{"title":"Ethical Dimensions of Assertion","authors":"T. Cuneo","doi":"10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780190675233.013.38","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780190675233.013.38","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers the ethical dimensions of acts of assertion. Acts of assertion often have moral features, such as being wrong. In this regard, they are like many other familiar acts such as invasions of privacy and inflictions of bodily harm, which are also often wrong. But might assertion have an even more intimate link to moral reality than these other actions? Might it be that how things are ethically explains how it is that we could perform illocutionary acts such as asserting? A version of what the author calls the normative theory of speech answers in the affirmative. This view maintains that the performance of illocutionary acts such as asserting not only often have moral properties, such as being morally wrong, but also that there are cases in which moral facts explain (in part) how it is that agents can perform these acts. The article presents the rudiments of the normative theory of speech, paying attention to why it maintains that moral facts are among the features that explain how it is that we can assert. Along the way, the author points to some interesting metaethical implications of the position.","PeriodicalId":310780,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Assertion","volume":"1830 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127456544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assertion and the Future","authors":"Corine Besson, Anandi Hattiangadi","doi":"10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780190675233.013.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780190675233.013.20","url":null,"abstract":"It is disputed what norm, if any, governs assertion. We address this question by looking at assertions of future contingents: statements about the future that are neither metaphysically necessary nor metaphysically impossible. Many philosophers think that future contingents are not truth apt, which together with a Truth Norm or a Knowledge Norm of assertion implies that assertions of these future contingents are systematically infelicitous.In this article, we argue that our practice of asserting future contingents is incompatible with the view that they are not truth apt. We consider a range of norms of assertion and argue that the best explanation of the data is provided by the view that assertion is governed by the Knowledge Norm.","PeriodicalId":310780,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Assertion","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133306151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can Artificial Entities Assert?","authors":"Ori Freiman, Boaz Miller","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.36","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.36","url":null,"abstract":"There is an existing debate regarding the view that technological instruments, devices, or machines can assert or testify. A standard view in epistemology is that only humans can testify. However, the notion of quasi-testimony acknowledges that technological devices can assert or testify under some conditions, without denying that humans and machines are not the same. Indeed, there are four relevant differences between humans and instruments. First, unlike humans, machine assertion is not imaginative or playful. Second, machine assertion is prescripted and context restricted. As such, computers currently cannot easily switch contexts or make meaningful relevant assertions in contexts for which they were not programmed. Third, while both humans and computers make errors, they do so in different ways. Computers are very sensitive to small errors in input, which may cause them to make big errors in output. Moreover, automatic error control is based on finding irregularities in data without trying to establish whether they make sense. Fourth, testimony is produced by a human with moral worth, while quasi-testimony is not. Ultimately, the notion of quasi-testimony can serve as a bridge between different philosophical fields that deal with instruments and testimony as sources of knowledge, allowing them to converse and agree on a shared description of reality, while maintaining their distinct conceptions and ontological commitments about knowledge, humans, and nonhumans.","PeriodicalId":310780,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Assertion","volume":"76 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116020728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Belief View of Assertion","authors":"M. Siebel","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.4","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the belief view of assertion, which considers assertion to be basically the expression of a belief. Let “S” stand for the asserter and “p” be a placeholder for a declarative sentence providing the content of the assertion. Then the belief view, in its purest form, takes “S asserts that p” to mean that S expresses the belief that p. The article proceeds as follows. It first introduces three general worries threatening variants of the belief view. Afterwards, it deals with Green’s disjunctive analysis, which utilizes a factive concept of belief expression for delineating sincere assertions and then provides conditions for insincere assertions. The remaining sections turn to Bach and Harnish’s, Davis’s, and Kemmerling’s variants of the belief view. They are connected by applying a nonfactive concept of belief expression to both sincere and insincere assertions. It is shown that these accounts face a common problem. The involved notion of indicating a belief has to be weak enough to allow for obviously insincere assertions, that is, cases in which it is evident to all eyes that the utterer does not believe what she asserts. But then it appears to be too weak to exclude utterances by which an assertion is simulated but not performed.","PeriodicalId":310780,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Assertion","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130513033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assertion: The Constitutive Norms View","authors":"M. Simion, Christoph Kelp","doi":"10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780190675233.013.