TRUTH AND WARRANTED ASSERTION

Clayton Littlejohn

INTRODUCTION

There is a strange lacuna in the literature on warranted assertion. A commonly held view is that
the knowledge norm governs assertion:
KW: You must not assert p unless you know that p is true.
KW entails that there are no false, warranted assertions. No matter how good the speaker’s
evidence is for believing p, if p is false but the speaker asserts that it is true, the speaker should not
have asserted that p is the case. At best, the speaker could be excused for her breach. If warrant is
anything like justification, just as excuses do not provide justifications, warranted assertions are not
merely excusable assertions.
The literature doesn’t seem to contain any direct argument for the thesis that assertion is
governed by the norm of truth:
TW: You must not assert p unless p is true.
Perhaps this is because it is thought that we do not need an argument for TW. We have arguments
for KW and KW cannot govern assertion unless TW does. One problem is that the arguments
offered in support of KW do not seem to support anything stronger than reasonable or justified
belief accounts of assertion.1 Another problem is that it seems plausible to maintain that if the
speaker is epistemically permitted to believe p, the speaker cannot then be obliged to refrain from
asserting that p is the case. If there were an obligation to refrain from asserting p, there is an
undefeated reason that demands that the speaker not assert that p is the case but it seems that there
would be no such reason that had any bearing on whether the speaker should believe. That seems
rather odd. Why wouldn’t reasons to refrain from asserting do double duty as reasons to refrain
from believing? If we know that there are no such reasons to refrain from believing, why doesn’t

1
We might grant that anyone who asserts that some lottery proposition is true asserted something
she (epistemically) oughtn’t have asserted. We might grant that you shouldn’t assert Moorean
absurdities such as ‘Custer died at Little Big Horn but I believe he didn’t’ are true, but you might
think that since speakers know (or could easily know with little reflection) that they do not know
these propositions to be true and it seems you might not be justified in believing what you know (or
could easily know with little reflection) that you do not know, we do not need anything stronger
than a rule that enjoins us to refrain from asserting what we do not believe with justification or
what we cannot reasonably take ourselves to know.
that show that there’s a clear path to believing? The problem is that if justified belief justifies
assertion, neither TW nor KW governs assertion because there can be false, justified beliefs.
The main rival to the knowledge account of assertion takes something along these lines to
be the norm that governs assertion:
RBKW: You must not assert p unless you can reasonably take
yourself to know p.2
It seems we have little reason to prefer KW to RBKW and some reason to think that KW demands
too much. What I’d like to do is offer an argument against RBKW and similar views that do not
require truth for warranted assertion. This will not give us an argument for KW, but it will give us
some reason to think that the truth about warranted assertion is that it is more like knowledge than
critics of the knowledge account seem to think.

1. WARRANT ENTAILS TRUTH

Let’s say that S’s assertion that p is the case is warranted iff S is epistemically permitted to assert
that p is the case. I think that if someone is permitted to Φ, there may be reasons for them not to
Φ but there cannot be undefeated reasons for them not to Φ. And, I think that if there are no
undefeated reasons for them not to Φ, it cannot be that they are obliged not to Φ. In the absence
of reasons not to Φ, Φ-ing is permitted. In other words, Φ-ing is warranted. To argue that truth
is necessary for warranted assertion, I’ll argue (predictably) that there’s always reason to refrain
from asserting false propositions and there’s no reason that defeats this reason that could warrant
the false assertion. My target in this paper is RBKW and similar views. They either have to say
that there is no norm that governs assertion that gives us reason to refrain from asserting the false
or they have to identify additional norms that give us reasons that defeat the reasons generated by
the truth norm, TW.
An important part of my argument is case driven. Here is a case:
Cook. Peacock just moved into the apartment next to Plum’s. To
welcome her to the building, Plum cooked her dinner. She did

