise.^[34]

To emphasize this, some authors write that assertionsguarantee (Peirce [CP]: 5.543; Watson 2004: 66),assure (Moran 2005, Hinchman 2013) orwarrant(Carson 2006) that their content is true. However, it is not obviousthat what assertions guarantee is that their content istrue.It may be that an assertor instead accepts the responsibility forbeingjustified in believing that one knows that theproposition is true (Green 2009), or that theyknow that theproposition is true.

An alternative way to characterize the responsibilities generated byassertions is to focus on what the speakeris expected to do,in virtue of making an assertion. Assertoric responsibility can beunderstood as a commitmentto act in a certain way. When youmake an assertion, you generate an expectation that you will behave incertain ways and not in others, especially in relation to what youwillsay next.^[35] To take a simple example, once you assert thatp, it becomesinappropriate for you to make statements that blatantly contradictp (Hamblin 1970b), or to behave in ways that are sharply atodds with acceptingp as true (Geurts 2019).^[36]

Furthermore, making an assertion commits you to respond topeople’s questions and challenges in certain ways, as theconversation evolves. Brandom (1994: 173–175) emphasizes this,and argues that asserting achieves two different social results at thesame time: (i) it commits the speaker to defend her claim in responsetolegitimate challenges; and relatedly (ii)authorizes the hearer to claim anything that follows fromwhat the speaker asserted. MacFarlane (2003: 14 [Other Internet References]) summarizes (and revises) the underlying idea as follows:

To assert a sentenceS (at a contextU) is(inter alia) to commit oneself to providing adequate groundsfor the truth ofS (relative toU), in response toany appropriate challenge, or (when appropriate) to defer thisresponsibility to another asserter on whose testimony one is relying.One can escape this commitment only by withdrawing the assertion.

Several technical notions are at play here. One is the notion ofchallenge. To challenge an assertion is to question itsveracity (or, at least, the speaker’s entitlement to make theassertion). An interlocutor can challenge an assertion by means ofquestions, such as (Q), or explicit denials, like (D):

(Q): How do you know that?
(D): That’s not true!

Challenges like (Q) and (D) are usually appropriate, but not always.For instance, they may be inappropriate if in the conversaation it isalready settled that what the speaker said is true.^[37] Asserting only commits you to respond toappropriatechallenges – or else retract your assertion (on norms ofretraction, seesection 5.1.4.)

It is often argued that there is a whole family of speech acts(“assertives” or “representatives”) that“commit the speaker (to varying degrees) to something’sbeing the case” (Searle 1979: 12): illocutionary acts such aswarning, denying, reminding, arguing, deducing, and so forth.These speech acts differ in the strength of the commitments theygenerate (e.g.,swearing thatp involves a strongercommitment than plain assertion), and in the conditions required fortheir felicitous performance (e.g., warning aboutp is onlyappropriate ifp involves a risk or danger for theinterlocutor). If a speech act involves a stronger commitment thanassertion and/or extra felicity conditions, we can say that it is“stronger” than assertion. Searle and Vanderveken (1985)note that whenever you perform the stronger speech act, you have alsomade an assertion. For example, it would not be incorrect to report(34) or(35) by saying that the speaker hasclaimed,asserted,oraffirmed that she is a certified forklift operator:

(34): I swear that I am a certified forklift operator.
(35): I warn you that I am a certified forklift operator.

If this is right, the term “assertion” does not designatea single illocutionary act, but rather a class of them: it denotesevery speech act that is normatively stronger than (or equal to)assertion. This seems to lose track of a narrower meaning of the term“assertion”, one that sets plain assertions apart fromstronger assertives. A strategy to rescue this narrow meaning whileacknowledging assertion’s close ties with other assertives isfound in Green (2013, 2017, 2020b: 8). Green, (like Brandom)understands commitment as a responsibility to defend your claim, andargues that an assertion commits you to a greater justificatory burdenthan weaker assertives, and lesser than stronger assertives (for analternative, like-minded solution, Marsili 2015: 123–127).Labinaz (2018) outlines some difficulties for extending the Brandomianframework to assertive speech acts, and proposes to adopt analternative approach to degrees of commitment that rather owes to thework of Austin (cf. also Labinaz & Sbisà 2014:§3).

We have seen that assertions differ from other speech acts in terms ofthe commitments that they engender. It has also been noted thatassertions themselves can differ in terms of the commitments that theygenerate: not all assertions generate commitment of the samestrength.

Using expressions like “I think thatA isB”, “Probably/PerhapsA isB”, or “A is quiteB”, aspeaker canmitigate their assertion thatA isB. And using intensifiers like “I know thatAisB”, “SurelyA isB”,or “A is absolutelyB”, the speaker canstrengthen orboost their assertion thatAisB. These expressions modulate thedegree of thecommitment engendered by the assertions in which they occur: they canbe used to undertakemore orless responsibilitytowards the content of the assertion, and more generally to modulatethe force and of the resulting speech act.^[38]

The commitments generated by assertions have often been compared tothose generated by promises. For instance, by saying(36) to a friend, a speaker will typically commit herself to calling therepair shop at 8.

(36): I promise to call the repair at 8.

In a standard context, as a result of uttering(36), both the speaker and the addressee will regard the speaker as havingincurred an obligation to the addressee.

In the literature, the standard view is that assertions and promisesgenerate commitments of different kinds, so that they belong todifferent families (e.g., Searle 1969, 1979). The relation betweenasserting and promising is discussed in detail in Watson (2004), whointroduces a distinction betweenprimary andsecondary commitments. Assertions and promises differ in theprimary commitments that they generate. When you promise toφ, your primary commitment is to (intend to) act so as tomakeφ happen. By contrast, when you assert thatp, your primary commitment is to facts that are independentof your actions: namely, for Watson, thedefensibility ofp (Watson 2004: 68). Furthermore, both assertions andpromises also involve a secondary commitment to act in certain ways“if one is queried or if things go wrong” (2004: 67). Thespeaker’s commitment to defend the assertion if challenged is onthis view a secondary commitment, that follows from the primary one(2004: 70).

Some authors maintain a stronger connection between promising andasserting. Marsili (2016) argues that promising that you willφ “illocutionary entails” asserting that youwillφ. The idea is that promises behave like the“strong assertives” discussed above (swearing, confessing,guaranteeing, etc.), whose performance commits the speaker to havingmade an assertion. For instance, if Pepa utters(36), it would be appropriate to say that Pepa hasasserted,affirmed orclaimed that she will call the repair shop.And if Pepa does not believe that she will call the repair shop, itwould be appropriate to say that Pepa has lied. In this sense,promising that you will do something entails asserting that you willdo it.^[39]

Hawley (2019) also draws a strong connection between asserting andpromises, but in the opposite direction: she analyses assertion interms of promising (cf. also Carson 2006). Hawley suggests thatwhenever you make an assertion aboutp, you also promise tospeak truthfully as to whetherp. This means that wheneveryou assert, your promise to speak truthfully is simultaneously madeand either fulfilled or broken (depending on whether you are speakingtruthfully or not). However, this view has trouble explaining animportant difference between asserting and promising: assertions canbe mitigated (“Maybe I will do it” is perfectly fine) butpromises cannot (“I promise that maybe I will do it” isnot a genuine promise).

