Why assertion may yet be social

In ‘Is assertion social?’, an article published in the Journal of Pragmatics, Peter Pagin (2004) claims to provide a method for producing counterexamples to theories of assertion of a certain kind. A clear characterization of that kind proves elusive. Nonetheless, I show that minor variants of theories that Pagin is explicitly concerned to refute fail to succumb to his method. We may be confident that these variants are theories of the kind that is the target of his argument. Thus, I show that Pagin fails to show that no theory of that kind could be true.