How to do nothing with Words.
I struggle with the notion of speech acts. I'm not sure if it's difficult to approach the topic with a disposition towards stupid and common sense, but I suppose I lack the higher-level abilities to differentiate between a speech act on the one hand and an act of speech on the other. So I seek help.
These disabilities limit me to see one act and one act only: the act of speech. To me, saying I promise is an act of speech. A speaker moves the mouth, makes the sounds, articulates the syllables, and so on. This act, such as it is, is physical, visible, involves bodily movements and measurable forces. One is actually doing something, namely, speaking, and in so doing affecting the world with these and only these movements. But I am told that other less apparent acts are occurring here as well.
We are told of locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary acts. One can peruse the literature as to what the authors mean by these terms, but the important point for now is that they are considered as acts of some kind.
The questions are: how are these acts distinct from the act of speaking? Where in space and time occurs the performance of these acts? Where in space and time lie the consequences and effects of these acts? Is a speaker actually doing something with words?
To the last question, that the words are a consequence of his actions, and not yet present at the time of the act of speech, makes it difficult to agree that he is doing something with words as if he picked them up and started to arrange them in this or that combination. He's doing something with his mouth or vocal chords, certainly, but doing something with another thing suggests that that thing exists beforehand, and not necessarily as a product of that action. When one bakes a cake he is not doing something with a cake. When one eats a cake, he is doing something with a cake.
As for the other questions, JL Austin notes the difficulty of his nomenclature.
But the nomenclature could prove disastrous insofar as one could mislead himself upon accepting it. Might the metaphor be taken literally? Might people believe they are performing two acts where they are performing one?
In my view, what may resolve the issue is including within the nomenclature a host of other acts, actual acts, namely, listening acts. Here, a listener or reader is actually doing something with words: hearing them, reading them, understanding them, considering them, and so on. These acts, such as they are, are physical, visible, involves bodily movements and measurable forces. In fact, how one takes the words, uses them, and applies them in his conduct might be the most important acts involved in the entire interaction.
Perhaps I am misreading or completely distorting Austin's theory. Any advice?
These disabilities limit me to see one act and one act only: the act of speech. To me, saying I promise is an act of speech. A speaker moves the mouth, makes the sounds, articulates the syllables, and so on. This act, such as it is, is physical, visible, involves bodily movements and measurable forces. One is actually doing something, namely, speaking, and in so doing affecting the world with these and only these movements. But I am told that other less apparent acts are occurring here as well.
We are told of locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary acts. One can peruse the literature as to what the authors mean by these terms, but the important point for now is that they are considered as acts of some kind.
The questions are: how are these acts distinct from the act of speaking? Where in space and time occurs the performance of these acts? Where in space and time lie the consequences and effects of these acts? Is a speaker actually doing something with words?
To the last question, that the words are a consequence of his actions, and not yet present at the time of the act of speech, makes it difficult to agree that he is doing something with words as if he picked them up and started to arrange them in this or that combination. He's doing something with his mouth or vocal chords, certainly, but doing something with another thing suggests that that thing exists beforehand, and not necessarily as a product of that action. When one bakes a cake he is not doing something with a cake. When one eats a cake, he is doing something with a cake.
As for the other questions, JL Austin notes the difficulty of his nomenclature.
It has, of course, been admitted that to perform an illocutionary act is necessarily to perform a locutionary act: that, for example, to congratulate is necessarily to say certain words; and to say certain words is necessarily, at least in part, to make certain more or less indescribable movements with the vocal organ. So that the divorce between 'physical' actions and acts of saying something is not in all ways completethere is some connexion. But (i) while this may be important in some connexions and contexts, it does not seem to prevent the drawing of a line for our present purposes where we want one, that is, between the completion of the illocutionary act and all consequences thereafter.
- How to do things with Words - p. 113 - Austin
But the nomenclature could prove disastrous insofar as one could mislead himself upon accepting it. Might the metaphor be taken literally? Might people believe they are performing two acts where they are performing one?
In my view, what may resolve the issue is including within the nomenclature a host of other acts, actual acts, namely, listening acts. Here, a listener or reader is actually doing something with words: hearing them, reading them, understanding them, considering them, and so on. These acts, such as they are, are physical, visible, involves bodily movements and measurable forces. In fact, how one takes the words, uses them, and applies them in his conduct might be the most important acts involved in the entire interaction.
Perhaps I am misreading or completely distorting Austin's theory. Any advice?
Comments (132)
Haven't you here both spoken (written...), and asked a series of questions?
Listening like that reminds me of the Miranda warning.
"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you."
Everyone likes options.
Clearly I have made many acts of speech. I wrote words. As far as I know this is the extent of my acts, more or less.
Well then, what am I to answer here?
I asked questions and made statements, yes. However, writing is the full extent of my actions here. Have I performed any other act?
IS that a question? Or only a bit of writing?
It is a bit of writing we call a question. The act of writing produces the question. The act is the writing. Or are more acts occurring?
So you made some marks on a screen. Did you also write something? And did you also ask a question?
You tell me. If all you did was make marks on a screen, then there is nothing to answer.
I didnt just make marks on a screen. I wrote purposefully with the intent to express my views and questions. Is there some other act occurring here?
Other than what? You made some marks. An act. You wrote something. An act. You asked a question. an act. Would you like to count this as one act or as three? I don't much mind.
But would you have asked the question without writing? Or written without making marks?
Yes, one act. I wrote. Speech act theory proposes multiple other acts, does it not?
Thats what I am genuinely unclear about. Are they talking about acts I am doing, or about acts somehow derived from the words I am writing? Am I or is the utterance performing the act?
Your point isnt clear from the letters you put on the screen.
What is this "point" you speak of as if words can have it in some way - clear or obscure?
Its like an idea or an argument. If you can read you can usually understand what someone is trying to say.
Its a play on the title of JL Austins How to do thing with Words. Over your head and below your knees, I suppose.
Nothing.
And that's something different from the action, obviously, because Banno's words are quite clear, but his "point" is not. How can this be? It's like the starter's pistol makes a noise, and that somehow makes all the competitors start to move, as if everybody had already agreed in advance to do that. Like the agreement had a universal force in that moment such that the bang 'meant' "Go!"
I think your actual issue of lack of clarity is about acts. What constitutes an act? What is an act?
An act is that which one does deliberately, intentionally, for some purpose. One hopes to achieve, accomplish something with an act. Thus, there are mental, verbal, and bodily acts.
Thats a good point, thanks. Though I would argue all acts are bodily, a central problem would be what constitutes an act. To Austin, promising is an act over and above saying "I promise", so long as the circumstances are correct and the function isn't met with any number of "Infelicities".
