Friday, January 1, 2010

Promises

It is tempting to define promising in a way that centrally involves some condition like "S intends that the utterance of T will place him under an obligation to do A", as Searle does. Of course, there will be other conditions, but this is the one that most clearly distinguishes promises from other illocutory acts.

However, there are many ways that an utterance that expresses that one will do A could place one under an obligation to do A, without the utterance having the illocutory force of a promise. For instance, when I assert: "I will not deny having made this assertion", I have thereby put myself under an obligation not to deny having made that assertion, not by making a promise (I was asserting, not promising, hence my use of "will" in place of "shall"), but simply because it's wrong for me to lie. Searle's other conditions will rule this out as a counterexample, but it is easy to imagine a social institution like promising but whose moral oomph is not that of the promise, but of something else, like obedience to an order.

For instance, Fred might command me that whenever I say: "Pursuant to Fred's command, p", I must bring it about that p. (I think that I can make a case like this fit all the other Searlean conditions.) If Fred is a legitimate authority, then by making an utterance like that, I gain an obligation to bring it about that p, but I do not gain promissory obligation but an obediential one. An easy way to see that the obligation is not promissorily grounded is to note that if I say: "Pursuant to Fred's command, I will take you out to lunch", the obligation is not to my interlocutor, as it would be in the case of a promise, but to Fred. Of course, one might modify the central condition by saying that the utterance will place S under an obligation to the interlocutor. But, nonetheless, I can suppose that I say "Pursuant to Fred's command, I will take you out to lunch" to Fred. In that case, I may owe the obligation to Fred, if Fred is the sort of authority obedience to whom is owed to him (God is that sort of authority), but it is still an obediential and not a promissory obligation.

I wonder whether promising can be defined in a vocabulary that uses normative and even moral vocabulary but that does not distinguish promissory normativity from other normativity.

This is a general worry about "normative" accounts of various phenomena. Consider, for instance, some normative account of assertion, where a central condition for T to be an assertion that p is that T is only permissiible if the speaker is justified in believing that p. Unless one specifies the kind of permissibility at issue, we open ourselves up to weird counterexamples, such as when a superior commands us to write down a list of yes/no questions to which one justifiably believes the answer is affirmative—it is, then, permitted to write down the question whether p only if one is justified in believing p. Here, the normativity is of the wrong sort, and a correct definition of assertion needs to specify what the relevant kind of normativity is. And I don't know that one can do so without saying that we're dealing with assertoric normativity.

(In the end, I think all normativity is moral. But there are different kinds of moral normativity, as there are different kinds of moral reasons.)

9 comments:

Mike Almeida said...

"I will not deny having made this assertion", I have thereby put myself under an obligation not to deny having made that assertion

Can't be right, Alex, since you might just as well be making a prediction or foretelling your own future or prophesying, etc. This is why it's important to ask whether it's prophesy or promise when the chair says, "You will be getting a raise next year".

Alexander R Pruss said...

Whenever I do A, I acquire the obligation not to deny having done A. Why? Because I have an obligation not to lie!

In particular, when I say S, I acquire the obligation not to deny having said S.

In particular, when I assert "I will not deny having made this assertion", I acquire the obligation not to deny having said S. And this is true whether it's a prediction or prophecy.

Mike Almeida said...

Whenever I do A, I acquire the obligation not to deny having done A. Why? Because I have an obligation not to lie!

I agree that you have an (prima facie) obligation not to lie. But if (i) you assert "I will not deny having made this assertion" and (ii) you're making a prediction about what you will do, then (iii) if you deny that you said it, you did not lie. You made a bad prediction.
If your boss predicts that you'll get a raise by saying, "you'll be getting a raise", and you don't get one, he did not lie to you. He made a bad prediction.

Alexander R Pruss said...

Suppose I say:
1. "I will not deny having made this assertion"
2. "I did not make the assertion in (1)."

Then (1) is not a lie. But (2) is! (Unless I've honestly forgotten.) So, my saying (1) makes me acquire the obligation not to say (2).

Mike Almeida said...

1. "I will not deny having made this assertion"
2. "I did not make the assertion in (1)." Then (1) is not a lie. But (2) is!


The point is that making the assertion places me under no obligation that I wasn't already under. It does not alter my obligations at all. I might as well have said, 'Snow is white' and claim that, making such an assertion has the illocutionary force of putting me under an obligation not to deny that I said that snow is white. But it is nothing other than a particular instance of an obligation I'm already under. Making those assertions does not have the force of generating obligations in the way that promising does.

Alexander R Pruss said...

This depends on how one counts obligations.

If you insist that I have simply one general obligation to say nothing I know (or at least believe) to be false, then I can likewise say that I have one general obligation to do everything that I have promised. Thus, my promising to do A does not produce any new obligation: "it is nothing other than a particular instance of an obligation I'm already under."

Mike Almeida said...

1. "I will not deny having made this assertion"
2. "I did not make the assertion in (1)." Then (1) is not a lie. But (2) is!


Alex, one other quick point. If (2) is a lie and (1) is a prediction, then it is possible for me to correctly predict that I lie to you about a proposition that you know I uttered, I know you know I uttered, you know that I know that you know I uttered, and so on. Is that possible? There is no question of you being deceived and we both know that. So I cannot even form the intention to decieve you, since I cannot intend to do what I know I cannot do. I can't even try to lie if I cannot form the intention to deceive.

Alexander R Pruss said...

Yeah, hadn't thought of that. So, think of (2) as said to some third party who hadn't heard me utter (1).

Heath White said...

I think the key in promising is that the speaker is the source of the new obligation brought about by the speech act; that is, the obligation is voluntarily undertaken. Come to think of it, I think this is an important part of assertion too.