Videos by Michael Schmitz
In this talk I defend a version of the mode account of collective intentionality – the subject mo... more In this talk I defend a version of the mode account of collective intentionality – the subject mode account – and argue that we should also recognize role-mode in addition to the we-mode. I present 5 theses about role-mode and conclude with the question in which respect the presented view is collectivistic and in which sense it is individualistic.
Talk will be part of the Social Ontology conference organized by ISOS. 44 views
I discuss legal positivism from the point of view of a collective acceptance account of the natur... more I discuss legal positivism from the point of view of a collective acceptance account of the nature of institutional reality and thus of the legal order. 156 views
In this talk I argue that by ascribing representational content to force indicators we can overco... more In this talk I argue that by ascribing representational content to force indicators we can overcome the force-content distinction or dualism.
Held at the workshop "The Force/Content Distinction"
organized by Francois Recanati at College de France, Paris, June 16-18, 2021. 91 views
Papers by Michael Schmitz
Topoi, 2024
In this paper I outline the PAIR account of joint attention as a perceptual-practical, affectivel... more In this paper I outline the PAIR account of joint attention as a perceptual-practical, affectively charged intentional relation. I argue that to explain joint attention we need to leave the received understanding of propositions and propositional attitudes and the picture of content connected to it behind and embrace the notions of subject mode and position mode content. I also explore the relation between joint attention and communication.
PsyArXiv Preprints, 2023
The media, including news articles in both Nature and Science, have recently celebrated the Integ... more The media, including news articles in both Nature and Science, have recently celebrated the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) as a 'leading' and empirically tested theory of consciousness 1-5. We are writing as researchers with some relevant expertise to express our concerns.
Academia Letters, 2021
Questions are not on all fours with assertions or directions, but higher-level acts that can oper... more Questions are not on all fours with assertions or directions, but higher-level acts that can operate on either to yield theoretical questions, as when one asks whether the door is closed, or practical questions, as when one asks whether to close it. They contain interrogative force indicators, which present positions of wondering, but also assertoric or directive force indicators which present the position of theoretical or practical knowledge the subject is striving for. Views based on the traditional force-content distinction take the indicative mood for granted and therefore do not understand assertion in contrast to direction, but in contrast to questions and other higher-level acts such as logical and fictional acts. But a corresponding sign like Frege's judgement stroke can only redundantly signal the absence of a higher-level act.
"Force, content and the unity of the proposition", 2021
In this paper I propose three steps to overcome the force-content distinction and dispel the Freg... more In this paper I propose three steps to overcome the force-content distinction and dispel the Frege point. First, we should ascribe content to force indicators. Through basic assertoric and directive force indicators such as intonation, word order and mood, a subject presents its position of theoretical or practical knowledge of a state of affairs as a fact, as something that is the case, or as a goal, as something to do. Force indicators do not operate on truth- or satisfaction evaluable entities as on the traditional view, but complete and unify them. Second, higher-level acts such as interrogative, logical and fictional acts create higher-level unities that may suspend commitment to the assertions and directions they operate on. But they do not cancel their force, but transfer the meaning of force indicators into the new unities they create. For example, in the context of asking a theoretical or practical question, the assertoric or directive force indicator now presents the kind of knowledge the subject is seeking. Third, the Frege point conflates different varieties of force. We neither need Frege’s assertion sign, nor Hare’s neustic, nor Hanks’s cancellation sign, but only ordinary force indicators and interrogative, logical and fictional markers. Propositions are not forceless contents to which a subject commits by forceful acts, but forceful acts put forward by higher-level acts which may suspend commitment to them.
to appear in: Miguel Garcia-Godinez, Rachael Mellin & Raimo Tuomela (eds.) Social Ontology, Normativity and Philosophy of Law. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020
How can the law be characterized in a theory of collective intentionality that treats collective ... more How can the law be characterized in a theory of collective intentionality that treats collective intentionality as essentially layered and tries to understand these layers in terms of the structure and the format of the representations involved? And can such a theory of collective intentionality open up new perspectives on the law and shed new light on traditional questions of legal philosophy? As a philosopher of collective intentionality who is new to legal philosophy, I want to begin exploring these questions in this paper. I will try to characterize the law in terms of the layered account of collective intentionality that I have introduced in some earlier writings (Schmitz 2013; 2018). In the light of this account I will then discuss a traditional question in the philosophy of law: the relation between law and morality.