One can try to leave the matter ambiguous, I suppose.
There is no "universal force", but particular beings who have come to understood what a the bang of a starting pistol meant.
Odd.
You made marks. That was an act on your part. You made sentences. That was an act on your part. You asked questions. That was an act on your part.
Whether you want to count this as one act with three different descriptions, or as three different acts, these remain acts attributable to you, and acts performed in virtue of your speech.
Speech acts.
Things you did with words.
I'm not seeing anything problematic so far.
It doesn't always suppose multiple different acts. I've seen it framed as a single act preforming multiple "functions." Other schemes are more categorical. You could think of speech as a genus of activity, and within that there are declarative statements, interrogative statements, etc.
TBH, I don't recall anyone I've read taking up the question of "how many acts is it?" People mention speech as "involving multiple acts," but this isn't analyzed in the context you seem to be thinking of it in. It's more of a way of saying, "the act is composite and serves multiple ends." This isn't unique to language, you could argue even something like a baseball pitch can serve multiple functions (e.g. throwing from the stretch as a signal to deter stealing, brush backs, etc.) and involves multiple acts (e.g. the wind up, release, etc.).
I can sort of see why it's unexamined. How would it be relevant? If we were talking about the metaphysics of "events," I could see how it might be relevant for there to be "multiple events," that supervene on a single act, or something of that nature. However, when it comes to speech I think the idea that it can be used for simultaneously disparate ends is sort of taken for granted.
For example, re declarative sentences versus informational ones, the defining feature of the former is said to be that it includes the assertion of the speaker as an agent, and thus someone responsible for their own veracity. Is this act of assertion a different act than the vocalization itself? It seems to me like this is akin to asking if your individual fingers' movements while playing a song on the guitar represent their own acts or if it is all part of "playing a song." The process is decomposable, although you lose elements of it, but whether or not it is worth decomposing depends on what sort of question you're asking. Which is all to say, I can't think of anything in philosophy of language that hinges on "how many acts are being performed when x."
But you could probably make a case for defining it either way.
Anscombe. Was the man making shadows? Moving his arms? Pumping water? Poisoning the well? Killing the villagers?
Each a different description of the same event. How many, and which, acts are involved depends on what one is doing with the description...
Speech act theory proposes that language is often used to perform acts, like getting married, making promises, or christening a boat. According to Austin, these are different than statements and have no truth value. But beneath the act of saying or writing the words (locutionary act) are a series of other, invisible acts (illocutionary and perlocutionary acts).
So while I have no problem with different descriptions of the same phenomena, my problem is that speech act theory proposes multiple phenomena where only one is apparent.
Quoting NOS4A2
Invisible?
Quoting NOS4A2
Here you made some marks on the screen - a physical act.
Those marks are letters and words - you have written something in a language. You performed a locutionary act.
In performing that locution you asked a question - an illocutionary act.
By performing that illocution you elicited this response - a perlocution.
Nothing in this is "invisible".
"Any advice?" is a question, not a statement. It is not the sort of thing that is either true or false. It does not have a truth value.
In the right circumstances, one names a ship by saying "I name this vessel the SS Incomprehensible"; One marries a hetro couple by announcing "I now pronounce you husband and wife"; One opens a bridge by pronouncing "I declare this bridge officially open". One makes a promise by saying "I promise to read your posts with care". We do things with words.
Quoting NOS4A2
The key insight in speech acts may be that the content and the force of the illocution are distinct.
For those interested in the topic - and it has many uses, in and outside of philosophy - see Speech Acts and John Langshaw Austin
I think that's wrong, and I'm replying not so much to correct you but to demonstrate the difference between the locution and the illocution:
The question is the grammatical form; an aspect of loctution. But if "(Do you have a)ny advice?" were a question in the illocution, too, you could just say "Sure, lots," and then walk away, as you'd have answered the question.
What we really have here (if sincere) is a request. "(Do you have) any advice?" is equivalent to "Please give me advice, if you have any." Both locutions express the same illocution. You've made too choices: one to make a request, and one how to express it.
There's only one distinct behaviour: "Any Advice?" has been typed on some keyboard here. The typing itself, on its own, is an action (and I don't actually know for sure the words have been typed by the interlocutor; they could have been dictated to a secretary, or transcribed and modified by speech recognition software, or...). That this is is a question is part of the rules of the language; it's part of what makes this a locution. But the typical function of question, to inquire about a certain state of affairs, is no the social function of the question. The grammatical form might be interrogative, but the social function of the question is a request for advice, which is why saying "Yes, I have advice," and then walking away would be a rather unusual response.
So "Any advice" is a locutionary question, and an illocutionary request. And since questions and requests are both acts that people can engage in, you're engaging in two different acts via one and the same set of behaviours (typing; if the post's been typed rather than dictated to a human or to voice recognition software) - but they're not acts on the same level; locutions and illocutions have a systematic relationship such that they can be anlysed.. Of course, often loctuionary questions are also illocutionary questions - but because they needn't be we have systematic relationship between the locutionary and the illocutionary (whether you call them acts or force is secondary, and many experts use the terms interchangably, in my experience), and thus it makes sense to view a "locutionary question" as different from the "illoctionary question" - analytically. Which you're going to do when it makes sense to you, and not otherwise.
For example, were I to ask "Did anyone find any value in this post?" this would be a question that expresses a question, if I were actually interested in the answer, and a question that expresses a request if I just wanted people to assuage my insecurities. And because people never co-operate with analysts such that their work is easy, it could be a little bit of both.
(I didn't talk about perlocutions, because I always found those the hardest to integrate. Basically, I think you need perlocutions to check on the success of illocutions. It's not quite that, though. I think Austin's example is the difference between urging and persuading. You can urge someone to close the door without them ever intending to close the door, but you can't persuade someone to close the door without them ever intending to close the door. [Might have been Searle's example; I think it was Austin, but it's been... 20 years?)
So far as this thread goes, it remains unclear what 's objection to speech act theory per se is.
I'm late to this (language?) game.
But I'd say it more properly has to do with context. "I promise" may create a contract, for example. What the act is depends on what it's for, in a given set of circumstances.
It is indistinguishable from the locutionary act. So which one is it? Either there is one act, or two acts and one is invisible.
Your response is no act of mine.
You spoke them or wrote them. No others acts have occurred or are apparent or can be measured.
At some point the philosopher stops analyzing the acts of the speaker and starts sifting through his words, none of which are capable of acting, none of which can be shown to possess any measurable properties called content or force. This is why I believe the theory ought to be reworked to include listening acts, the acts of a listener. This would include such acts as hearing, reading, understanding, responding, and so on. The acts are visible and measurable, and dont involve non-properties such as content and force.
