## 1. Life and Work



Austin was born in Lancaster, England 26 March 1911 to Geoffrey
Langshaw Austin and his wife Mary Austin (nee Bowes-Wilson).
The family moved to Scotland in 1922, where Austin's father
was Secretary of St. Leonard's School, St. Andrews.



Austin took up a scholarship in Classics at Shrewsbury School in 1924,
and, in 1929, went on to study Classics at Balliol College, Oxford. In
1933, he received a First in Literae Humaniores (Classics and
Philosophy) in 1933 and was elected to a Fellowship at All Souls
College, Oxford. He undertook his first teaching position in 1935, as
fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford.



Austin's early interests included Aristotle, Kant, Leibniz, and
Plato (especially *Theaetetus*). His more contemporary
influences included especially G.E. Moore, John Cook Wilson, and H.A.
Prichard. (Austin attended Prichard's undergraduate lectures
with such vigour that Prichard is reported to have made an
unsuccessful attempt to exclude him.) It's plausible that some
aspects of Austin's distinctive approach to philosophical
questions derived from his engagement with the last three. All three
philosophers shaped their views about general philosophical questions
on the basis of careful attention to the more specific judgments we
make. And they took our specific judgments (for instance, in
Moore's case, "I know that I have hands") to be, in
general, more secure than more general judgments (for instance, again
in Moore's case, "I know things about external
reality"). Moreover, there are some continuities of doctrine,
especially with Cook Wilson and Prichard, which align Austin with an
"Oxford Realist" school of philosophy. The core components
of the latter view are, first, that perception and knowledge are
primitive forms of apprehension and, second, that what we apprehend
are ordinary elements of our environments that are independent of our
apprehending them. (All three thinkers were at one or another time
committed to versions of both components of the position but for
complex reasons sometimes wavered about the second. See e.g., Travis
and Kalderon 2013.)



During the Second World War, Austin served in the British Intelligence
Corps. It has been said of him that, "he more than anybody was
responsible for the life-saving accuracy of the D-Day
intelligence" (reported in Warnock 1963: 9). Austin left the
army in September 1945 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was
honoured for his intelligence work with an Order of the British
Empire, the French Croix de Guerre, and the U.S. Officer of the Legion
of Merit. 



Austin married Jean Coutts in 1941. They had four children, two girls
and two boys.



After the War, Austin returned to Oxford. He became White's
Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1952. In the same year, he took on
the role of delegate to Oxford University Press, becoming Chairman of
the Finance Committee in 1957. His other administrative work for the
University included the role of Junior Proctor (1949-50), and
Chairman of the Sub-Faculty of Philosophy (1953-55). He was
president of the Aristotelian Society 1956-57. He gave the
William James Lectures in Harvard in 1955 (a version of the lectures
was published as *How to Do Things With Words* - see
1962b in the Bibliography). He invented the card game CASE in 1951.



During this period, Austin edited H.W.B. Joseph *Lectures on the
Philosophy of Leibniz* (1949) and produced a translation of
Gottlob Frege's *Grundlagen der Arithmetik*, so that it
could be set as an exam (1950). Austin wrote little and published
less. Much of his influence was through teaching and other forms of
small-scale engagement with philosophers. He also instituted a series
of "Saturday Morning" discussion sessions, which involved
detailed discussions of a number of philosophical topics and works,
including Aristotle's *Nichomachean Ethics*,
Frege's *Grundlagen*, Ludwig Wittgenstein's
*Philosophical Investigations*, Merleau-Ponty's
*Phenomenology of Perception*, and Noam Chomsky's
*Syntactic Structures*.



Austin died in Oxford on 8 February 1960.



(For more detail about Austin's life, work, and influences see
Ayer 1978; Baldwin 2010; Berlin 1973b; Dancy 2010; Garvey 2014;
Gustaffson 2011; Hacker 2004; Hampshire 1960; Travis and Kalderon
2013; Marion 2000a,b, 2009; Passmore 1957; Pears 1962; Pitcher 1973;
Searle 2014; Urmson and Warnock 1961; Urmson 1967; Warnock 1963,
1973a; Warnock 1989: 1-10.)


## 2. Language and Truth


### 2.1 Language and Philosophy



In this section, we'll look at Austin's views about the
role of the study of language in philosophy more generally. It is
common to count Austin as an "Ordinary Language
Philosopher", along with, for example, Gilbert Ryle, P.F.
Strawson, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. However, although each of these
thinkers was sometimes concerned, in one or another way, with our use
of ordinary language, it is far from clear what in addition to that
the label is supposed to entail. And it is equally unclear that the
various thinkers so-labelled deserve to be grouped together.



Austin cared about language for two main reasons. First, language use
is a central part of human activity, so it's an important topic
in its own right. Second, the study of language is an
aide--indeed, for some topics, an important preliminary--to
the pursuit of philosophical topics. Many of Austin's most
distinctive reflections on the use of language arise in the course of
discussion of other topics (see especially his "A Plea for
Excuses" 1957).



One route to understanding Austin's general approach to
philosophy is provided by reflection on the following comment by
Stuart Hampshire:



> 
> 
> [Austin] was constitutionally unable to refrain from applying the same
> standards of truth and accuracy to a philosophical argument, sentence
> by sentence, as he would have applied to any other serious
> subject-matter. He could not have adopted a special tone of voice, or
> attitude of mind, for philosophical questions. (Hampshire 1960:
> 34)
> 
> 
> 



In short, it mattered to Austin that, in attempting to make out
positions and arguments, philosophers should meet ordinary standards
of truth, accuracy, and so forth. On the one hand, this presented a
general challenge to philosophers, a challenge that they might easily
fail to meet. The challenge is either to make use of an ordinary
vocabulary, or ordinary concepts, in order to make claims or judgments
that are, according to ordinary standards, at least true (or accurate,
etc.); or to do the serious work required to set up an appropriate
technical vocabulary and then use it to say things that are by
appropriate standards true (accurate, etc.). On the other hand, it
provided Austin with what he took to be a reasonably secure approach
to general philosophical questions: first, find a connection between
those general philosophical questions and the more specific claims or
judgments that we ordinarily make and take ourselves to be secure in
making; second, make sufficiently many of the relevant claims or
judgments, in a sufficient variety of circumstances, in order to
address the general philosophical questions.



Austin held that, in their hurry to address general philosophical
questions, philosophers have a tendency to ignore the nuances involved
in making and assessing ordinary claims and judgments. Among the risks
associated with insensitivity to the nuances, two stand out. First,
philosophers are liable to miss distinctions that are made in our
ordinary use of language and that are relevant to our concerns and
claims. Second, failure to exploit fully the resources of ordinary
language can make philosophers susceptible to seemingly forced choices
between unacceptable alternatives. Here Austin warns:



> 
> 
> It is worth bearing in mind...the general rule that we must not
> expect to find simple labels for complicated cases...however
> well-equipped our language, it can never be forearmed against all
> possible cases that may arise and call for description: fact is richer
> than diction. (1957: 195)
> 
> 
> 



On Austin's view, language is likely to be well designed for the
ends to which it is ordinarily put. But special, or especially
complicated, cases may require special treatment. This is apt to be an
especial liability when it comes to the question whether a sentence
can be used in a particular circumstance to state something true or
false:



> 
> 
> We say, for example, that a certain statement is exaggerated or vague
> or bold, a description somewhat rough or misleading or not very good,
> an account rather general or too concise. In cases like these it is
> pointless to insist on deciding in simple terms whether the statement
> is "true or false". Is it true or false that Belfast is
> north of London? That the galaxy is the shape of a fried egg? That
> Beethoven was a drunkard? That Wellington won the battle of Waterloo?
> There are various *degrees and dimensions* of success in making
> statements: the statements fit the facts always more or less loosely,
> in different ways on different occasions for different intents and
> purposes. (1950a: 129-130)
> 
> 
> 



Austin makes two points here. First, when faced with a putative choice
of this sort, we should not insist on deciding *in simple
terms* whether a statement is true or false (or whether an
expression applies or fails to apply to something). Some cases are
complicated, and, in some of those cases, we are capable of meeting
some of the complications by saying more: "Well, it is true that
Belfast is north of London if you understand that claim in the
following way...." Second, the complications can take
different forms, and can matter in different ways, on different
occasions. Given the prior course of our conversation, and our
specific intents and purposes in discussing the issue, it might be
manifest that, on that particular occasion, we will
*understand* the complications, without a need for their
articulation, so that the following is fine as it stands: "Yes,
it is true that Belfast is north of London."



Austin's summarised his view of the role of attention to
ordinary language in philosophy thus:



> 
> 
> First, words are our tools, and, as a minimum, we should use clean
> tools: we should know what we mean and what we do not, and we must
> forearm ourselves against the traps that language sets us. Secondly,
> words are not (except in their own little corner) facts or things: we
> need therefore to prise them off the world, to hold them apart from
> and against it, so that we can realize their inadequacies and
> arbitrariness, and can re-look at the world without blinkers. Thirdly,
> and more hopefully, our common stock of words embodies all the
> distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they
> have found worth making, in the lifetimes of many generations: these
> surely are likely to be more sound, since they have stood up to the
> long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in
> all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I
> are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon--the
> most favoured alternative method. (1957:
>  181-182)[1]
> 
> 
> 



Austin holds, then, that an important preliminary to philosophising on
at least some topics--for instance, where the topic is
"ordinary and reasonably practical"--would be the
detailed study of the language we use to speak on that topic, and of
the way that we use it.



Austin didn't think that the investigation of language was more
than a preliminary to theorising, either in philosophy or science. He
wasn't averse to theory construction, even if its outcome were
potentially revisionary (see e.g., 1957: 189). His concern was only
that such theorising should be properly grounded, and that it should
not be driven, for example, by an initial failure to keep track of
distinctions that we mark in our ordinary use of language. Further,
Austin draws an important distinction between "words and facts
or things," and he seems to suggest that we have ways of
investigating the world--that is, facts and things--which
can bypass the "blinkers" sometimes imposed on us by our
words. We'll return to Austin's distinction between the world,
including facts--which Austin thinks of as particular or
concrete--and words, including the statements we make in using
words, in 
 section 2.2. 
 And we'll return to Austin's idea that we can
have unblinkered awareness of the world--unblinkered, that is, by
the linguistic or judgmental capacities that we bring to bear on what
we experience--in 
 section 3.1.



