Whose Uptake Matters? Sexual Refusal and the Ethics of Uptake

Philosophical Quarterly (2024)
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Abstract

What role does audience uptake play in determining whether a speaker refuses or consents to sex? Proponents of constitution theories of uptake argue that which speech act someone performs is largely determined by their addressee’s uptake. However, this appears to entail a troubling result: a speaker might be made to perform a speech act of sexual consent against her will. In response, we develop a social constitution theory of uptake. We argue that addressee uptake can constitute a speaker’s utterance of ‘no’ as a speech act of consent under some conditions, but that this does not prevent us from judging that an addressee committed rape. Second, we claim that addressee uptake is not the only form of uptake that matters—the uptake of other members of the discursive community matters too, and can override the addressee’s uptake, constituting the speaker’s utterance as the speech act it was intended to be.

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Author Profiles

Rebecca E. Harrison
State University of New York at Binghamton
Kai Tanter
University of Melbourne

Citations of this work

Uptake and refusal.Quill R. Kukla - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language.John Searle - 1969 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 4 (1):59-61.
Speech acts and unspeakable acts.Rae Langton - 1993 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (4):293-330.
Yes Means Yes: Consent as Communication.Tom Dougherty - 2015 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 43 (3):224-253.

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