Name: How to do things with words
ISBN: 9780674411524

How to do things with words

This work sets out Austin's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts for at least the last ten years of his life. Starting from an exhaustive examination of his already well-known distinction between performative utterances and statements, Austin here finally abandons that distinction, replacing it with a more general theory of 'illocutionary forces' of utterances which has important bearings on a wide variety of philosophical problems.

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mkovachJul 2026

I've spent a surprising amount of time reading philosophy of language, and it's probably done more for my AI prompting than most of the "prompt engineering" articles I've read.

Speech Act Theory, Austin's How to Do Things with Words, and Searle's work changed how I think about prompts. Instead of asking, "What words should I use?", I ask, "What action am I trying to perform?" Is this a request? A commitment? A declaration? An instruction? It turns out LLMs respond differently when you think in terms of acts instead of sentences. With AI able to hallucinate context, facts, intent, and answers, keeping AI on track is much like herding cats.

I've been borrowing those ideas for prompts, reusable skills, and even governance. The side effect of making me look smarter than I really am.

I even ended up writing an article about baseball umpires through the lens of Speech Act Theory: https://pitcherlist.com/umpires-dont-make-calls-they-make-hi.... Baseball, as usual, turns out to be an excellent way to explain philosophy. Or philosophy is an excellent way to explain baseball. I'm currently working on a update, since the ABS challenge system helps improve my position.

My suspicion is philosophy has a lot more to offer AI than ethics alone. Philosophy of language seems like an obvious fit, but epistemology ("what does it mean to know?") and philosophy of mind also seem increasingly practical once you're building systems instead of just chatting with them.

Maybe the shortage isn't philosophy majors. Maybe it's people who can translate philosophy into engineering without making everyone read Kant first.

Heavens, that got wordy, sorry about that.

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jeffmcmahanSep 2018

I've long been an Austin fan -- "How To Do Things With Words" is dazzling.

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jccalhounFeb 2019

History of Sexuality part 1 Michel Foucault puts for the repressive hypothesis which I find myself thinking about a lot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Sexuality

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Erving Goffman uses the metaphor of theater to explain how we perform roles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Ev...

I would say How to Do Things With Words by JL Austin which talks about the power of words to bring things into existence but it really gets into too much detail for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Austin#How_to_Do_Things_...

Similarly Phenomenology of Perception by Merleau-Ponty really influenced me but it is really really really long and dense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_of_Perception

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osteeleApr 2018

The works of the philosopher J. Austin, author of _How to Do Things With Words_[1] (and the wonderfully titled _Sense and Sensibilia_[2]), seem eminently more relevant to law, and I hope are cited as well.

Austin writes about “performative utterances”[3] such as “I promise I will give you a dollar” and “I pronounce you man and wife”, which by their utterance become true.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Austin#How_to_Do_Things_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Sensibilia_(Austin)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance

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softatlasApr 2014

You need to understand the scope of surveillance, its primitive basis:

    Magical Combat should be differentiated from psychic attack,
    with which a large proportion of 'fringe' occultists concern themselves 
    with, and is largely a product of self-delusion and varying degrees of 
    megalomania. True magical combat has its own rules and boundaries, 
    which are known to the skilled, while the trainee must quickly learn 
    them if trauma is to be avoided. Caught up in a situation which s/he 
    finds incomprehensible and alien, the trainee only knows confusion 
    and terror. Stripped of the smug self-assurance of "it can't happen to 
    me" s/he learns to perceive the environment with clarity, to give attention 
    to the rhythms and pulses of the world. Truly, Death is a great teacher. 
    If you can reach forwards and see the moment of your 'death', then that 
    moment will give you a glimpse of your potential.[0]

Look at this from a naturalistic framework. Jesus, for instance, may have simply been a very eccentric man who behaved linguistically and personally in ways that were revolutionary. He probably induced too many magic mushrooms, or some atypical neurological condition set him extremely intuitively in line with a mystical tradition — nevertheless, these are historical implementation details of this Universe. Not uniquely interesting either way you describe it.

Now imagine that these features of a society become more widespread — where you have {J1, J2, J3, ...}, then imposters, {I1, I2, I3, ...}, and then of course randoms, {R1, R2, R3, ...}. This is an oversimplified model, but it captures the problem well enough.

Surveillance becomes a psychological management strategy that naturally emerges given the task of ruling out true adepts (altruistics) and delusionists (potentials who cannot manage their own psychic powers).

"Psychic powers" does not amount to some belief in the supernatural. If I mention the word "chair", this will not sit with you as mental residue (surely, contextual and relational analysis apply, but on the whole it will not) — but if you take recourse to JL Austin's "How to Do Things With Words" — you will certainly need to shake off words like "preapopstaticontinentalism". The first point is that a speaker has produced the word, then it comes that decision procedure of whether or not it has literal meaning. The brain has to do work — which is the basis of "psychic forces" (reducible to behaviors of neurological substrata).

—

[0]: http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/apikindx.html

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brudgersJan 2012

Austin's argument is that "I promise" is unique because saying "I promise" is the act of promising.

"You promised" is not a promise, it is a description of the act of promising (carried out by someone else).

[see How to Do Things with Words: http://www.amazon.com/How-Do-Things-Words-Lectures/dp/067441... ]

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