Doables

Abstract

Just as our scientific inquiries are framed by our prior conception of what can be observed – that is, of observables – so our practical deliberations are framed by our prior conception of what can be done, that is, of doables. And doables are socially constructed, with the result that they vary between societies. I explore how doables are constructed and conclude with some remarks about the implications for moral relativism.

Keywords:

• action
• speech acts
• ethics
• moral psychology
• moral relativism

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the audiences of all the conferences where this paper was presented and also Gabriel Abend, Alexandra Aikhenvald, Paul Boghossian, Frederique deVignemont, Imogen Dickie, Randall Dipert, Melis Erdur, Joan Manes, Bruce Mannheim, David Owens, Herlinde Pauer-Studer, Gunter Senft, Bambi Schieffelin, Will Starr, Sharon Street, Daniel B. Velleman, and the Mid-Atlantic Reading Group in Ethics (MARGE), especially members Paul Bloomfield and Kyla Ebels Duggan. The author also thanks his Anthropology professor at Amherst College, L. Alan Babb.

Notes on contributor

J. David Velleman is a professor of philosophy at New York University. His most recent book is How we get along (Cambridge, 2009). His Foundations for moral relativism will appear in open-access format from Open Book Publishers in the first half of 2013. He is a founding co-editor of the open-access journal Philosophers’ Imprint.

Notes

^†An earlier version of this paper was presented at a UCLA conference in honor of Barbara Herman. The commentator on that occasion was Carol Voeller. It was also presented as a Zeno Lecture at the University of Leiden; as the John Dewey Memorial Lecture at the University of Vermont; at a workshop on truth-telling and trusting at the University of Sheffield; and to the philosophy departments of Rice University and the University of Notre Dame.

1. While using the term ‘community’, I acknowledge that it is problematic. All of the alternative terms (‘culture’, ‘society’, and so forth), are problematic as well. There are no well-defined communities or societies or cultures. When we theorize about them, we are simplifying. But I think that the simplification is warranted as an idealization for the purpose of theory.

2. On the individuation of options, see also Smith (2010). Of course, it will not come as news to philosophers that an action is always performed under a description. But the phrase ‘performed under a description’ is potentially misleading, because it means different things to the agent than it does to an observer. An observer sees a bodily movement and considers various descriptions under which it might have been performed. But the agent did not choose among different descriptions for that bodily movement; he chose among different descriptions to enact; and the bodily movements by which he enacted his chosen description were determined, at the most basic level, by sub-agential skills stored in his brain and body. So even if there is a neutral substrate of movement that can be variously interpreted, that substrate is irrelevant, indeed invisible, from the agent's point of view; from the agent's point of view, there are merely act descriptions to realize.

3. Note that Schutz's thesis does not apply to solitary actions: you do not choose recognized ways of being bored in order to make yourself interpretable to others. (If others were around to interpret you, you might not be so bored.) I would say that you choose recognized ways of being bored in order to be interpretable to yourself.

4. For a general discussion of whether there are lexical universals, see von Fintel and Matthewson (2008, 139–201).

5. As Randall Dipert has pointed out to me, there are certainly universal categories of action. Even if ingesting is not among them, a category such as self-moving, or locomotion, probably is. But such categories are universal in the sense that every community has action concepts that fall within the category, not in the sense that every community has the category itself as an action concept.

6. See the special issue on terms for body parts in Language Sciences 28 (2006). See also Williams (1980).

7. Elsewhere Ardener suggests that even the categories of action and behavior are socially constructed. Among the Ibo, he claims, all generic terms for behavior carry connotations of social approval or disapproval. So there is only good or bad behavior for the Ibo, not behavior simpliciter. See Ardener (1973), 153.

8. ‘Illocutionary forces are, so to speak, natural kinds of uses of language …’ (Searle and Vanderveken 1985, 179); ‘[A]s far as illocutionary forces are concerned there are five and only five fundamental types and thus five and only five illocutionary ways of using language’ (Searle and Vanderveken 1985, 52).

9. A similar proposal has been made for the reportative evidential in Korean by Chung (2006).

10. For an attempt to explain the use of evidentials (among other linguistic phenomena) in terms of cultural values, see Everett (2008). As Daniel B. Velleman has pointed out to me, some English utterances come close to having a presentational force: ‘Take, for instance, the claim that he's out hunting.’ Yet even this utterance differs from the Quechua, since its fundamental force is directive, so that it has a world-word direction of fit. The response ‘No, let's not consider it’ would be in order.

