Abstract
Certain commissive speech acts, such as “I forgive you,” “I’m in favor,” “Thank you” and “Sorry,” are often characterized as “expressives,” utterances whose primary function is to express a psychological state (so thanks expresses gratitude, apologies express remorse, and so on). In contrast, I argue here that such utterances are stance-takings: speech acts that commit the speaker to behave towards others in light of a normative position she accepts. I argue that stance-taking, as developed here, makes better sense of these utterances than the standard expressivist account, in terms of their meaning and the norms (both linguistic and moral) that govern their use. It also better accounts for how non-personal institutions – corporations, countries and courts, for example – can perform these utterances sincerely.
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Notes
- 1.
I have already described apologies as stance-takings, but have not yet developed the account or extended it to other speech acts and to non-human agents, as I do here. See Jeffrey S. Helmreich, “The Apologetic Stance,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 43:2 (2015), pp. 76, 97–107.
- 2.
My use of the term “stance” here more closely follows that of philosophers, describing the way people are oriented towards certain claims, than that of at least some linguists discussing “stance markers,” to wit: utterances that express the speaker’s attitude towards something else they are expressing, as in saying “to some extent” or “even” or “come to think of it…” See, for example, Bethany Gray and Douglas Biber, “Stance Markers,” in K. Aijmer & C. Rühlemann , eds., Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook (Cambridge: 2014), ch. 8.
- 3.
See J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Harvard: 1955), p. 79.
- 4.
Kent Bach, “Introduction,” in Harnish, ed., Basic Topics in the Philosophy of Language (Prentice Hall: 1994), p. 18n14; John Searle, “A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts,” in Searle, Expression and Meaning (Cambridge: 1985), p. 15. See also Austin, supra note 3, p. 79.
- 5.
David Kaplan, “The meaning of Ouch and Oops,” Paper delivered as UC Berkeley Graduate Council Lecture, accessed via web at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaGRLlgPl6w (April 24, 2004). Actually, a more precise way of putting it is that an expression such as “ouch” is sincere only when the state it expresses obtains and the speaker utters it with the intention of communicating or conveying or sharing the state. See Grice, “Meaning,” Philosophical Review, 66 (1957), p. 383.
- 6.
See Bach, supra note 4; Searle, supra note 4.
- 7.
See, for example, Charles Griswold, Forgiveness: a Philosophical Exploration (2007) and Pamela Hieronymi, “Articulating an Uncompromising Forgiveness,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62:3 (2001).
- 8.
See, for example, Norvin Richards, “Forgiveness”, Ethics, 99:1 (1988), p. 79; and Kathleen Dean Moore, Pardons: Justice, Mercy, and the Public Interest (Oxford: 1989), p. 184.
- 9.
Jeffrie Murphy, Getting Even: Forgiveness and its Limits (Oxford: 2003), pp 33–38, p. 16: Murphy maintains that forgiveness requires “overcoming all vindictive passions.”
- 10.
For a similar account of forgiveness, see Charles Griswold, supra note 7.
- 11.
Consent to sex is a well-known exception; arguably so is consent to surgery, as when a patient changes her mind just before the operation and makes her views known.
- 12.
On this point the seminal view is Gary Watson’s, arguing that “to value is to want,” and therefore, that “one’s valuational and motivational systems must to a large extent overlap. If, in appropriate circumstances, one were never inclined to action by some alleged evaluation, the claim that that was indeed one’s evaluation would be disconfirmed.” Gary Watson, “Free Agency,” The Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 215.
- 13.
I thank Seana Shiffrin for this observation.
- 14.
I know this dichotomy is now considered problematic, but I don’t think in ways on which my argument here turns. If anything, the domain of claims I’m calling normative and, shortly, “to-be-claims,” has been expanded in the erosion of the prescriptive-descriptive distinction.
- 15.
J. David Velleman (1999), “Love as a Moral Emotion,” Ethics 109, pp. 343–44: certain “ways of seeing” or regarding someone or something has valuing components, as well. Respect, and high regard, for example, involve such valuations. It is these sorts of ways of viewing people that, I claim, can be the objects of commitments.
- 16.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. (Harcourt: 1968), p. 292. I recognize that Arendt’s argument is more often taken in just the opposite way, as suggesting that calling a person a rightsholder is a way of describing their legal and institutional recourses, and therefore inapt to refugees and noncitizens. I read her, to the contrary, as arguing that this purely descriptive reading is precisely the mistake that needs to be corrected, one that sees “rights” as facts about human beings, perhaps resting on their capacities and aptitudes, instead of ways it is incumbent upon us to treat them.
