Illocution-based Humor

It’s been a while. In fact who knows who’s still checking this thing. But I found this, and couldn’t resist. If only apologies and declarations of romantic intent were this easy.

The Beginning of the End

It is getting to the point where writing a thesis blog turns into a form of procrastination about writing a thesis. That–combined with the fact that I finally have a pretty detailed outline of the thing, and that there are some application deadlines rapidly approaching–means that I will probably be posting fewer substantive musings about illocutions, authority, and the like in the coming weeks and months.

But fear not! I still have a few musings left in the tank, and I’ll still be posting links when something I read elsewhere strikes me as particularly thesis-related. In addition, this will probably become my main outlet for thesis-writing status updates. So stay tuned if you’re particularly interested in how stressed I am at any give moment this fall.

From The Comments

Just thought I’d direct your collective attention to this quick back-and-forth I’ve had with Mark Lance (of Kukla and Lance fame) in the comments of a previous post. I am very surprised, and very grateful, to be getting a little bit of feedback from someone I’ve been writing about.

The New York Times on Illocutionary Uptake

Modern Love picks up where Sports Night left off:

“I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.”

His words came at me like a speeding fist, like a sucker punch, yet somehow in that moment I was able to duck. And once I recovered and composed myself, I managed to say, “I don’t buy it.” Because I didn’t.

(hat tip: Silpa)

The New Yorker on the Second-Personal Sharing of Moral Responsibility

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2009/08/03/090803crat_atlarge_acocella

If Jesus informs you that you will betray him, and tells you to hurry up and do it, are you really responsible for your act? Furthermore, if your act sets in motion the process—Christ’s Passion—whereby humankind is saved, shouldn’t somebody thank you?

Maybe the Nuremberg Defense should be called the Judas Defense.

In Which Vicki Hearne Changes Everything and Nothing

Just back from New York, where I picked up a copy of Adam’s Task, by Vicki Hearne. I’m almost all the way through it now, and, as Korsgaard would say, I cannot go on as before.

Hearne was an animal trainer, a poet, and a philosopher (though she had no philosophy degree). The title of the book comes from Genesis, in which God creates the world’s animals, and gives to Adam the task of naming them. It’s a book about talking to animals, but that description really doesn’t do it justice.

My interest in the book (or at least my thesis-related interest) is in Hearne’s account, heavily influenced by Wittgenstein and Cavell, of how a dog and its trainer create a language-game and, thereby, a moral world that the two participants inhabit. In doing so, Hearne makes a series of observations which are helping me to better understand almost every element of my thesis. This is all sort of half-baked right now, but I’ll do the whole quote-extensively-and-begin-to-analyze thing, and see if I can get across what I’m talking about.

A Working Title!

From the department of procrastinating-on-important-thesis-work-by-doing-unimportant-thesis-work:

I think I’ve come up with a good working title for the thesis: On Our Own Authority.

Both a description of my topic (the particular kind of authority that we all share and that constitutes moral right and wrong), and an answer to the question of what grounds the “mighty must of morality”: On whose authority are we obligated to do what is right?

More to come on my recent decision to structure my thesis around the question of moral authority. In the meantime, let me know if you can think of a better title. This one is far from set in stone.

A Digression on Method

Recently I’ve written a few posts that represent rough drafts of passages that will likely appear in my final product. I’m going to pause for a moment here and try to hash out a decision I’m going to have to make about argumentative strategy. Specifically, I’m faced with a dilemma.

Is Practical Identity Second-Personal?

In The Sources of Normativity, Korsgaard (whose class I may take this fall!) argues that our ability to act for reasons necessarily derives from our having a practical identity–a sense of who we are that forms the basis of our reasoning about what to do. Some of the most obvious elements of our practical identity are entirely contingent, Korsgaard notes. Our religion, nationality, profession, and family ties can be crucial elements of our practical identity, and all of them can be assumed, discarded, or exchanged. We become parents, we lose our jobs, we convert.

The Times on Gossip as a Source of Expressive Morality

The Times Magazine this week has a column about the fascination with the ways that wives of philandering politicians handle their husband’s infidelity publicly. It includes this tidbit, which fits perfectly with Gibbard’s expressivism:

“Gossip is how we establish cultural norms. Talking about others is our way to test the social boundaries — to learn what raises eyebrows, what is met by shrugs — without directly talking about ourselves.”