The Certainty Norm of Assertion

In a well-known paper, Jason Stanley argues against the knowledge norm of assertion, in favour of a certainty norm of assertion. As Jason notices, knowledge-denying Moore-paradoxes like (1) aren't the only Moore-paradoxes in town; certainty-denying conjunctions like (2) seem similarly paradoxical:

1. Jason works at Yale but I don't know that Jason works at Yale
2. Jason works at Yale but it's not certain that Jason works at Yale

Jason thinks that knowledge doesn't entail certainty, and so a knowledge norm of assertion can't explain what's wrong with assertions of (2). Instead, he opts for a certainty norm of assertion, that's meant to explain both.

The argument I thought I remembered from the paper was that the certainty norm was strictly stronger than the knowledge norm. The certainty norm explains (2) in the obvious way (just like the knowledge norm explained (1)); and it explains (1) by invoking the entailment of knowledge by certainty. If I don't know that Jason works at Yale, it's not certain, so I can't assert the first conjunct. But today I read the paper again, and that's definitely not the argument. Certainty, in the sense Jason discusses, does not entail knowledge.

The relevant notion of certainty here is 'epistemic certainty', according to which 'one is certain of a proposition p if and only if one knows that p (or is in a position to know that p) on the basis of evidence that gives one the highest degree of justification for one's belief that p'. (p. 35) Since certainty does not entail knowledge, on Jason's view, it is not quite clear to me how a certainty norm explains the infelicity of (1). Of course one can't know both conjuncts in (1), but I don't see why why one couldn't have certainty in both conjuncts. Here is Jason's attempt to deal with the issue:

Consider the proposition that there are no large Jewish elephants in my bedroom. This may have been an epistemic certainty for me five minutes ago, even though I did not know that there were no large Jewish elephants in my bedroom. I did not know that there were no large Jewish elephants in my bedroom, because I did not believe it, and I did not believe it simply because it didn't occur to me ever to entertain that possibility. Nevertheless, in this case, if I had entertained the propsition that there are no large Jewish elephants in my bedroom, I would have known it. The reason this counterfactual is true is because it is an epistemic certainty for me that there are no large Jewish elephants in my bedroom. So the fact that a proposition is an epistemic certainty for a person does not entail that the person knows that proposition. If a proposition is an epistemic certainty for a person at a time, then it does follow that the person is in a *position to know* that proposition. Being in a position to know a proposition is to be disposed to acquire the knowledge that the proposition is true, when one entertains it on the right evidential basis. Since epistemic certainty entails possession of this dispositional property, utterances [like (1)] are odd. (p. 49)

The thought seems to be that if something is certain, then if one asserts it, one must know it. But it doesn't follow from his explanations of these notions that this must be so—couldn't something be asserted without being entertained on the right evidential basis? Suppose for instance that p is certain for me, but I don't know p because I am ignoring my overwhelming evidence for p, and basing my belief that p on some bad evidence. Couldn't it be, in this case, that it's also certain for me that I don't know p? I think it seems plausible that I might—my evidence, which, suppose, includes some sort of introspective access to the source of my belief—might overwhelmingly establish that I don't know that p. But if so, the certainty norm predicts that 'p but I don't know that p' should be assertable.

Assertability without Assertion

I think there are cases where one doesn't assert something, but one wouldn't be in violation of any norms of assertion if one did. Probably you can think of lots of cases like that. For instance, suppose that Helen is having a conversation about sloths and their habits. Suppose that she has whatever arbitarily high epistemic access you like with respect to the fact that urinate only once a week, but chooses not to mention this fact, preferring in this instance to listen to the other people speaking instead. If she had asserted it, this would have amounted to an expression of her knowledge or better (certainty, maybe), and it would have given knowledge to her interlocutors, who would have celebrated this fact as relevant and interesting. But she keeps it to herself instead.

