Negotiation and deliberation are two context types or genres of discourse widely studied in the argumentation literature. Within the pragma-dialectical framework, they have been characterised in terms of the conventions constraining the use of argumentative discourse in each of them. Thanks to these descriptions, it has become possible to analyse the arguers’ strategic manoeuvres and carry out more systematic, context-sensitive evaluations of argumentative discussions. However, one issue that still must be addressed in the pragma-dialectical theory—and other contextual approaches to argumentation—is (...) how to distinguish negotiation and deliberation in practice. In this paper, I seek to develop criteria that can help the analyst identify them in discourse. To this end, I characterise the felicity conditions of the superordinate speech acts defining and structuring deliberation and negotiation encounters. (shrink)

I argue that the debates over which norm constitutes assertion can be abandoned by challenging the three main motivations for a constitutive norm. The first motivation is the alleged analogy between language and games. The second motivation is the intuition that some assertions are worthy of criticism. The third is the discursive responsibilities incurred by asserting. I demonstrate that none of these offer good reasons to believe in a constitutive norm of assertion, as such a norm is understood in the (...) literature. Others who have made similar arguments conclude that assertion does not exist at all—that there is no such thing as assertion. I disagree: we do not have to relinquish the category of assertion just because it is not normatively constituted. There are alternative ways to understand and individuate assertion that do not rely on a constitutive norm. (shrink)

In this paper I describe three kinds of mansplaining, “well, actually” mansplaining, straw-mansplaining, and speech act–confusion mansplaining. While these three kinds have much in common, I focus on speech act–confusion mansplaining and offer a speech act theoretic account of what goes wrong when people mansplain in this way. In cases of speech act–confusion mansplaining, the target of the mansplaining is not able to do what she wants with her words. Her conversational contribution is taken to have a different force than (...) the force she intends. This contributes to women’s discursive disablement and to the restriction of women’s participation in epistemically relevant exchanges. (shrink)

Suppose I make an utterance, intending it to be a command. You don’t take it to be one. Must one of us be wrong? In other words, must each utterance have, at most, one illocutionary force? Current debates over the constitutive norm of assertion and over illocutionary silencing, tend to assume that the answer is yes—that each utterance must be either an assertion, or a command, or a question, but not more than one of these. While I think that this (...) assumption is intuitive, I will argue in this paper that it is not sustainable. I’ll argue that this assumption makes it hard to explain what determines illocutionary force in a consistent and non-ad hoc way. I will demonstrate this is not fatal for the notion of illocutionary force writ large by offering some alternatives. (shrink)

This paper uses the resources of illocutionary logic to provide a new understanding of the Liar Paradox. In the system of illocutionary logic of the paper, denials are irreducible counterparts of assertions; denial does not in every case amount to the same as the assertion of the negation of the statement that is denied. Both a Liar statement, (a) Statement (a) is not true, and the statement which it negates can correctly be denied; neither can correctly be asserted. A Liar (...) statement, more precisely, an attempted Liar statement, fails to fulfill conditions essential to statements, but no linguistic rules are violated by the attempt. Ordinary language, our ordinary practice of using language, is not inconsistent or incoherent because of the Liar. We are committed to deny Liars, but not to accept or assert them. This understanding of the Liar Paradox and its sources cannot be fully accommodated in a conventional logical system, which fails to mark the distinction between sentences/statements and illocutionary acts of accepting, rejecting, and supposing statements. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a brief overview of the development of analytic philosophy in the Philippines. I first highlight the circumstances that led to its inception in the late 1930s, and some of the notable works by prominent Filipino analytic philosophers that helped shape the tradition. Next, I discuss the socio-political climate in the late 1950s through the 1970s that may have led some Filipino philosophers to move away from analytic philosophy. Finally, I explore some signs of its re-emergence (...) in the late twentieth century and its possible trajectories in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

The constituents of social entities (and of social continuants in particular) determine whether or not a social thing comes to be, persists and perishes. John Searle hints at two very different accounts for the persistence of social entities, a mere past related account and an acceptance theoretic account, whereas Margaret Gilbert's account is based on deontic entities like obligations or joint commitments. I demonstrate that Gilbert's account can also accommodate Searle's examples. While oblivion, protests or violence can be historical causes (...) of the destruction of social entities, they cannot be considered to be the ultimate causes of the perishing from Gilbert's point of view. Social entities rather perish because of the treatises or divorces that dissolve their deontic constituents. (shrink)

