Assertion – Maverick Philosopher

Do Fire Alarms Make Assertions?

The Opponent writes,

The alarm means 'there is a fire in the building'. An assertion has taken place, that there is a fire. But it is triggered by a sensor in the building. So asserting is not just something people do.

This is a loose way of talking quite in order in ordinary life, but false if taken literally and strictly. I have no objection to people in ordinary life saying things like, 'The fire alarm is telling us that there's a fire in the building.' But people don't talk like that. You tell me, "There's a fire!" I ask, "How do you know?" You reply, "The fire alarm went off." You DON"T say, "The fire alarm told me so,"or "The fire alarm made an assertion to that effect." You COULD say, "A fireman told me so."

But let's not get hung up in Ordinary Language analysis. The 1950s are long gone.

My claim is that a mechanical contraption cannot make an assertion any more than a 'sensor' can sense anything. Thermostats don't feel heat and smoke detectors do not smell smoke. Oscilloscopes do not detect sine waves; an engineer detects a sine wave by the instrumentality of the oscilloscope. Neither my dipstick nor the oil on my dipstick asserts that there is sufficient oil in the crankcase; I infer that there is from the oil I observe on the dipstick. Inferring, like asserting, is something people do.

All meaning traces back ultimately to Original Meaners, Original Sinn-ers. Am I being too clever for clarity?

A green light means proceed. A red light means stop. But how did those signals come to acquire their conventional meanings? From us, from minds whose intentionality is original, not derived. Surely you don't believe that green, or a green light, intrinsically means that one may proceed.

Let us see if the Opponent and I can find some common ground. I concede that there is a clear sense in which the sounding of a fire alarm means that there is a fire in the building. But this meaning is an instance of derivative, as opposed to original, intentionality. The intentionality derives from us. The sounding of the alarm means what it means only because we have assigned it that meaning. Its intentionality or meaning is thus not intrinsic to it. After all, a fire alarm could be constructed for deaf people that emits a smell instead of a sound, perhaps the awful smell of burnt hair. Obviously, such a smell is not intrinsically significative of anything.

So: if the Opponent concedes that the intentionality of a fire alarm is merely derivative, then we have agreement. If he holds that it is original, then the disagreement continues.

There is a similar pattern with sentences and propositions. I will allow you to say that a sentence is true or false in a secondary or derivative sense so long as you admit that it is propositions that are the primary truth-bearers. Do we have a deal? A declarative sentence is true in virtue of expressing a true proposition.

Assertion and Truth In Itself

The Ostrich reports that he gave up on my transcendental argument from assertion to truth when he came to this paragraph:

To further unpack the concept of assertion, we note that whatever is asserted is asserted to be true independently of one's asserting it. Of course, it does not follow from one's asserting that p that p is true independently of one's asserting it. That's a further question. The point is rather that the act of assertion purports to get at reality as it is in itself. This is a matter of conceptual necessity: the act of assertion would not be what it is if it did have a built-in nisus or directedness toward truth.

He grants that " it can be true that p even though no one asserts that p, or believes that p, or thinks that p." But he has trouble with "reality as it is in itself."

But ‘the act of assertion purports to get at reality as it is in itself’? And I still don’t really understand the ‘act’ involved in asserting. I agree that uttering the utterance ‘grass is green’ is an act. Definitely an act. Is it an ‘act of assertion’? Well the utterance-act is performed against the backdrop of conventional meaning and so forth. The conventional or literal meaning of the English sentence ‘grass is green’ is that grass is green. So the utterer is aiming to communicate the proposition (in your sense of ‘proposition’) that grass is green.

To assert that grass is green I must produce a token of a sentence (sentence-type) in some language that has the meaning that 'grass is green' has in English. So I can assert that grass is green by the assertive utterance of 'das Gras ist grün': I don't need to be speaking English. But let's stick to our mother tongue.