I think this is a pretty mundane kind of case—it happens all the time. (There are other kinds of cases with the relevant feature too—imagine a case where one does the wrong thing by refraining from asserting. One may—indeed, ought—to assert, but doesn't.) But I also think it's a counterexample to Rachel McKinnon's 'Supportive Reasons Norm', which she suggests is the central norm governing assertion.

Here is the Supportive Reasons Norm (given on p. 52 of Rachel's recent assertion book):

One may assert that p only if
(i) One has supportive reasons for p,
(ii) The relevant conventional and pragmatic elements of the context are present, and
(iii) One asserts that p at least in part because the assertion that p satisfies (i) and (ii).

My case of Helen is a counterexample because Helen may assert that sloths urinate only once a week, but fails to satisfy condition (iii), since she doesn't make the relevant assertion at all, let alone for a particular reason. In general, that condition will ensure that the permissibility of the assertion entails that the assertion is made. Since it's not true we're only permitted to assert the things we do assert, I don't think condition (iii) is part of a proper characterization of what one may assert. (It is much easier to think something like it may have a role to play in a characterization of when a given assertion is a proper one. Perhaps that's what Rachel had in mind.)

Philosophical Assertions

Chapter 9 of Sandy Goldberg's recent book Assertion argues, on the basis of peer disagreement in philosophy, that it characteristic of typical, apparently appropriate, philosophical discussions that they include many assertions of contents for which the speakers are not justified. This is part of a bigger case that the epistemic norms governing assertion do not always make for strong epistemic constraints.

I am not convinced that the cases of disagreement he's looking at are cases in which people are typically making out-right assertions of controversial contents. I am attracted to something like the idea he recognizes in this passage:

I have sometimes heard it said (in conversation) that there really are no straight (first-order) assertions of controversial matters in philosophy, only speculations and conditional (or otherwise hedged) claims. A characteristic claim in this vicinity is that philosophers do not flat-out assert their claims, but instead suggest them tentatively, or with something like a "we have some reason to think that" operator in front of them. (p. 247)

I would weaken this point slightly—perhaps philosophers do sometimes assert things that they can't justifiably believe because of considerations about peer disagreement, but hold that these assertions are inappropriate norm violations. If most of the time, including all of the times that are clearly appropriate, philosophers are doing something weaker than flat-out asserting, then his larger argument for a weaker assertion norm doesn't really get off the ground. (While it may be unacceptable to suppose that philosophy is absolutely full of unwarranted assertions; it seems to me not at all implausible to suppose that some philosophers sometimes make unwarranted assertions.) But I do think that philosophers often tend to exaggerate the strength with which philosophers tend to put forward their philosophical ideas.

In response to this move, Sandy writes the following in defence of 'PASD'—the claim that it is common for philosophers in cases of systematic peer disagreement to assert controversial claims. This is a continuation of the passage quoted above:

I agree that this is sometimes the case. But I find it dubious in the extreme to think that all cases of apparent assertions made in philosophy under conditions of systematic peer disagreement are like this. Surely there are some cases in which a philosopher continues to assert that p, despite the systematic p-relevant peer disagreement. (fn: Indeed, some philosophers have even conceded as much in their own case.) Here, two points of support can be made. First, it should be obvious to anyone who has participated in or observed philosophical practice that there are (some, and arguably many) occasions on which a claim is advanced under conditions of systematic peer disagreement without any explicit hedge or "there are reasons to think" operator in play. For this reason, if the hedging proposal is to work, it must postulate an implicit (linguistically unmarked) hedge or "there are reasons to think" operator in play in all such cases. But such a global postulation would appear to be fully theory-driven, and so ad hoc. What is more (and this is my second point), there are independent reasons to think that such a postulation is not warranted. In particular, the suggestion—that philosophical practice under conditions of systematic peer disagreement always involves hedged rather than straight assertion—appears to be belied by other aspects of our practice. Why the vehemence with which some (apparently first-order, categorical) philosophical claims are made, even under conditions of systematic peer disagreement? Why so much heat, if all we are doing is entering hedged claims? Why do we go to such great lengths to try to defend our claims in the face of challenge? Why not shrug off such challenges to our claim that p, with the remark that, after all, we were merely claiming that there are reasons supporting that p? Relatedly: why is it that the typical response to challenges is to try to defend the claim that p, not the (weaker) claim that there are reasons to believe that p? Finally, if all we are doing in philosophy is entering hedged claims, why is talk of our philosophical "commitments" so prevalent? Reflecting on this practice, I conclude that assertions are made in philosophy, even in the face of systematic peer disagreement. PASD is true.

