"To produce a mighty work, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it." - Herman Melville

Friday, February 10, 2012

Fiction Q&A Question 1

Q&A Question One: Why cannot an assertion, a la Searle, be a lie?

Searle enumerated many necessary conditions for an illocutionary act to be an assertion, and amongst them he placed the condition that the utterer of the act must believe the truthfulness of the claim. I would be more than ready to accept this as a stipulation if but we were given an adequate claim, but with my admittedly insufficient reading, encountered no such defense.

It seems to me that there is a sensible manner in which we can talk about not only a false assertion but an assertion that is a lie. In the face of the paucity of reason to not consider this plausible I must assume it is.

Question: Is there a reason to think, other than the completion of his pet theory, that we should forgo the thought of a statement that is both an assertion and a lie.

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