I begin by giving a brief sketch of the layered account in the next section. Collective intentionality should be understood in terms of experiencing and representing others as co-subjects, rather than as objects, of intentional states and acts on different layers or levels. I distinguish the nonconceptual layer of the joint sensory-motor-emotional intentionality of joint attention and joint bodily action, the conceptual level of shared we-mode beliefs, intentions, obligations, values, and so on, and the institutional level characterized through role differentiation, positions taken in role-mode, e.g. as a judge or attorney, and writing and other forms of documentation. In the third section I introduce a set of parameters for representations such as their degree of richness, of context-dependence, of density and differentiation of representational role and of durability and stability, which can be used to more precisely distinguish different layers. I also put forward the hypothesis that these properties are connected and tend to cluster, and that higher levels can only function and determine conditions of satisfaction against lower level ones. In the fourth and final section I critically discuss the sharp positivistic separation of morality and the law according to which whether something is a law is completely independent of its moral merits. I argue that this only seems plausible if we take an observational stance towards the law, but not towards morality. When we treat them the same way, it rather appears that the moral attitudes of the co-subjects of a society will determine whether and to what extent they will accept its legal order. I conclude by proposing to think of the law as being itself an institutionalized form of morality.
Language & Communication, 2019
In this paper I argue that in order to properly account for group speech acts, we need to fundame... more In this paper I argue that in order to properly account for group speech acts, we need to fundamentally reconceptualize, the force-content opposition. This is because in a group speech act, a group presents itself as taking a position such as an assertion, a promise or an order, that is, it presents itself as the subject of such a position. But on the received understanding of the force / mode of speech acts and so-called propositional attitudes and their propositional content, only the latter is representational, so that only what the subject is e.g. asserting is represented, not the subject and the position it takes. Against this I argue for a representationalist account of mode / force, according to which they are to be understood in terms of the self-awareness of subjects. Individual and collective subjects are aware of whether they take a theoretical or practical position towards the reality of a state of affairs and indicate this position in their speech. This often involves pre-conceptual and grammaticalized content, which is importantly different from the conceptual content philosophers have usually focused on. I show that the ‘Frege point’ cannot establish the received force-content dualism and that, on the contrary, the view that force is representational allows a satisfactory response to the puzzles the ‘Frege point’ is based on. In the final section of the paper, I show how on the basis of the account developed we can give a more satisfactory analysis of the speech act of inviting a joint commitment and answer two important questions Bernhard Schmid has raised about group speech acts, namely whether there are 1st person plural Moore-sentences and a 1st person plural form of 1st person authority. I argue that the singular and plural cases can be treated in parallel.
Gabriele M. Mras, Paul Weingartner, Bernhard Ritter (eds.) "Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics" Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, Vol. XXVI 41th International Wittgenstein Symposium Kirchberg am Wechsel: Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 2018
The Frege point to the effect that e.g. the clauses of conditionals are not asserted and therefor... more The Frege point to the effect that e.g. the clauses of conditionals are not asserted and therefore cannot be assertions is often taken to establish a dichotomy between the content of a speech act, which is propositional and belongs to logic and semantics, and its force, which belongs to pragmatics. Recently this dichotomy has been questioned by philosophers such as Peter Hanks and Francois Recanati, who propose act-theoretic accounts of propositions, argue that we can’t account for propositional unity independently of the forceful acts of speakers, and respond to the Frege point by appealing to a notion of force cancellation. I argue that the notion of force cancellation is faced with a dilemma and offer an alternative response to the Frege point, which extends the act-theoretic account to logical acts such as conditionalizing or disjoining. Such higher-level acts allow us to present forceful acts while suspending commitment to them. In connecting them, a subject rather commits to an affirmation function of such acts. In contrast, the Frege point confuses a lack of commitment to what is put forward with a lack of commitment or force in what is put forward.
Journal of Social Philosophy, 2018
[Published version now available (open access).] In this paper I want to introduce and defend wha... more [Published version now available (open access).] In this paper I want to introduce and defend what I call the "subject mode account" of collective intentionality. I propose to understand collectives from joint attention dyads over small informal groups of various types to organizations, institutions and political entities such as nation states, in terms of their self-awareness. On the subject mode account, the self-consciousness of such collectives is constitutive for their being. More precisely, their self-representation as subjects of joint theoretical and practical positions towards the world – rather than as objects of such positions – makes them what they are. Members of such collectives represent each other as co-subjects of such positions and thus represent the world from the point of view of the collective.