I want to make three observations about this argument. First, for the reasons mentioned above, I think that Sandy is wrong to focus on the question of whether philosophers ever make assertions of controversial claims. For his argument to work, he needs this to be common enough that the verdict that such claims are unwarranted is undermining of philosophical practice. Second, he seems to be focused primarily on the idea that philosophers are asserting something weaker, like an existential claim about reasons; a more promising version of the idea seems to me that we are often making weaker commitments to categorical philosophical contents—that we're often speculating that p, for instance, rather than out-right asserting it. (Sandy recognizes that there is an important distinction here elsewhere in the book.)

Third, I think that when we really get down to what philosophers actually say and write, outright assertions of contentious claims are much rarer than we sometimes suppose. We very often use 'it seems to me that' etc. hedges. I think the passage I've just quoted from Sandy is reasonably representative in terms of philosophical force and style—but how often does it contain actual assertions of contentious claims? Let's look in detail:

• I agree that this is sometimes the case. May or may not be an assertion, but if it is one, it's an uncontroversial one Sandy makes about himself.
• But I find it dubious in the extreme to think that all cases of apparent assertions made in philosophy under conditions of systematic peer disagreement are like this. Ditto.
• Surely there are some cases in which a philosopher continues to assert that p, despite the systematic p-relevant peer disagreement. To my ear, the 'surely' makes this an invitation to notice for oneself, not an outright assertion. (I can almost hear question-marks on 'surely' claims.) But if it is an assertion it's a very weak one, and not one I'd expect to see systematic disagreement about.
• Indeed, some philosophers have even conceded as much in their own case. An assertion, but not a contentious one.
• Here, two points of support can be made. Ditto.
• First, it should be obvious to anyone who has participated in or observed philosophical practice that there are (some, and arguably many) occasions on which a claim is advanced under conditions of systematic peer disagreement without any explicit hedge or "there are reasons to think" operator in play. Plausibly an assertion, but not controversial.
• For this reason, if the hedging proposal is to work, it must postulate an implicit (linguistically unmarked) hedge or "there are reasons to think" operator in play in all such cases. An assertion. If 'the hedging proposal' is the idea that philosophers never make assertions in these cases, it looks like an uncontroversial one; if it's the more general idea that one can avoid his argument by invoking hedging moves, I think it's an unwarranted assertion for the reasons mentioned above.
• But such a global postulation would appear to be fully theory-driven, and so ad hoc. Exhibits the kind of hedges he's talking about.
• What is more (and this is my second point), there are independent reasons to think that such a postulation is not warranted. Exhibits the kind of hedges he's talking about.
• In particular, the suggestion—that philosophical practice under conditions of systematic peer disagreement always involves hedged rather than straight assertion—appears to be belied by other aspects of our practice. Exhibits the kind of hedges he's talking about.
• Why the vehemence with which some (apparently first-order, categorical) philosophical claims are made, even under conditions of systematic peer disagreement? Why so much heat, if all we are doing is entering hedged claims? Why do we go to such great lengths to try to defend our claims in the face of challenge? Why not shrug off such challenges to our claim that p, with the remark that, after all, we were merely claiming that there are reasons supporting that p? Relatedly: why is it that the typical response to challenges is to try to defend the claim that p, not the (weaker) claim that there are reasons to believe that p? Finally, if all we are doing in philosophy is entering hedged claims, why is talk of our philosophical "commitments" so prevalent? Six rhetorical questions provided to invite the reader to share in the appearance mentioned in the previous point. No assertions here.
• Reflecting on this practice, I conclude that assertions are made in philosophy, even in the face of systematic peer disagreement. Not obviously a contentious assertion. It could be an uncontentious assertion about Sandy. It could be the very weak assertion that assertions are sometimes made in philosophy under systematic disagreement.
• PASD is true. Looks like a contentious assertion; I'd be willing to call it unwarranted, because of the objections mentioned above. (PASD is a claim about what is normal; the existential doesn't justify it.) Note also that this could be interpreted as embedded within the previous sentence's 'I conclude that' operator, in which case it would not be a contentious assertion.

