THE LOGICAL FABRIC OF ASSERTIONS

SOME LESSONS FROM

AUSTIN’S “HOW TO TALK: SOME SIMPLE WAYS”1
Jean-Philippe Narboux

Of all the essays collected in Austin’s Philosophical Papers, “How to Talk: Some Simple
Ways” (Austin [1953]) may be the most widely underrated. It is, at any rate, the most widely
neglected. Yet, it encapsulates fundamental insights, themselves with ramified consequences,
which cannot be – and indeed, were not – safely ignored by those engaged in an elucidation of
the interwoven concepts of truth, assertion, and logical structure.2 Or so shall I contend here.
Warnock once referred to “How to talk” (Austin [1953]) as a “very strange piece”
(Warnock [1997] p.47). And a very strange piece it is indeed, although not quite for the
reasons summoned on by Warnock. In Warnock’s eyes, the oddity of the essay lies in its
employment of a certain method, which Austin was never to employ again, presumably in the
face of the meager results it had yielded (Warnock [1997] p.47): that of analyzing simple,
hence abstract, models of ordinary usage.
By contrast, I shall suggest that the relative oddity of the essay comes from its mounting an
attack against the best case that could be made for the fundamental cornerstone of logic as
classically conceived, namely the integrated account of truth, assertion and logical structure
which is epitomized by the classical concept of λόγος αποφαντικός and its modern avatars.
That account I shall call the “apophantic model”. It is the kernel of pre-Austinian logic, post-
Fregean logic included. Austin shows it to be plagued by a monotony that makes it an utterly
myopic account of the logical structure of the contents of assertions3. In effect, even if one
improves on the apophantic model by incorporating to it Frege’s revolutionary logical
insights, such a model turns out to be an oversimplification of what it is to assert something in
light of even the simplest of our ordinary models of what that takes. If Austin is right, it is not
merely the completeness of post-Fregean tables of logical categories that needs to be

1
I am grateful to Juliet Floyd for very illuminating comments on a previous version of this essay.
2
Two main influences are palpable in Austin’s essay: Cook Wilson’s, and Frege’s. Perhaps one of the most
original aspects of Austin’s essay, from the historical standpoint, resides in the manner in which it conjoins, and
elaborates upon, these two influences. Oxford philosophy, in its mature state, may well have arisen from such a
conjunction. In particular, that conjunction also pervades, as I shall have occasion to suggest (in section V),
Ryle’s work.
3
I draw the notion of the “monotony” of a model from Imbert [1992]. That philosophical doctrines are primarily
plagued by their monotony underwrites Austin’s invocation of the term “boring” as a term of philosophical
criticism (see e.g. Austin [1962b] p.5).

1
questioned4. Nor is the right move to replace such tables by some ante-predicative notion of
λόγος as “disclosure”, after the manner of Heidegger. Such tables simply lack the right
dimensions.
My second contention about Austin’s essay is that its centre of gravity really lies in what may
at first pass for a mere appendix, namely its very last tract, concerned with the topic of
negation. I shall contend, in effect, that the centre of gravity of the essay lies in an apparently
parenthetical remark made towards its end, to the effect that
To identify as not is nonsense for not to identify
Austin [1953] p.153
This reminder is in fact, I shall argue, the essay’s key point (hereafter “KP”). It can be shown
to shape the entire essay, and to underlie Austin’s dismantling of the aforementioned
“apophantic model”.
The present essay divides into five sections. The first delineates the overall thesis of “How to
Talk”. I try to convey the force and originality, from a logical point of view, of Austin’s
departure from the standard apophantic model. Endowing some findings of Cook Wilson’s
with their true logical significance (which Cook Wilson himself failed to appreciate properly),
Austin establishes that the logic of and (more importantly) in assertion is much more complex
than logicians, both ancient and modern (including, I shall submit, some of Austin’s self-
professed “heirs”), were ever able to admit. The second section unfolds the argumentation of
“How to Talk”. The third section is a first attempt at accounting for the odd terminology
deployed the essay (the “dressmaking-idiom” of “samples” and “patterns”) and at
circumscribing Austin’s aims. The fourth section proceeds to delve into the deep structure of
the argumentation of “How to Talk”. It claims that the true wellspring of Austin’s essay,
hence of his whole challenge to the apophantic model of assertion, is the aforementioned
“Key Point” (henceforth “KP”), according to which “to identify as not is nonsense for not to
identify” (Austin [1953] p.153). Finally, in the fifth section, I go into one corollary of KP and
sketch another, both of which I regard as of far-reaching philosophical significance.

I – A Logical Campaign

1. On a certain current, albeit shallow, understanding of Austin’s overall project, “How to

Talk” would seem to be somewhat off the mark. On such a reading of Austin, Austin only sets
off to show that not every utterance that looks like a statement is indeed in the business of
stating that so-and-so is the case and primarily assessable in terms of “truth” and “falsity”,
and he is only out to show that the classical notion of a ‘statement’ at best captures an
abstract aspect of any utterance, or a dimension of assessment to which any utterance
whatsoever is subject, while the ordinary notions marked by such verbs as “to state” or “to
describe” (in their ordinary uses) are that of speech-acts that have no unique position. In other
words, his aim is merely to undermine the privilege classically conferred to (the dimension of
assessment that comes to the fore in) the “constative utterance” over other (dimensions of
assessment that come to the fore in other) species of utterances. But, then, why does he so
much as bother about the various species of which the constative utterance itself admits? Why
should one give more attention to the very speech-act by which the philosophical tradition
has long been mesmerized? Is the alleged fact that such a speech-act is only generic Austin

4
In Thompson [2008], Michael Thompson makes a cogent case for irreducibly un-Fregean forms of predication
(e.g. the form of predication exemplified by “natural historical judgments” such as “The bobcat has retractable
claws” or “The iris blooms in spring”). But he questions the completeness of the Fregean table of categories
without ever questioning the meaningfulness of the aspiration to completeness in such matters (see Thompson
[2008] p.18).

2
[1953] p.140) enough of a ground for doing so? Why should it matter that constative
utterances can safely be said to perform one single speech-act only provided that (the name
of) that speech-act be explicitly acknowledged to be generic in nature?
Part of the answer lies in the very notion of a “constative utterance”. In coining that term,
Austin alerts his reader to his idea that this term, if somewhat contrived, is nonetheless to be
preferred to the term “descriptive utterance”, given that to make an utterance primarily
assessable as true or false (i.e. to make a “statement”, in a sense inherited from the tradition)
is not necessarily to “describe”:
It has come to be seen that many specially perplexing words embedded in apparently
descriptive statements do not serve to indicate some specially odd additional feature in the
reality reported, but to indicate (not to report) the circumstances in which the statement is
made or reservations to which it is subject or the way in which it is to be taken and the like. To
overlook these possibilities in the way once common is called the ‘descriptive’ fallacy; but
perhaps this is not a good name, as ‘descriptive’ itself is special. Not all true or false
statements are descriptions, and for this reason I prefer to use the word ‘Constative’.
Austin [1962a] p.3
In the terminology of “How to Talk” (whose legitimacy is also contemplated in “Truth” (see
Austin [1950] p.120)), one might put the point by saying that to make an “assertion” is not
necessarily to “describe” or to “state” (no longer used generically). In other words, “Stating,
describing, etc., are just two names among a very great many others for illocutionary acts;
they have no unique position” (Austin [1962a] p.149) not only in the sense (probably the one
primarily intended by Austin in the context of Chapter XII of Austin [1962a]) that the generic
speech-act of asserting (i.e. the speech-act designated by the verbs “to state” or “to assert”
used generically) has no unique position among speech-acts in general, but also in the sense
that the special speech-acts of “stating” and “describing” have no unique position among
assertive speech-acts. This suggests that the fallacy which Austin aims to expose and begin to
dismantle in How to Do Things with Words is better cast as the “constative fallacy” and that
mistaking the species for the genre (i.e. mistaking the “descriptive fallacy” for the “constative
fallacy”) is in effect one way of succumbing to it, i.e. one way of committing the constative
fallacy.
In effect, in unfolding four distinct species inside the speech-act of asserting, thereby showing
the speech-act of asserting to be at best generic (Austin [1953] p.141)5, Austin sets out to
dislodge a crucial assumption: the assumption that the characterization of a “statement” or
“assertion” [λόγος αποφαντικός] as the saying of something about something or as the
ascription of some predicate to some subject is left intact by the attack launched on the
constative fallacy (this is the second article of the traditional characterization of assertion, its
first article being, of course, that assertion is essentially assessable in terms of truth and
5
In fact, as Charles Travis has shown (Travis [1975] p.31-33), it is far from clear that the verb “to assert”, in its
ordinary use, marks even a family of illocutionary forces (i.e. is a generic illocutionary verb). The main ground
for denying that the verb “to assert” ordinarily functions as an illocutionary verb is that the distinction between
what can be asserted and what cannot is a function of how what was said is de facto understood (provided it is
properly understood), not of how it is de jure to be understood. In effect, circumstances and interests dictate what
can be asserted and what cannot by dictating what is remarkable and what is not, that it to say by dictating what
is controversially true and what is not (Travis [1975] p.32). Travis concludes: “There are at least two
philosophically sanctioned used of ‘assert’. On one use, ‘assert’ applies quite widely, in fact, to virtually any
illocution in which what was said is to be assessed as true or false, or perhaps where what was said is to be
assessed primarily as true or false. On such a use, ‘assert’ is certain to mark more than one illocutionary force,
though, like ‘state’ it may well mark a family of such forces, viz., the family of forces that describe illocutions
which are to be assessed as true or false, if such a family exists. On the other use, ‘assert’ applies quite narrowly,
and its application is to be guided by ordinary use. So used, ‘assert’ does not mark an illocutionary force, not
even a family of forces.” (Travis [1975] p.31) Note that this does not contradict Austin’s claim that the models
he considers are models of how we ordinarily conceive of asserting. For the verb “assert” does not appear in
these models. It can be regarded as a variable used in elucidatory talk about these models.

3
falsity). In other words, Austin there counters the temptation to mistake the correct thesis that
the notion of a constative utterance captures an essential aspect of any utterance (the so-called
“locutionary aspect”) for a certain disastrous concession – which his work never courts, let
alone makes – namely the concession that a monotonous logical analysis of the meaning of an
assertion can be salvaged from the collapse of the pre-Austinian approach to language and
truth, and even extended to a systematic analysis of the locutionary meaning of any utterance.
In particular, Austin is out to debunk the claim that (what Strawson, after Quine, calls) “the
basic combination” of predication (Strawson [1974] p.4) – i.e. of “a certain kind of union
either of two different sorts of expression (or term) or, at least, of expressions (or terms) with
two different kinds of role” (ibid.), respectively named “subject-expressions (-terms)” and
“predicate-expressions (-terms)”) – lies “at the core of logic” (ibid.) insofar as it constitutes
the basic way in which what is said by any assertion, and eventually by any utterance of any
force (in the locutionary sense of “say” delineated by Austin (Austin [1962a] Chapter VIII)),
is logically articulated6.
So the issue is not whether the subject-predicate nexus is to be found only in assertions or in
all utterances (as Searle, for one, goes so far as to maintain7), but whether it can account for
the inner logic of assertions at all – even confining ourselves to assertions of the grammatical
form “S is a P”. Austin’s findings belie, much more radically, the legitimacy of equating the
locutionary act with a propositional act and of factorizing speech-acts along the form F (p)
(where “F” is a variable ranging over illocutionary forces and “p” a variable ranging over
propositions)8, if only because such findings show that the logical structure of the value of the
alleged variable “p” actually depends upon the value of F.
Austin does not mean to retract the distinction which is typically invoked by those who intend
to extend the predicative analysis of assertion to an analysis of the “propositional content” of
any utterance, namely the distinction between force and meaning (exemplified by Frege’s
groundbreaking distinction between assertion and predication). Neither does he question the
Fregean thesis that negation is not a distinct force standing on a par with assertion but rather
belongs to the asserted content. Even though he takes the verbs “to affirm” and “to deny” to
mark illocutionary forces (Austin [1962a] p.162), not only he does not assimilate negation to
the speech-act of denying (as Strawson, for one, is inclined to do) but he does not even seem
to make room for some “illocutionary negation”, distinguished from “propositional negation”
(as Searle, who contrasts “F (¬p)” with “~F (p)”, explicitly does (Searle [1969] 2.4)).
What he does mean to question, on the other hand, is the assumption that the distinction
between assertion and predication simply is an instance of the more general distinction
between force and meaning (an assumption made by philosophers as different from each other
as Strawson, Searle and Dummett) as well as the more or less explicit claim that a theory of
the subject-predicate nexus can account for the logical articulation of the content of an
assertion, given that it abstracts from the specific force with which that assertion is uttered.
According to Austin, (i) (our model of) the subject-predicate nexus is context-sensitive insofar
as it is force-dependent9, and (ii) even a (our) context-sensitive conception of the subject-
predicate nexus cannot account for the logical form of the content of an assertion, given that

6
Searle endorses the second, strong, version of that claim: he insists that predication is not to be found only in
utterance with assertive force but in all utterances (see e.g. Searle [1969] 2.2, 2.4).
7
See the previous note.
8
Both moves are taken by Searle in Searle [1969] 2.4.
9
That is not to say that predication is a speech-act.