2
RBKW seems to enjoy a distinctive advantage over KW. According to KW, you oughtn’t assert p
if you don’t know p for purely Gettierish reasons. RBKW seems to have no such implication and it
seems that someone who reasonably believes themselves to know p but fails to know p for purely
Gettierish reasons is not obliged to refrain from asserting p.
 not realize that the mushrooms she used in making her dinner
were poisonous. (So far as this is possible, imagine that she is not
culpable or blameworthy for her ignorance. She used a field guide
for distinguishing safe from unsafe mushrooms, but it contained a
few errors.) Plum has on hand the stuff to give people who eat
poisoned mushrooms, but only enough for one person. It just so
happens that her other neighbor, Mustard, is suffering from food
poisoning because he at a can of bad peaches. (So far as this is
possible, imagine that he is non-culpably ignorant). Plum’s stuff
could help Mustard just as well as it could help Peacock. It’s good
stuff. Now, Mustard and Peacock are equally sick and Plum can
help only one.
It seems intuitively:
(*) Plum has a more stringent duty to assist Peacock than Mustard.
She did poison Peacock, after all. The intuition elicited by this example seems to disconfirm the
internalist idea that the conditions or properties that determine whether someone acts permissibly
or with justification are limited to the properties that are internal to the subject or the subject’s
perspective:
DI: Necessarily, if S and S’ are mental duplicates from the
cradle to the time at which they Φ, S is permitted to Φ iff
S’ is permitted to Φ.
In some nearby possible world where Plum’s mental duplicate gives her neighbor a dish with
mushrooms that are not poisonous, I think we can easily imagine that she does nothing wrongful
since Plum’s mental duplicate is no more negligent than Plum and she does not harm her neighbor
with her gift.
If (*) is correct, I don’t think that Plum’s duty to Peacock could be some mere duty of
beneficence. After all, Mustard’s needs are as great as Peacock’s and Plum’s stuff could help him
just as well as that stuff could help Peacock. My hypothesis is this. The reason that (*) is true is
that Plum’s duty is to right some past wrongful act of hers by assisting Peacock. The problem with
DI is that it can’t allow for the possibility that there was wrongdoing in the past because the internal
conditions common to Plum and Plum’s mental duplicates do not ensure that there was some good
reason for Plum not to act in the way that she did. The reason that she ought to assist Peacock first
is that she poisoned Peacock when she served her the mushrooms and the problem with DI is that
this fact is inaccessible to Plum.
Someone could say that while (*) is true, it doesn’t follow that this is a duty to address
some prior wrong she’s committed. That is to say, it is no mere duty of beneficence, but it is not a
reparative duty if such duties are understood as responses to past wrongs that the agent has
committed. To give this kind of duty a name, we can speak of reparative* duties. It is similar to a
reparative duty insofar as they are duties one can be under only if the agent brought about some bad
state of affairs, but they are like the duty of beneficence insofar as they can arise without any prior
wrongdoing on the agent’s part. Why can’t we say that the difference in stringency is due to the
fact that there is a prima facie duty to assist both Peacock and Mustard, but a stronger duty to
Peacock because there is the additional reparative* duty that gives her a pro tanto reason to assist
Peacock? That way, we can accommodate intuition without giving up internalism about
justification.
The problem with this is with this idea of reparative* duties. If this is merely a reparative*
duty, then we would have to say that this is a case in which Plum did not act against any pro tanto
reason to refrain from giving Peacock the poisoned dish. (Otherwise, we would have to say that
this was a reparative duty.) But, then it seems quite odd to think that Plum could have such a duty
because it would have to combine two features. First, it would have to give Plum a reason to act
that a similarly situated but causally idle agent would not have.3 Second, it would have to be a
reason for Plum to act over and above a reason associated with a mere duty of beneficence to
address some bad state of affairs when she could know full well that she never had any reason not to
bring about in the first place. On this account, there would be a resultant moral difference between
Plum and Green’s duties (i.e., both would have reasons of beneficence to assist either subject but
Plum would have the additional reason to discharge a reparative* duty) that alters the range of
permissible options available to them that arose in virtue of a causal difference that was not coupled
with any normative difference. That sounds really strange. Better, I think, to say that the reason
that this causal difference between Plum and Green makes a normative difference. It was in virtue
of a causal relation between Plum and the bad state of affairs that she acted against a pro tanto

3
Otherwise, we would say that the reparative* duty was really a mere duty of beneficence. It
would be the very duty that, say, Green would have if he had just the same amount of stuff to give
to someone who has been poisoned as Plum has.
reason. She now has the knowledge necessary to see that her actions were wrongful. This is why
Peacock has a stronger claim on Plum’s assistance than Mustard does. But, this is why there is a
reparative duty that Plum ought to discharge, not a reparative* duty.
Suppose DI is false. Suppose Plum didn’t know what to make Peacock so she asked White.
White said that she should use the mushrooms growing in the garden to make her a salad. Plum
followed his advice. Should White have said this? Consider:
(AP) If an advisee oughtn’t Φ and there is no reason to give
insincere advice, the advisor oughtn’t assert that the advisee ought
to Φ.
If AP is false, the reasons that speak against Φ-ing do not constitute reasons to refrain from
encouraging someone to act against those reasons by advising them to do so. That seems to go
against everything we know about giving sincere advice.
Now we have our argument against RBKW:
(1) Circumstances can arise in which there is a decisive case
against Φ-ing where the reasons not to Φ are grounded in
considerations the agent is non-culpably ignorant of (e.g.,
Cook).
(2) In such cases, an advisor might also be reasonably
ignorant of the reasons that constitute a decisive case
against Φ-ing.
(C) Circumstances can arise in which there is a decisive case
against to be made against the advisor’s assertion that the
advisee ought to Φ where the considerations that
constitute this case are considerations the advisor is non-
culpably ignorant of.
Since you cannot have warrant to assert when there decisive reason to refrain from asserting, Cook
is a counterexample to RBKW.

