通常我們批評別人只說不做，但在語言哲學當中，說話也是一個行為，說話也是在做事。當然捲動舌頭發出聲音本身已經是一個行為，但這只是語言行為當中最表面的一層。深入一層的內語言行為是說出一句說話時，在表達出那句說話本身的意思。再深入一層的外語言行為，是那句說話起的實際的作用，如法官宣讀判詞，在婚禮上答我願意，向別人許下一個承諾，這些語言行為與一般可以分辨真偽的陳述說話，有著本質上的不同，因為說話本身就有一個力量。最深入一層的後語言行為，便是透過說話去達到某些目的，例如婚禮上答我願意目的只是為了嫁入豪門。這篇功課探討如何劃分內語言行為和外語言行為的界線。

In “How to do Things with Words”, J.L.Austin challenges the traditional view of philosophy language that the meaning of utterances concerns about its truth value. He proposed the concept of speech act, instead passively describe what is being said, he bring froth a new idea that identify a critical feature of speaking, which is “saying is doing”. He classify utterance into two categories, performative utterance and costative utterance. Costative utterance is more or less the traditional account of sentence, in which it concerns about how to interpret the meaning of statement in the sentence. A statement is stating some fact and some reference which can be denotated and resolved its sense and then determine the truth value of the statement. For example, the sentence “My school is on top of Burnaby Mountain” is a statement stating some fact about the school of the speaker which can be verified by the listener once “my school” is deference to “Simon Fraser University” and “Burnaby Mountain” is denotated to a particular place that the listener knows about. On the other hand, performative utterance has no truth value attached, rather the speaker is trying to archive something with the utterance. The major concern of the sentence, for example a command or an instruction, is about what the speaker intended to archive. For example, when the speaker says “Get me a cup of tea”, there is no true of false regarding the sentence, he is instructing the listener to fetch him a cup of tea.

Austin further divide the performative utterance into three sub-categories. When a person speaks, he is actually performing three acts at the same time. On the surface level, he is preformance a locutionary act, that he is making some sound, speaking some words and uttering a sentence that means a certain thing literally. In short it is the act that he is speaking. On the second level, there is the illocutionary act, what the speaking is doing when he is speaking. He could be promising something, ordering someone or stating some facts through his speech. In short it is the act in his speaking. The last level is prelocutionary act, it is the intention of the speaker through the act of speaking, he could be trying to draw someone’s attention, pleasing someone or insulting someone. In short it is the act behind his speaking. Austin points out that costative utterance is a special kind of performative utterance where the act performed is to state something. He also points out that a sentence with illocutionary verbs will make the sentence a illocutionary act, but some sentence without any illocutionary verbs can also be a performative utterance under the right context. For example, the sentence “I will be there tomorrow” has an implicit meaning that I promise I will be there tomorrow.

Searle disagrees with Austin distinction on locutionary act and illocutionary act in the article “Austin on Locutionary and Illocutionary Acts” [2]. His paper is divided into two major sections. In the first half of the paper he try to show that Austin account on the boundary between locutionary act and illocutionary act is wrong, “reduces the locutionary-illocutionary distinction to trying and succeeding in performing an illocutionary act” [2, p409]. In the second half of the paper, he propose his own boundary between locutionary act and illocutionary act by introducing the concept of propositional acts. In the following sections, I will examine Searle’s argument in details and point out how he failed to show that Austin is wrong about louctionary act and illocutionary act.

Searle agrees with Austin on the first two level of locutionary act, the phonetic act that is the act of making some sound, the phatic act that is the act of uttering some words, but he disagree on the rhetic act that constitute the sense and reference of the sentence in the utterance. On the rhetic act level, he thinks that the meaning of the utterance is the same as the illocutionary, “there are not two difference acts but two different labels for the same act” [2, p407]. He argue that if someone says “Get out”, the rhetic act is he told me to get out, which is essentially the same as the illocutionary act. In short, “the verb phrases in the reports of rhetic acts invariably contain illocutionary verbs” [2, p411]. There is no way to give an indirect speech report of a rhetic act which does not turn the report into the report of an ilocutionary act.