4
such a form, as displayed in the simplest model, is two-dimensional10 rather than one-
dimensional.
Whether the manner in which the sense of an assertion (and more generally the locutionary
meaning of an utterance) is logically articulated is part of it in Austin’ eyes, is a tricky issue.
It is closely related to the controversial issue whether it is the locution or the illocution which,
in Austin’s eyes, constitutes the bearer of truth.
At any rate, the fact that Austin not only vindicates Frege’s distinction between sense and
reference but also explicitly fleshes out his notion of the locutionary act by means of the joint
notions of sense and reference should not mislead us into presuming that he thereby defers to
Frege’s views on predication, nor into assuming that he endorses Frege’s original way of
drawing the distinction between sense and reference (let alone Frege’s claim that predicates
refer). Austin does characterize the so-called “rhetic act” (i.e. the all-encompassing aspect of
the locutionary act) as
the act of using that pheme or its constituents with a certain more or less definite ‘sense’ and a
more or less definite ‘reference’ (which together are equivalent to ‘meaning’)
Austin [1962a] p.93
(the “pheme” being itself the content of the “phatic act” or “act of uttering certain vocables or
words, i.e. noises of certain types belonging to (and as belonging to) a certain vocabulary, in a
certain construction, i.e. conforming to (and as conforming to) a certain grammar, with a
certain intonation, etc.” (Austin [1962a] p.92))
And he declares that he intends
to distinguish force and meaning in the sense in which meaning is equivalent to sense and
reference, just as it has become essential to distinguish sense and reference
Austin [1962a] p.100
But that does not preclude his holding force to have an impact or even to inform meaning.
Nor does it imply that one should rest content with standard Fregean accounts of the sense-
reference distinction. So much is made clear by Austin at the end of How to Do Things with
Words:
We may well suspect that the theory of ‘meaning’ as equivalent to ‘sense and reference’ will
certainly require some weeding-out and reformulating in terms of the distinction between
locutionary and illocutionary acts (if these notions are sound: they are only adumbrated here).
I admit that not enough has been done here: I have taken the old ‘sense and reference’ on the
strength of current views. But here we should consider again the statement which we have
called ‘void’ for breakdown of reference, e.g., the statement ‘John’s children are all bald’ if
made when John has no children.
Austin [1962a] p.149
On the present reading of Austin, throughout his philosophical career, Austin vindicated the
logical import of his inquiries into distinctions marked by ordinary language. He did not
combat logic. Rather, it was in the name of logic that he dissented from (those he called)
“obsessional logicians” (Austin [1962a] p.54). Thus, in the fourth chapter of How to Do
Things with Words, he shows that contradiction is not the unique manner in which the
conjunction of two statements can go wrong (Austin [1962a] p.47) and that the distinct ways
in which it may go wrong more or less closely parallel the distinct ways in which the
conjunction of a performative utterance with a constative utterance defeating its
“implications” can go wrong, thereby rendering that performative utterance “infelicitous”11.

10
In a sense I explain below. Let me hasten to add, for the moment, that my use of the adjective “two-
dimensional” in this essay is unrelated to the meaning it has in the (now widely used) phrase “two-dimensional
modal semantics”.
11
The three distinct ways in which such conjunctions as “The cat is on the mat & The cat is not on the mat”,
“The cat is on the mat & I do not believe it is”, and “All Jack’s children are bald & Jack has no children”,
obviously go wrong, parallel (respectively) the three distinct ways in which such conjunctions as “I promise & I

5
Austin sometimes even flirts with the view that the fundamental notion of logic, that of
entailment, can be subsumed under the notion of an “infraction” or “breach” (i.e. under the
notion of a certain species of infelicity).12 It follows that if so-called “propositional logic”
ambitions to capture the logic of our ordinary assertions, then it cannot abstract from (what
Austin calls) “the total speech-act in the total speech-situation” (Austin [1962a] p.52),
contrary to the assumption typically made by “professional logicians”. Austin shows, more
radically, in the penultimate chapter of Austin [1962a], that “when a constative [i.e. an
assertion] is confronted with the facts, we in fact appraise it in ways involving the
employment of a vast array of terms which overlap with those we use in the appraisal of
performatives” (Austin [1962a] p.142-143) and that this entails that “true’ and “false” do not
stand for relations or qualities but for a whole dimension of assessment (Austin [1962a]
p.145-149).
“How to Talk” goes further along that direction. It is Austin’s most radical contribution to
logic – that is to say, to what has become of logic in his hands.13 For, what Austin now
questions is not simply standard accounts of the logic of assertion but, as it were, standard
accounts of the logic in assertion, i.e. of the logical articulation of the content of assertions.
Austin’s target, in “How to Talk”, is the last bastion of “professional logicians”. The point he
makes against their package of shared assumptions is, in a way, ad hominem: he considers and
rebukes a best case for the claim that the traditional concept of λόγος αποφαντικός, once
properly modernized, captures the logical fabric of assertions.14
The model S0, whose analysis by Austin we are about to consider, may well deserve to be
deemed the simplest model of the speech-situation which we can be said to make use of.15 As
such, it gives the lie to core tenets of the apophantic model. For the logic which it exhibits (a
two-dimensional one, as we shall see) strongly suggests that:
Any such model [of the speech-situation], even the simplest, seems bound to be fairly
complicated – too complicated for the standard subject-predicate or class-membership model.
Austin [1953] p.150-151
Insofar as the complexity in terms of which the simplest model exceeds the standard model is
logical in character, neglect of it is bound to occasion oversimplifications which are likewise
logical in character. Thus, Austin writes, in the above quoted ‘conclusive’ passage:

ought not”, “I promise … & I do not intend …”, and “I bequeath … & I do not own …”, render their first,
performative, conjunct infelicitous.
12
Austin also brings attention to cases of “predicate failure”. As Charles Travis has shown in detail (see e.g.
Travis [1981] p.111-128), “the existence of predicate failure has consequences for what patterns of inference are
acceptable (or valid)” (Travis [1981] p.120)
13
It is generally agreed that asserting is bound up with knowing (see e.g. Brandom [1983] p.637, p.647).
Timothy Williamson famously goes so far as to hold that “only knowledge warrants assertion”, i.e. to embrace
“the knowledge account” of assertion (Williamson [2000] p.243). To the extent that assertion and knowledge are
thus tied, the thesis that the logical articulation of the content of an assertion is a function of its specific assertive
force is of a piece with Austin’s thesis that in saying “I know” I perform an action, namely the action of staking
and transmitting my authority for saying that “S is P” (Austin [1946] p.99), and more generally with his
suggestion that to hold the phrase “I know” to be a descriptive phrase is once again to fall prey to the constative
fallacy (Austin [1946] p.103).
14
Note that the thesis argued by Austin in “How to Talk” is both importantly distinct from and more radical than
either of the two following currently maintained theses: that a two-dimensional modal operator and hence a two-
dimensional modal logic is required to capture the twofold manner in which the facts enter into the determination
of the truth-value of what is expressed in an assertion (Stalnaker [1978/1999]); that the key to an understanding
of the speech-act of asserting lies in the fact that in making an assertion one both inferentially licenses further
assertions by others and commits oneself to justifying one’s original assertion (Brandom [1983]).
15
The models considered in “How to Talk” are part and parcel of Austin’s enterprise of showing wherein the
triviality of truth exactly lies (instead of trivializing truth, as deflationists do). I owe this contrast to
Laugier [1999] p.63.

6
 Names for speech-acts are more numerous, more specialized, more ambiguous and more
significant than is ordinarily allowed for: none of them can be safely used in philosophy in a
general way (for example, ‘statement’ or ‘description’) without more investigation than they
have, I think, yet received.
Austin [1953] p.150 (my italics)
As we shall see, the claim that the complexity at stake here is logical in character only gets
secured in the last pages of the essay, that is to say after the conclusive passage just quoted. In
those last pages, Austin argues that not every species of assertion admits of the SN form “I is
not a T”. It is an immediate consequence of KP.

2. In arguing that the logical form in accordance with which the content of an assertion is
articulated is a context-sensitive matter, Austin seems to have taken his lead from Chapter IV
of John Cook Wilson’s Statement and Inference (Cook Wilson [1929/2007]), which bears the
title “The analysis of the statement or proposition into subject and predicate”. Austin both
draws and improves significantly upon the main claims of that chapter16.
The central thesis of Statement and Inference is this: to the uniform grammatical clothing that
goes by the name of “statement” there corresponds no single form of ‘thought’ deserving to be
called “judgment” and contrasted with “inference”, no single all-encompassing genre which
knowledge, opinion, belief, perception, experience would all count as species of. These are
primitive, irreducible, forms of apprehension, of which “thinking” in the ordinary sense of
that verb is but one, and whose unity resides in the fact that the forms of apprehension which
are not knowing revolve around the form which is knowing (Cook Wilson [1929/2007] p.38;
see Robinson [1931] p.22; this thesis was recently defended by Timothy Williamson in
Williamson [2000]). Summarizing the main findings of his previous chapters, Cook Wilson
writes at the beginning of Chapter III:
We have criticized a view which is obscurely bound up with the familiar distinction of
judgment from inference, the view, namely, that knowledge, opinion, belief, as well as
perception and experience, are forms of one and the same sort of mental activity, called
judgment. This supposed common activity has been investigated with special reference to its
name ‘judgment’; but the difficulty does not lie merely in this designation, it lies in the
assumption that there is one and the same kind of activity at all, however named, manifested in
each of these mental attitudes; something more specific than, say, mere activity of
consciousness in some relation to the object, – something so definite that a special verbal
form, the proposition, corresponds to it. / Now we have suggested that this view has not arisen
in the only way in which it should properly arise, from an analysis of these mental states or
activities themselves; – indeed no analysis could discover it, – but from the existence of the
common verbal form, the statement, which is indifferently applicable to all of them.
Cook Wilson [1929/2007] p.98-99.
The fallacy is that of naïvely imposing a certain grammatical form, in spite (or perhaps
because) of its very monotony, onto the realm of mental attitudes.17 Some facets of Cook
Wilson’s fundamental thesis are highly relevant to basic epistemological issues. Thus Cook
Wilson argues, in particular, against so-called “highest common factor” or “hybrid” accounts
of knowledge, that “believing, or thinking so, is not a highest common factor shared by

16
In contrast, Strawson bluntly asserts that Cook Wilson’s point is not “of great importance for logical theory”
(Strawson [1959] p.144).
17
As Richard Robinson puts it, “the assumption of judgment depends essentially on the fact of statement.
Whenever we talk of “judgments” we are speaking as if the possibility of constructing a statement were a
guarantee of the possibility of thinking a thought of which the statement would be the correct expression, and as
if all the possible thoughts that all possible statements would express all belonged to one species – “judgment”.
The unity really belonging to all the “judgments” that we speak of is nothing more than this, that every judgment
is what we imagine to be the thought corresponding to some particular statement to which we are attending at the
moment.” (Robinson [1931] p.66)

7
knowing and merely thinking so” (Travis [2008] p.290). Knowledge, like perception, features
among those epistemic stances which “simply contain their object: taking them is not aiming
at their object (which then, happily, is there to hit)” (Travis [2008] p.290). Thus, to the extent
that a certain assertion constitutes a claim to knowledge, it does not purport to express “an
appropriately justified true belief” (contrary to what Brandom’s account of assertion e.g.
explicitly assumes: see Brandom [1983] p.647). To the extent that the so-called “intentional
content” through the mediation of which one is supposed to apprehend a thing is construed as
“some sort of a replica of the thing”, knowledge and perception are importantly not
“intentional”.18 Even less can the alleged “highest common factor” supposed to provide us
with “the generic sense of thinking” be sought in the attitude of “entertaining” or “assuming”,
understood as “an intentional attitude taking the same objects as believing, but not involving
the doxastic commitment that is essential to believing” (Chisholm [1981] p.28-29). The
method employed by Cook Wilson to secure his fundamental point – that of (what was to be
called) the method of “ordinary language analysis” – is another breakthrough of his. It is with
the logical consequences of Cook Wilson’s thesis, though, that I am concerned here.
In Chapter IV, the traditional logical analysis of the “proposition” or the “judgment” into
“subject”, “predicate” and “copula”, together with the whole edifice of traditional logic that
builds on it, are shown to rest on sand. Cook Wilson considers the traditional definition of
“subject” and “predicate”, according to which the subject is that about which something is
asserted and the predicate that which is asserted about it (Cook Wilson [1929/2007] p.114).
He begins by showing that the manner in which the traditional definition of a predicate
inconsistently exploits ordinary usage poses an outright dilemma: either the definition abides
by ordinary usage, but then it is the whole assertion that should be said to be asserted of the
subject (that S is P is what is said of S), or the predicate is rather to be characterized as “what
the subject is asserted to be”, but then the definition does not fit an assertion like “Jones walks
fast”, where the supposed predicate is what the subject is asserted to do (Cook
Wilson [1929/2007] p.116-117). He then proceeds to show that a rationale may be found for
the traditional distinction, however imperfect and ambiguous it may be as it stands. The
unambiguous distinction which constitutes such rationale is that between, on the one hand,
“the object as originally conceived by us” and, on the other hand, “the new information
conveyed” in the assertion, to the effect that “the object has a certain reality or being other
than that which we first thought it to have” (Cook Wilson [1929/2007] p.123). That
distinction is not marked by grammatical form, but by the “stress” falling on the “predicative
word(s)”, which stress depends upon the context of utterance. The point is proven by going
over sample assertions and showing that the words upon which the stress of the assertion falls
are precisely those that crucially serve to express what is being asserted:

18
I return to the issue of intentionality in section V below.
It may well be that Cook Wilson’s view of knowledge as both irreducible and unmistakable (i.e. as being such
that if somebody knows that p then she could not have the grounds she has for so doing were p not the case) can
only be made viable by departing (after Austin’s manner) from Cook Wilson’s unguarded assumption that
whether a given conceivable scenario threatens one’s entitlement to knowledge is not a context-sensitive matter
(as Travis argues persuasively in Travis [2008] Essay 13). Still, Cook Wilson’s view of predication – according
to which whether a given part of an assertion bears the assertive stress (hence whether it is endowed with the
role of the predicate of the statement) is a context-sensitive matter – could have substantiated Austin’s crucial
corrective. So much is apparent from Dretske’s early defense of the thesis that the proposition upon which an
epistemic operator like “S knows that” operates is embedded in a matrix of relevant alternatives, corresponding
to the relevant contrasts which, depending on context, the speaker is bound to focus upon in making use of such
an operator (see section 3 of Dretske [1970] and Dretske [1972]). For that defense descends from just that strand
of Austin’s that finds its seeds in Cook Wilson’s (see Dretske [1977/1979] p.369-370. Whether Dretske is aware
of that provenance is of course a different matter.).