Well, no, it isn't. Making marks and asking a question are very different acts. Here are the same marks: "Any advice?". I am not using them here in order to asking a question. So there is a difference between making the marks and asking the question; which is to distinguish between the locution and the illocution. And neither is "invisible", what ever that might mean in this context.
Quoting NOS4A2
No, but your eliciting a response is an act of yours. Just as your post elicited this reply. I would not have written this were it not for your post, and hence this post is an act resulting from your act.
Quoting NOS4A2
You also made statements and asked questions. Are these not acts you performed? Why not?
Quoting NOS4A2
Speech act theory is embedded in social discourse, implicitly and explicitly addressing the place of utterances in social activity. Perlocutions include the acts of the listener.
From recollection, you maintain a form of hyper-individualism, which it seems makes it difficult for you to see the social aspects inherent in speech acts. I remain unable to see what your objection is.
However the issue here seems more central to our basic accounts of language. seems to hold that while we can make marks and sounds, we do not ask questions or make statements; or that acts are bodily movements, and hence that questions and statements are not acts; or something, that i have not been able to fathom.
Given politics, the power of the spoken/written word seems rather important.
If you're not asking a question when you ask "Any advice?"then what are you doing? Are you quoting a question? Maybe you're pretending to ask a question? Yet, there it is: a question. So where in space and time has this illocutionary act occured?
I didn't elicit any reply from you, nor did I intend to elicit any response from you. It's just not an act I have committed. You read and responded all on your own and at your own leisure.
If you look at the words, sure, some of the writing took the form of statements and questions, as indicated by the punctuation. But words can't act. if you looked at me, the only agent of action you've been dealing with, you'll see that there is one act and one act only, the locution, in this case the writing.
Some methodological individualism is involved, as is nominalism, but I simply cannot detect any of these aspects you routinely speak of. When I try to understand what you mean by "speech act theory is embedded in social discourse", I'm at a loss because "social discourse" appears to be just individual people talking or writing to each other, and all of language appears to be embedded in them and nowhere else.
This seems an externality and not a result of the act.
Asking a question doesn't determine anything as response to it. Invites? Sure. Does not cause any response, I don't think. But you'd have been free to not respond, response with some irrelevant etc.. etc.. which would then be unconnected to the invitation in large part. But are your acts, entirely.
Quoting NOS4A2
If I ask someone "what is the capital of Florida?" and they respond "Tallahassee," would they have uttered the word Tallahassee if I hadn't asked the question? It seems not. Would this not seem to imply that the question plays a causal role in the second utterance?
This can be reduced to absurdity. Can we really have it that a man who charges into a victim's house, threatens them, and then requests sexual acts from them hasn't committed sexual assault because there is no way for a request to cause a response?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Who knows? It was certainly elicited by your invitation in this instance, but had they answered "Albany", could you make that same inference? In your eg, the cause may have actually been their knowledge of the correct answer.
That would account for how the idea has no room for harm to reputation.
It can't involve both? It seems prima facie unreasonable to me to assume that someone who responds to the question "what is the capital of Florida," with [I]any[/I] city name was in any way likely to have just blurted out the name of a city if you were both sitting in silence. If this seems dubious to you, feel free to test this with an experiment and see how often people blurt out random cities' names unbidden, and then try asking them about a few state capitals. That questions can elicit responses that are incorrect answers seems trivial.
So if the victim refuses to perform a sex act in response to the threats and no sex act occurs the assailant has [I]still[/I] committed a sexual assault? I will allow that they will have certainly still committed a crime in both cases, but this doesn't appear to be the case. This would be like saying that if one person threatens another, telling them they will kill them if they don't murder a third person, then that person has committed a murder, even if the person doesn't give in to threat. But there cannot be a murder without a dead body, and I don't think you can have a sexual assault without a sex act. Yet if the murder or sex act does occur, it seems perfectly reasonable to find the person engaged in coercion responsible, and this is because one person's statements can certainly play a causal role in other's actions.
If asking someone to do something cannot cause them to perform an act, there would be no reason why war criminals who order mass executions should be considered criminals in the first place, so long as they don't pull any triggers. Ordering executions would be harmless. "Words don't kill people, people kill people," could be the slogan of the International War Criminal's Association.
It sure can - but on my view its not caused by the question. The response is caused by something the person responding. I Cant grok the causal relationship. Putting someone in mind of something shouldnt considered causal imo.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You can, though. A sex act could be a text message. So depends how youre defining it but legally, sexually assault doesnt per se require physical contact. Might just be a bad example as that doesnt change the premise of what youre arguing.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Not to me. And apparently not really to the law. Coercion only has a mitigating effect on sentencing for those types or crime. Under duress doesnt remove the charge and responsibility for the act.
The coercive party did not commit the act. The actus Reus differs.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Right, good. Tricky but my understanding is they are guilty of genocide which is intention-informed and not act-informed. It isnt murder, basically. Its another act deemed illegal based on the intent. Conversely, carrying out unjust military acts is illegal qua soldier (as Eg) and if circumstances allow, theyll be charged with murder or the wartime equivalent of. I think this inversion is more telling - carrying out a killing on the say-so of another doesnt reduce your culpability for committing the act (minor exceptions when one, or ones immediate family is in mortal danger in a civilian setting - yet this still only mitigates and a guilty act has still been committed).
I agree entirely, and add that the where and when of the illocutionary act is the same as the where and when of the locution: In your having written "Any advice?" you performed both a locution and an illocution; which is to claim no more than that you both wrote a sentence and you asked a question.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes, you did, and continue to elicit replies by your responses. I would not have posted this, had you not posted that.
Quoting NOS4A2
Again, I quite agree. But you can do things using word - that's the point. Quoting NOS4A2
...which involves both making marks and asking a question. Again, the issue is that asking a question is different to making a mark, and this difference is well worth marking, and hence the terms locution and illocution.
I performed one visible act, did one measurable thing, but you saw two visible acts, or me doing two visible things. So did I really perform two acts, or are you describing the same act in two different ways?
If I were to record myself writing I would see one act. I can point to it, witness it again and again. I am unable to see two.
I cant say I made any such action. I wrote the thread, you showed up. And when you finally abort the discussion no amount of eliciting will bring you back. I suppose I can understand the logicbefore this therefor because of thisbut I just cannot see it. I mean, we can even test it: elicit me to do something.
At best these kinds of verbs are metaphorical and they dont much give an accurate description of what is occurring.
How is it different?
Again, you wrote a sentence and you asked a question. You can call it two acts, if you like, or one act with two descriptions. What is salient is that there is a difference between writing a sentence and asking a question.
Quoting NOS4A2
So did you utter "Any advice?" without intending that other folk might respond?