It's fair to say that Austin's work has been caught up in
the stampede away from broadly ordinary language-based approaches to
philosophical questions. The work of Paul Grice, collected in his
*Studies in the Way of Words* (1989), has played an important
role in the negative assessment of such approaches, including aspects
of Austin's work. One central idea in Grice's work is that
the ways in which we use language--crudely, the pairings of
situations and sentences that we find appropriate or inappropriate, or
what we would or wouldn't say in those situations--is not a
simple function of the nature of the respective situations and the
correctness conditions with which the sentences are associated.
Rather, judgments about appropriateness are driven also by, for
example, our sensitivities to the demands of rational co-operation
with our conversational partners. And it has been thought that, in one
or another way, ordinary language philosophers, including Austin, have
been insensitive to the additional parameters to which judgments of
appropriateness are beholden (for early attacks of this sort, see Ayer
1967 and Searle 1966). It is beyond the scope of this entry to attempt
to assess either the extent to which Austin should really be seen as a
target of such objections or, if he should, whether they demonstrate
weaknesses in his work. However, in pursuing any such assessment, it
is important to note that Austin's exploitation of ordinary
language is never driven by simple appeal to whether, in a situation
considered as a whole, we would take it to be simply appropriate or
inappropriate to use some sentence or other. Rather, Austin
is--as we are--sensitive to more fine-grained appraisals of
uses of bits of language and, when he judges that an utterance on an
occasion would be false or nonsensical, he intends that judgment to
contrast with less damaging negative appraisals--for example,
about what it would be merely inappropriate or impolite to say.
Moreover, Austin is sensitive to the specific features of situations
upon which we base one or another more fine-grained appraisal of uses
of sentences. As he stresses, "It takes two to make a
truth" (1950a: 124 fn.1). And Austin is sensitive to the details
of both participants in that and other forms of transaction between
word and
 world.[2]



(For discussion of Austin's approach to philosophical questions,
with reference to his classification as an ordinary language
philosopher, see Berlin 1973b; Cavell 1965; Garvey 2014; Grice 1989:
3-21; Gustafsson 2011; Hampshire 1960, 1965; Kaplan 2018: 1-39; Longworth 2018a; Marion 2009; Martin
ms (Other Internet Resources); Pears 1962; Pitcher 1973; Putnam 1994;
Quine 1965; Reimer 2018; Searle 1966; Soames 2003: 171-219; Travis 1991;
Urmson 1965, 1967; Urmson and Warnock 1961; Warnock 1973a, 1989:
2-10; White 1967.)


### 2.2 Language and Truth



The topic of this section is Austin's views about truth.
Austin's views about truth are scattered throughout his work,
but his most explicit discussion of the topic is in the paper
"Truth" (1950a) (see also 1953, 1954ms, 1956b, 1962b,
1962c). Amongst the distinctive claims Austin makes about truth are
the following:



(1)
The predicate "is true" has a descriptive function:
 it serves to characterize the obtaining of a relation
 between *statements* and *facts* (1950a:
 117-121).
(2)
The *facts* that figure in determining whether or not a
 statement is true are *particulars*, for example, things,
 features, events, and states of affairs (1950a: 121-124;
 1954ms: *passim*).
(3)
The relation between statements and facts that underwrites the
 truth or falsity of statements is itself underwritten by relations
 between sentences and types of fact, and between episodes of stating
 and particular facts (1950a: 121-133).
(4)
Human judgment is involved in determining whether a particular
 fact makes true a statement. And judgment is involved in a way
 that is sensitive to the intents and purposes with which a
 statement is made. For that reason, truth is not a simple relation
 between types of sentences (given their meanings) and particular
 facts. A pair of statements made using the same sentence with
 respect to the same facts but on different occasions--given
 different intents and purposes--might differ in truth-value
 (1950a: 122 fn2; 1962a: 40-41, 62-77, 110-111;
 1962b: 
 142-147).[3]
(5)
Despite (1), Austin appears to endorse a form
 of *deflationism* about truth--a view on which truth
 is a thin or non-explanatory notion. According to this form of
 deflationism, saying that a statement is true is just a way of
 saying that the statement has one or another of a range of more
 specific positive qualities--for example, that it is
 satisfactory, correct, fair, etc. (1950a: 130; 1956b:
 250-251; 1957: 180).


Let's start with (1)-(3). Austin 1950a is ostensibly
responding to a proposal in Strawson 1949 according to which the
function of the predicate "is true" is to facilitate the
performance of acts of affirmation or agreement, and not to describe
things--e.g., statements--as possessing the property of
truth. For short, Strawson claimed that "is true" has a
*performative* rather than a *descriptive* function. And
he accused his opponents of committing the *descriptive
fallacy*: the alleged fallacy of treating expressions, or aspects
of the use of expressions, that really serve performative purposes as
having (only) a descriptive
 purpose.[4]
 One of Austin's aims was to defend the view that the predicate
"is true" has a descriptive function (perhaps in addition
to its having one or more performative functions). In pursuing that
aim, Austin also made a number of distinctive proposals about the
descriptive function of the truth
 predicate.[5]



Let's turn, then, to the core of Austin's account of
truth. Austin presents his account of truth as an account of truth for
*statements*. However, "statement" is at least two
ways ambiguous, covering both historical episodes in which something
is stated--what I'll refer to as
*statings*--and also the things or propositions that are
stated therein--which I'll refer to as *what is
stated*. Austin isn't especially careful about the
distinction, but it's possible to reconstruct much of what he
says in a way that respects it (for discussion of the distinction see
e.g., Cartwright 1962).



Austin's primary interest appears to be the truth of
*statings*. He writes of "statement" that it has
"the merit of clearly referring to the historic use of a
sentence by an utterer" (1950a: 121). However, statings are not
ordinarily said to be true or false, except derivatively insofar as
what is stated in them is true or false. Rather, statings are assessed
as, for example, correct or incorrect, appropriate or inappropriate,
and so forth. However, it is plausible that stating correctly is
closely associated with making a statement that is true. And
Austin's account can be understood as an account of the
conditions in which statings are such that what is stated in them is
 true.[6]



Austin presents the core of his account of truth in the following
way:



> 
> 
> When is a statement true? The temptation is to answer (at least if we
> confine ourselves to "straightforward" statements):
> "When it corresponds to the facts". And as a piece of
> standard English this can hardly be wrong. Indeed, I must confess I do
> not really think it is wrong at all: the theory of truth is a series
> of truisms. Still, it can at least be misleading. (1950a: 121)
> 
> 
> 



The two obvious sources of potential misdirection in the formula that
Austin endorses here are its appeal to *correspondence* and its
appeal to
 *facts*.[7]
 Austin attempts to prevent our being misled by explaining how those
two appeals ought to be understood. Austin's focus in his
"Truth" (1950a) is mainly on the nature of correspondence.
He deals more fully with facts in his "Unfair to Facts"
(1954ms).



In giving an account of correspondence, Austin makes appeal to two
types of (what he calls) *conventions*
 (as per (3) above):[8]


* *Descriptive conventions*. These correlate
*sentences* with *types* of situation, thing, event,
etc., in the world.
* *Demonstrative conventions*. These correlate
*statements* (*statings*) with *historic*
(particular, concrete) situations, things, events, etc., in the world.
(1950a:
 121-122)[9]



The *descriptive* conventions associate sentences with (types
of) ways for things to be: ways for situations, things, events, etc.
to be. For instance, the sentence "The cat is on the mat"
is associated with a type of way for things to be in which the cat is
on the mat. A variety of different historic situations might be of
that type. For instance, one historic situation of that type might
involve Logos (Derrida's cat), while a different historic
situation of the same type might involve Nothing (Sartre's cat).
Similarly, cat-mat pairings that took place at different times would
be different historic situations or events and yet might be of the
same type.



The *demonstrative* conventions, by contrast, associate
particular statings--themselves historic events--with some
amongst the accessible historic situations, things, events, etc.
Consider, for example, the following simplified case. There are two
accessible situations, one of which is of the cat-on-mat type and one
of which is of the dog-on-linoleum type. The descriptive conventions
governing the English sentence "The cat is on the mat" do
not, and cannot, determine which of the two accessible situations a
speaker aims to talk about on a particular occasion. In order to
achieve that, the speaker must find a way of making manifest that
their goal is to select, say, the dog-on-linoleum situation. They
might achieve this by, for example, their use on a particular occasion
of the present tense, or by pointing, etc. (1950a:
 121-126).[10]



With this machinery in place, Austin continues:



> 
> 
> A statement is said to be true when the historic state of affairs [or
> e.g., situation, thing, event] to which it is correlated by the
> demonstrative conventions (the one to which it "refers")
> is of a type [footnote omitted] with which the sentence used in making
> it is correlated by the descriptive conventions. (1950a: 122)
> 
> 
> 



What does "is of a type with which" mean? Austin expands
on his account in the omitted footnote:



> 
> 
> "Is of a type with which" means "is sufficiently
> like those standard states of affairs with which". Thus, for a
> statement to be true one state of affairs must be *like*
> certain others, which is a natural relation, but also
> *sufficiently* like to merit the same
> "description", which is no longer a purely natural
> relation. To say "This is red" is not the same as to say
> "This is like those", nor even as to say "This is
> like those which were called red". That things are
> *similar*, or even "exactly" similar, I may
> literally see, but that they are the *same* I cannot literally
> see--in calling them the same colour a convention is involved
> additional to the conventional choice of the name to be given to the
> colour which they are said to be. (1950a: 122 fn.2)
> 
> 
> 



The English sentence "This is red" is correlated by the
descriptive conventions with a type of way for things to be: a type
instanced by all and only those historic situations or states of
affairs in which a selected thing is red. According to Austin, a
stating by use of that sentence would be correct if the thing selected
in the stating via the demonstrative conventions were sufficiently
like standard situations or states of affairs in which a selected
thing is red. So, we rely on the existence of a range of standard
instances that are assumed to be of the required type. We can see that
the thing selected in this stating, via the demonstrative conventions,
is now in various ways similar and dissimilar from those standard
instances. The question we need to answer is this: Is this thing of
the *same* type as the standard instances with respect to its
colour? That is, is it the same colour as they are? According to
Austin, we cannot answer that question simply by looking. In an at
least attenuated sense we must make a decision as to whether the
present instance is, in relevant respects, *sufficiently*
similar to the standard instances as to mandate treating it as of the
very same
 type.[11]



Notice that, on Austin's view, states of affairs (etc.) do not
*per se* mandate that they belong to one or another type. To
that extent, they do not alone determine which propositional
statements are true of them. The things to which true statings
correspond, then, are (in at least that sense) *particulars*
 (see (2) above).
 The things to which statings correspond, then, appear to be quite
different from *facts* as the latter are commonly understood by
philosophers. For facts are often thought of as
proposition-like--as exhaustively captured by instances of the
form "The fact that *p*". And it seems that
elements of that type would mandate the correctness of one or another
classification. Austin's views about facts are developed a bit
more fully in his "Unfair to Facts" (1954ms). There Austin
makes clear, first, that he uses "facts", with
etymological precedent, to speak of particulars. Second, Austin
sketches a view of propositional fact talk on which it is used as a
way of indirectly denoting particulars as the elements that make the
specified propositions true. However, Austin's basic account of
truth can for the most part be detached from his views about facts and
 fact-talk.[12]



