Saturday, April 4, 2015

Weak promises

Commanding is meant to create an obligating reason for another, while requesting is meant to create a non-obligating one. Promising is meant to create an obligating reason for self. There is a natural spot in illocutionary space, then, for a speech act meant to create a non-obligating reason for self, a speech act type that stands to promising as requesting does to commanding.

We would expect that when I have a normative power, I also have the corresponding weaker powers. If a legislature can bind under pain of ten years' imprisonment, they can bind under pain of a week's imprisonment. If I can create an obligating reason for myself, I can create a non-obligating reason for myself. That's another reason to think that we would have the "weak promise" speech act that creates non-obligating reasons.

I am not sure we have good phrases to express weak promises. We can approximate the force of a weak promise by weaselly promissory wordage like "I'll try to do this" or "I'll take your needs into account".

4 comments:

JoPo said...

Perhaps there is something to be said for our authority over ourselves in comparison to our authority over others? Even if a given course of action is good for someone else, I may not have the authority to command him to take that course of action; but if a given course of action is good for me, I always have the authority to oblige myself to take it.

Alexander R Pruss said...

Good point. But it would be good to be able to bind oneself less than a promise does, since every promise exposes one to the risk of not doing so.

Mark Rogers said...

In Spanish the word 'tomorrow' is used sometimes in phrases to make a weak promise about future actions.

Alexander R Pruss said...

"I hope to" said in a context where it's meant to offer some assurance (rather than just be a piece of autobiography) may be a weak promise, too.