Contribution
A short programmatic paper. It takes Searle’s thesis that “language is the basic form of public deontology” (Searle 2010, p. 82) and denies that the deontology comes from constitutive rules. It puts in their place Bach and Harnish’s inferential model, with a presumption of rationality, read through Grice’s late lectures, as the minimal normative base. It closes by calling itself a “quessertion” (p. 206), a hedged suggestion.
Key insight
If which act an utterance performs is settled by inference to the speaker’s attitude, not by rules, then any obligation a speech act creates has to come from what the inference presupposes. Berdini’s candidate is that the parties treat each other as rational.
Assumptions
- Searle’s three sources of commitment: “(i) the social character of the communication situation, (ii) the conventional character of the devices used, (iii) the intentionality of speaker meaning” (Searle 2010, p. 80, quoted p. 201). Berdini keeps (i) and drops (ii).
- Bach and Harnish’s inferential model is taken as given.
- Rationality is evaluative. From Grice (1991, 2001) and Kim (1988): “the terms within the scope of rationality are normative, since rationality itself is essentially normative” (p. 205).
Key results
- Against the rule-based account (pp. 202–203). “Meaning never exhausts illocutionary force” (Bach and Harnish 1979, p. 132, quoted p. 202). “The door is open” may be an assertion, an order, a threat or a piece of advice. Searle limits his account to serious, literal, direct discourse, and his account of indirect acts relies on background information and inference that his rule-based core lacks (p. 202). His own “Background of Meaning” (1980) argues that literal meaning fixes truth conditions only against background practices (pp. 202–203).
- The inferential model (pp. 203–204). The hearer understands an illocutionary act by “inferring the speaker’s attitude from ‘what is said’, together with mutual contextual beliefs, two general mutual beliefs peculiar to the communication situation (linguistic and communicative presumptions), and a set of conversational presumptions (drawn from Grice’s maxims)” (p. 203). The presumptions are defeasible mutual beliefs. Communication is the speaker’s expression of an attitude “by means of reflexive-intending … ‘that the hearer take the [speaker]‘s utterance as reason to think [she] has that attitude’” (Bach and Harnish 1979, p. 39, quoted p. 204).
- Bach and Harnish on rights and obligations (p. 204). “I distance myself from Bach and Harnish, who define a ‘moral question’ whether illocutionary acts create a deontology, stating that ‘at best they create mutual beliefs between speaker and hearer about rights and obligations’ (Bach & Harnish 1979, 124).” With Searle, Berdini holds deontology “internal to the performance of speech acts”. Against him, she holds that it does not come from compliance with semantic rules (p. 204). Footnote 6 points to Harnish (2005) as facing normativity differently.
- Rationality as normativity (pp. 205–206). “The presumption about the interlocutor’s rationality could be regarded as the basic form of normativity deriving from the social character of the communication situation.” Treating someone as rational means expecting things of them, which constrains one’s own conduct. These expectations and constraints could be “an ultra-minimalist notion of normativity”, from which “commitments, obligations, rights, licenses” might be accounted for (p. 205). Making the presumption explicit would let the model drop the presumption of literalness and define conversational appropriateness without circularity (p. 205, n. 7).
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Linguistic meaning plus rules cannot determine which illocutionary act is performed, even for literal utterances | moderate | Bach and Harnish; Searle 1980 turned against Searle 1969 (pp. 202–203) |
| C2 | The inferential model accounts for literal, non-literal and indirect acts by one schema | asserted, from Bach and Harnish | p. 204 |
| C3 | Bach and Harnish hold that illocutionary acts at best create mutual beliefs about rights and obligations | reported, second-hand | quotation of 1979, p. 124 (p. 204) |
| C4 | The presumption of rationality is the basic normativity of communication | weak; a proposal | Grice 1991, 2001; Kim 1988 (pp. 205–206) |
Concepts
- Inferentialist model: Bach and Harnish’s account of understanding as inference from what is said, mutual contextual beliefs and presumptions to the speaker’s expressed attitude (p. 203).
- Presumptions: linguistic, communicative, literalness and conversational. They are defeasible mutual beliefs that make communication possible (pp. 203–204).
- Deontology / deontic powers: commitments, obligations, rights and licenses created in speech, after Searle (2010) (pp. 201, 205).
- Quessertion: Grandy’s word for a hedged suggestion, “It is perhaps possible that someone might assert that …” (p. 206, n. 8).
Connections
It applies Bach and Harnish (LIT-1040, unread) against Searle (2010; the record reads Searle’s “Social ontology: Some basic principles” as LIT-482). It points to Harnish’s “Commitments and Speech Acts” (LIT-1850, read alongside), which argues that expressed attitude and commitment may coincide. Berdini instead seeks a source for commitment in the presumption of rationality.
Bearing on the record
- CLAIM-221: partly, through one quoted sentence. The claim’s open point after 2026-10-13 is whether standing that enters through the content of the speaker’s intention counts as a relation, and it waits on Bach and Harnish for that. Berdini quotes them: whether illocutionary acts create a deontology is “a moral question”, and “at best they create mutual beliefs between speaker and hearer about rights and obligations” (1979, p. 124). On that sentence, Bach and Harnish do not count rights, obligations or standing among the constituents of an illocutionary act. Such things enter as mutual beliefs, which in their model are inputs to the hearer’s inference (p. 203). That is the intention-based answer the claim attributes to the line, and the reading confirms it is Bach and Harnish’s. It does not show how they treat teasing or reproach. It is one sentence at second hand, from an author who rejects it. It does not meet what the claim waits on: a reading of the book.
- QUESTION-073: partly, the same passage. On Bach and Harnish, as Berdini quotes them, standing would enter the act only as mutual belief about rights and obligations, and a frame the parties hold together would enter as mutual contextual belief and presumption (p. 203). Both are evidence for the inference, not parts of the act. That states the intention-based side of the question in its authors’ terms. It supplies no case and does not mention teasing.
- No instruction for machine-learning practice.
Limitations
- Programmatic. The positive thesis is stated, not argued, and the author says so (p. 206).
- Second-hand Bach and Harnish. The three quotations of the 1979 book (pp. 39, 124, 132) are Berdini’s, unchecked against the book. The definition of expressing is cited to p. 39 here and to p. 15 in Harnish (2005, LIT-1850), with slightly different wording. Either the book states it twice or one citation is wrong.
- Pagination. The PDF prints pp. 201–207. The journal’s metadata and Crossref give pp. 160–165.
Open questions
- What does Bach and Harnish’s p. 124 say in context? Does it concern all illocutionary acts, or only the communicative ones they separate from the conventional?
- Would a presumption of rationality make an act’s verdict depend on who is presumed rational, and so on the audience, as QUESTION-073 asks?