The role for human judgment or decision in mediating the
classification of particulars leaves open that their correct
classification as to type might vary depending on specific features of
the occasion for so classifying them
 (see (4) above).
 It may be, for example, that for certain purposes an historic state
of affairs involving a rose is sufficiently like standard situations
involving red things as to warrant sameness of classification, while
for different purposes its likeness is outweighed by its
dissimilarities from the standard cases. Moreover, what are counted as
standard cases may vary with the purposes operative in attempting to
classify, and may shift as new cases come to be counted as of a
specific
 type.[13]



The precise ways in which our statings depend for their correctness or
incorrectness on the facts can vary with variation in specific
features of the occasion, in particular with variation in the intents
and purposes of conversational participants. As Austin puts it,



> 
> 
> It seems to be fairly generally realized nowadays that, if you just
> take a bunch of sentences...impeccably formulated in some
> language or other, there can be no question of sorting them out into
> those that are true and those that are false; for (leaving out of
> account so-called "analytic" sentences) the question of
> truth and falsehood does not turn only on what a sentence *is*,
> nor yet on what it *means*, but on, speaking very broadly, the
> 
> circumstances in which it is uttered. Sentences *as such* are
> not either true or false. (1962a: 110-111. See also 40-41,
> 65)
> 
> 
> 



And the circumstances can matter in a variety of ways, not simply by
supplying, or failing to supply, an appropriate array of facts:



> 
> 
> ...in the case of stating truly or falsely, just as in the case
> of advising well or badly, the intents and purposes of the utterance
> and its context are important; what is judged true in a school book
> may not be so judged in a work of historical research. Consider
> ... "Lord Raglan won the battle of Alma", remembering
> that Alma was a soldier's battle if ever there was one and that
> Lord Raglan's orders were never transmitted to some of his
> subordinates. Did Lord Raglan then win the battle of Alma or did he
> not? Of course in some contexts, perhaps in a school book, it is
> perfectly justifiable to say so--it is something of an
> exaggeration, maybe, and there would be no question of giving Raglan a
> medal for it..."Lord Raglan won the battle of Alma"
> is exaggerated and suitable to some contexts and not to others; it
> would be pointless to insist on its [i.e., the
> *sentence's*] truth or falsehood. (1962b: 143-144,
> interpolation added)
> 
> 
> 



It's important here to separate two questions. First, is the
*sentence* "Lord Raglan won the battle of Alma"
true? Second, is *what is stated* in using that sentence on a
particular occasion, true? In order for the first question to get an
affirmative answer, *every* use of the sentence would have to
be--or issue in a statement that
 is--true.[14]
 But although the sentence can be used in a schoolbook to make a
statement that is true, it might also be used in a work of historical
research, or in support of Raglan's decoration, in making a
false statement. Hence, the sentence doesn't take the same
truth-value on *every* occasion: the sentence *per se*
is neither true nor false. By contrast, there is no reason to deny
that the things that are stated in using the sentence on occasions are
true: in particular, there is no reason to deny that what is stated by
the schoolbook occurrence of the sentence is true. So, the second
question can be given an affirmative answer, as long as we are willing
to allow that a sentence can be used to make different statements on
different occasions (see also Austin's discussion of
"real" in *Sense and Sensibilia* (1962a:
62-77) for an array of relevant examples).



We should avoid a possible misunderstanding of Austin here. His
argument shows, at most, that whatever combines with the facts to
determine a particular truth-value varies from occasion to occasion.
That does nothing to dislodge the natural view that a sentence can
carry its *meaning* with it from occasion to occasion, and thus
possess a literal meaning. However, if we wish to retain that idea, we
must give up on the idea that sentence meaning simply combines with
the facts that are being spoken about to determine truth-value: we
must reject the idea that sentence meanings determine
truth-conditions. Plausibly, we should also give up the idea that
meaning alone determines what is stated (at least insofar as the
latter determines truth-conditions). In taking this line, we would
reject views of meaning according to which it is given by appeal to
 truth-conditions.[15]



Austin's account gives rise to the possibility of utterances in
which no truth-evaluable statement is produced:



> 
> 
> Suppose that we confront "France is hexagonal" with the
> facts, in this case, I suppose, with France, is it true or false?
> Well, if you like, up to a point; of course I can see what you mean by
> saying that it is true for certain intents and purposes. It is good
> enough for a top-ranking general, perhaps, but not for a
> geographer... How can one answer this question, whether it is
> true or false that France is hexagonal? It is just rough, and that is
> the right and final answer to the question of the relation of
> "France is hexagonal" to France. It is a rough
> description; it is not a true or a false one. (1962b: 143)
> 
> 
> 



What Austin characterises in his final denial is the *sentence*
"France is hexagonal", in relation to France. He
needn't, and doesn't, deny that on occasion, for
particular intents and purposes, one might use the sentence to
*state* a truth. However, he suggests that, in some cases, the
circumstances of utterance may be such that no truth-evaluable
statement is made by the use of a sentence.



Suppose, for example, that someone uttered "France is
hexagonal" out of the blue, without making manifest any intents
and purposes. In that case, there would be nothing to go on, in
seeking to establish whether the utterance was true or false, other
than the words used, given their meanings. But those words might have
been used to make a variety of statements, statements whose truth or
falsehood depends on the facts in a variety of ways. Hence, unless we
are willing to allow that the utterance is both true and false, we
should withhold that mode of assessment: although such an utterance
would involve a perfectly *meaningful* sentence, it would fail
to be either true or false. Austin thought that our uses of words are
always liable to that sort of failure, especially when we are doing
philosophy. When used in cases that are out of the ordinary, or in the
absence of the background required to sustain the statement of truths
or falsehoods, words might--in that sense--fail us.



Austin makes no claims to generality for the account of truth that he
sketches. However, it's natural to wonder to what extent the
account can naturally be extended in order to take in types of
statement that he doesn't explicitly attempt to bring within its
purview. Potential pressure points here include statements whose
expression involves negation (see 1950a: 128-129, 129 fn.1),
quantification (see 1962b: 144), or conditionals, and statements of
necessary truths. The three main options open to the defender of
Austin here are the following. First, an attempt might be made to
bring some cases within the purview of a natural generalization of
Austin's account (see, for example, Warnock 1989: 56-61).
Second, it might be allowed that some such cases require distinctive
treatment, but argued that they can still be connected with the
account Austin offers as further species of the truth-genus. Third, an
attempt might be made to argue that some such cases are so distinctive
that the forms of positive appraisal that are appropriate to them are
not really forms of appraisal as to
 truth.[16]



Let's turn to
 (5),
 the question of the extent to which Austin endorses a deflationary
account of truth. The promiscuity of the classifier
"deflationist" has a tendency to render the question
difficult to discuss in a useful way. However, we can at least
consider some ways in which Austin might be thought to give an
explanatory role to truth, or to deny it such a role. It's clear
that Austin wishes to reject Strawson's very strong form of
deflationism, according to which the function of truth is exhaustively
performative: saying that a statement is true amounts, precisely, to
endorsing that statement oneself. Moreover, there is no sign that
Austin thinks an account can be given of the expression of statements
by statings that isn't bound up with consideration of the
conditions in which their stating would be subject to one or another
form of positive appraisal--at the most general level,
consideration of their correctness-conditions. However, Austin often
characterizes truth and falsity themselves as, in effect, mere labels
for positive and negative poles, respectively, in a variety of more
specific forms of appraisal.



> 
> 
> We become obsessed with "truth" when discussing
> statements, just as we become obsessed with "freedom" when
> discussing conduct. So long as we think that what has always and alone
> to be decided is whether a certain action was done freely or was not,
> we get nowhere: but so soon as we turn instead to the numerous other
> adverbs used in the same connexion ("accidentally",
> "unwillingly", "inadvertently", &c.),
> things become easier, and we come to see that no concluding inference
> of the form "Ergo, it was done freely (or not freely)" is
> required. Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal
> (the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about, say, the
> battle of Waterloo or the *Primavera*). (1950a: 130; see also
> 1956b: 250-251, 1957: 180)
> 
> 
> 



Austin's idea here seems to be the following. There are numerous
specific forms of positive appraisal that we employ with respect to
statings: they might be fair, reasonable, accurate, precise, adequate,
satisfactory and so forth. (Recall that Austin would have taken each
form of assessment to be occasion-bound: a matter, for example, of
what would be fair and reasonable to judge on this particular
occasion.) In saying that what is stated in a stating is
*true*, we are in effect saying that the stating meets the
"bare minimum" condition of being susceptible to one or
another of those specific forms of positive appraisal. It's
consistent with this type of view that our conception of the natures
of what we state, and of how our statings come to be expressions of
those things, is bound up with our conception of the conditions in
which our statings, and what we thereby state, are susceptible to one
or another form of positive appraisal. To that extent, it differs from
some stronger forms of deflationism on which no truth-related mode of
positive appraisal plays a non-derivative explanatory role. Moreover,
the view can take more or less radical forms. Its most radical form
treats truth as a mere disjunction of the more specific modes of
positive appraisal, with no uniform underlying commonality amongst
those specific modes. That view would be a distinctive form of
deflationism about truth, since it would reject the idea that truth
*per se* plays an essential role in explanation. Its less
radical form allows that truth might impose a uniform necessary
condition on the specific modes of positive appraisal, and thereby
play an essential role, through its government of the specific modes,
in the explanation of what is stated in statings. The latter form of
view wouldn't count as an interesting form of
*deflationism*, although it might well be an interesting
position in its own right.



Austin discusses an important range of ways in which assessment as to
truth can cover a variety of more fine-grained modes of appraisal in
his "How to Talk" (1953). See also the discussions of this
paper in Chisholm 1964 and Warnock 1989: 47-56.



(For discussion of Austin's account of truth, see Barwise and
Etchemendy 1987; Bennett 1966; Crary 2002; Davidson 1969; Grice 1989:
3-40; Hansen 2014; Kirkham 1995: 124-140; Mates 1974;
Narboux 2011; Putnam 1994; Recanati 1994: 1-5, 121-130,
141-153; Searle 1966; Strawson 1950, 1965; Travis 1991, 2005,
2008: 1-18, 2011; Warnock 1973c, 1989: 45-64,
135-145, 163-4 fn.74; White 1967; C.J.F. Williams
1973.)


