Acts of assertion

pp. 157-181

in: Richard J. Campbell, The concept of truth, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Abstract

We humans engage in many activities, some of which we appraise for truth. The linguistic practice of making statements is one of those. We regularly assert about a vast variety of matters that they are thus and so, and in each case the question can be asked: is what was asserted true? Although we have found the linguistic conception of truth narrow and inadequate — because it took truth to apply only to statements and similar linguistically structured items — it is incontrovertible that many items in the linguistic domain are appraised for their truth.