Abstract
G. E. Moore famously pointed out that all sincere assertions of the form ‘p, but I don’t believe that p’ are inherently absurd. John Turri strongly disagrees with the consensus evaluation of such assertions as inherently absurd and offers a counterexample according to which it is possible to say ‘Eliminativism is true, but of course I don’t believe it’s true’ sincerely and without any absurdity. I argue in this paper that Turri’s attempt misses the point entirely, for the most natural interpretations of his counterexample are either absurd or do not represent genuinely Moorean assertions. The critical analysis of Turri’s counterexample will enable me to reach the general conclusion that precludes the possibility of omissive Moorean assertions that are inherently non-absurd (regardless of their content), at least if we hold that our assertions ought to have some normative function.
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Notes
Some recent examples include Turri 2010; Pruss 2012; Frances 2016; Fileva and Brakel (forthcoming).
Andre Gallois gives a similar example of an eliminativist about belief who says ‘Neurophysiology is the key to understanding the mind, but I do not believe that it is’ (Gallois 1996: 52).
It should be noted that Ellie is in no position to make the commissive assertion of (1), for if she asserts ‘Eliminativism is true, but of course I believe it’s not true’, the second part of the assertion commits her to the existence of beliefs and consequently, to a rejection of eliminativism.
This view is often called the Unger-Williamson thesis. According to this thesis, the normative function of assertions is that one properly asserts that p only if one knows it and that in asserting that p, one represents oneself as knowing that p. For the classic exposition of this thesis, see Unger 1975; Slote 1979; De Rose 1991; Williamson 2000. For criticism and discussion of this thesis, see e.g., Coffman 2014; Douven 2006; Hill and Schechter 2007; Kvanvig 2009; Lackey 2007; Wright 2014.
Turri points out that not only the unusual or atypical character of such prefaces supports this view, but also ‘a wealth of theoretical and empirical evidence’ (Turri 2016b: 293).
I would like to thank an anonymous referee for urging me to clarify this point.
Of course, some authors propose that we do not need the normative function in order to individuate and understand assertions (see Johnson 2018). Owing to limitations of space, I must pass over the details of this proposal. I should make it clear, however, that the analysis in this paper assumes the view that our assertions ought to have at least some normative function. I believe this is a plausible view, and it is, in any case, widely accepted in the literature (see Pagin 2016; Lackey 2007).
Woods makes a similar remark (2014: 2).
I should emphasize that I do not know of any contemporary philosopher who maintains that to know that p is just to have a justified true belief that p. At best, epistemologists think that knowledge involves these three conditions or, in other words, they think that these three conditions (as they are typically understood) are necessary, but not sufficient for knowledge. Exactly what the correct characterization of knowledge is seems to represent a matter of some philosophical debate, into the complexities of which I will not enter as my argumentation in this section does not ultimately depend on one particular way or other of resolving the matter. I will therefore rely in what follows on a plausible thesis that knowledge involves these three conditions.
The arguments that have been raised in the literature in support of this theory are complex and not important for this paper.
It might be argued, however, that there is still an absurdity in the central sentence, created not by ‘I don’t believe’ but by ‘of course’, whose apparent commitment to the obviousness (rather than merely the truth) of the belief is naturally read as making even guessing inappropriate. This is an artifact of Turri’s example, but it may be worth pointing out that on interpretation [3], the assertion may be both not genuinely Moorean and nevertheless absurd. Thanks to an anonymous referee for emphasizing this point.
As shoemaker points out, to mentally assent to a certain proposition is to have a certain attitude toward this proposition; in other words, mental assent is, properly understood, the acceptance of a proposition (1996: 78).
See Pagin (2016) for a helpful general survey.
Some authors maintain that the normative function of assertion requires that the asserted content has some property—e.g., certainty (Stanley 2008) or truth (Weiner 2005; Whiting 2013). I concede that, on this view, (6) could have normative function, at least in principle. However, given that Turri embraces the view according to which the normative function of assertions requires that the speaker knows the content she asserts; this option is not available to him. As such, my point is that Turri—and, for that matter, any proponent of the view according to which the normative function of assertion requires that the speaker stands in some specified relation to the content she asserts—is forced to accept that (6) does not have any normative function.
At any rate, it is clear that Turri would have to accept this conclusion, for it is shown in this paper that his claim that there are Moorean assertions that suffer from no absurdities and his claim that the normative function of assertions is knowledge transmission are incompatible, which means in turn that his counterexample ultimately fails.
I owe a debt of gratitude to an anonymous referee from this journal for very helpful comments on earlier drafts.
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Funding
This study was funded by Ministarstvo Prosvete, Nauke i Tehnološkog Razvoja; the project “Dynamic Systems in Nature and Society: Philosophical andEmpirical Aspects” [grant number 179041].
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Milevski, V. Moorean Assertions and Their Normative Function. Acta Anal 35, 531–541 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-019-00412-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-019-00412-1