In the article we present a model of communicative irony formulated within the framework of speech act theory. We claim that acts of verbal irony are special cases of phenomena that John L. Austin referred to as “etiolations of language”. After discussing the concept of communicative irony understood in the spirit of Mitchell S. Green’s expressive communication model, we propose to develop the Austinian idea of etiolation and show how cases of etiolative use of language parasitize the mechanisms of its (...) serious or ordinary applications. In particular, we argue that echoing and overt pretence are two etiolation techniques that allow the sender to express a negative attitude towards contextually available mental or linguistic representations. We also show that the proposed model allows the explanation of verbal forms of communicative irony. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to discuss the recent attempts by Professor John R. Searle to cast doubt on the traditional empiricist distinction between fact and value. Searle's first attack on this distinction was made in 1964 in his now classic article, “How to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’.” In that paper, he presented what he claimed to be a counter-example to the thesis that statements of fact may not entail statements of value. Searle's argument aroused much controversy and inspired many (...) attempted refutations, but Searle apparently found none of these convincing, for a few years later he published a revised version of his paper as the last chapter of his book, Speech Acts. The new version includes his replies to many of the objections which had been made to his thesis up to that time. It also includes, in the main body of the book, a theory of language which is supposed to provide the theoretical underpinning explaining why his original paper presents a genuine counter-example to the position he is attacking. It is the Speech Acts version of Searle's thesis which I want to consider here. (shrink)

The concept of a dialogue is considered in general terms from the standpoint of its referential presuppositions. The semantics of dialogue implies that dialogue participants must generally have a collective intentionality of agreed-upon references that is minimally sufficient for them to be able to disagree about other things, and ideally for outstanding disagreements to become clearer at successive stages of the dialogue. These points are detailed and illustrated in a fictional dialogue, in which precisely these kinds of referential confusions impede (...) progress in shared understanding. It is only through a continuous exchange of question and answer in this dialogue case study that the meanings of key terms and anaphorical references are disambiguated, and a relevantly complete collective intentionality of shared meaning between dialogue participants is achieved. The importance of a minimally shared referential semantics for the terms entering into reasoning and argument in dialogue contexts broadly construed cannot be over-estimated. Where to draw the line between referential agreement and disagreement within any chosen dialogue, as participants work toward better mutual understanding in clearing up referential incongruities, is sometimes among the dialogue’s main points of dispute. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe ideological and methodological oppositions that divide philosophy generally into realisms and idealisms, objectivisms and subjectivisms, also pervade aesthetic theory. The question arises whether there was beauty in the world prior to the emergence of intelligent perceivers like ourselves, or whether beauty itself comes into existence only through the perceptual idiosyncrasies with which we happen to encounter the objects we happen to consider beautiful. The experience of beauty and its opposites under this description can easily seem to be an altogether (...) subjective phenomenon, available at most only to those psychological subjects conditioned or predisposed to recognize certain features as possessing specific aesthetic properties. The article examines topics related to the intentionality of expression in art. Intention is often rejected as a basis for aesthetic judgment. The present discussion, by focusing on the role of perception in art production and appreciation, considers ways of addressing those objections to restore an intuitive sense of the intentional expressiveness of art. The proposed solution also helps uphold an approach toward answering the question of whether aesthetic value generally is only subjective or also has a distinctively objective element. (shrink)

Although the production and recognition of social actions have been central concerns for conversation analysis from the outset, it has recently been argued that CA is yet to develop a systematic analysis of ‘action formation’. As a partial remedy to this situation, John Heritage introduces ‘epistemic status’, which he claims is an unavoidable component of the production and recognition of social action. His proposal addresses the question how is social action produced and recognized? by reference to another question how is (...) relative knowledge recognized? Despite the importance placed on the latter question, it is not clear how it is to be answered in particular cases. We argue that the introduction of epistemic status builds on a reformulation of the action formation problem that unnecessarily de-emphasizes the importance of the sequential environment. Our re-analyses of key sequences cast doubts on the empirical grounding of the epistemic program, and question whether the fundamental role of epistemic status has been convincingly demonstrated. (shrink)

