{"id":6631,"date":"2016-02-29T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/02\/29\/indicative-mood-and-assertoric-force\/"},"modified":"2016-02-29T12:00:34","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T12:00:34","slug":"indicative-mood-and-assertoric-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/02\/29\/indicative-mood-and-assertoric-force\/","title":{"rendered":"Indicative Mood and Assertoric Force"},"content":{"rendered":"

Assertion is a speech act of an agent, a speaker. This topic belongs to pragmatics. But one can also speak of the assertoric force of a sentence, considered apart from a context of use. So considered, assertoric force is presumably an aspect of a sentence's semantics along with the sentence's content. That is what I want to think about in this entry. The assertoric force of a sentence is, as it were, a semantic correlate of the speech act of assertion. I cannot assert a sentence unless it is of the right grammatical form. I can assert 'Dan is drunk' but not 'Dan, be drunk!' or 'Is Dan drunk?' or 'Would that Dan were drunk.'<\/span><\/p>\n

(show<\/a>)<\/span><\/div>\n
My asserting that Dan is drunk is a speech act. When I make an assertion, I do at least two things: I commit myself to the truth of what I assert, and I communicate the content of my assertion to a hearer. <\/span><\/p>\n

Suppose I assert that Dan is drunk. I do this by tokening the sentence type 'Dan is drunk.' The assertoric force of the tokened sentence type is indicated by 'is' which signals the indicative mood among other things. Now here is my question: Are indicative mood and assertoric force the same, or different?<\/strong> When I refer to the assertoric force of a sentence, am I referring to its indicativity, and vice versa? Or must we distinguish between indicativity and assertoric force?  I will argue that they are the same property.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consider this exchange between speakers A and B:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

A: Peter is innocent.<\/span>
B: (Ironically) Yeah, right. Peter is innocent.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Although both A and B are tokening 'Peter is innocent,' only A is asserting that Peter is innocent. Now the sentence type considered by itself is in the indicative mood. So I am tempted to say that assertoric force, as a semantic component, is identical to indicativity. Both tokens have assertoric force despite the fact that only one is asserted. Now consider this example:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

1. If Peter is innocent, then his conviction is unjust.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To assert a conditional is not to assert its antecedent. (Or its consequent for that matter.) The antecedent, 'Peter is innocent,' is in the indicative mood. I want to say that it has assertoric force despite the fact that it is not being asserted.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is assertoric force? I suggest that it is that property of a sentence that renders it capable of being used by an agent to say something either true or false. As far as I can see, it is the same as the property of indicativity. Sentences with assertoric force can be used without being asserted, but no sentence lacking assertoric force can be asserted. To say that a sentence is assertoric, or has assertoric force, is to say that it is of the appropriate form for the making of assertions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since assertoric force either is or is equivalent to the property of being either<\/em> true or false, a sentence's being assertoric does not entail its being true. Nor, of course, does a sentence's being asserted by someone entail its being true. To assert a sentence is to assert it as being true, but that is not to say that an asserted sentence is <\/em>true. Whatever truth is, it involves a relation to something external to sentences or propositions.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\nRelated articles<\/span><\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Must Singular Thoughts be Object-Dependent?<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Validity and Semantics: Will the Real Frodo Baggins Please Stand Up?<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Assertion is a speech act of an agent, a speaker. This topic belongs to pragmatics. But one can also speak of the assertoric force of a sentence, considered apart from a context of use. So considered, assertoric force is presumably an aspect of a sentence's semantics along with the sentence's content. That is what I … Continue reading “Indicative Mood and Assertoric Force”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[408],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-philosophy-of"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}