Commitment-making is central to some “mixed” accounts ofassertion—that is, accounts that incorporate insights fromdifferent theories of assertion. For Peirce, commitment is central toassertion, but not alone in characterizing it. In his view, assertingalso involves belief-expression: it “consists in the furnishingof evidence by the speaker to the hearer that the speaker believessomething” (Peirce [CP]: 2.335). Furthermore, for Peirceassertion is necessarily accompanied by an intention to convince thehearer: “every assertion involves an effort to make the intendedinterpreter believe what is asserted” (Peirce [CP]: 5.547). Inshort, Peirce’s view is that in asserting thatp, youattempt to convince your audience thatp is true by providingthem with evidence that you believe thatp, thereby becomingcommitted to (i.e., accountable for) the truth ofp.^[40]

Another mixed account is defended by Searle (1969) (cf. also Searle1975b: 322 and Searle & Vanderveken 1985). Searle’scharacterization of assertion varies slightly throughout his writings,but the central idea is that assertion can be identified on the basisof its distinctive rules—the rules for uttering an assertion“successfully” and “non-defectively” (i.e.,felicitously). They are presented as rules for the use offorce-indicating devices (Searle 1969: 62–4). The rules can besummarized as follows. HereS is the speaker andHthe hearer:

(Searle)

1.: The propositional content rule: what is to be expressed is anypropositionp
2.: First preparatory rule:S has evidence (reasons etc.) forthe truth ofp.
3.: Second preparatory rule: It is not obvious to bothS andH thatH knows (does not need to be reminded of,etc.)p.
4.: Sincerity rule:S believesp.
5.: Constitutive rule: Counts as an undertaking to the effect thatp represents an actual state of affairs.

The fifth rule is the crucial one, and is held to beconstitutive of assertion. Searle contrasts constitutiverules with regulative rules.^[41] Constitutive rules, according to Searle, are like definitions: theydefine what it is to engage in a certain activity: for instance,“attacking the king in such a way that no move will leave itunattacked counts as checkmate” (Searle 1969: 33).

Searle seems to adopt a notion of “commitment” thatinvolves both a responsibility to respond to challenges (à laBrandom) and a liability to sanctions (à la Peirce): theassertor is expected to “be able to provide reasons for theoriginal statement […] and can be held publicly responsible ifit turns out to be false” (Searle 2010: 82). Like Peirce, alsoSearle (1969: 65) integrates commitment with belief-expression: thespeaker expresses the state required by the sincerity rule, i.e., inthe case of assertion, whose sincerity rule is (4), the speakerexpresses a belief. Finally, the speaker implies that the preparatoryconditions are met—so that Searle’s view has the oddconsequence that in assertingp, you imply thatp isnot obviously true.

A third “mixed” account is defended by Green (1999, 2000,2007, 2013, 2017, 2020a). Green distinguishes three differentnormative notions in terms of which assertions (and other assertivespeech acts) can be characterized:

Fidelity
Liability
Frankness

The first component,fidelity, tracks commitment: one’sresponsibility to respond to legitimate challenges. More specifically,for Green, beingassertorically committed top meansbeing responsible to provide “strong justification ifchallenged” (2017). Here “strong” is used incontrast to weaker assertives, like conjectures, for performing whichis sufficient to be able to providesome (non-conclusive)justification if challenged.

The second component isliability to error:

one who asserts thatP is liable to be right or wrong on theissue ofP’s truth exactly asP turns out tobe true or false. (2020a: 350)

This is a feature that assertion has in common with weaker assertives:also in guessing or hypothesizing thatp, you may be right orwrong depending on whetherp is actually true. This relatesto Dummett’s idea that “an assertion is a kind of gamblethat the speaker will not be proved wrong” (1976: 84).

The third component,frankness, has to do with sincerity:“assertion is sincere just in case the speaker believes thecontent she has asserted” (Green 2020a: 350). This requirementsets assertion aside from other assertives (such as educated guessesand conjectures) that do not require belief for sincere performance(but rather, e.g., some reasons to think the content true).

A full account of assertion has to provide necessary andsufficient conditions for asserting. But is commitment towhat you say sufficient for asserting? That is, if you say thatp and thereby also commit to the truth ofp, does itfollow that you have asserted thatp? Pagin (2004) offers anegative response. The reason is that one can construct an utterancetype that isn’t assertoric, but that would be assertoricaccording to envisaged sufficiency view. A simple example is givenby

(37): I hereby commit myself to the truth of the proposition that thereare black swans.

Whoever utters(37) felicitously incurs a commitment to the truth of the proposition thatthere are black swans. However, intuitively(37) would not be an assertion that there are black swans; at most, it isa declaration of the speaker’s intent to be committed to thatproposition. What is said here does not entail that there are blackswans (it may be accurate even if there are no black swans). If thisis right, then incurring a commitment is not sufficient for asserting.This objection puts pressure on any “hearer-directed”account, including all the ones discussed in section 4, becauseparallel constructions can be derived from any hearer-directed view;for instance (against belief-expression views) by letting the speakerdeclare that she is representing herself as believing a givenproposition.

Some authors have questioned whether this test really underminescommitment accounts of assertion (and social accounts more generally).Pegan (2009) argues that the counterexamples can be blocked bycarefully amending the theory; see Pagin (2009) for a response.MacFarlane (2011) and García-Carpintero (2013) suggest that ifwe distinguish betweenwhat is said andwhat isasserted, we can regard(37) as an assertion that all swans are black. Marsili & Green (2021)argue that this sort of test is unreliable, questioning some keyassumptions needed for(37) to work as a counterexample. They acknowledge, nonetheless, thatassertions are not fully reducible to their social effects.

