Outline 1 Department of Philosophy Hokkaido University Padova Philosophy Summer School 23 September 2016 2 3 4 Searle 1 and Searle 2 1 2 3 4 We will look at Searle s views of speech acts presented during the period from 1968 till 1979 and his theory of social (or institutional) reality developed in Searle (1995) and Searle (2010). For the sake of convenience, we will sometimes refer to Searle during the former period as Searle 1 and Searle during the latter period as Searle 2.
Two notions of conventionality of illocutionary acts Searle 1 on Austin (1) Searle 1 writes: In the first lecture, we have distinguished the following two notions of conventionality of illocutionary acts. An act is EL-conventional if it is done as conforming to some extra-linguistic conventions or institution. An act is CE-conventional if its consequential effects are mere conventional consequences. There are a large number of illocutionary acts that require an extra-linguistic institution, and generally, a special position by the speaker and the hearer within that institution in order for the act to be performed. Thus, in order to bless, excommunicate, christen, pronounce guilty, call the base runner out..., it is not sufficient for any old speaker to say to any old hearer I bless, I excommunicate, etc. One must have a position within an extra-linguistic institution. (1979, p.7) Austin sometimes talks as if he thought all illocutionary acts were like this, but plainly they are not. In order to make a statement that it is raining or promise to come to see you, I need only obey the rule of language. No extra-linguistic institutions are required (ibid). Searle 1 on Austin (2) A few comments on Searle 1 s remark here I find Searle s wording here better suited for defining the term EL-conventional than the one we used in the first lecture. So, let us re-define it as follows. An act is EL-conventional if it require extra-linguistic institutions for their performance. Then we can say that Searle 1 here remarks that Austin sometimes talks as if all illocutionary-acts are EL-conventional, and that there are lots of illocutionary acts that are not EL-conventional. For the sake of discussion, let s suppose Searle is right. (1) Austin doesn t explicitly mention the kind of differences Searle mentions here. Thus he might have thought that all illocutionary acts are conventional in the sense that they are EL-conventional. (2) But it is also possible that Austin thought all illocutionary acts are conventional in the sense that they are CE-conventional. (3) If those illocutionary acts that are EL-conventional and those that are not are both CE-conventional, we can say that all illocutionary acts are conventional in the sense that they are CE-conventional.
Searle 1 on illocutionary effects As we have seen, Searle criticizes Grice s account of meaning, but he incorporates it in a modified form as follows. In the case of illocutionary acts we succeed in doing what we are trying to do by getting our audience to recognize what we are trying to do. But the effect on the hearer is not a belief or response, it consists simply in the hearer understanding the utterance of the speaker. It is this effect that I have been calling the illocutionary effect. (1969, p. 47.) The way the reflexive intention works then, as a preliminary formulation, is: the speaker S intends to produce an illocutionary effect IE in the hearer H by means of getting H to recognize S s intention to produce IE (ibid). Searle s IE and Austin s uptake As IE is the hearer understanding the utterance of the speaker, producing IE just amounts to what Austin called the securing of uptake [= bringing about the understanding of the meaning and of the forth of the locution]. Although Austin considers it to be necessary for performing any illocutionary act (JA4), he doesn t seem to think it sufficient. It seems clear that IE is not enough for performing illocutionary acts in the case of EL-conventional ones as Searle himself mentions in the passage we have seen. Is it enough for non-el-conventional illocutionary acts? Is IE enough for non-el-conventional illocutionary acts? Austin would say: Unless relevant conventional consequential effects are produced, purported illocutionary acts are void. 1 2 But is there any concrete example of a non-el-conventional illocutionary act which fails in this way? It seems that we need a clearer understanding of what the relevant conventional consequential effects of illocutionary acts are. 3 4 Searle 2 s theory of institutional reality will be of much help here.
Brute and Institutional Facts Institutional facts [W]e need to distinguish between brute facts such as the fact that the sun is ninety-three million miles form the earth and institutional facts such as the fact that Clinton is president. (1995, p. 27. See also Searle, 1969, pp. 51 53.) Brute facts exist independently from any human institutions; institutional facts can exist only within human institutions (ibid). [T]he statement that the sun is ninety-three million miles form the earth requires an institution of language and an institution of measuring distances in miles, but the fact stated, the fact that there is a certain distance between the earth and the sun, exists independently of any institution (ibid). Institutional facts, on the other hand, require special human institutions for their very existence (ibid). Language is one such institution (ibid). Institutional facts exist only within systems of constitutive rules (p. 28. See also Searle, 1969, pp. 51 53). Regulative and constitutive rules Constitutive rules Some rules regulate antecedently existing activities. For example, the rule drive on the right-hand side of the road regulates driving; but driving can exist prior to the existence of that rule (p. 27). [S]ome rules do not merely regulate, they also create the very possibility of certain activities. Thus the rules of chess do not regulate an antecedently existing activity.... Rather, the rules of chess create the very possibility of playing chess (pp. 27 28). The rules are constitutive of chess in the sense that playing chess is constitutional in part by acting in accord with the rules. If you don t follow at least a large subset of the rules, you are not playing chess (p. 28.). The rules come in systems, and the rules individually, or sometimes the system collectively, characteristically have the form X counts as Y or X counts as Y in context C. Thus, such and such counts as a checkmate, such and such a move as a legal pawn move, and so on. (ibid.) [S]pecific instances of institutional facts such as the fact that I won at chess or the fact that Clinton is president are created by the application of of specific rules, rules for checkmate or for electing and swearing in presidents, for example. (ibid.)
