Ethical Dimensions of Assertion

2019 ◽  
pp. 784-805
Author(s):  
Terence Cuneo
Keyword(s):  
Normative Theory ◽  
Bodily Harm ◽  
Moral Reality ◽  
Illocutionary Acts ◽  
Intimate Link ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
The Way ◽  
Moral Facts

This article considers the ethical dimensions of acts of assertion. Acts of assertion often have moral features, such as being wrong. In this regard, they are like many other familiar acts such as invasions of privacy and inflictions of bodily harm, which are also often wrong. But might assertion have an even more intimate link to moral reality than these other actions? Might it be that how things are ethically explains how it is that we could perform illocutionary acts such as asserting? A version of what the author calls the normative theory of speech answers in the affirmative. This view maintains that the performance of illocutionary acts such as asserting not only often have moral properties, such as being morally wrong, but also that there are cases in which moral facts explain (in part) how it is that agents can perform these acts. The article presents the rudiments of the normative theory of speech, paying attention to why it maintains that moral facts are among the features that explain how it is that we can assert. Along the way, the author points to some interesting metaethical implications of the position.

Meta-Ethics

2020 ◽  
pp. 264-278
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Objective Property ◽  
The Way ◽  
Moral Facts

Moore’s arguments begin a debate that revives sentimentalist and rationalist arguments. According to Moore, ‘good’ is indefinable, because there is no definition of it that mentions only ‘natural’ properties. Non-naturalist objectivists argue that we know about objective moral properties, but not in the way we know about other properties. Non-cognitivists argue that goodness is not an objective property at all; when we say that something is good, we are not stating a fact about it, but expressing an emotion, or issuing some prescription. Even if objectivism is correct about the meaning of moral judgments, we may still deny that any moral judgments are true, on the ground that we have no reason to believe that there are any moral facts of the sort that objectivists claim to describe. Further discussion of these arguments against objectivism requires closer attention to the difference between moral concepts and moral properties.

scholarly journals There Are No Easy Counterexamples to Legal Anti-Positivism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emad H. Atiq
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Legal Rule ◽  
False Negatives ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
Inclusive Form ◽  
Moral Facts

Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy, ForthcomingLegal anti-positivism is widely believed to be a general theory of law that generates far too many false negatives. If anti-positivism is true, certain rules bearing all the hallmarks of legality are not in fact legal. This impression, fostered by both positivists and anti-positivists, stems from an overly narrow conception of the kinds of moral facts that ground legal facts: roughly, facts about what is morally optimific — morally best or morally justified or morally obligatory given our social practices. A less restrictive view of the kinds of moral properties that ground legality results in a form of anti-positivism that can accommodate any legal rule consistent with positivism, including the alleged counterexamples. I articulate an ‘inclusive’ form of anti-positivism that is not just invulnerable to extensional challenge from the positivist. It is the only account that withstands extensional objections, while incorporating, on purely conceptual grounds, a large part of the content of morality into law.

scholarly journals PRAGMATIC PERSPECTIVES OF VERBAL HUMOR IN AN AMERICAN SITCOM

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-55
Author(s):  
Siti Sarah Fitriani ◽  
Chairina Nasir ◽  
Farrah Fajrianti Fonna
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Illocutionary Acts ◽  
Illocutionary Act ◽  
Big Bang Theory ◽  
The Big Bang ◽  
The Way ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative ◽  
Cooperative Principles

Purpose of the study: This study aimed at finding out the types of illocutionary acts which create humor effect in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory Episode The Thespian Catalyst (S04E14). Methodology: A descriptive qualitative study with the pragmatic approach of illocutionary acts suggested by Searle (1975) was undertaken by observing the utterances spoken by all the characters in the sitcom. Main findings: The results of the study showed that there were four types of illocutionary acts found in the sitcom; assertive, directive, commissive, and expressive. Those illocutionary acts also flouted the maxim of Cooperative Principles, i.e. quality and relevance. In conclusion, it can be known that the humor that occurred in the sitcom is the result of the way the characters conveyed illocutionary acts that also have flouted the maxim as in the Cooperative Principles. Applications of this study: This study is expected to be a reference for other studies in the field of pragmatics particularly in illocutionary acts. Novelty/Originality of this study:This current study, however, would discuss The Big Bang Theory sitcom by using the Illocutionary Act framework proposed by Searle (1975).