In Christoph Limbeck & Friedrich Stadler (eds.), The Philosophy of Perception. Proceedings of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 2019
A perceptual realism that is naive in a good way must be naive about world and mind. But contempo... more A perceptual realism that is naive in a good way must be naive about world and mind. But contemporary self-described naive realists often have trouble acknowledging that both the good cases of successful perception and the bad cases of illusion and hallucination involve internal experiential states with intentional contents that present the world as being a certain way. They prefer to think about experience solely in relational terms because they worry that otherwise we won't be able to escape from radical skepticism. I argue that experiential relations to objects require that their subjects be in internal experiential states. But this does not mean that these states are our epistemological starting point which can be known independently of any knowledge of the external world. We escape the epistemological predicament of radical skepticism because the good cases are primary over the bad ones. But this is not because the good cases alone provide reasons for belief, but because we do not need a reason to think we are in a good case, but do need a reason to think we are not, and such a reason must come from a good case. So bad cases can only be thought of as deviations from good cases. And we can only understand experiences as states with contents distinct from their objects and present in good and bad cases once we understand misrepresentation, that is, bad cases, and therefore only as we ascribe knowledge of the external world to ourselves.
In Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peters (eds.), Social Ontology and Collective Intentionality: Critical Essays on the Philosophy of Raimo Tuomela with his Responses, 37-70, Springer, Jan 2017
This paper discusses Raimo Tuomela's we-mode account in his recent book "Social Ontology: Collect... more This paper discusses Raimo Tuomela's we-mode account in his recent book "Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents" and develops the idea that mode should be thought of as representational. I argue that in any posture – intentional state or speech act – we do not merely represent a state of affairs as what we believe, or intend etc. – as the received view of 'propositional attitudes' has it –, but our position relative to that state of affairs and thus ourselves. That is, we represent the subject through what I call "subject mode" and its position through what I call "position mode". I argue that the key to understanding collective intentionality is to understand how we represent others as co-subjects of positions rather than as their objects. This is shown on various levels of collective intentionality. On the non-conceptual level of joint attention we experience others as co-subjects who we attend with rather than to and who we are at least also disposed to act jointly with. On the conceptual level of the we-mode we represent others as co-subjects of positions of knowledge, intention, belief and shared values. Organizations and thus group agents in Tuomela's sense I propose to understand in terms of what I call "role mode", that is, in terms of the positions individuals and groups take as occupants of certain roles, for example, as committee members, or as chancellor of Germany. I try to show how this account, while very much in the spirit of Tuomela's, can avoid his fictionalism about group agents and some other problems of his account, while steering between the Scylla of excessive individualism and the Charybdis of extreme collectivism.
Journal of Social Ontology, Mar 23, 2016
In this paper I discuss Michael Tomasello's account of the nature of thought and of its emergence... more In this paper I discuss Michael Tomasello's account of the nature of thought and of its emergence and development in his recent book 'A Natural History of Human Thinking'. I first introduce Tomasello’s notion of thought and his account of its emergence and development through differentiation, arguing that it calls into question the theory bias of the philosophical tradition on thought as well as its frequent atomism. On the basis of this discussion, I raise some worries in the second section that he may be overextending the concept of thought, arguing that we should recognize an area of intentionality intermediate between action and perception on the one hand and thought on the other. In the third section I continue this argument by suggesting that the co-operative nature of humans is reflected in the very structure of their intentionality and thought: in co-operative modes such as the mode of joint attention and action and the we-mode, they experience and represent others as co-subjects of joint relations to situations in the world rather than as mere objects. To capture this I suggest to abandon the traditional understanding of propositional attitudes. In conclusion, I will then briefly comment, in the light of the preceding discussion, on what Tomasello refers to as one of two big open questions in theory of collective intentionality, namely that of the irreducibility of jointness.