### 2.3 Speech Acts and Truth



In this section, we'll consider some aspects of Austin's
treatment of speech acts--things done with words (the main
sources here are: 1962b, 1956b, and 1963; see also 1946: 97-103,
1950a: 130-133, 1953). The topics we'll consider are the
following.



(1) In his work on
speech acts, Austin presents a different reason for why sentences,
given their meanings, do not combine with the facts to determine
truth-values. The second reason is based on the fact that any sentence
can be used in performing a variety of linguistic acts. Although in
stating, we typically produce statements that are assessable as true
or false, in performing other linguistic acts, we need not produce
things that are assessable in that way. The second reason depends,
then, on two sub-claims: first, that whether a sentence is used on an
occasion to make a *statement*--more generally, something
truth-assessable--is dependent on more than just what it means;
second, that some uses of sentences to perform linguistic acts other
than the making of statements are not properly assessable as true or
false.
(2)
Connected with (1) is Austin's discussion of a distinction
between *constative utterances*--broadly, utterances of a
type suitable to be appraised as to truth--and *performative
utterances*--broadly, utterances that are suitable only for
other forms of appraisal (1962b: 1-93).
(3)
In
addition to discussing the putative constative-performative
distinction, Austin sketches a distinction amongst speech act types,
between *locutionary acts*, *illocutionary acts*, and
*perlocutionary acts*--broadly, the distinction between
saying anything at all, saying something with a specific force (e.g.,
making a statement, asking a question, making a request), and the
further effects of saying something with a specific force (e.g.,
getting an audience to believe something, getting them to tell you
something, or getting them to do what you request). The need to draw
such a distinction is now very widely accepted and probably amounts to
Austin's central contribution to more recent work (1962b:
83-164).
(4)

Austin makes some cryptic suggestions about the wider significance of
his discussion of topic (3), concerning their bearing on, for example,
what he calls "the true/false fetish" and "the
value/fact fetish" (1962b: 148-164).


A topic that has figured in some recent discussions, but that we
won't discuss here, is this:



(5)In
the course of discussing his main topics, Austin sometimes makes use
of a distinction between *serious* and *non-serious*
uses of language, and suggests that non-serious uses of language are
derivative from serious uses. (Roughly, the distinction is a
generalisation of distinctions between genuine assertions and mock
assertions in fiction or on the stage. See e.g., Austin 1962b: 104.)
Jacques Derrida challenged the standing of the distinction and the
priority that Austin seemed to accord to some of what he counted as
serious uses. John Searle responded to Derrida and the issue has
become a source of some attempts at engagement between those
sympathetic to Searle's more "Analytic" approaches
to issues in this area and those sympathetic to more
"Continental" approaches. (See Derrida 1977 and Searle
1977. For recent discussion of aspects of the controversy see de
Gaynesford 2009, A.W. Moore 2000, Richmond 1996, Ricks 1992.)


Austin presents the second reason for why sentences do not conspire
with the facts to determine truth-values in considering whether there
is a useful distinction to be drawn between (indicative) sentences
that are used to make statements--which Austin labels
*constatives*--and sentences that are useable in the
performance of some act--which Austin labels
*performatives* (or sometimes *performatory*)
 (topic (2) above).[17]
 Austin's opening list of examples of putative performatives
includes: "I take ... to be my lawfully wedded
..."--as uttered in the course of the marriage
ceremony; "I name this ship the *Queen
Elizabeth*"--as uttered when smashing a bottle against
the stern; "I give and bequeath my watch to my
brother"--as occurring in a will; "I bet you sixpence
it will rain tomorrow" (1962b: 5). About these examples, Austin
writes:



> 
> 
> In these examples it seems clear that to utter the sentence (in, of
> course, the appropriate circumstances) is not to *describe* my
> doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be doing...[fn.
> Still less anything that I have already done or have yet to
> do.]...or to state that I am doing it. None of the utterances
> cited is either true or false: I assert this as obvious and do not
> argue it. (1962b: 6)
> 
> 
> 



Austin is sometimes read as seeking to defend this view of
performatives. However, four features of his presentation suggest that
his view is not so straightforward. First, Austin presents the issue
as concerning the classification by use of utterances of *types of
sentence*, and we have already seen that he is in general
sceptical about alleged associations between sentences and their
occasional uses. Second, Austin fails here, and elsewhere, to offer
serious arguments for his assertion that none of the cited utterances
is either true or false. Third, Austin's assertion is made using
the apparently performative form, "I assert ...
"--a form that appears, moreover, to falsify the
generalisation that performatives lack truth-values. Finally, Austin
issues the following warning in a footnote, two pages earlier:
"Everything said in these sections is provisional, and subject
to revision in the light of later sections" (1962b: 4 fn.1).



Austin goes on to discuss two apparently quite different modes of
assessment for utterances of the two apparently different types.
Constatives, as already noted, are assessed along the dimension of
truth and falsehood. By contrast, performatives are assessed along
dimensions of *happiness* and *unhappiness*, or
*felicity* and *infelicity*. Taking the example of an
utterance of "I take ... to be my lawfully wedded ...
", and simplifying Austin's discussion, there are two main
sorts of unhappiness, or infelicity, to which this performative is
liable. First, there are *misfires*:



> 
> 
> ...if we...utter the formula incorrectly, or if...we
> are not in a position to do the act because we are...married
> already, or it is the purser and not the captain who is conducting the
> ceremony, then the act in question, ...marrying, is not
> successfully performed at all, ...[it] is not achieved. (1962b:
> 15-16)
> 
> 
> 



Second, there are *abuses*: in these cases, the act is
performed, but insincerely, perhaps for example in instituting a
marriage of convenience.



It's important to see that, even if it were true, in general,
that some things done using performatives--e.g., marrying,
naming, bequeathing, and betting--are neither true nor false, but
rather are subject to assessment as happy or unhappy, it would not
follow that truth is out of the picture. That would depend, not only
on the basic claim that actions of those types *per se* are not
true or false, but also on the claim that particular actions of those
types are not also of other types that *are* assessable as true
or false. And Austin recognised that actions can be of more than one
type (or, perhaps, that distinct actions might be performed
simultaneously):



> 
> 
> To say that I believe you 'is' on occasion to accept your
> statement; but it is also to make an assertion, which is not made by
> the strictly performatory utterance "I accept your
> statement". (1950a: 133)
> 
> 
> 



In the examples that Austin cites, things are done that are not
assessable as true or false--marrying, naming, betting, etc. But
as Austin points out, those examples might also involve other things
being done--e.g., the making of statements--that are, or
involve things that are, assessable as true or false. However, even
though this undermines Austin's provisional characterisation of
performatives, the possibility that we might sometimes do more than
one thing in using a performative puts pressure on the idea that there
is a simple connection between sentences and the various things we do
in using them.



I've suggested that Austin's view of the putative
distinction between performatives and constatives is less
straightforward than it might at first seem. And the structure of
Austin (1962b) bears out that assessment. Although much of the book
seems to be devoted to pursuit of a distinction between performatives
and constatives, none of the attempts succeeds. It is possible, but
implausible, that in the course of the lectures Austin found that he
was unable to draw a distinction that he thought should be drawn. A
more plausible interpretation is that Austin's purpose is not to
draw such a distinction. Rather it is to argue--through the
failures of various attempts to draw the distinction--that there
is no such simple distinction--no sorting of sentences into those
apt for performative, and those apt for constative, use.



Austin argues against the distinction by appeal to the fact that the
same forms of assessment are applicable to utterances apparently of
both sorts:



> 
> 
> ...unhappiness...seems to characterize both kinds of
> utterance, not merely the performative; and...the requirement of
> conforming or bearing some relation to the facts, different in
> different cases, seems to characterize performatives... (1962b:
> 91)
> 
> 
> 



Attempts to make a statement are liable both to misfires and abuses.
For example, an attempt to make a statement using "France is
hexagonal" might misfire if there were no such country as
France, or (as discussed above) if no suitable intents and purposes
were manifest (1962b: 47-52). And an attempt might be an abuse
if the speaker failed to believe that France was hexagonal. Attempts
at performative utterance are liable to assessment either in terms of
truth or falsehood, or in terms similarly dependent on conformity with
the facts: my utterance of "I warn you that the bull is about to
charge" may be liable to criticism as *mistaken* rather
than unhappy if the bull is not about to charge (1962b: 55). More
generally, it is often impossible to decide, just from the words a
speaker uses, whether their utterance is susceptible to one or another
form of assessment. And there are cases like "I state that
..." which seem to satisfy all formal and lexical
requirements for being performative, and yet are used in utterances
"...which surely are the making of statements, and surely
are essentially true or false" (1962b: 91). (Austin's
ideas here also bear on
 topic (4) above.)



(For discussion of Austin's views about performative utterances,
see Bach 1975; G. Bird 1981; Black 1963; Cohen 1964, 1974; Forguson
1966; Heal 1974; Hornsby 1988, 2006; Jack 1981; Lemmon 1962; Lewis
1972; Schiffer 1972; Sinnott-Armstrong 1994; Tsohatzidis 2018; Urmson 1977; Warnock
1973b, 1989: 105-151.)



From the wreckage of the initial distinction, Austin assembles a new
model
 (topic (3) above).
 The new model is founded on distinctions among various kinds of thing
speakers do--various *acts* they perform--when they
produce an utterance.


* *The locutionary act*: the production of an utterance that
can be classified by its phonetic, grammatical, and lexical
characteristics, up to sentence meaning (the *phatic* act). It
is also the performance of an act that can be classified by its
*content* (the *rhetic* act)--a feature
distinctively of acts of speech. If I promise *that I'll be
home for dinner* and then promise *that I'll work
late*, my actions are instances of two different locutionary acts:
one with the content that I'll be home for dinner, and one with
the content that I'll work late (1962b: 94-98).
* *The illocutionary act*: an act classifiable not only by
its content--as with the locutionary act--but also by its
*force* (stating, warning, promising, etc.). If I
*promise* that I'll be home for dinner and later
*state* that I'll be home for dinner, my actions are
instances of the same locutionary act: both actions involve the
content that I'll be home for dinner. However, my actions are
instances of different illocutionary acts: one has the force of a
promise, while the other has the force of a statement (1962b:
98-101).
* *The perlocutionary act*: an act classifiable by its
" ... consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or
actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons
... ". If I warn that the ice is thin, and so perform one
illocutionary act, I may thereby perform a variety of perlocutionary
acts: I may *persuade* someone to avoid it, or
*encourage* someone to take a risk, and so forth (1962b:
101).



