April 06, 2014 at 07:10PM [via Facebook]
“(3) Are these cases of infelicity mutually exclusive? The answer to this is obvious. (a) No, in the sense that we can go wrong in two ways at once (we can insincerely promise a donkey to give it a carrot). (b) No, more importantly, in the sense that they ways of going wrong ‘shade into one another’ and ‘overlap’ and the decision between them is ‘arbitrary’ in various ways.
“Suppose, for example, I see a vessel on the stocks, walk up and smash the bottle hung at the stem, proclaim ‘I name this ship the MR. STALIN’ and for good measure kick away the chocks: but the trouble is, I was not the person chosen to name it (whether or not–an additional complication–MR. STALIN was the destined name; perhaps in a way it is even more of a shame if it was). We can all agree
“(1) that the ship was not thereby named;
“(2) that it is an infernal shame.
“One could say that I ‘went through a form of’ naming the vessel but that my ‘action’ was ‘void’ or ‘without effect’, because I was not a proper person, had not the ‘capacity’ to perform it: but one might also and alternatively say that, where there is not even a pretence of capacity or a colourable claim to it, then there is no accepted conventional procedure; it is a mockery, like a marriage with a monkey. Or again one could say that part of the procedure is getting oneself appointed. When the saint baptized the penguins, was this void because the procedure of baptizing is inappropriate to be applied to penguins, or because there is no accepted procedure of baptizing anything except humans? I do not think that these uncertainties matter in theory, though it is pleasant to investigate them and in practice convenient to be ready, as jurists are, with a terminology to cope with them.”
– J.L. Austin, HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS, Lecture II (23-24)
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