Abstract

ASSERTIONS ARE A SYMBOLIC FORM that exists only within species--specifically human language. Language, of course, allows for many other conventions of symbolic expression: greetings, exclamations, commands, exhortations, imprecations, interrogatives, and so forth. But assertions are unique in possessing, of themselves, a truth-value--that is to say, in being adjudicable as true or false. All other varieties of discourse are adjudicable as true or false by reason of assertions they presuppose, contain, or imply. But the assertion as such is what is directly so adjudicable.