Manuel GARCIA-CARPINTERO
(Universitat de Barcelona,
Professeur invité à l’ENS)
Four Talks on Assertion
Les 21, 26, 27 et 28 avril 2017 de 15h30 à 17h30
Institut Jean Nicod, Pavillon Jardin, Ecole normale supérieure,
29, rue d'Ulm 75005 Paris. Salle de réunion, RDC
This series of talks will present the core chapters of my forthcoming book Tell Me What You Know:
1. Vendredi 21 avril de 15h30 à 17h30
Assertion, Norms and Convention
I will present some considerations to prefer normative accounts of illocutionary forces in general and assertion in particular to Gricean psychological accounts. In order to critically engage an argument by Tim Williamson that assertion cannot be conventional, I will discuss an issue raised by Rawls about what makes a normative type whose real definition is given by norms to be in force, and its application to the assertoric practice.
2. Mercredi 26 avril de 15h30 à 17h30
The Knowledge-Provision Account.
I will present my own "knowledge-provision" account of the constitutive norms of assertion, and I will provide a teleological account of what makes assertion thus understood to be in force that helps clarifying the crucial notions of the account.
3. Jeudi 27 avril de 15h30 à 17h30
Indirect Assertions.
Assuming the previously articulated normative account of assertion, I will critically discuss several arguments that assertion cannot be done indirectly, one based on intuitions, another on the lying/misleading distinction, and a final one on the power of assertions to transmit knowledge via testimony.
4. Vendredi 28 avril de 15h30 à 17h30
Assertion and Propositional Unity.
I will discuss act-based accounts of the unity or representational character of propositional contents, critically engaging Hanks' view that unity-conferring acts should have an assertoric character.