As the world economy has for better or worse become more and more dependent on the financial markets, a rethinking of the role of finance in both theory and practice is necessary. I argue that such a rethinking requires a new look at the theories of finance that is philosophical in kind. In effect, as Martha Nussbaum claims, if the absence of philosophy in economics is arguably one of the main reasons for the flaws in certain economic theories, the absence (...) of philosophy in finance is one the main reasons for the flaws in our theories on financial systems. In this paper I discuss the mutual relations and benefits between finance and philosophy. First, I examine the contribution that philosophy can offer to finance by analyzing a few critical issues in financial ontology, financial methodology and financial mathematics. I argue that philosophy is essential to enabling finance to achieve the goals for which it was designed, not only because it is a valuable external addition, but also internally, since philosophy is the proper tool for bringing about new theories and approaches. Then, I examine the contribution that finance can offer to philosophy by analyzing the relationship between theory and practice, data and hypothesis, and prediction, description and control in the context of financial systems. I argue that finance can help us to rethink some philosophical tenets on these issues. (shrink)

In order to account for the mode of existence of social rules and norms, the author develops a theory of the emergence of institutional facts. Just as other kinds of institutional fact, rules and norms are meanings. Therefore, insight into the emergence of social rules and norms can be achieved by studying the recognition and the communication of meanings. Following accounts of meaning and factuality, institutional facts are characterized as unquestionable shared typifications. It is argued that, in becoming an institutional (...) fact, a typification goes through two phases. First, it becomes a social habit. Second, this habit turns into an obligation by being objectified. (shrink)

This article discusses the “contextual turn” in the interpretation of Chinese classics: the contextuality of Confucian classics in China was latent, tacit, and almost imperceptible; however, it became salient and explicit once the Confucian classics were introduced to Tokugawa Japan. Many a Japanese Confucian took ideas and values expressed in the Chinese classics and transplanted them into the context of Japanese politics and thoughts, in light of which the Japanese scholars staked out new interpretations of the classics. This “contextual turn” (...) involved issues of two levels: the material political order (especially the Chinese-barbarian distinction) and the abstract political thought (especially the ruler-subject relation). It is pointed out that the Chinese empire was the Japanese Confucians’ “political foreign country” and “cultural homeland,” and the tension was evidenced by their interpretations of the term “Zhong’guo” appearing in the Confucian classics. The usual strategy adopted by the Japanese Confucians in interpreting Chinese classics was to “de-contextualize” them and then to “re-contextualize” them in their own Japanese environment. (shrink)

Many countries throughout the globe function in a system that allows the usage of more than one language. Such a multilingual social reality’s construction, especially in societies like the one in which I am living, is perceived in many different ways: attempting thus to provide for the process of differentiating identity’s oneness and sameness into various cultural subcategories, which already represent new realities. Due to newly created social realities, semiotics naturally discusses the differences and/or oppositions that can contribute to various (...) cultures’ mutual exclusivity or inclusivity, in terms of various heterogeneous “transformations,” which would thus overcome dualities, and be viewed as single acts of signs, or as a result of a process of singularization of their constituent components. I shall also attempt using a semiotic style that may enact a semiotics of action, grounded on the semiotics of passions, through a way of producing semantic taxonomies as pride versus humiliation, hegemony versus subordination, etc., obtainable due to disjunctive and/or conjunctive semiotic relations such as contextualization versus de-contextualization. (shrink)

Health communication researchers and practitioners continue to debate about the types of influence that are appropriate in health promotion. A widely held assumption is that health campaigns and communicators should respect the autonomy of their audiences, and that the most appropriate way to do so is to persuade them by means of truthful substantive information. This approach to ethical persuasion, though, suffers from certain blind spots. To account for circumstances when respecting autonomy might take a back seat to other ethical (...) considerations, a comprehensive framework for the ethics of health communication needs to acknowledge types of communication that aim to do something other than provide substantive information (disclosive and directive communication), and subjective circumstances when people are not motivated to process information or make active choices (low processing motivation and decision aversion). (shrink)

