The Norms of Assertion

Truth, Lies, and Warrant

R. McKinnon

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781349705603, 9781137521712
• eBook ISBN: 9781137521729
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Linguistics

When we make claims to each other, we're asserting. But what does it take to assert well? Do we need to know what we're talking about? This book argues that we don't. In fact, it argues that in some special contexts, we can lie.

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The Norms of Assertion

1 Overview

A topic of lively debate in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of language is what norms might govern our linguistic practice of asserting. When we tell each other things, such as that it will probably rain tomorrow, we’re asserting. There’s an intuitive sense in which some assertions are good, whereas others are bad. Lies, for example, seem like good candidates for things we shouldn’t say. But what’s the difference between honest truth-telling and lying? Are all false assertions bad assertions? These questions concern whether there are any standards governing what it takes to assert well. We call these standards norms. And so the debate about what, if any, norms govern the linguistic practice of assertion is known as the norms of assertion debate. When one’s assertion satisfies the norm, we say that the assertion is warranted.

This book is about the norms of assertion. Various philosophers have typically attempted to articulate the level of epistemic support required for properly asserting. Some argue, for example, that one must know what one asserts. Others argue that one merely needs to justifiably believe what one asserts – an epistemic standing weaker than knowledge. Most candidate norms focus on epistemic concepts like truth, reasonable belief or justification, and knowledge. There are three prominent proposals for the central norm of assertion. These are the Truth Norm (TN), the Knowledge Norm (KN), and some version of a Reasonable Belief Norm (RBN). Other less prominent proposals include the Belief Norm (BN) and the Certainty Norm (CN). Roughly speaking, versions of TN hold that an agent may assert only if the proposition asserted is true; versions of KN hold that an agent may assert only if she knows the proposition asserted; and versions of RBN hold that an agent may assert only if she reasonably believes the proposition asserted.

KN: One may assert that p only if one knows that p¹

TN: One may assert that p only if p (is true)²

RBN: One may assert that p only if one reasonably believes p³

BN: One may assert that p only if one believes that p

CN: One may assert that p only if one is certain that p⁴

Those who propose these norms consider their proposal as the single, central norm-governing assertion. That is, Williamson (2000), for example, argues that KN is the norm of assertion. This means that he does not endorse TN. One might think that KN entails TN, since truth is a necessary condition for knowledge, but that would be a mistake. The debate has been about which of these is the single norm that governs the practice of assertion.

In a departure from these sorts of views, though, others argue that the picture is much more complicated: the epistemic requirements for properly asserting shift with changes in the context of assertion. In some contexts, one needs particularly strong evidence for what one asserts, for example, whereas in some contexts one can knowingly assert what one knows to be false. I advocate for a norm of assertion along the lines of the latter view. While most proposals for the central norm of assertion focus only on the epistemic requirements for properly asserting, and propose a rigid, simple norm such as “Assert only if you know” for all contexts, the view I will defend proposes that what’s required for properly asserting depends on one’s conversational context. In a low-stakes conversation over dinner, for example, the evidence that I need to support my assertion that the beet salad is particularly good at this restaurant will be lower than the support required to assert in a high-stakes context, such as key witness testimony in a capital murder trial. (Although, I doubt I’d be asserting about the deliciousness of a particular salad.) Views such as “Assert only if you know” leave out this feature by proposing a norm that doesn’t change with shifts in context. I’ll argue that this is a mistake.

Although there is a great deal of focus on the epistemic requirements for warranted assertibility, there are other factors relevant to the nature and content of assertoric norms. Assertion is a public practice: it’s something done with other speakers. It doesn’t make much sense to assert to a tree, after all. One might speak to a tree, but it would be odd to describe such speech acts as assertions. Part of the reason for this is that we are, in some sense, socially on the hook for our assertions: we have to take responsibility for them. This responsibility only makes sense in social contexts with other agents. This feature is absent when speaking to (one wouldn’t say “with”) trees. There are a number of social conventions surrounding the appropriateness of some assertions. Although an assertion may be true, and even a case of knowledge, it may be impolite to assert during a department meeting that your boss has very bad breath. So there may be important conventional aspects to assertoric norms, and this should be reflected in the articulation of the norms.

