Dimitar Elchinov

This paper examines philosophical applications of Zahavi’s handicap principle to assertion reliability, focusing on contributions by M. Green, P. J. Graham, and J. P. Bruner. The handicap principle holds that honest signals are costly to produce and that this cost is differential – it falls more heavily on lower-quality signallers than on higher-quality ones, which is what prevents deception and keeps signals reliable. I argue that social norms cannot function as cost-imposing mechanisms in handicap-based accounts of assertion. My argument consists of two stages. First, I use Penn and Számadó's biological objections to preemptively undermine any naturalistic interpretation of the way in which the handicap principle has been deployed in philosophy, and, in particular, to block any such naturalistic interpretation of the concept of “social norms.” Second, I examine the notion of “social norms” as used by philosophers to argue that biological handicaps impose costs deterministically, whereas social norms impose costs only probabilistically, and that the social costs of assertion introduce systematic variability that renders social norms incapable of serving as stable costimposing mechanisms. Although I do not offer a positive account of the philosophical application of the handicap principle, I think that my contribution may nevertheless be helpful insofar as it identifies serious obstacles to such deployment.