In this paper, we propose to analyze the phenomenon of Christian prayer by way of combining two different analytical frameworks. We start by applying Schutz’s theories of “intersubjectivity,” “inner time,” “politheticality,” and “multiple realities,” and then proceed by drawing on the ideas and insights of linguistic philosophers, notably, Wittgenstein’s “language-game,” Austin’s “speech act,” and Evans’s “logic of self-involvement”. In conjoining these accounts, we wish to demonstrate how their combination sheds new light on understanding the phenomenon of prayer. Prayer is a (...) complex phenomenon that involves two major dimensions: the private and the social, as Matthew and Acts, respectively, demonstrate. Schutz’s study of the phenomenon of “inner time” and the “polithetical” structure of consciousness, at both the subjective and intersubjective level, provides a useful lens to analyze these two dimensions. In addition, prayer, in following a specific set of rules, can also be considered as a specific, i.e., religious “language-game”. In the last analysis, however, we propose to analyze prayer within the Schutzian framework of “multiple realities,” “enclaves,” and “symbolic appresentation,” which permits accessing the “religious finite province of meaning” in the very midst of the paramount reality of everyday life. In a nutshell, we claim that Christian prayer is a practice of constructing and living within a “religious province of meaning” in the everyday world; it is a practice that revolves around self-involving language-activities such as praising, confessing, thanksgiving, or requesting to God, which enable the praying subject to transfigure the language of everydayness and “see through” the world of everyday life in order to let it appear in a different light, e.g., the light of grace, gift, and salvation. (shrink)

There is a line of reasoning in metaepistemology that is congenial to naturalism and hard to resist, yet ultimately misguided: that knowledge might be a natural kind, and that this would undermine the use of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. In this paper, I first bring out various problems with Hilary Kornblith’s argument from the causal–explanatory indispensability of knowledge to the natural kindhood of knowledge. I then criticize the argument from the natural kindhood of knowledge against the method (...) of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. A natural motivation for this argument is the following seemingly plausible principle: if knowledge is a natural kind, then the concept of knowledge is a natural kind concept. Since this principle lacks adequate support, the crucial semantic claim that the concept of knowledge is a natural kind concept must be defended in some more direct way. However, there are two striking epistemic disanalogies between the concept of knowledge and paradigmatic natural kind concepts that militate against this semantic claim. Conceptual analyses of knowledge are not affected by total error, and the proponents of such analyses are not subject to a priori conceptual obliviousness. I conclude that the argument from natural kindhood does not succeed in undermining the use of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. (shrink)

Hanks has defended a novel account of what propositions are. His key argument against Soames' rival view is that predication is not neutral. According to Hanks, predication is essentially committal. I show that Hanks' argument for this conclusion raises problems for his own account of questions and orders.

Many philosophers believe in things, propositions, which are the things that we believe, assert etc., and which are the contents of sentences. The act-type theory of propositions is an attempt to say what propositions are, to explain how we stand in relations to them, and to explain why they are true or false. The core idea of the act-type theory is that propositions are types of acts of predication. The theory is developed in various ways to offer explanations of the (...) important properties of propositions. I present the core idea of the theory, and some developments of it. I discuss the relationship between the theory and the content–force distinction. I also present an important type of objection that has been raised to the explanations offered by the act-type theory. (shrink)

Having briefly sketched the aims of our paper, namely, to logically analyse the ascription of propositional attitudes to somebody else in terms, not of Fregean senses or of intensions-with-s, but of the intentional object of the person spoken about, say, the believer or intender (Section 1), we try to introduce the concept of an intentional object as simply as possible, to wit, as coming into view whenever two (or more) subjective belief-worlds strikingly diverge (Section 2). Then, we assess the pros (...) and cons of Frege’s view that the indirect reference of an expression is nothing but its customary sense (Sections 3–4), and call the reader’s attention to the fact that in belief ascriptions de re we take it for granted that the believer’s intentional object is at the same time a ‘citizen’ of the belief ascriber’s subjective world (or, for that matter, the real word), and that the idea of such a ‘dual citizenship’ is even more obviously presupposed in the cases of true belief and propositional knowledge (Section 5). Then, we try to argue that it is more fertile to take the belief ascriber’s intentional object to be, not the whole state of affairs the believer has in mind and thinks to exist, but the latter’s intentional object as such, that is, as being his intentional object (Section 6). Finally, we discuss the intricate and mostly neglected question of whether an intentional object’s inhabiting two or more subjective belief-worlds should be considered to be sort of a ‘transmundane identity’ in the numerical sense or rather in some deviant sense of the term, which can be specified as a momentous subcase of a ‘categorial difference’ (Section 7). (shrink)

