Irksome Assertion

McKinnon, R., & Turri, J. (2013). Irksome assertions. Philosophical Studies, 166(1), 123–128.

The Knowledge Account of Assertion (KAA) says that knowledge is the norm of assertion: you may assert a proposition only if you know that it’s true. The primary support for KAA is an explanatory inference from a broad range of linguistic data. The more data that KAA well explains, the stronger the case for it, and the more difficult it is for the competition to keep pace. In this paper we critically assess a purported new linguistic datum, which, it has been argued, KAA well explains. We argue that KAA does not well explain it.