https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5433-7651
-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Jonathan Ichikawa, Prescriptive and Evaluative Norms of Assertion, Analysis, 2024;, anae066, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anae066
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
1. Introduction
Assertions are subject to norms. Someone’s assertion might be poignant or clever or eloquent, and these can be reasons to make it; or it might be rude or distracting or racist, which might explain why it shouldn’t have been asserted. So much, so obvious.
Many philosophers have suspected that there are also more distinctive senses in which assertions are subject to norms. For example, there is a large literature considering:
(Knowledge Norm of Assertion) One must: assert p only if one knows p.
If this norm is correct, it is tied more closely to assertion than any norms about eloquence or rudeness are. The reason one should not assert rudely is that in general, one should not do rude things. If one should not assert unknowningly, that is for a more specific reason; there is no general prohibition on doing things unknowingly (it is for example perfectly acceptable to ask or wonder whether p without knowing p).1