Additionally, there are important pragmatic aspects relevant to assertibility. There are many things that we do with assertions that may bear on assertibility conditions. For example, assertions are typically taken as reasons for action. Although there may be a picture of a fire on the wall of a crowded movie theater, it would be a rather terrible idea to suddenly loudly assert “There’s a fire!” People will wrongly interpret this true assertion as a reason to stampede for the exits (naturally thinking that there’s a real fire in the theater, rather than just a painting). Since this predictably bad outcome is a likely consequence of the assertion, it seems to make the assertion inappropriate. Understanding the pragmatic implications of assertion, including what conditions are required for licensing an interlocutor to take one’s assertion and act on it, might therefore bear on whether one may or ought to assert. And this, too, should be reflected in the articulation of the norms of assertion.

Currently, the dominant view in the literature is that knowledge is the norm of assertion: one may assert only if one knows. Arguments for this view take roughly four different forms, the first three of which involve a set of observations of linguistic data. The first is the lottery paradox: statements about lottery tickets, such as “My ticket will lose,” made prior to information of the results of the draw seem inappropriate. What seems to explain this best is that the speaker can’t know that her ticket will lose. The second is Moore’s Paradox: statements such as, “The meeting starts at 4 p.m., but I don’t know it,” seem inappropriate. What seems to explain this is that in asserting, one represents oneself as knowing. And the speaker seems to contradict this representation when she says “but I don’t know it.” The third involves challenges to assertions such as “How do you know?” The general appropriateness of challenging assertions with “How do you know?” seems to indicate that one ought to assert only if one knows. The fourth is based on observations about how we evaluate actions that fall short of their goal. Assertions that fall short of expressing knowledge are worthy of criticism, and this suggests that a norm has been violated.

Throughout the literature, arguments for proposed norms of assertion typically take the form of an explanatory inference to the best explanation. Some argue that a particular norm best explains some subset of the data, and that this provides evidence for such a norm. For example, Timothy Williamson (2000) argues that KN is best able to explain the Lottery Paradox observations and that this supports KN. Others argue that a particular norm best explains all of the data, when taken as a whole, compared to other candidate norms, even if it may not best explain (or uniquely best explain) a particular subset of data. For example, John Turri (2010b, 2011) argues that KN can best account for all of the linguistic data of challenges and prompts, even though some competitors may do better on subsets of the data, and that this supports KN. I will have more to say about a good methodology for pursuing norms of assertion below.

2 The supportive reasons norm

The purpose of this book is to defend what I propose as the central norm governing our practice of assertion, which I call the Supportive Reasons Norm (SRN). Here’s what it looks like:

One may assert that p only if:

(i)		One has supportive reasons for p,
(ii)		The relevant conventional and pragmatic elements of the context are present, and
(iii)		One asserts that p at least in part because the assertion that p satisfies (i) and (ii).^5

It is what I call a “reasons-based” norm, akin to Jennifer Lackey’s (2007) Reasonable-to-Believe Norm (RTBN) and Igor Douven’s (2006) Rational Credibility Rule (RCR).

RTBN	(i)	One may assert that p only if it’s reasonable for one to believe that p, and,
	(ii)	One asserts that p at least in part because it’s reasonable for one to believe that p.

RCR One may assert that p only if p is rationally credible to one.

I call this family of norms reasons-based since they all place having good (generally, epistemic) reasons or evidence at the center of what it takes to properly assert.

One of the biggest differences between my view and other reasons-based norms is how I incorporate the conventional and pragmatic features of assertion into the norm rather than treat them as external to the norm. Advocates of norms such as those canvassed thus far typically view any moral, pragmatic, or conventional features relevant to whether one may warrantedly assert as external to the practice. Instead, I argue that there are some such features internal to the practice, and thus incorporate them into my proposed norm. SRN also takes seriously the observation that assertibility seems to change when the practical stakes of the context of assertion changes. For example, when the stakes are higher, better reasons are required. However, there are even some contexts where a speaker may warrantedly assert something she knows to be false, such as some pedagogical contexts. This makes my use of “reasons,” evidence, or epistemic justification a departure from other reasons-based norms such as RTBN and RCR. And as such, there currently are no other proposals in the literature for an assertoric norm quite like SRN.