Austin's interest in the types of act so distinguished was
"...essentially to fasten on the second, illocutionary act
and contrast it with the other two..." (1962b: 103). What
did Austin think was important about the illocutionary act? And what
did he think were the dangers inherent in failing to mark it off from
the other types?



Austin appears to have thought that the various modes of assessment
that he discusses--e.g., true/false, happy/unhappy--apply
most fundamentally to the *illocutionary* act, rather than the
locutionary or the perlocutionary
 act.[18]
 One point is that Austin thought that philosophers have had a
tendency to view some assessments as to happiness (or felicity) as
really applying to perlocutionary acts, so as not bearing on the
specifically linguistic things that speakers are up to. Another
point--and perhaps the point of primary importance--is that
Austin thought that philosophers have had a tendency to view
assessments as to truth as applying most fundamentally to locutionary
acts. Moreover, he thought that philosophers had conceived locutionary
acts, not as abstractions from illocutionary acts, but rather as
things that might be done without any illocutionary purpose, just by
virtue of the linguistic expressions employed or their meanings. By
contrast, Austin held that locutionary acts are abstracted from
instances of illocutionary acts, and that assessment as to truth is
directed most fundamentally to the illocutionary act. (We'll
consider below a stronger and a weaker reading of the idea that
assessment as to truth applies most fundamentally to the illocutionary
act.)



For Austin, then, assessment as to truth is of a piece with various
forms of assessment as to happiness, etc., and like those forms it is
the assessment of an act with respect to its goodness or badness. Thus
Austin's discussion of illocutionary acts is bound up with his
other discussions of the ways in which assessment of utterances as to
truth is dependent upon specific features of the circumstances of
utterance. He writes:



> 
> 
> The truth or falsity of statements is affected by what they leave out
> or put in and by their being misleading, and so on. Thus, for example,
> descriptions, which are said to be true or false or, if you like, are
> "statements", are surely liable to these criticisms, since
> they are selective and uttered for a purpose. It is essential to
> realize that "true" and false', like
> "free" and "unfree", do not stand for anything
> simple at all; but only for a general dimension of being a right and
> proper thing to say as opposed to a wrong thing, in these
> circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes and with these
> intentions. (1962b: 144-145)
> 
> 
> 



According to Austin, there is more involved in any such assessment
than a simple comparison of requirements imposed by linguistic meaning
with the facts. Reflection on the assessment of actions in which we
speak and the speech acts that classify them indicates two things:
first, the distinction between assessment as to happiness and
assessment as to truth is ultimately unprincipled; and, second, some
mixture of various types of assessment applies to all, or nearly all,
utterances. These ideas appear to be the basis for a cryptic claim of
Austin's
 (mentioned above as topic (4)).
 Exploiting the various modes of appraisal to distinguish five very
general classes of speech act verbs, Austin writes that



> 
> 
> They are...quite enough to play Old Harry with two fetishes which
> I admit to an inclination to play Old Harry with, viz. (1) the
> true/false fetish, (2) the value/fact fetish. (1962b: 151)
> 
> 
> 



Austin's cryptic suggestion appears to be to the effect that, in
one or another way, classifications of utterances along the true-false
dimension, or according to whether they are expressions of fact or
expressions of value, is--for at least some purposes--too
crude. The suggestion is susceptible of a weaker and a stronger
reading. On the weaker reading, the suggestion is to the effect that,
when the assessment of an *utterance* is at issue, it is
essential to consider the force or forces that attach to the
illocutionary act or acts thereby performed. Since various such acts
may have been performed, and since assessment of each act involves
consideration of a mix of facts and values, there is no clean way of
sorting utterances on the basis either of whether or not their primary
mode of assessment is on the true-false dimension, or of whether their
primary function is the expression of fact, rather than the expression
of value. That leaves open that, with respect to at least some speech
acts, a locutionary core--a proposition, or propositions, or
propositional-like element--may be assessed in a way that makes
no reference to force, for example, along the true-false dimension. On
the stronger reading, the claim would be that it is not possible to
detach a locutionary core from the force with which it is expressed in
such a way that that core can be assessed without reference to force.
On its stronger reading, Austin's suggestion would have to
contend with an aspect of what is known as the *Frege-Geach*
problem: the challenge of explaining logical connections amongst
speech acts with different forces where those connections appear to
depend upon their sharing (elements of) a locutionary core (see Geach
1965).



(For discussion of Austin's distinction amongst locutionary,
illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts see Bach 1975; Bach and Harnish
1979; G. Bird 1981; Black 1963; Cerf 1966; Chisholm 1964; Cohen 1964,
1974; Fiengo 2018; Forguson 1966, 1973; Furberg 1969; Garvey 2014; Geach 1965;
Hornsby 1988, 1994, 2006; Katz 1986; Moltmann 2018; Schiffer 1972; Searle 1968, 1969;
Strawson 1964a, 1973; Urmson 1977; Vendler 1972; Warnock 1973b, 1989:
105-151. For discussion specifically of the interaction of
Austin's views about the natures of speech acts with his views
about truth, see Crary 2002; Quine 1965; Travis 2011; Warnock 1989:
140-150, 163-164 fn. 74.)


## 3. Knowledge and Perception



Austin's main discussions of knowledge and perception take place
in "Other Minds" (1946) and *Sense and Sensibilia*
(1962a; see also "Unfair to Facts" [1954ms], which
overlaps with parts of the lecture series on which *Sense and
Sensibilia* was based that are excised from the book, and
"Ifs and Cans" [1956a:
 230]).[19]
 Stated more baldly than would have been acceptable to Austin, and
reconstructing slightly, his distinctive views in this area include
the following.



(1)

Knowledge is a basic form of apprehension of how things are, rather
than a hybrid of belief conjoined with additional conditions. Knowing
provides a sort of guarantee about one's environment. That is,
in at least some sense, the following is true: "If you know, you
can't be wrong." What a subject's knowledge
guarantees can include truths about the environment that are
independent of the subject (1946: 77-78, 84-103; 1962a:
104-131). Austin's commitment to (1) aligns him with the
tradition of "Oxford Realism" (see Travis and Kalderon
2013; Marion 2000a,b, 2009; Martin ms (Other Internet Resources);
Williamson 2000).
(2)

Knowledge arises through the successful exercise of judgmental
capacities in propitious circumstances--that is, through a
combination of *acumen* and *opportunity* (1946:
79-97; 1962a: 20-61).
(3)
Like
all other human capacities, human judgmental capacities are inherently
limited and fallible. The capacities are inherently limited in that
there are bound to exist cases with respect to which they are
insufficiently reliable to give rise to knowledge. And they are
inherently fallible in that, even in the most propitious
circumstances, it is possible that their exercise is unsuccessful.
(The risk of fallibility is liable to increase, of course, as the
capacities approach the limits within which their application is
reliable.) (1946: 90-97; 1962a: 104-131)
(4)
The
fact that capacities that are essentially involved in the acquisition
of knowledge are inherently limited and fallible is consistent with
their operating successfully in a variety of circumstances so as to
give rise to knowledge (1946: 83-103; 1962a:
104-131).


A consequence of (3) and (4) is that *foundationalism* is
undercut: there are no foundational claims that are especially
infallible; and there are no non-foundational claims that are
distinctively fallible. It is possible for our judgmental capacities
to misfire with respect to any subject matter, including e.g., our own
feelings or experiences. And it's possible for their exercise to
be sufficiently reliable to give rise to knowledge about ordinary
matters, e.g., that there is a pig before one.



(5)
In
order for exercises of capacities to make perception-based judgments
to sustain knowledge about the subject-independent environment,
perception must put the perceiver in contact with that environment,
rather than being restricted in its reach to *sense-data*
(1946: 86-97, 1962a: 10). Again, this commitment aligns Austin
with "Oxford Realism" (see Hinton 1973; Travis and
Kalderon 2013; Marion 2000a,b, 2009; Martin ms (Other Internet
Resources), 1997; Snowdon 1981).
(6)
Some
standard forms of argument that perception cannot put the perceiver in
the required type of contact with their environment--arguments
that have been presented in support of the claim that our basic form
of perceptual contact is with sense-data (e.g., the so-called
"argument from illusion")--are, at best, unconvincing
(1962a: *passim*).


Three further side claims that have assumed some importance in recent
work are the following.



(7) 
Austin
stresses that being told something by someone who
knows it can put one in a position to know that thing (1946:
81-83, 97-103, 114-115).
(8)

Connected with (7), Austin sketches a view on which claims to the
effect that someone knows something can serve as *assurances*,
on the basis of which others are entitled to act, form beliefs, or
claim to know (1946: 97-103).
(9)

Austin sketches a view on which utterances of the form "I know
that such-and-such" serve a *performative* and
*not* a *descriptive* function. According to this view,
the function of "I know" is very similar to the function
of "I promise": both serve as ways of giving one's
word, the first (typically) about how things are, the second
(typically) about how one intends them to be (1946:
97-103).

### 3.1 Knowledge



Let's begin with some of what Austin says in support of
 (1).
 In his "Other Minds" (1946), Austin sketches a
distinction between knowing and believing through appeal to the
different kinds of challenges that are appropriate to claims to know
versus claims to believe. First, Austin points out that one who claims
to know may be challenged to explain *how* they know, while
someone who claims to believe may be challenged to explain
*why* they believe. The consequences of failing adequately to
meet those challenges are also different: in the first case, the
consequences might include that the subject does *not* know; in
the second, the consequence might include, not the subject
doesn't *believe*, but that they *oughtn't*
to believe. Later, Austin indicates a further basis for the
distinction between knowing and believing:



> 
> 
> ...saying "I know"...is *not* saying
> "I have performed a specially striking feat of cognition,
> superior, in the same scale as believing and being sure, even to being
> quite sure": for there *is* nothing in that scale
> superior to being quite sure. (1946: 99)
> 
> 
> 



Importantly, and moving on to claim
 (2),
 Austin holds that knowledge is the upshot of the successful exercise
of judgmental capacities--which he thinks of as essentially
language involving--in appropriate circumstances: the successful
exercise of (judgmental) *acumen* given (perception- or
testimony-based) *opportunity*. The following two passages are
central to understanding Austin's views in this area:



> 
> 
> Any description of a taste or sound or smell (or colour) or of a
> feeling, involves (is) saying that it is like one or some that we have
> experienced before: any descriptive word is classificatory, involves
> recognition and in that sense memory, and only when we use such words
> (or names or descriptions, which come down to the same) are we knowing
> anything, or believing anything. But memory and recognition are often
> uncertain and unreliable. (1946: 92).
> 
> 
> 
> ...sensa [the things we sense or perceive] are dumb, and only
> previous experience enables *us* to identify them. If we choose
> to say that they "identify themselves" (and certainly
> "recognizing" is not a highly voluntary act of ours), then
> it must be admitted that they share the birthright of all speakers,
> that of speaking unclearly and untruly. (1946: 97)
> 
> 
> 



We perceive various things, features, events, and states of affairs.
The things we perceive are not presented to us as already classified
into types. Yet propositional knowledge essentially involves
classification: for example, we know that that thing *is a
pig*. In order to know, we must exercise judgmental capacities,
taking stands with respect to the ways the things, features, events,
and states of affairs are. We must classify the elements into types
based on their similarities with elements that we have already
classified into types. (Notice that Austin's view that these
elements are particulars, articulated in his "Truth"
(1950a) and "Unfair to Facts" (1954ms), figures
essentially here.)