Bibliography

Adler, Jonathan E., 2002,Belief’s OwnEthics, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Alston, William P., 2000,IllocutionaryActs and Sentence Meaning, Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress.
Antonsen, Paal, 2018,“Scorekeeping”,Analysis, 78(4): 589–595.doi:10.1093/analys/anx145
Austin, John Langshaw, 1956 [1979],“Performative Utterances”, corrected transcript of anunscripted radio talk delivered in the Third Programme of the BBC.Reprint in hisPhilosophical Papers, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1961, 220–239; third edition, 1979,233–252. doi:10.1093/019283021X.003.0010
–––, 1962 [1975],How toDo Things with Words, James O. Urmson (ed.), Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press; based on his 1955 William James Lectures atHarvard; second edition, James O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà(eds.), 1975.
Bach, Kent, 1994, “ConversationalImpliciture”,Mind & Language, 9(2): 124–162.doi:10.1111/j.1468-0017.1994.tb00220.x
–––, 2008, “ApplyingPragmatics to Epistemology”,Philosophical Issues, 18:68–88. doi:10.1111/j.1533-6077.2008.00138.x
Bach, Kent and R. M. Harnish, 1979,Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts, Cambridge, MA: MITPress.
Baghramian, Maria and J. Adam Carter,2020, “Relativism”, inThe Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy (Fall 2020), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/relativism/>
Begby, Endre, 2020, “The Knowledge Normof Assertion in Dialectical Context”,Ratio, 33(4):295–306. doi:10.1111/rati.12261
Bellucci, Francesco, 2019, “Peirce on Assertion and OtherSpeech Acts”,Semiotica, 2019(228): 29–54.doi:10.1515/sem-2018-0081
Benton, Matthew A., 2011, “Two More forthe Knowledge Account of Assertion”,Analysis, 71(4):684–687. doi:10.1093/analys/anr085
–––, 2013, “DubiousObjections from Iterated Conjunctions”,PhilosophicalStudies, 162(2): 355–358.doi:10.1007/s11098-011-9769-3
–––, 2016, “GriceanQuality”,Noûs, 50(4): 689–703.doi:10.1111/nous.12065
Blaauw, Martijn and Jeroen de Ridder, 2012,“Unsafe Assertions”,Australasian Journal ofPhilosophy, 90(4): 797–801.doi:10.1080/00048402.2011.641573
Black, Dylan, 2019, “A Non-NormativeAccount of Assertion”,Ratio, 32(1): 53–62.doi:10.1111/rati.12210
Black, Max, 1952, “The Identity ofIndiscernibles”,Mind, 61(242): 153–164.doi:10.1093/mind/LXI.242.153
Bonalumi, Francesca, Thom Scott-Phillips,Julius Tacha, and Christophe Heintz, 2020, “Commitment andCommunication: Are We Committed to What We Mean, or What WeSay?”,Language and Cognition, 12(2): 360–384.doi:10.1017/langcog.2020.2
Borg, Emma, 2012,Pursuing Meaning,Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588374.001.0001
–––, 2019, “ExplanatoryRoles for Minimal Content”,Noûs, 53(3):513–539. doi:10.1111/nous.12217
Brandom, Robert, 1983, “Asserting”,Noûs, 17(4): 637–50.
Brandom, Robert, 1994,Making itExplicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brock, Jarrett E, 1981,“An Introduction to Peirce’sTheory of Speech Acts”.Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society. A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy,17(4): 319–26
Brogaard, Berit, 2014, “IntellectualFlourishing as the Fundamental Epistemic Norm”. In C. Littlejohn& J. Turri (2014), 11–31.
Brogaard, Berit and Dimitria Electra Gatzia, 2017,“Introduction: Epistemic Modals”,Topoi, 36(1):127–130. doi:10.1007/s11245-016-9374-3
Brown, Jessica, 2008, “The Knowledge Normfor Assertion”,Philosophical Issues, 18: 89–103.doi:10.1111/j.1533-6077.2008.00139.x
–––, 2010, “Knowledgeand Assertion”,Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch, 81(3): 549–566.doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00369.x
–––, 2011, “Fallibilismand the Knowledge Norm for Assertion and Practical Reasoning”,in Brown and Cappelen 2011: 153–174.
–––, 2012, “Assertionand Practical Reasoning: Common or Divergent EpistemicStandards?”,Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,84(1): 123–157. doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00432.x
Brown, Jessica and Herman Cappelen (eds.), 2011,Assertion:New Philosophical Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199573004.001.0001
Caffi, Claudia, 1999, “OnMitigation”,Journal of Pragmatics, 31(7):881–909. doi:10.1016/S0378-2166(98)00098-8
Cappelen, Herman, 2011, “AgainstAssertion”, in Brown and Cappelen 2011: 21–47.
–––, 2020,“Assertion: A Defective Theoretical Category”, in Goldberg2020: 137–155. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.6
Carson, Thomas L., 2006, “TheDefinition of Lying”,Noûs, 40(2): 284–306.doi:10.1111/j.0029-4624.2006.00610.x
Carter, J. Adam, 2017, “Assertion,Uniqueness and Epistemic Hypocrisy”,Synthese, 194(5):1463–1476. doi:10.1007/s11229-015-0766-5
Carter, J. Adam and Emma C. Gordon, 2011,“Norms of Assertion: The Quantity and Quality of EpistemicSupport”,Philosophia, 39(4): 615–635.doi:10.1007/s11406-011-9317-6
Carter, Sam, 2022, “Degrees of Assertability”,Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 104(1):19–49. doi:10.1111/phpr.12725
Caso, Ramiro, 2014, “Assertion and RelativeTruth”,Synthese, 191(6): 1309–1325.doi:10.1007/s11229-013-0329-6
Coates, Jennifer, 1987, “EpistemicModality and Spoken Discourse”,Transactions of thePhilological Society, 85(1): 110–131.doi:10.1111/j.1467-968X.1987.tb00714.x
Coffman, E. J., 2014, “LenientAccounts of Warranted Assertability”, in Littlejohn and Turri2014: ch. 2, 33–58.
Cole, Peter and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), 1975Syntax andSemantics 3: Speech Acts, New York: Academic Press.
Conte, Amedeo G., 1991, “L’enjeu desrègles”,Droit et société, 17(1):125–146.
Cull, Matthew J., 2019, “When Alston met Brandom: DefiningAssertion”,Rivista Italiana Di Filosofia DelLinguaggio, 13(1): 36–50. [Cull 2019 available online]
Davidson, Donald, 1979, “Moods andPerformances”, inMeaning and Use, Avishai Margalit(ed.), Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 9–22.doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-4104-4_2
–––, 1984,“Communication and Convention”,Synthese, 59(1):3–17. doi:10.1007/BF00873278
Davis, Wayne A., 1999, “Communicating,Telling, and Informing”:,Philosophical Inquiry, 21(1):21–43. doi:10.5840/philinquiry19992112
