Chapter 8 takes a closer look at the relation between the knowledge rule of assertion and the divide between contextualist and invariantist semantics for knowledge attributions. We argue that DeRose’s influential argument that the knowledge rule of assertion demands contextualism fails and show how it can be turned on its head.

Chapter 5 fits the knowledge rule of assertion into the functionalist picture. We ask the question of why assertion should be governed by the knowledge rule, look at some proposals from the rule first camp, due, respectively, to Bach and Hindriks on the one hand and Douven on the other, and show that they remain unsatisfactory. We then offer a functionalist account of the status of the knowledge rule of assertion as well as a functionalist rationale for it.

The vast majority of the literature on the knowledge rule of assertion focuses on the claim that knowledge is necessary for permissible assertion. Chapter 3 turns to the thesis that knowledge is sufficient for permissible assertion and defends it against recent objections by Jessica Brown and Jennifer Lackey.

Chapter 2 discusses a number of classical problems for the knowledge rule of assertion and argues that these problems can be solved. Worth special notice here is a general normative framework with accounts of criticisability, blamelessness and blameworthiness that we develop. Applied to the case of assertion, this framework allows us to give a well-motivated and knowledge-rule-friendly response to some classical cases that are often thought to show that the knowledge rule of assertion is too strong.

According to the knowledge rule of assertion, one must assert that p only if one knows that p. Chapter 1 mounts a case for the knowledge rule of assertion. It surveys relevant evidence for it in the literature and develops a couple of additions that serve to strengthen the case for the knowledge rule of assertion.

Chapter 7 considers the question of whether the knowledge rule of assertion is a constitutive rule of assertion in the same way in which rules of games and languages are constitutive, and defends a negative answer.

The introduction introduces the debate on the normativity of assertion and offers an overview over the central idea the book develops.