Informal logic is a new sub-discipline of philosophy, roughly definable as the philosophy of argument. Contributors have challenged the traditional concept of an argument as a premiss-conclusion complex, in favour of speech-act, functional and dialogical conceptions; they have identified as additional components warrants, modal qualifiers, rebuttals, and a dialectical tier. They have objected that "soundness" is neither necessary nor sufficient for a good argument. Alternative proposals include acceptability, relevance and sufficiency of the premisses; conformity to a valid argument schema; conformity (...) to rules for discussion aimed at rational resolution of a dispute. Informal logic is a significant part of philosophy. (shrink)

There is today much interest in research of neuronal substrata in metaphor processing. It has been suggested that the right hemisphere yields a key role in the comprehension of figurative language and, particularly, in metaphors. Figurative language is included in pragmatics, a branch of linguistics that researches the use of language, in opposition to the study of the system of language. There lingers, though, an open debate in respect to the identification of the specific aspects concerning semantics, as opposed to (...) those dominated by pragmatics. Can studies from neuronal correlates clarify questions that relate to semantics/pragmatics representation? I shall analyze neuroscientific developments about implicit language to attempt to understand, in section 2, scientific techniques available and more suitable to the phenomenology of the act of understanding an implicit, figurative or implicated message in a certain language game. To do so, I shall start by reviewing the studies in philosophy of language, and accommodate the development of the research in pragmatics underlying metaphor, particularly, in Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein. Finally, I discuss the possibility of interpretative capabilities being socioculturally grounded. I expect this methodological analysis to contribute to the enlightenment of the problem of phenomenology of intersubjective pragmatics, and to its future experimental paradigms. (shrink)

According to the increasingly popular knowledge account, assertion is governed by the rule that speech acts of that kind require knowledge of their content. Timothy Williamson has argued that this knowledge rule is the constitutive rule of assertion. It is argued here that it is not the constitutive rule of assertion in any sense of the term, as it governs only some assertions rather than all of them. A (qualified) knowledge rule can in fact be derived from the traditional analysis (...) of assertion according to which assertion is the linguistic expression of belief. Because it is more informative, this analysis provides a better point of departure for defending the knowledge account than Williamson’s view according to which the knowledge rule is part of the analysis of assertion. (shrink)

Mental, mathematical, and moral facts are difficult to accommodate within an overall worldview due to the peculiar kinds of properties inherent to them. In this paper I argue that a significant class of social entities also presents us with an ontological puzzle that has thus far not been addressed satisfactorily. This puzzle relates to the location of certain social entities. Where, for instance, are organizations located? Where their members are, or where their designated offices are? Organizations depend on their members (...) for their existence, but the members of an organization can be where the organization is not. The designated office of an organization, however, need be little more than a mailbox. I argue that the problem can be solved by conceptualizing the relation between social entities and non-social entities as one of constitution, a relation of unity without identity. Constituted objects have properties that cannot be reduced to properties of the constituting objects. Thus, my attempt to solve the Location Problem results in an argument in favor of a kind of non-reductive materialism about the social. (shrink)

Hindriks argued that Searle’s theory of institutions suffers from a number of problems pertaining to the notions of constitutive rule, status function, Status Function Declaration, deontic power, and human right. Lobo argues that these criticisms are not sufficiently charitable. In response, it is argued here that the problems that were identified earlier are sufficiently severe to call for substantial revisions of the theory.

