Lecture 10, 2015
“How to Get a Norm from a Speech Act”
Rae Langton
University of Cambridge
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Abstract
Doing things with words can create an ought that was not there before: Jones makes a promise,
a master orders a slave. With the former example, Searle 'derived' an ought from an is. With
the latter, Lewis showed that permissibility follows a 'rule of accommodation'. The parallel
between promise and order suggests that norms, good and bad, can be got from speech acts
by accommodation: what is said 'requires and thereby creates' what is required, given certain
conditions. Authority is such a condition: of a slave master, a desert island leader, a doctor,
a quack doctor, a father, or a presidential candidate who 'normalizes' a behaviour. Authority
can be pre-established, or gained by accommodation. It can be practical, or epistemic. It can
belong to the speaker, or be outsourced. These cross-cutting distinctions allow for weakened
authority, but a power to enact directives remains. Hearers can assist: in a two-part process,
hearers accommodate presupposed authority, which in turn accommodates a speech act, creating
a norm. As hearers we may need, sometimes, to stop helping.
Preferred citation
Langton, Rae “How to Get a Norm from a Speech Act.” The
Amherst Lecture in Philosophy 10 (2015): 1–33.
<http://www.amherstlecture.org/langton2015/>.
