Thinking Together: Advising as Collaborative Deliberation

We spend a good deal of time thinking about advising, but philosophical discussions of advising have been scattered and somewhat disconnected. The most focused discussion has come from philosophers of language interested in whether advising is a kind of assertive or directive speech act. This paper argues that the ordinary category of advising is much more heterogenous than has been appreciated: it is possible to advising by asserting relevant facts, by issuing directives, and by asking questions and other kinds of adviceless advising. The heterogeneity of advising makes speech act-theoretic accounts of advising look like accounts of special cases, and motivates us to look elsewhere for an account of what advising is. Instead, I suggest that we think about advising as a kind of joint practical thinking--collaborative deliberation--, which answers to our need to pool various kinds of deliberative resources.