Online research in philosophy

Zusammenfassung Mit „propensity meint Popper die Neigung oder Tendenz einer Versuchsanordnung ein bestimmtes Versuchsergebnis zu produzieren. Sie wird durch die Wahrscheinlichkeit des Ergebnisses gemessen oder ist sogar mit ihr identisch. Zunächst hatte er behauptet, jeder Wahrscheinlichkeitskalkül lasse sich als Axiomatisierung sowohl der Theorie subjektiver Wahrscheinlichkeiten als auch der propensity-Theorie der Wahrscheinlichkeit interpretieren. Ohne diese Position ausdrücklich aufzugeben hat er nun einen Kalkül vorgelegt, der die einzig adäquate Axiomatisierung der propensity-Theorie darstellen soll. Seine Postulate widersprechen aber nicht nur allen herkömmlichen Wahrscheinlichkeitskalkülen. Da die meisten seiner Axiome gleichzeitig für die logische Wahrscheinlichkeit von Sätzen gelten sollen und da er ausdrücklich bestimmte Zusammenhänge zwischen logischer Wahrscheinlichkeit und propensity postuliert, ist seine Axiomatisierung auch inkonsistent, zumal selbst seine Axiome für die logische Wahrscheinlichkeit mit den herkömmlichen Kalkülen logischer Wahrscheinlichkeit nicht vereinbar sind.

Rae Langton and Jennifer Hornsby argue that there may be a free-speech argument against pornography, if pornographic speech has the power to illocutionarily silence women: women's locution ‘No!’ that aims to refuse unwanted sex may misfire because pornography creates communicative conditions where the locution does not count as a refusal. Central to this is the view that women's speech lacks uptake, which is necessary for illocutionary acts like that of refusal. Alexander Bird has critiqued this view by arguing that uptake is not necessary for the illocutionary act of refusal. The Hornsby-Langton view, then, is philosophically indefensible. Here I defend the philosophical cogency of the Hornsby-Langton approach.

It has become standard for feminist philosophers of language to analyze Catherine MacKinnon's claim in terms of speech act theory. Backed by the Austinian observation that speech can do things and the legal claim that pornography is speech, the claim is that the speech acts performed by means of pornography silence women. This turns upon the notion of illocutionary silencing, or disablement. In this paper I observe that the focus by feminist philosophers of language on the failure to achieve uptake for illocutionary acts serves to group together different kinds of illocutionary silencing which function in very different ways.

In this paper, illocutionary acts of commanding will be differentiated from perlocutionary acts that affect preferences of addressees in a new dynamic logic which combines the preference upgrade introduced in DEUL (dynamic epistemic upgrade logic) by van Benthem and Liu with the deontic update introduced in ECL II (eliminative command logic II) by Yamada. The resulting logic will incorporate J. L. Austin’s distinction between illocutionary acts as acts having mere conventional effects and perlocutionary acts as acts having real effects upon attitudes and actions of agents, and help us understand why saying so can make it so in explicit performative utterances. We will also discuss how acts of commanding give rise to so-called “deontic dilemmas” and how we can accommodate most deontic dilemmas without triggering so-called “deontic explosion”.

As is shown in the introduction of the book, the notion "illocutionary act" is used with quite a number of essentially different meanings; consequently, it is quite unclear what an "illocutionary act" is actually supposed to be. This problem is the starting point of the thesis. An argument is stated, to the effect that the introduction and use of scholarly terms like, for instance, "illocutionary act", or "performative sentence", is not entirely arbitrary. It is argued that technical terms should not be re-defined without a reason, but in the absence of reasons to the contrary should be used in the way in which they have originally been introduced. This argument is applied to the notion "illocutionary act". John L. Austin is the one who introduced this notion. Consequently, his conception of these acts should be adopted unless there are good reasons to the contrary. Therefore the book provides a detailed analysis of Austin's account, and his original conception of these acts is reconstructed. The most popular alternative account of "illocutionary acts" is John R. Searle's. Therefore, secondly, the book provides an analysis of Searle's famous account of "illocutionary acts" - the first really detailed one available, including Searle's own work. It is shown that what Searle presents is in fact extremely sketchy, and can certainly not be viewed, as it often is, as an elaborated theory. It is further argued that the fundamental assumptions about language which Searle intends to illustrate with his account of "illocutionary acts" are mistaken, so that in general a theory following the lines Searle suggests is doomed to failure. Finally it is shown that Searle's account of "illocutionary acts", as far as it goes, is not an adequate adoption of the conception Austin introduced. Hence Searle's account is no reasonable alternative to Austin's account.