11. For an opposing argument, see von Fintel and Matthewson (2008, 189). von Fintel and Matthewson say that Keenan's argument is to their knowledge the only attempt to challenge the universality of Grice's maxims. I would argue that the examples that I am about to cite in the text – examples of conventional uncooperativeness in conversation – have similar implications for Grice.

12. See also the quotation from Geertz (1960, 246).

13. As Daniel B. Velleman has pointed out to me, these utterances are not counterexamples to the Gricean maxim if they intentionally flout it in order to establish the speaker's superiority – as if to say, for example, ‘Someone is here but I'm not going to tell you who it is.’ But Ochs Keenan's description indicates that uninformativeness is conventional in the language, not exceptional in a way that would convey such a message.

14. See Gombrich (1971, 41):Lying is bound to be frequent in a culture much concerned with the preservation of status ... and dignity ...  – saving face; the most trivial matter which might in any way appear discreditable to the speaker is concealed almost as a matter of course.

15. The villagers say, on the one hand, ‘We live with two faces,’ and on the other, ‘The English don't lie’ (Gombrich 1971, 35, 43). Here is a similar report, of a remote Greek village where honor and prestige are similarly valued (Friedl 1962, 80):In the village the word for lies, psemata, is used much more freely, with less emotional intensity, and with a milder pejorative connotation than Americans use the English word. ‘Let's tell a few more lies and then go home,’ a man once remarked jovially near the end of a social evening. To accuse someone of mendacity is not the gross insult it is in the United States; it may be meant as a statement of fact in a situation in which, in village expectation, it would not be unusual for a person to attempt some deception.

See also du Boulay (1976).

16. Gilsenan (1976). On the meaning of ‘kizb’, see also Harris (1996).

17. See Sweetser (1987, 82). Sweetser claims, on the basis of fairly narrow cross-cultural evidence, that there is a core concept of lying that is universal.

18. Here are a few further examples. The linguist Wierzbicka writes,There are many languages which have no exact equivalent of the word warning and which have, instead, words for modes of communication which have no equivalents in English. For example, Japanese has the word satosu, which combines some of the components of the English concept codified in the word warning with some other components: an assumption that the speaker has authority over the addressee, the intention of protecting the addressee from evil, and good feelings toward the addressee … . In English, the assumption of authority is encoded in verbs such as order and forbid, but it is never combined (lexically) with the intention to protect. … English doesn't have any verb which would combine authority, responsibility, and care … ’ (1985, 494).As Wierzbicka remarks, it may make no sense to talk of ‘“questions in Eskimo”, “commands in Burundi”, or “blessings and curses in Yakut”’, because ‘English words such as question, command, or blessing identify concepts which are language-specific’ (2009, 492).

There may even be cultural differences in the conceptualization of null speech acts, that is, acts of not speaking. In Anglo-Saxon culture, silence is strenuously avoided in social situations; but there are cultures in which ‘silent co-presence’ is a way of socializing, so that hosts and guests may sit silently for the first half hour of a visit. These cultures afford their members an act of sociable silence that is not available to Anglo-Saxons. See Basso (1970), Reisman (1989, 112–3), Searles (2000).

19. I discuss this phenomenon in Velleman (1997).

20. Schank and Abelson use the term ‘script’, which strikes my ear as implying that actions and utterances are mandated with more specificity than what Schank and Abelson actually have in mind. I prefer the term ‘scenario’, which suggests a greater degree of indeterminacy, leaving room for improvisation. ‘Scenario’ is the term that was used for the standard plot outlines on which performers improvised in the Commedia dell'Arte tradition, and it was adopted by some of the originators of Chicago ‘improv’ theater (see Sawyer 2003, 20 ff.). Where Schank and Abelson speak of scripts, and I speak of scenarios, Goffman (1959, 16 et passim) speaks of routines. Sawyer discusses the variable specificity of scripts, scenarios, or routines in his 2001 paper. See also Bicchieri (2006, 93 ff.).

21. ‘This is a stick-up!’ Did robbers actually say this back in the day? Was it said only in the movies? Or was it invented for use on the radio, where the audience could not see what was happening?

22. Note that ‘sightseeing’ is not what moral philosophers call a thick concept, since it is evaluatively neutral. To offer someone a day of sightseeing is neither to recommend nor to disparage the option. Yet the presence of ‘sightseeing’ in our practical repertoire has some practical import simply in virtue of defining the option in the first place – in virtue, that is, of constituting it as a doable. The notion of thick descriptions was introduced by Ryle (1971, 480–96). See also Geertz (1973, Chapter 1).