It is a commonplace within philosophy that the ontology of institutions can be captured in terms of constitutive rules. What exactly such rules are, however, is not well understood. They are usually contrasted to regulative rules: constitutive rules (such as the rules of chess) make institutional actions possible, whereas regulative rules (such as the rules of etiquette) pertain to actions that can be performed independently of such rules. Some, however, maintain that the distinction between regulative and constitutive rules is merely (...) a linguistic one. In this paper I present the status account of constitutive rules in order to address this criticism. According to the status account constitutive rules pertain to institutional statuses and statuses are to be understood in terms of status rules. Status rules concern the enabling and constraining roles of institutions, and constitutive rules specify the preconditions that have to be met in order for them to play these roles. Even though I end up endorsing the claim that the distinction mentioned is a linguistic one, I go on to argue that there is an underlying reality that constitutive rules serve to make apparent. (shrink)

According to John Searle’s well-known Is-Ought Argument, it is possible to derive an ought-statement from is-statements only. This argument concerns obligations involved in institutions such as promising, and it relies on the idea that institutions can be conceptualized in terms of constitutive rules. In this paper, I argue that the structure of this argument has never been fully appreciated. Starting from my status account of constitutive rules, I reconstruct the argument and establish that it is valid. This reconstruction reveals that (...) the soundness of the argument depends on whether collective acceptance as such can generate obligations. Margaret Gilbert has argued that it can, and thus far some of her central arguments have not been addressed. The upshot is that the Is-Ought Argument deserves to be taken seriously once again. (shrink)

Through an argumentation analysis can one show how it is feasible to view a narrative religious text such as the Gospel of Matthew as a literary argument. The Gospel is not just good news but an elaborate argument for the standpoint that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah. It is shown why an argumentation analysis needs to be supplemented with a pragmatic literary analysis in order to describe how the evangelist presents his story so as to reach his (...) argumentative objective. The analysis also shows why in the case of historical religious literary texts, certain demands are put on the analyst that are not normally present. (shrink)

This article explores communicative processes in Chinese involving Chinese American children in order to explain the notion of preference for ambiguity, a characteristic often invoked when describing the Chinese as a group. It also speculates on the impact this notion has on children's socialization. Preference for ambiguity can be defined as making ambiguous something that is otherwise clear-communicating ambiguously or conveying something that is ambiguous-communicating ambiguity. Treating ambiguity as an interaction-centered and activity-bound phenomenon rather than a purely semantic or logical (...) problem, this article locates ambiguity in the intersubjectivity co-constructed by all participants and explores its role in the construction of cultural, situational and interpersonal contexts. It shows that ambiguity is shaped not only by lexico-grammar but also by discourse structure. This article draws data from a total of 30 hours of audio/video recorded classroom interactions involving 4 teachers and about 35 students in two Chinese Heritage Language Schools in the USA as well as from observations and interviews. In the classroom context, children are compelled to make speculations and draw inferences regarding their interlocutors' references, intentions, dispositions and goals. They do so without confronting their interlocutors or holding their interlocutors accountable. In contrast, teachers freely and vocally formulate, clarify, question and interpret children's utterances in an effort to make the children's stances unequivocal. This study suggests that the communicative patterns observed with respect to ambiguity may play an important part in the socialization of cultural knowledge and cognitive styles. (shrink)

The study of pragmatic competence has gained increasing importance within second language assessment over the last three decades. However, its study in L2 language testing is still scarce. The aim of this paper is to research the extent to which pragmatic competence as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has been accommodated in the task descriptions and rating scales of two of the most popular Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) at a C1 level: Cambridge’s Certificate in (...) Advanced English (CAE) and Trinity’s Integrated Skills in English (ISE) III. To carry out this research, OPI tests are first defined, highlighting their differences from L2 pragmatic tests. After pragmatic competence in the CEFR is examined, focusing on the updates in the new descriptors, CAE and ISE III formats, structure and task characteristics are compared, showing that, while the formats and some characteristics are found to differ, the structures and task types are comparable. Finally, we systematically analyse CEFR pragmatic competence in the task skills and rating scale descriptors of both OPIs. The findings show that the task descriptions incorporate mostly aspects of discourse and design competence. Additionally, we find that each OPI is seen to prioritise different aspects of pragmatic competence within their rating scale, with CAE focusing mostly on discourse competence and fluency, and ISE III on functional competence. Our study shows that the tests fail to fully accommodate all aspects of pragmatic competence in the task skills and rating scales, although the aspects they do incorporate follow the CEFR descriptors on pragmatic competence. It also reveals a mismatch between the task competences being tested and the rating scale. To conclude, some research lines are proposed. (shrink)