2. THE OBJECTION
RBKW is a theory of epistemically warranted assertion. In Cook, there is a decisive practical case to be
made against asserting. Cook isn’t a counterexample to RBKW.
 Here’s my response. Suppose Cook shows:
(1) If Plum morally oughtn’t Φ in C and Plum is in C, White morally oughtn’t assert
that Plum ought to Φ.
The objector assumes (1) doesn’t entail:
(2) If Plum morally oughtn’t Φ in C and Plum is in C, White epistemically
oughtn’t assert that Plum ought to Φ.
If we deny that (1) entails (2), we have to accept:
(3) Although Plum morally oughtn’t Φ in C, White is epistemically permitted to assert
that Plum ought to Φ in C.
(3) is false, so the entailment holds. Suppose White considers the matter and judges that
he should Ψ (i.e., assert that Plum ought to Φ in C). White is thereby motivated to Ψ accordingly.
We call White on it. We might say to White that if he wasn’t epistemically permitted to judge that
he should Ψ, he could not defend his Ψ-ing as being epistemically permissible.4 White agrees but
says that his judgment that he should Ψ was epistemically permissible. He then points out that if the
judgment that he should Ψ is epistemically permissible then his Ψ-ing would be epistemically
permissible. This follows from two further assumptions:
(AI) If S intends to Ψ and it’s not the case that she should not
so intend, it’s not the case that S oughtn’t Ψ.
(IB) If S believes that she should Ψ and it’s not the case that
she should not so believe, it’s not the case that S oughtn’t
intend to Ψ in accordance with that belief.
The problem is that we can say that if he judged that he should Ψ and was permitted to Ψ in only
some non-moral sense, then he would not be defending his Ψ-ing. If he insisted that in light of his
epistemic permission to judge that he should Ψ there was an additional moral permission to Ψ
because the moral reasons that determined the permissibility of his Ψ-ing were the relevant
epistemic reasons that determined whether he was epistemically permitted to Ψ, that would be a
defense. This defense assumes that (3) is false.5

4
This means that this would not be a situation in which Ψ-ing would be epistemically permissible,
so (3) would be false because its second conjunct would be false.
5
(3) is true only if the reasons that constitute a decisive non-epistemic case against Ψ-ing do not
 The problem with (3) can be brought out as follows. Suppose White had no mistaken
beliefs. It seems natural for someone in White’s position to think that the same reasons in light of
which the advisee oughtn’t Φ are the reasons in light of which he oughtn’t epistemically and morally
assert that the advisee ought to Φ or ought to feel free to Φ. In other words, it seems to the
subject in the good case that the epistemic and non-epistemic reasons demand the same thing from
him. Now, consider a second subject in a bad case, a case where the subject is mistaken about the
external surroundings. It might be that as a result of this factual ignorance the subject doesn’t
know what reasons bear on whether her advisee ought to Φ. It doesn’t seem to follow from the
fact that the subject suffers from this factual ignorance that there would be a change in the relations
between the reasons that bear on whether the agent ought to Φ and whether she should advise the
agent to Φ. This is just intuitive. Note that if these relations varied between the good case and
bad, the subject’s knowledge of the relations between the reasons would not be apriori.6 I take it,
however, that the subject’s knowledge of the relations between the reasons that bear on whether the
advisee ought to Φ and whether she ought to advise the advisee to Φ is apriori and thus independent
from the empirical knowledge that subjects have in the good case but lack in the bad.
To sum up, in the good case, the subject knows that the reasons not to Φ constitute a
decisive case against asserting that the subject ought to Φ. This relation between reasons is
invariant and doesn’t change depending upon facts that vary between the good case and the bad.
Thus, the reasons not to Φ for practical reasons constitute a decisive epistemic case against
asserting that the subject ought to Φ. Thus, (3) is false.7 Focusing on the ‘downstream effects’ of

thereby create a decisive epistemic case against Ψ-ing as well.

6
That is because it would depend, inter alia, upon knowledge of those contingent matters of fact
that differ in the good and bad cases.
7
To deny this, it seems that you would have to deny at least one of the following:
(PRO) Reasons that count in favor of beliefs or intentions thereby
count in favor of the intentions and actions these beliefs
and intentions rationalize.
(CON) Reasons that count against actions or intentions count
against the intentions and beliefs that purport to
rationalize them.
(DEON) If S’s Φ-ing is permitted, there is no unmatched or
undefeated reason not to Φ.
These all look good to me. If they are true, we can argue from the ‘downstream effects’ of an
assertion about what should be done to conclusions about whether that assertion is warranted.
When we do this, we find that TW is among the norms that governs assertion.
an assertion, we can see that asserting that an advisee ought to do what oughtn’t be done, we can
see that the reasons the advisor advises acting against give reason not to advise. These reasons are,
inter alia, reasons to refrain from asserting generated by a norm that governs assertion that enjoins
us not to assert the false.

