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 ...

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

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)

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)

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)

Die Hauptthese dieses Buches ist es, Krankheit und Gesundheit mit Nietzsche auf zwei verschiedenen Ebenen zu denken, nämlich als Ereignisse des Willens zur Macht in einem zirkulär-relationalen Modell, in dem sie sich gegenseitig behaupten, sowie die Metaebene der Konzeptualisierung anzuerkennen. Es behandelt die Schwierigkeit des begrifflichen Denkens, diese Ereignisse einzuholen, und diskutiert kritisch Modellbildungen, die darauf hinauslaufen, dass Krankheit zu überwinden und als lineares singuläres Ereignis zu verstehen sei. In Nietzsches Spätwerk wird die Figur des "dionysischen Künstlers" als Idealisierung der (...) Gesundheit gemäß seiner interpretierenden Sichtweise der Welt dargestellt. Die Relevanz des Buches liegt darin, eine Analyse der Begriffe von Gesundheit und Krankheit (tragischer und schlechter Pessimismus) in direkter Beziehung zu leiblichen Vorgängen vorzulegen, die sich von metaphysisch-dialektischen Voraussetzungen befreit. Zu diesem Zweck widmet die Untersuchung sich einer intertextuellen Lektüre der fünf Vorreden, die Nietzsche 1886/87 zu seinen früheren Schriften verfasste, und verknüpft sie mit der Interpretation des Nachlasses und weiterer Veröffentlichungen aus seiner letzten Schaffensphase. (shrink)

This handbook presents the conceptions and principles central to every aspect of Hegel’s systematic philosophy. In twenty-eight thematically linked chapters by leading international experts, The Palgrave Hegel Handbook provides reliable, scholarly overviews of each subject, illuminates the main issues and debates, and details concisely the considered views of each contributor. Recent scholarship challenges traditional, largely anti-Kantian, readings of Hegel, focusing instead on Hegel’s appropriation of Kantian epistemology to reconcile idealism with the rejection of foundationalism, coherentism and skepticism. Focused like Kant (...) on showing how fundamental unities underlie the profusion of apparently independent events, Hegel argued that reality is rationally structured, so that its systematic structure is manifest to our properly informed thought. Accordingly, this handbook re-assesses Hegel’s philosophical aims, methods and achievements, and re-evaluates many aspects of Hegel’s enduring philosophical contributions, ranging from metaphysics, epistemology, and dialectic, to moral and political philosophy and philosophy of history. Each chapter, and The Palgrave Hegel Handbook as a whole, provides an informed, authoritative understanding of each aspect of Hegel’s philosophy. (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)

Canguilhem’s contemporary relevance lies in how he critiques the relation between knowledge and life that underlies Kantian rationality. The latter’s Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgment represent life in the form of an exception: life is simultaneously included and excluded from understanding. Canguilhem’s critique can be grouped into three main strands of argument. First, his reference to concepts as preserved problems breaks with Kant’s idea of concepts regarding the living as a ‘unification of the manifold’. Second, Canguilhem’s vital (...) normativity represents life as the potential to resist normative orders that judge the living, relegating Kant’s ‘lawfulness of the contingent’ to a ‘mediocre regularity’. Third, Canguilhem’s introduction of the environment as a ‘category of contemporary thought’ decentres the living/knowing subject and introduces contingency. His idea of the ‘knowledge of life’ leads to the conclusion that life is the condition of possibility of rationality, rather than rationality’s ‘blind spot’. (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)

We offer a new account of the role of values in theory choice that captures a temporal dimension to the values themselves. We argue that non-epistemic values sometimes serve as “inquiry tickets,” justifying scientists’ pursuit of certain questions in the short run, while the answers to those questions mitigate transient underdetermination in the long run. Our account of inquiry tickets shows that the role of non-epistemic values need not be restricted to belief or acceptance in order to be relevant to (...) hypothesis choice: the relevance of non-epistemic values to a particular cognitive attitude with respect to h vary over time. (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)

What, if anything, do the ‘square’ protests and ‘occupy’ movements of 2011 bring to contemporary democratic theory? And how can we, as political theorists, analyse their discourse and do justice to it? We address these questions through an analysis of the Greek and Spanish protest movements of the spring and summer of 2011, the so-called aganaktismenoi and indignados. We trace the centrality of the critique of representation and politics as usual as well as the ideas about horizontality and autonomy in (...) the protesters’ discourse. These ideas are not only important to their critique of the contemporary liberal democratic regimes in the two countries, but also important to the way in which the protesters organise themselves. Nonetheless, as we shall argue, the protesters are caught within a tension between horizontality and verticality, between autonomy and hegemony, or between moving beyond representation and accepting representational structures. Given this tension, we examine how the protesters negotiate it in three key areas: politics, representation and organisation. Drawing on Jacques Rancière, we further argue that the protesters can be seen as making a claim to equal voice. This is what Rancière refers to as politics proper, and the question is then whether such a politics is possible without falling back into traditional forms of politics. (shrink)

