Several philosophers maintain that outright belief exists because it plays a reasoning simplifying role (Holton 2008; Ross and Schroeder 2014; Staffel 2019; Weisberg 2020). This claim has been recently contested, on the grounds that credences also can simplify reasoning (Dinges 2021). This paper takes a step back and asks: what features of an attitude explain its alleged ability to simplify reasoning? The paper contrasts two explanations, one in terms of dispositions and the other in terms of representation, arguing in favour (...) of the latter and against the former. The proposed explanation yields two interesting results: first, both belief and other attitudes, such as acceptance and imagination, can play a reasoning simplifying role; second, credences do not simplify our reasoning. (shrink)

Speech acts are governed by a variety of illocutionary norms. Building on Sbisà’s (2019) work, this chapter attempts to develop a common framework to study them. Four families of illocutionary rules are identified: (i) Validity rules set conditions for (actual) performance; (ii) Cooperative rules set conditions for cooperative performance; (iii) Illocutionary goals set conditions for successful performance; (iv) Illocutionary obligations set conditions for compliance. Illocutionary rules are often taken to play a constitutive role: speech acts are said to be constituted (...) by the unique set of rules that regulates them. Against this view, it is argued that many illocutionary rules are instead best construed as rationally derivable expectations of cooperation. This alternative paradigm provides fertile ground to reconcile scholarly disagreement between speech act theorists, and yields a promising explanation of how illocutionary norms are learned and evolve through time. (shrink)

According to an influential view, asserting a proposition involves undertaking some “commitment” to the truth of that proposition. But accounts of what it is for someone to be committed to the truth of a proposition are often vague or imprecise, and are rarely put to work to define assertion. This paper aims to fill this gap. It offers a precise characterisation of assertoric commitment, and shows how it can be applied to define assertion. On the proposed view, acquiring commitment is (...) not sufficient for asserting. To assert, commitment must be acquired by explicitly presenting a proposition as true. (shrink)

Can fictions make genuine assertions about the actual world? Proponents of the ‘Assertion View’ answer the question affirmatively: they hold that authors can assert, by means of explicit statements that are part of the work of fiction, that something is actually the case in the real world. The ‘Nonassertion’ View firmly denies this possibility. In this paper, I defend a nuanced version of the Nonassertion View. I argue that even if fictions cannot assert, they can indirectly communicate that what is (...) recounted as fictional is actually true. I show that this view is supported by independent linguistic data, and that it is able to defuse the objections that are typically raised against the Nonassertion View. I conclude by showing that this position has some interesting implications for testimonial cognitivism about fiction. (shrink)

William P. Alston argues in “Expressing” (1965) that there is no important difference between expressing a feeling in language and asserting that one has that feeling. My aims in this paper are (1) to show that Alston's arguments ought to have led him to a different conclusion—that “asserting” and “expressing” individuate speech acts at different levels of analysis (the illocutionary and the locutionary, respectively)—and (2) to argue that this conclusion can solve a problem facing contemporary analyses of expressing: the “no (...) show tell” problem, or the problem of accounting for utterances that report feelings truly without expressing them. Alston's paper made an important contribution 50 years ago, and a reimagining of it can make another important contribution today. (shrink)

What makes two sentences inconsistent? Expressivists understand the meaning of a sentence in terms of the mental state it expresses. In order to explain the inconsistency between two sentences, the expressivist must appeal to some inconsistency feature of the mental states expressed. A simple explanation is that two sentences, e.g., “murder is wrong” and “murder is not wrong” are inconsistent by virtue of expressing mental states that disagree. Schroeder argues that the expressivist lacks a plausible explanation of the disagreement. Baker (...) & Woods argue that Schroeder is wrong. With these authors, I agree that expressivists have an explanation of disagreement, but this does not adequately explain why two sentences are inconsistent. The reason is that two intuitively inconsistent sentences do not necessarily express mental states that disagree. Moreover, assuming that the expressivist gives a structurally identical explanation for moral and non-moral language, the problem generalizes to non-moral language. It is also argued that the problem extends to thought. How expressivists can and should conceive of inconsistency thus remains a challenge. (shrink)

This chapter reviews empirical research on the rules governing assertion and retraction, with a focus on the normative role of truth. It examines whether truth is required for an assertion to be considered permissible, and whether there is an expectation that speakers retract statements that turn out to be false. Contrary to factive norms (such as the influential “knowledge norm”), empirical data suggests that there is no expectation that speakers only make true assertions. Additionally, contrary to truth-relativist accounts, there is (...) no requirement for speakers to retract statements that are false at the context of assessment. We conclude by suggesting that truth still plays a crucial role in the evaluation of assertions: as a standard for evaluating their success, rather than permissibility. (shrink)

Generalisation, universal knowledge claims, and recommendations within disaster studies are problematic because they lead to miscommunication and the misapplication of actionable knowledge. The consequences and impacts thereof are not often considered by experts; forgone as irrelevant to the academic division of labour. There is a disconnect between expert assertions for disaster risk reduction (DRR) and their practical suitability for laypersons. Experts currently assert independently of the context within which protective action measures (PAMs) are to be used, measures unconnected to the (...) people for whom they are developed. This has knock-on effects for DRR: much expert-generated science and policy remains unused, unimplemented, and sometimes misapplied. I use philosophical accounts of assertion and epistemic blame to highlight the epistemic relationship between experts and laypersons. This relationship includes responsibilities and agreements between epistemic agents. Since multilevel DRR knowledge still transfers top-down from experts to laypersons, if experts impair the epistemic relationship, they can be held epistemically blameworthy. To address the pervasiveness of top-down systems, I analyse the epistemic framings and narratives currently shaping DRR, and more specifically PAMs and campaigns. I deconstruct universal perspectives that dominate the epistemic processes of generating, disseminating, and implementing DRR knowledge and specifically for co-seismic landslide PAMs for Nepal. I argue for more inclusive, contextual, and epistemically responsible DRR. Co-production of knowledge should begin from the standpoints of marginalised persons who may have an epistemic advantage due to their socio-politically marginalised positions. Often these epistemic contributions are left out of DRR efforts because marginalised persons are rarely afforded equal, if any, epistemic agency, which results in epistemic gaps and a large pool of relevant knowledge remaining unincorporated and unused in DRR research and policy. (shrink)

Can fictions lie? According to a classic conception, works of fiction cannot contain lies, since their content is neither presented as true nor meant to deceive us. But this classic view can be challenged. Sometimes fictions appear to make claims about the actual world, and these claims can be designed to convey falsehoods, historical misconceptions, and pernicious stereotypes. Should we conclude that some fictional statements are lies? This article presents two views that support a positive answer, and two that support (...) a negative one. After examining various ways in which fictions can deceive, it concludes in favour of the view that fictional statements can mislead, but never lie. (shrink)

Moorean constructions are famously odd: it is infelicitous to deny that you believe what you claim to be true. But what about claiming that p, only to immediately put into question your evidence in support of p? In this paper, we identify and analyse a class of quasi-Moorean constructions, which we label counterevidentials. Although odd, counterevidentials can be accommodated as felicitous attempts to mitigate one’s claim right after making it. We explore how counterevidentials differ from lexicalised mitigation operators, parentheticals, and (...) anaphoric mitigation devices, and consider some cognate non-assertoric constructions. We conclude by exploring the implications of our analysis for theorising about linguistic responsibility, assertion, and lying. (shrink)