8
 “A is B” Question/ Context S P Quantity of P P-word

[1] What building is that? that building that that building is the Particular “the
“That building is the Bodleian” [What is A?] Bodleian Bodleian”
/ Being the Bodleian
[2] Which building is the the Bodleian that it is this building which Particular “that”
“That building is the Bodleian” Bodleian? is the Bodleian
[What is it that is B?] / Being this building
[3] What property does glass Glass that glass is elastic / General “elastic”
“Glass is elastic” have? Elasticity (i.e. Being elastic)
[What is A?]
[4] Which substances possess Elasticity (i.e. That being elastic is a General “glass”
“Glass is elastic” elasticity? Being elastic) property possessed by glass
[What is it that is B?] / Being in glass
[5] Who is rowing badly? Rowing badly that it is Jones who is rowing Particular “Jones”
“Jones is rowing badly” [What is it that is B?] badly
/ Jones
[6] Is it Jones who is rowing Jones; the that it is Jones who is rowing “is”
“Jones is rowing badly” badly? / Is it Jones who is man who is badly
rowing badly? rowing badly / Is
[Is A really B?]

In fact, apart from an assumption to the effect that the traditional account of the logical
distinction between subject and predicate contains some element of truth (i.e. that it is true in
its spirit if not in its letter), Cook Wilson’s findings yield a dilemma: either to conclude that
the distinction needs to be recast in accordance with such findings, or to argue (as did e.g.
Strawson), on the basis of “the fact that an assertion may, depending on the context, be said to
be about any term introduced into it, and not merely about the term or terms introduced in the
referring way”, that the term “about” just “cannot carry the weight” which the traditional
account requires it to carry, so that this account fails (in its very spirit) to capture the
distinction which it drives at (Strawson [1959] p.145-147). The latter stance allows one to
keep absolute the distinction between subject-expressions and predicate-expressions, but it
also deprives Cook Wilson’s findings of any relevance for logic (see Strawson [1959] p.144).
I shall return to this issue in the next section.
In subsequent chapters, Cook Wilson further contends, first (see A5 in section II below), that
the logical distinction between subject and predicate is not underwritten by any corresponding
distinction in the realm of being (Chapter VII). While the relation of subject and predicate is
reciprocal, in the sense that “what is subject of a predicate in a statement in one context may
be predicate of that predicate, as subject, in another, and what is predicate may become
subject”, the relation of a subject to its attributes is not. Thus, for example, in “That building
is the Bodleian” (example [2] above), “‘that building’ is a subject of attributes and also
appears as such in the statement; but it is not the logical subject of the statement” (Cook
Wilson [1929/2007] p.158). He also contends (in Chapter VI) that the logical distinction
between subject and predicate is primarily a function of a “difference of relation to our
subjective attitude, in virtue of which we call the one object ‘subject’ and the other
‘predicate’” (Cook Wilson [1929/2007] p.140). In other words, he denies not only the
ontological but also the objective character of the context on which the focus of the assertion
depends (see B1 in section II below): the logical articulation of the content of my assertion, in
Cook Wilson’s eyes, is primarily a function of how I mean it, insofar as it is primarily a
function of how I conceive of the objects involved in it. As we shall soon see, Austin rejects
that contention.
In fact, the twofold claim that the “contrastive focus”19 of an assertion evinces its context-
sensitivity and that it is of logical significance lies at the heart not only of Austin’s analysis of

19
I am using a phrase coined by Fred Dretske (see Dretske [1972] p.412 and Dretske [1977] p.370.

9
the logic of and in assertions in “How to Talk” but of his analysis of the logic of and in
ascriptions of “agency” in “A Plea for Excuses” (Austin [1956])20. There, it fuels the
suspicion that the general question “what events in the life of a person reveal agency?” is in
fact misguided (see Davidson [1980] p.43). It thus underwrites a challenge mounted against
the misguided conception of “the intentional” in both its theoretical guise and its practical
guise. But let us no longer postpone our examination of the models analyzed by Austin in
“How to Talk”.

II. Varieties of Assertion

3. There are two aspects to a model in Austin’s sense, namely a world-aspect and a language-
aspect. Hence, it is of a speech-situation that a model is a model of. The worldly aspect of S0
is characterized by the twofold fact that, in S0, each item is exactly of one type (rather than of
none or many) and that the world is exactly amenable to the vocabulary of S0, in the sense
(not only that it is amenable to it – which is no small accomplishment already (see
Austin [1953] p.147)21 – but) that any item-type exactly matches the sense of some vocable or
other. The linguistic aspect of model S0 is characterized by the fact that in S0 only sentences of
the form S: “I is a T” (where “I” is a variable ranging over item-words and “T” a variable
ranging over type-words) constitute utterances. S1 and S0N are then respectively obtained, on
the basis of S0, by laying out a small variation on the world side (namely, by making room for
some measure of looseness in the match between types and senses) or a small variation on the
language side (namely, by introducing a second sentence form SN: “I is not a T”). In S1, the
world is still amenable to the vocabulary, of course, but not exactly so: item-types are only
more or less similar to one or more than one of the patterns in our stock (Austin [1953]
p.146)22.
Before he lands in a classification of the various species of speech-act falling under the
generic speech-act of asserting in the simplified speech-situation S0, Austin is at pains to
delineate the procedures which are at play in the prior stage of linguistic legislation and which
the performing of a speech-act pertaining to any of those species presupposes insofar as it
operates “in accordance with” such legislation (Austin [1953] p.135-140; p.137, p.141). The
stage of linguistic legislation itself comprehends “two sets of (semantic) conventions”,
namely conventions of reference and conventions of sense (a distinction often wrongly
equated with another distinction drawn by Austin, namely that between demonstratives
conventions and descriptive conventions (Austin [1950] p.121-122)):
I-conventions, or conventions of reference, are needed in order to fix which item it is that the
vocable which is to be an I-word is to refer on each (and in our simple case, on every)
occasion of the uttering (assertive) of a sentence containing it. […] T-conventions, or
conventions of sense, are needed in order to associate the vocables which are to be T-words
with the item-types, one to one.
Austin [1953] p.135-136
20
Dretske’s own elaboration of the notion of contrastive focus seems to have derived from the latter analysis (see
Dretske [1977] p.369-370).
21
Austin is rediscovering and reformulating nothing less than the problem that sets the stage for the Kantian
Third Critique.
22
With the passage from S0 to S1 the link (match) between type and sense is no longer purely natural
(Austin [1953] p.137 footnote 2; I return to this issue in §6). Moreover, the transition to S1 gives flesh to an
important contention of “Truth” (Austin [1950]): that there are various degrees of success in making assertions
(Austin [1950] p.130). Finally, while in S0 a species of speech-act like placing could already exploit the
incompatibility between two assertions (between, say, “1227 is red” and “1227 is green”), the presence in S1 of
generic names (i.e. names of multiform patterns) makes room for the first time for the entailment of an assertion
by another (say, of “1227 is red” by “1227 is crimson”, where crimson is a sort of red) (Austin [1953] p.149).

10
Conventions of reference consist in allotting to each item its own I-word (called a ‘reference’
once in use) and to each I-word its own item. Conventions of sense, on the other hand, consist
in attaching an item-type, which is attached by nature to certain items (namely, those items,
precisely, that are of that type), to a certain vocable as the ‘sense’ of that vocable, that vocable
being thereby turned into a type-word, more particularly into the ‘name’ of that item-type
(Austin [1953] p.136). Conventions of sense themselves comprise of two sorts of procedures,
namely name-giving and sense-giving, according to whether a certain vocable is allocated
(fitted) to a certain item-type or a certain item-type is allocated (fitted) to a certain vocable
(name-giving and sense-giving thus differ by (what Austin is later to call) their ‘direction of
fit’ (see Austin [1953] p.141)).
The distinction between the stage of legislation and the stage of performance is all-important:
‘Referring’ and ‘naming’ are terms for only parts, and we may say ancillary parts, of my
performance on any occasion
Austin [1953] p.139
That is to say, although referring and naming are speech-acts, like asserting, they are not
generic speech-acts (i.e. speech-acts admitting of various coordinated species). Nor are they
genuine speech-acts (i.e. like asserting and its species). Rather, they are speech-acts
collaterally performed (through the use of certain sentential subparts) in performing the main
(sentential) speech-act. Austin insists, in particular, that
Even if ‘the identification’ can be used, as is ‘the name’, for a part of the utterance, still
‘identifying’ is not a name for a part of my performance in issuing the utterance (as ‘naming’,
in my use, always is), but for the whole of it. That part of our utterance is a name or a
reference says nothing to prejudge the type of assertive speech-act to which our whole
performance in issuing the utterance belongs.
Austin [1953] p.140
The foregoing is already enough to show that the standard, rampant, view that an assertion
such as “1227 is a rhombus” “picks out” or “identifies” a particular which it then “goes on to
say something about” (a view advocated e.g. by Strawson throughout his career) is misguided
insofar as it rests upon a conflation of the two stages.

4. In each of the two speech-situations S0 and S1 the two aforementioned parameters, direction
of fit (between item and name) and onus of match (between type and sense), combine
systematically so as to give rise to exactly four distinct speech-acts that may be performed in
uttering a sentence of the S-form “I is a T” (say, “1227 is a rhombus”). One thus obtains the
following logical diagrams for S0 and S1 (recall that S1 only differs from S0 in that it makes
room for loose match; apart from this difference, the same taxonomy holds in both):

Onus of match sense matched to type type matched to sense

Direction
of fit
name fitted to item placing / c-identifying Stating
“N matches I” “I matches N”
Find a pattern to match Find a pattern to match
to this sample this sample to

item fitted to name instancing casting / b-identifying

“N matches I” “I matches N”
Find a sample to match Find a sample to match
this pattern to to this pattern

11
 Onus of match sense loosely type loosely
Direction matched to type matched to sense
of fit
name fitted to item calling describing
“N matches I” “I matches N”
Find a pattern to match Find a pattern to match
to this sample this sample to

item fitted to name exemplifying classing

“N matches I” “I matches N”
Find a sample to match Find a sample to match
this pattern to to this pattern

12
Speech-acts located on the same horizontal axis have the same direction of fit, while speech-
acts located on the same vertical axis have the same onus of match23. That which is being
fitted to (or that which is to be found), in contrast with that which is being fitted with (or that
which is taken as given), is italicized. In the logical paraphrase of the form of each species of
speech-act, that (whether name or item) upon (the sense or type of) which the onus of match
lies counts as subject (Austin [1953] p.143).24
That the models S0 and S1 are models which we ordinarily make use of, not mere artifacts of
philosophical analysis, is testified by the fact that our very uses of the performative verbs
which they feature not only conform to, but also serve to mark, the distinctions around which
they are organized. In Chapter VI and VII of Austin [1962a], Austin shows that the form
shared by ordinary “explicit performatives” (i.e. performatives like “I promise that …”, “I
conclude that …”, and so on) might constitute a “normal form” in which all performatives can
be couched so as to wear their performative character on their sleeves – somewhat in the
sense in which so-called “disjunctive normal form”, in propositional calculus, can be shown
to constitute a normal form in which any well-formed proposition can be couched so as to
wear certain logical properties on its sleeves. Just so, in “How to Talk”, he shows that such
“expositives” as “calling” or “describing” are assigned the task, in ordinary language itself, of
marking logical distinctions that are only implicit in the ordinary practice of asserting. There
is thus a sense in which Austin continues – far from breaking with it – Frege’s project of
putting forward a logical notation capable of making explicit logical features that are only
implicit in ordinary usage. In opposition to Frege, Austin does not think that such a logical
notation needs to be artificially designed, nor does he think that it constitutes a universal
language. But he does share Frege’s expressivist, anti-formalist, conception of the status of a
logical notation (on Frege’s logical expressivism, see Brandom [2000] p.56-61).25 Far from
disavowing Frege’s logical expressivism, Austin’s vindication of the (presumably semantic)
notion of a model takes it on board.
After drawing the conclusion that “the standard subject-predicate or class-membership
model” does not measure up to the complexity of even the simplest of our ordinary models
(Austin [1953] p.150-151), Austin proceeds to consider a model whose speech-situation
incorporates the negative sentence form SN “I is not a T”, the model S0N (Austin [1953]
p.151-153). The main bulk of his elucidation of model S0N consists in arguing, on the basis of
KP, that not all species of assertion admit of the SN-form, but only those pertaining to one of
the two diagonals of the diagram of S0 (the same fact holds, of course, in S1N). I shall return to
model S0N at length in section four. The examination of S0N by which Austin concludes his
essay may not be the appendix which, on a first reading, it looks to be.
The maximal simplicity of S0 and S1 matters to the exact tenor of the claim to the effect that
an assertion can exemplify a variety of assertive ties. The claim is not that various kinds of
assertive tying may be at work depending on the categories of terms. For here the categories
of the terms are emphatically kept constant. Austin’s classification of assertive ties is both
distinct from and in tension with Strawson’s own classification – even though the latter may
be partly inspired by the former. Strawson tracks the differences between the following cases:

23
Note that the variable direction of fit between name and item in an assertion should not be confused with the
invariant world-to-words direction of fit between an assertion and the world. Any assertion, as an assertion, is
accountable to the world (while an order, say, is something to which the world is accountable).
24
From the latter point, it follows – pace Austin – that the main verb of the logical paraphrase of a form of
speech-act should be “to match” rather than the “to fit”. I have modified all of Austin’s logical paraphrases in
accordance with that caveat.
25
Another author who holds ordinary language to be resourceful from a logical point of view is Saul Kripke. As
Stalnaker points out, the general strategy of Kripke’s Naming and Necessity is “to find a part of our modal
discourse that seems relatively free of the particular equivocations and unclarities that infect modal discourse
generally, a part that might be developed and used to clarify the rest” (Stalnaker [1997] p.539).