Phantasmagoria explores ideas of spirit and soul since the Enlightenment; it traces metaphors that have traditionally conveyed the presence of immaterial forces, and reveals how such pagan and Christian imagery about ethereal beings are embedded in a logic of the imagination, clothing spirits in the languages of air, clouds, light and shadow, glass, and ether itself. Moving from Wax to Film, the book also discusses key questions of imagination and cognition, and probes the perceived distinctions between fantasy and deception; it (...) uncovers a host of spirit forms--angels, ghosts, fairies, revenants, and zombies--that are still actively present in contemporary culture. It reveals how their transformations over time illuminate changing ideas about the self. Phantasmagoria also tells the accompanying story about the means used to communicate such ideas, and relates how the new technologies of the Victorian era were applied to figuring the invisible and the impalpable, and how magic lanterns (the phantasmagoria shows themselves), radio, photography and then moving pictures spread ideas about spirit forces. As the story unfolds, the book features the many eminent men and women--scientists and philosophers--who in the Society of Psychical Research applied their considerable energies to the question of other worlds and other states of mind: they staged trance seances in which mediums produced spirit phenomena, including ectoplasm. The book shows how this often embarrassing story connects with some of the important scientific discoveries of a fertile age, in psychology and physics. Over a sequence of twenty-eight chapters, with over thirty illustrations in color and black and white, Phantasmagoria thus tells an unexpected and often uncomfortable story about shifts in thought about consciousness and the individual person, from the first public waxworks portraits at the end of the eighteenth century to stories of hauntings, possession, and loss of self as in the case of the zombie, a popular figure of soulessness, in modern times. (shrink)

The philosopher Lev Shestov aimed to establish a new free way of thinking, which manifested itself as a struggle against the delusion that we have a rational grasp of the necessary truths on matters that are of the greatest importance to us, such as the questions of life and death. Philosophy, as the Russian philosopher understood it, is not pure thinking, but ‘some kind of inner doing, inner regeneration, or second birth’ (Shestov in Lektsii po Istorii Grecheskoi Filosofii [Lectures on (...) the history of Greek philosophy], YMCA-PRESS, Moscow, 2001, p. 53). Having adopted the notion of the ‘regeneration of one’s convictions’ from Dostoevsky’s vocabulary in his earlier works, Shestov developed the idea of ‘awakening’ further in his mature thought, in which the motif of ‘awakening’ comprised one of the main ideas of his philosophy: the fight for the individual’s right to freedom and to creative transformation at a time when she is in despair or on the brink of death. In this article, I analyse Shestov’s idea of ‘awakening’ as one of the key tropes and developmental characteristics of his philosophical vision. In particular, I argue that, having stemmed from Shestov’s earlier interpretations of Dostoevsky, Shakespeare and Plotinus, in his later writings, the notion of ‘awakening’—the possibility of a fundamental, inner transformation of one’s worldview (probuzhdenie, pererozhdenie)—marked the beginning of a new salvific mode in his writing. (shrink)

New technology develops with little attention to its impact upon human values. In particular, let us do what we can in this era of “the computer revolution” to see that computer technology advances human values. True enough, we could argue endlessly over the meanings of terms like “privacy,” “health,” “security,” “fairness,” or “ownership.” Philosophers do it all the time – and ought to. But people understand such values well enough to desire and even to treasure them. We do not need (...) absolute clarity or unattainable unanimity before we do anything to advance them. Professional groups are both technical and moral communities because in order to be self-regulatory the members must set shared goals and specify appropriate ways to achieve them. In order to specify these appropriatestandards it is necessary to detail what types of behavior are ethically acceptable or not. The three most important functions of a code, he notes, identify different types of codes. Codes are either primarily (1) aspirational, giving ideals to strive for, (2) educational, intending to educate or socialize some constituency, or (3) regulatory, hoping to sanction violations of the standards. Most codes are intended to achieve all three aims to some degree, but a careful examination may reveal a concentration upon one of these. Advancements in computer technology over the past twenty years have created ethical dilemmas, some similar toother professions and some unique to the computer field. Because of the questions that have been raised, and in some instances sensational news accounts of computer irregularities, including fraud, there is a growing perception that self-regulation may be the only means by which the computer professional associations will prevent governments from intervening to regulate the computer profession. (shrink)

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study examines the curvilinear relationship between harmonious and obsessive work passion and organizational citizenship behavior as well as the moderating effect of collectivistic values. Using 233 paired supervisor-employee responses from Russia, I found that harmonious work passion and OCB are positively related up to a point, after which higher levels of harmonious work passion are associated with declining OCB. The main curvilinear effect of obsessive work passion on OCB was not significant. Collectivistic values (...) were found to significantly interact with obsessive work passion but not harmonious work passion in the way they affect OCB. Employees who score high on collectivistic values tend to engage more in OCB than those who score low on collectivistic values. Interestingly, at low levels of collectivism, the inverted U-shaped curve illustrates the relations between obsessive passion and OCB changes into a U-shaped curve, suggesting that the highest engagement in OCB will no longer be observed at intermediate levels of obsessive work passion but rather at its lowest and highest levels. The findings contribute to work passion research and suggest that curvilinear rather than linear relationships may exist between work passion and work outcomes, which may account for the existing inconsistencies in the previous studies in regards to whether work passion-outcomes relationships are either positive or negative. (shrink)

A founding figure of German idealism, Johann Gottlieb Fichte developed a radically new version of transcendental idealism. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Fichte follows his intellectual life and presents a comprehensive overview of Fichte's dynamic philosophy, from his engagement with Kant to his rigorously systematic and nuanced Wissenschaftslehre and beyond. Covering a variety of topics and issues in epistemology, ontology, moral and political philosophy, as well as philosophy of right and philosophy of religion, an international team of experts on Fichte explores (...) his important contributions to philosophy. Arranged chronologically, their chapters map Fichte's intellectual and philosophical development and the progression of his thought, identifying what motivated his philosophical inquiry and revealing why his ideas continue to shape discussions today. Alongside wide-ranging chapters advancing new insights into Fichte, there are topical discussions of conceptions and issues central to his philosophy. Featuring a chronology of Fichte's life, as well as a timeline of his publications and lectures, this is an invaluable research resource for all Fichte scholars and a reliable guide for anyone undertaking a study of Fichte and German idealism. (shrink)