In Neil Roughley, Julius Schälike (eds.) Wollen. Seine Bedeutung, seine Grenzen. Mentis, 2016
In diesem Aufsatz argumentiere ich, dass die Standardauffassung von Propositionen und proposition... more In diesem Aufsatz argumentiere ich, dass die Standardauffassung von Propositionen und propositionalen Einstellungen inadäquat ist, ein Artefakt der gegenwärtig herrschenden theorielastigen Auffassung von Intentionalität, Sprache und Rationalität, und skizziere eine alternative Auffassung. Im folgenden Abschnitt belege ich erst einmal die These der Theorielastigkeit anhand einiger Beispiele vor allem aus der gegenwärtigen analytischen Philosophie. Der dritte Abschnitt erklärt, wie diese Theorielastigkeit im Standardverständnis von Propositionen und propositionalen Einstellungen verkörpert ist. Im vierten Abschnitt argumentiere ich, dass dieses Standardverständnis der Proposition zwei unvereinbare Rollen zuweist. Sie kann nicht sowohl einen Sachverhalt repräsentieren, der Gegenstand praktischer genauso wie theoretischer Stellungnahmen sein kann, als auch wie eine theoretische Stellungnahme Wahrheitswertträger sein. In den folgenden Abschnitten versuche ich eine partielle Diagnose, wie es zu dieser Auffassung kommen kann: gewisse Formen der Neutralisierung von Stellungnahmen durch das bloße „in den Raum stellen“ (fünfter Abschnitt), durch fiktionale Kontexte (sechster Abschnitt) und den Kontext logischer Verknüpfungen (der so genannte „Frege-Punkt“; siebter Abschnitt) werden verwechselt mit der Neutralität zwischen dem Praktischen und Theoretischen, zwischen Wollen und Wahrheit, die die Standardauffassung erfordern würde. Der achte Abschnitt skizziert in groben Umrissen ein alternatives Bild. Demnach wird eine Repräsentation eines Sachverhalts erst durch die dazu kommende theoretische oder praktische Position zu einer Stellungnahme und damit zum Träger eines Erfüllungswerts. Die Bereiche des Praktischen und des Theoretischen sind parallel strukturiert und unterschieden sich im Wesentlichen nur durch die Verschiedenheit der Passrichtungen. Grundlegende rationale Operationen wie Deduktion, Abduktion und Induktion können auf praktischen Stellungnahmen genauso ausgeführt werden wie auf theoretischen. Im neunten Abschnitt verorte ich die tieferen Wurzeln der Theorielastigkeit in dem Verlangen, das Praktische an die dem Theoretischen eigene Form der Objektivität zu assimilieren. Dieses Verlangen muss aber fruchtlos bleiben, und die dem Praktischen eigene Form der Objektivität wird so verfehlt. Der letzte Abschnitt deutet an, wie sich Werturteile in dem skizzierten Rahmen deuten lassen.
Synthesis philosophica, 58, 235–251, Apr 2015
In this paper I criticize theory-biased and overly individualist approaches to understanding othe... more In this paper I criticize theory-biased and overly individualist approaches to understanding others and introduce the PAIR account of joint attention as a pragmatic, affectively charged intentional relation. I argue that this relation obtains in virtue of intentional contents in the minds of the co-attenders, and – against the received understanding of intentional states as propositional attitudes – that we should recognize what I call “subject mode” and “position mode” intentional content. Based on findings from developmental psychology, I propose that subject mode content represents the co-attenders as co-subjects, who are like them and who are at least disposed to act jointly with them. I conclude by arguing that in joint attention we experience and understand affective, actional and perceptual relations at a non-conceptual level prior to the differentiation of mind and body.
In G. Seebaß, M. Schmitz & P. M. Gollwitzer (eds.), Acting Intentionally And Its Limits: Individuals, Groups, Institutions, 57-84. Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2013
In Miguel Hoeltje, Thomas Spitzley und Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), Was sollen wir glauben? Was dürfen wir tun?, Sektionsbeiträge der GAP. 8., 392-403, Jun 2013
The contribution deals with knowledge of what to do, and how, where, when and why to do it, as it... more The contribution deals with knowledge of what to do, and how, where, when and why to do it, as it is found in a multitude of plans, rules, procedures, maxims, and other instructions. It is argued that while this knowledge is conceptual and propositional, it is still irreducible to theoretical knowledge of what is the case and why it is the case. It is knowledge of goals, of ends and means, rather than of facts. It is knowledge-to that is irreducibly practical in having world to mind direction of fit and the essential function of guiding as yet uncompleted action. While practical knowledge is fundamentally different from theoretical knowledge in terms of mind-world relations, the practical and theoretical domains are still parallel in terms of justificatory and inferential relations, they are like mirror images of one another. It is shown that if this view of practical knowledge is accepted, convincing Gettier cases for practical knowledge can be constructed. An extensive analysis of these cases demonstrates the usefulness of the notions of practical deduction, abduction, and induction.
In M. Schmitz, B. Kobow & H.B. Schmid (eds.), The Background of Social Reality, 107-125, Springer, 2013
How can people function appropriately and respond normatively in social contexts even if they are... more How can people function appropriately and respond normatively in social contexts even if they are not aware of rules governing these contexts? John Searle has rightly criticized a popular way out of this problem by simply asserting that they follow them unconsciously. His alternative explanation is based on his notion of a preintentional, nonrepresentational background. In this paper I criticize this explanation and the underlying account of the background and suggest an alternative explanation of the normativity of elementary social practices and of the background itself. I propose to think of the background as being intentional, but nonconceptual, and of the basic normativity or proto-normativity as being instituted through common sensory-motor-emotional schemata established in the joint interactions of groups. The paper concludes with some reflections on what role this level of collective intentionality and the notion of the background can play in a layered account of the social mind and the ontology of the social world.