- 17.
Philip Pettit, “Groups with Minds of Their Own,” in Frederick F. Schmitt, ed., Socializing Metaphysics: the Nature of Social Reality (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield: 2003), pp. 167–94.
- 18.
Margaret Gilbert, “Collective Guilt and Collective Guilt Feelings,” Journal of Ethics, Col. 6 (2002), pp. 115–143.
- 19.
Peter A French, “The Corporation as a Moral Person,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979), pp. 207–215.
- 20.
John R. Searle, Making the Social World (Oxford: 2010), pp. 42–55.
- 21.
Christopher Kutz, Complicity (Cambridge: 2007), pp. 71–73.
- 22.
I take this term from Searle, supra note 20, p. 36.
- 23.
Ibid, p. 37n, quoting Arthur C. Danto, “Basic Actions and Basic Concepts,” the Review of Metaphysics 32:3 (1979), pp. 471–72.
- 24.
This is not to say it will be inclined to treat them unfairly; just that it would no longer be true that it would be inclined to treat them fairly.
- 25.
This would be a behavioristic account if it equated typical or putatively “internal” psychological states with dispositions to act, as Gilbert Ryle does with knowledge and emotions. See Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), pp. 83–149. Instead, my position is that not all states that speech acts express or commit one to require typical or internal psychological states, and that among those that do not are institutional stances.
- 26.
Arendt, supra note 16.
- 27.
For a defense of the claim that it does, see Hieronymi, supra note 7.
- 28.
See Seana Valentine Shiffrin, “Reparations for U.S. Slavery and Justice over Time,” in David Waserman and Melinda Roberts, Eds. Harming Future Persons. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009), pp. 336–37.
References
Hannah Arendt, “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man,” in H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. (Harcourt: 1968).
J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Harvard: 1955)
Kent Bach, “Introduction,” in R. Harnish, ed., Basic Topics in the Philosophy of Language (Prentice Hall: 1994).
Arthur C. Danto, “Basic Actions and Basic Concepts,” the Review of Metaphysics 32:3 (1979).
Peter A French, “The Corporation as a Moral Person,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979): 207-215.
Margaret Gilbert, “Collective Guilt and Collective Guilt Feelings,” Journal of Ethics, Col. 6 (2002): 115-143.
Bethany Gray and Douglas Biber, “Stance Markers,” in K. Aijmer & C. Rühlemann , eds., Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook (Cambridge: 2014).
Charles Griswold, Forgiveness: a Philosophical Exploration (Cambridge: 2007).
Jeffrey S. Helmreich, “The Apologetic Stance,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 43:2 (2015), pp. 75-108.
Pamela Hieronymi, “Articulating an Uncompromising Forgiveness,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62:3 (2001), pp. 529-555.
David Kaplan, “The meaning of Ouch and Oops,” Paper delivered as UC Berkeley Graduate Council Lecture, accessed via web at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaGRLlgPl6w (April 24, 2004).
Christopher Kutz, Complicity (Cambridge: 2007).
Kathleen Dean Moore, Pardons: Justice, Mercy, and the Public Interest (Oxford: 1989).
Jeffrie Murphy, Getting Even: Forgiveness and its Limits (Oxford: 2003).
Philip Pettit, “Groups with Minds of Their Own,” in Frederick F. Schmitt, ed., Socializing Metaphysics: the Nature of Social Reality (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield: 2003), pp. 167-94.
Norvin Richards, “Forgiveness”, Ethics, 99:1 (1988), pp. 77-97.
Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (University of Chicago Press: 1949).
John Searle, “A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts,” in John R. Searle, Expression and Meaning (Cambridge: 1985), pp. 1-30.
John R. Searle, Making the Social World (Oxford: 2010).
Seana Valentine Shiffrin, “Reparations for U.S. Slavery and Justice over Time,” in David Waserman and Melinda Roberts, eds., Harming Future Persons. (Springer: 2009).
J. David Velleman, “Love as a Moral Emotion,” Ethics 109 (1999), pp. 343-44.
Gary Watson, “Free Agency,” The Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975), pp. 205-220.
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Helmreich, J.S. (2019). Taking a Stance: An Account for Persons and Institutions. In: Capone, A., Carapezza, M., Lo Piparo, F. (eds) Further Advances in Pragmatics and Philosophy: Part 2 Theories and Applications. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00973-1_28
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