Is Assertion Relative to a Question? Some Thoughts on Schaffer's "Knowledge in the Image of Assertion"

In "Knowledge in the Image of Assertion," Jonathan Schaffer (2008) defends a view of assertion according to which:

KQ: S ought: assert that p in context c only if s knows the answer (p) to the question under discussion in C. (Schaffer 2008: 10).

He gives several (four in total) interesting cases which he takes to support his question-relative account of assertion (which he takes in turn as counting in favour of his question-relative account of knowledge.) Here I want to examine specifically the plausibility of his question-relative account of assertion and will do so by considering two of these example-cases which he cites in support of the question-relative view of assertion: 'Stop Thief' and 'Millard Fillmore.'

A quick note on my dialectical aim. Although I am not here presupposing any particular (normative) account of assertion to be correct, I want to argue by the strategy of showing that, were I out to defend something like the 'justification account of assertion,' (i.e. Douven 2008, Kvanvig 2010, Lackey 2008) Schaffer's cases would support it (the justification account) no less than they appear to support his question-relative account of assertion. First, here's "Stop Thief", a case originally from Dretske (1970):

Stop Thief: Black has stolen the opals from the locked safe. The detective arrives on the crime scene, find Black's fingerprints all over the safe, and on that basis reports that Black has stolen the opals.

Schaffer's idea is that whether the detective's assertion is proper depends on the question: if the question concerned who stole the opals, then the detective has asserted correctly. But if the question concerned what Black stole then, according to Schaffer, the detective cannot assert appropriately that Black has stolen the opals.

A second case: 'Millard Filmore':

Consider the following easy question:

Who was the thirteenth president of the United States?

A. Millard Filmore

B. Hillary Clinton

Says Schaffer:

"Your average student, faced with this question, can appropriately assert that Millard Fillmore was the thirteenth president of the United States. But consider the following hard question:

Who was the thirteenth president of the United States?

A. Millard Fillmore

B. Zachary Taylor

According to Schaffer: "Your average student, faced with the hard question, cannot appropriately assert that Millard Filmore was the thirteenth president of the United States," (7) and this is so, Schaffer thinks, even though the student can appropriately assert "Millard Filmore is the thirteenth president of the United States" when it is the answer to the easy question.

I think that the apparent force of these examples in favour of a question-relative account of assertion can be explained away once we consider a more fundamental difference in the positions of the asserters in Schaffer's cases: a difference that can be accounted for independently of any appeal to what question is asked, but which an appeal to the differences in questions asked must be explained in terms of.

Put simply: it is a difference in epistemic position in each of the two cases which explains why the assertions were proper, when they were, and not proper, when they were not. To support this notion, let's now employ the dialectical strategy I alluded to. Suppose I'm trying to support the 'justification account of assertion' according to which:

JA: One ought: Assert p only if one is appropriately (epistemically) justified in one's belief that p.

In the thief case, consider that, in the instance in which the question was "Who stole the opals", one's evidence for it being Black who stole the opals is:

(i) Black's fingerprints are on the safe

(ii) Someone stole opals

Together, (i) and (ii) count as rather strong justification for the claim that Black stole the opals. When the question however is what it is black stole, then the evidence set eliminates (ii), and so the epistemic support is weaker:

(i) Black's fingerprints are on the safe

(ii) Something was stolen

Together, (i) and (ii) are not enough to justify one's assertion that "It was the opals that Black stole."These considerations would support a justification account of assertion--one which itself would need not make any further appeal to facts about what questions are asked in order to account for the impropriety of the assertion at issue. Whereas, to emphasise, the question relative account only appears to be supported by the examples Schaffer uses once we consider that one's epistemic justification is better in one case than in the other.

The same move can be analogously made to explain why it is that the Millard Filmore case would appear to support a question-relative account of assertion--even though it ultimately does nothing more than to support the idea that assertions with epistemic justification are warranted whereas ones which lack epistemic justification are not.