We start with a fact: we make assertions. The fact is actual, so it must be possible. What are the conditions of its possibility? What has to be the case for assertion to be possible? I will argue that there has to be truth for assertion to be possible.
We proceed by unpacking the concept of assertion.
By 'assertion' I mean the speech act of asserting a proposition, not the proposition asserted taken in abstraction from the act of assertion. Clearly, the asserting and the proposition asserted -- the content of the assertion -- must be distinguished despite the fact that there is no act of assertion without a content. To assert is to assert something.
If one asserts that p, then one asserts it to be true that p. There is a conceptual link between assertion and truth. Whatever is asserted is presented as true by the one who makes the assertion. And it doesn't matter whether the proposition asserted is true or false. Suppose that, unbeknownst to me, the proposition I assert is false; it is still the case that I assert it to be true.
Assertion is the overt verbal expression of belief, and believing a proposition to be true is logically consistent with the proposition's being false. To believe a proposition is to believe it to be true, and to assert a proposition is to assert it to be true.
To further unpack the concept of assertion, we note that whatever is asserted is asserted to be true independently of one's asserting it. Of course, it does not follow from one's asserting that p that p is true independently of one's asserting it. That's a further question. The point is rather that the act of assertion purports to get at reality as it is in itself. This is a matter of conceptual necessity: the act of assertion would not be what it is if it did have a built-in nisus or directedness toward truth.
We take a step further by noting that to assert a proposition is to affirm it as true independently of anyone's asserting of it. This follows because a proposition such as The Moon is a natural satellite of Earth can be asserted by anyone. If so, then to assert a proposition is to assert it as intersubjectively true, true for all assertors. But if a proposition is asserted to be true independently of anyone's asserting it, then it is asserted to be true not just intersubjectively, but absolutely (non-relatively). But there is no need to speak, pleonastically, of absolute truth; it suffices to speak of truth. Truth is absolute by its very nature.
The main point here is that when one makes an assertion one purports to state what is true in itself independently of any of us. The presupposition of truth is built into the concept of assertion. Now could this presupposition fail in every case of assertion? Granted, it fails in some cases. There are false assertions. Could every assertion be false? Well, if every assertion is false, then it is true that every assertion is false, and if I assert that this is so, then I make a true assertion, one that is true independently of my assertion. Therefore, it cannot be that every assertion is false. So some assertions are true, absolutely true.
Therefore, for assertion to be possible, there must be some (absolute) truths even if we do not know which propositions are the true ones.
In sum: assertion is actual, hence possible. But it cannot be possible unless there are truths that are true independently of anyone's assertions. This is because, as a matter of conceptual necessity, assertion is linked to truth. Therefore, given that assertions are made as a matter of fact, there are truths.
I have just argued from the fact that we make assertions to the existence of truth (truths) as a transcendental presupposition of assertion.
But the following question disturbs me: Is truth merely a transcendental presupposition, or is it also an absolute presupposition?
A Merely Transcendental Presupposition?
Have I really proven the existence of truths that subsist independently of our acts of assertion (and independently of all our other discursive operations), truths that would subsist even if if we did not exist; or have I merely proven that we cannot make assertions without presupposing truth?
I have argued that the fact of assertion presupposes the existence of truths: if there are true assertions, then there is truth. But also: if there are false assertions, then there is truth. But it doesn't follow that necessarily there are truths. For the fact of assertion entails the existence of assertors who are the agents of the various acts of assertion. But these agents are contingent beings. We who assert might not have existed. It follows that the fact of assertion, the starting point of my transcendental argument, is a contingent fact.
What this seems to entail is that the necessity that there be truths is a conditional, as opposed to an absolute, necessity. I would like to be able to conclude that it is is absolutely necessary that there be truth. But the contingency of my starting point seems to spread to my conclusion, relativizing it.
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