13
 We say of a speaker that he characterizes an object as such-and-such, or instances something
as a so-and-so, or attributes something to something else.
Strawson [1959] p.167
But he traces such differences to categorial differences, thereby assuming that you are bound
to instantiate if you make use of a sortal universal (like “chair”), bound to characterize if you
make use of a characterizing universal (like “red”), and so on (Strawson [1959] p.167-168).
This is tantamount to confusing the assertive speech-act with its ancillary parts, in violation of
Austin’s context principle 26.
It is also worth emphasizing that in saying that “the difference between one named speech-act
and another often resides principally in a difference between the speech-situations envisaged
for their respective performances” (Austin [1953] p.151), Austin is in fact contesting the very
terms in which Cook Wilson had cast the context-sensitivity of the logical structure displayed
by an assertion. For Cook Wilson, the role of the context is that of supplementing the asserted
sentence, to the benefit of the hearer, with some outward sign of the subjective intention
governing the speaker’s assertion. The context merely exteriorizes the inward deed from
which the assertion draws its force. This faulty conception of the speech-act ruins the benefit
of Cook Wilson’s insightful observation that the logical articulation induced by a given kind
of speech-act is well-captured by a counterpart question. By contrast, under Austin’s analysis,
the circumstances and the conventions perform the task of conditioning the very kind of
speech-act that can be performed. Hence there is room for a genuine classification of assertive
speech-acts, casting light upon the logic of and in assertion.
A detailed confrontation between the views of Cook Wilson and those of Austin lies beyond
the scope of this essay. So I shall confine myself to indicating what may be regarded as the
main upshot of such a confrontation. In “How to Talk”, in addition to endorsing Cook
Wilson’s qualms concerning the alleged existence of a general form of ‘thought’ as well as
Cook Wilson’s forceful objections to all attempts to itemize components of ‘thought’, Austin
takes on board (at least) ten specific theses maintained by Cook Wilson in Cook Wilson
[1929/2007] and objects to (at least) ten others. In effect, following in the steps of Cook
Wilson, Austin holds: (A1) that the logical articulation of (the content of) an assertion is
context-sensitive; (A2) that (one aspect of) this context-sensitivity gets reflected in the
contrastive focus of the assertion; (A3) that the contrastive focus of the assertion is typically
displayed by means of (spoken or written) marks of emphasis, affected to some determinate
component of the sentence; (A4) that the logical analysis into subject and predicate is not to
be modeled upon the grammatical analysis into subject and predicate; (A5) that the logical
distinction between subject and predicate is not to be equated with the distinction between
substance and property, nor even with the more general distinction between the particular and
the general; (A6) that the ontological distinction between item and type (of item) does not
depend upon the species of assertion being made, and that the assertive link is not what ties
item and type together; (A7) that the determinate species of unity that belongs to (the content
of) an assertion derives from the determinate species of unity that belongs to the act of
making it (i.e. from the determinate species of assertive link); (A8) that the copula “is”, in “I
is a T”, contributes to the assertive link (expressed by “is a”); (A9) that the copula “is”, in the
logical analysis of (the content of) an assertion, belongs to what is asserted (i.e. to the logical
predicate); finally, (A10) that the negative form “I is not a T” does not reduce to the
affirmative form “I is a T” via any transformation.
On the other hand, Austin clearly denies: (B1) that the logical articulation of (the content of)
an assertion is at bottom a subjective matter; (B2) that one can account for the logical
articulation of (the content of) an assertion simply by means of a one-dimensional model;
(B3) that the logical predicate of an assertion is to be construed as the locus of new
26
This flaw goes along with the one pointed above in Section II §3.

14
information; (B4) that the logical predicate of an assertion is to be equated with the locus of
emphasis (i.e. with the contrastive focus of the assertion); (B5) that the ontological distinction
between item and type (of item), insofar as it is independent from the context-sensitive logical
articulation of (the content of) the assertion, simply precedes its unitary content, rather than
being derivative upon it; (B6) that no asymmetry between item and type shows forth in the
logical analysis of the content of an assertion; (B7) that the assertive link simply provides the
unity of the content of an assertion; (B8) that the assertive link to which (according to B7) the
content of an assertion owes its very unity (and not just its kind of unity but) is the expression
of a mental act of linking; (B9) that negation is at root a mental operation; finally, (B10) that
all species of assertion equally admit of negation.27
Let us take stock. We have seen how the maximal simplicity of the models considered by
Austin shapes his main contention and endows it with enough force to challenge even the
apparently least assumption-loaded version of the view that the subject-predicate combination
is the fundamental subsentential logical structure. More specifically, we have seen: that the
content of an assertion of even the simplest form depends for its logical articulation on the
total speech-act situation, that is to say, that the conventions and circumstances governing an
assertion of even the simplest form contribute to inform its very content; that they do so, in
even the simplest speech-situation, in at least four distinct ways, that is to say along a
minimum of two dimensions; that such notions as those of subsumption and instantiation are
either far too vague or far too special restrictive to illuminate the generic notion of an
assertion; that the inferential commitments of an assertion are reflected by the logical form of
its content and depend on the total speech-act situation (hence that the dichotomy between
taking some inferential order and taking our experiential dealings with the world as the cue to
logical form is misguided28); that the content of an assertion of even the simplest form need
not be the content of a yes-no question; that both correspondentism and coherentism contain
an important grain of truth, the latter insofar as it stresses the (potentially inferential)
phenomenon of incompatibility exploited by identificatory speech-acts, the former insofar as
it stresses the notion of fit which comes to the fore in non-identificatory speech-acts (where it
takes on a binary aspect).
There is much that remains unclear, however. In particular, how does the distinction between
locutionary meaning and illocutionary meaning fare in the light of our findings? In what sense
and to which extent does Austin endorse Frege’s distinction between sense and reference?
Why settle on such an odd idiom as the idiom of “samples” and “patterns”? To these issues I
now turn.

III – A Tailor-Made Terminology

5. In “How to Talk”, Austin expressly refrains from going “into the ‘metaphysical status’ of
types and senses (nor of items)” (Austin [1953] p.137). That issue is tackled in “Are there A
Priori Concepts?” (Austin [1939]) as well as in “The Meaning of a Word” (Austin [1940]).
The negative results reached in these two essays may help us to answer some of our questions.
The former essay dismantles a certain “transcendental argument” (Austin’s own phrase) for
the existence of universals. The main contention of the latter essay is that “there is no simple
and handy appendage of a word called ‘the meaning of (the word) “x”’” (Austin [1940] p.62).
To look for ‘the designatum of a word’, Austin argues, is in effect to commit a fallacy, that of
conflating the genuine question “What-is-the-meaning-of a word?” – which merely captures

27
In think that one could show in detail that most, if not all of, these disagreements with Cook Wilson can be
traced to the influence exerted upon Austin by Frege.
28
That dichotomy shapes much of Rödl [2005].

15
the form of such ordinary questions as “What-is-the-meaning-of (the word) “rat”?”) – and the
nonsensical question “what is the-meaning-of-a-word?”. The latter essay is, in one important
respect, more radical than the former, since it contends that all attempts to supply the pseudo-
question with an answer, and not just the attempt to supply it with the answer “a universal”
(or “a concept”), are equally misguided. At any rate, one and the same suppressed
unwarranted assumption underwrites both the first part of the transcendental argument and the
pseudo-question: namely, the assumption that wherever ‘one identical’ word is being used,
there has to be some definite something which it denotes – as if words were barred from being
‘general’ by nature, as if generality had to be conferred upon them (Austin [1940] p.38). In
the light of that assumption, it looks as if our very ability to refer to more than one thing by
means of a common noun stood in need of being accounted for. Austin dispels this appearance
by showing that “it makes no sense at all to give a general explanation for the generality of
language, because it makes no sense at all to suppose words in general might not recur, that
we might possess a name for a thing (say “chair” or “feeding”) and yet be willing to call
nothing (else) “the same thing”.” (Cavell [1979] p.188)29 In the same vein, Austin discards
such questions as concern the “possession” and “acquisition” of concepts by showing that
they derive their credentials from the treatment of concepts as articles of property, a treatment
induced by the reification of meaning (Austin [1939] p.40-41).
In “Truth”, Austin traces the abovementioned unwarranted assumption to a mistaken
assimilation of the descriptive to the demonstrative:
In philosophy we mistake the descriptive for the demonstrative (theory of universals) or the
demonstrative for the descriptive (theory of monads).
Austin [1959] note 3 p.122
This twofold mistake consists less in a failure to distinguish sense and reference as in a failure
properly to keep them apart, that is, in a twofold failure to confine reference to proper names
and sense to common nouns. The first of the two mistakes finds its seeds in
the curious belief that all words are names, i.e. in effect proper names, and therefore stand for
something or designate it in the way that a proper name does. But this view that general names
‘have denotation’ in the same way that proper names do, is quite as odd as the view that proper
names ‘have connotation’ in the same way that general names do, which is commonly
recognized to lead to error.
Austin [1940] p.61
Austin is evidently contesting, in particular, Frege’s thesis that an unsaturated expression (like
“ξ is red” or “ξ is a rhombus”) at once displays an unsaturated sense [Sinn] and refers to a
concept as its unsaturated referent [Bedeutung]. This thesis of Frege, in Austin’s eyes, spoils
Frege’s insight into the asymmetry between saturated and unsaturated expressions. It betrays a
failure to keep up with the insight encapsulated in the context principle (see Austin [1939]
p.40). Frege was right to criticize the traditional view that unsaturated expressions refer to all
the items which the expressions that fill them refer to (in particular, the view that common
names are names that are common to many things), but he was wrong to insist that incomplete
expressions refer and that sentences refer in the same way names and functional expressions
do.
We are now in a position, at last, to provide the beginning of a rationale for the odd
terminology deployed in “How to Talk”. By construing the items which item-words refer to as
samples and the senses which type-words convey as standards or patterns, Austin has loaded
into his terminology the upshot of his reflections on sense and reference so as both to hinder a
certain number of pseudo-questions from so much as arising and to give a simple model of
how to construe the relations between item, type, and sense.

29
Cavell ascribes this line of thought to Wittgenstein, not to Austin (see Cavell [1979] p.187-188), even though
he elsewhere invokes it to defuse objections aimed at Austin (see Cavell [1994] p.70-71).

16
If items are to be thought of as samples (in the trivial, ordinary sense in which a dress may
function as a sample of a certain dress-pattern, or again in the (trivial) sense in which a swatch
may function as a sample of a certain “colour, weave, texture, and pattern” (Goodman [1976]
p.53)), then there is no longer any room for a stage at which items could be thought of as bare
particulars, thus giving rise to such questions as “how can a bare particular partake of a
universal at all?” or “in virtue of what can a bare universal so much as exemplify anything?”.
For to be a sample just is to function as a sample, and to function as a sample is to exemplify.
If names of item-types are to be thought of as expressing patterns (in the trivial, ordinary
sense in which a dress may exemplify a certain pattern, or again in the trivial, ordinary sense
in which a swatch may exemplify a pattern), then there is no longer any room for a stage at
which they could be thought to refer to separate entities (‘universals’), thus giving rise to such
questions as “how can a particular partake of a separate universal at all?” or “in virtue of
what can a separate universal so much as recur?”. For to express a pattern is to express the
function played by a certain chosen sample, and for that sample to be conferred that function
just is for it to be that in the light of which various samples can be said to exemplify whatever
it is regarded as a pattern of. Finally, there is no longer any room for such questions as “in
virtue of what are items and item-types tied together?” or “what does glue items and item-
types together?”, since what a sample functions as a sample of just is, by construction, what
the item elected as a pattern functions as a paradigm of.
Realism (which posits the existence of separate universals) and nominalism (which denies
their existence) come to look equally misguided: the former because it expects items to owe
their capacity to exemplify to something else (as if simply to be used as a sample were not
enough), the latter because it expects items to owe to themselves their capacity to exemplify
(as if no norm were required). Each of these two stances itself admits of two variants, a
Dogmatic one and a Skeptical one, according to whether items are indeed held to owe their
capacity to exemplify to that to which their are expected to owe it, or not. Both stances share
the assumption that the capacity to exemplify is in the power of a certain entity, whether it be
in the power of another entity of another kind, or in the power of that very same entity that
exemplifies. Both stances are trapped into a spurious predicament – call it “the exemplariness
predicament”.
In introducing the idiom of samples and patterns, Austin is in fact at once translating and
deflating Frege’s talk of objects and concepts. Frege recurrently underscores the fact that he
does not begin with concepts and assembles them into thoughts, but instead obtains thought-
components [Gedankenteile] from a decomposition [Zerfällung] of thoughts, one whose
leading thread is provided by a quantificational treatment of generality (see Ricketts [2010]).
Consider the simplest example of such analysis, namely the decomposition of the thought
expressed by a sentence like “1227 is a rhombus” into a proper name (“1227”) and the part
that remains when this proper name is removed. The proper name which is removed
corresponds to a saturated component of the thought expressed by the sentence (i.e. to an
object), while the leftover component corresponds to an unsaturated component awaiting
completion by a component of the first sort (i.e. to a concept). Frege’s revolutionary claim is
that predicates are unsaturated in much the way functional expressions (like “x2+1”) are, in
other words that they contain blanks to be filled in with names (as in “[ ] is a rhombus”).
Moreover, Frege holds that, to the blanks occurring in unsaturated expressions, there
corresponded gaps in the concepts which they refer to. Such blanks are to be marked by
variables, that is to say blanks exemplifying the sort of component they required (as in “ξ is a
rhombus”). When one or many occurrences of a proper name in a sentence are replaced by a
variable, that sentence is endowed with generality of content. Variables are quantified over
whenever generality is at stake in what we say (as in “Everything is a rhombus”). As Ricketts
points out, the notion of a name’s signifying an object in a sentence, in Frege, does not

