Problems for factive accounts of assertion

The knowledge account of assertion construes assertion as subject to constitutive norms. In its standard version, it combines a wide scope obligation not to assert p without knowing p, with narrow scope principles specifying conditions under which it is permissible to assert p, where the notions of obligation and permission are duals and behave uniformly for variable p. It is argued that, given natural assumptions about the logic of ‘ought’, the account proves incoherent. The argument generalizes to accounts that substitute other factive notions for knowledge. A recent non-standard version of the knowledge account employs proposition-relative norms and circumvents the problem. However, it still leads to intolerable combinations of verdicts. Again, the problem arises because knowledge is factive, and it generalizes to other factive notions. It is shown that non-factive accounts face none of the diagnosed difficulties and can do much of the explanatory work that the knowledge account is alleged to do.     

A non‐normative account of assertion

Many contemporary philosophers argue that assertion is governed by an epistemic norm. In particular, many defend the knowledge account of assertion, which says that one should assert only what one knows. Here, I defend a non‐normative alternative to the knowledge account that I call the repK account of assertion. According to the repK account, assertion represents knowledge, but it is not governed by a constitutive epistemic rule. I show that the repK account offers a more straightforward interpretation of the conversational patterns and intuitions that motivate the knowledge account. It does so in terms of ordinary normative principles that philosophers already accept, none of which are constitutive to assertion. I then contend that the repK account is preferable to the knowledge account because it is simpler, its implications are less contentious, and it avoids a problem for normative accounts of assertion recently raised by Peter Pagin. I also argue that the repK account offers a satisfying explanation of selfless assertion, a counterexample to the knowledge account posed by Jennifer Lackey.     

Testimony and the Constitutive Norm of Assertion

Abstract

I can, given the right conditions, transmit my knowledge to you by telling you some information. If I know the time, and if all goes well, I can bring it about that you know it too. If conditions are right, all I have to do is assert to you what time it is. Paradigmatically, speakers use assertions to transmit what they know to their hearers. Clearly, assertion and testimony are tightly connected. The nature of this connection, however, is not so clear. According to many accounts, assertion has an epistemic constitutive norm. This norm appears to be able to account for some important features of testimony: first, testimonial knowledge transmission, second, the reliability of testimony, and third, the epistemic rights exchanged in cases of testimony. In this paper, however, I argue against this apparent ability. The constitutive norm of assertion, I argue, plays no role in accounts of testimonial knowledge transmission, or of the epistemic rights that testimony confers. This is especially clear when we consider the general norms to which we’re held. Epistemological accounts of testimony can and should, therefore, avoid the difficult debate over the constitutive norm of assertion.     

Reinterpreting Sellars in the Light of Brandom,McDowell, and A. D. Smith

Abstract: The intent of this paper is to indicate a development in Sellars' writings which points in another direction than the interpretations offered by Brandom, McDowell, and A. D. Smith. Brandom and McDowell have long claimed to preserve central insights of Sellars's theory of perception; however, they disagree over what exactly these insights are. A. D. Smith has launched a critique of Sellars in chapter 2 of his book The Problem of Perception which is so penetrating that it would tear Sellars' philosophy of perception apart if it were adequate. However, I try to show firstly that Brandom's and McDowell's interpretations are unsatisfying when Sellars' late writings are taking into consideration. And secondly that we can give another interpretation of Sellars that is not vulnerable to some of the problems of which Smith accuses Sellars.     

Epistemic and Dialectical Regress

Dialectical egalitarianism holds that every asserted proposition requires defence when challenged by an interlocutor. This view apparently generates a vicious ‘regress of justifications’, since an interlocutor can challenge the premises through which a speaker defends her original assertion, and so on ad infinitum. To halt the regress, dialectical foundationalists such as Adler, Brandom, Leite, and Williams propose that some propositions require no defence in the light of mere requests for justification. I argue that the putative regress is not worrisome and that egalitarianism can handle it quite satisfactorily. I also defend a positive view that combines an anti-foundationalist conception of dialectical interaction with a foundationalist conception of epistemic justification.     

