Comment on Joseph Raz, From Normativity to Responsibility.

These preprints were automatically compiled into a PDF from the collection of papers deposited in PhilSci-Archive in conjunction with the PSA 2018.

A groundbreaking examination of Michel Foucault's history of truth. Many blame Michel Foucault for our post-truth and conspiracy-laden society. In this provocative work, Daniele Lorenzini argues that such criticism fundamentally misunderstands the philosopher’s project. Foucault did not question truth itself but what Lorenzini calls “the force of truth,” or how some truth claims are given the power to govern our conduct while others are not. This interest, Lorenzini shows, drove Foucault to articulate a new ethics and politics of truth-telling precisely (...) in order to evade the threat of relativism. The Force of Truth explores this neglected dimension of Foucault’s project by putting his writings on regimes of truth and parrhesia in conversation with early analytic philosophy and by drawing out the “possibilizing” elements of Foucault’s genealogies that remain vital for practicing critique today. (shrink)

Communication and content presents a comprehensive and foundational account of meaning based on new versions of situation theory and game theory. The literal and implied meanings of an utterance are derived from first principles assuming little more than the partial rationality of interacting agents. New analyses of a number of diverse phenomena – a wide notion of ambiguity and content encompassing phonetics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and beyond, vagueness, convention and conventional meaning, indeterminacy, universality, the role of truth in communication, semantic (...) change, translation, Frege’s puzzle of informative identities – are developed. Communication, speaker meaning, and reference are defined. Frege’s context and compositional principles are generalized and reconciled in a fixed-point principle, and a detailed critique of Grice, several aspects of Lewis, and some aspects of the Romantic conception of meaning are offered. Connections with other branches of linguistics, especially psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and natural language processing, are explored. -/- The book will be of interest to scholars in philosophy, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. It should also interest readers in related fields like literary and cultural theory and the social sciences. (shrink)

Attempts to philosophize about human knowledge lead inevitably to skepticism. So Hume taught and so some influential contemporary philosophers would have us believe. But what are we to make of this fact, assuming that it is one? Should we treat it as bad news about our chances of obtaining knowledge? Or should we rather see its importance as primarily meta-philosophical? That is, should we take the real significance of skepticism's seeming inevitability to lie in what it tells us about the (...) idea of understanding knowledge philosophically? (shrink)

The ethical treatment of cancer patientsparticipating in clinical trials requiresthat patients are well-informed about thepotential benefits and risks associated withparticipation. When patients enrolled in phaseI clinical trials report that their chance ofbenefit is very high, this is often taken as evidence of a failure of the informed consent process. We argue, however, that some simple themes from the philosophy of language may make such a conclusion less certain. First, the patient may receive conflicting statements from multiple speakers about the expected (...) outcome of the trial. Patients may be reporting the message they like best. Second, there is a potential problem of multivocality. Expressions of uncertainty of the frequency type can be confused with expressionsof uncertainty of the belief type. Patients may be informed using frequency-type statements and respond using belief-type statements. Third, each speech episode involving the investigator and the patient regarding outcomes may subservemultiple speech acts, some of which may beindirect. For example, a patient reporting ahigh expected benefit may be reporting a beliefabout the future, reassuring family members,and/or attempting to improve his or her outcome by apublic assertion of optimism. These sources oflinguistic confusion should be considered injudging whether the patient's reported expectation isgrounds for a bioethical concern that there hasbeen a failure in the informed consent process. (shrink)

Confucius uses the term xin 信 in about twenty passages in the Analects. The frequency of his usage would suggest that xin has a significant place within his ethics. The main aim of this essay is to offer an account of the roles played by xin within the ethics of Confucius. To have a clear understanding of these roles, however, we need first to understand what is encompassed within his notion of xin. This essay thus begins with an attempt to (...) delineate the Confucian conception of xin, as it is presented in the Analects. The notion of xin is frequently taken to be largely isomorphic with the notion of trust, and passages involving xin are commonly translated in terms of “trust” (and its cognates). This essay .. (shrink)

