2.1. Awareness and knowledge

In Silva’s argument, the core concept is awareness. Though he does not define it precisely, one can identify its characteristic features. First, awareness is a factive mental state: If S is aware that p, then p is true. For example, if one says “I am aware that it is raining, but it isn’t raining,” it sounds infelicitous. Second, awareness is grounded in intellectual competencies, such as memory, inference, and introspection. Third, one can appeal to awareness when criticizing or excusing behavior. For example, when criticizing, one can say, “Were you aware of that?” or “You were aware that it was wrong, but you did it!” When excusing, one can say, “I was not aware of that” (Silva Reference Silva2019: 725–726).

Silva (Reference Silva2019) contends that ET is false. His argument can be formulated as follows:

Let us start with P1. Silva (Reference Silva2019) provides several considerations in favor of P1. The first is Williamson’s (Reference Williamson2000) generality thesis, which states that knowledge is the most general factive mental state. This means that if one has any factive mental state concerning p, then one knows that p. Silva admits that the generality thesis is highly controversial but notes that two linguistic phenomena seem to support P1. First, utterances of the following form sound infelicitous: “I am aware that p, but I do not know that p.” For example, this sounds infelicitous: “I am aware that it is raining, but I do not know that it is raining.” Second, when someone asks whether you know p, you can respond by acknowledging your awareness of p; this response is considered an acknowledgment that you know p. P1, it seems, can easily explain these phenomena.

P2 is where The Inquiring Student comes into play. Recall that Kat has decided to adopt an epistemic policy: She believes propositions only if she knows she is in a position to know that they are true. According to Silva, when Kat infers K, there is a time gap between two significant moments: one in which she completes the inference whose conclusion is K and another in which she recognizes that her epistemic policy is satisfied. During the time gap, Kat does not believe K, but she is aware of K and thereby knows K. By P1, it follows that during the gap, Kat knows K without believing K. Silva argues that The Inquiring Student is a counterexample to ET, which implies ET is false.

2.2. A recipe for making counterexamples to ET

Consider how The Unconfident Examinee can be understood as an application of Silva’s account. In my view, Silva’s main contribution is a recipe for constructing counterexamples to ET. The recipe can be structured as follows: (1) choose a kind of awareness (perception, memory, introspection, and so on); (2) devise a case involving a subject who is aware that p in the way you have chosen; (3) put that subject in a situation that leads the subject to suspend judgment about whether p is true or a situation that leads the subject not to believe that p (because of a lack of conviction, nervousness, doubt about one’s own capability, or an epistemic policy). Following this recipe, you can posit a case where the subject is aware that p but does not believe that p. If P1 is true, then you succeed in making a counterexample to ET.

Not surprisingly, with this recipe, you can “cook up” The Unconfident Examinee, or something similar to it: (1) choose memory as a kind of relevant awareness; (2) make a case where a subject (Jeane) remembers Q; (3) put her in a situation that makes her nervous so that she lacks conviction in Q. In this case, Jeane is aware of Q because she remembers Q. If P1 is true, then she knows Q. According to the description of the case, however, Jeane does not believe Q. The similarity between The Unconfident Examinee and The Inquiring Student means that the strategy for addressing the latter would work for the former, since they are cooked from the same recipe.

2.3. Problems with the presence-of-belief account

Turning to the presence-of-belief account and its limitations, I will address how the presence-of-belief account works in The Unconfident Examinee and why it encounters a novel problem, as Silva has suggested.

The presence-of-belief account encompasses more than one attempt to defend ET. The first, Rose and Schaffer’s (Reference Rose and Schaffer2013), begins with the distinction between occurrent and dispositional beliefs. They argue that Jeane, the protagonist of The Unconfident Examinee, has a dispositional belief in Q, but her belief is masked by her panic. This strategy, however, faces a serious flaw when applied to The Inquiring Student. According to Silva, Kat had not formed any belief in K before becoming aware of K (and thereby coming to know K). This point represents a significant difference from The Unconfident Examinee. In that case, Jeane has learned Q, so she has already formed a belief in Q. Therefore, one can plausibly ascribe a dispositional belief to Jeane. In contrast, in The Inquiring Student, there is no prior learning process. Instead, Kat seems to be in the process of learning K during the gap. Thus, one cannot plausibly ascribe a dispositional belief to Kat, since she did not form any belief in K before finishing the inference.

