06/13/2008
Kiteley, Murray - Verbs of Speech
This is a short discussion on Austin's How To Do Things With Words, where he introduces the category of 'performatives'. Also mentioned was the fact that once a present-tense verb performative is made into a past-tense verb, it can have a truth value and thus wouldn't be a performative.
Danto, Arthur - A Note on Expressions of the Referring Sort
Author writes a response paper to Strawson's 'On Referring' and and Earl Russell's discussion as well. Author takes a stance against a certain type of logic of ordinary language that takes a sentence that refers to nothing as neither true nor false. For instance: 'The building on south-west corner of 116th st is beautiful'. If there is no building there, the argument goes, then the sentence is neither true nor false. Author points out that if this is allowed to stand, then the speaker of such a sentence couldn't be considered lying, since lying is saying something false (pg405). But if this was a business context where purchasing the 'building' was involved, such a sentence might easily constitute fraud-- untrue statements being an integral part of fraud. Author suggests that ordinary language stretches over too many different contexts and cases to allow for one strict logic. (pg407)
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