Returning to
 (1),
 let's consider what Austin says about the conditions in which a
subject would *fail* to know. Austin's discussion is
haunted by the following condition: "If I *know*, I
*can't be wrong*". He never quite endorses the
condition. He admits at one point that its third person counterpart
*makes sense*, but characterizes the sense it makes by appeal
to a prohibition on *saying* "I know it is so, but I may
be wrong" (1946: 98).



It's clear that Austin would reject the claim that it is a
necessary condition on knowing that it be *impossible* for one
to have been wrong--impossible, that is, for one to have
exercised the same capacities in the same circumstances and to have
judged incorrectly. For given that he holds that judgmental capacities
are inherently fallible
 ((3) above),
 it would follow that we can never know anything.



> 
> 
> The human intellect and senses are, indeed, *inherently*
> fallible and delusive, but not *inveterately* so. Machines are
> inherently liable to break down, but good machines don't
> (often). It is futile to embark on a "theory of knowledge"
> which denies this liability: such theories constantly end up by
> admitting the liability after all, and denying the existence of
> "knowledge". (1946: 98)
> 
> 
> 



What Austin says here is consistent with the operation of the
capacities being reliable in some circumstances, and with their
reliable operation being such as to give rise to knowledge. So it is
open to Austin to hold a view on which knowledge requires that the
particular *exercises* of the capacity to judge on which they
are based couldn't have occurred and yet the output judgment be
mistaken. And it is open to him to hold that if the exercise of
judgmental capacities is to give rise to knowledge, those capacities
must be *reliable* in the circumstances in which they are
exercised and given the way they are exercised on that occasion (e.g.,
carefully). However, Austin doesn't make fully explicit that his
view about knowledge includes either component. And some of what he
says--especially in discussion of his performative proposal about
the use of "I know"--is in tension with the first
claim, on which knowing is incompatible with being
 mistaken.[20]
 (It's possible that Austin viewed his "Ifs and
Cans" (1956a) discussion of abilities as providing further
illumination concerning the proper understanding of the formula
"If one knows, one can't be wrong".)



One potential consequence of Austin's account concerns
foundationalism. Foundationalism typically involves the following
three claims. First, many of the ordinary judgments that we
make--for example, judgments to the effect that there is a pig
here--are inherently risky in the following sense. It's
possible for us to make such judgments mistakenly, even in cases in
which we operate as carefully as possible. Second, some of the
judgments we make, or could make, are not inherently risky: for
example, where we are careful only to judge about how things presently
appear to us, the judgments we make carry no risk of error. Third,
then, if our aim is to achieve absolute security, we should avoid
judgments of the first sort except insofar as they are securely based
upon judgments of the second sort. (On one view of this type, the
second sort of judgment would be taken to provide *evidence* on
which judgments of the first sort are based.) Austin's account
undermines the first two components of this view. The first component
is undermined because, although it is always *possible* to
judge incorrectly, there are ordinary cases in which our judgments
about our environment are, in fact, absolutely secure
 ((4) above):



> 
> 
> ...if I watch or some time an animal a few feet in front of me,
> in a good light, if I prod it perhaps, and sniff, and take note of the
> noises it makes, I may say, "That"s a pig'; and this
> too will be "incorrigible", nothing could be produced that
> would show that I had made a mistake...if the animal then emerges
> and stands there plainly in view, there is no longer any question of
> collecting evidence; its coming into view doesn't provide me
> with more *evidence* that it's a pig, I can now just see
> that it is, the question is settled. (1962a: 114-115)
> 
> 
> 



The second component is undermined because there is no *type*
of judgment, and no *type* of subject matter, with respect to
which error is impossible
 ((3) above).
 In order to have propositional knowledge even about what I am
experiencing right now, I must classify it together with other things
of the same type. And that requires the exercise of capacities that
are inherently fallible: I may not have had enough experiences of
things of the same sort to classify this one securely; I may not have
attended to what I am experiencing with sufficient care; I may fail
adequately to remember similar things that I experienced earlier; and
so forth (1946: 90-97; 1962a: 104-131).



Ordinary challenges to judgments or claims, including claims to know,
are sometimes invitations to detail our *credentials*--our
possession of appropriate acumen in making judgments of the type in
question. Sometimes, however, they are invitations to detail our
*facts*--the features of the circumstance that figure in
our judging in the way that we do. For example, we might claim to know
that that presented thing is a goldfinch "by the shape of its
head". If we were to detail our facts in that sort of way, then
we might be open to further challenge: someone might claim that
that's not *enough* of a basis on which to judge that the
presented thing is a goldfinch. In addition to emphasizing the role of
special acumen in this type of case--not just anyone can tell a
goldfinch by the shape of its head--Austin makes two important
claims about such potential challenges to our facts. First, Austin
claims that, in order for such a challenge to be appropriate, the
challenger must have in mind some more or less definite lack, for
example by pointing out that birds other than goldfinches have heads
of that shape. Second, Austin writes:



> 
> 
> Enough is enough: it doesn't mean everything. Enough means
> enough to show that (within reason, and for present intents and
> purposes) it "can't" be anything else, there is no
> room for an alternative, competing description of it. It does not
> mean, for example, enough to show it isn't a *stuffed*
> goldfinch. (1946: 84.)
> 
> 
> 



There are at least three, non-exclusive ways of reading Austin's
claim here. The first is as the claim that what suffices for *this
here* to be a goldfinch may not be enough with respect to anything
in any circumstance. There may be other birds, or other things, with
heads of the same shape. However, we might still know full well that
there are no such birds, and no such things, here; or we may know
enough about this thing to know it isn't a bird of that sort, or
one of those other things, even though we haven't specified how
we know in answer to the initial challenge. That is, we may know that
*this* isn't a stuffed goldfinch--given the rest of
what we know, and the circumstances in which we judge--even
though what we explicitly point to in answer to challenges
doesn't alone rule out the possibility. The second way of
reading Austin here is as allowing that we can know that this is a
goldfinch, even though we know that if it's a stuffed goldfinch,
then it is not a goldfinch, and we don't know that it
isn't a stuffed goldfinch. We are entitled--either in
general, or in circumstances of this sort--to assume or rely upon
its not being a stuffed goldfinch, even though that is something we
can't rule out and don't know (see Kaplan 2011 for
development of the second way of reading Austin's views in this
area). The third way of reading the passage is as claiming that the
range of *possibilities* can vary from occasion to occasion for
judging or claiming that one knows that this is a goldfinch. On the
third reading, it might be *impossible*, on this occasion, for
the presented thing to be a stuffed goldfinch, even though there are
other occasions on which it would be a possibility. Hence, our facts
do not need to foreclose on that possibility on this occasion,
although there might be other occasions on which our facts would need
to do so. (Travis 2005 develops the third approach. See Millar 2005
for objections.)



Let's turn, then, to
 (7)-(9),
 focusing attention on
 (9),
 the view that utterances of the form "I know that
such-and-such" serve a performative and not a descriptive
function. This is puzzling for at least two reasons: first, the claim
that "I know" lacks a descriptive function is apt to seem
obviously false; and second, it is unclear what, if any, function the
claim has in Austin's account as a whole.



The main focus of objection to Austin here isn't the claim that
"I know that such-and-such" can, on occasion, serve
distinctive performative functions. Rather, the concern with
Austin's proposal is focused on two more specific claims. First,
it is focused on the claim that "I know that
such-and-such" always and only serves a distinctive performative
function and so is never at the service of self-description. Second,
it is focused on the claim that, in cases in which "I know that
such-and-such" is used to serve a performative function, neither
the felicity conditions of using the sentence in that way, nor the
truth of what, if anything, one thereby states, depend in turn on
whether the speaker knows that such-and-such.



Austin is misled here, I think, due to three factors. First, he is
misled by similarities between saying "I know that
such-and-such" and saying "I promise that
such-and-such" or "I swear that such-and-such". But
the cases are importantly different. For example, unlike the case of
promising, in which saying "I promise..." in
appropriate circumstances makes it so that one has promised...,
saying "I know that such-and-such" does not make it so
that one knows. Now, as Austin later saw, it is possible to develop an
account on which saying "I know that such-and-such" can
serve more than one purpose and so can function well with respect to
one such purpose while functioning poorly with respect to others (see
e.g., 1950a: 133 and 1962b). Accordingly, it would be possible to
develop a view on which, for example, saying "I know that
such-and-such" in cases in which one does *not* know
would be improper *qua* statement (since saying it
doesn't remove the deficit by making it so that one knows),
while properly serving the purpose of giving an audience one's
assurance. However, and this is the second reason for which Austin is
misled, he had not in "Other Minds" (1946) yet attained
the later perspective on which that is a clear possibility. Since he
nonetheless believes that "I know that such-and-such"
serves purposes other than statement making, he is forced to efface
its statement-making function. Finally, and more speculatively, it
seems that Austin is misled due to his attempting to build into his
account a response to a doctrine, common to his Oxford Realist
predecessors Cook Wilson and Prichard, according to which whether one
knows or merely believes something is transparent to one. (For
discussion of that feature of Cook Wilson's and Prichard's
views, see Longworth 2018b, Travis and Kalderon 2013 and Travis 2005.) Although Austin
rejects the letter of the doctrine, he retains its spirit in
attempting to provide an account on which avowals of the form "I
know that such-and-such" can never be false. (For further
discussion of Austin's performative proposal, see Warnock 1989:
24-33, Lawlor 2013.)



(For critical engagement with Austin's work on knowledge, see
Ayer 1967; Baz 2011; Chisholm 1964; Hetherington 2018; Kaplan 2011, 2018; Lawlor 2013, 2018; Leite 2011; Longworth 2018b, Marion 2000a,b; Martin ms (Other
Internet Resources); Millar 2005; Putnam 1994; Soames 2003:
171-193; Stroud 1984: 39-82; Travis 2005; Travis and Kalderon 2013; Warnock 1989:
32-44; M. Williams 1996: 135-171.)