Second, Buckwalter et al.’s (Reference Buckwalter, Rose and Turri2015) attempt faces a problem that arises from The Inquiring Student. Their attempt is based on the distinction between thin and thick beliefs. They claim that Jeane has a thin belief in Q and that the presence of this belief can be captured by asking, “At least on some level, does Jeane believe that Elizabeth died in 1603?” It is intuitive to answer this question as follows: “Yes, at least on some level, Jeane believes it.” According to them, this shows that Jeane has a thin belief in Q. However, in The Inquiring Student, Kat’s epistemic policy can be reworked to nullify their strategy. For example, suppose Kat revises her epistemic policy as follows: “Believe a proposition thinly only if you know that you are in a position to know that it is true.” In accordance with this revised policy, Kat would not believe K thinly.

Two points support the intuition that Kat does not believe K. First, it seems she is seriously considering possibilities in which she has a false belief in K. Second, Kat is deliberating whether she should believe K; it is therefore difficult to describe her as someone who presently believes K. This reveals that the presence-of-belief account fails for The Inquiring Student. By contrast, in The Unconfident Examinee, Jeane formed a belief in Q. Given her prior belief in Q, it is natural to think she has a (thin) belief in Q, even though she temporarily does not feel convinced of it.

In sum, the presence-of-belief account fails in The Inquiring Student, since the case involves no prior belief formation. In The Unconfident Examinee, it is natural to ascribe belief to Jeane; we are told that Jeane had previously formed a belief in Q. However, in The Inquiring Student, during the gap, Kat is engaged in a belief-formation process, not in recollection, so an appeal to a prior belief is much less persuasive.

Here, someone might object that I have overlooked how dispositionalists or interpretationists could reply to my argument. I have argued that the absence-of-knowledge account has an advantage over the presence-of-belief account. The critic might say that if one takes dispositionalism or interpretationism as the default view, one cannot clearly tell whether this advantage is real. This is because it seems that dispositionalists and interpretationists could attribute belief to Kat.

Let us turn to The Inquiring Student. Kat has a disposition to finish the inference with the conclusion K. Furthermore, if Kat were forced to bet on whether K is true, then she would lean toward betting that K is true. If forced to state whether K is true or false, she would lean toward answering that K is true. These dispositions seem appropriately associated with a belief in K, since any believer in K would possess them.

The critic might therefore argue, drawing on either dispositionalism or interpretationism, that Kat believes K. According to dispositionalism, to believe that p is simply to have enough of the dispositions that belong to a dispositional stereotype associated with the belief that p (Price Reference Price1969; Schwitzgebel Reference Schwitzgebel2001, Reference Schwitzgebel2002, Reference Schwitzgebel2013).Footnote ³ A dispositionalist might support the presence-of-belief account by asserting that Kat has a sufficiently large number of dispositions that are appropriately related to a belief in K. Meanwhile, according to interpretationism, for S to believe that p means that the attribution to S of a belief that p figures in the best (most predictive) interpretation of S’s behavior (Davidson Reference Davidson1973, Reference Davidson1974; Dennett Reference Dennett1989: 29). An interpretationist could buttress the presence-of-belief account by showing that Kat’s inference, action, and utterance are best explained by an interpretation that includes Kat’s belief in K.

However, these objections to my argument do not withstand closer scrutiny. Of course, Kat would indeed have the dispositions or features the hypothetical objectors mention. A different picture, however, comes into view once we shift our focus to the dispositions Kat lacks. Kat has no disposition to feel convinced that K is true. Kat would not bet that K is true, or assert flatly that K is true, unless forced. Furthermore, Kat lacks a disposition to engage in any practical inference with K as one of its premises. Accordingly, Kat has only some, but not all, of the dispositions or features that are appropriately related to a belief in K.