We can use 'sentence' and 'sentence type' interchangeably. But we must scrupulously distinguish sentences/sentence types from sentence tokens. I use 'token' both as a noun and as a verb. One way to token a sentence is by uttering it. Another way is by writing it on a piece of paper. A third is by carving it into stone. And of course there are other more sophisticated ways of tokening or encoding a sentence. To utter a sentence is to say it, whether sotto voce, or loudly. But you have to use your tongue and vocal cords, etc. An utterance is the act of an agent. The speaker is the agent; the saying or speaking of the words composing a sentence is the act. We can use 'inscribe' to covering tokenings that do not require speech, as when I write 'Sally is drunk' on a piece of paper and hand it to you to convey to you the proposition that — wait for it — Sally is drunk! I can do that in such away that it constitutes an assertion and is taken by you to be one. And let's be clear that by sentences in this discussion we mean sentences in the indicative mood. I discern no difference between such a sentence and a declarative sentence.

Are you with me so far?

Now suppose I assert that grass is green and I do so in English. To do this I must produce a token of 'Grass is green' either by utterance or by inscription or in some other way such as sign language. I produce this token with the intention of (i) expressing a proposition or thought and (ii) conveying it to my hearer or reader. I intend by my act of communication to convey to my hearer or reader what I take to be a truth, where a truth is a true proposition.

To assert is to assert something. We must distinguish the asserting from that which is asserted. That which is asserted is the proposition. Now what I assert, I assert to be true. That's analytic: I am merely unpacking (analyzing) the concept of assertion.

Now stop and think about that. It would make no sense to say that what one asserts, one asserts to be false. Of course, one can assert that a certain proposition is false. For example, I can assert that the proposition Trafalgar Square is in Brighton is false. But this is no counterexample to my claim since I assert it to be true that the proposition in question is false.

Of course, not everything I assert to be true IS true in reality. But that does not alter the fact that whenever one makes an assertion, the proposition one asserts is asserted to be true. Every sincere assertion aims at truth whether or not it hits the target. Every sincere assertion is truth-directed as a matter of conceptual necessity.

To assert, then, is to assert to be true. But not only that. What I assert to be true I assert to be true independently of my asserting it or anyone's asserting it. What is true independently of anyone's asserting it is true in itself. What is true in itself is true in reality. What is true in reality is true extramentally and extralinguistically.

We can therefore say that anyone who makes an assertion purports to say something true about reality as it is in itself.

Alles klar?

A Transcendental Argument from Assertion to Truth

We start with a fact: we make assertions. The fact is actual, so it must be possible. What are the conditions of its possibility? What has to be the case for assertion to be possible? I will argue that there has to be truth for assertion to be possible.

We proceed by unpacking the concept of assertion.

By 'assertion' I mean the speech act of asserting a proposition, not the proposition asserted taken in abstraction from the act of assertion. Clearly, the asserting and the proposition asserted — the content of the assertion — must be distinguished despite the fact that there is no act of assertion without a content. To assert is to assert something.

If one asserts that p, then one asserts it to be true that p. There is a conceptual link between assertion and truth. Whatever is asserted is presented as true by the one who makes the assertion. And it doesn't matter whether the proposition asserted is true or false. Suppose that, unbeknownst to me, the proposition I assert is false; it is still the case that I assert it to be true.

Assertion is the overt verbal expression of belief, and believing a proposition to be true is logically consistent with the proposition's being false. To believe a proposition is to believe it to be true, and to assert a proposition is to assert it to be true.

To further unpack the concept of assertion, we note that whatever is asserted is asserted to be true independently of one's asserting it. Of course, it does not follow from one's asserting that p that p is true independently of one's asserting it. That's a further question. The point is rather that the act of assertion purports to get at reality as it is in itself. This is a matter of conceptual necessity: the act of assertion would not be what it is if it did have a built-in nisus or directedness toward truth.

We take a step further by noting that to assert a proposition is to affirm it as true independently of anyone's asserting of it. This follows because a proposition such as The Moon is a natural satellite of Earth can be asserted by anyone. If so, then to assert a proposition is to assert it as intersubjectively true, true for all assertors. But if a proposition is asserted to be true independently of anyone's asserting it, then it is asserted to be true not just intersubjectively, but absolutely (non-relatively). But there is no need to speak, pleonastically, of absolute truth; it suffices to speak of truth. Truth is absolute by its very nature.