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Videos by Michael Schmitz
Talk will be part of the Social Ontology conference organized by ISOS.
Held at the workshop "The Force/Content Distinction"
organized by Francois Recanati at College de France, Paris, June 16-18, 2021.
Papers by Michael Schmitz
I begin by giving a brief sketch of the layered account in the next section. Collective intentionality should be understood in terms of experiencing and representing others as co-subjects, rather than as objects, of intentional states and acts on different layers or levels. I distinguish the nonconceptual layer of the joint sensory-motor-emotional intentionality of joint attention and joint bodily action, the conceptual level of shared we-mode beliefs, intentions, obligations, values, and so on, and the institutional level characterized through role differentiation, positions taken in role-mode, e.g. as a judge or attorney, and writing and other forms of documentation. In the third section I introduce a set of parameters for representations such as their degree of richness, of context-dependence, of density and differentiation of representational role and of durability and stability, which can be used to more precisely distinguish different layers. I also put forward the hypothesis that these properties are connected and tend to cluster, and that higher levels can only function and determine conditions of satisfaction against lower level ones. In the fourth and final section I critically discuss the sharp positivistic separation of morality and the law according to which whether something is a law is completely independent of its moral merits. I argue that this only seems plausible if we take an observational stance towards the law, but not towards morality. When we treat them the same way, it rather appears that the moral attitudes of the co-subjects of a society will determine whether and to what extent they will accept its legal order. I conclude by proposing to think of the law as being itself an institutionalized form of morality.
Talk will be part of the Social Ontology conference organized by ISOS.
Held at the workshop "The Force/Content Distinction"
organized by Francois Recanati at College de France, Paris, June 16-18, 2021.
I begin by giving a brief sketch of the layered account in the next section. Collective intentionality should be understood in terms of experiencing and representing others as co-subjects, rather than as objects, of intentional states and acts on different layers or levels. I distinguish the nonconceptual layer of the joint sensory-motor-emotional intentionality of joint attention and joint bodily action, the conceptual level of shared we-mode beliefs, intentions, obligations, values, and so on, and the institutional level characterized through role differentiation, positions taken in role-mode, e.g. as a judge or attorney, and writing and other forms of documentation. In the third section I introduce a set of parameters for representations such as their degree of richness, of context-dependence, of density and differentiation of representational role and of durability and stability, which can be used to more precisely distinguish different layers. I also put forward the hypothesis that these properties are connected and tend to cluster, and that higher levels can only function and determine conditions of satisfaction against lower level ones. In the fourth and final section I critically discuss the sharp positivistic separation of morality and the law according to which whether something is a law is completely independent of its moral merits. I argue that this only seems plausible if we take an observational stance towards the law, but not towards morality. When we treat them the same way, it rather appears that the moral attitudes of the co-subjects of a society will determine whether and to what extent they will accept its legal order. I conclude by proposing to think of the law as being itself an institutionalized form of morality.
behaviors reported can be accounted for by nonconceptual forms of consciousness, such as emotions and motor experiences, rather than by – conscious or unconscious – conceptual level intentions tends to be disregarded, even though it promises to be empirically fruitful.
which seems—in some sense—to be thoroughly governed by physical causality?
Mental causation has been a nagging problem in philosophy since
the beginning of the modern age, when, inspired by the rise of physics, a
metaphysical picture became dominant according to which the manifest
macrophysical world of rocks, trees, colors, sounds etc. could be eliminated
in favor of, or identified with, the microconstituents of these entities
and their basic physical properties, plus their effects on human or animal
minds. Against the background of this ontology, the argument from causal
closure, or the causal completeness of physics, exerts strong pressure
to also identify consciousness with microphysical entities—or even to eliminate
it in favor of the latter—the only other options apparently being
either the denial of the causal closure of the physical level, epiphenomenalism
about the mind, or the view that its physical effects are generally
overdetermined. In this paper, however, I want to introduce what I call
the “microstructure view” (MV) of the brain-consciousness relation, and I
want to try to make plausible that the problem of mental causation can
also be solved, or perhaps rather dissolved, on the basis of this account. On
the MV, the minimal neuronal correlates of consciousness—of the global
state of consciousness, or specific states of consciousness such as pain—are
not identical with these states, but rather constitute their microstructure,
or, as I shall also say, equivalently, compose them.