Again, I don't think Sandy's writing here is idiosyncratic; this is what lots of analytic philosophy looks like. If this is representative, it seems that quite a small proportion of philosophical writing constitutes outright assertion of contentious claims. So the idea that such assertions are unwarranted does not imply that warranted philosophical dialogue and debate is impossible. Sandy exaggerates the role of contentious assertions in philosophical discussion.

Pritchard on pragmatics of knowledge ascriptions

I'm working on a review of Duncan Pritchard's book Epistemological Disjunctivism. I'll probably try out a few ideas here over the next couple of months. I want to start out by focusing on something from near the end of the book—§8 of Part III. Here, Duncan is trying to deal with what he considers to be a challenge to the particular form of neo-Moorean disjunctivist response to the skeptical paradox he's been developing. The salient element of the view is that, contrary to skeptical intuitions, one does typically know that e.g. one is related in the normal way to the world, rather than being a brain in a vat. This, even though one lacks the ability to discriminate perceptually between being related in the normal way to the world and being a brain in a vat.

The challenge Duncan considers in this section is that Moorean assertions like "I know I'm not a brain in a vat" seem conversationally inappropriate. As he puts it earlier in the book,

[T]here appears to be something conversationally very odd about asserting that one knows the denial of a specific radical sceptical hypothesis. That is, even if one is willing to grant with the neo-Moorean that one can indeed know that one is not, say, a BIV, it still needs to be explained why any explicit claim to know that one is not a BIV (i.e., 'I know that I am not a BIV') sounds so conversationally inappropriate. Call this the conversational impropriety objection. (115)

The answer Duncan gives to this challenge in §8 ("Knowing and Saying That One Knows") is that the Moorean claims in question, in the contexts under consideration, generate false conversational implicatures to the effect that one has the relevant discriminatory abilities:

[I]n entering an explicit knowledge claim in response to a challenge involving a specific error-possibility one is not only representing oneself as having stronger reflective accessible grounds in support of that assertion than would (normally) be required in order to simply assert the target proposition, but also usually representing oneself as being in possession of reflectively accessible grounds which speak specifically to the error-possibility raised. (142)

I tend to be suspicious of pragmatic explanations for infelicity that don't come along with systematic explanations. Grice tells nice stories about how his maxims predict particular implicatures, given various contents asserted. What is Duncan's explanation for why first-person knowledge assertions implicate that one has the perceptual capacity to discriminate the state of affairs claimed to be known from alternatives that have been mentioned? Let's take an example, adapted from one of Duncan's (p. 146 -- one of his "unmotivated specific challenge" cases):

• Zula: [looking at some zebras in the zoo] There are some zebras over there.
• Asshole: They look like zebras. But who knows? Maybe they're cleverly disguised mules.
• Zula: I know that they're zebras.

Duncan's view is that Zula last utterance is true but unassertable—unassertable because it implicates falsely that Zula can discriminate perceptually between zebras and cleverly disguised mules. But why does it implicate that, if it doesn't entail it? I can't see how any of Grice's maxim's would generate the implicature in this case. Without some kind of story about where the implicature comes from, the suggestion that any impropriety comes down to pragmatics looks suspiciously ad hoc.