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780190675233.013.2","url":null,"abstract":"Two important philosophical questions about assertion concern its nature and normativity. This article defends the optimism about the constitutive norm account of assertion and sets out a constitutivity thesis that is much more modest than that proposed by Timothy Williamson. It starts by looking at the extant objections to Williamson’s Knowledge Account of Assertion (KAA) and argues that they fail to hit their target in virtue of imposing implausible conditions on engaging in norm-constituted activities. Second, it makes a similar proposal and shows how it does better than the competition. It suggests that Knowledge Norm of Assertion (KNA) is not constitutive of the speech act of assertion in the same way in which rules of games are constitutive, and thus KAA comes out as too strong. The final section embarks on a rescue mission on behalf of KAA; it puts forth a weaker, functionalist constitutivity thesis. On this view, KNA is etiologically constitutively associated with the speech act of assertion, in virtue of its function of generating knowledge in hearers.","PeriodicalId":310780,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Assertion","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133857214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assertoric Quality","authors":"Jennifer Lackey","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.45","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.45","url":null,"abstract":"The practice of assertion is said to be governed by an epistemic norm, with one of the leading candidates being the Knowledge Norm of Assertion (KNA). In this paper, I focus on the sufficiency condition of this norm, according to which one is properly positioned to assert that p if one knows that p. I show that this condition is false, and that the arguments to this end reveal something very important about the nature of epistemically proper assertion: the assertoric quality of the epistemic support, such as whether the belief in question has firsthand or secondhand grounding, is just as important as the quantity of epistemic support.","PeriodicalId":310780,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Assertion","volume":"20 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122558409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assertion and Testimony","authors":"Edward S. Hinchman","doi":"10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780190675233.013.23","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780190675233.013.23","url":null,"abstract":"Which is more fundamental, assertion or testimony? Should we understand assertion as basic, treating testimony as what one gets when one adds an interpersonal addressee? Or should we understand testimony as basic, treating mere assertion—assertion without testimony—as what one gets when one subtracts that interpersonal relation? This article argues for the subtractive approach and for the more general thesis that its treatment of the interpersonal element in assertion makes understanding that interpersonal element the key to understanding how assertion expresses belief. This theory of belief expression in assertion treats it as internalizing the transmission of belief in testimony. How we understand that internalizing move depends on how we conceptualize the interpersonal element in testimony. Since what will be called the Command Model does not give one the conceptual resources to make this move, one should adopt an alternative that will be called the Custodial Model, on which a testifier aims not to convince her addressee but to reason with him—to give him reasons to believe what she tells him, where those reasons are grounded in her trustworthiness in thus attempting to influence him. The subtractive approach to assertion thus rests on a key distinction between the aims of reasoning and persuasion.","PeriodicalId":310780,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Assertion","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114692392","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hedged Assertion","authors":"Matthew A. Benton, Peter van Elswyk","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.11","url":null,"abstract":"Surprisingly little has been written about hedged assertion. Linguists often focus on semantic or syntactic theorizing about, for example, grammatical evidentials or epistemic modals, but they pay far less attention to what hedging does at the level of action. By contrast, philosophers have focused extensively on normative issues regarding what epistemic position is required for proper assertion, yet they have almost exclusively considered unqualified declaratives. This article considers the linguistic and normative issues side by side. It aims to bring some order and clarity to thinking about hedging, so as to illuminate aspects of interest to both linguists and philosophers. In particular, it considers three broad questions. (1) The structural question: when one hedges, what is the speaker’s commitment weakened from? (2) The functional question: what is the best way to understand how a hedge weakens? And (3) the taxonomic question: are hedged assertions genuine assertions, another speech act, or what?","PeriodicalId":310780,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Assertion","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129897037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assertion and Modality","authors":"Fabrizio Cariani","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.21","url":null,"abstract":"This essay is an opinionated exploration of the constraints that modal discourse imposes on the theory of assertion. Primary focus is on the question whether modal discourse challenges the traditional view that all assertions have propositional content. This question is tackled largely with reference to discourse involving epistemic modals, although connections and parallels with deontic modals and conditionals are noted along the way. The essay also discusses the impact of the idiosincrasies of modal discourse on the theory of assertion. The first topic in this thread is whether the relevant fragment of modal discourse is subject to some of the norms of assertion that are ordinarily invoked for nonmodal discourse. The second topic is whether theories of assertion that focus on the effects of assertions on context must be viewed as fundamentally disjunctive in order to capture the distinctions between modal and nonmodal assertion.","PeriodicalId":310780,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Assertion","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124425833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Asserting Ignorance","authors":"R. Peels","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190675233.013.25","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores to what extent ignorance is assertable. More specifically, can one properly assert that one is ignorant with respect to some specific proposition p? This article argues that, depending on one’s account of ignorance, there are six or seven different kinds of ignorance. Subsequently, it examines whether or not each of these varieties of ignorance is assertable. It defends the view that only two out of six or seven kinds of ignorance are assertable, at least de dicto: what the author calls “suspending ignorance” and “undecided ignorance.” The other four or five kinds of ignorance are unassertable: what the author calls “disbelieving ignorance,” “unconsidered ignorance,” “deep ignorance,” “complete ignorance,” and, on some accounts of what it is to be ignorant, “unwarranted ignorance.” It turns out they are unassertable for very different reasons, though. Finally, the article applies its argument to two issues. First, the debate about whether there is inexpressible ignorance has focused entirely on various kinds of propositions or facts that are supposed to be such that one cannot express ignorance with regard to them. It has failed to pay attention to the various attitudes that ignorance can consist in. Second, Transparency as an account of self-knowledge may be true for belief and some other mental states, but not for various kinds of ignorance.","PeriodicalId":310780,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Assertion","volume":"102 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133921049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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