Helping Others to Understand: A Normative Account of the Speech Act of Explanation.

IF 1.3 2区哲学 0 PHILOSOPHY

TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI:10.1007/s11245-022-09878-y

Grzegorz Gaszczyk

引用次数: 0

Abstract

This paper offers a normative account of the speech act of explanation with understanding as its norm. The previous accounts of the speech act of explanation rely on the factive notion of understanding and maintain that proper explanations require knowledge. I argue, however, that such accounts are too demanding and do not reflect the everyday practice of explanation and the attribution of understanding. Instead, I argue that the non-factive, objectual attitude of understanding is sufficient for a proper explanation. On the normative level, explanations are governed by an audience-centred norm, i.e., they are sensitive to the epistemic position of the audience. According to the proposed account, an explanation is a communicative act in which one puts the audience in a position to understand the explained phenomenon. This proposal fits into the recent wave of applications of the normative account and makes space for the pluralism of illocutionary acts.

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帮助他人理解:言语解释行为的规范描述。

本文对以理解为规范的言语解释行为进行了规范解释。先前对言语解释行为的描述依赖于理解的实际概念，并认为适当的解释需要知识。然而，我认为，这样的描述过于苛刻，并没有反映出解释的日常实践和理解的归属。相反，我认为非事实的、客观的理解态度足以提供适当的解释。在规范层面上，解释受以受众为中心的规范支配，也就是说，它们对受众的认知立场很敏感。根据提出的说法，解释是一种交际行为，在这种行为中，一个人使听众能够理解被解释的现象。这一建议符合最近规范解释的应用浪潮，并为言外行为的多元化提供了空间。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY-

CiteScore

3.10

自引率

7.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： Topoi''s main assumption is that philosophy is a lively, provocative, delightful activity, which constantly challenges our received views, relentlessly questions our inherited habits, painstakingly elaborates on how things could be different, in other stories, in counterfactual situations, in alternative possible worlds. Whatever its ideology, whether with the intent of uncovering a truer structure of reality or of soothing our anxiety, of exposing myths or of following them through, the outcome of philosophical activity is always the destabilizing, unsettling generation of doubts, of objections, of criticisms. It follows that this activity is intrinsically a ''dialogue'', that philosophy is first and foremost philosophical discussion, that it requires bringing out conflicting points of view, paying careful, sympathetic attention to their structure, and using this dialectic to articulate one''s approach, to make it richer, more thoughtful, more open to variation and play. And it follows that the spirit which one brings to this activity must be one of tolerance, of always suspecting one''s own blindness and consequently looking with unbiased eye in every corner, without fearing to pass a (fallible) judgment on what is there but also without failing to show interest and respect. Topoi''s structure is a direct expression of this view. To maximize discussion, we devote most or all of this issue to a single topic. And, since discussion is only interesting when it is conducted seriously and responsibly, we usually request the collaboration of a guest-editor, an expert who will identify contributors and interact with them in a constructive way. Because we do not feel tied to any definite philosophical theme (or set of them), we choose the topic with absolute freedom, looking for what is blossoming and thriving, occasionally betting on what might - partly through our attention - ''begin'' to blossom and thrive. And because we do not want our structur e to become our own straightjacket, we are open to contributions not fitting the ''topos'', and do not rule out in principle the possibility of topic-less issues.