Calling it SRN, and defining it as I have, belies its complexity. The central epistemic concept to warranted assertibility is epistemic justification, evidence, or what I’ll simply call reasons. By this I mean that there are no cases of warranted assertions where adequate reasons, in an important epistemic sense, are lacking. However, depending on the conventional or pragmatic considerations of a particular case, the connection between what’s asserted and the epistemic reasons supporting it may be more distal. In such cases it may be sufficient for the asserted proposition to be in service of a prospective, later assertion where the connection between the assertion and the reasons is more proximal. For example, if a speaker knows that something is false, then by definition she cannot have epistemic justification for the proposition. However, she may warrantedly assert the false proposition if the proposition is something that could play a role in setting up a later assertion. Cases such as this are not hard to imagine: consider the wide range of pedagogical assertions made by teachers which are, strictly speaking, known to be false but it’s best for the student to be told a noble lie rather than the truth. It’s better to instruct young students in physics by using the Bohr model of the electron structure of atoms rather than the valence model, for example. I discuss this case in detail in Chapter 4.

Another important feature of SRN is that the speaker need not believe what she asserts. Cases of warranted assertions will often involve the speaker believing what is asserted, but, provided that the appropriate conventional and pragmatic considerations are present, this is not a necessary condition. The pedagogical example above is such a case, as are Lackey’s (2007) cases of “selfless assertions.” One of her examples is of a creationist teacher who nonetheless asserts, “Homo sapiens evolved from Homo erectus.” I discuss such cases in detail in Chapter 4. A further defining feature of my account is the importance given to the highly variegated conventional and pragmatic features of assertion.

This raises natural questions such as, “What determines which conventional and pragmatic features are relevant?” and, “How do the ‘relevant’ conventional and pragmatic features impact the requirements for warranted assertibility in a given case?” The short answer is, “It depends.” Assertion is not a simple practice, even insofar as it’s a single, coherent practice. Much like other complicated social practices, such as etiquette, law, sports, and government, a one-size-fits-all approach will not adequately capture the phenomena. It is a primary task of this book to sort through these issues, and many more.

One might wonder if my viewing SRN as “context-sensitive” connects in any way to the literature on epistemic contextualism in epistemology, which concerns itself with observations that whether one knows, or whether one can be said to know, in a context seems to depend on features of the context such as pragmatic stakes. “Contextualist” accounts in epistemology argue that whether one knows (or whether one can be said to know) shifts with changes in such features. “Invariantist” accounts argue that whether one knows (or whether one can be said to know) does not shift with changes in such features. In short, the context-sensitivity of my account only tangentially connects with the epistemic contextualism use of “context-sensitivity” and its cognates. One might say that my position on warranted assertibility is, in these terms, invariantist in that the requirements for warranted assertibility do not shift with context: conditions (i)–(iii) of SRN never change. However, the satisfaction of those conditions is highly sensitive to context. So the truth conditions for ascribing the predicate “warrantedly assertible” will shift with context. In this sense, my use of “context” and “context-sensitive” is not connected to its use in the “contextualism” literature. In fact, for most of this book, the reader can forget that literature entirely.

Although I argue that having adequate reasons is the central epistemic concept in assertion (compared to, say, knowledge or truth), the context-sensitivity of my view allows it to deal with cases where circumstances clearly seem to require speakers to have particularly strong epistemic support for what they assert, such as in high-stakes court testimony. However, I don’t think that there are any contexts, even high stakes ones, where one must know in order to properly assert. And even while one takes an oath to tell the truth (the whole truth and nothing but the truth) in legal contexts, false assertions where the speaker has very good reason to think that what they say is true ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  The Norms of Assertion
• 2  Speech Acts and Assertion
• 3  Norms of Assertion and Normativity
• 4  The Supportive Reasons Norm
• 5  The Lottery Paradox
• 6  Moores Paradox
• 7  How Do You Know? and Challenges to Assertion
• 8  Performance Normativity
• 9  Supporting the Supportive Reasons Norm
• 10  Assertion and Isolated Second-Hand Knowledge
• 11  Gender, Power, and the Norms of Indirect Assertion
• References
• Index