Page 135 - Žagar, Igor Ž. 2021. Four Critical Essays on Argumentation. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 135
summary
(1) What we say can only be more or less true (i.e., true up to a point);
(3) it can only be true for certain intents and purposes;
(4) it can only be true in some contexts, and
(5) its truth (or falsity) depends on knowledge at the time of utterance.
is a real rhetorical perspective on communication (truth, logic, and phi-
losophy) that was very often overlooked, mostly at the expense of classifi-
catory madness that started with J. R. Searle. What Austin is proposing is
that—outside logic, in the real world, in everyday communication, whe-
re we don’t go around with propositions in our pockets and truth tables in
our hands—the truth or falsity of what we say be replaced by right or pro-
per things to say, in these circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes
and with these intentions.
I claim that Hamblin followed the same enterprise 15 years later with
his Fallacies. These two ground breaking works follow the same pat tern,
run parallel, and I show why.
(1) Real life, Hamblin claims, as opposed to the simple situations en-
visaged in logical theory, one cannot always answer in a simple
manner whether something is true or false: we can speak of for-
mal validity (which includes truth and falsity, and, consequent-
ly, fallacies) only in formal systems, but not in ‘natural languag-
es’. If we want any kind of formal validity in natural languages,
which wouldn’t involve only la langue (language) in de Saussure’s
conceptualization, but also his la parole (speech, (everyday) com-
munication)—we need to bring it into relation with a formal lan-
guage of a formal (logical) system. This ‘bringing into relation’
usually means: translating the very vast vocabulary (lexicon) of
ordinary language, with its extremely ramified semantics and
pragmatics, into a very limited vocabulary of logic with its even
more limited semantics.
And we can do so, Hamblin argues, ‘only at the expense of features es-
sential to natural language.’ (Hamblin ibid.: 213)
(2) Reference depending on knowledge at the time of utterance,
claims Hamblin.
Which implies that there is no perennial and universal truth, and con-
sequently, no perennial and universal truth-conditions or criteria. The truth
is relative, but we shouldn’t understand ‘relative’ as a trivial stereotype that
everything changes and everything can be different. ‘Relative’ should be
135
(1) What we say can only be more or less true (i.e., true up to a point);
(3) it can only be true for certain intents and purposes;
(4) it can only be true in some contexts, and
(5) its truth (or falsity) depends on knowledge at the time of utterance.
is a real rhetorical perspective on communication (truth, logic, and phi-
losophy) that was very often overlooked, mostly at the expense of classifi-
catory madness that started with J. R. Searle. What Austin is proposing is
that—outside logic, in the real world, in everyday communication, whe-
re we don’t go around with propositions in our pockets and truth tables in
our hands—the truth or falsity of what we say be replaced by right or pro-
per things to say, in these circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes
and with these intentions.
I claim that Hamblin followed the same enterprise 15 years later with
his Fallacies. These two ground breaking works follow the same pat tern,
run parallel, and I show why.
(1) Real life, Hamblin claims, as opposed to the simple situations en-
visaged in logical theory, one cannot always answer in a simple
manner whether something is true or false: we can speak of for-
mal validity (which includes truth and falsity, and, consequent-
ly, fallacies) only in formal systems, but not in ‘natural languag-
es’. If we want any kind of formal validity in natural languages,
which wouldn’t involve only la langue (language) in de Saussure’s
conceptualization, but also his la parole (speech, (everyday) com-
munication)—we need to bring it into relation with a formal lan-
guage of a formal (logical) system. This ‘bringing into relation’
usually means: translating the very vast vocabulary (lexicon) of
ordinary language, with its extremely ramified semantics and
pragmatics, into a very limited vocabulary of logic with its even
more limited semantics.
And we can do so, Hamblin argues, ‘only at the expense of features es-
sential to natural language.’ (Hamblin ibid.: 213)
(2) Reference depending on knowledge at the time of utterance,
claims Hamblin.
Which implies that there is no perennial and universal truth, and con-
sequently, no perennial and universal truth-conditions or criteria. The truth
is relative, but we shouldn’t understand ‘relative’ as a trivial stereotype that
everything changes and everything can be different. ‘Relative’ should be
135