Could one, then, attribute a belief in K to Kat on the grounds of dispositionalism or interpretationism? The answer seems unclear, since dispositionalism and interpretationism both allow belief attribution to be indeterminate: They accept the existence of cases where one can appropriately say neither that the subject believes that p nor that the subject does not believe that p. Dispositionalists accept this because, in such a case, the subject matches a dispositional stereotype appropriately in some respects but not in others (Schwitzgebel (Reference Schwitzgebel2001, Reference Schwitzgebel2002) describes such cases as in-between believing, and Price (Reference Price1969: 302–314) describes them as half-belief). Thus, from the dispositionalist perspective, whether Kat believes K is at best indeterminate. As a strategy for supporting the presence-of-belief account, then, dispositionalism does not seem promising.

Similar points apply to interpretationism. Interpretationists acknowledge that there are competing interpretations that are equally good but incompatible with one another. In such cases, they believe there is no fact of the matter as to whether the subject believes the relevant proposition (Davidson Reference Davidson1974: 321–322; Dennett Reference Dennett1989: 40–41). Therefore, interpretationists would argue that there are two competing interpretations of The Inquiring Student that are at best equally good but incompatible with one another. If one focuses on the prediction about forced betting or answering, and on the inference leading to K as its conclusion, the interpretation that Kat believes K seems better. However, when we shift our focus to betting or assertion in ordinary situations and to practical inferences in which K is a premise, the interpretation that Kat fails to believe K seems preferable. This leaves it unclear whether we should attribute the belief in question to Kat. Hence, the strategy in question does not work.

Therefore, I will focus mainly on The Inquiring Student, for which the presence-of-belief account does not work. The presence-of-belief account holds good only in those putative counterexamples to ET where an appeal to prior belief is justified. Nonetheless, in The Inquiring Student, there is no prior belief to appeal to. From now on, focusing on The Inquiring Student, I will address putative counterexamples by applying the absence-of-knowledge account based on KNA-Suff.

3.1. The plausibility of KNA-Suff

Recall the following principle:

Several considerations support KNA-Suff. First, in our ordinary conversations, we talk about whether assertions are appropriate. When determining whether an assertion is appropriate, we ask whether it is well-grounded in the speaker’s knowledge. When it becomes evident that an assertion is indeed based on knowledge, we consider it appropriate. For example, suppose your friend asserts that the Earth is a spheroid. If you know that your friend knows that the Earth is a spheroid, you will think that her assertion is appropriate.

Second, we make assertions with specific aims in mind. What is the purpose of assertion? One of the most intuitive explanations is that assertion is a vehicle of knowledge: we assert to generate or transmit knowledge. As Simion (Reference Simion2016) suggests, a subject who knows that p is in a proper position to transmit knowledge of p to hearers or generate such knowledge in them.

Finally, the “How do you know?” challenge is a standard and legitimate way to challenge an assertion.Footnote ⁴ Its target is the propriety of assertion. Suppose one asserts that p. The addressee can challenge that assertion by uttering, “How do you know that?” If the asserter satisfies the challenge by referring to the relevant knowledge that p, the addressee recognizes the assertion as proper; otherwise, the addressee will consider it improper. Thus, appealing to knowledge that p is a legitimate way to meet a challenge to an assertion. For these reasons, KNA-Suff is highly plausible.

Here, it is worth noting what “proper” means in KNA-Suff. For the present purpose, the following points will suffice. First, propriety in KNA-Suff is a property of an assertion. To be specific, propriety is associated with the distinctive norm of assertion that distinguishes it from other kinds of speech acts (Williamson Reference Williamson2000). Brown and Cappelen (Reference Brown, Cappelen, Brown and Cappelen2011) have a helpful example: Even if you know that your boss is bald, it is not proper for you to assert it. If you did, you would be appropriately criticized. However, the reason is not that you have violated the distinctive norm of assertion. Perhaps your assertion sounds improper because it violates a norm of politeness, which is not specific to assertions but applies to speech acts in general (see Leech Reference Leech2014). In KNA-Suff, the domain of the term “proper” is limited to assertion.