17
precede but rather goes with the notion of the inferential relationship between a generalization
and its instances (see Ricketts [2010]). For Frege, the structure of a sentence, even on a given
occasion of its use, may be viewed in a variety of distinct ways, from which it follows that the
thought which it then expresses does not admit of a unique logical analysis. In Geach’s
wording, “if the same assertion could not be analyzed in different ways, logic would be
hopelessly crippled.” (Geach [1950] p.462) A given decomposition only becomes necessary
in order to render the validity of an inference perspicuous (see Dummett [1991] p.41). Thus,
in order to show that the truth of “someone killed himself” can be inferred by existential
generalization from the truth of “Cato killed Cato”, one needs to discern the pattern
“ξ killed ξ” (rather than, say, the pattern “φ killed ξ”) in the latter sentence, which is to say
that one needs to discern the concept of suicide in the thought which the latter sentence (on
that occasion of its use) expresses. What is more, for Frege, a thought may be viewed as
structured in a variety of distinct ways. It is not just that the structure of a thought may be
viewed in a variety of distinct ways: a thought has no intrinsic structure at all (on the
irreducibility of the thesis that thoughts are not essentially structured to the thesis that
sentences can be segmented in a variety of distinct ways, see Travis [2000] p.85-88).
That is not to say, however, that objects and concepts can switch roles and that the categories
to which they belong are not mutually exclusive. In particular, no concept can be referred to
by using a name: no concept can be treated like an object. The “thesis of interchangeability”
(see Geach [1968] p.47) is directly blocked by the fact that the copula pertains to the
predicate. When it seems as if a concept were being talked about, either what is being talked
about is in fact an object (as in “The concept horse is easily attainable”), or what is being said
is that a first-level concept is subsumed under a second-level concept (as in “There is at least
one square root of four”), or finally what is being talked about is in fact a quantified variable
and one concept is being subordinated to another one (as in “men are mortal”, which says
that, for any thing, if it is a man, then it is mortal). That an assertion may seem to be about a
concept or that it may be about a concept in the sense that it predicates of it a second-level
conceptual expression, does not mean that an assertion can be about a concept in the very
sense in which an assertion predicating a first-level conceptual expression is, according to
Frege, about an object; to put it differently, it does not mean that an assertion can be about a
concept in the sense of treating it as an object. So, pace Strawson, it does not really falsify, by
itself, Geach’s Fregean thesis (in Geach [1950]) that the distinction between object and
concept can be framed by relying upon “the distinguishing powers of the word ‘about’” and
that it is an absolute distinction (Strawson takes Cook Wilson’s treatment of assertion directly
to confound Geach’s criterion: see Strawson [1959] p.143-144).
Strawson is undoubtedly right to observe, against Cook Wilson, that the discriminative
powers of the word “about” cannot, without further qualification, bear the full weight of the
logical distinction between the saturated and the unsaturated components of a thought. But,
for Austin, Cook Wilson’s point about “about” does not show that the distinction between
saturated and unsaturated expressions fails to be exclusive (just as, for Cook Wilson, it does
not show that the distinction between subjects and predicates fails to be exclusive). Even less
does it show that the distinction between saturated and unsaturated thought-components
(hence, for Austin, the distinction between items and senses) fails to be exclusive. Moreover,
in direct opposition to Strawson (compare Strawson [1959] p.144), Austin goes along with
Cook Wilson’s proposal to annex the pair of terms “subject” and “predicate” to the notion of
what an assertion is about. The crucial point is that although he is concurring with Cook
Wilson’s claim that type-words may feature as subjects of predication (witness his logical
paraphrases in the diagrams of S0 and S1)30, Austin is siding with Frege against both Cook
30
I am here leaving aside the fact that Cook Wilson mistakenly ascribes one and the same logical form to both
“Jones is rowing” (which subsumes Jones under the concept of being rowing) and to “Glass is elastic” (which

18
Wilson and Strawson insofar as he denies that concepts “may, and do, figure as objects of
reference” (Strawson [1994]). Frege mistakenly held that unsaturated expressions referred.
But Strawson compounded this mistake with the mistake which Frege constantly warned his
readers against, namely that of holding that the references of unsaturated expressions
(concepts) could be treated as (hence, in a way, turned out to be analogous to) saturated
entities (objects)31. In Austin’s analysis, the sense of a type-name does not become an item
just because that type-name figures as subject in the logical paraphrase of a c-identifying
assertive speech-act (as in the logical form “N matches I”).
Be that as it may, Austin does not think anyway that the distinction between saturated and
unsaturated thought-components (hence the distinction between item and sense) has much to
do with the distinction between subject and predicate (that is to say, that it has much to do
even or especially with the logical distinction between subject and predicate: witness his
logical paraphrases in the above diagrams). The distinction between saturated and unsaturated
expressions does not correspond to any of the two dimensions along which he analyzes the
logic of/in assertive speech-acts (which is not to say that that distinction does not conform to
the context-principle).
Now, the idiom of samples and patterns perspicuously registers the fact that it is generality
that compels the analysis of thoughts into components none of which is a thought, and
generality again that compels their analysis into radically heterogeneous components which
cannot switch roles without ceasing to be the components they are – if only because they are
the roles which they play.
A major consequence of Frege’s radically new way of drawing the distinction between object
and concept is that the issue of what holds object and concept together no longer arises32. That
issue was both unavoidable and intractable as long as concepts were regarded as self-
subsistent entities, while the copula was expected to cement object and concept together. But
in fact “no link is needed to join subject and predicate; the incomplete sense of the predicate is
completed when the subject is inserted in the empty place […]; no tertium quid comes in”
(Geach [1950] p.464; see also Dummett [1991] p.90)33. Again, the evaporation of that issue
crystallizes in the conception of the referents of item-words (i.e. of objects) as samples and of
the senses of type-words (i.e. Fregean conceptual expressions) as patterns. Nothing needs to
glue together a dress-pattern and a dress for the latter to be a sample of the former. The idiom
of samples and patterns makes it transparent that there is no need for any predicative link

subordinates the concept of being in glass to the concept of being elastic and, in the light of Frege’s
quantificational treatment of generality, is of the form “∀ξ (ξ is in glass → ξ is elastic)”).
31
The analogy alleged by Strawson should not be confused with the analogy drawn by Frege himself between
first-level predication and second-level predication, i.e. between sentences predicating something of a concept
and sentences predicating something of an object. Frege’s analogy rests on the prior conviction that “when we
predicate something of a concept, we do not need, and in fact ought not, to transform the expression for the
concept into the grammatical subject” (Dummett [1991] p.91).
32
At the very least, it no longer arises under its traditional guise, whose hopelessness was diagnosed by Bradley.
See Palmer [1988] Chap.1 and 3, and Davidson [2005] Chap.6 for two versions of the thesis that Frege still
remains in the grip of that issue under another guise.
33
Given that Strawson challenged the modern, Fregean view that one should “reject the distinction, within the
predicate-expression as a whole, between a copula (a notion [Frege’s] followers tend to treat with contempt) and
a universal-denoting element” (Strawson [1994]), that issue was bound to resurface in Strawson’s thought.
Hence Davidson’s harsh, yet arguably warranted diagnosis: “It is interesting that someone who made it “central”
to his life’s work to explain “singular reference together with predication” should, as far as I know, have paid no
serious attention to what I am calling the problem of predication” (Davidson [2005] p.113). Needless to say, on
the present view, the “running repair” to Frege’s doctrine of the sense and reference of predicates attempted by
David Wiggins (in Wiggins [1984]), involving as it does a new plea for the copula (a plea which was to be
welcomed by Strawson (see Strawson [1997] p.86)), does not repair much.

19
(Austin’s notion of an assertive link (Austin [1953] p.138) should not be confused with the
notion of such a link).
What Frege thought was primarily true of the concept to which an unsaturated expression
refers is, for Austin, true only of the sense of that unsaturated expression: namely, that it can
no more be abstracted from items than the unsaturated expression can be abstracted from the
sentences in which it features as a component. Dummett emphasizes that a complex
functional expression [like, say, the one displayed in “ξ killed ξ”] cannot be literally removed
from sentences in which it occurs so as to be displayed on its own (see Dummett [1973]
Chap.8; Dummett [1991] Chap.4). And Geach observes that “an isolated function sign is for
Frege a monstrosity; what signifies a given function is not the presence in a formula of a
given piece of type, but the occurrence of a given pattern” (Geach [1977] p.60). Think of the
pattern for a dress: whether, to display it, you make use of a certain dress as a prototype (i.e.
treat it as a paradigmatic sample of the pattern), or you merely make use of a certain piece of
paper (i.e. treat it as a paradigmatic schema of the pattern), you are not, at any rate, attempting
to do what cannot be done: to display it on its own. The pattern after which various dresses are
made is ‘unsaturated’. Now, something analogous holds of the sense of a type-word
according to Austin: it is not an isolated something, but a pattern. Frege had built
subsumption into concepts by holding concepts to be unsaturated (see Ricketts [2010]).
Austin builds it into senses. Both gestures cut deep into abstractionism.
Note that Austin’s attempt at elucidating the distinction between samples and patterns is
bound to misfire in much the same way as Frege’s attempt to elucidate the distinction between
objects and concepts34. Both attempts appear to be self-thwarting. Like Fregean elucidations,
Austinian elucidations can only succeed to the extent that they can rely upon the readiness of
the reader to meet the author half-way (compare Frege [1892/1980] p.54). For just as we
cannot say anything about a concept without eo ipso turning it into an object (or rather having
an object misleadingly deputizing for it), so we cannot say anything about a pattern without
eo ipso turning it into an item (or rather having an item deputizing for it). We cannot talk
about a status without itemizing it. To say that talk about status is self-defeating is not to say,
however, that it is valueless.
To think of sense as the role played by a certain item insofar as it is regarded as a standard is
to think of sense as showing forth in the conventional use that is being made of that thing. It is
to construe Fregean Sinn in a deflationary way35. Think of the standard meter. First, the
convention which presides over the selection of a certain rod as the standard meter is not
merely a linguistic convention. For a certain parcel of the world itself enters into language, it
acquires a normative role. Second, you cannot touch the standard meter. Call that the truth in
Platonism. Not because it is a non-sensible entity, but simply because it is no entity at all (and
if you insist on seeing the standard meter as an entity, then you should see it as an entity of the
same sort as any sample of the one-meter length (compare Austin [1939] p.53)). That a certain
rod is the standard (rather than a sample) of the one-meter length shows forth in how we
regard it, that is to say in the convention-governed use that is being made of it in our practice
of measuring things.
What, finally, of types themselves? Can we really abstain from construing them as universals?
Austin’s implicit rejoinder to the latter question is that the idiom of type is merely an idiom,
hence a harmless one. It is but a convenient way of saying something complicated about items

34
On this predicament, see Weiner [1990], Conant [2002] and Ricketts [2009].
35
In this respect, Austin’s interpretation of Fregean Sinn, under the present reading, bears affinities with
McDowell’s deflationary interpretation of the Fregean Sinn of proper names, under which “the ontology of a
theory of sense need not exceed the names and their bearers” (McDowell [1977] p.175). From McDowell’s
standpoint, however, in denying that proper names are endowed with sense, Austin and Strawson betray a
prejudice in favor of the generality of sense and they fall prey to the Myth of the Given.

20
(or samples): namely, that a certain item is sufficiently like an item that was elected as a
standard to be deemed a sample of what that standard is regarded as a standard of (compare
Austin [1939] p.39). As we shall see below, the notion of sameness which is presupposed in
the notion of a “type” (and which is here being elucidated through the notion of being
sufficiently like) involves two conventions. But two conventions have never added to one
abstract entity.
To summarize: Austin neither jettisons nor imports Frege’s distinction between sense and
reference. Rather, he reshapes it. If we consider “that illocutionary force is what remains to be
described after sense and reference, in some traditional sense, have been specified”
(Travis [1975] p.24) (one plausible way of reading Austin), then the locutionary meaning of
an assertion does not encompass its logically structured content. Like a Fregean thought (i.e.
the sense of a Fregean assertion), the locutionary meaning of an assertion is essentially
unstructured. But if the locutionary meaning of an assertion is its content, then it is permeated
in a systematic manner by the illocutionary force of that assertion, in the sense that it is a
function of the species of assertive force which that assertion possesses.

6. That Austin, in “How to Talk”, construes sense as pattern – i.e. as what is being
exemplified by a sample elected as a standard or paradigm (Austin [1953] p.137) – directly
sheds light on his account of truth (Austin [1950] p.122). In his essay on “Truth”, in effect,
Austin famously declares:
A statement is said to be true when the historic state of affairs to which it is correlated by the
demonstrative conventions (the one to which it ‘refers’) is of a type with which the sentence
used in making it is correlated by the descriptive conventions.
Austin [1950] p.122
An important footnote further specifies that
‘Is of a type with which’ means ‘is sufficiently like those standard states of affairs with
which’. Thus, for a statement to be true one state of affairs must be like certain others, which is
a natural relation, but also sufficiently like to merit the same ‘description’, which is no longer a
purely natural relation. […] That things are similar, or even ‘exactly’ similar, I may literally
see, but that they are the same I cannot literally see – in calling them the same colour a
convention is involved additional to the conventional choice of the name to be given to the
colour which they are said to be.
Austin [1950] note 2 p.122
To illustrate this footnote, let us return to model S1 of “How to Talk”. In S1, where the world
is such as to contain items of types which do not exactly match the sense of any of our names,
the ground on which we can say that “1228 is red” is that the type of the item whose name is
“1228” resembles the sense of “red” “sufficiently well, and more closely than it resembles the
senses of others of our names” (Austin [1953] p.147). In S1, one can see that item 1228 is
similar to those things called “red” – just as in S0 one can see that it is exactly similar to them
(just because there is exact match in S0, no assimilation is required)36. That is one reason, by
the way, why if there were universals, they would be superfluous as far as the discerning of
similarities is concerned. According to Austin, seeing that item 1228 is similar to those things
may well require comparing it with a “pattern”, but what serves as a pattern is an entity of the
same kind as item 1228 (see Austin [1939] p.53). But in S1 one cannot see that item 1228 is of
the same type as those things called “red”. To the extent that “same” means “sufficiently
like”, it plays the role of an “adjuster-word”, that is to say of a word “by the use of which
other words are adjusted to meet the innumerable and unforeseeable demands of the world
upon language” (Austin [1962b] p.73). That one cannot see that item 1228 is of the same type
as those things called “red” is the grain of truth in the theory of universals: if there were
36
That one can see that 1228 is similar to those things called “red” does not imply that there is some further
thing to be seen in addition to 1228 and those things called “red” (see Austin [1939] p.49).

