1. Subject of Investigation
There is a way of organizing thought and communication in which the significance of an utterance is determined primarily by whether an assertion has been made and whether its truth has been established. Under this arrangement, questions, doubts, conjectures, assumptions, the choice of a category, actions, and the relations expressed through them become secondary to the final assertion.
When a subject investigates what relation has already been expressed by a question, the response is: “But that is not an assertion yet,” “We do not know whether it is true,” or “You must first prove it.” This does not answer the problem raised. An investigation of an actual relation is replaced by checking whether the property being asked about actually obtains.
The subject of this document is the ideology of assertion: privileging an established proposition as the only meaningful result, together with the associated operation of removing from consideration the reality of meaning that emerges before an answer is established and independently of that answer.
This is not about grammar or a prohibition against checking facts. It is about one mode of examination arrogating to itself the right to determine which relations deserve to exist within an investigation.
2. What the Privilege of Assertion Consists In
The proposition “X deceives Y” is treated as meaningful content: it can be confirmed, rejected, or verified.
But if X asks Y, “Are you deceiving me?”, attention is automatically redirected toward whether Y is actually deceiving X. X’s own action, which has already expressed a relation to Y as someone who may be deceiving them, becomes invisible.
Within this organization of thought:
- Priority is given to establishing a proposition about the subject matter.
- The question is treated primarily as a means of obtaining that proposition.
- The meaning of asking this particular question is regarded as merely instrumental or irrelevant.
- The questioner’s relation to the subject matter is excluded from the subject of investigation.
- Any attempt to return attention to this relation is met with the response: “The fact itself has not yet been established.”
This produces a substitution of the subject of investigation. The original investigation concerned the subject’s relation; the response begins investigating a property of someone else.
The ideology of assertion need not be expressed as an explicit thesis that “only assertions matter.” It becomes visible in a sequence of actions: which content is recognized as worthy of consideration, what the dialogue is repeatedly brought back to, and what is excluded on the pretext that it has not been proved.
3. Two Different Subjects of Investigation That Are Substituted for Each Other
Take a question from A to B: “Are you deceiving me?”
First subject of investigation: whether B is deceiving A.
Second subject of investigation: what relation A is already in toward B when A calls B’s sincerity into question.
The first concerns the event or property being asked about. The second concerns the completed act of questioning and the relation expressed by it.
The very appearance of B within A’s field of possible deception is already an actual fact of their relation. One need not first determine whether B is deceiving A in order to investigate the fact that A is already considering B through the possibility of deception.
When arguments concerning the first subject are offered in response to the second, the investigation is not clarified; its object is changed.
“Deception has not been proven” does not refute “the possibility of deception has already been included in the questioner’s relation to the interlocutor.” These are altogether different subjects.
4. Mechanism of the Elimination of Meaning
The substitution unfolds through a sequence:
- A subject identifies a relation already existing in the act of asking a question, an action, or a deed.
- They are invited to consider only whether the subject matter actually possesses a particular property.
- The meaningfulness of the originally discovered relation is made dependent on the truth of that property.
- Until the truth is established, the relation is declared unworthy of investigation.
- The original action through which the category entered the relations between subjects disappears from consideration.
This is not the restoration of missing precision, but the elimination of one subject matter in favor of another.
The most characteristic formula of this substitution is: “But it is not an assertion yet.” It shifts a conversation about an actual relation into a conversation about confirming a proposition. The absence of one kind of utterance begins to function as though it were the absence of the relation itself.
5. What Exists Before an Assertion
Relations between subjects arise not only when one of them pronounces a final proposition about the other.
5.1. A Question
“Are you capable of understanding this?”
The interlocutor’s capacity to understand has already been called into question. The possibility of not understanding has been introduced into the relation toward them. What matters is not only the answer obtained, but the very choice of the capacity to understand as the object of examination.
5.2. Suspicion and Doubt
Doubt about another subject’s sincerity is an actual relation of the doubting subject, expressed in the modality of doubt. It can guide questions, decisions, and actions even before any conclusion is reached.
5.3. Choice of Category
When another person’s activity is considered through “benefit,” “egoism,” “envy,” or “incapacity,” the subject has already chosen a way of relating what is happening to a particular category. Subsequent discovery that the category is untenable does not cancel the fact that the choice was made.
5.4. Action and Deed
A relation is expressed not only through words. Ignoring an appeal, blocking communication, resorting to a coercive procedure, excluding a subject from discussion, or making a demand without dialogue: each of these actions can create and reveal a relation to another. Investigating them does not require first translating the deed into an explicit assertion about a person.
5.5. Direction of Attention
What a subject regards as worthy of suspicion, examination, acknowledgment, exclusion, or explanation already characterizes their relation to the subject matter. The selectivity of attention does not become meaningless simply because it lacks the form of a completed thesis.
Thus, assertion is one form of expressing meaning, not the source of meaning’s right to exist.
6. The Privilege of the Final Result
Within the ideology of assertion, the final answer is considered important: “yes/no,” “true/false,” “established/not established.” The act that led to the answer is treated merely as a means.
