Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Assertions, joint epistemic actions and social practices

  • Published:
Synthese Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this paper I provide a theory of the speech act of assertion according to which assertion is a species of joint action. In doing so I rely on a theory of joint action developed in more detail elsewhere. Here we need to distinguish between the genus, joint action, and an important species of joint action, namely, what I call joint epistemic action. In the case of the latter, but not necessarily the former, participating agents have epistemic goals, e.g., the acquisition of knowledge. It is joint epistemic action that assertion is a species of.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. I note that some versions of some of these theories have overlapping characteristics.

  2. See also Brown (2010), who discusses the idea that epistemic standards for knowledge might be different from those for assertion. For discussion of the view that epistemic standards are context relative and the implications this might have for the relation between knowledge and assertion see Hawthorne (2004).

  3. For criticisms and his reply see: Hawthorne and Magidor (2009) and Stalnaker (2009).

  4. This is a different enterprise from that of Clark and Carlson (1982) when they attempt to accommodate third party members of an audience who are not the actual addressees of assertions. Goldberg (2014) has recently argued that assertions give rise to certain hearer moral entitlements, e.g. to assume that the speaker acknowledges being responsible for having the relevant warranting authority.

  5. Pagin (2004) argues that assertions are not social.

  6. Williamson (1996), for example, offers only to provide one constitutive condition that, nevertheless, individuates assertions.

  7. Grice (1975) holds that relevance is a conversational maxim and, as such, is not constitutive of his account of speaker-meaning or assertion.

  8. For related notions see Fallis (2007) and Corlett (2008).

  9. Sperber and Wilson (1986) argue that communication comes with a guarantee of relevance.

  10. Atomistic individualism (Taylor 1985) is associated with methodological individualism, collectivism with theorists such as Durkheim (1965) and, more recently, French (1984) and, in a somewhat different way in terms of collective minds, Pettit (2007). For a set of recent discussions of these issues see Konzelmann-Ziv and Schmid (2014).

  11. I have argued elsewhere (Miller 2001, Chap. 5; 2010; Chaps. 1 and 2) that, properly speaking, there are no such things as corporate actions that are irreducible to individual actions (taking joint actions as relational individual actions).

  12. A fourth relevant influential theorist is Raimo Tuomela (2013). However, Tuomela’s view oscillates between the views of the other three.

  13. There is a need for an excluder clause to supplement this brief description that I have offered here.

  14. Broad (1928) appeared to have this kind of notion in mind when he spoke of ‘extraspection’. See also Eitan et al. (2005).

  15. See Miller (2015) for an earlier version of this notion and of the material in this section.

  16. The idea of truth as teleological has been advanced by Dummett (1978, Chap. 1, 1981, Chap. 10).

  17. See Walker (1996) and Montmarquet (1993, Chap. 1) for a related defence of the sort of view I am here espousing. See also the exchange between Stern (1997) and Walker (1998). For a more recent treatment favourable to my own view and that of Montmarque and Walker see Frankish (2007). Note that the general view I am espousing is that one can be directly responsible for some of one’s beliefs, i.e. that one’s responsibility for some of one’s belief is not dependent on one’s responsibility for some action that led to those beliefs. In short, doxastic responsibility does not reduce to responsibility for actions. Note also that there are different accounts of this general view that one can be directly responsible for some of one’s beliefs. For example, I disagree with Walker in that I hold that the judgment that p is partially independent of the desire or goal to know whether or not that p. A further point is that if the general direct responsibility view shared by myself, Montmarquet, Walker and Frankish turned out to be incorrect, the basic arguments in this paper for joint epistemic action could be recast in terms of a notion of indirect moral responsibility. However, obviously from my perspective such recasting would not be entirely satisfactory.

  18. For the classic defence of this view see Geach (1957).

  19. For an early influential account of communication and (relatedly) speaker-meaning see Grice (1957). For the recent influential so-called ‘Knowledge Account’ of assertion see Williamson (2000, Chap. 11). For an account of the communication/assertion distinction and their relation see Sperber and Wilson (1986, Chap. 3).

  20. This example is famously discussed by Strawson (1971).

  21. Hence the paradoxical nature of G. E. Moore’s assertoric form ‘I believe that p but not p’. There is a voluminous literature on this issue but see, for example, Pruss (2011). Here I note that on my account such an assertion is not strictly logically inconsistent with having the collective end of mutual true belief that p. Perhaps it is openly infringing the requirement to aim at the truth. If so, then it is not an assertion on my account. On the other hand, it might be that one is making a judgment that is inconsistent with one’s prior belief in which case it could well be an assertion. I cannot pursue this issue further here.

  22. Or perhaps ‘most’ given the possibility there are some extreme cases of, say, autism for which this is not true, although it is by no means clear that such persons could engage in judgment making independent of some participation the social practice of assertion.

  23. Telling a lie on any given occasion is parasitic on most aiming at the truth most of the time (Miller 1986).

  24. Thus my account is able to escape some of the pejorative criticisms made of those theories, such as Williamson’s which hold that the norm in question is to the effect that the assertor not simply aim at knowledge, truth or the like but actually ‘hit’ it. See, for example, Koethe (2009).

  25. This is consistent with trust being a default position in the sense that one trusts unless one has reason not to. For even in the latter case a reason based decision to, for example, continue to trust because one has no good reason not to, is called for from time to time.

  26. This example was provided by an anonymous attendee at the Collective Intentionality VIII conference held at Manchester University in 2012.

