Two tales of the turnstile

Abstract

I contrast two accounts of assertoric contexts. The Frege-Geach-style 'exter-nalist' account keeps force (judgment) and content (proposition) separate. The act-theoretic 'internalist' inverts the Frege-Geach point by making force integral to content. Assertoric contexts being hyperintensional, act theory cannot assume that extensional logic (such as introduction and elimination rules for the truth-functions) applies to act-theoretic propositions; nor that intensional logic (e.g., distribution axioms) applies. I level an objection against internalism, namely that the internalist is wrong to argue that the assertion of a conjunction entails the assertion of both conjuncts separately. The general insight is that the Frege-Geach point remains intact, but also that the externalist owes an account of the logic of assertoric contexts.