Prompting Challenges Forthcoming in Analysis

The knowledge account of assertion (KA) says you may assert Q only if you know Q. Many objections have been raised against KA (e.g. Weiner 2005, Douven 2006, Lackey 2007, Hill and Schechter 2007, Levin 2008, Kvanvig 2009, and Brown forthcoming). Here I’ll focus on one objection in particular, and offer a response. A major part of the case for KA is an explanatory argument from conversational patterns (Unger 1975: 260 ff.; Williamson: Chapter 11; Reynolds 2002; DeRose 2002). Our discussion takes one of these patterns as its point of departure: appropriate chal-