Wenn es aber Wirklichkeitssinn gibt, und niemand wird bezweifeln, daß er seine Daseinsberechtigung hat, dann muß es auch etwas geben, das man Möglichkeitssinn nennen kann. Wer ihn besitzt, sagt beispielsweise nicht: Hier ist dies oder das geschehen, wird geschehen, muß geschehen; sondern er erfindet: Hier könnte, sollte oder müßte geschehn; und wenn man ihm von irgend etwas erklärt, daß es so sei, wie es sei, dann denkt er: Nun, es könnte wahrscheinlich auch anders sein. So ließe sich der Möglichkeitssinn geradezu als die Fähigkeit definieren, alles, was ebensogut sein könnte, zu denken und das, was ist, nicht wichtiger zu nehmen als das, was nicht ist.

Abstract: A psychologically plausible analysis of the way we assign illocutionary forces to utterances is formulated using a 'contextualist' analysis of what is said. The account offered makes use of J. L. Austin's distinction between phatic acts (sentence meaning), locutionary acts (contextually determined what is said), illocutionary acts, and perolocutionary acts. In order to avoid the conflation between illocutionary and perlocutionary levels, assertive, directive and commissive illocutionary forces are defined in terms of inferential potential with respect to the common ground. Illocutionary forces are conceived as automatic but optional components of the process of interpretation.

Rae Langton and Jennifer Hornsby have argued that pornography might create a climate whereby a woman’s ability to refuse sex is literally silenced or removed. Their central argument is that a failure of ‘uptake’ of the woman’s intention means that the illocutionary speech act of refusal has not taken place. In this paper, I challenge the claims from the Austinian philosophy of language which feature in this argument. I argue that uptake is not in general required for illocution, nor is it required for refusal in particular. I conclude with remarks on the relationship between illocutionary and perlocutionary speech-acts.

It is often assumed that Paul Grice, in one way or another, has made an important contribution to the theory of speech acts} Grice, as far as I can see, never expressly addresses Austin’s theory in his published work. He hardly ever uses the speech act terminology of "illocution", "perlocution", etc.2 So what does the more or less implicit Gricean contribution to the theory of speech acts consist in'? There is more than one good answer to this question. I shall concentrate on a particularly influential one, which goes back to Strawson (1964). It says that Austin, in his account of the nature of illocutionary acts, over-emphasized the role of conventions; that Austin went wrong in characterizing illocutionary acts as acts which are essentially conventional. The Gricean contribution to speech act theory, according to the envisaged answer, is twofold, both diagnostic and therapeutic. First, it helps us see where and why Austin went wrong in taking illocutionary acts to be essentially conventional. Second, it suggests an essentially intentional — instead of an essentially conventional- element in illocutionary acts. In his 1964 paper Strawson tried to bring out, as regards the interplay of convention and intention in illocutionary acts, both what can be conceded to Austin and what must be learnt from Grice. Austin (1962: 115) had said that "the performance of an illocutionaiy act involves the securing of uptake". Strawson (1964: 158 ff) interprets Austin as meani_ng to say that the performance of an illocutionary act involves understanding of illocutionary force. Understanding of illocutionary force involves, according to Strawson, grasping a "compleX [speaker’s] intention" (ib.: 160), and it is here, of course, where he brings Gricean ideas into _Austin’s scheme of what the essence of illocution is. He says.