Hedged Assertion

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 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 essay considers the linguistic and normative issues side-by-side. We aim to bring some order and clarity to thinking about hedging, so as to illuminate aspects of interest to both linguists and philosophers. In particular, we consider 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

Googled Assertion

Recent work in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2010a; Clark 2010b; Palermos 2014) can help to explain why certain kinds of assertions—made on the basis of information stored in our gadgets rather than in biological memory—are properly criticisable in light of misleading implicatures, while others are not

Proxy Assertion

In proxy assertion an individual or group asserts something through a spokesperson. The chapter explains proxy assertion as resting on the assignment of a status role to a person (that of spokesperson) whose utterances acts in virtue of that role have the status function of signaling that the principal is committed in a way analogous to an individual asserting that in his own voice. The chapter briefly explains how status functions and status roles are grounded and then treats, in turn, the case of a spokesperson for an individual and a group and the differences in the significance of what the spokesperson does in each case. Finally, it reviews complications introduced by spokesperson autonomy, where the spokesperson is given leave to represent her principal’s views or positions in her own words and to respond to questions on his behalf

Weak Assertion

We present an inferentialist account of the epistemic modal operator might. Our starting point is the bilateralist programme. A bilateralist explains the operator not in terms of the speech act of rejection ; we explain the operator might in terms of weak assertion, a speech act whose existence we argue for on the basis of linguistic evidence. We show that our account of might provides a solution to certain well-known puzzles about the semantics of modal vocabulary whilst retaining classical logic. This demonstrates that an inferentialist approach to meaning can be successfully extended beyond the core logical constants

Assertion and Testimony

[The version of this paper published by Oxford online in 2019 was not copy-edited and has some sense-obscuring typos. I have posted a corrected (but not the final published) version on this site. The version published in print in 2020 has these corrections.] Which is more fundamental, assertion or testimony? Should we understand assertion as basic, treating testimony as what you get when you add an interpersonal addressee? Or should we understand testimony as basic, treating mere assertion -- assertion without testimony -- as what you get when you subtract that interpersonal relation? In this chapter, I’ll argue 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. My 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 I’ll call the Command Model does not give us the conceptual resources to make this move, we should adopt an alternative that I’ll call 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 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

Assertion, knowledge and predictions

John N. Williams (1994) and Matthew Weiner (2005) invoke predictions in order to undermine the normative relevance of knowledge for assertions; in particular, Weiner argues, predictions are important counterexamples to the Knowledge Account of Assertion (KAA). I argue here that they are not true counterexamples at all, a point that can be agreed upon even by those who reject KAA

Assertion: a function first account

This paper aims to develop a novel account of the normativity of assertion. Its core thesis is that assertion has an etiological epistemic function, viz. to generate knowledge in hearers. In conjunction with a general account of etiological functions and their normative import, it is argued that an assertion is epistemically good if and only if it has the disposition to generate knowledge in hearers. In addition, reason is provided to believe that it makes sense to regulate the practice of assertion by a speaker rule—and, more specifically, by a knowledge rule—as so regulating assertion contributes to ensuring that assertion fulfils its etiological function reliably

Knowledge, Belief, and Assertion

The traditional answer to the question what it is to make an\ud assertion appeals to belief (see Grice 1989 and Searle\ud 1969). To assert something, so the analysis goes, is to\ud express a belief by way of uttering a sentence. Timothy\ud Williamson claims (1) that on the traditional analysis\ud assertion is constitutively governed by the truth rule (242):1\ud One must: assert p only if p is true.\ud He argues (2) that the traditional analysis is mistaken, and\ud (3) that assertion is constitutively governed by the\ud knowledge rule instead (243):\ud One must: assert p only if one knows p.\ud I will argue that all three of these claims are false

Judgement and Certainty

Judgement is the interiorisation of assertion: the inner\ud notion of judgement is to be explained in terms of the outer\ud notion of assertion. When someone asserts "Snow is\ud white", an interlocutor is entitled to ask "How do you know?"\ud If the asserter is not able to give grounds for his assertion,\ud it has to be withdrawn. In an assertion an illocutionary\ud claim that one has grounds is present; an assertion is thus\ud a claim to knowledge. Not all occurrences of declarative\ud sentences are asserted. In such cases the context should\ud make it clear that the declarative is, for example, used to\ud express mere opinion or conjecture. Whereas an assertion\ud made is correct or incorrect, other uses of the declarative\ud do not allow for this distinction. Just as for assertion, implicit\ud in every judgement is a claim to knowledge; judgement\ud is an epistemic notion