Second, when an assertion that p is improper, its asserter should retract the assertion that p, and the addressee is allowed to challenge the assertion or to criticize the asserter (Kelp Reference Kelp2018; Van Elswyk and Benton Reference Van Elswyk and Benton2023; Williamson Reference Williamson2000). For example, suppose Sam passes through a countryside area full of fake barn façades. Pointing to what looks like a barn, he asserts, “Over there! There’s a barn!” Fred, Sam’s friend, then challenges this assertion by raising a question: “How do you know that?” Fred explains that this region is full of fake barn façades. This challenge seems legitimate, so Sam should retract the assertion that there is a barn. By attending to these linguistic patterns, we can see that Sam’s assertion is improper. This point supports the preceding claim. When we are determining the propriety of speech acts other than assertions, we do not judge them in terms of knowledge. For instance, when Sam guesses, “There seems to be a barn,” it would be odd for Fred to challenge that guess by saying, “How do you know that?” As this example shows, knowledge plays a normative role in the assessment of assertions.

In what follows, when I say that “an assertion that p is proper,” I mean that the asserter can defend the assertion that p against challenges, such that no retraction is required and the assertion cannot be legitimately criticized. Now, suppose that in a modified version of the example, Sam says, “I just checked it. I went there myself and saw that it is a real barn. I know that there’s a barn!” It would then sound absurd for Fred to challenge the assertion by asking, “How do you know that it is a real barn?” or for Fred to criticize Sam by saying, “You don’t know that!” or for Sam to retract his assertion that there is a barn. Sam’s assertion is proper in the sense I have just explained.

In this example, it is intuitive that Sam’s assertion is proper, and KNA-Suff makes this both explicable and predictable. According to KNA-Suff, it is proper for him to assert that there is a barn, since he knows that there is a barn. KNA-Suff predicts that challenging, criticizing, or retracting the assertion would sound odd. This prediction fits our ordinary intuitions.

3.2. Refining KNA-Suff

Someone might point out that, in certain cases, one knows p, but one’s knowledge “escapes from view” or is temporarily inaccessible (Friedman Reference Friedman2017). Importantly, the objector might claim that, in such cases, KNA-Suff seems false. This claim gains force in the following case.

Friedman (Reference Friedman2017) argues that when Brian wonders about Alice’s absence, it seems intuitive that he knows that Alice is on leave; since he had already formed that knowledge, it is unnatural to think that he lost it at the moment he began to wonder about her. Drawing on her point, one might argue that Alice on Leave seems to be a counterexample to KNA-Suff, since Brian knows that Alice is on leave this term, but it seems improper for him to assert it.

Suppose he asserts that Alice did not attend the conference because she is on leave this term. He cannot defend this assertion against the “How do you know?” challenge. If an addressee challenges it – by asking, “How do you know?” – Brian cannot meet this challenge by answering it since the memory of his conversation with Alice has temporarily slipped his mind. The challenger can criticize him by saying, “You don’t know that!” Therefore, it seems that this is a counterexample to KNA-Suff, since Brian knows that Alice is on leave this term, but it is improper for him to assert it.

Fortunately, I can avoid this problem simply by refining KNA-Suff as follows:

I use “occurrent” both to contrast it with “dispositional” and to indicate that this mental state’s content enters one’s consciousness (Rose and Schaffer Reference Rose and Schaffer2013). If knowledge that p is present in one’s consciousness, one can access that knowledge, so it is proper for one to assert p. For example, suppose Brian recalls that Alice is on leave this term. Since he conjures up this proposition on the surface of his consciousness, his knowledge is occurrent. His knowledge that Alice is on leave this term is accessible to him, and it is proper for Brian to assert that Alice is on leave this term.

This example shows that knowledge becomes inaccessible when, although one has already formed that knowledge and it is stored in one’s memory, one (temporarily) fails to conjure up the proposition on the surface of one’s consciousness. In other words, inaccessible knowledge principally involves a failure to remember. As Lee (Reference Lee2023) suggests, such cases can be understood as cases involving dispositional mental states. A dispositional mental state can be masked, even though it remains one’s mental state. Cases like Alice on Leave can be interpreted appropriately: Brian dispositionally knows the proposition, but his knowledge is temporarily masked. This point will be crucial when I address The Inquiring Student in §3.3.2.