21
universals, they could not be sensed (see Austin [1939] p.37-38). Thus, if we are to say (in S1)
that “1228 is red”, a further convention is needed over and above the convention of sense in
virtue of which an item-type (attached by nature to certain items) is attached to a certain
vocable as the “sense” of that vocable, i.e. the preliminary convention that involves conferring
to an item the role of a standard or pattern37. Note that universals are superfluous when it
comes to supplying the first, preliminary convention and that they are irrelevant when it
comes to supplying the second. Finally, when the further convention is required, the
preliminary convention concomitantly acquires a new importance to the extent that the
involved selection is no longer innocent (by contrast, in S0, it does not really matter which
sample item is initially endowed with the role of a pattern).
Now, in the same fashion, if we are to say truly (in S1) that the statement that 1228 is red is
true, at least two conventions are required. First, a descriptive convention is at play, which
involves conferring to a state of affairs the role of a standard or pattern. The note quoted
above, where Austin talks about “those standard states of affairs” (my italics), confirms that
we should indeed construe the “descriptive conventions correlating the words (= sentences)
with the types of situation, thing, event, etc., to be found in the world” (Austin [1950] p.121-
122) in a manner that parallels Austin’s characterization of the conventions of sense in “How
to Talk” (Austin [1953] p.137). Second, a further convention over and above that preliminary
convention is also at work, in virtue of which the type of a certain state of affairs comes to be
assimilated to the type of a state of affairs erected as a standard or pattern or vice versa.
Again, the second, ongoing convention amplifies the importance of the first, preliminary one.
Thus, in Austin’s deflationary account of sense (in “How to Talk”) lies the ground for an
account of truth that is at once conventionalist and externalist38. The notion of a statement
being true, hence also that of a state of affairs being the case, evince a tight intertwinement of
nature and convention. For the statement “1228 is red” to count as “true” is for the historic
state of affairs to which it is correlated by demonstrative conventions to deserve to be said to
be like those paradigmatic state of affairs (whose very obtaining enters into the meaning of
“true”). The dimension of the “true” thus turns out to have an indexical character.
What this means is that counting as true is in an important sense (in part) ruled by precedent,
the world itself having its share in such precedent, together with (and never apart from)
conventions39. That truth should be in part ruled by precedent is unavoidable, if only because
the conventional procedures it involves have, like all conventional procedures, but a limited
and not strictly delineated sphere of applicability, so that “there will always occur difficult or
marginal cases where nothing in the previous history of a conventional procedure will decide
conclusively whether such a procedure is or is not correctly applied to such a case.”
(Austin [1962a] p.31)
The idea that the correspondence between language and world in which truth consists needs
and can be cashed out in terms of a prior enabling correspondence involving the sharing of
logical multiplicity thus proves to be futile, and twice so. It is futile both because the match
between the sense of a sentence and the type of the historical state of affairs to which it is
demonstratively correlated is thoroughly conventional, so that the sense of a statement need
not and cannot mirror reality, and because that match is to be assessed in the light of prior

37
In Benoist [2007], J. Benoist rightly emphasizes the normative character of Austin’s notion of a type. But he
fails to draw the proper distinction between the first, stage-setting, convention and the second, ongoing,
convention. The norm defining the type consists in the second convention.
38
As far as I know, the externalist character of Austin’s account of truth has eluded commentators.
39
That Austin’s account of truth is committed to a form of externalism shows forth in its holding the world not
only to settle the question whether a given statement fits the facts or not but also to contribute to settle the
question when a given statement fits facts (that is to say, the question of what it takes for that statement to fit the
facts). I borrow this characterization of externalism from Travis [2005a].

22
assessments, that is to say in the light of prior facts, so that the very sense of a statement does
depend on the truth-value of other statements.

IV – The Diagonal Argument of “How to Talk”

7. So far, I have treated the inquiry into model S0N as a sort of appendix to the essay. Austin
indeed initially presents that inquiry as further confirmation of the stated conclusion of the
essay, to the effect that “the difference between one named speech-act and another often
resides principally in a difference between the speech-situations envisaged for their respective
performances” (Austin [1953] p.151). Though, on the face of it, it is but “a small variation in
our model of the speech-situation, this time on the language side rather than on the side of the
world” (Austin [1953] p.151), the move consisting in the introduction of the negative sentence
form “I is not a T” (noted ‘SN’) brings it about that two of the four assertive speech-acts
distinguished by Austin are no longer in order (Austin [1953] p.153). To allow the new form
“I is not a T” is eo ipso to deactivate two of the four types of assertion.
But Austin also points out that the effect of the introduction of the negative sentence form
characterizing the speech-situation S0N retrospectively casts light upon the structure of S0
itself (as well as upon that of S1 of course):
By introducing this sentence form [i.e. SN: “I is not a T”], we bring out a resemblance not
hitherto pointed out, between c-identifying and b-identifying in contrast with stating and
instancing, which might be symbolized in our diagram by linking them with a diagonal line,
thus:
c-identifying stating
instancing b-identifying
Austin [1953] p.151
Evidently, an assertion made by uttering a sentence of the form SN (i.e. “I is not T”) is true if
the type of the item referred to by “I” and the sense of the name “T” do not match
(Austin [1953] p.151). But only when fit and match run in opposite directions or, in Austin’s
own terms, when direction (i.e. of fit) and onus (i.e. of match) are opposite (Austin [1953]
p.152), is the sentence form SN in order and does it make sense to ask whether the item
referred to by “I” and the sense of the name “T” do or do not match (Austin [1953] p.152) (I
shall return below to Austin’s ground for setting that condition). Hence the speech-acts joined
by the upper left diagonal are deactivated whenever use is made of the sentence-form SN. I
shall henceforth call that argument Austin’s diagonal argument. (Each of the two diagonal
lines indicates that the relation between fit and match is kept invariant, whether it be that of
identical polarity or that of reversed polarity, in other words (Austin’s) whether it be that of
parallelism or that of opposition.) Now, not only the diagonal argument establishes another
principle of grouping for the already distinguished four types of assertion. By establishing the
need to distinguish cases where fit and match do not display the same polarity from cases
where they do, it establishes the need to distinguish between direction of fit and onus of match
in the first place (i.e. the need to introduce two distinct sorts of stress or emphasis). For it
thereby displays the explanatory power of the systematic interplay between direction of fit
and onus of match (i.e. the systematic interplay between two sorts of stress). It thus appears
that the end of Austin’s essay provides the true rationale for the distinction that initially set it
in motion. By contrast, in drawing upon the difference between “assimilating X to Y” and
“assimilating Y to X” at the beginning of his essay (Austin [1953] p.142) in order to motivate
by analogy the introduction of the notion of the onus of match of an assertion, Austin may
have made it plausible that the variety of forces of which assertion admits depends on the
latter notion, but he has certainly not shown it. Accordingly, the centre of gravity of the essay,
on the present reading, lies in its final part. Far from being a mere appendix, that final part

23
casts light on its core by motivating its whole apparatus.40 Intent on keeping the order of his
exposition straightforward, Austin lets this important fact recede in the background.
I accordingly urge that we see Austin’s ground for putting forward the condition that issues in
the diagonal argument as a key to the entire essay. I have already referred to that ground as
Austin’s “Key Point” (KP). It is the thesis that
There is no such thing as a negative or counter identification.
Austin [1953] p.152
The point may be equally phrased thus:
To identify as not is nonsense for not to identify.
Austin [1953] p.153
That KP holds we may discern at once. The division that subtends an act of identification is
not in general a dichotomy, from which it follows that the opposition between the members of
that division is not in general that of contradictories but (simply) that of contraries41. We
identify 1229 as red as opposed to blue, etc. In the same manner, we identify 1229 as a
square, as opposed to 1228, etc. In other words, an assertion with identificatory force is made
rather than one among all those that are contrary to it, while an assertion without
identificatory force is made rather than the unique one that contradicts it. Now, the negation
attaching to the assertive link “is” itself bears on the sentence as a whole. It is a device of
sentential negation. (SN is aptly considered by Austin to be a sentence-form in addition to the
form S.) But the semantics of the device of sentential negation is that of contradictory
negation, since an assertion is true if and only if the assertion of its sentential negation is false
and vice versa. In effect, two contradictory assertions, by definition, not only cannot both be
true (like contrary assertions) but they also cannot both be false (for a standard formulation of
the contrast, see e.g. Quine [1950/1982] p.9). It follows that a given S-assertion of a given
force admits of a negation of the SN-form with the same force only to the extent that it admits
of a contradictory negation, that is to say only to the extent that it admits not only of at least
one, but also of no more than one contrary assertion of the same force (see Anscombe
[1959]). Now, assertions with identificatory force do not meet the latter condition. Hence they
do not admit of a contradictory assertion endowed with the same force. So, they do not admit
of a SN-assertion endowed with the same force. Finally, no assertion of the SN-form may
perform an act of identification.

8. Geach remarks, in the same vein, that an assertion like “I saw again today the same man as
I saw yesterday” “has no longer a clear sense if we replace “man” by “non-man”; we cannot
make anything of “the same non-man” (Geach [1956] p.80). He defines an “identifying
predicate” as a predicate P such that “the phrase “the same (thing that is)” prefixed to P
expresses a criterion of identity for a thing” (Geach [1956] p.80). And he rightly points out
that the fact that one cannot obtain an identificatory predicate by negating an identificatory
predicate does nothing to support the Asymmetricalist Thesis about Negation (ATN),
according to which affirmation and negation do not stand on a par and a negative predication
always needs to be backed by an affirmative one.
Nevertheless, Geach, maintains, by contrast with Austin, that this fact “does not arise from
negation itself” (Austin [1956] p.80). Now, it is true if it means that such a fact arises from the

40
Subsequent philosophy has made much of the notion of direction of fit, while it has made virtually nothing of
the notion of onus of match (see e.g. Searle’s work). It is fair to say that the importance of the distinction
between direction of fit and onus of match has eluded Austin’s readers. I am suggesting that a central cause of
the obliteration of the latter notion has been a failure to appreciate the function played by the last part of the
essay in its overall economy.
41
In fact, it would seem to follow from KP that the division underlying an assertion with identificatory force
cannot be a dichotomy, and that the opposition between its members cannot be that of contradiction, without its
losing its identificatory force.

24
attempt at combining negation and identification. But it is wrong if it means that such a fact
casts no light on either negation or assertion. From the fact that not every non-identificatory
predicate is the negation of an identificatory predicate, Geach seems to infer that the
incompatibility between negation and identification has nothing to do with negation. Yet, it
only follows that identification may be out of place without negation being involved. From
the fact that not every predicate is an identifying predicate, he seems to infer that
identification is a subsentential notion. Yet, again, it only follows that not every assertion is
an identifying one.
It is no accident that Geach tends to minimize the significance of KP. For KP conflicts with
the thesis famously put forward by Geach (henceforth referred to as “Geach’s Thesis”), to the
effect that predicates admit of pairs of contradictories while subjects do not, so that the
differentiated behavior of subjects and predicates towards negation can serve as a criterion of
distinction42. Geach’s criterion is borne out by the observation that “we can never get the
contradictory of a sentence by substituting some other name for the subject. We can contradict
“Peter struck Malchus” by keeping the subject “Malchus” and replacing the predicate by its
contradictory “Peter did not strike ”; we could not contradict it by keeping the predicate
“Peter struck ” and substituting some other name for “Malchus”.” (Geach [1950] p.463). It
is also borne out by the observation that in a language dual to ours (i.e. in a language in which
a sentence is used to say the contradictory opposite of what the homophonic English sentence
says), names are self-dual while predicates are dual to their negations (see Diamond [2002]
p.262-263). Against Geach’s line of analysis, though, Austin establishes, in “How to Talk”,
both that an assertion is not guaranteed to admit of contradictory negation and that it is not
with objecthood that contradictory negation is essentially incompatible, but with the speech-
act of identification. A c-identifying assertion (which identifies a pattern) no more admits of
contradictory negation than a b-identifying one (which identifies a sample)43.

9. It remains to be shown that those assertions whose onus of match parallels the direction of
fit are exactly those assertions which have identificatory force, so that those assertions whose
onus of match does not parallel (but reverses) the direction of fit are exactly those assertions
which do not have identificatory force. Each of the two implications may be proven simply by
going through an enumeration of the cases at hand. Among the four types of assertions
distinguished by Austin, exactly two are such that their onus of match parallels their direction
of fit: placing and casting. For in placing we have to find a pattern to match to this sample,
and in casting we have to find a sample to match to this pattern. But placing and casting are
two ways of identifying, whose difference lies only in their having opposite directions of fit
(Austin [1953] p.142). So all and only those assertions whose onus of match parallels the
direction of fit are identifications. The converse point admits of as smooth a proof.
If it is to provide the rationale for the distinction between direction of fit and onus of match,
however, the proof we are after should not rest upon a mere enumeration of the cases at hand.
For a proof of the equivalence will provide a rationale for Austin’s cardinal distinction only if
it can show it to draw on some rule-governed interplay between direction of fit and onus of
match. (Only from the existence of such a systematic interplay, in effect, may the cardinal
distinction draw its legitimacy.) And the required proof can unfold the logic upon which the
equivalence rests only if it can show that a certain invariant way of combining direction of fit
and onus of match captures the very notion of identification, while conversely that notion

42
Strawson famously accepted the formal validity of this criterion, but questioned its explanatory power (see e.g.
Strawson [1974] p.5-9).
43
From another angle, though, KP may be read as a corrective rather than as rebuke to Geach’s Thesis. For in
Austin’s diagram, the speech-acts which cannot take the SN-form are exactly those whose subject is italicized.
And this seems congruent with the spirit, if not quite the letter, of Geach’s Thesis.

