#gilbert ryle

[philosophybitmaps]

[philosophybits]

Drill dispenses with intelligence, training develops it.

Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind

[hokeoutsider]

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[anaxerneas]

from The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (Library of Living Philosophers)

[villings]

La gente tiende a identificar su mente con el lugar en el que lleva a cabo sus secretos pensamientos.

Gilbert Ryle

[weil-weil-lautre]

Should I, or should I not, put my knowing self down on my list of the sorts of things that I can have knowledge of? If I say 'no', it seems to reduce my knowing self to a theoretically infertile mystery, yet if I say 'yes', it seems to reduce the fishing-net to one of the fishes which it itself catches. It seems hazardous either to allow or to deny that the judge can be put into the dock.

Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind, 187

[quotessentially]

From Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind

[cryptovalid]

Speech Acts: why racial slurs are actions

Recently, I reacted to someone online who said that when they said the n-word, it was not an act and only a word, so other people should get over it.

I responded with the statement that words are in fact actions and gave the examples of marrying and entering into a contract. A good friend asked me to explain that, so I will try.

It has been a very common belief in our culture that language communicates ideas. These ideas are imagined to be private things in our heads, that only the communicator can ‘really’ know. This old model of language suggests that words and symbols just translate what goes on in your mind, and then your audience translates it back into their minds. In this model, nobody *really knows* what other people are thinking, at any time. So maybe this person who just used racial slurs isn’t really a racist *in their mind*. Maybe, somewhere along the translation, *someone* interpreted their thoughts incorrectly. 

Now we can see how this outdated model of language is incredibly forgiving of people who reject responsibility for their use of words. Whether or not someone is a bullshitter or a liar is reduced to an internal, unknowable secret unconnected to their actions. It becomes easy to blame the audience, or even language itself. Who knows if they are racist in their heart of hearts?  

There are many more problems caused by this model, but I’d like to focus on this problem for now.  Wittgenstein, Ryle and Austin are Western philosophers who’ve built entire careers off of debunking this old model of language, if you’re interested.

I’d like to focus mostly on their concept of ‘speech acts’. In their defenses of what they called ‘natural language’, these philosophers noted that not all language communicates an idea at all. We all use language to *do* things. When a referee says ‘Fight!’ at the beginning of a boxing match, he is not expressing an idea in his mind; he is starting the round. The same could be said for hand and flag signals in other sports.

When you make a promise, you are not communicating an idea. You are committing to keeping a promise.

These are clear examples of what philosophers call ‘speech acts‘. They both are and imply actions, both on the part of the listener and the speaker. If these other actions do not or can not follow, the speech act has failed or is illegitimate somehow. Under this definition, language is utterly meaningless without action. The meaning of language is defined by its use in real situations. Other clear examples of speech acts include saying ‘I do‘ at your wedding, signing a contract and... threatening other people.

When you tell another person ‘I will kill you if you do x‘, you are not predicting a possible future or telling the person what you believe about the world. You are attempting to manipulate another’s actions by threatening violence as a possible consequence.

Every piece of language can be described as an act, whether written, signed or spoken. And those acts can be harmful. Bullying, lying and threatening can be examples of harmful speech acts.

Slurs are a shorthand for many harmful speech acts simultaneously. They are used to intimidate, to threaten, to conspire and justify violence. Slurs are so accepted and have done this for so long that entire cultures have adopted them in their languages. Everyone who understands a slur knows the target is considered worthy of humiliation and violence by a large group of people. 

To say that this was not intended or that you didn’t know is to miss the point. If you are not the target of a slur, speaking it invokes a history of socially acceptable violence against the target. This alienates the target and emboldens bigots, whether you know or intend to do this or not. That is the consequence of the act of uttering a slur. It is not ‘just’ a word. Laws are not ‘just’ words and money is not ‘just’ numbers. We live in a society where using language is an act. Sometimes those acts are the difference between life and death, and we don’t get to decide for ourselves what the consequences will be. We can only take responsibility for our actions, and our words count as such. We can just stop using slurs, like people targeted by slurs have been telling us to all along.