Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2003 11:01:41 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [HAB:] Re: Commissive vs. perlocutionary speech


Well, Antti, I'm delighted to see you de-lurk; you induce
me to violate my avowed vacational silence (30 Aug, to Ali,
archive.0308.60, next to last paragraph). I've missed your
presence. Please see my disagreement below as a tacit
avowal of your thought-provokingness. And *please* de-lurk
more often. (Have you finished your dissertation?]

--- Antti Kauppinen <amkauppi-AT-cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:

A> There is no such category as "perlocutionary speech
acts" in speech act theory,....[though Habermas speaks] of
"perlocutions" as a separate class of speech acts whose
perlocutionary success (desired effect on the hearer) is
overtly independent of illocutionary success (acceptance of
validity claim by the hearer).

G: Then, of course, there IS such a category, since JH
indicates what he intends to mean by perlocutions. Why
can't speech act theory have developed beyond its
initiators like any other discursive formation?---though JH
would find Austin averse to what JH has in mind (but Austin
might be more open-minded than Searle). 

A> [JH's perlocution] makes it look like he has
misunderstood the basics of speech act theory - as indeed
Searle has accused him of doing. 

G: But is the accusation valid? The "basics" for Searle
don't involve the theory of validity bases that are basic
for JH's employment of Searle's amplification of Austin (I
know that, at one time, Searle claimed that he didn't
*understand* what Habermas was doing in the name of formal
pragmatics. He may have abandoned that claim, but then so
do many critical readers of Habermas who, it turns out, are
jousting with a straw man). 

Is it not the case that, just as all validity dimensions
belong to any given speech act, while only one may be
prevailing in that speaking (making it one kind rather than
another), so too does any given speech act have three
aspects (locutionary, ill-, and per-), and one may intend
the perlocutionary aspect to prevail? 

May one not intend propositional content to serve a
directive that has a normally clear effect in ordinary
communicative relations, and thereby tenably presume to be
"read" to intend the perlocutionary aspect to prevail in a
speech act? I see no reason not to admit such acts into
speech act theory and thus to give them a name:
perlocutions or perlocutionary speech acts. 

A> [In any case,]..."perlocutions" do not, according to
[JH], raise validity claims,....

G: What causes you to believe that this is fair to JH's
view? All speech acts participate in the validity basis of
speech. It may be inappropriate that John yelled "Look out
for the car!," because there was no car coming that put me
in danger. And he *knew* that, so it wasn't a genuine
warning. He exploited my friendship, just to give me a pang
of fear. But that's OK; Johnny is only 8 years old, and
kids that age do such things (though I better talk to his
mother about his exploitation of others' trust; there's
something symptomatic going on there). 

Is it not the case that *any* raising of a validity claim
has to be done in a subsequent speech act, and perlocutions
can be the object of a validity claim against its
genuineness or appropriateness (using a claim against the
truth of its propositional content to prosecute claims
against genuineness and appropriateness)? 

I agree, though, that:

A> [A perlocution's] effect on the hearer cannot be
mediated through her acceptance of the raised validity
claims.

G: But this is merely because, for any speech act, validity
claims are merely *implied*, usually without raising
questions. Speech acts *have* a validity basis; the claim
to this is *tacitly* effected in the act. To find one's
presumption odd causes one to question the "having" that
the speech act tacitly presumes, in the form of a
thematization of one kind validity claim out of the general
validity basis of the act. Perlocutions may participate in
this susceptibility, too, though a questionable
perlocutionary intent is a matter of speaker avowal, its
normal reading a matter of fact, as well as its actual
effect. But the acceptance of any speech act---tacitly
finding it genuine, appropriate, and referentially
cogent---is not in "raised validity claims" (i.e., a
thematized acceptability) rather in the effective
*implicity* of the act's validity AS act (i.e.,
unquestioned genuineness of appropriately enacted meaning).
In this respect, then, perlocutions ARE "mediated" through
the acceptance of the speech act that effects its affect. 

A> Perhaps you cannot weigh reasons for or against
accepting a creation fable....

G: If that were the case, there could be no doctrinal
hermeneutics in religion. Besides, those who put religious
faith in a creation story don't do so by regarding it as a
fable. The rhetorical power of a creation story---the
self-identifying sway of the commissive invocation conveyed
in the story---draws one into its pretense. In The Word,
*we* are betrothed to a covenant as to what it is to be in
the world. 

A>.... that is why its acceptance cannot be rational and
takes a leap of faith instead.

G: Some scientists have to problem with authentic religious
experience. They might say that the allegory of Genesis is
a credible folkism for our *evolving* universe which has a
"life" of its own among other possible universes (with
different basis numbers). The comprehensibility of our
*physical* universe is so mysteriously elusive (not to
mention incomprehensible issues of quantum gravity at the
"particle" level of space as such) that, *regardless* of
silly "intelligent design" narratives, calling the universe
"rational" is a stretch (especially given its dependence on
a "singularity" Event---the Big Bang--which is not itself a
"physical" event, in the sense of anything articulated in
physics. And speculation is, among speculations, that the
accelerator energy needed for articulating the physics of
the Big Bang may be unobtainable). 

Best regards,

Gary





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