DeRose, Keith, 2002, “Assertion,Knowledge, and Context”,The Philosophical Review,111(2): 167–203. doi:10.1215/00318108-111-2-167
Dewey, John, 1938,Logic. The Theory ofInquiry, New York: Henry Holt Company.
Douven, Igor, 2006, “Assertion,Knowledge, and Rational Credibility”,The PhilosophicalReview, 115(4): 449–485. doi:10.1215/00318108-2006-010
–––, 2009, “Assertion,Moore, and Bayes”,Philosophical Studies, 144(3):361–375. doi:10.1007/s11098-008-9214-4
Dummett, Michael, 1976, “What Is a Theoryof Meaning? (II)”, inTruth and Meaning, Gareth Evans& John McDowell (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press,63–137.
–––, 1973 [1981],Frege:Philosophy of Language, London: Duckworth. Second edition,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
–––, 1991,The LogicalBasis of Metaphysics, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.
Egan, Andy, 2012, “Relativist DispositionalTheories of Value: Relativist Dispositional Theories of Value”,The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 50(4): 557–582.doi:10.1111/j.2041-6962.2012.00136.x
Engel, Pascal, 2004, “Truth and the Aim ofBelief”, inLaws and Models in Science, Donald Gillies(ed.), London: King’s College Publications, 77–97.
–––, 2008, “In WhatSense Is Knowledge the Norm of Assertion?”GrazerPhilosophische Studien, 77: 45–59.doi:10.1163/18756735-90000843
Evans, Gareth, 1985, “Does Tense LogicRest on a Mistake?” in hisCollected Papers, AntoniaPhillips (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 341–363.
Fallis, Don, 2013, “Davidson Was AlmostRight about Lying”,Australasian Journal of Philosophy,91(2): 337–353. doi:10.1080/00048402.2012.688980
Fantl, Jeremy and Matthew McGrath, 2009,Knowledge in an Uncertain World, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199550623.001.0001
Frege, Gottlob, 1879,Begriffsschrift, EineDer Aritmetischen Nachgebildete Formelsprache Des Reinen Denkens,Halle: Louis Nebert;partial translation in Frege [TPW],1–21; full translation in J van Heijenoort (ed.),Frege andGödel. Two Fundamental Texts in Mathematical Logic,Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1970.
–––, 1892, “ÜberSinn Und Bedeutung”,Zeitschrift Für Philosophie UndPhilosophische Kritik, 100: 22–50; translated by Max Blackas “On Sense and Meaning”, in Frege [TPW]:56–78.
–––, 1918a, “DerGedanke: Eine logische Untersuchung”,Beiträge ZurPhilosophie Des Deutschen Idealismus, 100: 58–77; Englishtranslation by P. T. Geach and R. H. Stoothoff as “Thoughts: ALogical Enquiry”, republished in Frege [TFR], 325–45.
–––, 1918b, “DieVerneinung. Eine logische Untersuchung”,Beiträge zurPhilosophie des deutschen Idealismus, I (1918–1919), pp.143–157; translated by Peter T. Geach as “Negation”,in Frege [TPW]: 117–135.
–––, [TFR],The Frege Reader, MikeBeaney (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 1997.
–––, [TPW],Translationsfrom the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, Peter T. Geachand Max Black (eds.), Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952.
Fricker, Elizabeth, 2012, “Stating andInsinuating”,Aristotelian Society SupplementaryVolume, 86: 61–94.doi:10.1111/j.1467-8349.2012.00208.x
García-Carpintero, Manuel, 2004,“Assertion and the Semantics of Force-Markers”, inTheSemantics/Pragmatics Distinction, Claudia Bianchi (ed.),Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, pp. 133–166.
–––, 2008,“Relativism, Vagueness and What Is Said”, inRelativeTruth, Manuel García-Carpintero and Max Kölbel(eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 129–154.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199234950.003.0006
–––, 2013, “Explicit performativesrevisited”,Journal of Pragmatics, 49: 1–17.
–––, 2016, “Indirect Assertion”,Polish Journal of Philosophy, 10(1): 13–49.doi:10.5840/pjphil20161012
–––, 2019a,“Conventions and Constitutive Norms”,Journal ofSocial Ontology, 5(1): 35–52.doi:10.1515/jso-2019-0013
–––, 2019b, “Sneaky Assertions”,Philosophical Perspectives, 32(1): 188–218.doi:10.1111/phpe.12116
–––, 2022, “How to UnderstandRule-Constituted Kinds”,Review of Philosophy andPsychology, 13: 7–27. doi:10.1007/s13164-021-00576-z
Gerken, Mikkel, 2012, “Discursive Justification andSkepticism”,Synthese, 189(2): 373–394.doi:10.1007/s11229-012-0076-0
–––, 2014, “Same, Samebut Different: The Epistemic Norms of Assertion, Action and PracticalReasoning”,Philosophical Studies, 168(3):725–744. doi:10.1007/s11098-013-0156-0
–––, 2017,On FolkEpistemology: How We Think and Talk about Knowledge, Oxford:Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198803454.001.0001
Gerken, Mikkel and Esben Nedenskov Petersen,2020, “Epistemic Norms of Assertion and Action”, inGoldberg 2020: 681–706.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.49
Geurts, Bart, 2019, “Communication asCommitment Sharing: Speech Acts, Implicatures, Common Ground”,Theoretical Linguistics, 45(1–2): 1–30.doi:10.1515/tl-2019-0001
Glüer, Kathrin and Peter Pagin, 1998,“Rules of Meaning and Practical Reasoning”,Synthese, 117(2): 207–227.doi:10.1023/A:1005162503125
–––, 2003,“Meaning Theory and Autistic Speakers”,Mind &Language, 18(1): 23–51. doi:10.1111/1468-0017.00213
Glüer, Kathrin and ÅsaWikforss, 2013, “Aiming at Truth: On the Role of Belief”,Theorema, 32(3): 137–160.
Goldberg, Sanford C., 2015,Assertion: Onthe Philosophical Significance of Assertoric Speech, Oxford:Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732488.001.0001
––– (ed.), 2020,The Oxford Handbook ofAssertion, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.001.0001
Graham, Peter J., 2020, “Assertions, Handicaps, and SocialNorms”.Episteme, 17(3): 349–363.doi:10.1017/epi.2019.53
Green, Mitchell S., 1999, “Illocutions,Implicata, and What a Conversation Requires”,Pragmatics& Cognition, 7(1): 65–91. doi:10.1075/pc.7.1.05gre
–––, 2000,“Illocutionary Force And Semantic Content”,Linguistics and Philosophy, 23(5): 435–473.doi:10.1023/A:1005642421177
–––, 2007,Self-Expression, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199283781.001.0001
–––, 2009, “SpeechActs, the Handicap Principle and the Expression of PsychologicalStates”,Mind & Language, 24(2): 139–163.doi:10.1111/j.1468-0017.2008.01357.x
