Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 11:51:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: Re: BHA: Nixon's lies


Hi everybody,

No fair jumping on Louis when I was the one who brought up crazy old
Habermas!  I was refering to his speech act stuff, which I believe he gets
from Austin (is this right?), the point of which, as I understand it, is
that truth-telling is the primary purpose of language; that other uses
depend on the "locutionary," or assertion-making aspect, and that, within
this mode, lying, to be effective, is logically dependent on the implicit
"This claim is true" carried by locutionary statements.  

I don't know that this is a correct view to hold, but I'm pretty sure that
it, or something close to it, is Habermas'.

R.



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