Assertion and Assurance: Some Empirical Evidence

Krista Lawlor’s Assurance is a rich and stimulating work. Lawlor argues that assurance is “a distinctive speech act,” that assurance “is not the speech act of assertion,” and that assurance has a special relationship to claiming that one has knowledge (Lawlor 2013, quotes from pp. 9, 3; unless otherwise noted, all parenthetical page references are to this work). Because she theorizes about the nature and function of some familiar aspects of ordinary language, her theory is answerable to empirical facts about actual usage. Lawlor admirably acknowledges this constraint. She bases her theory on “facts about usage” (p. 22), which constitute “data that any account” in this area “must . . . respect and explain” (p. 80). I do three things in this paper. I report three simple experiments that test whether Lawlor’s theory is headed in the right direction. I evaluate what Lawlor describes as “compelling criticisms of the knowledge account of assertion.” And I suggest an alternative theory of assurance.