scholarly journals Direct and Indirect Directive Illocutionary Acts in the Movie “Penguin of Madagascar”

HUMANIS ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 253
Author(s):  
Gusti Alit Mahendra ◽  
I Gusti Ayu Gede Sosiowati ◽  
Ni Ketut Alit Ida Setianingsih
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Illocutionary Acts ◽  
Illocutionary Act ◽  
The Social ◽  
Context Of Situation ◽  
The Way ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

The study entitled “Direct and Indirect Directive Illocutionary Acts in the Movie Penguin of Madagascar” is aimed at identifying the direct and indirect directive types of illocutionary acts and explaining and analyzing the meaning of the utterances interpreted by the listeners. The data of this study were taken from the movie entitled Penguins of Madagascar, and it was chosen because of many utterances identified as directive of illocutionary acts. The observation and documentation methods were used in collecting the data since the data were obtained from the spoken source in the movie. The data were analyzed using the descriptive qualitative method since the purpose of this study is to analyze the social phenomena like speech acts. The first theory proposef by Bach and Harnish (1979: 47) is used to analyze the type of directive of illocutionary acts. The second theory, the context of situation proposed by Dell Hymes (1972, is used to analyze the meaning of directive of illocutionary acts that can be interpreted by the listeners. There are six types of directive of illocutionary act proposed by Bach and Harnish (1979). They are requestives, questions, requirements, permissives, prohibitives and advisories. In this study, several types of directive illocutionary were found in the movie, except the indirect question, and direct prohibitive. The way the listeners interpret the meaning depends on the context of situation.

Contradiction and Freedom

Philosophy ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 63 (245) ◽  
pp. 317-330
Author(s):  
B. H. Slater
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Literary Figure ◽  
Intimate Link ◽  
Clear Thinking ◽  
A Minor ◽  
The Way

Jean-Paul Sartre, in describing the realization of his freedom, was often inclined to say mysterious things like ‘I am what I am not’, ‘I am not what I am’ (‘as I am already what I will be …, I am the self which I will be, in the mode of not being it’, ‘I make myself not to be the past … which I am’.) He was therefore plainly contradicting himself, but was this merely a playful literary figure (paradox), or was he really being incoherent? By the latter judgment I do not mean to reject his statements entirely (like many of his Anglo-Saxon contemporaries); for I believe there is an intimate link between contradiction and freedom, as I shall explain in this paper. But a minor thing we must first have out of the way is the suggestion that Sartre's language was just a rhetorical trope, designed merely to express some banal platitude in a bemusing way: ‘I am not yet what I will be’, ‘I am no longer what I was’ are sane and sensible, for instance, but cannot be the meant content of Sartre's sayings, since, while they would indeed describe the reform of some character, they would be appropriate only before or after some metamorphosis, not, as Sartre clearly intended, in the midst of some process of riddance and conversion, whether radical or otherwise. Yet, in the turmoil of such a change, ‘I am not what I am’ (or the everyday ‘I am not myself’) still, surely, cannot be true, and if that is the case, Sartre must be being inocherent, and therefore, obfuscating and deliberately obscure, and hence, it seems, must properly be rejected by all right and clear thinking men.

Was Reid a Moral Realist?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Graham
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Moral Realist ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Intellectual Power ◽  
Moral Facts

This chapter argues that, contrary to a very widely held view, Reid’s express disagreement with Hume on the matter of morality cannot satisfactorily be pressed into the “realism versus sentimentalism” dichotomy. Hume is certainly a sentimentalist, but there is good reason to interpret Reid’s use of the analogy between moral sense and sense perception in a way that does not imply the existence of “real” moral properties. Reid makes judgment central to the analogy, and this gives the exercise of an intellectual “power” primacy over passive sensual experience. The analogy thus allows him to apply the concepts “true” and “false” to moral judgments, without any quasi-realist appeal to moral facts.

scholarly journals Structure, norms and normative theory in a re-defined English School: accepting Buzan's challenge