25
casts light upon the tenor of that invariance. For all we have said so far, it could be a mere
coincidence that the concept of an assertion whose onus of match parallels the direction of fit
and the concept of an assertion whose force is identificatory are coextensive, just as it could
be a mere coincidence that the concept of an assertion whose onus of match parallels the
direction of fit and the concept of an assertion not admitting of the SN-form are coextensive.
In particular, the decision to count both placing and casting as “identifications” is still
unwarranted. Austin’s early elucidatory remarks concerning the use of the verb “to identify”
(Austin [1953] p.142) await completion. It has been shown that we use that term
“understandably enough, in two opposite ways” (Austin [1953] p.142), not why one and the
same term should be used in these two ways44. Since placing (c-identifying) and casting (b-
identifying) share neither direction of fit nor onus of match, why count them both, as Austin
does early on in the essay, as ways of “identifying”? Naturally, in order to show that any
speech-act whose direction of fit and onus of match are parallel merits being counted as an
identificatory one, we could simply argue for the converse of KP (i.e. for the claim that if a
speech-act cannot take the SN-form, then it has the force of an identification) and then merely
observe that placing and casting cannot take the SN-form. And Austin is indeed not far from
taking that route at the end of his essay. But our present interest lies in how a certain definite
interplay between direction of fit and onus of match (namely, parallelism) accounts at once
for the necessity of identification and for the impossibility of negation.
Now, in both placing and casting, the onus of match is placed upon what is to be produced (a
pattern in the case of placing, a sample in the case of casting) rather than upon what is taken
for granted (respectively, a sample or a pattern). What is to be produced (whether a pattern or
a sample) is to match what is given (whether a sample or a pattern) – this fact being formally
expressed by the italicized term’s featuring in subject-position (Austin [1953] p.142). Or, to
put things the other way around, that upon which the onus of match lies (i.e. what is to be
matched) just is that which is to be produced – this fact being formally expressed by the
italicizing of the term that features in subject-position (Austin retrospectively draws the
attention of his reader to this feature of his original diagram: see Austin [1953] p.153). By
contrast, in both stating and instancing, the onus of match is placed upon what is given (a
sample in the case of stating, a pattern in the case of instancing), and the italicized term and
the term featuring in subject-position no longer coincide.
Austin himself delineates the resemblance between placing and casting in the following terms
in the penultimate paragraph of the essay, so as to bring out which shared feature blocks the
SN-form from being in order:
The sentence form SN is in order when we are matching the (given) sense/type to a (produced)
type/sense, but not in order when we are matching a (produced) sense/type to the (given)
type/sense.
Austin [1953] p.152
In other words, the shared feature in virtue of which placing and casting do not admit of the
SN-form is (what I shall call, for lack of a better word) the “quantitative polarization” of the
relation of match: in both placing and casting, the match goes from something whose identity
is initially indefinite (a type in the case of placing, a sense in the case of casting) towards
something whose identity is initially definite (respectively: the type, the sense). This
reinforces the argument mounted above in order to secure KP.
But the resemblance between placing and casting may also be delineated thus: in both placing
and casting, what is given (whether a sample, as in placing, or a pattern, as in casting) also
polarizes the arrow of match as its target. In other words, not only is what is given to be fitted

44
What is more, the distinction drawn by Austin between “what-identification” (placing) and “which-
identification” (casting) (Austin [1953] note 1 p.143) obliterates to some extent the essential tie between
identification and contrariety, in virtue of which even the what of “what-identification” is essentially a which.

26
by what is to be produced (this much is true by definition, given that what is given is defined
as the target, and what is to be produced as the source, of the arrow of fit), but the standard
against which the matching is to be assessed, in virtue of which the given is to be fitted by
what is produced, is itself to be encapsulated in what is given (whether the encapsulated
standard be the type of item to be matched by the sense of the T-word, as in placing, or the T-
word sense to be matched by the type of the item, as in casting). This is not to say, by the
way, that such a standard should itself be said to be “given”, since only what lies at the target
of the arrow of fit may aptly be so characterized in accordance with the present terminology
(see Austin [1953] p.141). You might say that what is given not only is to be fitted (again, this
much is true by definition) but is also to show wherein fitting it consists. By contrast, in both
stating and instancing, the standard of match lies in what is produced – which is not to say
that it should be said to be produced, given that only what lies at the source of the arrow of fit
deserves to be so characterized (when it comes to the arrow of match, it is rather what lies at
the target of the arrow that deserves to be so characterized).
In order further to elucidate the resemblance between placing and casting, we need to depart
from Austin’s terminology in one respect. While Austin reserves the term “exemplifying” for
the “loose” counterpart, in S1, to the speech-act of “instancing” (in which one has “to find a
sample to match this pattern to” (Austin [1953] p. 143 et p.147), we shall follow in the steps
of Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art (Goodman [1976]) and provisionally use the term
“exemplify” to designate a “subrelation of the converse of denotation” (Goodman [1976]
p.59) in virtue of which an item refers to or stands for a T-word that applies to it (i.e. that
refers to it in the sense that it “denotes” it). And we shall contrast “exemplify” with
“instantiate”, itself provisionally understood as the relation an item bears to a T-word insofar
as this T-word “denotes” or “subsumes” it. Leaving aside Goodman’s reservations as to the
viability of the Fregean concept of Sinn (sense), exemplification may then be defined as the
relation which a sample (in Austin’s extended use of that term) bears to the T-word to which
it refers or for which it stands insofar as it is being used as a sample (in the ordinary sense of
the word) of the pattern (i.e. the embodied sense) named by that T-word. Sticking to ordinary
usage, we shall confine our own use of the terms “sample” and “pattern” to the sole
designation of the two distinguished relata of the relation of exemplification.
Now, only where fit and match (between sample and pattern) run parallel, in virtue of the
standard of match being encapsulated in what is given (as in placing or in casting), can a
given sample (in Austin’s extended use of that term) be used to exemplify a pattern (in
Austin’s sense) that subsumes it, or a given pattern (in Austin’s sense) be exemplified by
using a sample (in Austin’s sense) which it subsumes. To place a given sample (in Austin’s
sense) or to find a cap to fit a given sample (in Austin’s sense) is not quite to find an
(exemplified) pattern (in the ordinary sense). And to cast a sample or to find a sample (in
Austin’s sense) to fill a given bill is not quite to find an (exemplifying) sample (in the
ordinary sense). But to place a given sample (in Austin’s sense) is to find a pattern (in
Austin’s sense) that it could exemplify, that it could serve as a sample of (in the ordinary
sense). And to cast a sample (in Austin’s sense) as a given pattern (in Austin’s sense) is to
find a sample (in Austin’s sense) that could exemplify that pattern or that could serve as a
sample (in the ordinary sense) of it. In both placing and casting, both sample and pattern (in
Austin’s extended use of these terms) can actually function as sample and pattern (in the more
restricted, ordinary sense). By contrast, neither in stating nor in instancing can the sample (in
Austin’s sense) actually function as a sample (in the ordinary sense), the pattern (in Austin’s
sense) actually be endowed with the status of a pattern (in the ordinary sense), while
preserving the opposition between direction of fit and onus of match.

27
I conclude that Austin’s choice of the terms “sample” and “pattern” is all the more warranted
in the case of those speech-acts whose onus of match parallels the direction of fit as it is less
warranted in general.

10. In the process of completing the diagonal argument based on KP, we have hit upon a more
direct way of securing the conclusion of that argument. A version of the diagonal argument
can easily be mounted, which is based on the following Alternative Key Point (AKP), instead
of being based on KP:
To exemplify as not is nonsense for not to exemplify.
There is no such thing as a negative or counter exemplification.
We have seen that for a speech-act to have its onus of match running parallel to its direction
of fit just is for it to be transformable into an exemplificational speech-act with the same
property. Coupled with AKP, this directly secures the conclusion of the diagonal argument,
namely that those speech-acts whose onus of match and direction of fit run parallel are exactly
those that do not admit of the negative form SN, so that there is an internal link between the
admission of a sentential negation and the interplay between direction of fit and onus of
match.
AKP can be argued for directly, on the ground that none of the two following utterances
ordinarily make sense:
* This is not a sample O of that pattern O.
* This is not a sample O of that pattern O.
Assuming that Austin’s use of the terms “sample” and “pattern” remains faithful to ordinary
usage, this is also direct ground for holding that none of the following utterances of the SN
form make sense:
* This is not a sample A of that pattern A. (* negative placing)
* This is not a sample A of that pattern A. (* negative casting)
Alternatively, if we assume both AKP and the conclusion of the diagonal argument, we see at
once that Austin’s use of the terms “sample” and “pattern” is faithful to ordinary usage and as
it were habilitated by it. AKP thus provides a direct justification for Austin’s terminology.
Our reformulated twofold conclusion, then, runs as follows: first, Austin’s choice of terms
(i.e. his use of the terms “sample” and “pattern”) is all the more justified in the case of those
speech-acts whose onus of match parallels the direction of fit as it is not so justified in
general; second, those speech-acts which do not admit of the negative form SN are exactly
those which do admit of exemplificational inflection, while those which do admit of the
negative form SN are exactly those which do not admit of exemplificational inflection but are
bound to be denotational. To put it in a slogan: exemplification and negation do not mesh
with each other. This twofold conclusion is to be preferred to the previous one on account of
its greater inner consistency. AKP provides the rationale, in the end, both for the distinction
between onus of match and direction of fit (i.e. for Austin’s whole conceptual apparatus) and
for Austin’s terminological apparatus.
In effect, the insight which AKP affords us into the similarity between placing and casting (or
into that between calling and classing) also provides us with a way of resolving our original
puzzle over Austin’s choice of the idiom of “samples” and “patterns”. After all, we observed,
that choice was supposed to capture “our ordinary thought and language about the uses of
speech” (Austin [1953] p.134). We were baffled by Austin’s (on the face of it, quite far-
fetched) invocation of the contrast between “sample” and “pattern” (Austin [1953] p.137) – a
contrast evidently meant to dislodge and replace the traditional contrast between the
“particular” and the “general”. We noted that a sample was not, at any rate, a bare particular,
since its being a sample of some feature was, as it were, built into it; and that a pattern
emphatically did not owe its status to its being a general entity, let alone a separate one. We

28
are now in a position to appreciate the deep reasons, linked to AKP, for adopting the odd
idiom.

V – Negation and Elimination

11. Perhaps the most important corollary of Austin’s Key Point is that all attempts to account
for negation in terms of elimination are bound to end up trafficking in nonsense. Only if the
concept of negative identification or counter-identification made some sense could negation
be understood in terms of the appeal which the so-called “method of elimination” is
recurrently alleged to make to that concept. A proximate target of Austin’s counter-argument
may be the account of negation put forward by Gilbert Ryle in his contribution to the 1929
symposium on the subject (Ryle [1929]; on the 1929 symposium, see Horn [1929] p.68). But
in the last resort it aims to counter, I am prone to think, the sort of account of negation which
was made prominent by the British Idealists45. Ryle’s aforementioned essay, for all its
claimed opposition to such views, seems still to fall under their spell.
The account of negation put forward by Ryle may be read as the result of incautiously
transposing to negation the principle of Cook Wilson’s Contextualist account of predication,
as set out in Chapter IV of Statement and Inference (Cook Wilson [1926/2007]). The
disagreement between Ryle and Austin on the topic of negation is thus directly a function of
their divergent ways of building on Cook Wilson’s thought.
The following excerpt from Ryle’s essay is at once reminiscent of Cook Wilson’s
fundamental insight and inconsistent with Austin’s Key Point:
Take “Jones is not the secretary of the Club.”
First of all, the words as printed give no clue to which element in the whole is being negated;
so in lieu of the elucidation that tone of voice, context, etc., would ordinarily afford, we must
give a little more flesh to this typical logician’s specimen.
I shall bring out four of the possible meanings by completing the sentence with alternative
“but” clauses and italicizing the negated element.
(a) “Jones is not the secretary of the Club (but some other member, Brown, say, is).”
(b) “Jones is not the secretary of the Club (but holds some other office, treasurer, say).”
(c) “Jones is not the secretary of the Club (but of some other body, a sub-committee, say).”
(d) “Jones is not the secretary of the Club (but his tenure of the office belongs to some other
period, last year, say, or next year).”
This brings out not simply the uninteresting linguistic fact that negative sentences may be
elliptical and ambiguous, but much more: (a) that the full explication of what is meant by a
sentence necessarily takes the form of an assertion of otherness; and (b) that the otherness
asserted is not just otherness in general, but otherness as specified or made determinate by
mention of the particular disjunctive set to which the “others” belong as members.
Ryle [1929/] p.88-89
Like Cook Wilson and, before him, the British Idealists, Ryle takes exception to the
formalistic approach to logic, which leads its proponents to abstract entirely from the context
in which a given assertion is made, on the alleged ground that such a context is logically
irrelevant (Mabbott [1929] p.67; Ryle [1929] p.83). A genuine insight underwrites this
rejection of the formalistic approach to logic (call it the “Contextualist Insight”), namely that
no assertion is so much as assessable in terms of truth and falsity – indeed, is so much as an

45
If only because a confrontation with British Idealists becomes unavoidable once it has been conceded to them
that some assertions (namely those with identificatory force) essentially range over incompatibilia. As we
already had occasion to observe at the end of section II, “How to Talk” accommodates the impulses behind both
correspondentist and coherentist views of truth, thereby dislodging them on account of their shared one-
sidedness.