Let me show Searle is wrong by employing two counter examples. In the simple examples used in Searle’s article, it is indeed very hard to distinguish the the rhetic act and illocutionary. However when we consider a more complex example, we can clearly mark distinction between locutionary act and illocutionary. Under many circumstance, the surface meaning of the speech can be very difference from the illocutionary act. Imagine that there is a secret agent who is is contacting his undercover spy to exchange some information and issue further instructions in a coffee shop. They both agreed on using some secret code word, let’s say for example on surface they are talking about NHL games, but in reality they use the score of the games and the number on the hockey player’s jersey to encode secret messages. In this case, on the surface the locutionary act are just talking about hockey, but the illocutionary act has totally different meaning, maybe they are talking about their next assassination plan. Here we have a clear cut distinction between locutionary act and illocutionary act that the two are not the same.

Searle also made a wrong assumption that locutionary act must always has three parts. In fact a locutionary act can only consist of the first two parts or even just the first part, but there can still be an illocutionary act associated with the same utterance. For example, a brain injury patient lost his function in speaking, so he can only make isolated words or he is even only capable of making incomprehensible noise, although his can still think clearly inside his mind. Imagine a scenario that the patient want to get the attention of the nurse, he would try to speak something or make some noise to get the attention of the nurse. The illocutionary act of his utterance is very clear, but yet the rhetic act or the pahtic act is totally missing, only the phonetic act of the loctionary act remains. This example also demostrate that locutionary act is very different form illoctionary act. Even the utternace is totally meaningless on the surface, under some context the meaningless utterance could actually mean something that the speaker is trying to do.

In the second half of the paper, Searle attempt to reconstruct the boundary of locutionary and illocutionary by introducing a new layer, propositional act, above the phatic act in the place of rhetic act used to be. He started with stating three linguistic principles. Then he try to point out Austin neglects those three principles in his original theory in spech act to explain why Austin is wrong. His first argument (point 3) is less controversal, Austin’s attempt to identify specific illocutionary verbs and the endless distinction of different types of illouctionary acts is futile. The cataglory of illocutionary force of utternace is not precise, there can be more than one way to distinguish different types of illocutionary acts.

Searle’s next argument on Principle of Expressiblity (point 1 and 2) tries to point out that “for every illocutionary act one intends to performs, It is possible to utter a sentence the literal meaning of which is such as to determine that its serious literal utterance in an appropriate context” [2, p418]. He thinks that given proper translation and detail description, the meaning of an illocutionary act can be expressed by a sentence literally, so that the Austin’s separation between the said-meaning and the meant-force does not exist. Searle assume “the meaning of a sentence is determined by the meanings of all its meaningful components” [2, p415] which is not always true. The meaning of a sentence can sometimes determined by what is missing from its meaningful components, so that the listener can deduce the true meaning of the sentence from what is omitted from the sentences when it is compare against the normal components of that type of sentences. In a situation that a person has to say one sentence to two listeners but at the same time convey two different meanings to the two listeners with the prerequisite that one of the listener cannot know the meaning that is intended for the other listener. For example, a businessman introduce a customer to his long time business partner. The businessman praise the customer such and such during the introduction in front of the customer. To the customer, the illocutionary act is about using the praises to say something good about the customer. But to the business partner, the illocutionary act is about using what is not praised to indicate something bad about the customer. If the omission in the locutionary act is the true intend of the illocutionary act, then it is impossible to express the illocutionary act in a plain literal sentence, no matter how many details you put into the sentences.

