I argue that the debates over which norm constitutes assertion can be abandoned by challenging the three main motivations for a constitutive norm. The first motivation is the alleged analogy between language and games. The second motivation is the intuition that some assertions are worthy of criticism. The third is the discursive responsibilities incurred by asserting. I demonstrate that none of these offer good reasons to believe in a constitutive norm of assertion, as such a norm is understood in the (...) literature. Others who have made similar arguments conclude that assertion does not exist at all—that there is no such thing as assertion. I disagree: we do not have to relinquish the category of assertion just because it is not normatively constituted. There are alternative ways to understand and individuate assertion that do not rely on a constitutive norm. (shrink)

This paper presents an enrichment of the Gabbay–Woods schema of Peirce’s 1903 logical form of abduction with illocutionary acts, drawing from logic for pragmatics and its resources to model justified assertions. It analyses the enriched schema and puts it into the perspective of Peirce’s logic and philosophy.