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Stick to the facts: on the norms of assertion

Stick to the facts: on the norms of assertion
Stick to the facts: on the norms of assertion
The view that truth is the norm of assertion has fallen out of fashion. The recent trend has been to think that knowledge is the norm of assertion. Objections to the knowledge view proceed almost exclusively by appeal to alleged counterexamples. While it no doubt has a role to play, such a strategy relies on intuitions concerning hypothetical cases, intuitions which might not be shared and which might shift depending on how the relevant cases are fleshed out. In this paper, I reject the knowledge view on principled grounds. More specifically, by appeal to a principle which is motivated independently of the debate over the norms of assertion and which is already accepted by many proponents of the knowledge view, I show the knowledge view to be false while simultaneously accounting for why it might seem to be true. In doing so, I provide a novel defence of the unfashionable truth view.
0165-0106
847-867
Whiting, Daniel
c0847bb4-963e-470d-92a2-5c8aae5d5aef
Whiting, Daniel
c0847bb4-963e-470d-92a2-5c8aae5d5aef

Whiting, Daniel (2013) Stick to the facts: on the norms of assertion. Erkenntnis, 78 (4), 847-867. (doi:10.1007/s10670-012-9383-6).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The view that truth is the norm of assertion has fallen out of fashion. The recent trend has been to think that knowledge is the norm of assertion. Objections to the knowledge view proceed almost exclusively by appeal to alleged counterexamples. While it no doubt has a role to play, such a strategy relies on intuitions concerning hypothetical cases, intuitions which might not be shared and which might shift depending on how the relevant cases are fleshed out. In this paper, I reject the knowledge view on principled grounds. More specifically, by appeal to a principle which is motivated independently of the debate over the norms of assertion and which is already accepted by many proponents of the knowledge view, I show the knowledge view to be false while simultaneously accounting for why it might seem to be true. In doing so, I provide a novel defence of the unfashionable truth view.

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Assertion_Stick_To_The_Facts_DJW.pdf - Author's Original
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e-pub ahead of print date: June 2012
Published date: August 2013
Organisations: Philosophy

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 340130
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/340130
ISSN: 0165-0106
PURE UUID: b1a9d3e6-03cc-4863-8c84-c8bf0a584ccf

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Date deposited: 12 Jun 2012 12:12
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 11:19

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