Searle introduce propositional act, the act of expression the proposition, which is a specific type of illocutionary act that the intend of the sentence is merely stating the content of the sentences. Austin thinks that this type of performative utterance act bears the truth value of the content of the sentences just like traditional costative utterance. Searle argues that a propositional act has two components, the statement act itself which is the act of stating, and the statement object which is the content of what is stated. The statement act is like any other act that it does not have true or false. A statement object is a proposition that we can evaluate its truthfuliness. I think Searle are force to introduce this arkward layer of the proposition act in order to complete his speech act theory because he get rid of the rhetic act layer of locutionary act. Let’s recall Austin’s definition of locutionary act, especially the definition of rhetic act, is that the speaker is saying the literal meaning of the sentence. Statement act is actually a special kind of illocutionary act that the meaning of illocutionary act overlap with the meaning of rhetic act. Let me use the same technique employed by Searles earlier in the article but flip it, there is no way to give a report of an illocutionary act which does not turn into giving an indirect speech report of a rhetic. For example, he said “Simon Fraser University is in Burnaby”, the illocutionary act is that he is stating Simon Fraser University is in Burnaby which is exactly the same as the rhetic act.

In conclusion, I successfully defence Austin’s account on the locutionary act and illocutionary act from Searle’s attack by showing counter examples that clearly mark the boundary between locutionary and illocutionary acts. In addition, I also refute his claim that illocutionary act can be express in a literal sentence that in his account makes locutionary act no longer necessary. At last, I demostrated that the introduction of propositional act is redundant if we keep the distinction of locutionary act and illocutionary act. Propositional act is just a special case of illocutionary act that actually overlap with locutionary.

References:
[1] J.L. Austin, “Performative Utterances”
[2] J.R.Searle, “Austin on Locutionary and Illocutionary Acts”

在傳統認知論中，知識等於真實的信念加上合理相信的理由。在尋找合理的理由時，我們采用歸納法，從已經被肯定的知識中，推論相信新知識的合理理由。可是這裹有一個問題，若每一項知識也是從先前的知識推論出來，那層層遞進地推論追溯上去，那最初的知識如何肯定呢。傳統上基礎主義認為在知識的最底層，是一些不需論證自我肯定的基礎知識，作為所有知識推論的基礎。調和主羲則否定有基礎知識的存在，所有知論的推論是個巨大的循環，只能檢視整個知識系統的一至性，有沒有內部矛盾或對世界觀測的不協調。這篇功課討論調和主義理論本身的問題，探討調和主義能否成立。

The Coherence Theory of Empirical Knowledge

In this essay, I am evaluating Bonjour’s coherence theory of empirical knowledge (CTEK) against foundational theory of empirical knowledge (FTEK). First, I will outline what is the regress problem and compare the responses from FTEK and CTEK. Then I will examine the objection against CTEK regarding its relationship with external world. I will further extend the objection by arguing CTEK is asserting a fundamental assumption that the external world itself has to be coherent for CTEK to be justified. At last I am going to conclude CTEK is unsuccessful in overcome the objection in strictly epistemological sense but it is successful in practical sense.

Since Plato, traditional view of knowledge is justified true belief. A piece of belief is only qualified as knowledge if it is justified. A belief is justified based on the validity and soundness of its argument, which is implicitly depends on the premises used in the argument are also justified. Each premise on its own is also a piece of belief which required the justification of the premise’s premises. As a result, we have a regression of justifications for premises that keep tracing back, which is known as “the regression problem”. FTEK deals with the regression problem by stating there are some foundation beliefs at the very bottom of chains of premises and the regression terminates when the basic beliefs are reached. There are two version of FTEK. The strong version stated that the basic beliefs are self-justified without the need of further premises. The weak version stated that the basic beliefs are initially credible that are likely to be true. The CTEK rejects the notation of basic beliefs, instead of having the regression of premises go on infinite linearly, the inference is circular. An epistemic system is justified by its internal coherence.

However, the circular nature of CTEK runs into the problem of begging the question, which a belief cannot be justified unless it is already justified. The solution is to reject the linear conception of inferential justification and uses a holistic or systematic conception of inferential justification instead. CTEK separate the justification into two categories, justification of a particular belief and the global justification of the entire cognitive system. The justification of a particular belief appears linear, since the premises regression will soon reached some acceptable beliefs in the context. If no acceptable belief is reached, the premises regression will continue moving in a circle. In this case, the justification of the overall knowledge system comes under questions. In CTEK, the justification of the entire system is based on its degree of coherence. A coherent system must be internally consistence, which means there is no internal conflict, but it has more than just consistency. Coherent is the systemic connection between the components of the system, how observable facts can be explained and predicted. The justified knowledge system is the one with the highest degree of coherences out of all the alternative consistence systems.