3. JUSTIFICATION IS SUFFICIENT FOR WARRANT

You have warrant to assert that p is true if you justifiably believe p (JSW).8 If assertion is governed
by (TW), it seems that the following principle is true:
(ENM) If S were to assert that p is true and cause S’ an epistemic
harm by convincing S’ to believe p, S should not assert
that p is true.9
If someone’s assertion convinces you that p is true when in fact p is false, you have suffered an
epistemic harm. So, if (ENM) is true, you should not assert false propositions.
I know you are curious as to whether p is true and assert:
(1) There is sufficient justification for believing p.

8
If you don’t have sufficient warrant to assert p, you epistemically shouldn’t assert that p is the case.
If you shouldn’t assert p, there is an undefeated reason for you to refrain from asserting that p is the
case. If it is nevertheless the case that your belief is justified, that is either because the reason to
refrain from asserting is not a reason to refrain from believing or because there is an overriding
reason to believe that does not provide a justification for asserting. The suggestion that the
(alleged) reason to refrain from asserting on epistemic grounds would not constitute a reason to
refrain from believing is obscure, as is the suggestion that the (alleged) overriding reason to believe
could not provide an overriding reason to assert what there is (allegedly) a reason not to assert. So,
it seems plausible to maintain that belief and assertion are held to common rather than divergent
epistemic standards.
9
The principle needs to be restricted. If I assert that p is true and that pragmatically implies that q
is true, it isn’t clear that I’ve violated an epistemic norm by asserting that p is true if q is false. I
might have violated a conversational norm, but that’s a different matter. If I say ‘Mustard hasn’t
been drunk in days’ and you infer mistakenly that he had been drunk a time or two in the past, I
don’t want to say that I’ve violated (ENM) if Mustard has never been drunk. Here’s the fix. If I say
that there’s sufficient reason to believe p, it seems someone cannot both believe my assertion and
suspend judgment as to whether p, so let’s say that (ENM) enjoins us to refrain from causing those
epistemic harms that cannot be avoided on the condition that the subject accepts our assertion.
Those harms that can be avoided if only some conversational implicature had been cancelled might
be conversationally inappropriate but not epistemically inappropriate. Thanks to an anonymous
referee for raising this issue.
As there cannot be sufficient justification for believing p unless it is permissible for you to believe p,
it follows from (1) that:
(2) It is permissible for you to believe p.
When p is false, it seems that my assertion that (1) is true or that (2) is true could cause the very
same epistemic harm as my assertion that p is true. Thus, if you accept (ENM), it follows that you
cannot have sufficient warrant to assert (1) or (2) if p is false.
It seems knowledge is sufficient for warranted assertion (KSW).10 Combine the (ENM)
with (KSW) and you get the result that you cannot know that (1) or (2) is true if p is not true. If p
is not true, (ENM) says that you cannot have sufficient warrant to assert that (1) or (2) is true. It
follows from this and (KSW) that you do not know that (1) or (2) is true.
Why can’t you know that (1) or (2) if ~p? Is it that your belief in (1) and (2) cannot be
justified unless p is true? Then, there are no false, justified beliefs.11 Is it that your belief in (1) and
(2) cannot be true unless p is true? If so, there are no false, justified beliefs. Is it that you cannot
believe (1) or (2) unless p? I doubt it. I also doubt that belief in (1) or (2) is always Gettiered.
Thus, it seems that the only two plausible explanations as to why it follows from the fact that p is
false that someone cannot have sufficient warrant to assert (1) or (2) assume that it cannot be that
someone justifiably believes p when ~p.

10
Remember that the notion of propriety that figures in an account of warranted assertion is
epistemic and it is hard to see what more than knowledge that p is true could be needed for
properly saying that p is true. If knowledge, justified belief, or truth suffices for warranted
assertion, knowledge suffices for warranted assertion. If knowledge is not enough for warranted
assertion, situations should arise where we can properly say something like, ‘He knew that p, but
he was in no position to claim that p was true’. I doubt such situations would arise with any
frequency.
11
We often have sufficient warrant to ascribe justification as we do not infrequently ascribe
knowledge to one another. If the fact that p is false does not prevent someone from justifiably
believing p on its own, why would it prevent the speaker from having sufficient justification to
believe that there is sufficient justification for the first-order belief that p is true?