After an introduction that identifies the elimination of the manifest physical world in modernity as the metaphysical background of the mind-body problem and describes the dilemmatic situation created by the typical reactions to it, the first chapter attempts to clarify what consciousness is. The second chapter then discusses some of the standard formulations of the so-called “puzzle” or “mystery” of consciousness. It is shown that these cannot be transformed into a genuine, answerable question. The notion that other macrophenomena can be explained much better than consciousness, perhaps even in a completely transparent way, is revealed to be an illusion, an artefact of the tacit elimination of the manifest physical world. In the third chapter, the thesis that consciousness has spatial properties is defended against various forms of skepticism. The fourth chapter begins the debate with the mind-body identity theory by discussing various positions on identity statements in the philosophy of language. This discussion leads to the conclusion that the idea of informative identity statements is meaningless. On this basis, the notion of an empirically contentful so-called “scientific identification” of consciousness phenomena with their neuronal correlates is criticized in the fifth chapter. The sixth chapter argues that it is possible to dissolve the problem of mental causation if a physiological and ultimately also a microphysical structure is ascribed to consciousness. In a concluding reflection it is explained what it means that the present suggestion amounts to a dissolution rather than a solution of the traditional mind-body problem.
Individual intentional action and intentions have been a focus of investigation in philosophy and psychology since their beginning. Recently, collective action and collective intentions are also increasingly coming to the fore. Throughout this history, the limits of intentions have been a central topic in two distinct, but still related respects. First, the boundaries of the concept of intention have shifted at various points in that history. Second, there has always been an interest in the limits of intentions in the sense of the limits of their efficacy in controlling behavior, and of course these limits will vary depending on how intentions are delineated. This interest in turn is at heart an interest in the limits of rationality in controlling behavior, since intentions are or at least can be the products of processes of practical rationality, of practical reasoning. In what follows, we trace part of the ancient as well as the more recent history of that debate, not for its own sake, but as a means of introducing various aspects of intentions and their control over behavior and of locating the contributions of this volume in the geography of this territory.
A more natural and more promising suggestion is that joint commitments can be initiated through questions, for example through questions posed by means of presenting imperative sentences with rising intonation as in “Go for walk?” or “Have a drink?”. But existing accounts of questions in the philosophy of language neglect such practical yes-no questions, affirmative answers to which are tantamount to directions rather than assertions. They can neither explain how an answer to a question can be a practical commitment, nor how it can establish a joint commitment.
In my contribution, I will present a new account of questions, the higher-level act account, and show how it can explain both these things. I will argue that questions are not on all fours with assertions and directions, as it is commonly supposed. Nor should we accept the force-content distinction and with it the idea that all these acts have forceless propositions as their contents. Rather questions are higher-level acts (Schmitz 2021) which put forward assertions or directions themselves in order to elicit yes-no responses, or various kind of completions in the case of word questions. And basic assertoric, directive and interrogative force indicators such as intonation contour, word order and grammatical mood themselves nonconceptually present the subject’s theoretical or practical position towards a state of affairs: theoretical or practical knowledge for assertoric, respectively directive force indicators, and a position of wondering, for interrogative force indicators. Questions then have structures like “? AS (it rains)” or “? DIR (go for a walk)”, where in the context created by the higher- level illocutionary act of questioning, the assertoric or directive force indicators now present knowledge positions the subjects seek rather than ones they lay claim to.
I will show how this account can explain practical commitment and how it can be naturally extended to also explain joint commitment. Key is the thought that the experience of joint attention, deliberation and communication, as manifest in eye contact, alignment, posture, attunement, again intonation contour, and so on, can also nonconceptually determine that what is being proposed or under consideration is a joint action and a joint commitment.
I conclude with some general reflections on how overcoming the force-content distinction – and thus a picture of intentionality centered around the idea that all content is propositional and conceptual – is crucial for a proper understanding of collective intentionality.
The opposition between the force (mode) and the propositional content of speech acts (and propositional attitudes) has long reigned supreme in the history of analytic philosophy since Frege made what Geach later called the ‘Frege point’. Lately though it has been attacked by philosophers such as Peter Hanks and Francois Recanati, who argue that propositions can’t be forceless and non-committal because anything that bears a truth value must take a position with regard to whether things hang together in the way they are represented. It cannot leave this open.
Against this background of the history and the current debate, my paper will discuss Wittgenstein’s critique of the force-content distinction in the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein’s critique of Frege’s (and Russell’s) use of an assertion sign in the Tractatus (4.442) is well-known and has often been discussed, though (perhaps unsurprisingly) this discussion has not led to a generally accepted intepretation. Comparatively less attention has been given to Wittgenstein’s remarks on the assertion sign and the force-content distinction in §22-23 of the Philosophical Investigation.
