This book collects seventeen essays published between 1984 and 2020, in which Marina Sbisà develops her distinctive approach to speech acts and related pragmatic phenomena. Drawing inspiration from the work of J. L. Austin, the essays examine the categories of speech act theory and apply these categories in the context of natural discourse and conversation, with the aim of providing an accurate analysis of how speech can be action. Sbisà devotes particular attention to normative aspects of language (...) and language use: speech acts reshape the normative context in which they occur by assigning or unassigning deontic properties to relevant parties. Emphasis is placed on the normative aspect of linguistically mandated presuppositions as well as the rational grounds of implicature. The conventionalist view of speech acts developed here turns on the role of intersubjective agreement in deontic updating, in a framework that shifts focus from single utterances to discursive sequences and conversational interaction. This view challenges the main tenets of a Gricean intentionalist understanding of speech act performance, paving the way for a theory of speech actions centred on the normatively transformative power of illocution. Throughout the essays, examples and applications are given to illustrate how the view put forward contributes to understanding the social and political dimensions of linguistic activity, such as hidden persuasive strategies, power imbalances both within and outside the context of conversation, and the relevance of language and discourse to gender issues. (shrink)

Uptake and Conventionality in Illocution The aim of this paper is to put forward a new way of conceiving of the conventionality of illocutionary acts, grounded in a new look at Austin's original ideas. While the indispensability of uptake has correctly been deemed to be a hallmark of illocution, it has also been taken as evidence of the intention-based nature of illocutionary acts as opposed to their alleged conventionality. After discussing the readings of the "securing of uptake" offered by Strawson (...) and Searle and commenting on the consequently established divide between "communicative" and conventional speech acts, I claim that illocutionary acts are conventional, first of all, because they have conventional effects. I show that Austin took such effects to be essential to illocution and argue that the bringing about of conventional effects is bound up with the indispensability of uptake. (shrink)

This paper argues for a reorientation of speech act theory towards an Austin-inspired conception of speech acts as context-changing social actions. After an overview of the role assigned to context by Austin, Searle, and other authors in pragmatics, it is argued that the context of a speech act should be considered as constructed as opposed to merely given, limited as opposed to extensible in any direction, and objective as opposed to cognitive. The compatibility of such claims with each other is (...) discussed. Finally, the context-changing role of speech acts is analyzed differentiating between the illocutionary and the perlocutionary dimension. (shrink)

The received picture of rationality, nowadays in trouble, is contrasted with the "argumentative" conception, inspired by Paul Grice's proposal to define rationality as an agent's desire that his or her moves are supported by reasons and a capacity to satisfy that desire at least to some extent. Some implications of the argumentative conception of rationality are unfolded: it involves a first-person perspective, requires criteria for the attribution of the capacity to justify one's moves, and allows for failures to behave or (...) think rationally. Attribution of argumentative rationality to a human being does not follow from final evidence, but , coincides with the acknowledgement of personhood, which in turn, being at least to some extent a matter of choice, is revealed to be an ethical task. So the argumentative conception of rationality may help us see why it still make sense to think of man as a rational being. (shrink)

Austin rejected the objectification of “meanings” and was also critical of the identification of meaning with truth-conditions. Much of his work appears to be inspired by a conception of meaning as use. In particular, apparently at least, his “performative utterances” are utterances whose understanding amounts to the understanding of their use. But Austin did not endorse the tendency, common in Ordinary Language Philosophy, to explain the meaning of linguistic expressions in terms of their use alone. His distinction between locutionary meaning (...) and illocutionary force was designed to avoid such a reduction. But it is unclear whether speech act theory can escape paying the price of a new objectification of meaning. (shrink)

Introduction Marina Sbisà University of Trieste 1. Pragmatics and philosophy It is well known that pragmatics – like many branches of the social and even ...

The aim of this paper is to explore the status of argumentative discourse. We argue that argumentation can contribute to instances of different discourse genres, regardless of whether it is functional to their purposes. By analyzing examples from the daily press in the light of an approach to discourse analysis inspired by pragmatics, we show that also texts that are not expected to be argumentative have underlying argumentative structures and that a text’s being argumentative is a matter of degree: the (...) understanding of underlying argumentative structures contributes to a varying extent to the understanding of what a text as a whole means and of its point in the speech situation. This role of argumentative structures in text understanding suggests considering argumentation as a cognitively-based dimension of discourse, connected to human rationality. (shrink)

In this closing chapter, Marina Sbisà replies to the volume’s contributors, while clarifying important aspects of her deontic model of speech actions.

