Review Essay of Dorit Bar‐On’sSpeaking My Mind

Abstract

MIT "Avowals" are utterances that "ascribe [current] states of mind"; for instance utterances of 'I have a terrible headache' and 'I'm finding this painting utterly puzzling' (Bar-On 2004: 1).And avowals, "when compared to ordinary empirical reports…appear to enjoy distinctive security" (1), which Bar-On elaborates as follows:A subject who avows being tired, or scared of something, or thinking that p, is normally presumed to have the last word on the relevant matters; we would not presume to criticize her self-ascription or to reject it on the basis of our contrary judgement.Furthermore, unlike ordinary empirical reports, and somewhat like apriori statements, avowals are issued with a very high degree of confidence and are not easily subjected to doubt.(3)The project of this ambitious, original, and challenging book is to explain why avowals have this distinctive security.Bar-On's guiding idea is that avowals "can be seen as pieces of expressive behavior, similar in certain ways to bits of behavior that naturally express subjects' states" (227).Crying and moaning are natural expressions of pain, yawning is a natural expression of tiredness, reaching for beer is a natural expression of the desire for beer, and so on.In some important sense, avowals are supposed to be like that.In what sense, though?It will be useful to begin with the simplest answer. Simple ExpressivismAccording to "Simple Expressivism" (228), a position often associated with Wittgenstein, the comparison between avowals and natural expressions is very close-too close, in fact, for Bar-On to endorse it.Crying is a natural expression of pain, but someone who cries because he is in pain is not asserting that he is in pain.And someone who cries while slicing shallots cannot thereby be convicted of making a false claim about his sensations.The simple expressivist takes a similar view of avowals: an utterance of 'I am in pain' is not true or false, any more than an act of crying is.The utterance is a verbal replacement for crying and-contrary to appearances-performs much the same function.Avowals

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