According to Horwich’s use theory of meaning, the meaning of a word W is engendered by the underived acceptance of certain sentences containing W. Horwich applies this theory to provide an account of semantic stipulation: Semantic stipulation proceeds by deciding to accept sentences containing an as yet meaningless word W. Thereby one brings it about that W gets an underived acceptance property. Since a word’s meaning is constituted by its (basic) underived acceptance property, this decision endows the word with a (...) meaning. The use-theoretic account of semantic stipulation contrasts with the standard view that semantic stipulation proceeds by assigning the meaning (reference) to W that makes a certain set of sentences express true propositions. In this paper I will argue that the use-theoretic account does not work. I take Frege to have already made the crucial point: "a definition does not assert anything but lays down something ["etwas festsetzt"]” (Frege 1899, 36). A semantic stipulation for W cannot be the decision to accept a sentence containing W or be explained in terms of such an acceptance. Semantic stipulation constitutes a problem for Horwich's use theory of meaning, especially his basic notion of acceptance. (shrink)

What is it to dedicate a thing or event to some person or thing? In the spirit of—and using the same techniques as—J.L. Austin, we advance an analysis of the practice of dedications. We propose that dedicating is an intentional activity involving reverence and honour. We identify the different ways a dedication can go awry and highlight the values that explain why dedications have merit (e.g. they can involve an honorable, evident self-subordination of the donator to the recipient and also (...) bring recognition to the one being honored while incorporating her in something of value). (shrink)

This paper focuses on the performative character of fictional language. While assuming that all speaking is a form of acting, it aims to shed light on the nature of fictional, and particularly literary, speech acts. To this aim, relevant input can be found in the discussion of the ontological status of fictional entities and of their constitution and in the inquiry into the interaction between author and receiver of a fictional work. Based on the critical assessment of different approaches in (...) the debate on speech-act theory and literary fiction, the article first clarifies why the study of the performative character of fictional language cannot be reduced to either the discussion of the status of singular speech acts in the fiction or the inquiry into the pretend or unserious nature of fictional speech acts formulated by an author. While referring to Roman Ingarden’s, Jean-Paul Sartre’s, and Wolfgang Iser’s work, it subsequently argues that such a performative character should be understood as a specific serious affordance—or appeal—to imagine and thus to participate in the constitution of the fictional world. (shrink)

In this paper, I will analyze, as an example of political discourse, the songs used by Spain's two main political parties in the 2008 general elections. Just like other texts used in political electoral discourse, these songs form a part of a public and ideological discourse aimed at the election of a candidate. The whole of the candidate's discourse is aimed at convincing the electorate that she/he and his/her party are the best choice, while the opposing candidate is the worst. (...) In this paper, I will analyze how this strategy, quite typical in political ideological electoral discourse, is put into practice in the two songs. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper I critically analyze the work of Shepard Fairey, the street artist better known as OBEY, as a multimodal discourse. After introducing the notion of street art, I analyze Fairey’s aesthetics, inspired in Pop Art and Soviet Constructivism, as well as his accounts on his own art, in order to unveil his ideology. I then discuss a particular case, concerning the pastiche of the Che Guevara’s image. I will show that the seemingly subversive nature of OBEY’s work, is (...) nothing more than marketing. Consequently, by industrially producing and commodifiying dissent, OBEY banalizes and deactivates it. According to the dichotomy between oppositional and emergent discourses, I conclude that OBEY enacts only an oppositional behavior. Moreover, by ‘manufacturing propaganda dissent’, OBEY performs protest, but in doing so he contributes to perpetuating the system he says he fights against. (shrink)

The past two decades have seen a surge in cross-disciplinary work in philosophy and psychiatry. Much of this work is necessarily abstract whilst those working in the area are aware of the necessity of relating the theoretical and conceptual work to the vagaries of day-to-day practice. But given the diverse methods and aims of philosophy and psychiatry, crossing the ‘communication gap’ between the two disciplines is easier said than done. In this article different methods of bridging this gap are presented (...) and commented upon. A number of research studies are reviewed with an eye to the potential they display to develop interdisciplinary theory. An empirical approach to philosophy of practice with special attention to ordinary language use is proposed as a fruitful may forward. (shrink)

