Assertion and its many norms

• Main Author: WILLIAMS, John N.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: assertion; speech acts; norms; knowledge; belief; intention; Modern Languages; Theory, Knowledge and Science
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2415; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/3672/viewcontent/2317_630X_man_40_04_39.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Timothy Williamson offers the ordinary practice, the lottery and the Moorean argument for the ‘knowledge account’ that assertion is the only speech-act that is governed by the single ‘knowledge rule’ or norm, that one must know its content. I show that the emptiness of the knowledge account renders mysterious why breaking the knowledge rule should be a source of criticism. I then argue that focussing exclusively on the sincerity of the speech-act of letting one know engenders a category mistake about the nature of constraints on assertion. For Williamson and those in his tradition, assertion alls under purely epistemic norms. But assertion is an epistemic action and is governed by norms of epistemic action. The action of informing someone is an epistemic action. So is proclaiming one’s faith,answering an examiner or lying. I propose that norm of a type of assertion is the epistemic state one needs for one’s speech-act to succeed in being an assertion of that type and that the epistemic state in question is determined by the point of the type of assertion. Consequently, much of the knowledge account is at odds with this proposal, although some of it is also correct if assertion is thought of narrowly as informing. Next I show that Williamson’s the ordinary practice argument, the lottery argument and the Moorean argument fail to support the knowledge account. After giving an analysis of assertion, I propose that the norm of a type of assertion is the epistemic state one needs for one’s speech-act to succeed in being an assertion of that type and that the epistemic state in question is determined by the point of the type of assertion. One is practically irrational in violating the norm.