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 1235-1253 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
English School ◽  
Second Line ◽  
Social Structural ◽  
Normative Dimension ◽  
Competing Dynamics ◽  
Analytical Power ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis article looks at the significance of Barry Buzan's 2004 reformulation of the English School from the perspective of the normative dimension of English School theory. Picking up a challenge that Buzan set, but which has largely gone unanswered, for those who see normative theory as a key aspect of the English School's contribution, the article assesses three possible responses. It rejects a stance denying the relevance of Buzan's approach to normative theory and is dissatisfied with a second line that distinguishes methodologically between Buzan's social structural theorising and an approach to normative theory that draws principally on political theory. Instead, it argues for the inherent normativity of Buzan's position because of its reliance on values, arguing that many of the analytical benefits of Buzan's approach can also be deployed normatively because of the way he highlights contested and competing dynamics in play at different times and at different levels. The article suggests that this has the potential to revive pluralism as a normative position in the English School in a way that retains and extends the enhanced analytical power that Buzan's reformulation offers.

Structural change in Catalan discourse

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Montserrat Forcadell ◽  
Jaume Llopis
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Television Production ◽  
Intimate Link ◽  
Structural Innovation ◽  
The Way

For the function of theme-rheme mapping onto sentence structure, Catalan right-dislocation, a syntactically-based operation, is being replaced by in situ accent-shift, a prosodic strategy. This structural innovation found in the data analysed is probably triggered by a calque from English and Spanish, which uses a prosodic variant. The occurrences found in the corpus (oral television production from non-spontaneous, supervised genres) indicate that the phenomenon is occurring unnoticed by language advisors. By showing that a non-standard prosodic strategy alien to the Catalan inventory has increased over the two periods studied, it is proved that the (structural) calque is making progress. The frequency of the occurrence of this calque may pave the way for its acceptance as a valid Catalan resource among Catalan speakers, as the intimate link between prosody and syntax in Catalan is blurred.

scholarly journals Language and legitimacy: Is pragmatist political theory fallacious?

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Fossen
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
The Way

Eva Erman and Niklas Möller have recently criticised a range of political theorists for committing a pragmatistic fallacy, illicitly drawing normative conclusions from politically neutral ideas about language. This paper examines their critique with respect to one of their primary targets: the pragmatist approach to political legitimacy that I proposed in earlier work, which draws on Robert Brandom’s theory of language. I argue that the charge relies on a misrepresentation of the role of pragmatist ideas about language in my analysis of legitimacy. Pragmatism’s significance for thinking about political legitimacy does not lie in the normative conclusions it justifies but in the way it reorients our thinking towards political practice. This raises the deeper question of what we are to expect from a theory of legitimacy. I argue that Erman and Möller presuppose a widely held but unduly restrictive conception of what a normative theory of legitimacy consists in and that pragmatism can broaden the scope of enquiry: a theory of legitimacy should not focus narrowly on the content and justification of criteria, but more fundamentally aim to explicate the forms of political activity in which such criteria are at stake.

scholarly journals Illocutionary act between barista and customers in starbucks coffee shop at Changi airport

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 142
Author(s):  
Isbandi Isbandi ◽  
Nurma Dhona Handayani
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Observational Method ◽  
Coffee Shop ◽  
Dominant Type ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Illocutionary Acts ◽  
Illocutionary Act ◽  
The Way

This research primarily aimed to analyse the types of the illocutionary act proposed by Searle (1979),  secondly to find the dominant type produced by both sides, between barista and customers’ utterances at Starbucks coffeeshop Changi Airport. This research applied observational method and non-participatory technique as the way collecting the data. The design of this research were qualitative and quantitative research. Qualitative research is applied to analyse the data in the form text. In contrast, quantitative research used to count the number of utterances, to conclude which types of illocutionary acts find dominantly during the conversation. It was found that directive, representative, and expressive types were in the utterances. Meanwhile, commissive and declaration type did not find in the utterances. The result from this study showed that directives illocutionary act as the most frequently found in utterances, because the communication which takes place in coffeeshop between the baristas and customers usually only needed to ordering and just give information (informing).

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