But the subject acts and participates in relations already while posing the question. They choose what to examine, admit certain categories, address another person, demand a response, distribute attention, and change the course of the conversation.
If only the final result is considered, the meaningful content of the very process through which the question arises disappears.
Then the same “no” seems to erase all preceding activity. One person asked another whether they were being deceived; received a denial; and the final assertion “deception has been detected” never appeared. The ideology of assertion concludes: there is nothing to investigate. Yet the question itself and the relation it expressed have already taken place.
7. “I Was Just Asking” as a Way of Evading Responsibility
The formula “I was just asking” can be used to remove an action that has already been performed from the domain of responsibility.
Its logic is:
- No answer establishing a negative characteristic has been obtained.
- Therefore, there is nothing to hold against the questioner.
- Consequently, the very act of asking is not subject to substantive evaluation.
Here, responsibility for one’s manner of relating to another subject is replaced by responsibility exclusively for an expressed assertion.
Between subjects, it matters which possibilities are introduced into their communication, who is required to justify themselves, whose understanding and sincerity are made objects of examination, and which question replaces the original subject matter of the conversation.
Removing these actions from consideration allows a subject to actively change relations while simultaneously declaring that nothing significant has occurred.
8. What the Manipulative Operation Consists In
Manipulation arises where the very restriction of the subject of investigation is used to eliminate an unwanted distinction.
A subject points out: “You are already viewing me through the lens of deception.”
They are answered: “I did not say that you were deceiving me.”
They repeat: “I am investigating your relation to me as expressed by the question.”
They are answered again: “But deception has not been proven.”
This is not a dispute about the same thing. One participant holds the relation in view; the other repeatedly returns the conversation to whether the property actually obtains. The crucial distinction that was discovered is forcibly replaced with another subject matter.
The manipulative character here pertains to the structure of the communicative act that was performed, not to any need to guess the author’s hidden thoughts. Repeated substitution makes it possible to retain control over what is considered discussable at all.
9. From Epistemic Verification to Ontological Narrowing
Establishing truth is important when investigating assertions. The problem begins when the corresponding procedure becomes a universal criterion for the existence of meaning.
The examination “Is B actually deceiving A?” concerns one determination.
The investigation “What relation to B is expressed by A’s very question?” concerns another.
Transferring the criterion of the first investigation to the second means demanding that an already existing relation be confirmed by a fact unrelated to it. This is an error in the scope of application of a criterion.
As a result, the reality of intersubjective relations is narrowed to a collection of completed, confirmed propositions. The subject who creates relations through actions disappears; what remains is a fact-checking observer against whom, supposedly, nothing can be brought until an affirmative sentence is uttered.
But a subject’s relation does not begin after a proof is completed.
10. Necessary Distinctions
| What Is Distinguished | Content |
|---|---|
| Actuality of a property | Whether the subject matter possesses characteristic C |
| Subject’s actual relation | Whether a subject considers the matter through the possibility of C |
| Modality of possibility | Whether C is admitted as possible in relation to this matter |
| Act of questioning | What a subject does by asking precisely this question |
| Answer to the question | What content has been established within the accepted form of the question |
| Consequences of the question | How the subject of communication and the participants’ relations have changed |
| Responsibility for the relation | For what already performed treatment of another subject the questioner is responsible |
None of these distinctions should be destroyed by another. Investigating the first is not entitled to eliminate the rest merely because the first has not yet been resolved.
11. Connection to Other Investigations
- Potential Categorical Relation in the Act of Questioning investigates the relation itself, expressed and actualized when a question is posed.
- Types of Questions distinguishes the discovery of the unknown from determination among already established possibilities.
- Usurpation of Meaning by Form investigates the transformation of an introduced form into the measure of meaning itself.
- “You Misunderstood Me” describes a similar transition from investigating the thesis to investigating the interlocutor.
12. Main Propositions
- Assertion does not have an exclusive right to meaning.
- A question, doubt, admission of possibility, choice of category, action, and deed already express actual relations of a subject.
- The actual relation arising in questioning does not depend for its existence on what the answer will be.
- Replacing an investigation of a relation with verification of the truth of a property is a substitution of the subject of investigation.
- The demand “first prove the assertion” can eliminate from consideration what has already occurred at the level of relation.
- The appeal “I only asked” does not eliminate the actuality of the question that was asked or the relation it expressed.
- A subject bears responsibility not only for established propositions but also for their own ways of treating another subject.
- Relations cannot be reduced to the final results of verifying assertions.
13. Further Questions
- How does the privilege of assertion arise in logical, institutional, and everyday practices?
- How does investigating the truth of a proposition differ from investigating the direction of attention, assumption, and action?
- How does a procedure of proof, when applied to something outside its proper subject matter, become a means of excluding that subject matter?
- How can we distinguish the meaning an action already has for the person performing it from the meaning arising in the relation between participants?
- Which other modalities, besides questioning and doubt, create actual relations before any fact is established?
