Stalnaker on the Essential Effect of Assertion

This chapter is concerned with answering this question: What is Stalnaker’s Grice-inspired model of communication, and how does this general model guide and constrain an account of the speech act of assertion? In Section 1, the author explains and motivates Stalnaker’s general Grice-inspired model of communication, and then in Section 2 examines how this model guides and constrains an account of the speech act of assertion and thereby leads to Stalnaker’s claim concerning the “essential effect” of assertion. In Section 3, the author considers two challenges for Stalnaker’s claim: the first challenge concerns assertions of necessary truths, and the second concerns assertions of propositions that are (already) commonly believed. Finally, in Section 4, the author briefly considers a more fundamental challenge for the general Grice-inspired model of communication within which Stalnaker’s claim is formulated.