Abstract
Our linguistic communication is, in part, the exchange of truths. It is an empirical fact that in daily conversation we aim at truths, not falsehoods. This fact may lead us to assume that ordinary, assertion-based communication is the only possible communicative system for truth-apt information exchange, or at least has priority over any alternatives. This assumption is underwritten in three traditional doctrines: that assertion is a basic notion, in terms of which we define denial; that to predicate truth of a sentence is to assert the content it expresses; and that one should, in the context of radical interpretation, try to maximize the truth of what foreigners believe or utter. However, I challenge this assumption via a thought experiment: imagine a language game in which everyone aims to exchange only falsehoods. I argue that information exchange is possible in this game, and so truth-guided communication and falsity-guided communication are conceptually on a par. As a consequence, we should reject the three doctrines, based as they are on the conceptual priority of assertion-based communication.
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Notes
Lewis calls it “Liarese” and characterizes it as spoken by a tribe of “Liars”, who, unlike ordinary liars, never intend to deceive (Lewis 1980: 80). I thank John Mackay for drawing my attention to Lewis’s Liarese example.
Wittgenstein says, “[A] proposition is true if we use it to say that things stand in a certain way, and they do; and if by “p” we mean ~ p and things stand as we mean that they do, then, construed in the new way, “p” is true and not false” (1922: 4.062).
“To be truthful in L is […] to try never to utter any sentences of L that are not true in L”, where “L” can be any natural language or Liarese (Lewis 1975: 167).
We should be careful to distinguish the case of (Z) from the case where I assert: “It is false that zero is odd”. In the latter I aim to produce a truth. In the former I aim to produce a falsehood. These two cases are very different, even though the same information is conveyed.
In a nutshell, I’m using the Maxim of Quality for capturing the normative aspects in truth-apt information. But I’m not arguing that the Gricean approach is the best account for capturing the normative aspects of assertion. In particular, my argument is not committed to the truth account—“assert p only if p is true”—espoused in Weiner (2005) and Whiting (2013). They employ the Gricean model to challenge the knowledge account—“assert p only if one knows that (it is true that) p”—championed by Williamson (2000). If one prefers the latter approach, one can use, instead of the Variant Maxim of Quality, this formulation: “utter p only if one knows that it is false that p”.
There is a claim that denial is evidentially less specific than assertion, which has a long history in philosophy (see Horn 2001: ch1). When one asserts that a is F, it must be based on the particular evidence that the individual constant a satisfies the predicate F. In contrast, when one denies that a is F, there are several possibilities for justifying this utterance: a does not satisfy F, a is empty, to predicate F of a is a category mistake, etc. (see Dickie 2010; Incurvati and Schlöder 2017). However, such “messiness” of denial is orthogonal to the possibility of the present thought experiment. For the F-game brings about the change in the way of speaking, not the way of how we deal with evidence. To utter “a is not F” in the F-game requires the same specificity of evidence that a is F as to utter “a is F” in the T-game does. Instead, uttering “a is F” becomes messy in the F-game.
The norm that one should assert what one believes is considered by some to be a norm of sincerity (e.g. Lowlor and Perry 2008; Green and Williams 2010; see also Goldberg 2015: 1.3). In a discussion of deflationism, Price in (2011) takes it to be the norm of sincerity that one should manifest what one has in mind. According to Price, this norm is not a genuine norm of assertion because this claim also applies to the case of other mental states such as desire. One should follow the norm of sincerity just described not only in the case of expressing beliefs or propositional contents one has in mind, but also in the case of expressing desires or other non-propositional contents. I agree with Price that manifesting what one actually believes is not the norm of assertion for this reason. But I think, as against Price, that trying to manifest what one disbelieves may count as a sincere act in certain cases, as, for example, in the F-game.
According to MacFarlane’s classification, there are largely four types of theories of assertion – the attitudinal account, the common ground account, the constitutive rule account, and the commitment account (MacFarlane 2011; the labels are from (Goldberg 2015: 9)). My claim that an utterance in the F-game counts as a denial is compatible with any of these accounts; for, whatever characterization one gives to assertion, I may ask for the corresponding account of denial, and then argue that the denial with that characterization becomes the normal move in the F-game.
In his “Truth” (1959), Dummett famously compares our linguistic practice with playing a game of chess, claiming that this normative aspect is part of our concept of truth, but is not captured by Frege’s theory:
[I]t is part of the concept of truth that we aim at making true statements; and Frege’s theory of truth and falsity as the references of sentences leaves this feature of the concept of truth quite out of account. Frege indeed tried to bring it in, afterwards in his theory of assertion — but too late; for the sense of the sentence is not given in advance of our going in for the activity of asserting, since otherwise there could be people who expressed the same thoughts but went in instead for denying them.