–––, 2013,“Assertions”, inPragmatics of Speech Actions(Handbooks of Pragmatics, 2), Marina Sbisà and Ken Turner(eds.), Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 387–409.
–––, 2017,“Assertion”, inOxford Handbooks Online, Oxford:Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935314.013.8
–––, 2020a, “Assertionand Convention”, in Goldberg 2020: 345–369.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.8
–––, 2020b, “SpeechActs”, inThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Winter 2020), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/speech-acts/>
Greenough, Patrick, 2011,“Truth-Relativism, Norm-Relativism, and Assertion”, inBrown and Cappelen 2011: 187–231.
Greenberg, Alexander, 2020, “There Is No (Sui Generis) Normof Assertion”,Philosophy, 95(3): 337–62.doi:10.1017/S0031819120000169
Grice, Herbert Paul, 1957, “Meaning”,The Philosophical Review, 66(3): 377–388.doi:10.2307/2182440
–––, 1969,“Utterer’s Meaning and Intention”,ThePhilosophical Review, 78(2): 147–177.doi:10.2307/2184179
–––, 1975, “Logic andConversation”, in Cole and Morgan 1975: 41–58.
–––, 1989,Studies in theWay of Words, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hamblin, C. L., 1970a,Fallacies,London: Methuen.
–––, 1970b, “TheEffect of When It’s Said”,Theoria, 36(3):249–263. doi:10.1111/j.1755-2567.1970.tb00426.x
Hawley, Katherine, 2019,How To BeTrustworthy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/oso/9780198843900.001.0001
Hawthorne, John, 2004,Knowledge andLotteries, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/0199269556.001.0001
–––, 2012, “SomeComments on Fricker’s ‘Stating andInsinuating’”,Aristotelian Society SupplementaryVolume, 86: 95–108.doi:10.1111/j.1467-8349.2012.00209.x
Hawthorne, John and Jason Stanley,2008, “Knowledge and Action”,Journal ofPhilosophy, 105(10): 571–590.doi:10.5840/jphil20081051022
Heim, Irene, 1988, “On the ProjectionProblem for Presuppositions”, inProceedings of the SecondWest Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Dan Flickinger etal. (eds.), Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,114–125.
Hill, Christopher S. and Joshua Schechter, 2007,“Hawthorne’s Lottery Puzzle and the Nature ofBelief”,Philosophical Issues, 17: 102–122.doi:10.1111/j.1533-6077.2007.00125.x
Hinchman, Edward S., 2013, “Assertion,Sincerity, and Knowledge”,Noûs, 47(4):613–646. doi:10.1111/nous.12045
Hindriks, Frank, 2007, “The Status ofthe Knowledge Account of Assertion”,Linguistics andPhilosophy, 30(3): 393–406.doi:10.1007/s10988-007-9019-5
Holmes, Janet, 1984, “ModifyingIllocutionary Force”,Journal of Pragmatics, 8(3):345–365. doi:10.1016/0378-2166(84)90028-6
Hookway, Christopher, 1985,Peirce, Routledge,London.
Hornsby, Jennifer and Rae Langton, 1998,“Free Speech and Illocution”,Legal Theory, 4(1):21–37. doi:10.1017/S1352325200000902
Incurvati, Luca and Julian J.Schlöder, 2019, “Weak Assertion”,ThePhilosophical Quarterly, 69(277): 741–770.doi:10.1093/pq/pqz016
Jackson, Frank,1979, “On assertion and indicativeconditionals”,The Philosophical Review, 88(4):565–589.
Jary, Mark, 2010,Assertion, London:Palgrave Macmillan UK. doi:10.1057/9780230274617
Kaplan, David, 1989, “Demonstratives: AnEssay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics and Epistemology ofDemonstratives and other Indexicals”, inThemes fromKaplan, Joseph Almog, John Perry, and Howard Wettstein (eds.),New York: Oxford University Press, 481–563; paper firstpresented at the March 1977 meeting of the Pacfic Division of theAmerican Philosophical Association.
Karttunen, Lauri, 1974, “Presuppositionand Linguistic Context”,Theoretical Linguistics,1(1–3): 181–194. doi:10.1515/thli.1974.1.1-3.181
Kneer, Markus, 2018, “The Norm ofAssertion: Empirical Data”,Cognition, 177:165–171. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2018.03.020
–––, 2021, “Norms of assertion in theUnited States, Germany, and Japan”,Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences, 118 (37).doi:10.1073/pnas.2105365118
Koethe, John, 2009, “Knowledge and theNorms of Assertion”,Australasian Journal ofPhilosophy, 87(4): 625–638.doi:10.1080/00048400802598660
Kot’átko, Petr, 1998, “TwoNotions of Utterance Meaning”,Proceedings of theAristotelian Society, 98(3): 225–239.doi:10.1111/1467-9264.00035
Kölbel, Max, 2004, “FaultlessDisagreement”,Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,104(1): 53–73. doi:10.1111/j.0066-7373.2004.00081.x
–––, 2010, “LiteralForce: A Defence of Conventional Assertion”, inNew Waves inPhilosophy of Language, Sarah Sawyer (ed.), London: PalgraveMacmillan UK, 108–137. doi:10.1057/9780230248588_7
–––, 2011,“Conversational Score, Assertion, and Testimony”, in Brownand Cappelen 2011: 49–77.
Kvanvig, Jonathan L., 2009, “Assertion,Knowledge and Lotteries”, inWilliamson on Knowledge,Patrick Greenough and Duncan Pritchard (eds.), Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, pp. 140–160.
–––, 2011, “Norms ofAssertion”, in Brown and Cappelen 2011: 233–250.
Labinaz, Paolo, 2018, “Brandom’sDeontic Scorekeeping Model and the Assertive Family”,Journal of Pragmatics, 128: 53–66.doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2018.03.006
Labinaz, Paolo and Marina Sbisà, 2014,“Certainty and Uncertainty in Assertive Speech Acts”, inCommunicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive andScientific Contexts, Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli, IlariaRiccioni, and Carla Canestrari (eds.), (Dialogue Studies 25),Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 31–58.doi:10.1075/ds.25.02lab
Lackey, Jennifer, 2007, “Norms ofAssertion”,Noûs, 41(4): 594–626.doi:10.1111/j.1468-0068.2007.00664.x
–––, 2008, “Norms ofAssertion and Testimonial Knowledge”, in herLearning fromWords: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, pp. 103–141.
–––, 2011, “Assertionand Isolated Second-Hand Knowledge”, in Brown and Cappelen 2011:251–275.
Lasersohn, Peter, 2005, “ContextDependence, Disagreement, and Predicates of Personal Taste”,Linguistics and Philosophy, 28(6): 643–686.doi:10.1007/s10988-005-0596-x
Levin, Janet, 2008, “Assertion, PracticalReason, and Pragmatic Theories of Knowledge”,Philosophy andPhenomenological Research, 76(2): 359–384.doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2007.00136.x