This article reviews arguments that, in the process of action formation and ascription, the relative status of the participants with respect to a projected action can adjust or trump the action stance conveyed by the linguistic form of the utterance. In general, congruency between status and stance is preferred, and linguistic form is a fairly reliable guide to action ascription. However incongruities between stance and status result in action ascriptions that are at variance with the action stance that is otherwise (...) conveyed in the turn. This argument is presented, first, in relation to epistemic status and stance where the process is argued to be both fundamental and universal across all declarative and interrogative utterances. Some consequences of this way of viewing action are discussed. The argument is then briefly extended to deontics and benefactives. (shrink)

Work on advice has concentrated on institutional settings where there are restrictions on roles, actions and their organisation. This article focuses on advice giving in mundane settings: interactions between mothers and their young-adult daughters in a corpus of 51 telephone calls. Analysis reveals a range of designs that can be ‘advice implicative’ including advice-implicative interrogatives and advice-implicative assessments. Recipients orient to the characteristic features these implicit forms share with more explicit advice: normative pressure on the recipient’s conduct and epistemic asymmetry (...) between advisor and advisee. Advice-implicative actions orient to contingencies on the recipient’s ability or willingness to perform the target action. They also display varying degrees of entitlement over the recipient’s performance of the target action. Manipulating contingency and entitlement can soften or heighten both the normative thrust and the knowledge asymmetry of the advice giving. This analysis further discusses the distinction between the practices of advising, directing and requesting, and allows consideration of how action design connects to relationality between parties. (shrink)

The 'substitution argument' purports to demonstrate the falsity of Russellian accounts of belief-ascription by observing that, e.g., these two sentences: (LC) Lois believes that Clark can fly. (LS) Lois believes that Superman can fly. could have different truth-values. But what is the basis for that claim? It seems widely to be supposed, especially by Russellians, that it is simply an 'intuition', one that could then be 'explained away'. And this supposition plays an especially important role in Jennifer Saul's defense of (...) Russellianism, based upon the existence of an allegedly similar contrast between these two sentences: (PC) Superman is more popular than Clark. (PS) Superman is more popular than Superman. The latter contrast looks pragmatic. But then, Saul asks, why shouldn't we then say the same about the former? The answer to this question is that the two cases simply are not similar. In the case of (PC) and (PS), we have only the facts that these strike us differently, and that people will sometimes say things like (PC), whereas they will never say things like (PS). By contrast, there is an argument to be given that (LS) can be true even if (LC) is false, and this argument does not appeal to anyone's 'intuitions'. The main goal of the paper is to present such a version of the substitution argument, building upon the treatment of the Fregan argument against Russellian accounts of belief itself in "Solving Frege's Puzzle". A subsidiary goal is to contribute to the growing literature arguing that 'intuitions' simply do not play the sort of role in philosophical inquiry that so-called 'experimental philosophers' have supposed they do. (shrink)

This paper provides a conceptual exploration of the implication of Jeffrey’s rule of belief revision to account for rule-following behavior in a game-theoretic framework. Jeffrey’s rule reflects the fact that in many cases learning something new does not imply that one has full assurance about the true content of the information. In other words, the same information may be both perceived and interpreted in several different ways. I develop an account of rule-following behavior according to which, in the context of (...) strategic interactions, following a rule is defined by two conditions. First, that agents must frame the interaction in a sufficiently similar way and be aware of the same salient properties, i.e. they must have the same partition of the event. Second, they must ascribe to others the same revised probabilities to what they take to be the common partition. In a game-theoretic framework, this also indicates that rule-following behavior cannot be identified merely to the existence of a common prior. (shrink)

Since current water governance patterns mandate cooperation and partnership within and between the actors in the hydrosystems, supplementary models are necessary to distinguish the roles and the rules of indoor actions which is why we extend a theory in the frameworks of philosophy of technology. This analysis is empirically grounded on the problematic hydrosystems of a river in central Iran, Zayandehrud. Following a modernist-holistic-based analysis, it illustrates how values in the water apportionment mechanisms are being reshaped. The article by using (...) the theory of normative practice has scrutinised the tasks and the rules of the old and new water-management systems, Mirab. Subsequently according to such philosophical theory, it has argued that the conflicts over the cases are due to interference of structural and directional norms within them. (shrink)