On the one hand, Austin appreciates truth as the aim not only of science, but also of philosophy. On the other hand, truth in his works is demythized, contextualized, or even relativized. I analyze this ambivalence by considering some aspects of Austin’s thought which may appear close to pragmatism: his claims that the bearer of truth is assertion as a speech act, that speech acts are to be assessed as felicitous and infelicitous before being assessed as true or false, and (...) that the truth/falsity judgment is concerned with assertions in their contexts, including the participants’ goals and knowledge. These claims are, however, argued for in full coherence with a corrispondentist conception of truth. At a closer examination, Austin’s conception of truth appears to be an independent, “heretic” development of that of Frege. In taking distance from Frege, albeit on a Fregean basis, Austin went some length in the direction in which pragmatists too had gone, without actually sharing any properly pragmatist assumption. (shrink)

Considering data concerning the underrepresentation of women in philosophy, I reflect on how it is that discrimination of individuals or of categories of people can take place in this discipline, and on what approaches can be adopted to analyse and contrast the discrimination of women in particular. I consider Louise Antony’s distinction between two different approaches: “Different Voices”, according to which women are discriminated in philosophy because of their difference, and “Perfect Storm”, according to which such discrimination is caused by (...) a combination of independent factors. Accepting Antony’s criticism of the Different Voices approach, I offer a few considerations that hope to supplement the Perfect Storm approach by showing how the factors that combine to cause the discrimination of women in philosophy are interconnected. In so doing, I discuss the normative role of gender stereotypes, the role of care-giving in society and its place in our value system, and women’s difficult path towards the indispensable condition of being autonomous subjects and agents. (shrink)

This paper argues that understanding speech in terms of action requires dispensing with propositions. Austin's outline of speech act theory did not give any role to propositions, which were introduced into speech act theory later on, in order to cope with criticism leveled by Strawson and Searle at Austin's characterization of the locutionary act and his view of the truth/falsity assessment. The introduction of propositions had weakening effects on the claim that speech is action, foregrounding again the received picture of (...) linguistic communication. I show that, in order to make sense of Austin's characterization of the locutionary act, propositions are not needed and give some suggestions as to how one could give an account of the truth/falsity assessment, compatible with the claim that speech is action, without resorting to propositions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the status of argumentative discourse. We argue that argumentation can contribute to instances of different discourse genres, regardless of whether it is functional to their purposes. By analyzing examples from the daily press in the light of an approach to discourse analysis inspired by pragmatics, we show that also texts that are not expected to be argumentative have underlying argumentative structures and that a text’s being argumentative is a matter of degree: the (...) understanding of underlying argumentative structures contributes to a varying extent to the understanding of what a text as a whole means and of its point in the speech situation. This role of argumentative structures in text understanding suggests considering argumentation as a cognitively-based dimension of discourse, connected to human rationality. (shrink)

White lies, lies that are beneficial to the addressee and uttered out of concern for them, are pervasive in daily life. This raises a prima facie question: if white lies are so common, are they still lies? I tackle this question from the perspective of speech act theory, using the case of white lies to shed light on the broader question of whether lying itself can be considered a type of speech act. Adopting Sbisà’s (Uptake and Conventionality in Illocution. (...) Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 5 33–52. Reprinted in Marina Sbisà (forthcoming), Essays on Speech Acts and Other Topics in Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) neo-Austinian approach that places the emphasis on the achievement of certain conventional effects, I claim that malicious lying cannot be a type of speech act. However, white lies are a type of speech act, a claim which finds support in three types of evidence: the conventionality of means by which white lies are performed, their online processing, and their acquisition. Moreover, the existence of a continuum between white (harmless) lies (which are a type of speech act) and malicious (harmful) lies (which are not) suggests that whether an utterance performs a certain type of speech act or not can be a matter of degree. In other words, the property itself of being a speech act of a certain kind, an utterance’s speech-act-hood, so to speak, may be graded. This is an interesting result, which applies to speech acts more generally, beyond lying. (shrink)