Institutional facts again Senses of objective and subjective Institutional facts, on the other hand, require special human institutions for their very existence (ibid). Language is one such institution (ibid). Institutional facts exist only within systems of constitutive rules (p. 28. See also Searle, 1969, pp. 51 53). Can there be objective facts that depends on human institutions? Searle writes [B]oth objective and subjective have several different senses. (1995, p. 8.) and For our present discussion two senses are crucial, an epistemic sense of the objective-subjective distinction and an ontological sense. (ibid) Epistemic subjectivity/objectivity (1/2) Epistemic subjectivity/objectivity (2/2) Epistemically speaking, objective and subjective are primarily predicates of judgments (ibid). For epistemically objective judgments, the facts in the world that makes them true or false are independent of anybody s attitudes or feelings about them (ibid). Judgments are epistemically subjective if their truth of falsity cannot be settled objectively, because the truth or falsity is not a simple matter of facts but depends on certain attitudes, feelings, and points of view of the makers and the hearers of the judgment. (ibid.) (Ex.) Rembrandt is a better artist than Rubens (ibid). (Ex.) Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam during the year 1632 (ibid). In this epistemic sense we can speak not only of objective judgments but of objective facts. Corresponding to objectively true judgments there are objective facts (ibid). The contrast between epistemic objectivity and epistemic subjectivity is a matter of degree (ibid).
Ontological subjectivity/objectivity (1/2) Ontological subjectivity/objectivity (2/2) In the ontological sense, objective and subjective are predicates of entities and types of entities, and they ascribe modes of existence (ibid). In the ontological sense, pains are subjective entities, because their mode of existence depends on being felt by subjects. (ibid.) But mountains, for example, in contrast to pains, are ontologically objective because their mode of existence is independent of any perceiver or any mental state (ibid). [w]e can make epistemically subjective statements about entities that are ontologically objective, and similarly, we can make epistemically objective statements about entities that are ontologically subjective (ibid). EOJ on OOE The sun is ninety-three million miles from the earth. ESJ on OOE Mt. Everest is more beautiful than Mt. Whitney. EOJ on OSE These bits of paper are money. ESJ on OSE Find an example. Constitutive Rules and status functions How status functions are possible The constitutive rule of the form X counts as Y in C only determines a set of institutional facts and institutional objects where the Y term names something more than the sheer physical features of the object named by the X term (p. 44). The Y term has to assign a new status that the object does not already have just in virtue of satisfying the X term; and there has to be collected agreement, or at least acceptance, both in the imposition of that status on the stuff referred to by the X term and about the function that goes with that status (ibid). This is what Searle calls status functions. [B]ecause the physical features specified by the X term are insufficient by themselves to guarantee the fulfillment of the assigned function specified by the Y term, the new status and its attendant functions have to be the sort of things that can be constituted by collective agreement or acceptance (p. 44). Also, because the physical features specified by the X terms are insufficient to guarantee success in fulfilling the assigned function, there must be continued collective acceptance or recognition of the validity of the assigned function: otherwise the function cannot be successfully performed (p. 45).
