Page 239 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

216 Notes

ence and Metaphysics (London, 1968); E. Tugendhat, ‘“Phanomenologie
und Sprachanalyse,” in Festschrift fur Gadamer, vol. 2 (Tibingen, 1970),
pp. 3-24; J. Hintikka, Knowledge and Belief (Ithaca, 1962); C. Taylor,
“Explaining Action,” Inquiry 13 (1970):54-89. On the analysis of ex-
pressive speech acts, cf. P. M. S. Hacker, Insight and Illusion (Oxford,
1972), chs. 7, 8, 9.
63. Cf. B. B. Steinberg and Jakobovits, eds., Semantics (Cambridge,
1971), pp. 157-484; H. E. Boekle, Semantik (Munich, 1972).
64. The work of P. W. Alston is a good example.
65. F. von Kutschera, Sprachphilosophie (Munich, 1971), pp. 117-
161; H. Schnelle, Sprachphilosophie und Linguistik, pp. 190-240; Wun-
derlich, Grundlagen, pp. 238-273.
66. P. Watzlawick, J. H. Beavin, D. D. Jackson, Pragmatics of Hu-
man Communication (New York, 1967).
67. A communication theory that is supposed to reconstruct conditions
of action oriented to reaching understanding requires as its basic unit of
analysis, not necessarily pairs of complementary speech actions—that is,
reciprocally performed and accepted speech actions—but at least a speak-
er’s utterance that can not only be understood but accepted by at least
one additional speaking and acting subject.
68. D. Wunderlich, “Zur Konventionalitat von Sprechhandlungen,”’ in
D. Wunderlich, ed., Linguistische Pragmatik, p. 16; cf. also the linguistic
characterization of the standard form given there and Wunderlich’s anal-
ysis of advising in Grundlagen, pp. 349 ff.
69. Exceptions are representative speech acts, which, when rendered
explicit, can also take on a negative form; e.g., “I do not want (hereby)
to conceal from you that...”
70. Deviating from a common usage, I do not think it advisable to
distinguish propositions from assertions in such a way that a proposition
is indeed embedded in a specific speech situation through being asserted
but does not receive its assertoric force therefrom. I am of the opinion,
rather, that the assertoric force of a proposition cannot be reconstructed
otherwise than with reference to the validity claim that anyone in the
role of a competent speaker could raise for it in asserting it. Whether this
claim can, if necessary, be discursively vindicated, that is, whether the
proposition is “valid” (true), depends on whether it satisfies certain truth
conditions. We can, to be sure, view propositions monologically, that is, as
symbolic structures with an abstract truth value without reference to a
speaker; but then we are abstracting precisely from the speech situation
in which a propositional content, owing to the fact that it is asserted as
a proposition, receives a relation to reality, that is, fulfills the condition
of being true or false. This abstraction naturally suggests itself (and
often remains hidden even from the logician) because the truth claim
raised by the speaker is wniversalistic—that is, precisely of such a nature
that, although it is raised in a particular situation, it could be defended
against anyone's doubt.