### 3.2 Sensory perception



Let's turn now to Austin's views specifically about
perception
 ((5) and (6) above).
 Once we have detailed the facts on which a perception-based judgment
of ours relies, a more general challenge arises concerning our access
to those facts. In order to exploit the bird's head shape as the
basis for our judgment that it is a goldfinch, it is arguable that we
must be able to see (or perhaps feel) the bird and its shape. On some
views of perception, however, birds and their shapes are not amongst
the things that one can perceive. Austin's main aim in *Sense
& Sensibilia* is to undermine considerations that have been
offered in favour of the general doctrine that, as he puts it,



> 
> 
> ...we never see or otherwise perceive (or "sense"),
> or anyhow we never *directly* perceive or sense, material
> objects (or material things), but only sense-data (or our own ideas,
> impressions, sense, sense-perceptions, percepts, &c.). (1962a:
> 2)
> 
> 
> 



Central to those considerations are those organized by versions of
what is known as the argument from illusion
 ((6) above).[21]
 The version of the argument that Austin criticizes can be
reconstructed as follows. (i) There are cases of illusion in which we
have a sensory experience as of seeing something of some sort with
specific features but in which nothing has those specific features.
This might be because, although we experience something of the sort in
question, the thing we experience lacks the features in question; or
it might be because we don't experience a thing of the sort in
question at all. (ii) In those cases, there must be something we
experience that has the features in question. Call the things we
experience in such cases *sense-data*. (iii) Since the cases in
which we experience sense-data include cases in which no material
things of the sort in question, or with the features in question, are
experienced, it follows that sense-data are not (in general) material
things, or elements in the environment independent of the individual
experiencer. It follows that, in the cases in question, we experience
things (or *directly* experience things) that are distinct from
material things and we do not thereby experience (or *directly*
experience) material things. (iv) Now it is a general principle about
experiences that if we cannot discriminate the objects of two
experiences on the basis of introspection, then those experiences must
have objects of the same sort. Hence, if one experience has only
sense-data as its objects, and not material things, and a second
experience has as its objects something that we cannot discriminate on
the basis of introspection from the objects of the first experience,
then the second experience also has sense-data rather than material
things as its objects. (v) Since every experience stands in the
required relation to an experience with only sense-data as its
objects, every experience has sense-data rather than material things
as its objects. Hence, we never experience--or never
*directly* experience--material things



Austin objects to every step in the argument just reconstructed.
Amongst other complaints, he argues that key terms in the argument
have not been properly defined or explained--for instance,
"material thing" and "sense-data" (1962a: 4,
7-14, 55), and "directly" (1962a: 14-19). And
he objects to the general principle, to which appeal was made in (iv),
pointing out that there are no grounds for thinking that we cannot
have experiences with different kinds of object that we nonetheless
can't discriminate on the basis of introspection. For instance,
we might experience a bar of soap that looks just like a lemon, and be
in a position where we couldn't discriminate the soap from the
lemon on the basis of introspection. Nonetheless, we would hold that
the two experiences have different kinds of objects (1962a:
 50-52).[22]
 However, what are perhaps his most important complaints target (i)
and (ii) by exploiting the distinction, initially articulated in
"Other Minds" (1946), between two elements in perceptually
based judgment: the opportunity afforded by sensory perception and
judgmental acumen.



The distinction between sensory perception and judgmental acumen
enables Austin to distinguish between central cases of
*illusion* and central cases of *delusion*, and also to
sketch explanations of what is going on in those cases that do not
make appeal to sense-data. Austin takes the defender of (i) and (ii)
to argue as follows. First, consider an illusion, for example a stick
that looks bent but really isn't. Such an illusion has two key
features. First, it clearly involves a distinctive sensory experience.
Second, the distinctive sensory experience that it involves is apt to
give rise to an erroneous perceptual judgment, to the effect that the
stick is bent. Now one way of explaining the erroneous perceptual
judgment is to view it as *dictated* by the sensory
experience--that is, to view it as accurately representing
features presented in the experience: the bent-ness of that which is
experienced. Since the stick is *not* in fact bent, and that
which is experienced *is* bent, we have reason to claim that
that which is experienced is not identical with the stick. What we
experience is *sense-data* rather than a stick. Moreover, we
might also consider more extreme cases in which we make erroneous
perceptual judgments: cases of delusion or hallucination. For example,
there is the case in which an alcoholic person judges that pink rats
are visible, when in fact there are none. Now, given the proposed
account of the case of illusion, that case cannot be distinguished
from the case of delusion by appeal to the fact that, in the former,
an environmental feature is experienced while, in the latter, there is
no suitable environmental feature to be experienced. It therefore
seems natural to treat the two cases as of the same basic type, and to
offer the same type of explanation for both. Thus, one might be
tempted to view the rat-delusion as having the following three
features. First, it involves a distinctive sensory experience. Second,
the distinctive sensory experience that it involves *dictates*
an erroneous perceptual judgment to the effect that pink rats are
visible. Third, that judgment is dictated because it accurately
represents features present in the experience.



Austin responds as follows. First, he exploits the role of judgmental
acumen in perceptual judgment in order to provide an alternative
explanation of cases of illusion (or more generally of things looking
ways that they are not). He allows that some things really do
*look* the way they are sometimes taken to be--the stick
looks bent, even though it is not in fact bent. But he holds that
those looks are not private features of individual's
experiences. For example, they are available to other perceivers and
might be recorded in a photograph. (Austin discusses talk about how
things look, and distinguishes it from talk about how things
*seem*--which he associates with judgment rather than with
experience, in *Sense and Sensibilia* (1962a: 33-43). See
also Jackson 1977: 30-49; Martin 2010; Travis 2004.) However,
the way the stick looks, just as much as features like the
stick's straightness, can be the basis for perceptual judgments.
We can explain why someone is prone to judge that the stick is bent by
appeal to the stick's *looking* bent, rather to
anything's being bent, together with the ways in which exercises
of judgmental acumen can respond erroneously to looks. More generally,
there needn't be anything in particular--any specific
feature of what is experienced or any specific look--that figures
in explaining why individuals are prone to make a specific type of
judgment on the basis of the experience. For the explanation for each
individual's judgment will depend, not only on what they
experience, but also on the types of judgmental capacities that they
have. In support of this form of explanation, Austin notes that not
everyone would be inclined to judge that the stick is bent. For
example, noting the presence of water, those whose judgmental
capacities are sufficiently well trained might withhold judgment about
the stick's shape (Hinton 1973: 114ff includes a useful
discussion of some of Austin's claims about illusions).



Standard cases of illusion or misleading appearance of the sort
we've just considered involve sensory experiences of ordinary
things and their features, including their looks, feels, and so forth.
However, because the connection between what is experienced and what
one judges on its basis is not straightforward--because
judgmental acumen is involved in moving from one to the
other--there is no general way to read back from the judgments
someone is prone to make to specific features of their sensory
experiences. Because such cases of illusion involve experience of
ordinary things, while standard cases of delusion do not, we thus have
a ground on which to distinguish the two sorts of case. For example,
we have grounds to distinguish the case in which someone erroneously
judges that a submerged stick is bent from the case of the alcoholic
person who judges that pink rats are visible. But having distinguished
the cases in that way, we are liable to become open to two new
questions. First, should we allow that the judgment in the delusory
case is based on sensory experience? Perhaps, for example, some cases
of delusion involve dysfunction in the systems responsible for
perceptual judgment of a sort that give rise to perceptual judgments
in the absence of any sense-experiential basis for those judgments.
Second, even if we allow that a particular delusory judgment is based
upon sensory experience, should we allow that it involves sensory
experience of anything other than elements that are present in the
deluded subject's environment? Perhaps some cases of delusion
involve dysfunctional judgmental responses to what is seen or heard.
For example, an alcoholic subject judgment that a pink rat is visible
might be a disordered response to an experience of a shadow. Unless we
are forced to answer both questions affirmatively, we lack the basis
for an argument that the deluded subject experiences anything distinct
from the ordinary things and features that they can see, hear,
etc.



Austin doesn't suggest that there could be no grounds for giving
affirmative answers to either of those questions. Moreover, it is very
plausible that such grounds *can* be provided. It is plausible,
for example, that there are distinctive sensory experiences involved
in what we call seeing double, or seeing afterimages, that cannot be
explained simply by appeal to what is present in subjects'
environments. And it is plausible that genuine sensory hallucinations
are possible--indeed, it is plausible that such hallucinations
might figure in explaining the alcoholic person's judgment.
However, although the style of response just considered is indecisive
against such additional developments of the argument, the resources
that it deploys will surely figure in serious engagement with those
developments. Austin sketches an approach to issues raised by such
experiences by attempting to give an account of the reports we are
inclined to make in such cases--"I see two pieces of
paper", "I see pink rats". Austin's sketch
aims to explain how such reports can be non-committal about the nature
of the experiences so-reported, and in particular about whether such
experiences have objects at all (1962a: 84-103). It is here in
particular that Austin comes close to endorsing a form of
*disjunctivism* about perception (see Soteriou 2009).



(For critical engagement with Austin's work on perception, see
Ayer 1967, 1969; Burnyeat 1979; Firth 1964; Forguson 1969b; Garvey
2014; Hinton 1973: 114ff; Hirst 1963; Jackson 1977; Travis and
Kalderon 2013; Leite 2011; Longworth 2019, Marion 2000a,b; Martin ms (Other Internet
Resources), 2000, 2010; Pears 1979; Putnam 1994; Schwartz 2004, 2018;
Snowdon 2014; Soames 2003: 171-193; Thau 2004; Travis 2004; van
Hulst and Cresswell 2016; Warnock 1989: 11-31.)


## 4. Action and Freedom



The core of Austin's work on freedom and action is contained in
"A Plea for Excuses" (1957) and developed in "Ifs
and Cans" (1956a), "Three Ways of Spilling Ink"
(1966), and "Pretending" (1958a). The three most
distinctive features of his views in this area are the following.



(1)
Austin
proposes that philosophers should attend to the details of the ways in
which we talk about particular actions of specific types rather than
attempting a more direct assault on general questions about freedom
and action (1957: 175-181; 1966: 273).
(2)

Austin holds that in order for someone to count as responsible for an
action, nothing more need be true than that the action is a normal or
standard instance of something they do. For example, it need not be
true of the actor, in addition, that they did what they did
*voluntarily* or *on purpose* (1957: 189-204;
1966).
(3)

Austin is inclined to think that, insofar as he understands the thesis
of determinism, it is *incompatible* with what we ordinarily
take to be true of human action (1956a: 218 fn.1, 231).

