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Promising, Prescribing and Playing-Along

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

L. C. Holborow
L. C. Holborow
Affiliation:
University of Dundee.
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Extract

Several recent attempts to isolate the fallacy in the view that I am committed to particular moral principles merely by describing a man as having promised seem to me to have erred through excess of zeal. The argument which commits the fallacy is at its most explicit in an article by Professor Searle, and the attempted refutations with which I am concerned fasten upon the first step in his ‘deduction’, which moves from

(1) Jones uttered the words ‘I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars’

to

(2) Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars

by way of the ‘fact about English usage’ which Searle states as:

(1a) Under certain conditions C anyone who utters the words (sentence) ‘I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars’ promises to pay Smith five dollars (p. 44).

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 44 , Issue 168 , April 1969 , pp. 149 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1969

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References

1 ‘How to Derive “ought” from “Is”’, Philosophical Review, Vol. 73 (1964).Google Scholar

2 ‘Two Concepts of Morality’, Philosophy, Vol. XLI (1966).Google Scholar

3 ‘The Game of Life’, The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 16 (1966).Google Scholar

4 Op. cit., p. 31.Google Scholar

5 Loc. cit.

6 Philosophical Papers (Oxford, 1961), p. 223.Google Scholar

7 ‘The Promising Game’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, No. 70 (1964)Google Scholar. Reprinted in Theories of Ethics (Oxford, 1967), ed. Foot, PhilippaGoogle Scholar. Page references are to the latter.

8 Op. cit., p. 125.Google Scholar

9 Op. cit., p. 126.Google Scholar

10 Vide, Freedom and Reason, pp. 200–201Google Scholar. Hare's remarks at this point are notoriously difficult to reconcile with his claim that his ethical theory is neutral as between competing substantial principles.