The Oxford Handbook of Assertion

by Goldberg, Sanford C.

• ISBN13: 9780190675233
• ISBN10: 0190675233
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2020-03-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Assertions belong to the family of speech acts that make claims regarding how things are. They include statements, avowals, reports, expressed judgments, and testimonies - acts which are relevant across a host of issues not only in philosophy of language and linguistics but also in subdisciplines such as epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics, and social and political philosophy. Over the past two decades, the amount of scholarship investigating the speech act of assertion has increased dramatically, and the scope of such research has also grown. The Oxford Handbook of Assertion explores various dimensions of the act of assertion: its nature; its place in a theory of speech acts, and in semantics and meta-semantics; its role in epistemology; and the various social, political, and ethical dimensions of the act. Essays from leading theorists situate assertion in relation to other types of speech acts, exploring the connection between assertions and other phenomena of interest not only to philosophers but also to linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, lawyers, computer scientists, and theorists from communication studies.

Author Biography

Sanford C. Goldberg is Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. His interests range over philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. He is the author of dozens of articles on these topics as well as several books, including Conversational Pressure (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), To the Best of Our Knowledge (OUP, 2018), Assertion (OUP, 2015), Relying on Others (OUP, 2010), and Anti-Individualism (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Table of Contents

The Oxford Handbook of Assertion

Introduction
Sanford C. Goldberg

Part I. The Nature of Assertion: Various Approaches

1. Stalnaker on the Essential Effect of Assertion
Lenny J. Clapp
2. Assertion and the Declarative Mood
Mark Jary
3. Assertion: The Constitutive Norms View
Mona Simion and Christoph Kelp
4. Commitment Accounts of Assertion
Lionel Shapiro
5. The Belief View of Assertion
Mark Siebel
6. The Indicativity View
Peter Pagin
7. Assertion: A Defective Theoretical Category
Herman Cappelen

Part II. Assertion among the Speech Acts

8. Assertion among the Speech Acts
Marina Sbis?
9. Promising and Assertion
Mark van Roojen
10. Threats, Warnings, and Assertions
Hallie Liberto

Part III. Types of Assertion

11. Rhetorical Questions as Indirect Assertions
Marga Reimer
12. Hedged Assertion
Matthew Benton and Peter van Elswyk
13. Bullshit Assertion
Ben Kotzee
14. Slurs, Assertion, and Predication
Christopher Hom
15. Proxy Assertion
Kirk Ludwig
16. Can Groups Assert that P?
Deborah Tollefsen

Part IV. Methodological Questions in the Study of Assertion

17. Assertion and Convention
Mitchell S. Green
18. Testing for Assertion
Martin Montminy
19. Assertion and Mindreading
William S. Horton
20. Can Artificial Entities Assert?
Ori Freiman and Boaz Miller

Part V. Assertion in Semantics and Metasemantics

21. Assertion and Fiction
Manuel Garc?a-Carpintero
22. De Se Assertion
Isidora Stojanovic
23. Assertion and the Future
Corine Besson and Anandi Hattiangadi
24. Assertion and Modality
Fabrizio Cariani
25. Assertibility and Paradox
Tim McCarthy

Part VI. Assertion in Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind, and Philosophy of Action

26. Assertion and Testimony
Edward S. Hinchman
27. Assertion of Knowledge
Patrick Rysiew
28. Asserting Ignorance
Rik Peels
29. Assertoric Quality
Jennifer Lackey
30. Austin on Asserting and Knowing
Robert Fiengo
31. Formal Models of Assertion
Erik J. Olsson
32. Epistemic Norms of Assertion and Action
Mikkel Gerken and Esben Nedenskov Petersen
33. Moore's Paradox and Assertion
Clayton Littlejohn

Part VII. The Social Dimensions of Assertion

34. The Function of Assertion and Social Norms
Peter J. Graham
35. Silencing and Assertion
Alessandra Tanesini
36. Social Identity and Assertion
Casey Rebecca Johnson
37. Ethical Dimensions of Assertion
Terence Cuneo
38. The Norm of Assertion and Blame
Jessica Brown
39. Assertion, Lying, and Untruthfully Implicating
Jessica Pepp