The chapter aims to provide the theoretical background that is necessary to understand the research questions addressed by the chapters in this collection. We identify and discuss the key claims grounding Sbisà’s deontic approach to speech actions, while locating her contribution within the broader literature on speech acts and their nature. In particular, we focus on her distinctive Austinian-inspired understanding of the conventionality of illocutionary acts, their core effects, and the role of presupposition accommodation in force assignment. We close (...) with an outline of the collection’s structure and contents. (shrink)

The volume provides a thorough look into Marina Sbisà’s distinctive, Austinian-inspired approach to speech acts. By gathering original essays from a world-class lineup of philosophers of language, linguists, social epistemologists, action theorists, and communication scholars, the collection provides the first comprehensive critical treatment of Sbisa’s outstanding contribution to speech act theory.

Midway through How to Do Things With Words, J.L. Austin’s announces a “fresh start” in his efforts to characterize the ways in which speech is action, and introduces a new conceptual framework from the one he has been using up to that point. Against a common reading that portrays this move as simply abandoning the framework so far developed, Marina Sbisà contends that the text takes the argumentative form of a proof by contradiction, such that the initial framework (...) plays an instrumental role as part of a proof in favour of the subsequent one. Despite agreeing with Sbisà’s broad instrumentalist approach, we argue that her regimentation of Austin’s narrative into a proof by contradiction ultimately fails - both as a proof and as an interpretation of Austin. Instead, we suggest that a better way of interpreting the peculiar structure of How to Do Things With Words is as a pedagogical exercise whose point is to bring a concealed alternative into view in a manner that also explains its initial concealment, and that this approach provides richer resources for supporting Sbisà’s own conventionalist understanding of illocution than that afforded by reading the text as a proof by contradiction. (shrink)

This paper explores the reception of Kant's understanding of consciousness by both Romantics and Idealists from 1785 to 1799, and traces its impact on the theory of religion. I first look at Kant's understanding of consciousness as developed in the first Critique, and then looks at how figures such as Fichte, Jacobi, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schleiermacher received this theory of consciousness and its implications for their understanding of religion.

Sigmund Freud sah die Anziehungskraft christlich-religiöser „Illusionen“ in der möglichen Aussöhnung des Menschen mit dem Tod begründet. Heute hat die moderne Industriegesellschaft die Religion jedoch weitestgehend hinter sich gelassen, die Vorstellungen von Tod und Sterben haben sich gewandelt. Marina Brandes untersucht, wie, in welchem Alter, an welchen Orten und unter welchen Umständen heute im Vergleich zu vormodernen Epochen normalerweise gestorben wird. Sie zeigt, welche Assoziationen mit dem Tod verknüpft sind und entwickelt vor dem Hintergrund der Medizinalisierung, der Institutionalisierung des (...) Sterbens und der Ausgrenzung der Sterbenden, Perspektiven für ein versöhntes, gutes Sterben. (shrink)

In his book, 'History as a Science and the System of the Sciences', Thomas Seebohm articulates the view that history can serve to mediate between the sciences of explanation and the sciences of interpretation, that is, between the natural sciences and the human sciences. Among other things, Seebohm analyzes history from a phenomenological perspective to reveal the material foundations of the historical human sciences in the lifeworld. As a preliminary to his analyses, Seebohm examines the formal and material presuppositions of (...) phenomenological epistemology, as well as the emergence of the human sciences and the traditional distinctions and divisions that are made between the natural and the human sciences. -/- As part of this examination, Seebohm devotes a section to discussing Husserl’s formal mereology because he understands that a reflective analysis of the foundations of the historical sciences requires a reflective analysis of the objects of the historical sciences, that is, of concrete organic wholes (i.e., social groups) and of their parts. Seebohm concludes that Husserl’s mereological ontology needs to be altered with regard to the historical sciences because the relations between organic wholes and their parts are not summative relations. Seebohm’s conclusion is relevant for the issue of the reducibility of organic wholes such as social groups to their parts and for the issue of the reducibility of the historical sciences to the lower-order sciences, that is, to the sciences concerned with lower-order ontologies. -/- In this paper, I propose to extend Seebohm’s conclusion to the ontology of chemical wholes as object of quantum chemistry and to argue that Husserl’s formal mereology is descriptively inadequate for this regional ontology as well. This may seem surprising at first, since the objects studied by quantum chemists are not organic wholes. However, my discussion of atoms and molecules as they are understood in quantum chemistry will show that Husserl’s classical summative and extensional mereology does not accurately capture the relations between chemical wholes and their parts. This conclusion is relevant for the question of the reducibility of chemical wholes to their parts and of the reducibility of chemistry to physics, issues that have been of central importance within the philosophy of chemistry for the past several decades. (shrink)