That would be odd. Indeed, that might be enough to render your utterance not a question.
Quoting NOS4A2
Simply in that someone might make the very same marks as part of, say, a random scribble - thumping on the keyboard, perhaps - and hence, not intending to elicit a response, not have asked a question.
If you don't want to call is [I]causal[/I] it still seems like you'd need to explain the counterfactual. How does B fail to occur without A, and when A occurs, B follows from it through a chain of consequences, but A cannot be said to cause B?
Even if you want to allow for some form of libertarian free will, it seems like it simply cannot be the case that other people's words or other communicative acts never "put things in mind," or motivate action. If you want to call this special case something other than cause, fine, but in virtue of what is it special? More to the point, even if words don't "cause" acts, it seems like their relationship to acts still has to fulfill pretty much all the characteristics of naive conceptions of cause (i.e., counter factual analysis, no B without A; A leads to a chain of events that causes B, etc.). Else, people leaving a crowded theater after someone screams "fire" is incomprehensible.
If people's words can never "put things in mind," for others, then communication seems completely impossible and doing philosophy is pointless. We are all hermetically sealed in our own minds and no matter what we do we cannot "put things from our mind, into others." But clearly there has to be some sense in which this is not the case, and at least parts of the process, sound waves propagation, ear drum vibration, etc. would appear to follow all normal causal laws. The question would be, when do we hit the sui generis "cause-like-but-not-cause" phenomena and why is it different?
It is. The dictator who only orders executions indirectly is a better example, since they not only simply speak these orders, but they don't even speak them to the people who carry them out. Are they free from blame?
I'll allow that the law might not be a good reflection of true responsibility, but it is certainly the case that:
A. In the US, if you coerce or negotiate in order to get someone else to commit a murder, you can be found guilty of murder. People who are the "buyer" in "murder-for-hire," plots are often convicted of murder in the first degree (as are the murderers, both are responsible). I think this gets the blame mostly right, as without the plotter there is no murder.
B. Coercion or deception can be partially mitigating or completely mitigating, and it depends on the prosecution or jury to determine guilt. I would maintain that even a Texas jury is not going to find a three year old who shot their mother guilty if it is the case that the father manipulated the three year old and told them to point the gun at the mother and pull the trigger. In this case, the father's act is not limited to criminal negligence in handing a child a loaded firearm, but something far worse in using words to instruct them to fire the weapon at the other parent, whereas the child lacks the capability to adequately think through the consequences of actions "put into their mind," by the father.
Likewise, someone who tricks someone into poisoning someone else by telling them cyanide is medicine, etc. is responsible for the murder, not the person who thinks they are mixing up some harmless medicine for their patient to take.
If deception can't shift responsibility then most instances of fraud could never be crimes because they only involve persuasion and not coercion. If words cannot cause people to act, then I don't see how we can prosecute fraudsters for tricking senior citizens into sending them cash by posing as their family members. After all, the fraudsters words, sent over the phone, could never cause the deceived to send the money. But this seems unreasonable.
It can't be just intent. If this was the case, some random basement dwelling Chud posting on the Internet about the need to "exterminate the Jews," would be as guilty of "genocide" as top Nazi officials. I would maintain that one cannot have a genocide without murders. We might agree with states that have harsher hate speech laws, that the Internet troll has committed [I]a[/I] crime, but it hardly seems that they have committed the [I]same[/I] crime. Even the harshest hate crime law advocates do not say we should hang people for urging genocide, and yet even people who don't want any hate crime laws see hanging Nazi officials who oversaw the Holocaust as completely justified.
Social context matters. Screaming fire in your home with no one around differs from screaming fire in a crowded theater, and the difference lies precisely in what could reasonably be expected to be the causal fall out from the same act placed in different contexts. Muttering "someone should kill X," as a person no one takes seriously is different from being King Henry III and declaring: "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Understand. I guess, as an empirical consideration, sure, that may not have happened otherwise - but there's no reason why it couldn't. Perhaps that doesn't do anything for you - for me, its a fairly stark difference between a truly proximate cause and something which contributed to the event in question. I may be triffling here but I always find it hard to conclude a cause without some very clear, fairly exclusive, reason for the act being caused by whatever is in question. Here, I don't see it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Im unsure your description is all that accurate. The act itself arises from the mentation of the subject, not the causal train of physically receiving whatever information we're talking about. The empirical causal relationship between lets say utterance in A and thought B cannot be rightly extended to the act, imo. Im unsure i need to answer the question above here.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree. But motivation is not a cause on my account. Its an invitation or inspiration. I don't think anyone would claim that Kant's CPR was caused by Hume. I distinguish between something being 'put in mind' and an act being 'caused'. It seems you're not? Sorry if i've got that wrong - if i've not got it wrong, it would explain some of the daylight here.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
A better example might be promissory estoppel. If its reasonable that someone(B) acted in good faith pursuant to a purported commitment from (A) which was then either ignored or disregarded entirely, it's held that if the commitment caused B to do something (think: promise to buy/sell property where B takes that as commitment and sells their property in order to buy A's property). Here, a law takes your definition of 'cause' wholesale, so I must concede my use of law to defend my point was at best inconsistently applied. That said, I do think there's a significant difference between an 'act' in general and an 'act' as against another person.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
With this I would agree, and just rest on my emphasis within the above. I think the idea that a fully indirect act, from which there is no connection to the act save for the subject's interpretation, is a proximate cause, is just plainly wrong. No one can reasonably claim that GTA causes similar types of crime as shown in the game, despite someone claiming it did. You'd say no, you're culpable by the fact of your actually having carried out a guilty act. The game has nothing to do, per se, with that act.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes. My understanding of both how those laws are written (cross-jurisdictionally) and the case law around them is that it is purely the intent (which matters later) that the person is being charged for. It is not the act of murder. It is the setting-in-motion a chain of events. It does not mitigate the actor's guilt. I am not all that up on US law though, so if you can provide a caase where someone is plainly convicted of 1st Degree Murder, but hte actor isn't, Id be happy to retract all this. I just can't see that ever happening. They both have the mens rea but their actus reus differ. If i'm wrong, i'm wrong.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Important, but a truly held belief that what you did wouldn't cause the consequence in question is a defense to almost any charge. Including rape, which is pertinent here as its an act against another for whom your mindstate has zero mitigating effect. But, if you can successfully argue that you thought there was consent, you're good to go basically.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I believe this is inducement, by deception, and not 'murder', which is the act of killing someone unlawfully. Again, I could be wrong as i'm not across US law fully. Which speaks to what Im saying - it didn't cause the death, it induced someone to cause the death.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is entirely wrong to me. At what point has some internet Chud had any part in a Holocaust? If you can point to one, we will have a discussion about the two cases. Otherwise, this isn't relevant. Internet Chuds get fined and arrested for their intentions regularly (at least in places with Digital communication regulations). Their intent, and not their act, is an actus reus of its own. Going further to the act would be another actus reus for a different charge. If they knew they had some real-world minions carrying it out, they would be. Osama bin Laden is in this camp., but he was cave-dwelling. You seem to note this, but don't note its consequences for the position..