I will develop an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s comments according to which the rejection of the force-content distinction represents a continuity between the thought of early and late Wittgenstein, and some of the remarks in the Investigations can also be used to elucidate what he means in the Tractatus. The assertion sign is “logically meaningless” and thus redundant because what one wants to express by means of the assertion sign is on reflection already indicated by other signs. As Wittgenstein puts it in §22, “Frege’s assertion sign marks the beginning of the sentence” and “distinguishes the whole period from a clause within the period”. I will argue that in the Tractatus the truth-table (of the conditional) that Wittgenstein refers to in 4.442 has a function similar to the period. It is “a propositional sign”, that is, it represents the proposition as a whole, in contradistinction to the elementary propositions which are part of it. Moreover, the truth-table already indicates that the conditional does not entail its clauses, and this is, I shall argue, sufficient to account for the intuition that motivates the ‘Frege point’.
Wittgenstein further points out in §22 that we have to be careful what contrast we want to indicate by means of an assertion sign. We can use it, for example, to distinguish an assertion from a question, but it is a mistake to conclude from this that asserting consists of two separate acts, of considering or entertaining a proposition, and of asserting it. Here I will argue that Wittgenstein correctly identifies a mistake Frege makes. Frege confounds the question whether something is an assertion with such questions as whether it is e.g. an antecedent or consequent rather than a free-standing occurrence. Properly understood, the assertion sign does not mark this latter contrast – which is already indicated by conditional markers – but a contrast with different forces such as those of directive speech acts. At this point though, I will argue that Wittgenstein also does not take his insight to its logical conclusion. The assertion sign does not mark a contrast with questions either, because questions are higher-level non-logical operations which operate on either assertions or directives, yielding theoretical or practical questions (“Is the door closed?” or “Close the door?”).
In §23 Wittgenstein argues that that-clauses are not propositions because to say something like “that such and such is a case” is not yet a sentence or proposition, it is not yet, as he puts it, “a move in the language game”. I argue that this is because as a mere representation of a state of affairs it is essentially incomplete as it does not yet specify the position a subject takes up towards the reality of a state of affairs. Wittgenstein’s remark here supports Hanks’s point that only something that takes a position with regard to the reality of a state of affairs can be a truth value bearer and thus a move in the language game.
https://so2020.isosonline.org/conference/legal-positivism-and-collective-acceptance/
In my contribution I will discuss legal positivism from the point of view of a collective acceptance account of the nature of institutional reality and thus of the legal order. For purposes of my talk, I take the core claim of legal positivism to be that whether something is law does not depend on its moral merits, but on its sources, on the social structures and processes from which it originates and which maintain its existence, its being in force. Legal positivism rejects the ideas of the natural law tradition that something could be law ‘naturally’, without a proper social, institutional context, and that something properly situated in such a context could fail to be law. So when people express their opposition to certain prescriptions by saying they are not, or not really, the law, the positivist will think that they are mixing up the question whether a certain social fact obtains with the question whether it should obtain. But while this part of the positivist position strikes me as correct, it is not sufficient to establish the core claim of positivism with its sharp separation of law and morality. I will argue that this core claim only seems compelling if we take up an observational stance towards the law, but not towards morality. The legal positivist notes as an observer that something is the law which is morally unacceptable – in light of the theorist’s own morality. But, (1) the decisive question is not whether an observer can find the laws of a society morally unacceptable, but whether something can be the law of that society indepedently of its acceptance through the members or co-subjects of that society, and whether (2) this acceptance is plausibly independent of their moral attitudes. I further argue that (3) acceptance is holistic in the sense that the legal order as a whole can remain in force even if specific laws lack acceptance, and that (4) while acceptance is a somewhat vague and elastic notion, the law being in force is plausibly construed as being a special case of it. The law being in force in the relevant sense here is (5) not an inner-legal notion. It is not sufficient for it that a law has been passed in accordance with the procedures specified in the law itself, but requires that the legal order is accepted in the society at large. Against John Searle’s version of the collective acceptance account I argue that (6) the relevant acceptance constituting attitudes are not mere beliefs, but have an irreducibly practical aspect. They don’t represent the legal order as a mere fact, but as prescriptions which are binding at least in the normal case. They are (7) pushmi-pullyu representations in the sense of Ruth Millikan. On the basis of these points I argue that it remains plausible that acceptance of a legal order will crucially depend on moral attitudes. I conclude by proposing to think of the law itself as an institutionalized form of morality.