Levinson, Stephen C., 1983,Pragmatics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.doi:10.1017/CBO9780511813313
–––, 2000,PresumptiveMeanings. The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature,Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lewis, David, 1976, “Probabilities of conditionals andconditional probabilities”,Philosophical Review,85(3), 297–315.
–––, 1979, “Scorekeepingin a Language Game”,Journal of Philosophical Logic,8(1): 339–359.
Littlejohn, Clayton and John Turri (eds.), 2014,EpistemicNorms: New Essays on Action, Belief, and Assertion, Oxford:Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199660025.001.0001
Lyons, John. 1977.Semantics, Volume 2. CambridgeUniversity Press.
MacFarlane, John, 2005, “MakingSense of Relative Truth”,Proceedings of the AristotelianSociety (Hardback), 105(1): 305–323.doi:10.1111/j.0066-7373.2004.00116.x
–––, 2011, “Whatis Assertion?” in Brown and Cappelen 2011: 79–96. [MacFarlane 2011 draft available online]
–––, 2014,AssessmentSensitivity: Relative Truth and Its Applications, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199682751.001.0001
Maitra, Ishani, 2011, “Assertion, Norms,and Games”, in Brown and Cappelen 2011: 277–296.
Maitra, Ishani and Brian Weatherson,2010, “Assertion, Knowledge, and Action”,Philosophical Studies, 149(1): 99–118.doi:10.1007/s11098-010-9542-z
Marques, Teresa, 2014, “RelativeCorrectness”,Philosophical Studies, 167(2):361–373. doi:10.1007/s11098-013-0100-3
Marsili, Neri, 2015, “NormativeAccounts of Assertion: From Peirce to Williamson, and BackAgain”,Rivista Italiana Di Filosofia Del Linguaggio,2015: 112–130. doi:10.4396/26SFL2014
–––, 2016, “Lying byPromising”,International Review of Pragmatics, 8(2):271–313. doi:10.1163/18773109-00802005
–––, 2018, “Truthand Assertion: Rules versus Aims”,Analysis, 78(4):638–648. doi:10.1093/analys/any008
–––, 2023a, “The Normof Assertion: A ‘Constitutive’ Rule?”,Inquiry, 66(5): 799–820.doi:10.1080/0020174X.2019.1667868
–––, 2023b, “Lies, Common Ground andPerformative Utterances”,Erkenntnis, 88:567–578. doi:10.1007/s10670-020-00368-4
Marsili, Neri and Alex Wiegmann, 2021,“Should I Say That? An Experimental Investigation of the Norm ofAssertion”,Cognition, 212: 104657.doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104657
Mazzarella, Diana, Robert Reinecke, IraNoveck, and Hugo Mercier, 2018, “Saying, Presupposing andImplicating: How Pragmatics Modulates Commitment”,Journalof Pragmatics, 133: 15–27.doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2018.05.009
McCammon, Christopher, 2014,“Representing Yourself as Knowing”,AmericanPhilosophical Quarterly, 51(2): 134–144.
McIntosh, Jonny, 2020, “How to understand the knowledge normof assertion: reply to Schlöder”,Thought: A Journal ofPhilosophy, 9: 207–214. doi:10.1002/tht3.452
McKenna, Robin, 2013, “Why Assertionand Practical Reasoning Are Possibly Not Governed by the SameEpistemic Norm”,Logos & Episteme, 4(4):457–464. doi:10.5840/logos-episteme2013446
–––, 2015, “Assertion,Complexity, and Sincerity”,Australasian Journal ofPhilosophy, 93(4): 782–798.doi:10.1080/00048402.2014.1003075
McKinnon, Rachel, 2013, “TheSupportive Reasons Norm of Assertion”,AmericanPhilosophical Quarterly, 50(2): 121–135.
–––, 2015,The Norms ofAssertion: Truth, Lies, and Warrant, London: Palgrave MacmillanUK. doi:10.1057/9781137521729
McKinnon, Rachel and John Turri, 2013,“Irksome Assertions”,Philosophical Studies,166(1): 123–128. doi:10.1007/s11098-012-0028-z
Mehta, Neil, 2016, “Knowledge and OtherNorms for Assertion, Action, and Belief: A TeleologicalAccount”,Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,93(3): 681–705. doi:10.1111/phpr.12222
Midgley, G. C. J., 1959, “LinguisticRules”,Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 59(1):271–290. doi:10.1093/aristotelian/59.1.271
Milić, Ivan, 2015, “A Note onExistentially Known Assertions”,PhilosophicalQuarterly, 65(261): 813–821.
–––, 2017, “AgainstSelfless Assertions”,Philosophical Studies, 174(9):2277–2295. doi:10.1007/s11098-016-0798-9
Montminy, Martin, 2013a, “ExplainingDubious Assertions”,Philosophical Studies, 165(3):825–830. doi:10.1007/s11098-012-9983-7
–––, 2013b, “TheSingle Norm of Assertion”, inPerspectives on Pragmatics andPhilosophy, Alessandro Capone, Franco Lo Piparo, and MarcoCarapezza (eds.), Cham: Springer International Publishing,35–52. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-01011-3_2
Moore, George Edward, 1912 [1966],Ethics:The Nature of Moral Philosophy, New York: Henry Holt; secondedition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966.
–––, 1944,“Russell’s ‘Theory of Description’”, inThe Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Paul Arthur Schilpp(ed.), Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, 175–225.
Moran, Richard, 2005, “Getting Told andBeing Believed”,Philosophers’ Imprint, 5: art.5. [Moran 2005 available online]
Nes, Anders, 2016, “Assertion, Belief, and‘I Believe’-Guarded Affirmation”,Linguisticsand Philosophy, 39(1): 57–86.doi:10.1007/s10988-015-9181-0
Owens, David, 2006, “Testimony andAssertion”,Philosophical Studies, 130: 105–129.doi:10.1007/s11098-005-3237-x
Pagin, Peter, 1987,Ideas for a Theory ofRules, PhD thesis, Stockholm University, Department ofPhilosophy.
–––, 2004, “Is AssertionSocial?”,Journal of Pragmatics, 36(5): 833–859.doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2003.10.004
–––, 2009, “AssertionNot Possibly Social”,Journal of Pragmatics, 41(12):2563–2567. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.12.014
–––, 2011, “Informationand Assertoric Force”, in Brown and Cappelen 2011:97–136.
–––, 2016a, “DeSe Communication”, inAbout Oneself, ManuelGarcía-Carpintero and Stephan Torre (eds.), Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 272–306.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198713265.003.0011
–––, 2016b, “Problemswith Norms of Assertion”,Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch, 93(1): 178–207. doi:10.1111/phpr.12209
–––, 2020, “TheIndicativity View”, in Goldberg 2020: 118–137.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.5
Papafragou, Anna, 2006, “EpistemicModality and Truth Conditions”,Lingua, 116(10):1688–1702. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2005.05.009