### 4.1 Actions and Excuses



Let's begin with
 (1).
 Austin holds that we can make progress on questions about freedom and
action by descending from reflection at the general level--i.e.,
reflection on freedom and action, *per se*--to reflection
on the more specific ways in which we characterize and appraise
actions. Austin's view about the general notions of acting, and
of acting freely or responsibly, is structurally similar to his view
about the general notion of truth: he thinks of such general notions
as *dimension words*, grouping a range of more specific
characterizations. The basic range here consists in the various
specific ways in which we can characterize happenings as
actions--for example, as someone running to the shop, or as their
reading a book. In addition to that basic range are what Austin calls
*aggravations*: the various specific ways in which we
characterize someone as *distinctively* responsible for
something that happens--for example, when we characterize someone
as having done something on purpose, intentionally, or deliberately.
The latter three aggravations are the topic of his "Three Ways
of Spilling Ink" (1966).



In his "A Plea for Excuses" (1957), Austin argues that the
minimal requirement for an agent to be responsible for an action of
theirs is that it be *incorrect* to characterize the action in
one or another way as something for which they were *not* fully
responsible--as something for which they have an *excuse*.
We might, for example, characterize a happening as an accident, a
mistake, involuntary, unintentional, inadvertent, or as due (in part)
to clumsiness, lack of appreciation of circumstances, or incompetence.
Where an act is performed, and where no excuse is available, the
action is one for which the actor counts as fully responsible. Where
one or another type of excuse *is* available, the specific type
of excuses that are available mitigate in one or another specific way
the subject's responsibility for the occurrence of an action or
its consequences, and so the extent to which the action is to be
counted as free. An excuse may do this by mitigating in various ways
the subject's responsibility either for an action considered as
a whole, or for proper sub-components of the action, or for
consequences of the action, or by indicating ways in which a happening
is not (a paradigmatic case of) an action. The varieties of
*pretending* that Austin discusses in his
"Pretending" (1958a) are of importance to him, at least in
part, because they provide for some distinctive forms of excuse. For
instance, one might seek to excuse what appeared to be an action of
type *A* by claiming that the agent was only pretending to
*A*, pretending to be *A*-ing, or pretending that they
were *A*-ing. (One of Austin's aims in the paper is to
distinguish those ways of pretending.)



One of Austin's central aims in considering the variety of
excuses and aggravations is to shed light on the inner composition of
responsible action: the division between an action and its
consequences; the decomposition of an action into its various
sub-components or phases; and what Austin calls the machinery of
action:



> 
> 
> ...the detail of the complicated internal machinery we use in
> "acting"--the receipt of intelligence, the
> appreciation of the situation, the invocation of principles, the
> planning, the control of execution and the rest. (1957: 179)
> 
> 
> 



Turning now to
 (2),
 Austin thinks that there is a range of normal or standard cases of
attributions of action with respect to which modification, by appeal
either to aggravations or excuses, is impermissible. With respect to
such normal or standard cases, it suffices, in order to characterize
the agent's role within them, simply to say what the agent did.
To add that the agent did the thing, for example, either voluntarily
*or* involuntarily would be inappropriate, incorrect, or even
senseless. Austin summarizes this idea in the slogan, "No
modification without aberration". Amongst the supporting
examples he gives are the following:



> 
> 
> I sit in my chair, in the usual way--I am not in a daze or
> influenced by threats or the like: here, it will not do to say either
> that I sit in it intentionally or that I did not sit in it
> intentionally, nor yet that I sat in it automatically or from habit or
> what you will. It is bedtime, I am alone, I yawn: but I do not yawn
> involuntarily (or voluntarily!), nor yet deliberately. To yawn in any
> such peculiar way is just not to just yawn. (1957:
>  190)[23]
> 
> 
> 



Austin holds that modifiers like "voluntarily" and
"involuntarily" are used to assert the respective presence
and absence of specific elements in the general machinery of action.
(He suggests that such apparent pairs do not invariably target the
very same specific elements. See 1957: 189-193.) Austin thinks
that philosophers have tended to assume that, given that someone has
done a specific thing, it will always be a further question whether
those pieces of machinery are present or absent. Moreover,
philosophers have aligned that question with the question whether the
actor was responsible for what they did or acted freely. Those
philosophers have in effect been making the following pair of
assumptions. They've assumed, first, that there is a single type
of piece of machinery such that for *any* action, the action
will be free and responsible just in case it involves that machinery.
Second, they've assumed that the various aggravations serve
indiscriminately to mark the presence of the required type of
machinery, while the various excuses serve to mark its absence.



Characteristically, Austin suggests that the situation is more
complicated. In particular, although he thinks that, in normal or
standard cases, actors are responsible for what they do and act
freely, he holds that what makes that so can vary from case to case:
different types of machinery can account for freedom and
responsibility with respect to different types of action. He holds
moreover that different aggravating and excusing modifiers target
different pieces of machinery. And, finally, he holds that the
appropriate use of a modifier doesn't depend only upon the
presence or absence of instances of the type of action-machinery that
it targets. In addition, it depends upon whether the targeted
machinery figures in normal cases of actions of the type in
 question.[24]



(For discussion of Austin's views about actions and excuses see
Forguson 1969a; Heintz 1981; Holdcroft 1969; Laugier 2018; Narboux 2011; New 1966;
Petrie 1971; Searle 1966; Zimmerman 2004; Warnock 1989: 65-79;
White 1967.)


### 4.2 Freedom and Ability



Let's turn now to Austin's discussion of whether
determinism is compatible with free action
 ((3) above).
 One general form of excuse for doing something would be that one
*couldn't avoid* doing it. Similarly, a general excuse
for failing to do something--failing to apply one's brakes,
for example--would be that one *couldn't* do it.
Excuses of that general type have figured centrally in discussions of
human freedom and the bearing of determinism on whether we ever act
freely. Suppose that, wherever an excuse of this form is correctly
applicable, we are not responsible for the action targeted by the
excuse and did not act freely. If this supposition were correct, a
demonstration that there are no things that we do that we could have
avoided doing, and no things that we do not do that we could have
done, would amount to a demonstration that we are never responsible
for doing, or refraining from doing, what we do and, so, never act
freely. And some philosophers have held that determinism provides the
basis for such a demonstration.



Such a demonstration might take the following form. The all-in claim
that someone could have done something at *t* requires that the
circumstances at *t* are consistent with their doing that thing
at *t*. But according to determinism, the circumstances,
*C*, at *t* determine that one set of events,
*E*, occurs at *t* rather than any others. That is,
according to the thesis of determinism, it couldn't be that
(*C* & not-*E*). Now, given that what the individual
in question in fact did at *t* (/refrained from doing at
*t*) is a member of *E*, it couldn't have been
that *C* and yet they failed to do it (/failed to refrain from
doing it). Hence, because of *C*, it's not the case that
they could have avoided doing what they did (/refraining from doing
it).



Austin considers this issue in his "Ifs and Cans" (1956a).
There, he discusses and rejects attempts in G.E. Moore 1912 and
Nowell-Smith 1954 to provide accounts of what we can do on which it
being true that we can do things (/refrain from doing them) is
compatible with its being determined by our circumstances that we
don't in fact do them (/refrain from doing them). Austin thinks
that his objections to the accounts on which he focuses provide
partial support to the view that our ordinary claims about what we can
do are incompatible with determinism.



The first proposal of Moore's that Austin considers is that the
claim that someone, *S*, can do something, *A*, is
equivalent to the following claim: *S* will *A*, if
*S* chooses to *A*. Austin argues that Moore's
first proposal is based on a mistaken view about the functioning of
the claims of the form: "*S* can *A*, if
*S*
 chooses".[25]
 The second proposal of Moore's that Austin considers is the
claim that "*S* can *A*" is equivalent to a
claim of the form "If it were that *C*, then *S*
would *B*". For example, "I could have holed the
putt" might be taken to be equivalent to "If I had tried
to hole the putt, I would have succeeded in holing the putt."
Here again, it seems that the proposal might be of service in
sidestepping the challenge posed by determinism. Suppose that in
actual circumstances *C*, I don't try to hole the putt.
According to determinism, it follows that it is impossible that
(*C* and I do try to hole the putt). But that is consistent
both with its being possible, in slightly different circumstances,
that I try to hole the putt, and with it being the case that, if I
were to try, I would succeed. Austin doesn't pursue the proposal
in detail, though his discussion of Nowell-Smith pursues connected
issues (219-230). However, in a footnote, Austin presents an
important putative counterexample:



> 
> 
> Consider the case where I miss a very short putt and kick myself
> because I could have holed it. It is not that I should have holed it
> if I had tried: I did try, and missed. It is not that I should have
> holed it if conditions had been different: that might of course be so,
> but I am talking about conditions as they precisely were, and
> asserting that I could have holed it. There is the rub. (1956a: 218
> fn.1)
> 
> 
> 



Austin's thought here is that attributions of this sort manifest
our belief that,



> 
> 
> ...a human ability or power or capacity is inherently liable not
> to produce success, on occasion, and that for no reason (or are bad
> luck and bad form sometimes reasons?). (218: 218 fn.1)
> 
> 
> 



Now a committed determinist would claim that the events that
constitute such failures must be determined--and in that sense
explained--by the circumstances at and before the failure. But
Austin believes--for reasons in effect considered
above--that the existence of such an explanation would make it
the case that, in fact, the golfer *could not* have made the
putt in the circumstances as they precisely were.



We have here, then, a point at which Austin expresses his view that
ordinary attributions of ability, power, and capacity are incompatible
with the thesis of determinism. In response, the compatibilist is
forced, I think, to deny that its being true that a golfer could have
holed the putt, or even that he could have holed the putt in precisely
the same conditions, entails that he would have holed the putt in a
*perfect* duplicate of the actual world. Leaving that issue to
one side, Austin presents the proposed analysis with a case of
*masking*--a case in which, although ability is retained,
successful exercise of the ability is somehow precluded, for instance
by outside interference (for discussion of masking, see A. Bird 1998;
Clarke 2009; Fara 2008; and Johnston 1992). The challenge facing the
defender of the analysis is to spell out the analysis so as to cope
with masking. Arguably, meeting the challenge depends upon provision
of a non-circular specification of all possible masks. Austin would, I
think, claim that it is impossible to meet the challenge. For on his
view, abilities are sometimes masked *brutely*, without any
specifiable mask. Even if he is wrong about that, it remains an open
question whether the challenge can be met, or whether the endless
heterogeneity of potential masks makes it impossible to provide an
explanatory specification.



(For discussion of Austin views about freedom and ability see Ayers
1966; Clarke 2009; Kaufman 1963; Locke 1962; New 1966; Nowell-Smith
1960; Pears 1973; Thalberg 1969; Warnock 1989: 80-97.)