(Dummett 1959: 2; emphasis added).
To reconstruct this passage as a simple reductio form, suppose that Frege’s theory is correct. It follows that the proposition or thought expressed by a sentence would be identifiable independently of our activity of assertion. Then we should be able to express that content while performing the opposite speech act, i.e., denial. But this is absurd, as contended in the italicized clause. So it is concluded that the starting supposition is wrong.
The playability of the F-game shows that Dummett’s reductio argument doesn’t work; the F-game shows that it is possible that everyone expresses thoughts in order to go in for denying them. Dummett’s argument does not reach an absurdity.
My treatment of denial is different from bilateralism: “the view that meanings in general are to be given via conditions on assertion and denial” (Ripley 2020), the view also held in (Price 1990; Smiley 1996; Rumfitt 2000; Restall 2005). For Bilateralists, assertion and denial are both primitive notions and so conceptually on a par. In contrast, my treatment of denial does not take assertion and denial to both be primitive notions. I establish parity in a different way. In the context of conversation and truth-apt information exchange, the F-game shows that we can exchange information via denials just as well as we can via assertions. Neither assertion nor denial has priority over the other. It is in this way that I argue for the conceptual parity of assertion and denial.
Rumfitt notes that early Frege held a theory of “content of possible judgment” (Rumfitt 2000). According to the theory, when we judge “p” we grasp not only “p” but also “ ~ p”, and so “[t]he rejection of the one and the acceptance of the other are one and the same” (Frege 1879–81: 8). Here Frege suggests an account that treats acceptance and rejection conceptually on a par with respect to negation. Later, Frege dropped the terminology “content of possible judgment” when he discovered the sense/reference distinction, but he suggested no substantial change to the underlying idea in the previous account (e.g. Frege 1892: 186). Thus, there is room for asking, as some bilateralists do, how strongly Frege himself is committed to what I call the Frege-Geach account of denial (see, for example, Ripley 2020, fn. 2). I won’t here decide the textual question of what exactly Frege’s view was. The Frege-Geach account of denial that is my focus is certainly a standard interpretation of Frege; in fact, Geach calls it “the Frege point” (Geach 1965: 449).
Smiley (1996) characterizes this approach in terms of Ockham’s razor.
A terminological point: where I use “denial”, Geach would employ the term “rejection”.
Here’s how such an ‘F-logic’ would look in comparison with the standard one, ‘the T-logic’. First, let’s stipulate that if a sentence follows the reverse turnstile $$⊣$$, it means that the sentence is produced while following the F-rules. So,
\({ \dashv }{\rm{Snow is black}},\)
represents my denying the content that snow is black.
The F-game allows the players to generate only falsehoods. So the rules of the F-logic must be falsity preserving in the sense that they allow the F-game players to draw from known falsehoods some new falsehood. Let’s start with conjunction. Consider the sentence “Snow is white and snow is not white”. It is false, and so we can state it in the F-game. However, we may not eliminate the conjunction to present each conjunct separately, since the first conjunct is true in isolation. So the standard Conjunction Elimination rule does not obtain. Instead, we know that the whole conjunction is false whenever one conjunct is false. So, given that p is false, we can infer any conjunction p & q with an arbitrary q. Accordingly, the F-logic has the following introduction rules for conjunction:\(\frac{{{ \dashv }p}}{{{ \dashv }{ }p{ }\& { }q}}{ }\left[ {\& {\rm{ Intro}}1} \right]\quad \quad \frac{{{ \dashv }q}}{{{ \dashv }p{ }\& { }q}}{ }\left[ {\& {\rm{ Intro}}2} \right]\)
These are the ‘upside-down’ versions of the standard Conjunction Introduction. And similar reasoning shows that the F-logic has the Disjunction Elimination as follows:
\(\frac{{{ \dashv }p \vee q}}{{{ \dashv }{ }p}}{ }\left[ { \vee {\rm{Elim}}1} \right]\quad \quad \frac{{{ \dashv }p \vee q}}{{{ \dashv }q}}{ }\left[ { \vee {\rm{Elim}}2} \right]\)
Thus, the behavior of conjunction governed by its introduction rules. in the F-logic is just like that of disjunction governed by its introduction rules in the T-logic; and the behavior of disjunction governed by its elimination rules in the F-logic is just like that of conjunction governed by its elimination rules in the T-logic.