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Agreed, but there's a significant difference between adults and children when it comes to culpability, either morally (on almost anyone's account) or legally. Im unsure what this is doing for either side of the discussion. I think a better example would be one between two adults - the second adult is not somehow less culpable because they were told to shoot. That just isn't a move available to them unless they are mentally impaired - which is equivalent, by degree, to being a minor in the law's eye.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Disagree with the former and the latter just seems to be a emotional position on either party's part. The holocaust was a genocide, so I think they're confused to distinguish too strictly. The Holocaust isn't sufficiently different from genocide as either a definition, or an historical concept, to be held apart imo. Just an extreme example of.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree here, but it would have us speaking on an entirely case-by-case basis which I don't think either of positions can result in.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
in the intended fall out. Not the actual fall out. If you yell Fire in a crowded theater, but are mistaken, you are not culpable since you believed there was a fire. The resulting fracas and potentially injuries are not on your head, if you truly believed there was a fire.
Such a reluctance should be equally applied to a claim that all is caused by the choices of a single individual.
Quoting AmadeusD
If it turns out that the calling out of fire served another purpose, that other purpose will be an intention to consider. That is the basis of Tort law in the U.S.
Unsure I get what you're saying in the first response. Your choice and your act aren't separable. I've made room for inspiration and incitement, which are in some sense both covered by different laws of liability that those which apply to an actor.
On the second, torts require either intention or negligence. Being convinced of an incorrect fact wouldn't raise a claim to that level, I don't think. But, more to the point, I didn't involve any other purpose.
The person was merely honestly mistaken. The results are the same, and no other purpose has been fulfilled. They are not liable as it was neither intended, or a result of negligence.
In saying "choice and your act aren't separable" are you agreeing with the thesis of the OP that the actor is ultimately the only "cause" that matters? That seems to be an important criterion when separating incitement from action.
In regard to being "honestly mistaken", how far can that logic be applied when the actor expresses a clear goal in the aftermath? The line between reporting a perception and creating one.
I think he plays, purposefully for the sake of playing... an agent provocateur. He cannot believe everything he writes.
Kant did.
This may speak to where i highlight 'naive conceptions of cause' earlier in Timothy's reply.
I see nothing in Kant which does this, rather I see much that says Kant took Hume to have caused his 'awakening' or more importantly 'discomfort' or 'repulsion' at his conclusions. The cause of the CPR was Kant's need to solve the problem. If you feel there's something from Kant that shows he left off hte middle man in that, please do show me! In this case, I think 'cause' being a few steps behind the proximate cause removes from it that title.
The SEP article on Action was updated recently and addresses many of these issues. I have quite a bit of sympathy for Davidson's view (from Anscombe, mentioned above), that flicking the switch, turning on the light and alerting the burglar (a by now standard example) is one act, with several descriptions. But that is about theory of action, not so much speech acts. There is much overlap, of course, but as I've argued, it doesn't seem to mater much if the locution and illocution are seen as one act or two; but that what is of import is the distinction between content and force.
Quoting creativesoul
Maybe. If it gets a few more folk to learn a bit of philosophy of language it might be for the greater good.
A: I promise to pay you back
B: I told @NOS4A2 "I promise to pay you back", that sucker believed me!
A and B are doing very different things with the utterance "I promise to pay you back", even though the mechanical act is identical. The question "is it one act or two?" is kind of irrelevant. What is important is that these two things, locution and illocution, are distinguished.
The mechanical act is not identical because the act of writing B takes longer than writing A. More letters and punctuation is used.
Its becoming more and more clear that people are searching for acts in the text and not in the actor. Philosophy of language in a nutshell: the philosopher drifts from a clear and plain view of the human being into the muddled pursuit of sifting through his expressions.
Hume's influence on the academic/philosophical/scientific community at the time caused Kant to awaken from dogmatic slumber. He said as much himself in the forward, or at the beginning of the CPR...
Right?
:yikes:
:point:
Yeah, for that reason the emphasis in speech act theory is usually the utterance, not the sentence. But the point holds.
Quoting NOS4A2
That's not correct.
Here it is again, set out so the actor is clear:
NOS4A2 pressed buttons on a keyboard (if that is what you indeed did)
NOS4A2 made marks on a screen
NOS4A2 made a sequence of letters
NOS4A2 wrote "Any advice?"
NOS4A2 asked a question
NOS4A2 asked for advice
NOS4A2 elicited responses from Banno and others
NOS4A2 did things with words.
Which of these is false?
But the act of saying/typing "I promise to pay you back" is identical in both cases.
I'm not suggesting 'everyone is wrong' i'm suggesting tthis is being described inaccurately, 'this', being hte difference between inspiration and cause. And I understand these are sloppy, underthought and are likely to be wrong. Just trying to be clear when it's not being quite nailed in criticisms.
May I suggest Davidson's Anomolous Monism or his paper in the early 70's or late 60's, "Mental Events" which has a very basic argument, undeniable really, that you may find of interest. It's quite germane to this topic.
A thoguht that struck me to address the OP's actually questions though:
Consider Sean Carroll on stage, providing data/information and eliciting 'WOW!" from some audience members (none of these discreet events matter, particularly).
He is, all at the same time:
Speaking;
Informing;
Performing; and
if taken to an extreme, and related to some previous discussion eliciting certain, lets say, involuntary responses to his speech.
Are all of these acts rolled into the one act?
I would argue against the last one because I performed no action worthy of the verb, and no one in particular was the direct object of my act. I simply put it out there. Your response and the response of others are the direct result of listening acts, your reading and so on. As for the rest, none of them are false.
I took some time away from reading the thread to illustrate how your act elicit has become separated from you. You elicited an answer days ago but your force never had any effect, intended or otherwise, until days later, when it would finally spring into action. A perlocution of this sort could occur over a millennia.
But if I were to film myself responding to your question, and if we were to observe this film rather than sifting through the actors byproducts, I think wed have to admit that I was just plunking away on the keyboard. The other acts you describe become visible only when we analyze the text, and by then we are no longer observing the actor.
This?
Ok, then if you accept the rest, you accept that we sometimes do things with words?
Seems to me you are reading to much in to "elicited responses". I would not have written this unless you had posted; that's all that we need in order to say you elicited this reply.