Rules and convention Status function and deontology In the case of money, [t]hat objects can function as a medium of exchange is not a matter of convention but of rule. But which objects perform this function is a matter of convention (p.49) In many cases the conditions laid down by the X term are only incidentally related to the function specified by the Y term, the selection of the X term is more or less arbitrary; and the resulting policy... is a matter of convention (ibid). In some cases the features necessary for the applicability of the X term are essential to the performance of the Y term.... Nonetheless, even in these cases, there is an addition marked by the Y term (ibid.) In Searle (2010), Searle has admitted that not all institutional facts exist within preexisting institutions consisting of constitutive rules, and introduced the following rather simple set of equivalences and logical implications (2010, p.23). institutional facts = status functions deontic powers desire-independent reason for action. Deontic powers are things like rights, duties, obligations, requirements, permissions, authorizations, entitlements, and so on (ibid). [O]nce recognized, they provide us with reasons for acting that are independent of our inclinations and desires. Hierarchy of statuses We can impose status-functions on entities that have already had status-functions imposed on them. In such cases the X term at a higher level can be a Y term from an earlier level (p. 80). [A] certain sort of promise as X can count as a contract Y, but to be a promise is already to have a Y status-function at a lower level (ibid). It is no exaggeration to say that these iterations provide the logical structure of complex societies (ibid). 1 2 3 4
Illocutionary acts as Y-terms EL-conventional acts in the hierarchy Searle has introduced the notion of institutional facts and that of constitutive rules of the form X counts as Y in context C in Searle 1969 (pp. 51 2). There he says Our hypothesis that speaking a language is performing acts according to constitutive rules involves us in the hypothesis that the fact that a man performed a certain speech act, e. g., made a promise, is an institutional fact (ibid). This view survives the change from Searle 1 to Searle 2, especially the introduction of the concept of status functions in Searle (1995), and the introduction of the new equation in Searle (2010). [A] certain sort of promise as X can count as a contract Y, but to be a promise is already to have a Y status-function at a lower level (1995, p. 80). The possibility of such iterations provides us with the means for explaining the conventional effects of EL-conventional illocutionary act. The conventional effects of EL-conventional illocutionary act (Y term) can be understood as the further status functions imposed on not necessarily EL-conventional illocutionary acts (X term) performed in the context of some higher extra-linguistic institution. Status functions of non-el-conventional acts Conventional effects of CE-conventional illocutionary acts [A] certain sort of promise as X can count as a contract Y, but to be a promise is already to have a Y status-function at a lower level (1995, p. 80). Since to be a promise is already to have a Y status-function at a lower level, and since an act of promising is not an EL-conventional acts, it is an example of a non-el-conventional act which has status function. This can be safely generalized as follows. Every non-el-conventional illocutionary act has some status function since to be an illocutionary act is to to have a Y status. Both EL-conventional illocutionary acts and non-el-conventional illocutionary acts have status functions. Since the fact that such and such an illocutionary act has such and such status functions is an institutional fact, it is not a brute fact. (JA6) The illocutionary act takes effect in certain ways, as distinguished from producing consequences in the sense of bringing about states of affairs in the normal way, i.e. changes in the natural course of events. Thus I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth has the effect of naming or christening the ship; then certain subsequent acts such as referring to it as the Generalissimo Stalin will be out of order. (p. 117/116.)
JA6 again Accommodating more of Austin in Searle 2 (JA6) The illocutionary act takes effect in certain ways, as distinguished from producing consequences in the sense of bringing about states of affairs in the normal way, i.e. changes in the natural course of events. Thus I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth has the effect of naming or christening the ship; then certain subsequent acts such as referring to it as the Generalissimo Stalin will be out of order. (p. 117/116.) Although Austin didn t have the distinction between brute facts and institutional facts, it seems that he was just seeking to introduce some such distinction here. It seems probable that Austin thought that all illocutionary acts are CE-conventional, though he might have thought that all illocutionary acts are EL-conventional at the same time. In calling effects of illocutionary acts conventional, Austin might have been seeking to capture their non-brute character. To dismiss Austin s notion of conventional effects totally on the grounds that it only applies to EL-conventional illocutionary acts seems to be a mistake. What about the objectivity? A question yet to be asked A judgment of the form John promised Mary to buy her a doll is an epistemically objective judgment on ontologically subjective entity, namely, John s act of promising. If that judgment is true, we can speak of an epistemically objective fact, the fact that John promised Mary to buy her a doll. Since being a promise is to have a status, John s act of promising has status functions, including John s committing himself to buying a doll. What Austin would call a conventional consequence. If we accept Searle 2 s theory of institutional facts, we should say that every illocutionary act has status functions. But what status functions do CE-conventional illocutionary acts other than acts of promising have? What status functions does an act of asserting, for example, have?