3.3. Applying the knowledge–assertion link

4.1. Objection 1: awareness entails knowledge?

Up to now, I have shown that the putative counterexamples to ET are not genuine ones; their subjects lack occurrent knowledge, or, if they have dispositional knowledge, then it is at least plausible to ascribe dispositional beliefs to them. I will now deal with two potential objections—the first in §4 and the second in §5—to clarify and reinforce my account.

The first objection concerns the knowledge–assertion link on which I rely: The appeal to the link fails to identify the absence of knowledge. The objector might argue that Kat knows K, even though it is improper for her to assert K. So, the objection goes, the absence-of-knowledge account based on the link does not work well.

This objection gains force when one considers the link between awareness and knowledge. As I noted in §2.1, according to Silva (Reference Silva2019), awareness entails knowledge. Two linguistic phenomena support this thesis: first, when you are asked whether you know that p, if you acknowledge your awareness of p, this acknowledgment is taken to affirm your knowledge that p; second, uttering “I am aware that p, but I don’t know that p” sounds contradictory. If we accept the link between awareness and knowledge, then the subjects know the relevant propositions. Consequently, the objector might argue that KNA-Suff and KNA-Suff* fail to identify the absence of knowledge.

4.2. Reply: doubts about the awareness–knowledge entailment

The awareness–knowledge entailment seems prima facie plausible. However, contrary to this impression, the phenomena – the linguistic patterns Silva describes – do not support the awareness–knowledge entailment. My strategy is to show that the phenomena can be explained by the thesis that awareness means something weaker than knowledge. It is possible to explain the phenomena without relying on the awareness–knowledge entailment, which undermines its persuasiveness.

The task involves two plausible suppositions. The first supposition is that awareness means being in a good position to know, which does not entail knowledge. In favor of this, the instances of “awareness” (memory, perception, and so on) are factive states (Silva Reference Silva2019: 738). Also, Pritchard (Reference Pritchard2012: 26) contends that such states can be understood as being in a good position to know. Even if awareness does not mean being in a good position to know, the underlying strategy remains effective. Suppose this supposition, together with the second introduced below, can explain the two phenomena that Silva describes. Then, these linguistic phenomena are inconclusive evidence for the awareness–knowledge entailment. This is because the phenomena equally support another explanation: one that is incompatible with the awareness–knowledge entailment. The second supposition is that when one asserts p, one represents oneself as someone who knows that p (Van Elswyk and Benton Reference Van Elswyk and Benton2023; Williamson Reference Williamson2000). With these two suppositions, we can explain the two phenomena without relying on the claim that awareness entails knowledge.

When you assert “I am aware that p,” you represent yourself as someone who knows that you are aware that p (by the second supposition). Then, you represent yourself as someone who knows you are in a good position to know p in virtue of possessing factive mental states, such as seeing and remembering (by the first supposition). In turn, you thereby represent yourself as someone who knows that p. This is because if you know you are in a good position to know p in virtue of possessing factive states, then it seems that you know p. To be specific, in order to know that you have a factive state, you should know that the proposition (the object of the factive mental state) is true. For instance, when you know that you see that there is a barn, you know that there is a barn.

To see how these suppositions explain the linguistic patterns in question, suppose you are an astronomer working with a space telescope. One day, a person who believes that the Earth is flat challenges your epistemic authority by asking you, “How do you know that?” In such a situation, you can answer the question by saying, “I see that the Earth is a spheroid, not flat.” In doing so, you represent yourself as someone who knows that you are in a good position to know the Earth is a spheroid in virtue of seeing that it is. In turn, you convey the content that you know that the Earth is a spheroid. When someone asserts that she has a factive state that p, it is natural to understand this as an utterance that conveys both the content that p and a claim that she has epistemic authority over p.

It seems that if awareness entails only being in a good position to know, one represents oneself as someone who knows that p, when one asserts “I am aware that p.” Therefore, if one acknowledges that one is aware that p, the acknowledgment conveys that one knows p. We can explain this phenomenon without supposing the awareness–knowledge entailment.