In the paper, Bonjour lists three objections to CTEK on questioning the fundamental questions of the connection between coherence and justification. Out of the three objections, Bonjour spends most of the paper in defending against objection number two, the relationship of CTEK and external world. I think this is the strongest objection against CTEK and I also think Bonjour successfully defends CTEK against this objection. However, Bonjour omitted an underlining assumption in his defence that the external world has to be coherent in order to justify his argument. In the following paragraphs, I will first out the objection, go over Bonjour’s response to the objection and illustrate his hidden assumption with a counter example.

The strongest objection to CTEK is that since CTEK is justified only in terms the internal coherence of the beliefs in the system, it does not have any relationship with the external world. A self-enclosed system of beliefs cannot constitute empirical knowledge. Bonjour’s defense is pretty straight forward, it simply link the coherent belief system in CTEK to observable facts from external world. He argues that in CTEK, the coherent system of beliefs must also coherent with reliable observation of the external world in long run. When a particular observation does not coherent with the belief system, CTEK can either neglect the particular observation as an incoherent exception to the belief system or refine the belief system to include the new observation. If there are too many incoherent exception observations accumulated in the belief system, the belief system will become less coherent with the world and eventually it will be replaced by a more coherent belief system. The belief system is continuously updating itself upon new observation to maintain its degree of coherence. The input from external world has causal relationship with the CTEK belief system where the belief system is justified by its coherence with observable facts of the external world. One of the key pieces in Bonjour’s argument is to establish what can be constituted as reliable observations yet at the same time is not a basic belief. He argues that spontaneous introspective beliefs on spontaneous sensa beliefs are very likely to be true. The reliability of cognitively spontaneous beliefs is part of the coherence system along with the observation of the external world. Therefore it is not a prior truth in the sense that it is required as the foundation for justification of the knowledge.

Bonjour based CTEK’s justification on the coherence of the belief system and the reliable observation of external world in long run. Let’s granted that the belief system and the observations are reliable, however Bonjour failed to address the underlining assumption that the external world is coherence in long run. If the external world is not coherence, then no belief system can stay coherent due to CTEK has a causal relationship with the external world. Bonjour uses the spontaneous visual belief a red book and the lack of spontaneous visual of a blue book to illustrate how the belief system is linked to the external world. What if there is a chance that the book randomly change colour every time I observe it? How can I conclude there is a red book on my desk but not a blue book on my desk? Even though I can trust my spontaneous beliefs from my sensa of the book, I cannot trust the object under my observation stays the same between my two observations. It is possible that the cover of the book is made of the latest colour changing e-paper technology, which in the case we can provide a coherent account for the observable fact. However, it is also possible that there is no scientific theory can possible explain why the book change its color. It could be the act of God and it is simply a miracle that the book changed from red to blue for no apparent reason. The CTEK justification adopt an objective clock work world view that rule out the existence of any supernatural power, such as an omnipotent God who defies all laws of physics.
In theory, we cannot epistemological justify the CTEK because we cannot epistemological justify the world is coherent. Hume argues that “Uniformity of Nature”, which is essentially the same as coherence of the world, cannot be justified, yet it is rational and non-optional for us to accept the habit of inductive inference. Practically, we can assume the world is coherent almost all of the time and take it as a weak foundation that it is probably initially true until shown otherwise. CTEK is actually a very weak FTEK in disguise; the base belief of CTEK is that the world is coherence to provide the foundation to build coherent belief systems.

However, it would be totally absurd to argue the world is not coherent. If the world is not coherent, then even FTEK is not possible to have any knowledge system. Just like FTEK cannot convince the ultimate skeptic, CTEK also fail to convince the ultimate skeptic that there is justification on any knowledge. Given the fact that assumption of the world is coherent must dialectically acceptable in the context of any knowledge theory to have any meaning, we can grant this assumption a priori status outside of any epistemic dialog. With this particular exception, I conclude that CTEK is successful in overcoming the objection regarding the relationship of coherent belief system and the external world.