Now go back to a contradiction:
\(p\,\& \sim \!\!p\)
This is a logical falsehood, and so we can put it forward with the reverse turnstile. But, with the variant introduction and elimination rules, the sentence above does not generate explosion. This suggests that the F-logic is no more inconsistent than the T-logic.
The terminology is from (Bar-On and Simmons 2007: 73). Illocutionary deflationism tries to explain the role of the truth predicate in terms of assertion. Unlike Bar-On and Simmons, here I am not arguing for (or against) the claim that the concept of truth is needed to explain the concept of assertion.
There is a non-Fregean approach to truth predication in an embedded context (e.g. Hanks 2015: Ch 4), but, for reasons of space, I set this aside here.
Williams’ characterization also states that the truth predicate allows us to reject some content. I take this to mean that we can reject what another person said by uttering, “What you said is not true”, without repeating the actual sentence.
The relation between assertion and endorsement is asymmetric: the former entails the latter, but not vice versa. This fits our ordinary conception of assertion and endorsement.
One might argue that there is a conceptual link between our current practices and the meaning of the truth predicate. To this claim, the F-game does not present any problem, because it only shows that, if we started the F-game, the meaning would change as the practice changed. I thank an anonymous referee for pointing out this claim.
Davidson himself later replied to his critics; that, although he sometimes used the term “radical interpretation” to refer to “the special enterprise of interpreting on the basis of a limited and specified data base”, he “has never argued, specified, or assumed […] that the data on which the special enterprise is based exhaust the data available to actual interpreters” (1994: fn. 2).
One might think that Eddy understands the use meaning of that sentence, inasmuch as Eddy is supposed to recognize when and only when he can also utter that sentence. But then, the distinction between the truth conditional theory and the use theory of meaning seems to collapse, which would be undesirable for proponents of the former.
As outlined in footnote 15, the logic of the F-game is falsity preserving. Now assume that Eddy observes Greta’s inference from (i) to (ii).
(i) Schnee ist nicht weiss.
(ii) Schnee ist nicht weiss und p.
(where “p” is an arbitrary German sentence). The inference is correct with respect to the F-rules, in the sense that Greta’s inference is falsity preserving. Also, as we’ve just seen, Eddy translates (i) into (iii).
(iii) Snow is white.
Now Eddy observes that Greta and other German speakers, following the F-rules, always allow to draw a new sentence with “und”. This performance coincides with our Disjunction Introduction. Thus, Eddy seems likely to conclude that “und” in German means “or” in English. Then, (ii) is translated into (iv).
(iv) Snow is white or p.
In a similar vein, he would mistake “oder” for “and”. Thus, Eddy will mistake conjunction (disjunction) in English for disjunction (conjunction) in German.
The discrepancy between the failure of specifying the sentence’s meaning and the success of specifying speaker’s mental content might suggest a weaker notion of ‘interpretation’. In contrast to the standard notion, the weaker interpretation does not aim to provide the semantic meaning of an uttered sentence. It rests satisfied with identifying other’s mental content, and it makes sense to think that, as long as Eddy knows what Greta believes, he successfully interprets this rational agent. It seems interesting to compare the distinction between two notions of interpretation with that between semantic and use meaning mentioned in footnote 22. But in this paper I only deal with the standard notion of interpretation.
For example, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Blackburn 2008) characterizes the principle as the constraints on the interpreter ‘to maximize the truth or rationality in the subject’s sayings’ (see the entry, “charity, principle of”). Notice that it mentions the truth at the level of “sayings”, not at the level of doxastic attitudes. So, in general, if the formulation forces the interpreters to maximize the truths of utterances, then the F-game is a direct counterexample. Another type of formulation appeals to the truth in foreigners’ beliefs. For example, Ludwig characterizes the principle as that “a speaker’s beliefs, particularly those that are responses to his environment, are largely true” (Ludwig 2004: 353). Then, this formulation itself is not problematized by the F-game. There remains a problem, however, insofar as it is supposed to follow from the belief formulation that when a speaker holds true a sentence, by and large the sentence is true (ibid.). Hence, in general, if the formulation leads the interpreters to maximize the truths of utterances, then the F-game is an indirect counterexample.
Here I take consistency in utterances to be a hallmark of (minimal) rationality. The F-game players keep producing false sentences, but such a practice itself does not generate any inconsistency in what they say, as illustrated in footnote 15.
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Ito, K. Truth and Falsity in Communication: Assertion, Denial, and Interpretation. Erkenn 88, 657–674 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-021-00375-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-021-00375-z