The main point here is that when one makes an assertion one purports to state what is true in itself independently of any of us. The presupposition of truth is built into the concept of assertion. Now could this presupposition fail in every case of assertion? Granted, it fails in some cases. There are false assertions. Could every assertion be false? Well, if every assertion is false, then it is true that every assertion is false, and if I assert that this is so, then I make a true assertion, one that is true independently of my assertion. Therefore, it cannot be that every assertion is false. So some assertions are true, absolutely true.

Therefore, for assertion to be possible, there must be some (absolute) truths even if we do not know which propositions are the true ones.

In sum: assertion is actual, hence possible. But it cannot be possible unless there are truths that are true independently of anyone's assertions. This is because, as a matter of conceptual necessity, assertion is linked to truth. Therefore, given that assertions are made as a matter of fact, there are truths.

I have just argued from the fact that we make assertions to the existence of truth (truths) as a transcendental presupposition of assertion.

But the following question disturbs me: Is truth merely a transcendental presupposition, or is it also an absolute presupposition?

A Merely Transcendental Presupposition?

Have I really proven the existence of truths that subsist independently of our acts of assertion (and independently of all our other discursive operations), truths that would subsist even if if we did not exist; or have I merely proven that we cannot make assertions without presupposing truth?

I have argued that the fact of assertion presupposes the existence of truths: if there are true assertions, then there is truth. But also: if there are false assertions, then there is truth. But it doesn't follow that necessarily there are truths. For the fact of assertion entails the existence of assertors who are the agents of the various acts of assertion. But these agents are contingent beings. We who assert might not have existed. It follows that the fact of assertion, the starting point of my transcendental argument, is a contingent fact.

What this seems to entail is that the necessity that there be truths is a conditional, as opposed to an absolute, necessity. I would like to be able to conclude that it is is absolutely necessary that there be truth. But the contingency of my starting point seems to spread to my conclusion, relativizing it.

Battling the Bad Ostrich over Assertion

BV said:

I will now pose a problem for the view that assertion = proposition. Suppose I give the following valid argument, an instance of modus ponens. By 'give an argument,' I mean that I assert its premises, and I assert its conclusion as following from the premises, and this in the presence of one or more interlocutors. Thus the argument is to be taken in concreto, not in abstracto.

If Tom is drunk, then Tom ought not drive
Tom is drunk
—–
Tom ought not drive.

If the argument is valid, as it plainly is, then, in both of its occurrences, the sentence 'Tom is drunk' must express the same proposition. But this cannot be the case if a proposition is identical to an assertion. For the proposition Tom is drunk occurs unasserted in the major, but asserted in the minor. (To assert a conditional is not thereby to assert either its antecedent or its consequent.) Since one and the same proposition can occur unasserted in one context and asserted in another, we must distinguish between a proposition and an assertion.

The Ostrich responds:

I deny that the sentence ‘Tom is drunk’ in the major expresses a proposition at all. It expresses a proposition in the minor, I agree. I also claim that both sentences must have the same content in major and minor. But having the same content is not the same as expressing the same proposition. Perhaps we should rewrite the major as follows:

That Tom is drunk implies that Tom ought not drive.

We connect a name for contents, using a that-clause, with the connector ‘entails’. Thus we express the whole argument as follows

It is the case (that Tom is drunk implies that Tom ought not drive)
It is the case that Tom is drunk
It is the case that Tom ought not drive.

BV counter-responds:

The Ostrich carelessly leaves out the parentheses in the minor and in the conclusion of his re-write of the original argument. His re-write should look like this:

It is the case (that Tom is drunk implies that Tom ought not drive)
It is the case (that Tom is drunk)
It is the case (that Tom ought not drive).

'That Tom is drunk' is not a sentence but a nominal phrase. In the major, it names a proposition, the proposition expressed in English by a tokening of 'Tom is drunk.' It has to name a proposition because the implication relation connects propositions to propositions. In the minor 'that Tom is drunk' also expresses a proposition. It has to if the argument is to be valid.

So one and the same proposition — the one named by 'that Tom is drunk' — occurs in both the major and the minor. It is just that in the major it is not asserted, whereas in the minor it is. Therefore, a proposition is not the same as an assertion — which was my claim all along. (Not original with me, of course. From Frege via Peter Geach.)