Reference:
[1] Laurence Bonjour, The Coherence Theory of Empirical Knowledge, Philosophical Studies 30 (1976) p281-312

苖卡兒(Descartes)說﹕我思故我在。雖然我們可以肯定自己的存在﹐但如何可以證明在我們思想以外的世界也是存在呢﹖如何去證明人生不是一場夢﹐不是只有獨自一個人的意識漂浮在虛無之中。這篇哲學功課的題目﹐大慨正好對號入座哲學給一般人的印象﹐怎麼哲學問這個無聊的問題。其實這個問題只是大問題的其中一環﹐問世界存在的本質是什麼。這篇功課對比了Moore和Russell兩位哲學家的論證﹐前者從康德(Kant)以理論為起點﹐推論出在人與人的意識以外﹐必然存在一個外在的世界。後者則把問題反過來﹐質疑為什麼不接受世界存在﹐畢竟認為世界不存在的人精神有問題。最搞笑是話說某次Russell講學﹐其中有一個聽眾相信世界不存在﹐那當然除他以外的其他人也不會存在。可是他聽得半桶以為Russell在認同他的觀點﹐演講完畢走上台對Russell說﹐他很高興聽到有人認同他認為其他人不存在的觀點﹐一個多麼的自相多盾的說法。我證明世界存在的論証很簡單﹐如果世界不存在的話﹐我就不需要寫這篇文章交功課﹐教授也不需要花時間去改功課。既然我寫了這篇文章出來﹐教授又要花間去改﹐那就證明了世界是存在的了。

In this essay, I am going to evaluate Moore’s and Russell’s proof of the existence of external world. I will first outline Moore’s argument and Russell’s argument respectively. Then I will point out the difference in the scope of claim in the two arguments. Moore’s argument asserts a smaller scope of claim than Russell’s, thus it is more defendable. Furthermore, I will propose counter examples to nullify Russell’s argument. At last, I am going to propose my proof to the existence of external world to address the shortcomings in both Russell and Moore’s argument.

On the surface, Moore’s argument is surprise simple. It is so simple that it does not seem to be very convincing. His argument can be illustrated as the following. By holding out two hands, here is one hand and here is another hand. There are two hands exists in front of you. If those hands exist, which is something you cannot deny, there must be external world. [1-p451]

Let’s us understand Moore’s claim a little bit more. Moore’s claim is actually an argument to convince a skeptic who does not believes there is an external world but maintain the belief that there is still an external mind outside of his own mind. In another word, to begin with he has to at least believe that there is other mind, who is trying to convince him that there is an external world, already exists outside of him. Moore’s claim will not work on soloist who does not even believe there is anything outside of his own mind. Moreover, Moore’s claim is based on Kant’s early doubt that “the existence of things outside of us … must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their (here, their refer to the external world, not those people) existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof.” [1- p439]. Most important of all, Moore’s claim does not survive Descartes style of self-meditation scrutiny. Moore believe there exists an external world and convince the other minds he experience in his external world to believe there really is an external world, but he can never proof to himself that he is not a sole existence that all the external world he experience are merely a product of his own mind.

Moore’s argument is pretty straight forward. He is playing word games on Kant’s argument by separating the definition of the terms use by Kant. He redefines “things outside of us”, “external things” and “things external to our mind” as three separate terms. (Notice that that he uses the term “things outside of US” instead of “things outside of ME”.) He excluded transcendent things from his argument, since that belongs to the department of metaphysics. Then he flipped the argument to equate “external things” to “things not internal to our mind”. Notice this slight change of term is the slate of hand he played to separate “things that can meet in space” from “physical objects” and here is he introduced the term “present in space” which supposed to have a lesser definition than “things that can meet in space”. He used a few examples like shadows, after image to illustrate his points, but I am not going to repeat the arguments here due to the limitation of space. Now, here he plays the finally trick, he used the “two hands” as a common experience shared between two different minds, which the skeptic cannot deny. Since there is a gap between the two minds and now there is a common experience come form that gap, there must be something existence between the two minds originate that experience, so the external world must exist.