Notice also that certain predictions of the pragmatic explanation do not seem to be borne out. Since Duncan's story depends essentially on the implicatures involved in Zula's assertion, it does not extend to knowledge attributions that Zula doesn't assert. For example, it does not extend to Zula's unasserted thought in this case:

• Zula: [looking at some zebras in the zoo] There are some zebras over there.
• Asshole: They look like zebras. But who knows? Maybe they're cleverly disguised mules.
• Zula: [thinking to herself] What an asshole. I know that they're zebras.

Zula's thought won't mislead Asshole or anybody else, so Duncan's story can't show why it's inappropriate. But it seems intuitively problematic in the same way her original assertion is. Similarly, there seems to be impropriety about Moorean assertions in third-personal contexts where one won't mislead. Suppose that you and I know full well that Zula can't tell the difference between a real zebra and a fake zebra; we also know full well that she is looking at a real zebra right now. Consider this:

• Zula: [looking at some zebras in the zoo] There are some zebras over there.
• Asshole: They look like zebras. But who knows? Maybe they're cleverly disguised mules.
• Me: [to you, out of earshot of Z and A] Zula knows that they're zebras.

My assertion seems problematic in the same way Zula's original one does; but I do not mislead anyone. (We could also consider, for this point, a version of the first-personal case where it is stipulated to be common knowledge that Zula lacks the discriminatory ability in question.)

Here is one more observation about the case. Suppose nobody says anything about knowledge, as in this variant:

• Zula: [looking at some zebras in the zoo] There are some zebras over there.
• Asshole: They look like zebras. But maybe they're cleverly disguised mules.
• Zula: They are zebras.

Insofar as I can feel the force of Duncan's suggestion that Zula's original final utterance—'I know that they're zebras—implicates that she has special abilities to rule out fakes, I think the same applies here. But if so, I think that this may show that even if Duncan has identified something wrong with the knowledge assertion, he hasn't identified everything wrong with it. For we have no inclination whatsoever to think that Zula speaks falsely in asserting, even in the face of the skeptical challenge, that there are zebras. The case is very different for her self-ascription of knowledge. The intuition is not merely that she shouldn't say she has knowledge; it's that she doesn't. (Indeed, I think the intuition is that it'd be fine for her to assert that she doesn't have knowledge.) Since there seems to be a special phenomenon about knowledge ascriptions, the pragmatic story will only work if it is particular to knowledge ascriptions. But I don't think it is; once the challenge has been made, an outright assertion of the proposition that was challenged does—so far as I can tell, in exactly the same way a bare knowledge ascription does—in some sense convey that one has the ability to answer the challenge.

More thoughts on more central elements of Duncan's very interesting book to follow. I started here for the simple reason that  it was freshest in my mind when I finished the book today.

Christoph Jäger on knowledge, contextualism and assertion

Christoph Jäger argues in a recent Analysis paper that contextualism and the knowledge norm of assertion are jointly untenable. Here’s my reconstruction of Jäger’s argument. (My numbering will differ from his.) Suppose that Keith has hands and the usual epistemic access to them. Also, Keith is a contextualist. For some two contexts, C-LOW and C-HIGH,

1. In C-LOW, “Keith knows that he has hands” is true.
2. In C-HIGH, “Keith knows that he has hands” is false.
3. In C-HIGH, Keith may appropriately state his contextualist theory.
4. In C-HIGH, “Keith knows his contextualist theory” is true.
5. In C-HIGH, “Keith knows that in C-LOW, ‘Keith knows that he has hands’ is true” is true.
6. In C-HIGH, “Keith knows that he has hands” is true.

But (6) contradicts (2), so something is wrong. Jäger says that it’s either contextualism or the knowledge norm that has to go. The first two premises are standard contextualist fare. A modest closure principle is invoked in the step from (5) to (6)—but it looks fine. The move from (3) to (4) follows from Jäger's version of the knowledge norm of assertion, which I do not contest. There are two action points here: the moves to lines (3) and (5). We consider them in turn.

