4 Lectures on Assertion

Manuel Garcia-Carpíntero
University of Barcelona, LOGOS Group

4 Lectures on Assertion

28 October, 18,and 25 November, 2 December 2011

Sala Mattos Romão,
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon

The course will explore the nature of assertion from the perspective
of different contemporary debates about that central speech act. In
the first session we will distinguish descriptive and normative
accounts, and we will examine the debate around Williamson's proposal
that assertion is defined by a constitutive norm requiring knowledge
of the asserted proposition by its performers. In the second session
we will explore the possibility of providing a normative account,
along Williamson's lines, of the act of presupposing, thereby
accounting for facts such as the accommodation of presuppositions and
informative presuppositions, and we will explore the consequences for
the appraisal of Williamson's account of assertion. In the third we
will investigate what it is for a speech act to be conventional, and
whether accounts of speech acts in terms of constitutive norms are
compatible with their being conventional. In the final session we will
explore the relation between assertion and truth, by discussing on the
one hand deflationary theories of truth, and on the other recent
proposals for the relativization of truth.

Free Attendance

For further information please contact:
Professor João Branquinho
jbranquinho@campus.ul.pt


Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa
LanCog Group (Language, Mind and Cognition Research Group)
http://lancog.com/
Instituto Filosófico de Pedro Hispano, Departamento de Filosofia da UL