Assertions, Identity, and Contexts

Most language-analytic philosophers (e.g., [TUGENDHAT 1982]) have reconstructed

assertions as a specific composition of certain partial sign acts. By uttering “the photograph” in the example above, the speaker performs a nomination, with “is blurred” a predication. Both partial acts are “unsaturated” [FREGE 1892]: it is not possible to use

such a partial act by itself in order to perform a complete act of communication.

Nomination and predication are determined by their function. Although they are pre- sent in every single assertion they are not necessarily bound in a fixed manner to certain types of words or phrases. A nomination is the sign act used to direct someone’s atten- tion to the object of which something new (informative) is to be communicated; this ob- ject must be familiar to both (all) participating interlocutors – it must be part of their

common “discourse universe” .16

If the actual situation of communication and the mate- rial objects “within” are meant, deictic expressions together with pointing gestures an- swer the purpose of nomination particularly well. But the function of nomination is not limited to those objects: we may of course utter expressions like ‘the last unicorn’, ‘the Platonic Form of beauty’ or ‘Otto von Guericke’, as part of an assertion, too, in order to point out an object of a corresponding discourse universe. They work as long as the dis- course partners are able to distinguish the object meant from the other discourse objects in question. In contrast to the nomination, predication has no immediate representational aspect: it is the sign act used by the sender to inform or propose to the others that a cer- tain custom of distinction – a concept – is relevant and applicable to the objects named. In the example above, ‘being blurred’ carries the predication. In every assertion, one predication (that may indicate a complex combination of concepts) and one or more nominations concur systematically.

Assertions are context-relative: if the corresponding discourse universe is unknown, an assertive sentence remains essentially incomprehensible. The nomination can only be performed effectively if it is clear which set of objects is at stake at all.17

Objects are never given in isolation. We always speak of objects as something appearing as a figure in front of a background: they are part of a context. The expression ‘context’ is used in the following for indicating a finite structured set of intentional individualized entities, i.e., objects (as something known by somebody) with relations between them. More precisely, the relation between propositions and contexts is one of figure-ground to me- dium. A proposition offers a unique figure-ground distinction with the predication as figure on the ground of the objects known already and identified by the nominations. A medium offers the potential of figure-ground dichotomies, i.e., for many possible dis- tinctions. Objects, while forming the background for predications, are thus seen as fig- ure against other objects, as well.

Based on this introduction, many different types of contexts may be considered: for example, discourse universes are contexts shared by several creatures that communicate with each other. The situational context corresponds to what a single creature perceives as (individual) objects from its present environment. Other contexts are analogous to the situational one, but entail the “objective” environment of other times and places or even of fictitious and hypothetical situations.

Nomination can primarily be anchored in the overlapping parts of the interlocutors’ situational contexts. The physical environment of the sign act (and all simultaneous be- haviors of the interlocutors) provides then, it seems, the discourse universe of the ob- jects being commonly perceived.18

In contrast to that, the objects in the contexts evoked by previous assertions – or co-texts as they are called – do not have to be physically ac- cessible. An earlier characterization (the concept used in predication) can be applied as part of a consecutive nomination in the form of a definite description: ‘The blurred photo was taken by Hermione.’

16

Proper names (‘Harry Potter’), deictic particles (‘this’, ‘she’, ‘you know who’), definite descriptions (‘the picture of the fat lady’), and deictic descriptions (‘this blurred photo’) are the forms of nominations traditionally considered.

17

Though the power of words for spontaneous context-evocation should never be underestimated, see be- low.

18

Note that the different individual perspectives (as of pre-objects) must have been integrated conceptu- ally in order to allow us of speaking from anything “being commonly perceived”.

Objects (as we usually understand the expression) are members of many contexts. What we call the identity of objects is basically the question of connecting an object in different contexts. Take for example a court of law trying to establish the identity of, for example, the dagger now presented (1st context), the pointed object that was used to stab the victim one year ago on the other side of the city (2nd context), and the knife bought by the accused in the neighbor city 13 months ago (3rd context). Note that it is impossi- ble to actually perceive simultaneously all the contexts in order to directly establish truth about identity. An important distinction of contexts – in FREGE’s terminology(cf.

below): of the “ways of being given” of objects – is the one between referential con- texts and intra-lexical contexts. Objects are said to be referentially given if they are elements of the current situational context. In this case, the legitimacy of an assertion can be tested directly at the object by, coarsely speaking, including it in corresponding sensory-motor behaviors. The sensory-motor anchoring in the referential context is ob- viously the foundation of any empirical research. If, however, an object has only been introduced verbally in the discourse universe, there remains nothing but to apply con- ceptual rules and draw conclusions from the predication about the objects that are not explicitly mentioned, and to check whether the assertion is logically compatible with the context [SCHIRRA1995].

Assertions allow us apparently to make any context whatever a discourse universe, to share or harmonize it with the others, that is. Harmonizing perceptions between interlocutors by means of the sign acts has the obvious purpose of combining the diverse perspectives of an environment. Creatures thus endowed can perceive not only with their own senses, but also with the other’s senses; they can manipulate not only with their own hands but with the other’s hands, as well. Still, this would be a very restricted employment for assertions compared to what we usually do with them: humans mostly talk about objects that none of the interlocutors can actually perceive in the situation – or that may even be not perceivable at all.

That is, assertions allow us to relate an arbitrary context with the current situational one. The use of proper names given in a christening situation long ago depends on that ability. As was noted above, speaking of a deception – viewed as an explicit lack of identity – also means to relate two different contexts of behavior with each other; so does considering resemblanceβ (in particular with something being absent). Thus, being

able to use resemblance as a crucial component of a certain type of signs (iconic/per- ceptoid signs) depends on a faculty that appears to be essentially mediated by asser- tions, disclosing a strong conceptual dependency between assertions and perceptoid signs.

In summary, assertions are context-relative on the one hand; but on the other hand, they are context-independent, since we can, at least in principle, perform an assertion relative to some context in any situational context whatever. The two characterizations of assertions depend on each other because it is only possible to speak independently of the actual situational context if another context can be explicitly referred to.