Cheers.
When he brings up counterfactuals, he is correct. Without Hume there would have been no CPR. Two points of attention is that counterfactuals still rely on regularity, like Hume. And that there are causes that are not counterfactuals, such as "Maria throwing a rock caused the window to break", but without Mary throwing the rock, Dimitris would have thrown his. So without Maria throwing her rock, the window still would have broken. So it seems that causes are necessary, while counterfactuals are sufficient.
I like this podcast to learn about different theories of causation: https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/nature-causation
This is the worst piece of reasoning ive seen along this line. "if but for" is not the same as 'cause'. Without Aristotle, there would be CPR either.
Wonder when the pin will drop..
Well, yes, that is how the (bare-bones) counterfactual theory of causation (CFTF) works.
No, because no syllogism has been made. Yes, as I expounded in the post before. No.
How so? Counterfactual analysis is probably single biggest tool used in the philosophy of causation. If Aristotle never writes anything, it is clear that our world would be quite different, due to innumerable small changes across the ages. It's not even clear if there would be a Kant or a Prussia. More directly, if Kant never read Aristotle and was never introduced to his ideas, it seems reasonable to assume his thought would have been quite different. What are the chances that Kant derives Aristotle's exact categories for judgement had he not already been using those categories because of Aristotle?
So where is the absence of any causal link?
Is the objection that reading Hume or Aristotle didn't necessitate Kant's work? That's certainly true, but there is a useful distinction between "x uniquely determines y," and "x plays a causal role in y." No one cigarette is going to "cause" lung disease, but years of smoking would seem to, each playing a causal role.
Animals evolving to survive on land didn't uniquely specify the invention of cars, but it seems to be a necessary precondition for their invention. That everything can be causally traced back to the begining of the universe per prevailing physics is sometimes raised as an objection to the entire concept of causation, but I don't think this really holds water.
The difference on display:
I did something with a keyboard. I can watch myself do this. Rather, you did something with the words. You read them. This appears to be the only thing were doing with words.
But then the dilemma: if you could go back in time and kill baby Hegel, would you?
Interesting.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, and as seems standard around these parts, no one's noticing that, as is standard in philosophical discourse, I am parsing phrases and using words in manners that make them make sense instead of less-sensible ways they've been used before - and I cop to that, given this isn't a piece of academic writing. But, I notice others doing this all the time and respond as such, so Im not sure what's missing fro my writing that prevents others from noticing this. The term 'cause' doesn't make sense if it also includes distant influences, and not proximate causes only.
Hume (the Treatise, particularly) is/was necessary, but not sufficient, as a cause for the CPR - would be my position here, and I can't use the word 'cause' to represent something which it doesn't represent, to my mind. If others are using it that way, my position is they are hurting themselves by doing so. I don't understand repeatedly using words in ways that make them impossible to adequately use in detailed discussions. These are personal, developing methods of interacting with these ideas. I see an issue - i address it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is the opposite of a reasonable enquiry. Show me one? Given my previous explanation of why i'm still using 'cause' here, I imagine this isn't a reasonable request. But that's the point. It cannot be shown.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Oh, yes, I absolutely agree, and this is largely the reason im rejecting some uses of 'cause'. 'a cause', to me, is a discreet and necessarily traceable relationship. That can't be done adequately for 'causal influence' for eg. It is inferred or assumed loosely (or, when you're actually told by the source that X was a distance influence on work II), whereas a 'cause' is (read: should be, under my use) capable of immediate recognition given, essentially, two pieces of information (the purported cause, and the purported effect per se coupled with their spatio-temporal relationship per se (i.e "Did it occur before, or after?").
I do not find this to be quibbling, either. The distinction you make is baked into my use of the word. I haven't got an adequate singular for 'distant causal influence' on foot, though. Perhaps this is just a needed refinement.
The flaw in "listening acts" is that ulterior motives can still be present, so people can provide a visible "act," but the implications may not truly be known to the subject, so there would be other acts that are not seen. In other words, an "act" may be perceived as genuine, with the implications seemingly clear; however, there is deceit being seeded into this act - this is common in the works of a Machiavellian. Frankly, this is not necessarily a flaw in "listening acts" itself, but more so in the nature of the manipulator. Although, the way that language has evolved and is regulated during the time of writing this easily allows deceit to elicit more "acts".
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live.
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And their posts are hard to forgive.
This is how I roughly read you: There are no words. You do things with a keyboard. Now there are words. Now other people can do things with words.
I think a lot of miscommunication here might arise from careless handling of the type/token distinction. Speech Act theory, I'm fairly certain, assumes that uttering the word "cat" produces a token "cat" of the type "cat". "How to Do Things with Words" includes both type and token, as without tokens we can't have types, and without types we wouldn't have tokens.
Word count: "The cat sat on the mat." Type-count: 5, Token count: 6
For example, if I were to count how many times the word "word" occured in this post, I'd be assuming that the word "word" is a word indepently of any words that actually occur in this post. To produce a token count of "word" I need to know how to identify a token of "word". For example, I must know that "ward" isn't a variant of the type. I must have, in my brain somewhere if you will, knowledge about the type "word". I could count a word that doesn't occur in this post and come up with a token count of zero, but I can't give an example in example in this post, because I'd be using a word token to do and thus disqualify it in the process. I've just thought of a word whose token count (in this post) is zero. I'll make another reply in a moment to reveal the word.
The word that doesn't appear in above post, and whose token count is zero, is "armadillo". While typing the above post I did something with the word "armadillo" without typing the word "armadillo". What I did wasn't actually count the word. What I did was "thinking of an example of a word I didn't use." I produced a token of the type in my head, which none of you can verify.
I apologise for the double post. It's partly a joke, but part of me thinks the double post was necessary to make a point. You can do things with words without actually creating an artifact associated with it (naturally occuring brain activity suffices). And I had to make a double post for reasons stated in my above post.
It's still silly, though, for me to do this.
Which implies that you have not asked questions, made statements, extracted responses, provided answers and so on.
Which is a bit odd.
Only imagining an act as like a physical movement comes from the desire to insert the question of intentionality. But you dont even make a movement an act; raising your arm is judged to be waiving down a taxi, or signaling a question. Thus , the possibility of something being multiple different acts (even, as raising your arm).
First though, Austin does not normally limit himself to acts of speech; including thinking, understanding, etc. Speech acts are not anything special and here are just examples of other things that words can do than just be: true or false. He wants to show that we (philosophers especially) minimize the world to things we know, things we can be certain about (true or false), as we imagine we can be certain of our intention, creating the seeming primacy of physical movement.
