This paper deals with an apparent tension in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: Wittgenstein holds an expressivist position with regard to avowals, but also claims that the doxastic avowal “I believe that p” is a “hesitant assertion” of p. It is argued that the tension is apparent only and that Wittgenstein’s expressivism in fact justifies and explains his views on “I believe”: avowals typically are explicit expressives and usually implicate (in the Gricean sense) the corresponding illocutionary acts. The hesitant assertion of p is the result of an implicature of the explicit expressive “I believe that p”. The paper also addresses the ambiguity of avowals and the possibility of thereby undermining the Frege–Geach objection to psychological expressivism.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Austin John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. 2nd ed. Edited by Urmson James O. & Sbisà Marina . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Bar-On Dorit 2004. Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge . Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Bar-On Dorit 2015. “Expression: Acts, Products, and Meaning.” In: Meaning without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism, edited by Gross Steven , Tebben Nicholas , & Williams Michael . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 180–209.
Benveniste Émile 1974. Probleme der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft. München: List-Verlag.
Brandl Johannes L. 2014. “Die Entwicklung der Autorität der Ersten Person.” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 62, 937–962.
Finkelstein David H. 2003. Expression and the Inner. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Frege Gottlob (1879) 1967. “Begriffsschrift, a formula language, modeled upon that of arithmetic, for pure thought.” In: From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931, edited by van Heijenoort Jean . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1–82.
Geach Peter T. 1965. “Assertion.” Philosophical Review 74, 449–465.
Giorgi Alessandra & Pianesi Fabio 2005. “Credo (I Believe): Epistemicity and the Syntactic Representation of the Speaker.” University of Venice Working Papers in Linguistics 15, 105–152.
Grice Paul 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Hare Richard M. 1970. “Meaning and Speech Acts.” Philosophical Review 79, 3–24.
Krifka Manfred 2014. “Embedding Illocutionary Acts.” In: Recursion: Complexity in Cognition, edited by Thomas Roeper & Margaret Speas. Dordrecht etc.: Springer, 59–87.
Kripke Saul 1979. “A Puzzle about Belief.” In: Meaning and Use, edited by Margalit Avishai . Dordrecht etc.: D. Reidel, 239–283.
McGinn Marie 2011. “Wittgenstein and Moore’s Paradox.” In: Image and Imaging in Philosophy, Science and the Arts, vol. 1, edited by Heinrich Richard , Nemeth Elisabeth , Pichler Wolfram , & Wagner David . Frankfurt etc.: Ontos, 59–72.
Moore George E. 1993. Selected Writings. Edited by Baldwin Thomas . London: Routledge.
Rosenthal David M. 1995. “Moore’s Paradox and Consciousness.” Philosophical Perspectives 9, 313–333.
Sadock Jerrold M . 1994. “Toward a Grammatically Realistic Typology of Speech Acts.” In: Foundations of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical and Linguistic Perspectives, edited by Tsohatzidis Savas L. . London/New York: Routledge, 393–406.
Schroeder Mark 2008. “How Expressivists Can and Should Solve Their Problem with Negation.” Nous 42, 573–599.
Searle John R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Searle John R . 1975. “Indirect Speech Acts.” In: Speech Acts . Vol. 3 of Syntax and Semantics, edited by Cole Peter & Morgan Jerry L. . New York: Academic Press, 59–82.
Searle John R. 1983. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Searle John R. and Vanderveken Daniel 1985. Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Urmson James O. 1952. “Parenthetical Verbs.” Mind 61, 480–496.
Williamson Timothy 2000. Knowledge and Its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wittgenstein Ludwig 1953. Philosophical Investigations. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wittgenstein Ludwig 1958. The Blue and Brown Books. New York: Harper & Row.
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1967. Zettel. 2nd ed. Edited by Anscombe G.E.M. & von Wright Georg H. , translated by Anscombe G.E.M. . Oxford: Blackwell.
Wittgenstein Ludwig 1980a. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. i. Edited by Anscombe G.E.M. & von Wright Georg H. . Oxford: Blackwell.
Wittgenstein Ludwig 1980b. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. ii. Edited by von Wright Georg H. & Nyman Heikki . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 848 | 117 | 9 |
Full Text Views | 232 | 3 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 128 | 15 | 0 |
This paper deals with an apparent tension in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: Wittgenstein holds an expressivist position with regard to avowals, but also claims that the doxastic avowal “I believe that p” is a “hesitant assertion” of p. It is argued that the tension is apparent only and that Wittgenstein’s expressivism in fact justifies and explains his views on “I believe”: avowals typically are explicit expressives and usually implicate (in the Gricean sense) the corresponding illocutionary acts. The hesitant assertion of p is the result of an implicature of the explicit expressive “I believe that p”. The paper also addresses the ambiguity of avowals and the possibility of thereby undermining the Frege–Geach objection to psychological expressivism.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 848 | 117 | 9 |
Full Text Views | 232 | 3 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 128 | 15 | 0 |