The Non-Conceptual Dimension of Social Mediation: Toward a Materialist Aufhebung of Hegel

ABSTRACT

Sellars’s relationship with Hegel is complex and itself ‘dialectical‘ in interesting ways. Sellars follows Hegel in recognizing that the normativity essential to intentionality and conceptuality is a social phenomenon. But Sellars criticizes Hegel for his inability to independently explain the emergence and function of this essential group phenomenon. I shall argue that Sellars’s critique of Hegel on this count is part of a larger, metaphysically ambitious and rigorously realistic position, which, though turning Hegel’s ontology on its head, shares with Hegel the methodological ambition of arriving at a position which is globally explanatorily closed. Further, it will be suggested that although Sellars would surely have been critical of the ontological reification of Hegel’s dialectical method, he nonetheless reserves an important role for conceptual dialectical development right at the heart of his system, namely in his understanding of the conceptual evolution that leads from the manifest to the scientific image. Finally, I shall argue that Sellars thereby aspires to provide nothing less than a materialist aufhebung of idealist Hegelian dialectics.     

Assertion,Complexity, and Sincerity

The target of this paper is the ‘simple’ knowledge account of assertion, according to which assertion is constituted by a single epistemic rule of the form ‘One must: assert p only if one knows p’ (where p is a proposition). My aim is to argue that those who are attracted to a knowledge account of assertion should prefer what I call the ‘complex’ knowledge account, according to which assertion is constituted by a system of rules all of which are, taken together, constitutive of assertion. One of those rules—which, following John Searle, I call the ‘preparatory condition’—is of the form ‘One must: assert p only if one knows p.’ All else being equal, simple accounts are preferable to complex accounts. I argue in this paper that all else isn't equal. While the simple knowledge account provides an elegant explanation of certain data, it is hard to see how to integrate the simple knowledge account into a more general theory of illocutionary acts. Because the complex knowledge account avoids this objection while explaining the same data as the simple knowledge account does, I conclude that the complex knowledge account is superior to the simple knowledge account.     

Making it Implicit: Brandom on Rule Following

In Making it Explicit , Brandom aims to articulate an account of conceptual content that accommodates its normativity—a requirement on theories of content that Brandom traces to Wittgenstein's rule following considerations. It is widely held that the normativity requirement cannot be met, or at least not with ease, because theories of content face an intractable dilemma. Brandom proposes to evade the dilemma by adopting a middle road—one that uses normative vocabulary, but treats norms as implicit in practices. I argue that this proposal fails to evade the dilemma, as Brandom himself understands it. Despite his use of normative vocabulary, Brandom's theory fares no better than the reductionist theories he criticises. I consider some responses that Brandom might make to my charges, and finally conclude that his proposal founders on his own criteria.     

Inferentialism and knowledge: Brandom’s arguments against reliabilism

I take issue with Robert Brandom’s claim that on an analysis of knowledge based on objective probabilities it is not possible to provide a stable answer to the question whether a belief has the status of knowledge. I argue that the version of the problem of generality developed by Brandom doesn’t undermine a truth-tracking account of noninferential knowledge that construes truth-tacking in terms of conditional probabilities. I then consider Sherrilyn Roush’s claim that an account of knowledge based on probabilistic tracking faces a version of the problem of generality. I argue that the problems she raises are specific to her account, and do not affect the version of the view that I have advanced. I then consider Brandom’s argument that the cases that motivate reliabilist epistemologies are in principle exceptional. I argue that he has failed to make a cogent case for this claim. I close with the suggestion that the representationalist approach to knowledge that I endorse and Brandom rejects is in principle compatible with the kind of pragmatist approach to belief and truth that both Brandom and I endorse.

     

A case for a certainty norm of assertion

According to the widely endorsed Knowledge Account of Assertion, the epistemic requirements on assertion are captured by the Knowledge Norm of Assertion, which requires speakers only to assert what they know. This paper proposes that in addition to the Knowledge Norm there is also an Epistemic Propositional Certainty Norm of Assertion, which enjoins speakers only to assert p if they believe that p on the basis of evidence which makes p an epistemic propositional certainty. The paper explains how this propositional certainty norm accounts for a range of data related to the practice of assertion and defends the norm against general objections to certainty norms of assertion put forward by Duncan Pritchard, John Turri, and Timothy Williamson, by drawing on linguistic theories about epistemic modals and gradable predicate semantics. Together these considerations show that the prospects of a certainty account of assertion are much more promising than is usually assumed.

     

Ginsborg on a Kantian-Brandomian View of Concepts

ABSTRACT

According to a Kantian-Brandomian view of concepts, we can understand concepts in terms of norms or rules that bind those who apply them, and the use of a concept requires that the concept-user be sensitive to the relevant conceptual norms. Recently, Ginsborg raises two important objections against this view. According to her, the normativity Brandom ascribes to concepts lacks the internalist or first-person character of normativity that Kant’s view demands, and the relevant normativity belongs properly not to concepts as such, but rather to belief or assertion. The purpose of this paper is to defend a Kantian-Brandomian view of concepts against these objections.     

