The conception of performative utterances proposed by John Langshaw Austin is unclear and provokes many fundamental questions. We compare this proposal with Jacek Juliusz Jadacki's conception of performatives, being much more precise one. We develop Jadacki's intuitions and propose to characterize performatives as expressions fulfilling a specific semantic function: A type-expression W is a performative generating an intentional state of affairs S iff there is a convention K and circumstances C such that the convention K says: if somebody utters a (...) token-expression W in circumstances C, so the state of affairs S will take place. Subsequently, we analyze the problem of correctness of performative utterances and relations between different criteria of correctness of performative acts. On the basis of these analyses, the paradox of annulled marriage is formulated and the problem of perfomatives in law is sketched. (shrink)

Moral Realism is such theory in metaethics, which can be characterized by three theses: ontological thesis - according to which moral facts exist independently of human opinion; epistemological thesis, that moral judgements can be truth apt, and moral knowledge is possible; and normativity thesis, that asserting a moral claim is a sufficient reason for acting in accordance with its content. However, in contemporary metaethics there is no realistic theory which would embrace all three theses together. Naturalists assert first two theses, (...) but reject the last one, on the other hand nonnaturalists emphasize the third, but renounce first two. The author seeks to show that transferring this issue onto the ground of Putnam's Internal Realism, would help us to get rid of this problem in metaethics altogether. (shrink)