Soames’s proposal preserves the traditional dichotomy of force and propositional content, as he suggests we can predicate a property of an object by merely entertaining a proposition, for example, in imagination or hypothesis, without committing to its truth. This would be a further step we would take in asserting its truth or otherwise acknowledging or endorsing it. Hanks has criticized this proposal and argued that only something that is forceful and committal and takes a position with regard to whether an object actually has the property predicated of it can be a truth value bearer. The traditional separation of propositions as truth value bearers from force is therefore untenable. A proposition can only be a unified truth value bearer through the forceful act of a subject. He further claims that if an act of predication has represented inaccurately, its subject must have made a mistake.
I believe that Hanks is right that a truth value bearer must take a position with regard to whether things hang together as it represents them. Otherwise it does not make sense to say that it is true, that is, that it has represented things succesfully, as they are. At the same time it seems that Soames is right that there are contexts such as those of imagining or doubting, those created by conditionals or disjunctions, or fictional contexts created by acts of pretense, in which the subject is not committed to things being as they are represented, and in which it would also be wrong to say that the subject has made a mistake. For example, in a conditional the subject is not committed to the truth of the antecedent and therefore has not made a mistake if it turns out to be false.
In my contribution I will argue that there is a way to reconcile these seemingly conflicting claims. We should think of imagining, doubting or questioning, but also of conditionalizing or pretending as higher-level acts, which operate on forceful acts such as assertions or directives themselves rather than on something supposedly distinct from them such as propositions. Propositions just are assertions as put forward for consideration by higher-level acts. The first crucial step here is a distinction between commitment in and commitment to an act. An assertion is a commitment to the reality of a state of affairs (SOA) from a theoretical position, a directive from a practical position. Through e.g. questioning, conditionalizing or other higher-level acts we present an assertion (or directive) while suspending commitment to it. Put differently, we entertain a commitment, but suspend commitment to it. But how is it possible for an act to contain a commitment if its subject is not committed? The second crucial step is a representational account of force indicators as presenting the subject’s position vis-à-vis the relevant SOA. The act can contain a commitment in the sense that it represents a committal position, even thought the subject is not commited to this position because it has performed a higher level act such as questioning or conditionalizing which suspends commitment to the act of which this representation is a part.
degree of context dependence, the density of representation vs. the differentiation of representational role and the degree of durability / stability and the degree of externalization / standardization of representations.
[This talk revisits ideas of my paper "Social Rules and the Social Background".]
A strict dichotomy between the force / mode of speech acts and intentional states and their propositional content has been a central feature of analytical philosophy of language and mind since the time of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Recently this dichotomy has been questioned by philosophers such as Peter Hanks (2015, 2016) and Francois Recanati (2016), who argue that we can’t account for propositional unity independently of the forceful acts of speakers and propose new ways of responding to the notorious ‘Frege point’ by appealing to a notion of force cancellation. In my paper I will offer some supplementary criticisms of the traditional view, but also a way of reconceptualizing the force-content distinction which allows us to preserve certain of its features, and an alternative response to the Frege point that rejects the notion of force cancellation in favor of an appeal to intentional acts that create
additional forms of unity at higher levels of intentional organization: acts such as questioning a statement or order, or merely putting it forward
or entertaining it; pretending to state or order; or conjoining or disjoining
statements or orders. This allows us to understand how we can present a forceful act without being committed to it. In contrast, the Frege point confuses a lack of commitment to with a lack of commitment or force in
what is put forward.
Aims, contents and method of the course (language of instruction) These lectures will be quite demanding. We will cover a lot of ground. We will discuss and connect the philosophy of self-consciousness, of consciousness and intentionality, perception and action, of speech acts, practical and theoretical inference, and of collective intentionality. I will develop an account of consciousness and self-consciousness as essentially connected and of mode – what distinguishes e.g. belief and intention – and force – what distinguishes e.g. assertion and promise – as representational. A subject is never just aware of the world, but also always of its position relative to it and thus of itself. This position has temporal, spatial and causal, but also theoretical, epistemic or practical dimensions. For example, in asserting I arguably present myself as knowing what is the case, in ordering as knowing what to do. I go on to outline an account of theoretical and practical knowledge, rationality and inference as essentially parallel, criticizing standard accounts as theory-biased, as privileging the theoretical domain. In a final step I extend this picture of intentionality as essentially involving subjects’ awareness of themselves and of their position in the world to collective intentionality. The key here is the thought that when we perceive, act, believe and intend jointly with other creatures, we experience and represent them as co-subjects of such positions rather than as their objects.
This opening first lecture discusses the relation between consciousness, self-consciousness, and intentionality.