Testimony and Assertion

Two models of assertion are described and their epistemological implications considered. The assurance model draws a parallel between the ethical norms surrounding promising and the epistemic norms which facilitate the transmission of testimonial knowledge. This model is rejected in favour of the view that assertion transmits knowledge by expressing belief. I go on to compare the epistemology of testimony with the epistemology of memory.     

断定、否定、承诺、资格与不相容性（以及一些推论）

在这篇短文里,我将比较Huw Price（【7】）和我本人（【9】）关于否定的对称性处理的两种不同方式,并与Robert Brandom关于承诺、资格和不相容性的分析进行对比。这两种方式都可以归为Brandom所谓的规范语用学,是一种关于意义的语义学反实在论：语汇的含义是由人们的受规则支配（即规范的）的语用实践（语用学）予以明确的。这样的处理不同于直觉主义者的语义学反实在论,因为它提供了一种方式,使得我们可以区分“A”和“A得以保证”的推理意义。尽管“证明”具有某种中心地位,但“实证”并不是意义的首要承载者。而这种区分植根于对人们语用实践的细致分析。一方面,根据Price以及我本人的看法,人们既做断定也做否定;另一方面,Brandom则区分了自上而下的承诺与自下而上的资格,以及据此而定义的不相容性概念。本文考察这些不同进路之间的各种关联,并讨论从这些考察中浮现出的一种关于证明的看法。     

The Express Knowledge Account of Assertion

Many philosophers favour the simple knowledge account of assertion, which says you may assert something only if you know it. The simple account is true but importantly incomplete. I defend a more informative thesis, namely, that you may assert something only if your assertion expresses knowledge. I call this ‘the express knowledge account of assertion’, which I argue better handles a wider range of cases while at the same time explaining the simple knowledge account's appeal. §1 introduces some new data that a knowledge account of assertion well explains. §2 explains the simple knowledge account's advantage over two of its main competitors. §3 presents a problem for the simple account and offers a solution, which is to adopt the express knowledge account. §4 encapsulates the case for the express knowledge account, and offers a unifying vision for the epistemology of belief and assertion. §5 answers an objection. §6 briefly sums up. Even those who ultimately reject my conclusion can still benefit from the new data presented in §1, and learn an important lesson from the problem discussed in §3, which demonstrates a general constraint on an acceptable account of the norm of assertion.     

Sincerely Asserting What You Do Not Believe

I offer examples showing that, pace G. E. Moore, it is possible to assert ‘Q and I don't believe that Q’ sincerely, truly, and without any absurdity. The examples also refute the following principles: (a) justification to assert p entails justification to assert that one believes p (Gareth Evans); (b) the sincerity condition on assertion is that one believes what one says (John Searle); and (c) to assert (to someone) something that one believes to be false is to lie (Don Fallis).     

Making Sense of the Role of Assertions

Much of the literature on speech acts and semantics assigns a type of theoretical priority to assertions; many philosophers assume, as Robert Brandom has put it, that assertion is the fundamental speech act. Others take a more pluralistic approach, with many categories interwoven as peers, and no one category as fundamental. I suggest there is a way to embrace a pluralistic approach and explain the importance of assertions without making them fundamental. Their role instead becomes one of supporting connections between other categories, and surprisingly, turns on their unusually broad but very thin pragmatic character.     

Psychological Nominalism and the Plausibility of Sellars's Myth of Jones

Part of Sellars's general attack on the Myth of the Given is his endorsement of psychological nominalism, a view that implies that awareness of our own mental states is not given but must be earned. Sellars provides an account of how such awareness might have been earned with the Myth of Jones. Such an account is important for Sellars, for without it the Given can look necessary after all. But a problem with such accounts is that they can look extremely implausible. Sellars himself seems unconcerned to make his account plausible, and so others have stepped in here. But, I argue, they have done so in ways that fail to respect his psychological nominalism. This evinces, as well as reinforces, a lack of sensitivity to the scope of Sellars's attack on the Given, the aim of which is the dismantling of “the entire framework of givenness.” In this essay, I show how one can make Sellars's Myth of Jones plausible, while still respecting his psychological nominalism, by seeing how Jones's thought is governed by the norms of rationality as interpretability.