In his paper “The Meaning of a Word” J. L. Austin argues that a set of questions and a set of answers to these questions is nonsensical. The philosophical claim that a question or answer is nonsense is an important part of the philosopher's stock and trade; for to ask and to propose answers to nonsensical questions is to reveal confusion and the tracking down and unraveling of confusion is one of the valuable contributions that philosophy has to make in (...) the advancement of understanding.At the same time one must not accept too easily the charge that a question or a form of answer to a question is nonsensical, for to do this is to block off a whole avenue of inquiry and therein direct one's efforts away from a route that might yield positive results. (shrink)

Given John L. Austin’s Oxonian pedigree, we should expect his discussion of how “to say something is to do something” (1962, 12) to be taken up analytically. However, Austin also offers resources that have been exploited outside of traditional analytic philosophy—think of certain analytic feminist work, for example, or literary critical uses of performativity. For the most part, such work extends and inflects Austin’s notion of illocution and its related concepts of force and performativity for disciplinary-specific ends. This tendency in (...) reading Austin to focus on illocution and its related concepts is understandable. After all, Austin devotes most of his Harvard lectures, assembled in How to Do Things .. (shrink)

Although others have focused on Catharine MacKinnon's claim that pornography subordinates and silences women, I here focus on her claim that pornography constructs women's nature and that this construction is, in some sense, false. Since it is unclear how pornography, as speech, can construct facts and how constructed facts can nevertheless be false, MacKinnon's claim requires elucidation. Appealing to speech act theory, I introduce an analysis of the erroneous verdictive and use it to make sense of MacKinnon's constructionist claims. I (...) also show that the erroneous verdictive is of more general interest. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a new (i.e., previously overlooked) breed of exercitive speech act (the conversational exercitive). I establish that any conversational contribution that invokes a rule of accommodation changes the bounds of conversational permissibility and is therefore an (indirect) exercitive speech act. Such utterances enact permissibility facts without expressing the content of such facts, without the speaker intending to be enacting such facts and without the hearer recognizing that it is so. Because of the peculiar nature ofthe rules (...) of accommodation that generate them, conversational exercitives have importantly different felicity conditions and therefore constitute a new breed ofexercitive speech act. (shrink)

We all make decisions, sometimes dozens in the course of a day. This paper is about what is involved in this activity. It's my contention that the ability to deliberate, to weigh different courses of action, and then to decide on one of them, is a distinctively human activity, or at least an activity which sets man and the higher animals apart from other creatures. It is as much decisio as ratio that constitutes the distinguishing mark of human beings. Homo (...) may not always be rationalis, but he is always decidens.The paper is about practical decision, although there is also another important kind of decision that I won't discuss, namely cognitive decision. The difference is roughly that which distinguishes the function of a jury from that of a judge, at least in jury trials. The jury's job is to arrive at an answer to the question: guilty or not guilty? This is a cognitive decision, a decision that, on the basis of the evidence, such-and-such is the case. The judge, apprized of the jury's cognitive decision, makes the practical decision to sentence the guilty party to 20 years. On some other occasion, I hope to be able to say something about cognitive decision, as well as about a third kind of decision named value decision. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 10, Page 39-41, October 2012.

This paper concerns the formal semantic analysis of imperative sentences. It is argued that such an analysis cannot be deferred to the semantics of propositions, under any of the three commonly adopted strategies: the performative analysis, the sentence radical approach to propositions, and the (nondeclarative) mood-as-operator approach. Whereas the first two are conceptually problematic, the third faces empirical problems: various complex imperatives should be analysed in terms of semantic operators over simple imperatives. One particularly striking case is the Dutch pluperfect (...) imperative. It is argued that this construction should be analysed as a genuine counterfactual imperative. On the constructive side, in the last part of the paper a formal semantic analysis of imperatives is presented, in the framework of Update Semantics. On this analysis, imperatives are sui generis semantic entities, on a par with propositions. The analysis also includes an account of the counterfactual imperatives. (shrink)

Mind &Language, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 115-138, February 2020.

Perspectives on Context and Contextualism.