However, for example: claiming a truth and making a promise both accomplish something. One proposes something to be true, the other makes a commitment.Yes, a proposition is stated by me, but my intention is only occasionally relevant (as clarifying, not a casual necessity), though the particulars of time, place, and the audience (maybe) may matter. More universally, what I say ties me to the judgment others can make of it, and of me through it (so we are observing the actor not just sifting through expressions). Similarly, the important part in me making a promise is that its me that answers for it when its due.
Third, a promise is meaningful to us in the same way claiming truth is, which means: a promise has its worth as what it is (differentiated from other relations between us) by criteria that necessarily, essentially, make it (judged as) what a promise is. As truth is right or wrong, a promise is binding or not, and fulfilled or reneged on. Also, a promise does have truth value: in the integrity of its criteria; either something fits into the criteria of a promise, or it is not a promise (its an aspiration).
Having criteria different than certainty (or physicality, or intention) does not make promising less of an act. What makes up both exists outside of, and before, us. The important part is not that the words are the consequence of me. The way it works is that I submit myself to (or avoid) the responsibility for, and the consequences of, what my acts are judged as.
This means, unfortunately that political discussion can no longer be had with most politicians in public.
Thanks for the input.
But the premise of doing things with words still stands out as mistaken wherever it is mostly focused on the so-called acts of the speaker, especially given that communication more often than not involves those who are faced with his utterances. It seems to me we're missing out on myriad acts of a listener: what to do with the utterance, how to understand it, read it, consider it, judge it, respond to it, and so on. Austin himself spends an inordinate amount of time doing this, considering utterances, what they might mean, and how one might respond to them. These acts, such as they are, can be explicated in both physical terms and using Austin's nomenclature of "doing things with words", whereas expressing the words seems far less consequential, even inconsequential, given the physics and biology of these interactions and behaviors.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot
The Greeks had a word for those who consistently engaged in fallacy, and it wasnt philosopher.
The citations in Wikipedia come down to one source, that noted resource for etymology, the Australian Journal of Political Science, which is paywalled.
But even if not quite true, it ought be. After all, by your own account, you have not made any statements here. Only thumped your keyboard.
Seems similar to the use of 'vulgar' in 18/19C philosophy.
Yes, private persons, the unskilled, laymen and those unconcerned with the state are all idiots. Theres that concern for our commonality revealing itself for what it really is.
Yes, not at all dissimilar.
not my fault. You elicited the response. The force and content animated me.
I'm sorry, Nos, I genuinely have been unable to follow what it is you see as problematic, nor have I been able to make sense of your account.
I agree that an act (especially speech) involves not only me, and that that condition is not appreciated enough by philosophy. But he is not focused on what we physically do, nor translating anything into physical terms, as if what happens in the body matters in our considering something a threat or a promise. Again, we are not talking about actions, but participating in activities, accomplishing their execution. That there are actions, even speech, in a practice, does not mean that describing how the actions happen explicates our practices. The acts of saying something is not a breakdown of how saying works, it is how words are deemed to have achieved something, like a statement or an apologyand in this sense, doing something.
He is describing how these activities, acts, work (or fail)at all. I do not, for example, intend acts, I conduct them (though some do require deliberateness). I may do my best to make a good (or sufficient) act (say, apology) but whether I do is judged by whether my offering meets the criteria (requirements for identity, completion, failure, etc.) inherent in the living practice of seeking forgiveness. These threshold conditions, measures, mechanics, etc., are the external, the codification of the judgment of others (even to myself); they are the consequences thereafter that Austin refers to as separate from the physical (e.g., the illocution, the saying). So the occurrence of the other understanding what we say is also a matter of judgment, whether they exhibit what is considered important in being understood in that case, which you actually partly draw out in saying how one takes the words, uses them, and applies them in his conduct . This is a demonstration and expression that we understand because these are what understanding consists of.
You are referring, presumably, to the Sophists. Aristotle did criticize their use of logical fallacy but also their misapplication of theory and account to the subject being investigated. Thus observations like the following:
Quoting Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1094b
In the case of your thesis, the subject is unavailable to the reader, a Chesire Cat, grinning derisively from a branch above.
If I were religious I would reference the Lord dealing with the uppity builders of the tower of Babel.
Even if its only making noise.
Here, doing nothing with words.
Oh dear, words did that to you!
For a hyperindividualist like Nosferatu, this is unintelligible.
From his pespective, he didn't do anything, nor did the words he typed do anything; you chose to reply; or well, you replied (somehow, whether by choice or not).
(He does yet have to make his language fully consistent with his hyperindividualism, though.)
There are two extremes: One is the Skinnerian the-human-as-a-blackbox, stimulus-reaction kind of thinking ("He made me do it, I'm innocent"). The other is "stimulus is irrelevant; it's all up to what a person chooses to do with it" ("Nobody can make you do anything").
Most people typically reside somewhere inbetween.
So how is believing that there is no society working out for you?
Quite well. Now I concern myself with the rights of flesh-and-blood human beings rather than for the rights of the abstract concepts in my head.
Framing it that way reminds me of Margaret Thatcher's saying, "society does not exist, only people and their families do." How does one separate such a bold claim of bourgeois supremacy over the functions of the state from the pre-linguistic space where the Sovereign Individual runs its cattle unfettered by the demands others? After all, they use many of the same words.
The word "right" is interesting because it expresses a direct or straight quality as an adjective: "Right on time", for instance. When the term is used as "rights of individuals", the use is all about the boundary between the prerogatives of a common interest and what an individual can preserve against such interests.
The thesis of the OP borrows from that latter use to deny the existence of what gave context for it.
Suppose you are standing with someone from the Middle East and you notice a man looking towards the two of you. The man flashes the sign, " :up: ". You, being an American, assume that the man is expressing approval; you smile back. The person from the Middle East assumes the man is insulting them; they glare back.
Now the man "performed one visible act, did one measurable thing," but the two people interpreted his act in different ways. If it is safe to assume that one of the two interpretations is correct, and the incorrect interpretation is not stupid, then the visible gesture taken in itself does not explain what the man was doing or communicating. The man was using his hand to communicate, and he was assuming that the two of you had a preconceived notion of what that particular gesture meant. That's how signs work, including words. To make use of a sign is to use a sensible reality to communicate with others. The sign only has meaning because of an implicit agreement between the communicators, and the same sensible reality can have a different meaning in different contexts.
A stock example in the linguistic sphere would be the Spanish speaker who knows a smattering of English and needs a prescription filled while traveling in an English-speaking country. She finds the words on the label, "Take once daily," dutifully consumes 11 pills on the first day, and dies of overdose. A lawsuit may follow, and the intent and meaning behind those markings, "o-n-c-e," will become the object of scrutiny. The single sensible reality has many possible meanings.