The plan of Austinian theory of speech acts 1 2 3 4 Is it possible to develop Austin s conception of illocutionary acts as acts whose effects are conventional into a general theory of illocutionary acts? In order to do so, we have to specify conventional effects of a sufficiently rich variety of illocutionary acts, and develop a theory in which these illocutionary acts are shown to be adequately characterized in terms of those conventional effects. An overview The developments of Public Announcement Logic The recent development of Dynamic Epistemic Logics suggests a recipe for developing logics that can capture effects of various speech acts. We have developed dynamic logics that can deal with acts of commanding, promising, requesting, asserting, conceding, and withdrawing developed according to this recipe. Moreover, it seems possible to capture and differentiate the characteristic effects of acts of commanding, promising, requesting, and asserting in one of these logics, a dynamified epistemic deontic logic. [ϕ!]k i ψ Public Announcement Logic DEL adding dynamic modalities rewriting along recursion axioms Multi-agent Epistemic Logics EL K i ϕ Cf. Plaza (1989), Gerbrandy & Groeneveld (1997), Gerbrandy (1999), Baltag, Moss, & Solecki (1999), Kooi & van Benthem (2004), van Ditmarsch, Kooi, and van der Hoek (2007)
Two points to be noted The recipe The formulas of the form [ϕ!]k i ϕ are shown to be valid for any i I if no operators of the form K i occur in ϕ. This is too strong for interpreting natural language public announcements. A gap similar to the one we have seen is also present here. The method used in developing PAL can be used to develop logics that deal with a much wider variety of speech acts. 1 Carefully identify the aspect affected by the kind of speech acts you want to study 2 find the modal logic that characterizes this aspect 3 add dynamic modalities that represent types of those speech acts 4 define model updating operation that interprets the speech acts under study as what update the very aspect 5 (if possible) find a complete set of recursion axioms for the resulting dynamic logic. Logics of specific speech acts The development of DMEDL Yamada (2016) Dynamified deontic logics (Yamada 07a, 07b, 08a) Commanding, promising, and conflicting obligations Dynamified deontic preference logic (Yamada 08b) Differentiating illocutionary acts of commanding from perlocutionary acts that affects preferences Dynamic logics of propositional commitments (Yamada, 2012) Asserting, conceding, and their withdrawals A dynamified epistemic deontic logic (Yamada 2011, 16) Requesting, commanding, promising, and asserting [command (i,j) ϕ]ψ, [promise (i,j) ϕ]ψ, [request (i,j) ϕ]ψ, [assert (i,j) ϕ]ψ DMEDL (Dynamified MEDL) adding dynamic modalities rewriting along recursion axioms MEDL (Multi-agent Epistemic Deontic Logic) K i ϕ, O (i,j,k) ϕ
Intended readings (1/2) Intended readings (2/2) O (i,j, k) ϕ : it is obligatory upon agent i with respect to j in the name of k to see to it that ϕ. where i is the agent who owes the obligation (sometimes called an obligor), j is the agent to whom the obligation is owed (sometimes called an obligee), k is the creator of the obligation. [command (i,j) ϕ]ψ : whenever an agent i (the commander) commands an agent j (the commandee) to see to it that ϕ, ψ holds after that. [promise (i,j) ϕ]ψ : whenever an agent i (the promiser) promises an agent j (the promisee) that i will see to it that ϕ, ψ holds after that. [request (i,j) ϕ]ψ : whenever an agent i (the requester) requests an agent j (the requestee) to see to it that ϕ, ψ holds after that. [assert (i,j) ϕ]ψ : whenever an agent i (the asserter) asserts to an agent j (the addressee) that ϕ, ψ holds after that. Some results (1/3) Some results (2/3) CUGO Principle For each agent i, j I, if ϕ is a formula of the base logic MEDL and the modal operator of the form O (j,i,i) does not occur in ϕ, the following principle is valid: PUGO Principle [command (i,j) ϕ]o (j,i,i) ϕ. For each agent i, j I, if ϕ is a formula of the base logic MEDL and the modal operator of the form O (i,j,i) does not occur in ϕ, the following principle is valid: [promise (i,j) ϕ]o (i,j,i) ϕ. RUGO Principle For each agent i, j I, if ϕ is a formula of the base logic MEDL and the modal operator of the form O (j,i,i) does not occur in ϕ, the following principle is valid: [request (i,j) ϕ]o (j,i,i) (K i O (j,i,j) ϕ K i O (j,i,j) ϕ). For each agent i, j I,..., the following principle is valid: [command (i,j) ϕ]o (j,i,i) ϕ. For each agent i, j I,..., the following principle is valid: [promise (i,j) ϕ]o (i,j,i) ϕ.
Some results (3/3) Contingent dilemmas AUGO Principle For each agent i, j I, if ϕ is a formula of the base logic MEDL and the modal operator of the form O (i,j,i) does not occur in ϕ, the following principle is valid: [assert (i,j) ϕ]o (i,j,i) O (j,i,i) K j ϕ. For each agent i, j I,..., the following principle is valid: [command (i,j) ϕ]o (j,i,i) ϕ. For each agent i, j I,..., the following principle is valid: [command (a,b) p][command (c,b) q](o (b,a,a) p O (b,c,c) q) (p q). p You will attend the conference in São Paulo on 11 June 2017. q You will join the demonstration in Sapporo on 11 June 2017. [command (a,b) p][command (c,b) p](o (b,a,a) p O (b,c,c) p). [promise (b,a) p][command (c,b) q](o (b,a,b) p O (b,c,c) q) (p q). [promise (i,j) ϕ]o (i,j,i) ϕ. Where the papers are Most of my papers can be downloaded from the website at: http://www.hucc.hokudai.ac.jp/ k15696/home/yamada/yamada.html You can find this page just by googling. Thanks!