While the philosophical study of shame has gained popularity, its application in the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible remains in its early stages. This paper delves into an analysis of shaming and unreasonable shame in the Book of Job, particularly in chapter 19. Through an examination of the Hebrew text and drawing on contemporary philosophical definitions of shame and shaming, I argue that Job perceives his friends, God, and the community to be employing shaming tactics against him, attempting to induce (...) feelings of shame, a sentiment Job considers unjustified. In his case, shame is deemed unreasonable because Job has not violated any cherished values that would warrant such an emotion. Additionally, I demonstrate that while Job senses God shaming him, the biblical character acknowledges that his deity is the sole entity aware of his innocence—God's eyes perceive accurately, in contrast to humans', which only assess outward appearances. The role of God as the perfect witness to Job's life is fulfilled in the epilogue of the book, where Yahweh vindicates Job from the shame he has endured by publicly denouncing the serious faults of his friends. (shrink)

Marina McCoy explores Plato's treatment of the rhetoric of philosophers and sophists through a thematic treatment of six different Platonic dialogues, including Apology, Protagoras, Gorgias, Republic, Sophist, and Phaedras. She argues that Plato presents the philosopher and the sophist as difficult to distinguish, insofar as both use rhetoric as part of their arguments. Plato does not present philosophy as rhetoric-free, but rather shows that rhetoric is an integral part of philosophy. However, the philosopher and the sophist are distinguished by (...) the philosopher's love of the forms as the ultimate objects of desire. It is this love of the forms that informs the philosopher's rhetoric, which he uses to lead his partner to better understand his deepest desires. McCoy's work is of interest to philosophers, classicists, and communications specialists alike in its careful yet comprehensive treatment of philosophy, sophistry, and rhetoric as portrayed through the drama of the dialogues. (shrink)

¿Recuerdas la última promesa que has hecho o te han hecho? Así comienza este ensayo en el que Marina Garcés explora el concepto de promesa. Vivimos en una sociedad aterrada por el futuro, obsesionada por predecir y proyectar, controlar y planificar. Pero ¿quién se atreve hoy a prometer algo? Este libro nos ofrece las claves históricas, filosóficas y literarias del poder de la promesa y de su actual fragilidad. Prometer, nos dice la autora, puede ser una forma de rebelión (...) que introduzca la batalla por el valor de la palabra en un presente incierto y un futuro amenazado. Un texto incisivo y esperanzador. (shrink)

'Marina G. Ogden offers a competitive and comprehensive outlook of the prominent Russian thinker Lev Shestov. This valuable book, based on the archive sources, provides a good historical background for Shestov's investigations which is very important for the better understanding not only Russian religious thought, but also Western philosophy of the twentieth century.'- Professor Teresa Obolevitch, The Pontifical University of John Paul II, Krakow 'The pioneering Russian existentialist Lev Shestov influenced Camus, Bataille, Celan and many others. In this absorbing (...) study, Marina G. Ogden shows how his "parable" of the many-eyed Angel of Death anticipates much recent thinking about trauma and its effect in setting a life on a unique and sometimes creative path.'- David M. Black, the author of Why Things Matter: The place of values in science, psychoanalysis and religion At the beginning of the twentieth century the Russian émigré philosopher Lev Shestov (1866-1938) challenged traditional philosophical norms and brought the individual experience of the anxiety of death to the forefront of philosophical investigation. Based on new research and translations of Shestov's unpublished manuscripts, notes and correspondence, this book analyses the thoughts of one of the most influential thinkers of the past century in an interdisciplinary context. While uncovering the roots of the philosopher's existential position, the author traces Shestov's 'wandering through souls' of the world's most significant philosophers and writers within the context of a historical and biographical narrative, offering a close reading of his thinking in its chronological progression. A new interpretation of Shestov's philosophy, this comparative and hermeneutical analysis focuses on the thinker's continual search for meaning on the question of human mortality. Bringing together up-to-date research findings in Russian, English and French, an evolutionary analysis of the key notions in Shestov's philosophy the problems of truth, revelation, faith and death - is carried out in conjunction with the ideas of such pivotal figures in Western culture as Fyodor Dostoevsky, William James, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, Martin Buber and Sigmund Freud. (shrink)

