Broadcasting sentences

You're now reading a blog post. Consider the sentence you just read. I wrote it once. But you read it, and other readers read it. To each reader, it expressed a different proposition. To Heath it expressed the proposition that Heath was reading a blog post, while to Dagmara it expressed the proposition that Dagmara was reading it. I was somehow responsible for asserting all these propositions.

Suppose that instead I wrote: "This is the best philosophy post you've read so far today." Then to some people, I would have expressed a truth (say, the ones who haven't read any other philosophy posts today yet), but to many others, I would have expressed a falsehood. And I know that this would be so. I'd be telling the truth to some readers and lying to others. Moreover, if you read this post more than once, then whether I told you the truth or lied might have changed between your readings.

Notice another curiosity. In the first sentence of this post, I probably expressed over hundred propositions, one per reader (my posts generally get over 150 hits, though some are no doubt bots). But apart from a handful of regulars (hi, Heath; hi, Dagmara), I didn't know who they would be. But I did know that they would all be reading a blog post while reading the sentence, so I was safe writing "You're now reading a blog post." I knew I wasn't lying to any of you. I wasn't BS-ing either. Yet many of the propositions that I expressed were ones I didn't believe. To each of my lurkers, I said something true when I said: "You're now reading a blog post." But the proposition I expressed is a proposition I don't believe, since I don't know who my lurkers are.

It seems that the first sentence of this post is an assertion. After all, if it's not assertion then neither would it have been a lie had I written "You're now reading the best blog post ever written", but of course that would have been a lie. For only assertions are lies. So it's an assertion, and a responsible one, even though I didn't know which propositions I was asserting when I asserted it. (Had I known which propositions I was asserting, I could have counted them, and thus known ahead of time how many people would read this post!)

The norm of assertion, thus, can neither require me to believe what I am asserting nor even to have a belief as to what it is that I am asserting. The truth norm is what best coheres with these strictures.

Maybe, though, I am not asserting in my first sentence?

Truthtelling

Consider the two simplest views of the central moral rule governing assertion:

1. You should avoid saying falsehoods.
2. You should avoid saying something you don't believe.

Here is a consideration in favor of (1) over (2). Let's say I believe p and q, but assign a higher probability to p. Suppose that in some context my communicative purposes can be equally well met by asserting p or by asserting q. (Maybe I am asked to give one simple reason for believing r, and both p and q are equally good reasons.) Then, I have good moral reason to assert p rather than q. Why? Because, as far as I can tell, p is more likely to be true than q. But if (2) is the central moral rule, then it is not clear why I have any reason to prefer asserting p to asserting q. If, on the other hand, it is (1) that is the central moral rule, then by asserting p I lower the chance of going wrong.

My own view is neither (1) nor (2). It is something like this:

3. You should only assert (or, more generally, endorse) with the intention not to assert (endorse) anything false.

Now if I have an intention not to assert anything false, I will prefer to assert p rather than q—if for no reason at all I choose to assert q rather than p, then that shows that I did not actually intend not to assert anything false. For if I intend something, I act in favor of that. That does not mean I always maximize the chance of that something. But where I have no reason to the contrary, it seems that I do maximize that chance. It would be weird to say: "I think that the number 7 in this lottery is more likely to win; I intend to win and I bet my money on 3." It is, at least, irrational to act this way, and we should avoid irrationality, at least ceteris paribus.