The second phenomenon can be explained in the same manner. When someone asserts, “I don’t know p,” it generally means that she does not know whether p. In saying it, she represents herself as someone who knows that she does not know whether p and thereby represents herself as not knowing whether p. Therefore, if one says, “I am aware that p, but I don’t know that p,” a collision occurs. As I explained, from the two suppositions, to utter “I am aware that p” conveys the content “I know p.” By uttering such a conjunction, one represents oneself as someone who knows that p, while one represents oneself as someone who does not know whether p. In this way, we can explain the second phenomenon without supposing the awareness–knowledge entailment.

What I have provided here is not a full explanation of the linguistic phenomena that Silva has identified. However, in this section, I have demonstrated that in explaining the linguistic patterns, there is no need to accept the awareness–knowledge entailment, which means that the potential objection fails.

5.1. Objection 2: proper assertion without belief?

One might object that it is proper for Kat to assert K, which implies that the absence-of-knowledge account does not work. To support this idea, one might appeal to the intuition that The Inquiring Student is analogous to cases of selfless assertions that Lackey (Reference Lackey2007) presented: cases in which the asserter does not believe that p, but is aware that p is well-supported by the available evidence. To see the analogy, consider the following:

Lackey argues that it is proper for Sebastian to assert, “There is no connection between vaccines and autism” (henceforth, R). Furthermore, this intuition is widely accepted among the opponents of the knowledge norm of assertion (e.g., McKinnon Reference McKinnon2013; Pelling Reference Pelling2013; Pritchard Reference Pritchard, Littlejohn and Turri2014). One might therefore argue that, if selfless assertions are considered proper, then assertions in Silva-style cases should be considered proper. This is because these two kinds of cases are sufficiently analogous: In both, the relevant propositions (K and R) are well-supported by evidence that the asserters have. In both, the asserters (Kat and Sebastian) are aware of this evidential support but do not believe the relevant propositions.

Admittedly, on the basis of ET, Lackey (Reference Lackey2007) argues that Sebastian does not know R, since he does not believe R. Opponents of ET could reinterpret this case differently (cf. Tebben Reference Tebben2021). Since they claim that ET is false, they might argue Sebastian can know R without believing R; if he knows R, then, by KNA-Suff, it is proper for Sebastian to assert R, which explains the apparent propriety of the selfless assertions. In this way, opponents of ET would argue that the best way to understand selfless assertions is to deny ET, not the propriety of selfless assertions.

Silva’s argument, combined with the observation that (at least) some selfless assertions seem proper, strengthens the case against ET. The same strategy can be applied to The Inquiring Student: Is it proper for Kat to assert K, even though she does not believe K? Those who believe that Sebastian’s assertion is proper would think of Kat’s as proper, too. They might argue that the best way to explain this intuition, while preserving KNA-Suff, is to reject ET: Even though Kat does not believe K, she knows K. According to KNA-Suff, then, if she knows K, it is proper for her to assert K, which meshes with their intuition. If so, the absence-of-knowledge account based on KNA-Suff does not work, since it fails to show that Kat does not know K.

5.2. Reply: belief as a requirement of proper assertion

According to this objection, proper assertion does not require belief. However, proper assertion, in fact, does require belief. Two considerations support the thesis that proper assertion requires belief and undermine the objection.

First, asserting a Moorean sentence – one with the form “p, but I don’t know/believe that p” – always sounds infelicitous (Moore Reference Moore1942). For example, it sounds infelicitous for Kat to utter, “Tezpur is not near Oman, but I don’t believe that.” The standard explanation of Moorean sentences’ infelicity is that proper assertion requires belief (Turri Reference Turri, Littlejohn and Turri2014; Williamson Reference Williamson2000). If proper assertion requires belief, someone who asserts such a sentence should believe both of its conjuncts. However, if the asserter believes the first conjunct, this belief conflicts with the second one. That is, if one utters a Moorean sentence, one’s assertion contradicts how one represents oneself.