So the Ostrich re-write is useless rigmarole. Consider the following re-write:

That Tom is drunk implies that Tom ought not drive
Tom is drunk
Tom ought not drive.

This is valid. In the major, 'That Tom is drunk' names but does not assert a proposition. In the minor 'Tom is drunk' asserts the very same proposition. So one and the same proposition can be both asserted and left unasserted. Therefore, a proposition is not the same as an assertion.

The Ostrich tells us, "But having the same content is not the same as expressing the same proposition." I don't understand that. A content in this context just is a proposition.

Two Senses of ‘Assertion’

Ed e-mails:

The crux is what is meant by ‘assertion’. Aristotle’s system is quite clear. We have two terms on the left and right, and the copula in the middle, plus a negation sign which (in Latin) can either appear on the left of the copula (a parte ante) or the right (a parte post). Assertion = enunciation = proposition. Assertion divides into affirmation (no negation sign) and denial or negation (includes negation sign).

The two terms specify precisely what is affirmed or denied in the assertion/proposition.

Then suppose some of John’s children are sleeping. We can express this using the two term plus copula in any of the following ways.

·Some children fathered by John are sleeping things

·Some things fathered by John are sleeping children

·Some sleeping children are things fathered by John

·Some sleeping things fathered by John are children

All of these assert the existence of some children such that they sleep, and they are fathered by John.

I have no objection to the above as a setting forth of one sense of 'assertion.' In this sense, an assertion is the content or proposition asserted. But I must quibble with the last sentence: "All of these [sentences/propositions] assert that the existence of some . . . ." That is a loose way of talking, allowable in some contexts, but not in the present one in which we are discussing assertion, presupposition, Excluded Middle, and cognate topics. A proposition doesn't assert anything, and neither does a sentence. People assert, and when they do, what they assert is a proposition.

The second sense of 'assertion,' then , comes into play when we use the word to refer to a speech act. We do various things with words: make assertions, ask questions, issue commands, express wishes, etc. These two senses of 'assertion' must be kept separate if we are to make any headway with the really interesting questions about presupposition, excluded Middle, and the rest.

So far I have said nothing the least bit tendentious or controversial. I have merely pointed out two senses of 'assertion.'

I will now pose a problem for the view that assertion = proposition. Suppose I give the following valid argument, an instance of modus ponens. By 'give an argument,' I mean that I assert its premises and its conclusion as following from the premises in the presence of one or more interlocutors.

If Tom is drunk, then Tom ought not drive
Tom is drunk
—–
Tom ought not drive.

What we ought to say is that a proposition is the content of an assertion as a speech act. A proposition cannot be the same as an assertion because there are unasserted proposition. And when a proposition is asserted, what gives it the 'assertoric quality' to coin a phrase is something external to the proposition itself, namely, a person's speech act of asserting it.

Ed won't accept this. But I don't understand why. Perhaps he can explain it.

More on Assertion and Presupposition

I continue to worry this technical bone, which is not a mere technicality, inasmuch as the topic of presupposition opens out upon some very Big Questions indeed. Anyway, back to work. I thank Ed Buckner for getting me going on this.

…………………

It should be obvious that one does not assert everything that the content of one's assertion entails. If I assert that Venus is a planet, I do not thereby assert that either Venus is a planet or Putin is a former KGB agent, even though the content of my assertion entails the disjunctive proposition. The content of an assertion is a proposition, and for any proposition p, p entails p v q.

A more interesting, and more difficult, question is whether one asserts any proposition that the content of one's assertion entails (apart from the proposition that is the content of the assertion).

Suppose you ask who won the 10K Turkey Trot and I assert that Tony won the race. Do I thereby also assert that he competed in it? That he competed in it is entailed by the fact that he won. And it is entailed in a stronger sense that the sense in which Venus is a planet entails Venus is a planet or Putin is a former KGB agent. For there is a semantic connection between winning and competing, but no semantic connection in the Venus-Putin case. You could say that it is analytically impossible that Tony win without competing: what makes it true that there is no possible world in which Tony wins but does not compete is the semantic connection between winning and competing.