Peet, Andrew, 2015, “Testimony, pragmatics, and plausibledeniability”,Episteme, 12(1): 29–51.doi:10.1017/epi.2014.31
–––, 2021, “Assertoric Content,Responsibility, and Metasemantics”,Mind and Language,first online 24 June 2021. doi:10.1111/mila.12372
Pegan, Philip, 2009, “Why Assertion Mayyet Be Social”,Journal of Pragmatics, 41(12):2557–2562. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.12.009
Peirce, Charles Sanders, [MS], “Lectureson Logic, to be delivered at the Lowell Institute”, 1903,manuscript MS R 454, Robin Catalogue.
–––, [NEM],The NewElements of Mathematics, Carolyn Eisele (ed.), volume IV, TheHague: Mouton, 1976.
–––, [CP],CollectedPapers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 volumes (Volume 2:Elements of Logic, 1932; Volume 5:Pragmatism andPragmaticism, 1935), Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and ArthurW. Burks (eds.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1931–1958.
Pelling, Charlie. 2011. “A self-referential paradox for thetruth account of assertion”,Analysis, 71(4):688–688. doi:10.1093/analys/anr093
–––, 2013a, “Assertion and The Provisionof Knowledge”,The Philosophical Quarterly, 63(251):293–312. doi:10.1111/1467-9213.12013
–––, 2013b, “Paradox and the KnowledgeAccount of Assertion”,Erkenntnis, 78(5): 977–78.doi:10.1007/s10670-012-9360-0
Pritchard, Duncan, 2014, “Epistemic Luck,Safety, and Assertion”, in Littlejohn and Turri 2014: ch. 8, pp.155–172.
Putnam, Hilary, 1981,Reason, Truth andHistory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.doi:10.1017/CBO9780511625398
Rawls, John, 1955, “Two Concepts ofRules”,The Philosophical Review, 64(1): 3–32.doi:10.2307/2182230
Recanati, François, 1987,Meaningand Force. The Pragmatics of Performative Utterances, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
–––, 2004,LiteralMeaning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.doi:10.1017/CBO9780511615382
–––, 2007,PerspectivalThought: A Plea for (Moderate) Relativism, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230532.001.0001
Reiland, Indrek, 2020, “ConstitutiveRules: Games, Language, and Assertion”,Philosophy andPhenomenological Research, 100(1): 136–159.doi:10.1111/phpr.12525
Reinach, Adolf, 1913, “Die apriorischen Grundlagen desbürgerlichen Rechts”,Jahrbuch für Philosophieund phänomenologische Forschung, I(2), 685–847, Translatedby J. F. Crosby as “The Apriori Foundations of the CivilLaw”,Aletheia, III, 1983: 1–142.
Rescorla, Michael, 2007, “A Linguistic Reason forTruthfulness”, inTruth and Speech Acts: Studies in thePhilosophy of Language, Dirk Greimann and Geo Siegwart (eds.),London: Routledge, pp. 250–279.
–––, 2009a,“Assertion and Its Constitutive Norms”,Philosophy andPhenomenological Research, 79(1): 98–130.doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2009.00268.x
–––, 2009b,“Shifting the Burden of Proof?”,The PhilosophicalQuarterly, 59(234): 86–109.doi:10.1111/j.1467-9213.2008.555.x
Reuter, Kevin and Peter Brössel, 2019,“No Knowledge Required”,Episteme, 16(3):303–321. doi:10.1017/epi.2018.10
Reynolds, Steven L., 2002, “Testimony,Knowledge, and Epistemic Goals”,Philosophical Studies,110(2): 139–161. doi:10.1023/A:1020254327114
Rysiew, Patrick, 2007, “Beyond Words: Communication,Truthfulness, and Understanding”,Episteme, 4(3):285–304. doi:10.3366/E1742360007000093
Rosenkranz, Sven, 2023, “Problems for factive accounts ofassertion”,Noûs, 57(1): 128–143.10.1111/nous.12395
Sadock, Jerrold M., 1974,Toward a Linguistic Theory of SpeechActs, New York: Academic Press.
Sbisà, Marina, 2001,“Illocutionary Force and Degrees of Strength in LanguageUse”,Journal of Pragmatics, 33(12): 1791–1814.doi:10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00060-6
–––, 2020, “Assertionamong the Speech Acts”, in Goldberg 2020: 157–178.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.7
Schaffer, Jonathan, 2008, “Knowledge inthe Image of Assertion”,Philosophical Issues, 18:1–19. doi:10.1111/j.1533-6077.2008.00134.x
Schiffer, Stephen, 1972,Meaning,Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Schlick, Moritz, 1936, “Meaning andVerification”,The Philosophical Review, 45(4):339–369. doi:10.2307/2180487
Schlöder, Julian J., 2018, “The Logic of the KnowledgeNorm of Assertion”,Thought: A Journal of Philosophy,7: 49–57. doi:10.1002/tht3.268
Simion, M., 2016, “Assertion, Knowledge and RationalCredibility: The Scoreboard”, in Martin Grajner and PedroSchmechtig (eds.),Epistemic Reasons, Norms and Goals,Boston: De Gruyter, 137–164.
Searle, John R., 1969,Speech Acts: An Essayin the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139173438
–––, 1975a, “A Taxonomyof Illocutionary Acts”, inLanguage, Mind and Knowledge(Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 7), Keith Gunderson(ed.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 344–369. [Searle 1975 available online]
–––, 1975b, “IndirectSpeech Acts”, in Cole and Morgan 1975: 59–82.
–––, 1979,Expressionand Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511609213
–––, 2010,Making the SocialWorld: The Structure of Human Civilization, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195396171.001.0001
Searle John, and Daniel Vanderveken,1985,Foundations of Illocutionary Logic, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Shapiro, Lionel, 2020, “Commitment Accounts ofAssertion”, in Goldberg 2020: 73–97.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.4
Siebel, Mark, 2020, “The Belief View ofAssertion”, in Goldberg 2020: 97–118.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.4
Simion, Mona, 2016, “Assertion:Knowledge Is Enough”,Synthese, 193(10):3041–3056. doi:10.1007/s11229-015-0914-y
Simion, Mona and Christoph Kelp, 2020,“Assertion: The Constitutive Norms View”, in Goldberg2020: 57–73. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.2
Simons, Mandy, 2006, “Foundational Issuesin Presupposition”,Philosophy Compass, 1(4):357–372. doi:10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00028.x
Slote, Michael A., 1979, “Assertion andBelief”, inPapers on Language and Logic, JonathanDancy (ed.), Keele: Keele University Library, 177–190,.