The context or manner of an utterance can alter or nullify the speech-act that would normally be performed by utterances of that sort. Coercive contexts have this effect on some kinds of seeming assertions: they end up being non-assertoric, and are merely capitulations. An earlier version of this view is clarified, defended, and extended partly in response to a useful critique by Roy Sorensen. I examine some complications that arise regarding resistance to speaking under coercion when ideological or religious commitments (...) are implicated. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the study of explicit performative utterances in the following ways. First, it presents arguments that support Austin’s view that these utterances are not assertions. In doing so, it offers an original explanation of why they cannot be true or false. Second, it puts forward a new analysis of explicit performatives as cases of showing performing, rather than of instances of asserting or declaring that one is performing a particular act. Finally, it develops a new account of (...) the role of the performative prefix in signalling performative intentions that shows how the prefix can play a special role in the interpretation of performatives utterances. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of the constitution of ‘the people’. It argues that J.L. Austin’s concept of the ‘perlocutionary’ speech act gives us a framework for understanding the constitutive force of a specific constitutional document: the American Declaration of Independence. It does so through responding to Derrida’s analysis of the Declaration, which itself draws on Austin’s work. Derrida argues that the Declaration’s constitutive force lies in the fact that it cannot be simply understood as either ‘performative’ or ‘constative’, in (...) Austin’s terminology. According to Derrida, ‘the people’ do not pre-exist the Declaration, but are constituted in the act of declaration itself. In response, I argue that while Derrida’s insight regarding the constitution of ‘the people’ is sound, his analysis misses two key aspects of the Declaration. These two lacunae point the way to an understanding of the constitutive force of the Declaration in terms of Austin’s ‘perlocutionary’ speech act. (shrink)

Performative Utterances: Seven Puzzles It was John Austin who introduced the word "performative" into the philosophy of language and linguistics. His original idea was that there are utterances which are more correctly characterized as doing something rather than stating something. Austin wrote: "when I say ‘I do’, I am not reporting on a marriage, I am indulging in it." As is well known, Austin went on to work out this notion of a performative utterance in a number of directions, but (...) in the end the attempt to isolate performatives from constatives failed dramatically, and the idea of viewing language use in terms of the performative-constative dichotomy gave way to the study of speech acts: "The total speech act in the total speech situation is the only actual phenomena which, in the last resort, we are engaged in elucidating." But giving up the performative-constative distinction does not mean giving up theorizing about performatives, and there is a cottage industry in the theory of language devoted to them. We identify seven puzzles for theorizing about performatives. We consider how Austin might have dealt with some of them. Finding his answers problematic, we then survey recent theories of performatives and zoom in on the major contenders, identifying one theory in particular for scrutiny and seeing how it fares with the seven puzzles. The upshot is that there is still work to be done understanding performatives. (shrink)

Saying so can make it so, J. L. Austin taught us long ago. Famously, John Searle has developed this Austinian insight in an account of the construction of institutional reality. Searle maintains that so-called Status Function Declarations, allegedly having a “double direction of fit”, synchronically create worldly institutional facts, corresponding to the propositional content of the declarations. I argue that Searle’s account of the making of institutional reality is in tension with the special theory of relativity—irrespective of whether the account (...) is interpreted as involving causal generation or non-causal grounding of worldly institutional facts—and should be replaced by a more modest theory which interprets the results of Status Function Declarations in terms of mere Cambridge change and institutional truth. I end the paper by indicating the import of this more modest theory for theorizing about the causal potency of institutional phenomena generated by declarations. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper identifies two central paradoxes threatening the notion of amor fati [love of fate]: it requires us to love a potentially repellent object (as fate entails significant negativity for us) and this, in the knowledge that our love will not modify our fate. Thus such love may seem impossible or pointless. I analyse the distinction between two different sorts of love (eros and agape) and the type of valuation they involve (in the first case, the object is loved (...) because we value it; in the second, we value the object because we love it). I use this as a lens to interpret Nietzsche's cryptic pronouncements on amor fati and show that while an erotic reading is, up to a point, plausible, an agapic interpretation is preferable both for its own sake and because it allows for a resolution of the paradoxes initially identified. In doing so, I clarify the relation of amor fati to the eternal return on the one hand, and to Nietzsche's autobiographical remarks about suffering on the other. Finally, I examine a set of objections pertaining both to the sustainability and limits of amor fati, and to its status as an ideal. (shrink)