Why should we accept (3)? Jäger introduces the set-up thus:

Consider a conversational context in which the contextualist states his theory. Such contexts are paradigmatic epistemology or 'philosophy classroom' contexts in which sceptical hypotheses are salient and taken seriously.

This appears to me to be mere assertion; why should classroom contexts be skeptical ones? I know that David Lewis said they were, but David Lewis said a lot of silly things in that paper. This just isn’t a commitment of contextualism per se. Contextualism is a linguistic thesis, made on the basis of, among other things, facts about linguistic use. If we were really taking skepticism seriously, we would not help ourselves to such facts. Some contexts in which epistemology of this sort is being performed—this one, for instance—are not very skeptical at all.

Actually, I think, there is a deeper problem for Jäger’s claim to (3). Contextualism is a controversial theory; lots of smart people think it’s wrong. It’s a theory that I accept, but I don’t think the acceptance here is a kind of outright belief, and I don’t think my statements of contextualism are appropriately regarded as assertions—as attempts to transmit knowledge. But the kind of “appropriate stating” at issue in (3) would have to be assertions in order for a knowledge norm of the latter to put any pressure on the move to (4). It’s far from obvious that anyone in ordinary contexts (let along skeptical ones) should go around asserting that contextualism is true. (And I say this as a contextualist! I think contextualism looks like the best theory. That doesn’t make it a thing to assert in ordinary contexts.)

So there are two pretty serious problems with premise (3). Now let’s set aside those problems for the purpose of further argument, and consider line (5). The inference from (4) to (5) is supposed to follow directly from the content of the contextualist theory. Jäger writes:

[Someone denying this step] would have to argue that the contextualist can legitimately deny [(5)], i.e. deny that he knows when he asserts his theory, in CHigh, that there are low-standards contexts in which (it is true to say that) he knows that he has hands. The claim that there are such quotidian contexts, however, is a cornerstone of classical, anti-sceptical forms of contextualism.

I don’t feel the motivation here at all. Contextualism the linguistic thesis does not entail that Keith or anyone knows that he has hands; it doesn’t even entail that Keith or anyone has hands. (Obviously.) It is consistent with the truth of contextualism that you and I are brains in vats. So even if we became convinced that we could have high-standards knowledge of contextualism—say, because we have introspective access to meaning, and that access is more resistant to skeptical scenarios than perceptual knowledge—we could still abandon Jäger’s ship at the step to line (5). Sure, Keith knows-HIGH that contextualism is true; that doesn’t mean he knows-HIGH that he knows-LOW that he has hands—even granting whatever intra-context closure principle you want. We’d get that he knows-HIGH that in C-LOW, he’d be invoking a relatively weak standard if he said “I know I have hands”. It doesn’t follow that he knows whether he’d meet it.

So there are lots of ways to resist this argument.

Assertability and Norms of Assertion

Here's a crazy thesis that nobody holds:

(1) If S knows that p, then S is permitted to assert that p.

There are boring counterexamples to (1). For instance, there are cases in which I am morally forbidden from asserting things that I know. This, of course, shows nothing interesting about the relationship between knowledge and assertion. So to capture the content of the interesting claim in the neighborhood, we move from (1) to something subtler and less crazy; maybe something like one of these:

(2) If S knows that p, then no epistemic shortcoming in S can explain why asserting that p would be inappropriate.

(3) If S knows that p, then S is in a strong enough epistemic position to assert that p.

(4) If S knows that p, then improving S's epistemic position won't put S in a position to assert p.

Maybe (2)-(4) are equivalent to one another; I'm not sure. They do a better job than (1) does at rendering certain kinds of cases of knowledge without assertability irrelevant. But they, too, are subject to conclusive refutation in a way orthogonal to the knowledge norm of assertion. My argument against (1) concerned cases in which I'm morally prohibited from asserting something, even though I know it -- maybe telling the Nazis where the Jews are hiding or something like that. But there are also cases in which I'm morally prohibited from asserting something, even though I know it, where a failure in my epistemic position plays a role in explaining the prohibition. There are boring cases like this. For instance, suppose that I've made a promise to assert that p only if I know that q. (Maybe promising by itself is insufficient for the relevant duties; stipulate that we're talking about a promise that carries serious moral weight.) Now suppose I know p, but don't know q. It's impermissible to assert that p, even though I know p -- and even though a deficiency in my epistemic position plays a role in explaining why p is unassertable. These cases, too, show that (2)-(4) don't get to the heart of the matter.

And it won't help to relativize the claims about strength of position to p, either. That is, these attempts at the knowledge norm face the same problem:

(5) If S knows that p, then S is in a strong enough epistemic position with respect to p to assert that p.

(6) If S knows that p, then improving S's epistemic position with respect to p won't put S in a position to assert p.

(7) If S knows that p, then p is, for S, warranted enough to justify S in asserting that p.

For take the special case of the sort of example given above where q is a proposition about S's epistemic position with respect to p. For instance, suppose I've promised not to assert p unless this condition is met: I know that I know that I'm absolutely certain that p. Suppose also that I know p, but don't know that I know that I'm absolutely certain that p. Under the circumstances, p is unassertable, because my epistemic position with respect to p isn't strong enough. But that doesn't show us anything interesting about the knowledge norm of assertion, if the latter is meant to be understood as showing something interesting distinctively about assertion.

What the knowledge norm of assertion suggests is that there's a special way that assertions can fail qua assertions. It says that if S knows p, then an assertion that p doesn't fail in this particular way. It doesn't provide any sufficient conditions for not failing in some other way, even when you build in all of these conditions about S's epistemic position.

Therefore, none of (1)-(7) are closely related to:

(Norm) Knowledge is the constitutive norm of assertion.

This post has gone on long enough for now, but I'll close by just asserting that many attempts to argue against the knowledge norm of assertion really look like arguments against some or all of (1)-(7); this is a mistake. I've argued that (1)-(7) are definitely false, for boring reasons that don't have anything to do with assertion in particular. If all you have is a case along with intuitions about what is known and what is unassertable, and why it's unassertable or under what circumstances that unassertability would be rectified, then you don't have anything strong enough to speak directly to (Norm). To evaluate (Norm) via the method of cases, you'd need to have intuitions about whether the assertion suffers from a particular kind of failure qua assertion. These, I think, we rarely have at any kind of pretheoretic level.

Conditional knowledge attributions

I'm going to be discussing an argument that I know Jason Stanley to have given, but I'm away from my copy of his book at the moment, so I can't cite it properly, or check and see who else has discussed it (or even whether it's original to Jason). I'll follow up if citation protocol ends up demanding it.

Here's a naive argument against 'knows' contextualism. (This isn't the Stanley argument I want to discuss; it's part of the set-up for it.) Assume contextualism. Now suppose you're in a nonskeptical context, and I'm in a skeptical one, and we're both talking about me and the proposition that p, a proposition with which I stand in a pretty strong epistemic relation -- one strong enough for your non-skeptical 'knows', but not for my skeptical 'knows'. You say: "Jonathan knows p." Now, according to this naive objection, I'm forced to say this:

(1) I don't know that p, but what you said was true.

This sounds like a crazy thing to say, under the circumstances, but it looks like contextualism predicts that it should be fine.

Of course, contextualism doesn't predict that (1) should be fine; the naive objection is naive. Contextualism avoids the felicity of this utterance by observing that it won't be assertable for me. What you said entails p (even your nonskeptical 'knows' is factive). Since I'm not in a context in which "I know that what you said is true" is true, I therefore can't assert that what you said is true. Indeed, (1) is Moore-paradoxical, or near enough, since it straightforwardly and transparently entails "I don't know that p, but p."

So there's a naive objection to contextualism and a good response on the contextualist's behalf. But Jason Stanley thinks the game isn't over yet, for he has a tweak on the objection to make it less naive in a way that he thinks will avoid the response. Take the same set-up as before; you're in a non-skeptical context and you say "Jonathan knows p," and I'm in a skeptical context where "I know p" is false. Now, Jason asks, why shouldn't I give this sentence?

(2) I don't know that p, but if p is true, then what you said is true.

Here, the second conjunct doesn't entail that p, so the sentence isn't Moore-paradoxical. Insofar as (2) also sounds crazy, we have a version of the objection that isn't susceptible to the quick response given above. (Does (2) sound crazy? Is it a natural enough sentence to generate clear intuitions? I don't know. Let's grant for the purpose of argument that it sucks to have to render this sentence assertible.) The contextualist, I contend, is not committed to the assertibility of (2). Although (2) is not Moore-paradoxical, because the second conjunct does not entail p, its infelicity can still be explained as a violation of the knowledge norm of assertion, since it's second conjunct will, in the relevant cases, be unknown.

Asserting Kp v p

Keith DeRose accepts something like the knowledge norm of assertion -- although as a contextualist, he can't have it entirely straightforwardly. He at least thinks this much: the assertability conditions for S for 'p' are the same as the truth conditions for 'I know p' in S's mouth. He takes it to be obvious that these are different than the assertability conditions for 'I know p'.

Now I'm one of those weirdos who is actually a bit sympathetic to the KK principle. So I'm interested in his argument. I find it pretty uncompelling. DeRose writes:

Both equations of standards -- (1) those for properly asserting that p with those for properly asserting that one knows that p, and (2) those for properly asserting that one knows that p with those for actually knowing that p -- are mistaken, as I trust the considerations below will show to anyone who has deliberated over close calls about whether one is positioned well enough to claim to know that p or should cool one's heels and only assert that p. (The Case for Contextualism, 103.)

I won't continue with his argument, because I'm already not on board. I'm pretty sure I've never deliberated over a close call about whether I was in a good enough situation to assert that I know p, or whether I should cool my heels and only assert that p. Indeed, that strikes me as a totally bizarre thing to do. DeRose himself says that to assert that p is, in some sense, to represent oneself as knowing p.

I know that there are strong theoretical reasons for denying KK, and for accepting the knowledge norm of assertion, and I see that those two verdicts together predict that there will be cases like these in which one can assert p but not that one knows p. But to take such cases as a clear starting point strikes me as bizarre; this, to me, is a cost that I'll accept if I'm forced to. But it's by no means obvious that this ever happens. "p but I don't know whether I know p" is not good.

Am I off base here? Do you ever consider whether Kp is warrantedly assertable, or whether to just stick with the safer p? I don't. (I know I don't.)

DeRose on 'knowledge' norm of assertion

In his 2002 paper "Assertion, Knowledge, and Context," Keith DeRose gave an argument for contextualism about 'knows' that took basically this form: knowledge is the norm of assertion; assertability varies according to context; therefore, knowledge varies according to context.

This was a pretty confused argument -- though of course this is much clearer in retrospect, with the advantage of years of engagement with SSI. The problem is that contextualism is a thesis about the word 'knows', not about knowledge, while 'knowledge is the norm of assertion' seems like it must be a thesis about knowledge, not about English. In fact, something like a knowledge norm for assertion, combined with the observation that what you're allowed to assert depends on your situation, provides a pretty good argument for SSI; I take it to be exactly parallel to the main argument for SSI that Stanley and Fantl and McGrath give.

In chapter 3 of his new book The Case for Contextualism, DeRose essentially reproduces the content of that 2002 paper, but he does add about two new pages of material designed to correct this aspect of the original. Now, in contrast to earlier, he recognizes the need to clarify the statement of the knowledge norm of assertion, if it is to be understood in contextualist terms. He gives us:

The Relativized Knowledge Account of Assertion (KAA-R): A speaker, S, is well-enough positioned with respect to p to be able to properly assert that p if and only if S knows that p according to the standards for knowledge that are in place as S makes her assertion. (99)