Thanks for the explication.
I would add that the meaning is found in the people of your examples, and that any possible meanings of signs is in direct proportion to their language, insofar as they understand it. This would account for the differing interpretations of the same sign.
But I still hold that the intentions and assumptions of the speaker the do not leave the speakers body and travel in the signs to be conveyed to some listener. The listener is faced with the sign only, and it is up to him to provide it some with meaning. The act of understanding a sign, considering it, giving it meaning, and so on, are very important acts in this exchange and I think they have been largely ignored (as far as I know), at least as it pertains to Speech Act Theory.
Well, it seems to me that the speaker is trying to communicate something to the listener, and the listener is trying to understand something from the speaker, so that both are contributing towards communication. Would you agree with that?
I would agree, but wouldn't this intimate that there are two separate acts taking place, that don't necessarily require each other for pertinence? For example, If i am yelling across a crowd at someone to elicit some action (come to me, go get X, leave this place etc.. ) but they cannot hear me, only one side of the exchange actually obtains, yet my speech act seems to cover off all its requirements to be an act of Speech.
In the converse, I often times "hear" my wife say something specific, that she hasn't said. My brain has filled in based on some previously noted house-bound noises, that my wife was talking, and in fact calculated what she's likely to be saying. OFten, it transpires she was about it - but in fact hasn't - made a speech act - yet my side of the exchange obtains regardless.
I've not gotten in to this discussion much, so hopefully this isn't entirely pedestrian or uncouth.
Your speech act doesn't cover all of its requirements under speech act theory. There are two possibilities I see here:
You yell across the crowd at someone. They're unaware of you, and since they don't hear you, they remain unaware. The perlocutionary force as intended by the illocution fizzles out. No effect at all. The speech act remains incomplete.
You yell acroos the crowd at someone. They're aware of you, but can't hear you. Maybe they yell back, "what?" (and you can't hear them either, but you're able to guess based on visual cues). In that case the perlocutionary force doesn't bring you the expected effect, which makes the illocution unsuccessful.
In both cases, what's complete is the utterance.
Note that I have no idea if actual adherents of Speech Act theory would agree to my interpretation here. But an act in an actual situation can be re-defined, like when you accidentally insult someone and apologise. By the time you apologise you acknowledge that your speech act was an insult (or you're going through the motions); you didn't intend to make an insult. Conversly, you might intend an insult but your interlocutor doesn't notice. Double down on the insult, or try to hide you intended one?
Typical speech acts are ideals and might be useful in analysing real-life situation.
So:
Quoting AmadeusD
So, yes, here you have a speech act you can describe in detail according to the theory, but once you find out that your wife hasn't spoken, all that description does is tell you which specific speech act didn't take place.
If you're going to use Speech Act Theory to analyse empirical situations, you'll need a theory how ideal-type speech acts relate to real speech acts. (Above statements imply some sort of theory, but I haven't quite worked it out - I just supply a potential analysis.)
A speech act has actually three components; a speaker, a hearer, and a set of rules that both of them expect the other to know. Those rules have no existence independent of the speaker/hearer, and needn't be the same for the speaker and hearer. They just have to be compatible to a high-enough degree to let situations in which speech acts occurs unravel to the satisfaction of either participant.
A non-linguistic example would be buying and selling. If you sell something, that implies that someone else bought something. It's a feature of the buying-selling transaction. Selling can't complete without buying also completing, and buying can't commence unless selling also commences. Speech acts aren't always like this, but they often are:
"Telling someone about something," isn't complete unless the hearer receives the information, for example. (The relevant technical term, I believe, is Felicity Conditions: the conditions a speech act needs to meet to be completed.)
I don't think I would use the word "pertinence." If a speaker knows that someone is not listening, then he will not speak; and if a listener knows that someone is not speaking,* then he will not listen. So at the very least the purpose of either act fails without the other.
* For example, if someone begins lecturing, or mumbling, or shifts into a mode of monologue that is not directed at their interlocutor in any relevant way. Or if someone is pondering out loud and another person begins to interact with their speech, they may say, "Oh, never mind that, I was just thinking out loud. I wasn't talking to you." So apparently here there is a difference between using vocal words and addressing someone, where the words may or may not be addressed to another.
[hide="Reveal"]Incidentally, I once had to work with an office full of women, and I quickly learned that the speech of women can be very complex. In the first place there are many more silent listeners than one anticipates, and over time this changes the nature of the locutions in the office (just as someone speaking into a microphone speaks differently than someone who is whispering). In the second place the locutions are crafted with an eye to who is within earshot. For example, when a "private conversation" is overhead it is often because the parties wish it to be overheard, and in extreme cases the speech is not at all directed to the person who it appears to be directed to.[/hide]
Indeed, from other posts by the OP, I kept in mind that he thinks that society does not exist, in the Thatcherian sense.
This is relevant, because one's political and sociological outlook will also shape one's theory of communication. For a (neo)liberal hyperindividualist, when two people appear to direct utterances at eachother, something else is going on than what a more traditionalist person might think goes on in such a situation. Examples of this abound in the way the OP talks about or explains the charges against Trump in the Trump thread.
No, they have not been ignored; if anything, they have been taken for granted, on account of taking for granted that people do not exist in a vacuum and that communication is not a solipsistic enterprise.
Various theories of communication assume that communicators have a shared cultural and linguistic foundation, and that they have a concept of this shared foundation.
You, on the other hand, appear to be interested in an (hyper)individualistic theory of communication in which no such assumption as above is made.
But things have changed. We are now living in the modern age of hyperindividualism and practical solipsism.
Its more of a pluralist or nominalist account of communication, and in my mind possesses less self-interest and solipsism than your own theory because your universals and general ideas cannot be found anywhere else on earth beyond the factory that is your own imagination.
That these acts can be reduced to the very people who perform them does not suggest some hyper-individualism, whatever that means, but a consideration of all parties involved in communication, including those who arent even speaking. Unlike the concern for the social, or communities of communicators, and other things forever trapped in the body of he who thinks about them, we can actually look outside ourselves for once and point to an individual person.
The question is how individual(istic) can a person be, given that they do not live in a vacuum.
No. I am not going to waste my time trying to communicate with those who do not wish to communicate. When there is no honesty, language is meaningless. Have you not noticed?
Its only trivially-true until it hurts us politically, then its trivially-false.
Silence has power. Others can only rule because we take their nonsense seriously out of habit. We have a huge advantage if we can communicate and they can only bullshit.
Only if one already has power.
Who cares if I'm silent?
I dont get it either. The worst it could do is put in doubt the metaphysics of those who think in crowds.
Who cares if you're not?