In recent philosophy of mind a non-holistic view on concept possession, originally developed by Tyler Burge, has emerged as an alternative to holistic analyses of language mastery. The article discusses the implications of this view for analyses of communication in doctor—patient-interaction. The central question Burge's theory gives an answer to is this: to what extent must a doctor and a patient understand a medical term in the same way in order to communicate in the sense that they express the same (...) concept by the term? Many empirical studies have shown that patients do not, typically, understand medical terms in the same way as doctors they encounter. Holistic approaches therefore imply that doctors and patients seldom communicate. Burge's position, on the other hand, implies that it is sufficient that patients have a minimal understanding. In an important range of cases doctors can make sure that patients have a minimal understanding by being explicit about common dictionary definitions of the terms in question. (shrink)

Throughout its history philosophy has been thought to be a member of a community of intellectual disciplines united by their common pursuit of knowledge. It has sometimes been thought to be the queen of the sciences, at other times merely their under-labourer. But irrespective of its social status, it was held to be a participant in the quest for knowledge – a cognitive discipline.

When J. L. Austin introduced two “shining new tools to crack the crib of reality”—the theory of performative utterances and the doctrine of infelicities—he could not have imagined that he was also about to inaugurate a shining new industry in the philosophy of the social sciences. But with its evident concern for the features to which “all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial,” Austin’s theory soon became indispensable in the analysis of ritual, linguistic and (...) every kind of social action. While Indianists such as Frits Staal, Bimal Matilal and David Seyfort Ruegg have made good use of the work of Austin and his “ordinary language” school, it is Quentin Skinner who has attempted to turn Austin’s insights into a general “theory and method” for the study of intellectual cultures. The question I want to address in this paper has to do with the applicability of Skinnerian techniques to the study of literary and intellectual Sanskrit culture in premodern India. If not all of Skinner’s methods transfer to the new context, identification of the points at which they breakdown helps to clarify the distinctive contours of Indian intellectual history, and suggests appropriate methodological innovation. (shrink)

This paper on post-truth politics argues that to the extent that one wants to understand political discourses generally (post-truth political discourses in particular), it is crucial to see them as circulating talk that performs rather than reports. This implies a shift in focus. Many react strongly to ‘post-truth’ assertions by appealing to evidence, objectivity, facts and truth. In this paper, it is suggested that, when analysing political discourses, there is no point asking, ‘Is it true?’ One should rather ask, ‘What (...) happens as a result?’ Understanding political discourses as performative demands that the resulting doing, transforming and changing may transcend established parameters and known patterns. That also means problematising the types of argument allowed, or discourse considered appropriate, in a given situation. What, then, is the force within the performative discourse driving transformation? What role does intention play? And who—if anybody—can be designated as the master of the discourse? One way of answering these questions is to broaden the perspective of what happens in verbal exchanges. The hearer-speaker relation is fundamental, one in which meaning is shaped and the performative force is formed. A political discourse in general, and a post-truth political discourse in particular, cannot do and perform—cannot function—in a vacuum. This evokes serious questions about accountability and responsibility and also about human action and freedom. (shrink)

In this paper, I look at Susan Stebbing’s articles and reviews that critically engage logical positivism. These appeared before the publication of A.J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic and helped shape the early British reception of logical positivism. I highlight Stebbing’s adoption of G.E. Moore’s tripartite distinction between knowing a proposition, understanding it, and giving an analysis of it and, in light of this distinction, her focus on whether the principle of verifiability can ground a plausible account of communication. Stebbing (...) thinks not, and I reconstruct her reasons, as well as her own account of communication. In doing this, I relate her criticisms to her rejection of methodological solipsism and her dissatisfaction with the logical positivist treatment of statements about other minds and the past. I also argue that Stebbing’s work provides a bridge to later criticisms of logical positivism from ordinary language philosophers. Foregrounding Stebbing’s engagement with logical positivism, especially her focus on communication, paints a fuller picture of how the logical positivists came to be part of analytic philosophy despite having different concerns than many of the British philosophers engaging their work. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 10, Page 41-43, October 2012.