Smith, Barry, 1990, “Towards a History ofSpeech Act Theory”, inSpeech Acts, Meanings and Intentions.Critical Approaches to the Philosophy of John R. Searle, ArminBrukhardt (ed.), Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 29–61.doi:10.1515/9783110859485.29
Smith, Martin, 2012, “Some Thoughts onthe JK-Rule 1”,Noûs, 46(4): 791–802.doi:10.1111/j.1468-0068.2012.00866.x
Smithies, Declan, 2012, “The NormativeRole of Knowledge”,Noûs, 46(2): 265–288.doi:10.1111/j.1468-0068.2010.00787.x
Sosa, David, 2009, “DubiousAssertions”,Philosophical Studies, 146(2):269–272. doi:10.1007/s11098-008-9255-8
Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson, 1986,Relevance: Communication and Cognition, Oxford:Blackwell.
–––, 1995,Relevance: Communication andCognition, second edition, Oxford: Blackwell.
Stainton, Robert J., 1996, “WhatAssertion Is Not”,Philosophical Studies, 85(1):57–73. doi:10.1023/A:1017922124403
–––, 2006,Words andThoughts: Subsentences, Ellipsis, and the Philosophy of Language,Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199250387.001.0001
Stalnaker, Robert, 1974, “PragmaticPresuppositions”, inSemantics and Philosophy, MiltonK. Munitz and Peter Unger (eds.), New York: New York University Press,pp. 197–213.
–––, 1978,“Assertion”, inSyntax and Semantics 9:Pragmatics, Peter Cole (ed.), New York: New York Academic Press,315–332.
–––, 2002, “CommonGround”,Linguistics and Philosophy, 25(5/6):701–721. doi:10.1023/A:1020867916902
Stanley, Jason, 2005,Knowledge andPractical Interests, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/0199288038.001.0001
–––, 2008, “Knowledgeand Certainty”,Philosophical Issues, 18: 35–57.doi:10.1111/j.1533-6077.2008.00136.x
Stokke, Andreas, 2013, “Lying andAsserting”,Journal of Philosophy, 110(1): 33–60.doi:10.5840/jphil2013110144
Stone, Jim, 2007, “Contextualism andWarranted Assertion”,Pacific Philosophical Quarterly,88(1): 92–113. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0114.2007.00282.x
Strawson, Peter F., 1964, “Intention andConvention in Speech Acts”,The Philosophical Review,73(4): 439–460. doi:10.2307/2183301
Tanesini, Alessandra, 2020, “Silencingand Assertion”, in Goldberg 2020: 748–769.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.31
Toulmin, Stephen E., 1958,The Uses ofArgument, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Turri, John, 2010, “Epistemic Invariantismand Speech Act Contextualism”,The PhilosophicalReview, 119(1): 77–95. doi:10.1215/00318108-2009-026
–––, 2011, “TheExpress Knowledge Account of Assertion”,AustralasianJournal of Philosophy, 89(1): 37–45.doi:10.1080/00048401003660333
–––, 2013, “The Test ofTruth: An Experimental Investigation of the Norm of Assertion”,Cognition, 129(2): 279–291.doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2013.06.012
–––, 2014, “Knowledgeand Suberogatory Assertion”,Philosophical Studies,167(3): 557–567. doi:10.1007/s11098-013-0112-z
–––, 2015, “SelflessAssertions: Some Empirical Evidence”,Synthese, 192(4):1221–1233. doi:10.1007/s11229-014-0621-0
–––, 2016, “Knowledgeand Assertion in ‘Gettier’ Cases”,PhilosophicalPsychology, 29(5): 759–775.doi:10.1080/09515089.2016.1154140
–––, 2017, “Experimental work on the normsof assertion”.Philosophy Compass, 12(e12425).doi:10.1111/phc3.12425
Tuzet, Giovanni, 2006, «Responsible for Truth? Peirce onJudgment and Assertion», inCognitio, 7:317–336.
Unger, Peter, 1975,Ignorance: A Case forScepticism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/0198244177.001.0001
van Riel, Raphael van, 2019, “Lyingbeyond a Conversational Purpose: A Critique of Stokke’sAssertion-Based Account of Lying”,The Journal ofPhilosophy, 116(2): 106–118.doi:10.5840/jphil201911626
Vlach, Frank, 1981, “Speaker’sMeaning”,Linguistics and Philosophy, 4(3):359–391. doi:10.1007/BF00304401
Watson, Gary, 2004, “Asserting andPromising”,Philosophical Studies, 117(1/2):57–77. doi:10.1023/B:PHIL.0000014525.93335.9e
Weiner, Matthew, 2005, “Must We Know WhatWe Say?”,The Philosophical Review, 114(2):227–251. doi:10.1215/00318108-114-2-227
Whiting, Daniel, 2013, “Stick to theFacts: On the Norms of Assertion”,Erkenntnis, 78(4):847–867. doi:10.1007/s10670-012-9383-6
–––, 2015, “Truth Is(Still) the Norm for Assertion: A Reply to Littlejohn”,Erkenntnis, 80(6): 1245–1253.doi:10.1007/s10670-015-9722-5
Williams, Bernard A. O., 1966,“Consistency and Realism”,Proceedings of theAristotelian Society (Supplementary Volume), 40: 1–22.doi:10.1093/aristoteliansupp/40.1.1
–––, 2002,Truth andTruthfulness. An Essay in Genealogy, Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press.
Williamson, Timothy, 1996, “Knowingand Asserting”,The Philosophical Review, 105(4):489–523. doi:10.2307/2998423
–––, 2000,Knowledgeand Its Limits, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/019925656X.001.0001
Willard-Kyle, Christopher, 2021, “P, but you Don’tKnow That P”,Synthese, 199(5–6):14667–14690.
Wright, Crispin, 1992,Truth andObjectivity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Znamierowski, Czesław, 1924,Podstawowe PojęciaTeorii Prawa,cz. I. Układ Prawny i NormaPrawna (The Basic Concepts of the Theory of Law, Part I:Legal System and Legal Norm), Fiszer i Majewski, Poznań.

Academic Tools

How to cite this entry.
Preview the PDF version of this entry at theFriends of the SEP Society.
Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).
Enhanced bibliography for this entryatPhilPapers, with links to its database.

Other Internet Resources

MacFarlane, John, 2003, “Epistemic Modalities and Relative Truth”, unpublished manuscript.
Philpapers Bibliography on assertion, edited by Ofra Magidor, Oxford University.
Philpapers bibliography on the Norms of Assertion, edited by Matthew A. Benton, Seattle Pacific University.
NDPR review of Jary’s bookAssertion, by Peter Pagin.
NDPR review of Goldberg’s bookAssertion, by Brian Montgomery.
NDPR review of Brown and Cappelen’s edited volumeAssertion, by Mikhail Kissine.

Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative.
The Encyclopedia Now Needs Your Support
Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia Free

Browse

About

Support SEP

Mirror Sites

View this site from another server:

USA (Main Site)Philosophy, Stanford University

Info about mirror sites

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Movatterモバイル変換