Research on folk epistemology usually takes place within one of two different paradigms. The first is centered on epistemic theories or, in other words, the way people think about knowledge. The second is centered on epistemic intuitions, that is, the way people intuitively distinguish knowledge from belief. In this paper, we argue that insufficient attention has been paid to the connection between the two paradigms, as well as to the mechanisms that underlie the use of both epistemic intuitions and theories. (...) We contend that research on folk epistemology must examine the use of both intuitions and theories in the pragmatic context of the game of giving and asking for reasons and, more generally, understand how these practices take place within the broader context of normative social cognition. (shrink)

Saying so can make it so, J. L. Austin taught us long ago. Famously, John Searle has developed this Austinian insight in an account of the construction of institutional reality. Searle maintains that so-called Status Function Declarations, allegedly having a “double direction of fit”, synchronically create worldly institutional facts, corresponding to the propositional content of the declarations. I argue that Searle’s account of the making of institutional reality is in tension with the special theory of relativity—irrespective of whether the account (...) is interpreted as involving causal generation or non-causal grounding of worldly institutional facts—and should be replaced by a more modest theory which interprets the results of Status Function Declarations in terms of mere Cambridge change and institutional truth. I end the paper by indicating the import of this more modest theory for theorizing about the causal potency of institutional phenomena generated by declarations. (shrink)

Much work on legal knowledge systems treats legal reasoning as arguments that lead from a description of the law and the facts of a case, to the legal conclusion for the case. The reasoning steps of the inference engine parallel the logical steps by means of which the legal conclusion is derived from the factual and legal premises. In short, the relation between the input and the output of a legal inference engine is a logical one. The truth of the (...) conclusion only depends on the premises, and is independent of the argument that leads to the conclusion.This paper opposes the logical approach, and defends a procedural approach to legal reasoning. Legal conclusions are not true or false independent of the reasoning process that ended in these conclusions. In critical cases this reasoning process consists of an adversarial procedure in which several parties are involved. The course of the argument determines whether the conclusion is true or false. The phenomenon of hard cases is used to demonstrate this essential procedural nature of legal reasoning. (shrink)

El principal objetivo de este estudio consiste en dar cuenta de cómo se enmarca la forma de tratamiento nominal marico en el habla de jóvenes universitarios de Caracas, Venezuela, dentro de la Teoría de la cortesía, según la perspectiva ofrecida por los hablantes. Igualmente, se busca documentar qué cambios está presentando en los contextos de uso así como en sus funciones pragmáticas. Los participantes fueron 60 estudiantes universitarios, 30 mujeres y 30 hombres, de 17 a 21 años. Tradicionalmente, la palabra (...) marico se ha usado como agresión verbal vulgar y ha sido, generalmente, considerada un insulto. Luego del análisis cualitativo de los datos, se plantea que esta FTN se halla en una fase de transición de insulto a marcador pragmático anticortés que indica solidaridad dentro de un grupo etario específico y está perdiendo su carácter agraviador. En la actualidad, la juventud caraqueña emplea esta FTN no solo para implicar lazos de amistad, sino para expresar emociones como sorpresa y enojo, crear efectos de intriga, hacer bromas, abrir y cerrar oraciones e, incluso, sustituir otras FTN que nunca han sido consideradas insultos en el español de Venezuela. La metodología empleada fue el cuestionario y el análisis cualitativo de reportes en primera persona. Las variables de edad y sexo son factores determinantes, puesto que parece haber tendencia entre los jóvenes entrevistados a no emplear esta forma nominal con hablantes que están fuera de su grupo etario y las mujeres siguen siendo conservadoras al restringir, más que los hombres, el uso de este vocablo. (shrink)

The author argues that Thomas Hobbes anticipates a set of questions about meaning and semantic order that come to fuller expression in the 20th century, in the writings of W.V.O. Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Donald Davidson, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. Despite their different points of departure, these 20th-century writers pose a number of profound questions about the conditions for the stability of meaning, and about the conditions that govern the use of the term “language” itself. Though the more recent debate (...) benefits from a set of philosophical tools unavailable in the seventeenth century, the author further argues that Hobbes performs a number of maneuvers in his texts from which his 20th-century successors would profit. (shrink)