In response to this, Lackey (Reference Lackey2007) argues that Moorean assertions’ oddness is explained away by pragmatic conversational implicature rather than by the propriety condition of assertion. She claims that what explains the oddness is something like Grice’s (Reference Grice, Cole and Morgan1975) Maxim of Quantity (“Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes”).Footnote ⁸ In ordinary contexts, it is presupposed that all participants in a conversation are cooperative and observe conversational maxims. In such contexts, if Sebastian says, “There is no connection between vaccines and autism, but I don’t believe it,” his utterance would make his addressee doubt that there is no connection between vaccines and autism, since the second conjunct suggests that there is non-negligible evidence for the connection. In her view, Moorean assertions sound odd because of the misunderstanding they would cause; their apparent oddness can be explained by a pragmatic problem.

However, this explanation is off the mark. Importantly, as Baldwin (Reference Baldwin, Green and Williams2007) points out, the Moorean paradox occurs in thought, not merely in assertion. Consider a case where you attempt to believe “It is raining, but I don’t believe that it is raining.” Obviously, such a belief would be odd. The fact that the Moorean paradox occurs in thought suggests that pragmatic approaches to this paradox fail, since the paradox cannot be explained away by applying Gricean Maxims, which presuppose conversational situations.

Furthermore, if Moorean assertions’ oddness comes from conversational implicature, then it could be canceled. Consider a well-known example, presented by Grice (Reference Grice, Cole and Morgan1975) himself: Professor A is writing a letter of recommendation for his pupil, Mr. X, as follows: “Mr. X’s command of English is excellent, and his attendance at tutorials has been regular.” Through its conversational implicature, this utterance pragmatically conveys that Mr. X is not good at philosophy. But this implicature can be canceled if Professor A clarifies, “Of course, Mr. X is excellent at philosophy.”

Now consider Sebastian again. Suppose that the reason why it would be problematic for him to assert a Moorean sentence about R is that such assertions pragmatically provoke their addressees’ misunderstanding. Then, what kind of clarification can cancel such a misunderstanding? Once one asserts Moorean sentences, can the confusing implicature be canceled? It does not seem so. Instead, a clarification from Sebastian would only deepen his addressee’s confusion and doubt. Suppose Sebastian clarifies, “… because my daughter was diagnosed with autism soon after she got a vaccine. Thus, I cannot believe that there is no connection between vaccines and autism, because of the grief and exhaustion I feel, not because of lack of evidence.” His addressee would not think that this oddity had been resolved. As Turri (Reference Turri, Littlejohn and Turri2014) notes, such a denial of the link between evidence and belief sounds “feeble and evasive.”Footnote ⁹

Importantly, these two problems are well explained in terms of the thesis that proper assertion requires belief. Let us begin with the Moorean paradox in thought. From the fact that one cannot believe Moorean sentences, and the thesis that proper assertion requires belief, it follows that one cannot assert Moorean sentences properly. Thus, those who accept that proper assertion requires belief have the resources to explain the Moorean paradox both in thought and in assertion, while Lackey would have to present a separate account of the Moorean paradox in thought beyond the account she has presented. In addition, one can explain the fact that the alleged implicature cannot be canceled in an expected way, if one accepts the thesis that proper assertion requires belief. This is because the oddity of Moorean assertions comes from the fact that one cannot believe Moorean sentences, not from the pragmatically provoked misunderstanding. In other words, the oddness of Moorean sentences arises from the propriety condition of assertion, not from pragmatically provoked confusion.

Second, the view that proper assertion requires belief is well-supported by linguistic patterns. As Turri (Reference Turri, Littlejohn and Turri2014) notes, asking, “Do you believe that?” or “Why do you believe that?” is an appropriate way to challenge an assertion. When such questions are put to Sebastian or Kat, they cannot meet the challenge. Then the challenger can criticize them by saying, “You don’t (even) believe that!” Sebastian or Kat should then retract the original assertion. These linguistic patterns support the view that proper assertion requires belief.

For these reasons, it has become clear why selfless assertions remain improper, despite their apparent propriety. The objection I have examined in this section, which is based on the alleged propriety of selfless assertions, is unconvincing. Therefore, the thesis that proper assertion requires belief still holds.