ABSTRACT
So-called dialectical approaches offer an attractive account of assertions as embedded in a larger norm-governed practice of reasoned discourse. But their proponents have rarely asked about what function such a practice could have fulfilled in the lives of human beings that could explain why those beings could have elaborated it. In this chapter, I address this challenge by reconstructing a pragmatic genealogy of assertoric practice and its intimate relation to reasoned discourse. Taking inspiration from the recent “state of nature epistemology,” I describe a discursive state of nature inhabited by simple yet already sociable human beings who stand to benefit from coordination, cooperation, and communication. I then reconsider why and how creatures could be under pressure to elaborate a communicative practice with the characteristic features that prominent dialectical accounts attribute to assertions. Finally, I show how that account can accommodate a number of characteristic features—social, normative, epistemic—that assertions might be claimed to have.