29
assertion at all – unless it is endowed with sense. The Contextualist Insight stands at odds
with all attempts “to itemize the components of a judgment or a proposition” (Palmer [1988]
p.5). Unlike Cook Wilson, though, and like Austin, Ryle takes the context-dependence of the
logical articulation of an assertion to have objective significance. He regards the (alleged)
completed assertions (a)-(d) as distinct informative answers to distinct questions. From that, it
follows that the emphasis which is laid upon one of the terms featuring in the assertion, and in
accordance with which that assertion is logically articulated, is not merely psychological. As
for the negation at play, it is no more psychological than the emphasis marking its scope. Like
Frege, and Austin after him, Ryle takes the content of an assertion to be internally related to
the content of the corresponding question. Unlike Frege, and like Austin, he does not take the
content of an assertion always to be the content of a yes-no question. Unlike Austin, he takes
the content of an assertion never to be the content of a yes-no question. In this respect, Ryle’s
position stands diametrically opposed to Frege’s. While Austin takes exception to Frege’s
thesis that all genuine content, insofar as it is essentially assertible, is internally related to the
content of a corresponding yes-no question, he nonetheless sides with Frege against Ryle in
holding that a negative assertion is essentially a negative answer to a yes-no question. Ryle’s
account does not obviously fly in the face of Geach’s Thesis. For it is congruent with that
thesis as long as the logical predicate of the assertion is distinguished from its grammatical
predicate and construed after the manner of Cook Wilson. Rather, its problematic character
stems from its straightforward commitment to the falsity of KP.
The problem with the alleged completed assertions (a)-(d) listed by Ryle is not that they fail
to make sense, but rather that to the extent that they do make sense, they fail to analyze, as
they are supposed to, their alleged implicit counterparts (i.e. “Jones is not the secretary of the
Club”, etc.); while conversely if they did analyze them, then such counterparts would not
make any sense.

12. Austin’s Key Point undermines, more generally, any version of the view of negation
typically advocated by the British Idealists, in part under the influence of Kant. In effect, in
trying to assess the merits of Ryle’s view over the sort of view made prominent by British
Idealism, one could hardly fail to notice, in H.H. Price’s words, “a very notable assumption
which they both make, namely, that negation […] is connected in some essential way with
disjunction and elimination” (Price [1929] p.97). In holding that “when a ‘predicate’ is denied
of a ‘subject’, that predicate must always be thought as one member of a disjunctive set, some
other member of which set (not necessarily specified) is asserted to be predicable of the
subject” (Ryle [1929] p.86), Ryle was essentially rehearsing a line of analysis taken, under
one guise or another, by all Idealists. I shall designate the view of negation to which this line
of analysis leads the “eliminativist” view.
This is not to say that Ryle, in his contribution to the symposium, does not relinquish certain
tenets of the eliminativist view, but only that he endorses that view in all its essentials46. The
core of that view is, in Mabbott’s terms (who in the symposium advocates a qualified (and
allegedly emended) version of the account put forward by Bosanquet) the thesis that “the
whole force of a genuine negation is eliminative and therefore rests on a true disjunction”
(Mabbott [1929] p.72). Ryle argues against both the reductive inflection and the subjective
inflection undergone by that thesis in Mabbott’s version of it47. That is to say, he denies both
that negation can be accounted for in terms of elimination in a non circular manner

46
As Horn points outs, Ryle, “in his contribution to the symposium, situates himself between Mabbott’s hard-
line asymmetricalist approach and Price’s symmetricalist stance.” (Horn [1989] p.68-69)
47
J.D. Mabbott writes on the second score: “since the real ground of the negative judgment is the corresponding
affirmative, and since as we have tried to show this is never our ground, our negation is to that extent
subjective.” (Mabbott [1929] p.72)

30
(Ryle [1929] p.81-82) and that negation (except when teleological) is but an expedient, from
which only ignorance may exculpate us (Ryle [1929] p.82). Against the latter, Ryle argues
that negation captures knowledge of negative facts48. To the extent that it does not assimilate
negation to falsity by altogether equating negation with “a second order affirmation to the
effect that a certain first order affirmation is false” (Austin [1950] p.129) – a step typically (if
not always avowedly) taken by Idealists, and which Austin and Geach have both inveighed
against (see Horn [1929] p.56-59) – Ryle’s account does not fall prey to Austin’s refutation,
in “Truth” (Austin [1950]), of that faulty assimilation. But the assumption to which any
version of eliminativism, including Ryle’s, is committed, comes out all the more clearly:
eliminativism rests upon the crucial assumption that negative assertions somehow indirectly
relate to the world (i.e. ATN above49). Even Ryle concedes that much, insofar as he ranks
negative facts as second order facts (Ryle [1929] p.88)50. Thus, when they are not altogether
dismissed by eliminativism, negative facts tend to be downplayed by it. It is doubtful whether
the abovementioned Contextualist Insight could give rise to eliminativism without being
vitiated by some lingering coherentism. It would seem, in effect, that the notion of otherness
(i.e. the notion of X being other than Y) is not primarily invoked by eliminativism to give
flesh to the Contextualist Insight but to avoid having to take true negative assertions at face
value51. Thus, consider Wittgenstein’s diagnosis:
Why do people ask whether a negation is equivalent to a disjunction? We might say that they
ask the question because they wish it to be so; they want to do away with negation because
they feel that there is something queer about it. The queerness is that when not-p is true what
is negated is not the case. But negation is only queer because it is looked at in a certain light.
Wittgenstein [1932-1935] p.119
As one recoils from positing some “non-fact” or “negative state of affairs” making the
assertion that “The cat is not on the mat” true, one begins to look for some other fact (than the
one to which that assertion refers) to make it true (on this diagnosis, see Narboux [2005]
p.439-440).
Why say that eliminativism is committed to the truth of ¬KP? Eliminativism’s commitment to
¬KP is straightforwardly discernable in Ryle’s account:
While certainly “Mrs. Smith’s hat is not green” is not an answer to “What colour is Mrs
Smith’s hat?” it is an answer to “What colour is Mrs. Smith’s hat not?” And not only are such
questions possible, but the method of elimination consists precisely in raising and solving
them.
Ryle [1929] p.84
I do wish to maintain the general position that whenever I assert, e.g., A is not B, I am
asserting that some other member than B of the disjunctive set or logical family, of which B is
a member, is that which A is.

48
Insofar as it questions the relegation of negation as merely subjective, Ryle’s account comes quite close to
Bosanquet’s. For Bosanquet had objected to Bradley’s original account of negation on just that score (see
Narboux [2005]).
49
ATN is of course not to be confused with Austin’s thesis that there is a fundamental asymmetry between
saturated expressions (which are endowed with reference but not with sense) and unsaturated expressions (which
are endowed with sense but not with reference).
50
According to Ryle, negative facts are less concrete than positive facts in the sense that they “are ex officio facts
about facts about things, or characters of characters of things, and not directly facts about things or characters of
things” (Ryle [1929] p.88). Thus, the negative fact that the colour of Mrs Smith is other-than-green, which
eventually makes true the assertion “Mrs Smith’s hat is not green”, is a character (being-a-colour-other-than-
green) of the character (say, the colour blue) which happens to characterize Mrs Smith’s hat (see Ryle [1929]
p.88).
51
This is not to say that the notion of otherness is only ever invoked for that negative purpose (see
Narboux [2009] section 2).

31
 And I wish to maintain, too, the further point, that while the denial of a certain quality to A
seems to have A for its subject, exactly as an ascription of it to A does, in fact the real subject
of the denial is not A but the (perhaps) unidentified quality of A.
Ryle [1929] p.87
Here Ryle is clearly taking the negative assertion “Mrs Smith’s hat is not green” to be partly
(if only negatively) identifying (the colour of) Mrs Smith’s hat as not being (the colour) green,
rather than stating (the colour of) Mrs Smith’s hat not to be (the colour) green. The considered
negative assertion does not answer the question whether (the colour of) Mrs Smith’s hat is
green or not, but rather the question which colour Mrs Smith’s hat is not.

13. Another way of bringing out what is wrong with eliminativism is to show that it
misconstrues the so-called “method of elimination” by distorting the sense in which that
method does constitute a valid pattern of inference. Ryle rightly emphasizes that the method
of elimination is unintelligible apart from the admission of negative facts, “so that the attempt
to explain negation in terms of elimination must break down” (Ryle [1929] p.96). So even if it
were true that “the special province of negation is […] the method of elimination”
(Ryle [1929] p.95), in other words that the method of elimination as we ordinarily employ it
captures the very essence of negation, it would remain the case that eliminativism cannot be
construed as a reductive account. But the fundamental flaw of eliminativism lies elsewhere:
such an account rests upon a crucial equivocation on the phrase “negative identification”. The
ordinary method of elimination is a method of “negative identification” in the sense that it is a
negative-method of elimination, not in the sense that it is a method of negative-identification.
Even if there were such a thing as counter-identification and Austin’s Key Point did not hold
(contrarily to what I have claimed), the ordinary method of elimination would still have no
business with it. What is, in effect, the tenor of such a method, as ordinarily employed? Its
purpose is the resolution of what one might call a “problem of identification”. It consists in
indirectly identifying an individual (a property, a location, or what-not) on the basis of an
(evidently finite) complete set of negative premises, each of which is the rejection of a
relevant possibility (i.e. a candidate to the status of solution) and the conjunction of which
amounts to the rejection of all relevant possibilities except one. On such a basis, one
concludes that the sought solution is none other than the unique relevant possibility that is
left. The method of elimination constitutes a valid pattern of inference insofar as the sought
solution cannot but be identical to the unique remaining relevant possibility.
Now, it is true that (i) the solution is reached indirectly, that (ii) the method of elimination
resorts to negation as to an expedient, and that (iii) the conclusive assertion has identificatory
force. But none of the premises (which are negative) has identificatory force, while the
conclusion (which has identificatory force) is squarely positive. One gets closer to the
solution as one adds new negative premises. One narrows one’s focus as it were. But this does
not mean that what stands in need of being identified gets more and more identified, i.e. that it
gets identified to an increasing degree. All it means is that one gathers more and more of the
necessary conditions for the inferential step. It is not true that as the length of the conjunction
of the negative premises grows, an identificatory process of some kind develops. It is even
less misleading to suggest that each of the negative premises identifies to a certain degree or
up to a certain point the sought individual (property, location, or what-not) on the alleged
ground that it answers, to a certain degree, some negative counterpart to the question to be
settled (say, the counterpart question “what colour has Mrs Smith’s hat not?”, as in Ryle’s
analysis). The mistake made by eliminativism is thus that of importing the structure of the
method of elimination back into each of the negative premises that provide its inferential basis
(again, this much is limpid in Ryle’s analysis). Kant saw through this –intermittently at any
rate. He sounded the following note of caution:

32
 The infinite sphere of all that is possible is thereby only so far limited [beschränkt] [by the
negative judgment “The soul is not mortal”] that the mortal is excluded from it, and the soul is
located in the remaining part of its space [Umfang ihres Raums]. But, even allowing for such
exclusion, this space [Raum] still remains infinite, and several more parts of it may be taken
away without the concept being thereby in the least increased, or determined in an affirmative
manner.
Kant [1787] A72-73/B98-99 p.108 (emphasis is mine)
Eliminativism stands or fall with its entitlement to slur Kant’s caution over.

14. I shall bring this essay to a close by sketching an argument that purports to derive one
final lesson from KP, namely that intentionality cannot be construed in terms of directedness
or, to put things the other way around, that intentionality can be so construed only at the cost
of making the two issues of intentionality and negation equally intractable.
If for a thought or for an assertion to engage with the world is for it to aim at or to fasten onto
some definite item (i.e. some object, state of affairs, fact, logical place, or what not) then
either there is such a thing as negative identification or counter-identification or intentionality
has essentially an affirmative character. Many an advocate of intentionalism, rightly recoiling
from the first alternative, has bitten the bullet and endorsed the thesis “that intending can
never have a negative character” (Meinong [1910/1983] §38 p.178; it is to Meinong credit
that he should have made that thesis explicit). The thesis that intending can never have a
negative character evidently expresses an Asymmetricalist Take on Intentionality (ATI). It
evidently entails ATN. The endorsement of KP may evince or create a commitment to ATI. It
certainly creates a commitment to ATI as soon as it is conjoined with the conception of
intentionality as directedness. ATI can be regarded as distorting a genuine insight – to wit, an
insight into the asymmetry between truth and falsity (see Narboux [2009]). As it stands,
though, it constitutes a reductio of the whole attempt to conceive of intentionality in terms of
directedness. Given that ATN is wrong, if the so-called “intentional arrow” is indeed
essentially affirmative, it can only be because the concept of intentionality which that
metaphor underwrites is fundamentally flawed.

One final word: contrary to a widespread opinion, largely conveyed by the tradition, Aristotle
did not equate the λόγος αποφαντικός with “the saying of something about something”. His
definition of λόγος αποφαντικός is irreducibly disjunctive: it is either the predication
[απόφανσις] of something towards something [τίνος κατά τινός] or the predication
[απόφανσις] of something away from something [τίνος από τινός], that is to say it consists
either in affirming or ‘attaching’ something to something [κατά-φασις] or in negating or
‘detaching’ something from something [από-φασις] (Aristotle [1938] De Int. 6:17a25-9)52.
Not admitting of a single general form, the λόγος αποφαντικός cannot be characterized
through the sole τίνος κατά τινός - structure (contrary to the suggestion conveyed by the title
of Tugendhat [1958] and to current practice). That all απόφανσις is putting-forward-as-true is
an altogether distinct issue. Whatever corruptions of logic Aristotle may be historically
responsible for (see Geach [1968]) – and this paper has been about why the concept of λόγος
αποφαντικός merits to be further indicted – he is not responsible for that blunder. On the
contrary, he warned us against it. Austin is one of the very few philosophers who did hear the
warning53.

52
As Wolfgang Künne underlines, Aristotle’s correspondentist account of truth and falsity, which combines the
true-false distinction with the affirmation-negation distinction, thereby takes into account the disjunctive
character of the concept of logos apophantikos (see Künne [2003] p.98).
53
Brentano is another. For him, the “arrow” of objectual intentionality either goes towards or away from the
object. It does not lend being to the object.

33

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Austin, J.L. [1961/1979]
Austin, J.L. [1962a]
Austin, J.L. [1962b]
Cook Wilson, J. [1926/2007]
Ryle G. [1929/]
Strawson, P.F. [1959]
Strawson, P.F. [1950a]
Strawson, P.F. [1950b]
Strawson, P.F. [1964]
Strawson, P.F. [1965]
Strawson, P.F. [1969]
Strawson, P.F. [1970]
Strawson, P.F. [1971]
Strawson, P.F. [1974]
Strawson, P.F. [1987]
Strawson, P.F. [1997]
Strawson, P.F. [1994]
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Ambroise, B. [2006]
Anscombe, G.E.M. [1959]
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