2026-09-19T03:47:54Zhttps://dspace.mit.edu/server/oai/requestoai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/1578802024-12-19T03:05:45Zcom_1721.1_7582com_1721.1_7581col_1721.1_131023
Khoo, Justin
Hill, John
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
2024-12-18T18:18:16Z
2024-12-18T18:18:16Z
2024-09
2024-12-16T20:10:23.671Z
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/157880
Ordering, requesting, and inviting are examples of directive speech acts. Philosophers have offered different accounts of what it is to perform a directive, which they have developed using different theoretical resources. Attitudinal theories of speech acts try to explain what it is to perform a directive in terms of a speaker’s beliefs, desires, and intentions. Nonattitudinal theories of speech acts try to explain directives in terms of something else.
This thesis is concerned with functionalism, a nonattitudinal theory of speech acts. According to functionalism, performing a directive is making an utterance with the etiological function of causing hearers to act in response to one’s utterance. I argue that functionalism is false. I develop counterexamples that show functionalism is too permissive about the kinds of causation suitable for generating directives. I argue further that the most plausible way to address these counterexamples is to become more attitudinal: rather than be permissive, functionalism should hold that directives and hearers’ responses to them are caused by specific internal processes.
S.M.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Not Function but Function Conquered: Against a Functionalist Theory of Directives
Thesis
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Master
Master of Science in Philosophy
Publication
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<Abstract>Ordering, requesting, and inviting are examples of directive speech acts. Philosophers have offered different accounts of what it is to perform a directive, which they have developed using different theoretical resources. Attitudinal theories of speech acts try to explain what it is to perform a directive in terms of a speaker’s beliefs, desires, and intentions. Nonattitudinal theories of speech acts try to explain directives in terms of something else.
This thesis is concerned with functionalism, a nonattitudinal theory of speech acts. According to functionalism, performing a directive is making an utterance with the etiological function of causing hearers to act in response to one’s utterance. I argue that functionalism is false. I develop counterexamples that show functionalism is too permissive about the kinds of causation suitable for generating directives. I argue further that the most plausible way to address these counterexamples is to become more attitudinal: rather than be permissive, functionalism should hold that directives and hearers’ responses to them are caused by specific internal processes.</Abstract>
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