Still, I want to say that Tony's competing is presupposed but not asserted when I assert that he won the race. Necessarily, anything red is colored. But when I assert that Tom the tomato is red, I do not thereby assert that it is colored, although of course I presuppose that it is colored. Note the word 'thereby.' It is no doubt possible for me to assert that Tom is colored, a 'vegetable of color' if you will, but that is a different assertion.

Go back to Tony the runner. That Tony did not cheat by taking a short cut is analytically entailed by the fact that he won. (To win a foot race it does not suffice to be the first to cross the finish line. Remember Rosie Ruiz of Boston Marathon 1980 notoriety?) Will you say that when I assert that Tony won the race I also thereby assert that he did not cheat by taking a shortcut? I would say No. For that would be an unbearably counter-intuitive thing to say. I presuppose, but do not assert, that Tony did not cheat by taking a shortcut

You can see how this series of questions can be extended. One can cheat by getting a head start or by jumping in at mid-course, which is what Rosie Ruiz did at Boston. You can cheat by hiring a a world-class doppelgaenger, by wearing special shoes . . . .

Note also that if Tony won, it follows that he either won or didn't win. Will you say that when I assert that Tony won the race I am also thereby asserting that he either won it or didn't? When I assert that Tony won, I am not asserting the Law of Excluded Middle (LEM). At most, LEM is a presupposition of my assertion, and of every assertion.

If Tony won, then it was possible that he win. For everything actual is possible. But when I assert that Tony won, I presuppose, but do not assert, that it was possible at the time of the race that Tony win.

I am toying with a strong thesis:

When an agent A makes an assertion by uttering or otherwise tokening a sentence s (which is typically, but needn't be, in the indicative mood), the content of the assertion is exactly the (Fregean) proposition explicitly expressed by the tokening of s and no other proposition. Propositions other than the content proposition that are entailed by the content proposition are at most presuppositions of the assertion.

Why hold this view? Well, it seems to me that what I assert on any occasion is precisely what I intend to assert on that occasion and nothing else. When I make an assertion I translate into overt speech a belief that I have. The content/accusative of the belief is a Fregean proposition and there is nothing in that proposition that is not open to my mind at the time I express my belief.

Did Kepler Die in Misery?

Either he did or he didn't. Suppose I say that he did, and you say that he didn't. We both presuppose, inter alia, that there was a man named 'Kepler.' Now that proposition that we both presuppose, although entailed both by Kepler died in misery and Kepler did not die in misery is no part of what I assert when I assert that Kepler died in misery.

Why not?

Well, to proceed by reductio, if what I assert when I assert that Kepler died in misery is that (there was a man named 'Kepler' & he died in misery), then what you assert when you contradict me is that (either there was no man named 'Kepler' or that he did not die in misery). But the latter is not what you assert, and the former is not what I assert. That is because we take it for granted that there was a man who rejoiced under the name 'Johannes Kepler.'

What I assert is that Kepler died in misery, and what you assert is that Kepler did not die in misery. But we both presuppose that there was a man named 'Kepler.' The proposition that we both presuppose, while entailed by what we each assert, is not part of what we each assert.

That, I take it, is Frege's famous argument in Ueber Sinn und Bedeutung.

It seems pretty good to me.

Assertion and Presupposition: An Argument for a Distinction

1) Someone, such as Sophomore Sam, who asserts that there are no truths does not assert that there are truths.

And yet

2) That there are no truths entails that there is at least one truth. (Why? Because it is impossible for the first proposition to be true and the second false.)

Therefore

3) If someone S asserts that p, and p entails q, it does not follow that S asserts that q. (Assertion is not closed under entailment.)

4) Although Sam does not ASSERT that there is at least one truth when he assertively utters the sentence 'There are no truths,' he is in some relation to the proposition that there is at least one truth. I will say that he PRESUPPOSES it.

Therefore

5) There is a distinction we need to make and it is reasonably labelled the distinction between ASSERTING a proposition and PRESUPPOSING a proposition. An act of asserting can carry a presupposition that is not asserted. Sam's act of asserting that there are no truths presupposes but does not assert that there is at least one truth.

If you don't accept this argument, tell me which premise(s) you reject and why.