Insincerity is the intentional conflict between a state of mind and a synchronic linguistic act. Three cases have to be distinguished: lying, as the opposition of belief and assertion (the act is untruthful); dishonesty, as the opposition of will and declaration of will (act empty); and simulation, as the opposition of emotion and exclamation (act ungenuine). One of the problems arising is: Are there insincere commands, and if not, why?Disloyalty, on the other hand, is a diachronic inconsequence, the breach of (...) a linguistic action (act unredeemed) which was binding for the future (such as, e.g. a promise). There is a cross-connection to dishonesty, which can be seen as the will to be disloyal. (shrink)

Our first aim in this paper is to respond to four novel objections in Jason Stanley's 'Context and Logical Form'. Taken together, those objections attempt to debunk our prior claims that one can perform a genuine speech act by using a subsentential expression—where by 'subsentential expression' we mean an ordinary word or phrase, not embedded in any larger syntactic structure. Our second aim is to make it plausible that, pace Stanley, there really are pragmatic determinants of the literal truthconditional content (...) of speech acts. We hope to achieve this second aim precisely by defending the genuineness of subsentential speech acts. Given our two aims, it is necessary to highlight briefly their connection—which we do in the first part of the Introduction. Following that, we introduce Stanley's novel objections. This is the role of the second part of the Introduction. We offer our rebuttals in Section 2 (against 'shorthand') and Section 3 (against syntactic ellipsis, among other things). (shrink)

The aim of this contribution is to propose a natural implementation of the reflexive-referential theory advanced by Perry 2001 that aims at accounting for the reflexive character of explicit performative utterances. This is accomplished by introducing a reflexive-performative constraint on explicit performatives.

Following the murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter-movement (BLM) took to the streets to protest against institutional racism. In these protests, one could often hear the slogan “No Justice, No Peace”. Drawing on legal theory, speech act theory and phenomenology, this article investigates what kind of justice and peace are called upon and how the slogan functions as a claim addressed to the legal order. First, the article shows that the rule of law provides a comprehensive normative framework (...) to evaluate what went wrong during the arrest of George Floyd. Second, the article maintains that the slogan should be understood as a passionate utterance in the sense of Stanley Cavell. Finally, drawing on a responsive phenomenology of legal order inspired by the work of Bernhard Waldenfels, the article concludes that the slogan is an extraordinary claim questioning the legal order, showing its contingent origins. (shrink)

This article aims to provide a semiotic analysis of environmental law and youth protests. More precisely, drawing on speech act theory this article regards both as types of communication and teases out the inherent voice and message, specifically with regard to the interests of future generations. The argument unfolds in three steps. First, the article looks into speaker and speech of environmental law and argues that it speaks, as legislation does, in the first-person plural voice of a ‘we’. Second, the (...) article examines a speech of Greta Thunberg through the lens of Stanley Cavell’s theory of passionate utterances. This interpretation will unlock the political stakes of Thunberg’s speech as she claims standing with those responsible for enacting environmental law. Finally, the consequences of this reading will be analysed by relating message and voice of environmental law. As youth protests question ordinary forms of political representation, new ways of safeguarding the interests of future generations are called upon. (shrink)

This research analyses media and online discourses produced by the Indigenous People of Biafra, a Nigerian separatist/secessionist group that seeks a referendum for the independence of the Igbo ethnic group of Nigeria. The research examines discourse structures, such as language use that clearly or implicitly produces propositions of conflict and war, tribalism and hate-speech. Discursive strategies such as labelling, exaggeration, metaphor and contradiction applied by the group to produce ideological discourses of outrage are also analysed. Moreover, conflicting discourses produced by (...) the Igbo politicians and factions of IPOB and other Biafra campaign groups are analysed in terms of their political implications to the overall self-determination efforts of the Biafra nation. The study concludes that the pragmatic implications of discourses that reflect opposing views, as well as varied ideological perspectives by group members, suggest that Biafra is a nation divided against itself and are a people incapable of the separate nation that they seek. (shrink)