Let’s move on to Russell’s argument, if that is qualified an argument. First of all, Russell’s claim is more ambitious than Moorse’s. Russell actually goes one step more to define the nature of external world, which is the existence of matter. Moorse is smart to leave the external world remains undefined which gives him more room to play with his definition tricks. Instead of arguing for the existence of matter, Russell simply makes the instinctive belief assertions without even bother to argue for it. To begin with, one cannot doubt his own existence and the existence of the sense data he experienced. Russell is quite frank to admit that “we can never prove the existence of things other than ourselves and our experience” [2-p.14], then he immediate follow by asserting that “although this is no logically impossible, there is no reason whatever to suppose that it is true.” and appeal to the common sense hypothesis to assert there are external objects that cause our sensations. Here he had commit the two fallacies. First, the appeal to common sense is begging of question. Second, even given that we can indeed somehow rule out the soloist possibility, his so-call argument still suffered from the false dilemma fallacy. He assumes that if we can rule out the soloist hypothesis, our sense data must come from physical objects, but he forgot the origin of experience can skipped the existence layer and come from the transcendent layer directly. For practical reason, we may operate on the “external object exists” instinctive belief proposed by Russell, but he should at least compare and evaluate all alternatives instincts before concluding his particular version of instinct is most simple thus should be the most possible solution.

In [2-p15] and chapter 3, Russell uses more examples to illustrate his instinctive belief of the existence of external object. In [2-p15], he uses the existence of a cat that is independent of his perception as an example. He thinks it is quite natural to think that a cat will continue to exists and feel hungry regardless of his sense-data. There is a famous counter example which is also a cat, Schrodinger’s cat. According to Quantum theory, the wave equation is only collapse at the moment of observation. Strictly speaking, Schrodinger’s cat are free to seize its existence when there is no observer, except that once when it is being observed, its state variable collapse to a known state and catch up with what supposed to happen during the unobservable moments. The Schrodinger’s cat does not sound nature to most people, but it conforms to the laws of quantum physics. Therefore whether something sounds nature or not cannot be used to justify the intrinsic belief. In chapter 3, Russell uses the common between public space and private space to argument for his existence of matter. I can nullify his arguments with two terms, “Virtual Reality” and “Augmented Reality”. In virtual reality, there is no public space and each one’s private space is truly private to him. In augment reality, although there still a public space, but the sense data of the public space can be augmented and altered before it arrive at the private space. In addition, Russell argues that a blind man cannot experience light. With the latest technology, the vision chip, a blind can actually experience light more or less like a seeing person although he never experience lights. The vision chips implanted in his retina stimulate the visual nerve to send image to the brain. In theory the whole visual process can stay digital and electrical without anything related to light. Therefore light must be something that can be reduced and transformed into a set of computer equations and can be recreated using digital processors.

Both Moore and Russell did not give a satisfying proof of the existence of external world to a soloist. I am going to propose my solution in the last paragraph in an attempt to bridge the gap left open in Moore and Russell’s argument. My proof that I am not a lone existence in this world is very simple. If I am alone in this world, no one is going to mark my philosophy paper and I will have no reason to write it. The very fact that I am writing this philosophy paper is the proof that I am not alone in this world, which imply there must exists an external world. Now, assume that there is a philosophy professor who is marking this philosophy paper. The very fact that he is marking this paper also is a proof of the existence of an external world; otherwise he has no reason to mark this paper. In fact, if there is no external world, why would anyone bother to read a paper trying to proof the existence of the external world? Therefore the mere existence of this philosophical paper on its own is the proof of the existence of the external world. Q.E.D.

Reference:
[1] Paul K. Moser and Arnold Vander Nat, Human Knowledge Classical and Contemporary Approaches, 2003, Oxford Press
[2] Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, 1912, Feedbacks