  27. We owe the notions of illocutionary force and perlocutionary effect to Austin (1962).

References

  • Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bach, K., & Harnish, R. M. (1979). Linguistic communication and speech acts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brandom, R. (1983). Asserting. Nous, 17(4), 637–650.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brandom, R. (1994). Making it explicit. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bratman, M. (1992). Shared cooperative activity. Philosophical Review, 101, 327–341.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Broad, C. D. (1928). The mind and its place in nature. London: Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, J. (2010). Knowledge and assertion. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 81(3), 549–566.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clark, H. C., & Carlson, T. B. (1982). Hearers and speech acts. Language, 58(2), 332–373.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Corlett, J. A. (2008). Epistemic responsibility. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 16(2), 179–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Douven, I. (2006). Assertion, knowledge and rational credibility. Philosophical Review, 115, 449–485.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dummett, M. (1978). Truth and other enigmas. London: Duckworth.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dummett, M. (1981). Frege: Philosophy of language. London: Duckworth.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, E. (1965). The rules of sociological method. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eitan, N., Hoerl, C., McCormack, T., & Roessler, J. (2005). Joint attention: Communication and other minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fallis, D. (2007). Collective epistemic goals. Social Epistemology, 21(3), 267–280.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frankish, K. (2007). Deciding to believe again. Mind, 116, 523–547.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • French, P. (1984). Collective and corporate responsibility. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geach, P. (1957). Mental acts. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert, M. (2014). Joint commitment: How we make the social world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg, S. (2014). Assertion and the ethics of belief. In J. Matheson & R. Vitz (Eds.), The ethics of belief (pp. 261–283). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Grice, H. P. (1957). Meaning. Philosophical Review, 66(3), 377–388.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grice, H. P. (1969). Utterer’s meaning and intention. Philosophical Review, 78, 147–177.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts (pp. 113–127). London: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hawthorne, J. (2004). Knowledge and lotteries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hawthorne, J., & Magidor, O. (2009). Assertion, context and epistemic accessibility. Mind, 118, 377–397.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heal, J. (1978). Common knowledge. Philosophical Quarterly, 28, 116–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koethe, J. (2009). Knowledge and the norms of assertion. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 87(4), 625–638.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Konzelmann-Ziv, A., & Schmid, H. B. (Eds.). (2014). Institutions, emotions and group agents: Contribution to social ontology. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, D. (1969). Convention. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacFarlane, J. (2011). What is assertion? In J. Brown & H. Cappelen (Eds.), Assertion: New philosophical essays (pp. 79–96). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, S. (1986). Truthtelling and the actual language relation. Philosophical Studies, 49(2), 281–294.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, S. (1992). Joint action. Philosophical Papers, 21(3), 275–299.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, S. (1995). Intentions, ends and joint action. Philosophical Papers, 24(1), 51–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, S. (2001). Social action: A teleological account. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, S. (2007). Joint action: The individual strikes back. In S. L. Tsohatzidis (Ed.), Intentional acts and institutional facts: Essays on John Searle’s social ontology (pp. 73–92). Dordrecht: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, S. (2010). The Moral Foundations of Social Institutions: A philosophical study. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, S. (2013). Collective Responsibility, epistemic action and the dual use problem in science and technology. In B. Rappert & M. Selgelid (Eds.), On the dual uses of science and ethics: Principles, practices and prospects (pp. 185–206). Canberra: ANU Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, S. (2014). Joint actions, social institutions and collective goods: A teleological account. In A. Konzelmann-Ziv & H. B. Schmid (Eds.), Institutions, emotions and group agents: Contribution to social ontology (pp. 99–115). Dordrecht: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, S. (2015). Joint epistemic action and collective moral responsibility” Social Epistemology. doi:10.1080/02691728.2014.971908.

  • Montmarquet, J. A. (1993). Epistemic virtue and doxastic responsibility. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moser, P. (1989). Knowledge and evidence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pagin, P. (2004). Is assertion social? Journal of Pragmatics, 36, 833–859.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pagin, P. (2014). Assertion. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/assertion/. Accessed 8 Dec 2014

  • Pettit, P. (2007). Responsibility incorporated. Ethics, 117, 171–201.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pruss, A. R. (2011). Sincerely asserting what you do not believe. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 90(3), 541–546.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J. R. (1990). Collective intentions and actions. In P. Cohen, J. Moran, & M. Pollack (Eds.), Intentions in communication (pp. 401–415). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, N. V. (Ed.). (1982). Mutual knowledge. London: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stalnaker, R. (1999). Context and content. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Stalnaker, R. (2009). On Hawthorne and Magidor on assertion, context and epistemic accessibility. Mind, 118, 399–409.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Strawson, P. F. (1971). Intention and convention in speech acts. In P. F. Strawson (Ed.), Logico-Linguistic papers (pp. 149–169). London: Methuen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stern, C. (1997). Walker on the voluntariness of judgment. Inquiry, 40(2), 175–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, C. (1985). Atomism. In C. Taylor (Ed.), Philosophy and the human sciences: Philosophical papers 2 (pp. 187–210). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Tuomela, R. (2013). Social ontology: Collective intentionality and group agents. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Walker, M. T. (1996). The voluntariness of judgment. Inquiry, 39, 97–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walker, M. T. (1998). The voluntariness of judgment: A reply to stern. Inquiry, 41(3), 333–339.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, B. (2003). Truth and truthfulness. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williamson, T. (1996). Knowing and asserting. Philosophical Review, 105(4), 489–523.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and its limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia

    Seumas Miller

  2. Delft University of Technology, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Seumas Miller

Authors
  1. Seumas Miller
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Seumas Miller.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Miller, S. Assertions, joint epistemic actions and social practices. Synthese 193, 71–94 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0745-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0745-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation