The test of truth: an experimental investiga- tion of the norm of assertion* John Turri john.turri@gmail.com ABSTRACT - Assertion is fundamental to our lives as social and cognitive beings. Philosophers have recently built an impressive case that the norm of assertion is factive. That is, you should make an assertion only if it is true. Thus far the case for a factive norm of assertion been based on observational data. This paper adds experimental evid- ence in favor of a factive norm from six studies. In these studies, an assertion's truth value dramatically affects whether people think it should be made. Whereas nearly everyone agreed that a true assertion supported by good evidence should be made, most people judged that a false assertion supported by good evidence should not be made. The studies also suggest that people are consciously aware of criteria that guide their evaluation of assertions. Evidence is also presented that some intuitive support for a non-factive norm of assertion comes from a surprising tendency people have to misdescribe cases of blameless rule-breaking as cases where no rule is broken. Keywords: assertion | norms | truth | knowledge | speech acts | blame | excuses | rules | intuitions 1. Introduction Assertion is fundamental to our lives as social and cog- nitive beings. By asserting we share information, co- ordinate behavior, and advance collective inquiry. Be- cause assertion is so important, it is unsurprising that it is governed by cognitive or epistemic norms. Some as- sertions should be made and some should not. But what distinguishes the ones that should be made from the ones that shouldn't? In short, what is the norm of asser- tion? Should any false assertions be made? Or should we make an assertion only if it is true? In short, is the norm of assertion factive? Over the past decade, in philosophy there has been an explosion of interest in the norms of assertion, all aimed at answering the question, what is the norm of assertion? Experimental cognitive science hasn't directly addressed the question, but some have indicated that they think the answer is straightforward. For example, consider this recent passage by two leading cognitive scientists: [L]anguage is not only conventional in the sense of involving socially shared arbitrary sound-meaning assignments; language is a rule- governed, normatively structured practice. Given the conventional rules that constitute a language, there are appropriate and inappro- priate, right and wrong uses of the linguistic devices in making speech acts (with assertions, for example, being governed by norms of truth) that apply to all speakers, including the self, in an agent- general manner. (Rakoczy and Tomasello 2009: 205; emphasis added) Rakoczy and Tomasello then report a fascinating ex- periment designed to test whether children as young as 2 years old can 'differentially track kinds of mistakes' for different types of speech act, in particular com- mands and assertions. When it comes to assertion, the researchers treat falsity as 'inappropriate', 'wrong', and meriting 'normative intervention' even by a child's lights (209–10). In short, even a 2-year-old can be ex- pected to recognize that assertion has a factive norm. Rakoczy, Tomasello and perhaps many others think it's obvious that assertion's norm is factive, and, as we shall see momentarily, an impressive case has been built in support of a factive norm. Nevertheless, many claim to fnd a factive norm counterintuitive and propose al- ternative accounts. They argue that truth is too strong of a standard and that the relevant standard is instead what you believe to be true or what you have good evidence for. Consider Grice's famous Maxims of Quality, whose 'Supermaxim' is, 'Try to make your contribution one * This is the penultimate version of a paper to appear in Cognition. Please cite the fnal, published version if possible. 1 The test of truth | 2 that is true,' and whose sub-maxims are, '1. Do not say what you believe to be false. 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence' (Grice 1989: 27). Here the emphasis is on avoiding mendacity and on ad- equate evidence for the truth of an assertion, not truth per se. Sperber and Wilson (2012: 49, 47) go one step further than Grice and contend that our linguistic prac- tices are governed by 'no maxim of truthfulness at all.' In light of such disagreement, it's no trivial question whether assertion's norm is factive. Although there has been no experimental work in this area, empirical considerations have shaped the de- bate over assertion's norm, albeit at a fairly high level of abstraction. If assertion is indeed a rule-governed activ- ity - as virtually everyone agrees that it is - then we should look to the behavior of competent language users as a guide to what the rules are. Of course, asser- tion doesn't come with a rule book any more than nat- ural languages come with grammar guides. Nor do we expect competent language users to have an explicit, ar- ticulable theory about the rules of assertion any more than we expect them to have such a theory about the rules of syntax. But we can gain evidence about the rules of assertion by looking for distinctive patterns in two related areas: the normal give-and-take surround- ing assertion and competent speakers' normative intu- itions about assertions. It is an empirical matter whether such patterns exist and, if so, what they are like. Consider the primary case made for the leading theory in this area, the knowledge account of assertion, which says that knowledge is the norm of assertion. Since knowledge requires truth, knowledge is ipso facto a fact- ive norm. The best and most widely recognized evid- ence for the knowledge account is an explanatory argument from linguistic patterns (Williamson 2000, Turri 2010b, Turri 2011a). I can't canvass all the relevant evidence here, but in order to give the reader an idea of why the knowledge account has gained so much support, I will briefly discuss the most suggestive data points. First, one way of prompting someone to make an assertion is to ask, 'What time is it?'. But an equally ef- fective, and practically interchangeable, prompt is to ask, 'Do you know what time it is?'. Competent speak- ers respond to the two questions similarly. But why would that be? Proponents of the knowledge account explain it as follows. Because knowledge is the norm of assertion, my question 'Do you know what time it is?' enables you to infer that I want you to make the relev- ant assertion and, thus, functions as an indirect request for you to make the assertion. This is similar to how my question 'Can you pass the salt?' can function as an in- direct request for you to pass the salt. Second, when you're asked a question, even if the question has nothing to do with you or what you know, it is normally okay to respond by saying, 'Sorry, I don't know.' Suppose you're asked, 'What is the conversion rate from liters to quarts?', and you respond, 'Sorry, I don't know.' Normally, your response will be judged perfectly acceptable. But you and your epistemic state are irrelevant to the content of the question, so why is that response any more acceptable than, say, 'Sorry, Paris is the capital of France' would be? Proponents of the knowledge account explain it as follows. By saying 'Sorry, I don't know', you're informing the questioner that you lack the appropriate normative standing to an- swer her question, which is surely relevant in the con- text. Third, when you make an assertion, even if the content of your assertion has nothing to do with you or what you know, it is normally appropriate to ask you, 'How do you know that?'. What explains the default propriety of this response? Proponents of the know- ledge account explain it as follows. By making an asser- tion, you represent yourself as satisfying the norm of assertion; and knowledge is the norm; so the question is appropriate because it asks whether you're accurately representing yourself. Fourth, asking 'How do you know?' is understood as implicitly challenging my authority to make an asser- tion. More aggressive than asking 'How do you know?' is 'Do you really know that?'. More aggressive yet is 'You don't know that!' or 'You don't know what you're talking about'. What explains this range of aggressive- ness? Proponents of the knowledge account explain it as follows. 'How do you know?' implicitly challenges my authority to assert Q, by asking me to demonstrate that I do in fact have it; 'Do you really know that?' explicitly challenges my authority, by questioning whether I have it; and 'You don't know that!' explicitly rejects my au- thority. Explicitly questioning someone's authority is more aggressive than implicitly questioning it, and ex- plicitly rejecting someone's authority is more aggressive than explicitly questioning it. Fifth, assertions of the form 'Q, but I don't know that/whether Q' strike us as inconsistent. But their con- tent is perfectly consistent, so why do they seem incon- sistent? Proponents of the knowledge account explain it 3 | John Turri as follows. Knowledge is the norm of assertion, so in or- der to properly assert a conjunction of the form, 'Q, but I don't know that/whether Q', you must know each conjunct. But your knowing the frst conjunct ('Q') would falsify the second conjunct ('I don't know whether Q'), in which case you couldn't possibly know the conjunction. And by asserting the conjunction, you represent yourself as knowing it (because you represent yourself as satisfying the norm of assertion). So by as- serting the conjunction, you represent yourself as know- ing something that you couldn't possibly know, which explains the inconsistency. In a word, what you assert is inconsistent with how you represent yourself. In sum, the overall case for the knowledge account is impressive, based on data gleaned from social obser- vation and introspection. These data have acted as a leash, fruitfully constraining as well as inspiring the the- oretical debate. But it's quite a long leash (Turri 2013). It would be useful to add to our data set relevant obser- vations tempered by proper controls. This paper ac- complishes that by testing whether people's judgments about cases better ft a factive or non-factive norm of assertion. The results support the view that the norm is factive. Before proceeding, I should say a few words about the sort of normativity at stake in the debate over asser- tion's norm, and a word about how the various propos- als have been framed. I begin by characterizing the sort of normativity at stake and contrasting it with other sorts of normativity. For the most part, when theorists ask what the norm of assertion is, they have something very specifc in mind. They want to know what rule or rules help constitute the practice of assertion, make that form of activity possible. They are interested in constitutive norm- ativity (Searle 1969, Searle 1979, Brandom 1983, Rescorla 2009). Constitutive norms or rules are internal to and distinctive of a practice. Consider chess as an ex- ample. Chess is the game that it is precisely because it has the rules that it does: the rules help constitute the game of chess, and distinguish it from other board games, such as checkers. On the current approach, something similar is true of assertion: assertion is the speech act that it is precisely because it has the rule that it does. When someone performs a particular speech act and that speech act is an assertion, what makes it an assertion rather than something else, such as a guess, conjecture or guarantee, all of which have the same 'direction of ft' as assertion (Anscombe 1957, Turri 2010a)? One answer is that assertion is individuated norm- atively (Williamson 1996). Assertion is the unique speech act that has a certain standard of correctness, more stringent than that of guessing, less stringent than that of guaranteeing. This standard of correctness is the norm of assertion. Constitutive normativity differs from moral and prudential normativity. For example, a particular move might be allowed by the rules of chess even if making that move would be immoral or imprudent because, say, your opponent is a child who will be devastated by the ensuing crushing defeat, or because your opponent is a short-tempered mobster who will break your fngers if you checkmate him. Similarly, the constitutive norm of assertion might allow assertions which are nevertheless forbidden by other norms. For example, it might be il- legal in a certain country to assert that the emperor has no clothes, just as it might be illegal or imprudent to checkmate the emperor in a game of chess. But the norms that prohibit these assertions are not norms of assertion; they are not norms that help constitute the practice of assertion. Rather, they are norms that hap- pen to pertain to particular assertions. For these reasons, those who favor a non-factive norm of assertion aren't content to point out that some- times we should, in some sense of 'should', say some- thing false, or that sometimes we should, all things con- sidered, say something false. To object on such grounds is merely to confuse a more generic sense of 'should' with the 'should' associated with the norm of assertion. Such confusion is akin to noting that in some circum- stances you should move your rook diagonally - say, on pain of torture, or because it will drive your oppon- ent to distraction - and concluding that therefore the rules of chess allow the rook to move diagonally. The literature on assertion's norm suffers from some terminological inconsistency. What is the right way to express assertion's constitutive norm? Some say, 'You should make an assertion only if . . .'; others say 'You ought to make an assertion only if . . . '; others say, 'You may make an assertion only if . . .'; and others say, 'You must: make an assertion only if . . .'. (See Turri 2013 for more on the variety.) I'm not going to resolve this inconsistency here. Instead, I will simply opt for the 'should' formulation. And when probing laypeople I will stick to asking about what a speaker 'should' say or whether anything 'incorrect' has been done. It is legit- imate to question whether different terminology would lead to different results. But choices must be made in The test of truth | 4 order to get the project off the ground and I have chosen to start here. I welcome and encourage further work that makes different choices. 1.1. A synopsis of competing accounts Theorists have defended two main factive accounts of assertion's norm: The truth account: you should assert Q only if Q is true. (Weiner 2005) The knowledge account: you should assert Q only if you know Q. (Unger 1975, Williamson 2000, Hawthorne 2004, Schaffer 2008, Turri 2011a, Benton 2011) The knowledge account is a factive account because knowledge requires truth. (There has recently been some controversy over this. See Hazlett 2010, Turri 2011b, Hazlett 2012, and Buckwalter ms.) I have already explained the main argument for the knowledge account. For the remainder of this paper, I will simply ignore the differences between the two specifc factive accounts, focusing instead on the factive genus. Theorists have defended two main non-factive ac- counts of assertion's norm: The belief account: you should assert Q only if you believe Q. (Bach and Harnish 1979, Bach 2008) The justifcation account: you should assert Q only if believing Q is justifed (or: reasonable) for you. (Douven 2006, Lackey 2007) Belief isn't factive, because you can believe some- thing false. And virtually everyone agrees that justi- fcation isn't factive either, because it seems obvious that you can be justifed in believing something false. That is, fallibilism about justifcation is almost universally accepted (Friedman and Turri in press; Friedman and Turri under review; Sutton 2007 dissents). Justifcation is fallible only if it is possible to have a justifed false belief. To be clear, this is only a necessary condition, not a suffcient condition. To avoid near-total skepticism about justifcation, something much more than the mere possibility is needed. Pairing the justifcation account with an infallibilist conception of justifcation or an overly demanding fallibilist conception would completely undermine the primary motivation for a justifca- tion account. 1.2. Two counts against factive accounts: intu- ition and argument Two objections have led many to reject a factive ac- count and in its place endorse a justifcation account. Researchers who follow this path endorse a non-skep- tical, fallibilist conception of justifcation. (Note: al- though the justifcation account and truth account are logically compatible, so too is it logically consistent to reject one and accept the other. Researchers who fnd the following two objections persuasive do just that.) The frst objection is simply that there are straight- forward counterexamples to factive accounts. The counterexamples follow a recipe: a protagonist has good evidence for believing Q, believes Q on that basis, thereby gaining a justifed belief that Q, which he then gives voice to by asserting Q. Now simply add to the story that, despite the good evidence, Q is false and, thus, the assertion is false. Taken to the extreme, the protagonist is a radically deceived brain-in-a-vat some- how able to make assertions, perhaps by wiggling a parietal lobe. (Compare Douven 2006: 477, and Lackey 2007: 607.) Factive accounts entail that the protagonist's assertion is incorrect. Opponents of factive accounts re- port having a strong intuition that such justifed or reas- onable false assertions are not incorrect qua assertions.1 Call this the non-factivity intuition and theorists who en- dorse it non-factivists. The second objection is a simple argument about justifed false assertions. I will understand the argument to go like this: a speaker who makes a justifed false as- sertion is not thereby properly criticizable or blame- worthy; so the speaker has probably not broken a norm of assertion; so assertion probably doesn't have a factive norm (Lackey 2007: 603, 597; Douven 2006: 476–7; Hill and Schechter 2007: 109). The following experiments address both ways of resisting factive accounts: the non-factivity intuition and the argument from blamelessness to correct behavior. 2. Experiment 1A Do competent speakers generally share the non-factiv- ity intuition? Or does their assessment reflect an impli- cit commitment to the opposite factivity intuition, to wit, that a false assertion is ipso facto an assertion that should 1 'Qua assertion' because, as explained earlier, everyone agrees that they might be incorrect according to other rules that aren't constitutive of assertion, such as legal, prudential or moral rules. 5 | John Turri not be made? This section reports a very simple initial experiment to help answer these questions. 2.1. Participants, materials and procedure Sixty-six participants (36 female, aged 18–60 years, M = 32, SD = 12 years) were recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk and paid $0.20 for approximately 2–3 minutes of their time. Participants were located throughout the United States and 97% listed English as a native language. Participants were not allowed to take the survey more than once. I excluded data from 5 par- ticipants who failed a comprehension question designed to ensure that they were reading the scenario carefully enough. But including these participants in the analysis yielded the same pattern of results described below. Participants were not allowed to re-take any survey and participants who had taken previous similar surveys were excluded by their AMT Worker ID. The proced- ure for recruiting and compensating participants was the same for each of the experiments reported below. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: True and False. Participants read the follow- ing story (alternate text in brackets and separated by a slash): Maria is a watch collector. She owns so many watches that she cannot keep track of them all by memory alone. So she maintains a detailed inventory of them. She keeps the inventory up to date. Maria knows that the inventory isn't perfect, but it is extremely accurate. ¶2 Today Maria is having guests over for dinner. Soon after dinner is served, one of her guests asks, "Maria, do you have a 1990 Rolex Submariner in your watch collection?" ¶ Maria consults her inventory. It says that she does have a 1990 Rolex Submariner in her collection. [But this is one of those rare cases where the inventory is wrong: she does not have one /And this is just another case where the inventory is exactly right: she does have one]. In both the False and True conditions, Maria is justifed in thinking that she has a 1990 Rolex in her collection. She is justifed for the same reason in each condition: because of an entry in the inventory that she knows to be extremely reliable. On most standard accounts of justifcation, Maria's justifcation is equally strong in both conditions. She has fallible but nevertheless very 2 Indicates paragraph break on the participant's screen. good justifcation for thinking that the watch is in her collection. Any difference between the two conditions cannot plausibly be explained by saying that Maria had better justifcation in one condition or the other. Following the story, participants answered two com- prehension questions, followed by a question about what Maria should say (the test question). These were the questions, with response options in brackets: 1. Is there a 1990 Rolex Submariner in Maria's collection? [Yes/No] 2. If Maria tells her guest that she has a 1990 Rolex Submariner in her collection, she will be saying something _____. [True/False] 3. Should Maria tell her guest that she has a 1990 Rolex Submariner in her collection? [Yes/No] The questions were always asked in the same order. Response options were presented in random order. The questions appeared on a single screen and the story re- mained at the top of the screen throughout. Parti- cipants could change their answers while they remained on the screen. After testing, participants flled out a brief demographic questionnaire. These same proced- ures were also used in each of the experiments reported below. 2.2. Results and discussion Response to the test question - about whether Maria should tell her guest that the watch is in her collection - will tell us whether participants share the non-factiv- ity intuition. If they share the non-factivity intuition, then participant response probably won't differ between False and True conditions. The mere fact that the asser- tion would be false shouldn't change their estimation of whether Maria should make it. By contrast, if they share the factivity intuition, then they will probably an- swer that Maria should not make the assertion in the False condition more than in the True condition. There was a signifcant effect of condition: over 80% of participants in the False condition responded that Maria should not make the statement compared to only 3% in the True condition, Fisher's exact test, p < 0.001, all tests two-tailed unless otherwise noted. Moreover, participants in True responded that Maria should make the statement at rates far greater than would be expected by chance, just as participants in False said that she should not make the statement at rates far greater than chance, binomial, both ps < 0.001. This pattern is what we would expect if parti- cipants shared the factivity intuition but it's not what we would expect if they shared the non-factivity intuition. The test of truth | 6 It might be objected that although Maria is well jus- tifed in thinking that she has a 1990 Rolex in her col- lection, the comprehension questions focused only on truth-related matters, neglecting whether she was justi- fed. Perhaps this led participants to ignore the fact that Maria is justifed, which explains why participants failed to respond as non-factive accounts would predict. The next experiment addresses this concern. 3. Experiment 1B What would happen if, before asking participants to evaluate whether Maria should make the assertion, we asked them only one question about Maria's justifca- tion, or only one question about what's true in the case, or no question at all about either of those things? In- vestigating this will affect how we should interpret the results from Experiment 1A. If changing or eliminating the question results in participants answering that Maria should make the false but well justifed assertion, then that will provide some relief for non-factivists. But if it doesn't result in that, then it will provide them only more grief. So which will it be: relief or grief ? 3.1. Participants, materials and procedure Ninety-two new participants (26 female, aged 18–65 years, M = 27, SD = 9.5 years, 98% native English speakers) were randomly assigned to one of three con- ditions: No Question, Reason Question, and Truth Question. All participants read the False version of the story in Experiment 1A. Conditions differed in how parti- cipants were questioned. Following the story, in the Reason Question condition, participants were asked, It is _____ for Maria to think that she has a 1990 Rolex Submariner in her collection. [reas- onable/unreasonable] followed by the test question, Should Maria tell her guest that she has a 1990 Rolex Submariner in her collection? [Yes/No] In the Truth Question condition, participants were asked, Is there a 1990 Rolex Submariner in Maria's collection? [Yes/No] followed by the test question. Participants in No Ques- tion were asked only the test question. Participants in all conditions were then taken to a separate screen (they could not go back and change pre- vious answers at this point), where they were asked, When you were deciding whether Maria should tell her guest that she has a 1990 Rolex Sub- mariner in her collection, which factor seemed more important to you? [Maria's evidence about what was in her collection/The truth about what was in her collection] The purpose of asking this question is to see whether participants are able to reflectively identify the criteria guiding their evaluation of an assertion. Previous re- search on moral evaluation has found that participants are sometimes very unreliable at identifying the criteria that guide their moral assessments (Cushman, Young and Hauser 2006). 3.2. Results and discussion We want to know whether the earlier results favoring factive accounts were at least partly due to the way par- ticipants were questioned. If they were, then there probably will be an effect of condition on participant response in the present experiment. If they weren't, then there probably won't be an effect of condition. There was no effect of condition on participant re- sponse, χ2(2) = 3, p = 0.223. Moreover, participants in each condition answered that Maria should not make the assertion at rates exceeding what we would expect by chance: 68% in Reason Question, 80% in No Ques- tion, and 86% in Truth Question, binomial, all ps≤.05. It is especially noteworthy that participants in Reason Question answered 'No' at rates greater than chance. Even when asked only about Maria's justifcation, parti- cipants still think that she should not make the asser- tion. This is diffcult to explain if assertion's norm isn't factive but easily explained if it is factive. Participant assessment of what mattered more in their evaluation of the case, evidence or truth, didn't differ from their answer to whether Maria should make the false but well justifed assertion, McNemar's test, p = 0.508. That is, participants who answered that Maria should make the assertion strongly tended to identify evidence as mattering more, and participants who answered that Maria should not make the assertion strongly tended to identify truth as mattering more. Among those who said that Maria should make the as- sertion, 85% said that evidence mattered more. Among those who said that Maria should not make the asser- tion, 92% said that truth mattered more. Overall, 75% of participants said that truth mattered more, which far exceeds what could be expected by chance, binomial, p 7 | John Turri < 0.001. These results suggest that participants are able to reliably report the criteria guiding their evaluation of assertions, at least on the most basic way of soliciting such reports. One concern about both of the experiments up un- til now is that some participants might be answering the test question negatively even though they don't think that the norm of assertion is factive. For instance, per- haps some participants think that the norm of assertion is non-factive but they also think that a false statement by Maria might have negative consequences. Further- more, some of these participants might reasonably think that avoiding the negative consequences trumps whatever the norm of assertion permits. Accentuating this concern is the fact that the test question asks whether Maria should 'tell her guest' that she has the watch in her collection. It's a legitimate worry that some participants answered the test question negatively because they think that hosts, qua hosts, must tell their guests only truths. This is consistent with their thinking that assertors, qua assertors, are not required to assert only truths. The next experiment addresses these con- cerns. 4. Experiment 2 This experiment aims to address the concerns men- tioned at the end of the previous section by doing two things. First, it varies how serious are the implied con- sequences of a false assertion by Maria. Second, the test question doesn't ask whether Maria 'should tell her guest' something but instead whether she 'should say' it in response to people in different relationships to her. If the concerns raised at the end of the previous section are valid, then as the potential negative consequences of a false assertion rise, participants probably will be more likely to say that Maria should not make the assertion. By contrast, if participant response is keyed to the norms of assertion specifcally - rather than, say, the norms of prudent action - then participants probably won't be more likely to do that. 4.1. Participants, materials and procedure One hundred and fve new participants (36 female, aged 18–63 years, M = 31.18, SD = 10.01 years, 99% native English speakers) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: Low, Medium, and High. Participants in each condition read a variation on the False version of the story from Experiment 1A. Maria is no longer hosting guests for dinner but instead is simply asked a question by people in different capa- cities and for different purposes. In story for the Low condition, Maria's neighbor asks her a question out of idle curiosity, so the implied cost of speaking falsely is low. In the story for Medium, an insurance appraiser asks Maria a question in order to assess her collection's value, so the implied cost of speaking falsely is higher but not intimidating. In the story for High, a federal prosecutor asks Maria a question as part of an investig- ation, so the implied cost of speaking falsely is high. After reading the story, participants in all conditions were asked two questions. First, they were asked the test question: Should Maria say that she does have a 1990 Rolex Submariner in her collection? [Yes/No] Then they were taken to a separate screen (they could not go back and change their previous answer), where they were asked, When you were deciding whether Maria should tell her guest that she has a 1990 Rolex Sub- mariner in her collection, which factor seemed more important to you? [Maria's evidence about what was in her collection/The truth about what was in her collection] 4.2. Results and discussion We're primarily interested in whether there is an effect of condition on response to the test question. If there is, then it complicates the interpretation of participant re- sponse to the test question. More specifcally, to the ex- tent that participants answer negatively more frequently as the perceived costs of speaking falsely rise, it com- plicates the interpretation of earlier results favoring factive accounts. By contrast, if there is no effect of per- ceived cost of error on response to the test question, then that lends support to my earlier interpretation of the fndings in Experiments 1A and 1B. In line with that, I made two predictions about the results for the present experiment. First, there would be no effect of condition on response to the test question. Second, par- ticipants would once again tend to say that Maria should not make the false but well justifed assertion. Both predictions were true. First, there was no ef- fect of condition on response to the test question, χ2(2) = 0.655, p = 0.721. Higher implied costs of speaking falsely did not lead participants to more frequently an- swer that Maria should not speak falsely. Second, over- all 70% of participants answered that Maria should not make the false but well justifed assertion, which far ex- The test of truth | 8 ceeds what could be expected by chance, binomial, p < 0.001, and replicates the result from Experiment 1B, bi- nomial, p = 0.095, test proportion = 0.77. What's more, participants answered this way in each of the three con- ditions: 71% in Low, 65% in Medium, and 74% in High, binomial, ps≤.049, one-tailed. (A one-tailed test was used here because, based on previous results, the prediction was directional.) Once again, participant assessment of what mattered more in their evaluation of the case, evidence or truth, didn't differ from their answer to whether Maria should make the false but well justifed assertion, McNemar's test, p = 0.774. Among those who said that Maria should make the assertion, 83% said that evid- ence mattered more. Among those who said that Maria should not make the assertion, 91% said that truth mattered more. Overall, 71% of participants said that truth mattered more, which far exceeds what could be expected by chance, binomial, p < 0.001. As we saw in Experiment 1B, participants seemingly are able to identify the criteria guiding their evaluation. Altogether the results from our frst three experi- ments provide evidence for at least three conclusions. First, the non-factivity intuition is not widely shared. Second, by contrast, the factivity intuition is widely shared. It appears that roughly 3/4 of people respond as a factive account would predict, whereas roughly 1/4 of people respond consistently with the non-factivity in- tuition. An assertion's truth-value signifcantly affects how most people evaluate it. Third, people's evaluation of assertion is, to a surprising extent, insensitive to the implied costs of speaking falsely. Whether Maria's neighbor asks out of idle curiosity or a federal prosec- utor asks in the course of an investigation, participants were equally likely to answer that Maria should not make a false but well justifed assertion. These results could be strengthened by observing similar patterns using a different dependent measure. All the experiments thus far collected responses on a forced-choice dichotomous scale. But perhaps this method of questioning masks important differences that will be revealed if participants are given greater flexibil- ity to express themselves. The next experiment pursues this possibility. Table 1: Percentage of participants in Experiments 1A, 1B, and 2 who answered that Maria should not make a well justi- fed but false assertion. Should Not Experiment 1A True 3 False 80 Experiment 1B Reason Question 68 No Question 80 Truth Question 86 Experiment 2 Low 71 Medium 65 High 74 5. Experiment 3 This experiment explores the robustness of the main fndings from the frst three experiments. It does this by using a different method of questioning to detect sim- ilar patterns in participant response. 5.1. Participants, materials and procedure One hundred new participants (25 female, aged 18–64 years, M = 29.35, SD = 10.31 years, 97% native Eng- lish speakers) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 (Cost: Low/High) × 2 (Truth-value: True/False) between-subjects design. Participants in each condition read one story. The Truth-value factor varies whether the invent- ory correctly lists that Maria owns the watch. The Cost factor varies the implied costs of a false statement from Maria. In the story for Low True, Maria's neighbor asks her a question 'just out of idle curiosity,' Maria consults her inventory, and the inventory accurately lists that she owns the watch. In the story for High True, a federal prosecutor asks Maria a question 'for purposes of an in- vestigation,' and the inventory accurately lists that she owns the watch. The stories for the Low False and High False conditions are the same except that the inventory is wrong when it lists that she owns the watch. Other- wise, the storyline was the same as in previous experi- ments reported above. After reading the story, participants were asked to 9 | John Turri rate their agreement or disagreement with the following statement: Maria should say that she does have a 1990 Rolex Submariner in her collection. Responses were collected on 7-point scale, anchored at Strongly Dis- agree through Strongly Agree. Responses were coded from -3 (Strongly Disagree) through +3 (Strongly Agree), creating a midpoint of 0 (Neutral). (Participants never saw numerical values, only the qualitative de- scriptions.) 5.2. Results and discussion The main fndings from the frst three experiments were: the non-factivity intuition is not widely shared, the factivity intuition is widely shared, and raising the implied costs of speaking falsely doesn't affect people's evaluation of assertions. The previous experiments col- lected responses from participants using dichotomous scales. The present experiment tests whether we also observe those outcomes when participants have greater flexibility to express themselves. If we don't observe similar outcomes in this experiment, then it complicates my interpretation of earlier fndings. If we do observe similar outcomes, then it supports my interpretation of earlier fndings. In line with the earlier fndings, I made two predic- tions. First, there would be an effect of Truth-value on participant response. More specifcally, participants would be inclined to agree with the statement in True conditions but inclined to disagree in the False condi- tions. Second, there would be no effect of Cost on par- ticipant response. That is, response in Low True wouldn't differ from response in High True, and re- sponse in Low False wouldn't differ from response in High False. Both predictions were true. A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that there was an overall effect of condition on response to the test question, F(3) = 26.12, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.449. There was a main ef- fect of Truth-value, F(1) = 77.75, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.447, but there was no effect of Cost, F(1) = 0.37, p = 0.547, and no interaction, F(1) = 0.233, p = 0.630. The mode in Low False was 'Disagree'; the mode in High False was 'Disagree'; the mode in Low True was 'Strongly Agree'; the mode in High True was 'Strongly Agree'. Pairwise comparisons using independ- ent-samples t-tests revealed that participant response in Low False (M = -.48, SD = 1.92) didn't differ from re- sponse in High False (M = -.84, SD = 1.99), t(48) = 0.651, p = 0.518; similarly, response in Low True (M = 2.28, SD = 1.31) didn't differ signifcantly from response in High True (M = 2.24, SD = 1.27), t(48) = 0.110, p = 0.913. Because Cost entered into no main or interac- tion effects, I collapsed across that factor to gain statist- ical power. Participant response in True conditions was signifcantly above the midpoint (M = 2.26, SD = 1.28), t(49) = 12.34, p < 0.001, whereas response in False con- ditions was signifcantly below the midpoint (M = -.66, SD = 1.94), t(49) = -2.4, p = 0.020. These results provide additional support for the three main fndings from previous experiments. Once again, the truth-value of a proposition signifcantly af- fected people's evaluation of whether it should be asser- ted. Participants strongly agreed that a well justifed true assertion should be made, but they tended to disagree that a well justifed false assertion should be made. Moreover, once again, participant response wasn't af- fected by the implied cost of speaking falsely. Taken to- gether these results corroborate earlier fndings that participant response is keyed to the 'should' of as- sertoric normativity (as opposed to prudential norm- ativity), that the non-factivity intuition is not widely shared, and that the factivity intuition is widely shared. 6. Experiment 4 One concern about all the experiments up until now is that I have only tested people's intuitions about asser- tions of positive claims (i.e. claims that something is the case). I have not tested people's intuitions about asser- tions of negative claims (i.e. claims that something is not the case). But if the norm of assertion is factive, then it is factive regardless of whether the assertion is positive or negative. Thus the results so far could be strengthened by investigating whether an assertion's content (positive/negative) affects people's intuitions about whether it should be made. Another concern about the experiments thus far is that I haven't given participants enough flexibility of the right sort to register what they think Maria should say. They were forced to either answer a dichotomous ques- tion about whether Maria should make a certain asser- tion, or to rate their agreement with the claim that Maria should make the assertion. Narrowly focusing on one particular "should" question or statement might prevent participants from meaningfully expressing their view of Maria's situation. For instance, even though participants defnitely tend to say that Maria "should not" make a justifed false assertion, we still don't know what they think she should say in such a situation. The The test of truth | 10 results so far could be strengthened by allowing parti- cipants to directly select from multiple options what Maria should say. This experiment addresses both of these concerns. On the one hand, it tests whether the effect of truth on assertability is similar for positive and negative claims. On the other hand, it gives participants much more flexibility to select what Maria should say. 6.1. Participants, materials and procedure One hundred sixteen new participants (33 female, aged 18–62 years, M = 28.45, SD = 8.73 years, 96% native English speakers) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 (Content: Positive/Negative) × 2 (Truth-value: True/False) between-subjects design. Participants in each condition read one story. The basic story was the same as the Low cost story from Ex- periment 3 (Maria's neighbor asking her about the watch out of curiosity). The Content factor varies whether the inventory lists that Maria does/doesn't own the watch. The Truth-value factor varies whether the inventory is correct or incorrect. After reading the story, participants were asked a single question: How should Maria answer her neigh- bor's question? Participants were given seven options, displayed left-to-right across their screen. The options varied whether and how strongly Maria should claim or deny that the watch is in her collection. In conditions where the inventory says that Maria does have the watch (Positive conditions), participants chose from the following options, left-to-right: "I defnitely do have one." "I do have one." "I probably do have one." "It's unclear." "I probably don't have one." "I don't have one." "I defnitely don't have one." In conditions where the inventory says that Maria does not have the watch (Negative conditions), participants chose from the same options in reverse order, beginning with "I defnitely don't have one" on the left, through "I defnitely do have one" on the right. Responses were coded from left-to-right, +3 (Maria should say that things are defnitely as the inventory in- dicates) through -3 (Maria should say that things are defnitely not as the inventory indicates), with a neutral midpoint of 0 ("It's unclear"). (Participants never saw numerical values, only the qualitative descriptions.) Thus coding for specifc responses was reversed in Posit- ive and Negative conditions (except for the neutral mid- point, which was the same in both), creating a consist- ent measure of how strongly Maria should assert in ac- cordance with, or against, the evidence provided by the inventory. 6.2. Results and discussion We want to learn two things from this study. First, were earlier results favoring factive accounts at least partly due to the fact that the stimuli featured only positive as- sertions, or will participants will view negative assertions similarly? If participants view negative assertions simil- arly, then there probably won't be a main effect of Con- tent on response to the test question. Second, how will participants respond when they are empowered to more flexibly express themselves? Of special interest is what participants think Maria should say when she has a jus- tifed false belief about the contents of her collection. A two-way ANOVA revealed that there was an overall effect of condition on response to the test ques- tion, F(3) = 27.64, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.425. There was a main effect of Truth-value, F(1) = 82.12, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.423, but there was no effect of Content, F(1) = 0.762, p = 0.385, and no interaction, F(1) = 0.041, p = 0.841. Pairwise comparisons using independ- ent-samples t-tests revealed that the mean response in True Positive (M = 2.0, SD = 1.3) was signifcantly higher than in False Positive (M = -.28, SD = 1.71), t(56) = 5.69, p < 0.001; similarly, the mean response in True Negative (M = 2.28, SD = 0.649) was signifcantly higher than in False Negative (M = -.10, SD = 1.61), t(56) = 7.38, p < 0.001. The mode in both True Positive and True Negative was +2, indicating that Maria should flat-out assert the true and well justifed claim. The mode in both False Positive and False Negative was +1, indicating that Maria should say that the justifed false claim is probably true. Figure 1 visualizes the distri- bution of responses in the four conditions. These results further support a factive account. Once again, an assertion's truth-value signifcantly af- fected how people evaluate it, regardless of whether its content is positive or negative. And when given greater flexibility to indicate what should be said about a justi- fed false proposition, very few participants said that the proposition should be flat-out asserted. In False condi- tions, the most common response was that Maria should assert that the justifed false proposition is "prob- ably" true, although surprising number of participants also said that Maria should assert against her evidence in order to speak the truth. By contrast, almost all parti- 11 | John Turri cipants said that a justifed true proposition should be either asserted or emphatically asserted. It's worth noting that, on the most natural inter- pretation, the assertion "I probably do (not) have one" is arguably true even when the flat-out assertion "I do (not) have one" is false, given what Maria knows about the inventory's reliability. In other words, Maria's evid- ence can make it true that probably she does (not) have the watch even when it's false that she does (not) have one. Thus, in cases of justifed false belief, the most common view is that Maria should make a true probabilistic assertion, though the bimodal distribution of responses suggests that this view is not uncontroversial. By contrast, in cases of justifed true belief, nearly everyone agrees that she should make the true flat-out assertion, without any hedging or probabilistic qualifcation. 7. Experiment 5: rule-breaking and excuse validation Recall that the second objection to factive accounts is a simple argument about justifed false assertions: a speaker who makes a justifed false assertion is not thereby properly criticizable (or: blameworthy); so the speaker has probably not broken a rule of assertion; so assertion probably doesn't have a factive norm. The ar- Figure 1: Experiment 4: Distribution of responses across the four conditions: True Positive: the inventory correctly lists that Maria owns the watch; True Negative: the inventory correctly lists that Maria doesn't own the watch; False Positive: the invent- ory incorrectly lists that Maria owns the watch; False Negative: the inventory incorrectly lists that Maria does not own the watch. Values along the x-axis represent what Maria "should" say: 3 = the inventory is "defnitely" right; 2 = the inventory is right; 1 = the inventory is "probably" right; 0 = it's "unclear"; -1 = the inventory is "probably" wrong; -2 = the inventory is wrong; -3 = the inventory is "defnitely" wrong. The test of truth | 12 gument assumes that blamelessness is a defeasibly good indication that no rule has been broken. (Its proponents aren't committed to blamelessness being an indefeasible indication that no rule has been broken.) Granting that assumption for the sake of argument, this section re- ports an experiment that defeats its application to justi- fed false assertions. The results arguably also discredit the assumption itself - not merely its application in the present case - but that is a more ambitious claim that must be developed elsewhere. 7.1. Excuse validation Humans are sensitive to criticism for doing what is, by their lights, the right thing, even when it turns out to have been the wrong thing. Of course, we can be brought to see the error of our ways, but as we all know from experience, it can be challenging to admit to fail- ure and wrongdoing, especially when someone criticizes or blames us. We make allowance for this human sensibility in our dealings with others. We're often willing to excuse or even overlook what is in fact incorrect behavior if the trans- gressor had good evidence for thinking that their behavior was correct. If, from your perspective, you should do something, then it can easily seem harsh to criticize or blame you for doing it. And it seems even harsher yet to punish you for it.3 A more natural and generous reaction is to try to help you improve your perspective so that it better matches what is in fact proper behavior. But some- times even that much can seem like an imposition and we're willing to let further experience and reflection teach the transgressor his lesson in the fullness of time. What's more, sometimes we feel compelled to go so far as to insist that the transgressor "did nothing wrong." Such is the pressure we're prone to feel in the face of blameless wrongdoing. Call this the human tendency of excuse valida- tion. (A related phenomenon, "blame validation," is dis- cussed by Alicke 1992 and Alicke & Rose 2010.) If excuse validation occurs, then it complicates the ar- gument advanced by non-factivists earlier in section 3. Non-factivists noted that a speaker isn't properly criticiz- able for a false justifed assertion, and concluded that a rule hadn't been broken. But we should be cautious about this inference. Our view on whether someone deserves cri- ticism can affect whether we're willing to say, or perhaps even think, that a rule has been broken. If we want to 3 Actually, criticism and blame are mild forms of punish- ment. But 'punish' connotes something much more severe, beyond mere verbal punishment. reason from an intuition of blamelessness to the conclu- sion that no rule had been broken, then excuse validation is a factor that needs to be controlled for. This section looks more carefully at the potential rela- tionship between excuse validation and non-factivity intu- itions about assertion. Although the motivation for non- factive accounts is real and, for some, irresistible, I suspect that it is not keyed directly to the norm of assertion. In- stead it is keyed to our commitment to derivative prin- ciples of criticism for excusable violations, which fts a more general pattern. In short, the appeal of non-factiv- ism is an expression of a tendency to excuse validation. The relevance of distinguishing between correctness and blamelessness - or closely related distinctions - hasn't been lost on proponents of factive accounts (e.g. Williamson 2000: 256, DeRose 2002: 180). But earlier treatments have met with sustained criticism (e.g. Lackey 2007, Kvanvig 2009) and have not been developed in de- tail or with an eye toward empirical confrmation. Here I advance the discussion by identifying the phenomenon of excuse validation, experimentally establishing an approx- imate baseline frequency, and experimentally establishing that participant response to cases of justifed false asser- tions fts the observed pattern of excuse validation. This places a considerable burden on non-factivitsts who want to persist in arguing against factive accounts from premises about blamelessness. 7.2. Participants, materials and procedure Sixty-fve new participants (23 female, aged 18–54 years, M = 27, SD = 9.4 years, 97% native English speakers) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: Driving and Asserting. I excluded data from twenty-seven addi- tional participants who failed comprehension questions. Participants read one story about either a driver who blamelessly breaks the speed limit, or about a speaker who blamelessly makes a false statement. To accentuate their blamelessness, each protagonist's rule-breaking is saliently caused by the actions of another person in the story. After the story, participants were asked four comprehension questions, then two test questions: whether the protagonist is criticizable for their behavior, and whether there is a sense in which the protagonist's behavior is incorrect. Here are the story and questions for the Driving con- dition: Doreen just had her car serviced and is driving home from the mechanic's shop. She wants to get home without unnecessary delay, but she does not want to break the speed limit. The speed limit is 55 miles per hour, so she looks down to see how 13 | John Turri fast she is going. The speedometer says that she is going 55 miles per hour. But the speedometer is wrong, since the mechanic disrupted a setting on the speedometer without anyone noticing. As a result, Doreen is actually driving 60 miles per hour. D1. How fast does Doreen think she is driving? [50/55/60] D2. Is it reasonable for Doreen to think that she is driving that fast? [Yes/No] D3. How fast is Doreen driving? [50/55/60] D4. Is Doreen's speed above the limit? [Yes/No] D5. Should Doreen be criticized for driving that speed? [Yes/No] D6. Is there a sense in which it is incorrect for Doreen to drive that speed? [Yes/No] Here are the story and questions for the Asserting condi- tion. Robert just purchased an 1804 US silver dollar and is placing it in a display in his library. He is having dinner guests over tonight, and he wants to tell them about the silver dollar. He sets the sil- ver dollar in its display, closes the library doors be- hind him, and goes to greet his guests. Soon after, as Robert serves his guests dinner, he tells them, "There is an 1804 US silver dollar in my library." But between the time Robert left his library and the time he served dinner, a coin thief quickly slipped through his library window, stole the silver dollar, and escaped without anyone noticing. As a result, Robert's coin is not in the library. A1. Where does Robert think his coin is located? [in the library/in the thief 's possession] A2. Is Robert's belief about the coin's location reasonable? [Yes/No] A3. Where is Robert's coin? [in the library/in the thief's possession] A4. Is Robert's statement false? [Yes/No] A5. Should Robert be criticized for making that statement? [Yes/No] A6. Is there a sense in which it is incorrect for Robert to make that statement? [Yes/No] 7.3. Results and discussion The purpose of the Driving condition is to establish an approximate base rate for excuse validation. That is, re- sponses in this condition help set a baseline for how fre- quently we can expect participants to react to what obvi- ously is real but blameless objective rule-breaking by not merely excusing it, but by going so far as to deny that the trans- gressor behaved in incorrectly in any sense. It is a plain fact of the case that Doreen is breaking the speed limit: she is driving 60 m.p.h. in a 55 m.p.h zone. Indeed, it was a comprehension question whether Doreen was driving above the limit (i.e. question D4). Only participants who answered 'Yes' were included in the analysis. But it is also obvious that Doreen lacks evid- ence that she is breaking the speed limit, and indeed that she has excellent evidence that her driving speed is legal. So of course she should not be criticized, much less tick- eted, for breaking the speed limit. Her objective rule- breaking is blameless and fully excusable. Or so it can eas- ily seem. In light of all that, I predicted that many participants would engage in excuse validation by answering 'No' to question D6 - that is, by denying that Doreen's driving speed is incorrect in any sense. And this is exactly what we observe. Only 49% answered that there was a sense in which it was incorrect for Doreen to drive that fast, which doesn't differ signifcantly from what could be expected by chance, binomial, p>.99. This is a very surprising result, especially given that only participants who correctly answered comprehension question D4 ('Is Doreen's speed above the limit?') were included in the analysis. This is no doubt related to the fact that 97% answered that Doreen should not be criticized for driving that speed. I predicted that we would see a similar response pat- tern in the Asserting condition. Again, this is exactly what we observe. Participants responded to the two test ques- tions very similarly in both Asserting and Driving condi- tions (Fisher's, both ps>.95, two-tailed). In the Asserting condition, 96% said that Robert shouldn't be criticized, and only 46% answered that there was a sense in which it was incorrect for him to make the statement. What could explain this striking similarity? The best explanation is that protagonists in both stories en- gage in blameless and excusable rule-breaking, and that a predictable proportion of participants in both condi- tions react to this by engaging in excuse validation: they literally deny that any transgression has occurred, even though they recognize - and had just agreed! - that it has. Given the similarities of structure and content between Driving and Asserting, it must then be that making a false statement breaks a relevant and salient rule in Asserting just as driving over the speed limit breaks a rel- evant and salient rule in Driving. In other words, a fact- ive norm of assertion is part of the best explanation of the observed similarities in response patterns. The test of truth | 14 I want to be clear about how I'm marshaling this data into an argument against non-factive accounts. Ex- cuse validation occurs when people detect that a certain action breaks a rule, note that it was broken blamelessly, and then deny that the transgressor broke the rule. People tend to engage in excuse validation at a certain rate, but this rate can't be gleaned from the armchair. Participant response in Driving helps to establish an ap- proximate base rate experimentally. The response pat- tern in Asserting doesn't differ from the pattern in Driv- ing.4 This similarity is striking and cries out for explana- tion. One good explanation for this similarity is that participants in Asserting are also engaging in excuse validation at roughly that same rate. But in order for them to do that, they must think that a relevant rule has been broken. Given the structure of Asserting and its iso- morphism to Driving, the only plausible candidate for such a rule is a factive norm of assertion. And this is further evidence in favor of a factive norm of assertion. 8. Conclusion I accomplished two main things in this paper. First, I adopted an experimental approach to investigating the norms of assertion, placing the discussion on surer em- pirical ground and hopefully inspiring further work in an area ripe for experimental investigation. Second, I strengthened the case for a factive norm of assertion. Results from six experiments support several con- clusions. First, the non-factivity intuition is not widely shared (Experiments 1A, 1B, 2, 3, and 4). That is, most people do not judge that well justifed but false asser- tions should be made. Second, the factivity intuition is widely shared (Experiments 1A, 3 and 4). That is, most people judge that false assertions should not be made, even when they are strongly supported by the available evidence. Third, people's evaluation of the assertions is keyed to assertoric normativity rather than, say, pruden- tial normativity (Experiments 2 and 3). Fourth, people can reliably identify the criteria guiding their evaluation of assertions (Experiments 1B and 2). Similar results were observed across several experiments that ques- tioned participants differently, including adding or elim- inating comprehension questions, collecting responses 4 In subsequent work, my lab has replicated this result multiple times. We have replicated it not only with stor- ies involving driving, but with a range of other activities too, including baking, farming, and chess (Turri and Blouw, under review). on different scales, and changing the available options. Overall, a factive norm of assertion well explains some rather striking patterns in people's reaction to cases. Moreover, intuitions that appear to conflict with a fact- ive norm are arguably due to a general tendency to say that blameless transgressors did nothing incorrect (Ex- periment 5). Up until now, inquiry into the norms of assertion has been broadly observational though not experi- mental. But an experimental approach is warranted be- cause competing theories about the norm of assertion generate testable predictions, given two plausible and widely shared assumptions. The frst assumption is that the normative intuitions of skilled practitioners are a source of evidence about what the practice's rules are. This assumption is argu- ably shared by those who appeal to competent speakers' intuitions to support theories of syntax (e.g. Chomsky 1965), experimental investigations into the adequacy of various theories of the relationship between semantics and pragmatics, and other forms of psycholinguistic ex- perimentation (e.g. Gibbs and Moise 1997, and the es- says in Noveck and Sperber 2004). Other things being equal, we should expect skilled practitioners to reliably identify what should and should not be done, what must and must not be done according to the rules of the practice. Importantly, this is not to say that skilled practition- ers have an explicit, articulable theory about what the rules are, or that they can reliably identify the actual rule(s) of the practice when asked to select them from a set competing proposals. The assumption is not that skilled practitioners tend to be good theorists; rather, it's that patterns in their concrete, frst-order intuitions and judgments manifest their skill in applying the relevant rules (Chomsky 1957).5 In short, their intuitive reaction to cases tends to manifest their competence, resulting in detectable patterns. We can then use these patterns when theorizing about the practice's rules. The patterns will make some proposals much less likely than others, 5 Chomsky (1957: p. 97, n. 5) cautions against 'replac[ing] an operational test of behavior . . . by an informant's judgment about his behavior. The opera- tional tests for linguistics notions may require the in- formant to respond, but not to express his opinion about his behavior, his judgments about synonymy, about phonetic distinctness, etc. The informant's opin- ions [about these things] may be based on all sorts of ir- relevant factors.' Postulating a set of rules to explain the observed linguistic behavior is the linguist's job. 15 | John Turri given what we expect from skilled performance. The second assumption is that assertion is a social practice that competent speakers are skilled at, which is utterly uncontroversial. Given these two assumptions, the normative intuitions of competent speakers are a valuable source of evidence about the norms of asser- tion. Other things being equal, if that group strongly tends to judge that assertions of a certain sort should not be made, then we should conclude that those asser- tions probably violate the norm of assertion. Similar re- marks apply when investigating the norms of other speech acts, such as questioning, commanding, guaran- teeing, promising, etc. The present discussion can thus serve as a model for investigating the norms of other speech acts. All the studies reported here were conducted on adults in the United States. This is a noteworthy limita- tion and future research could proftably investigate these matters cross-culturally and developmentally. First, is there cross-cultural variation in the evaluation of assertions and informants? If members of other cul- tures respond signifcantly differently to the same exper- imental stimuli, then that would raise questions about how to interpret the results reported here, and indeed about whether there is a universally shared, normat- ively constituted practice of assertion. Second, are there developmental differences in the evaluation of asser- tions and informants? Do young children and adoles- cents tend to view these matters differently from adults? If so, at what point do the differences appear and disap- pear? In the process of investigating the norms of assertion, we encountered a surprising and potentially important pattern in people's normative judgments about blameless rule-breaking: excuse validation. Experiment 5 suggests that many people are surprisingly unwilling to identify blameless rule-breaking as rule-breaking. This raises a host of interesting questions about the nature and function of rules in human society, as well as the relationship between rules, blame and punishment. Further work in this area could investigate the causes and limits of excuse valida- tion. For example, if blamelessly breaking the rule has ser- iously negative social consequences, then perhaps people will be more likely to correctly identify it as rule-breaking. Acknowledgments For helpful comments and discussion, I thank James Beebe, Matthew Benton, Peter Blouw, Wesley Buckwal- ter, Trent Dougherty, Gerry Callaghan, Igor Douven, Ori Friedman, Tim Kenyon, Joshua Knobe, Rachel McKinnon, Christina Starmans, participants at the 2012 Buffalo Experimental Philosophy Conference, and an audience at Northwestern University. Special thanks go to Angelo Turri. 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