This paper explores three important criticisms of Kant's ethics by Friedrich Schleiermacher, all having to do with Kant's alleged failure to account for the value of the individual. These are: (1) Kant's formalism precludes him from specifying ends for the will, and without such ends, the moral perfection of the individual, and the genuine appreciation of the other in his or her individuality cannot become my end; (2) Kant cannot provide an adequate metaphysical grounding of the value of the individuals (...) comprising a community; (3) Kant cannot give an account of why members of a community should value the individual qua individual in relation to the community. In this paper I discuss these criticisms and their validity in detail. I show that understood properly, Kant has the resources to answer Schleiermacher's first criticism, and I show how Schleiermacher's own system sought to avoid the second and third problems. (shrink)

We explore different ways in which the human visual system can adapt for perceiving and categorizing the environment. There are various accounts of supervised (categorical) and unsupervised perceptual learning, and different perspectives on the functional relationship between perception and categorization. We suggest that common experimental designs are insufficient to differentiate between hypothesized perceptual learning mechanisms and reveal their possible interplay. We propose a relatively underutilized way of studying potential categorical effects on perception, and we test the predictions of different perceptual (...) learning models using a two‐dimensional, interleaved categorization‐plus‐reconstruction task. We find evidence that the human visual system adapts its encodings to the feature structure of the environment, uses categorical expectations for robust reconstruction, allocates encoding resources with respect to categorization utility, and adapts to prevent miscategorizations. (shrink)

Criticism is a staple of the scientific enterprise and of the social epistemology of science. Philosophical discussions of criticism have traditionally focused on its roles in relation to objectivity, confirmation, and theory choice. However, attention to criticism and to criticizability should also inform our thinking about scientific pursuits: the allocation of resources with the aim of developing scientific tools and ideas. In this paper, we offer an account of scientific pursuitworthiness which takes criticizability as its starting point. We call this (...) the apokritic model of pursuit. Its core ideas are that pursuits are practices governed by norms for asking and answering questions, and that criticism arises from the breach of these norms. We illustrate and advertise our approach using examples from institutional grant review, neuroscience, and sociology. We show that the apokritic model can unify several indices of criticizability, that it can account for the importance of criticizing pursuits in scientific practice, and that it can offer ameliorative advice to erstwhile pursuers. (shrink)

Marina Swat nutzt die sozialpädagogische Theorie der Lebensbewältigung, um die Handlungsfähigkeit jugendlicher Leistungssportler*innen differenziert zu analysieren. Ausgangspunkt dazu ist die Beobachtung, dass die sportlichen Karrieren der Jugendlichen entweder als besonders ‚wertvolle‘ Ressource im Lebenslauf betrachtet wird, die auch positive Effekte im Hinblick auf das Leben nach dem Leistungssport hat oder als Risiko für deren Lebenslauf, weil damit eine umfassende Orientierung am Leistungssport einhergeht und andere Teilbereiche des Lebenslaufs (z.B. Bildung) nachrangig werden. Im Ergebnis zeigen sich Spannungsmomente und Herausforderungen ebenso (...) deutlich wie die Gestaltungsspielräume, die sich in dieser Lebenswelt ergeben. (shrink)

In Italien war die Rezeption von Jürgen Habermas über die Jahrzehnte konstant; bibliographischen Daten zufolge steht Italien nach Deutschland und den USA an dritter Stelle. Dennoch lautet unsere These, dass das Forschungsprogramm von Habermas in der italienischen scientific community marginal war – insofern ist im soziologischen Sinne Pierre Bourdieus eher von einem akademisch-wissenschaftlichen »Feld« zu sprechen, da es bezogen auf die Habermas-Rezeption keine Homogenität und Identität gibt.