'Yo!' and 'Lo!': The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons

by Rebecca Kukla, Mark Lance

Overview

Much of twentieth-century philosophy was organized around the “linguistic turn,” in which metaphysical and epistemological issues were approached through an analysis of language. This turn was marked by two assumptions: that it was primarily the semantics of language that was relevant to broader philosophical issues, and that declarative assertions were the only verbal acts of serious philosophical interest. In ‘Yo!’ and ‘Lo!’ Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance reject these assumptions. Looking at philosophical problems starting with the pragmatics of language, they develop a typology of pragmatic categories of speech within which declaratives have no uniquely privileged position. They demonstrate that non-declarative speech acts—including vocative hails (“Yo!”) and calls to shared attention (“Lo!”)—are as fundamental to the possibility and structure of meaningful language as are declaratives.

Entering into conversation with the work of Anglo-American philosophers such as Wilfrid Sellars, Robert Brandom, and John McDowell, and Continental philosophers including Heidegger and Althusser, ‘Yo!’ and ‘Lo!’ offers solutions (or dissolutions) to long-standing philosophical problems, such as how perception can be both inferentially fecund and responsive to an empirical world, and how moral judgment can be both objective and inherently motivating.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674031470
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	01/15/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	719,375
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Rebecca Kukla is Professor of Philosophy, University of South Florida.

Mark Lance is Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Justice and Peace, Georgetown University.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• A Note to the Reader

1. Pragmatism, Pragmatics, and Discourse: Mapping the Terrain
1. Varieties of Pragmatism
2. Two Distinctions among Normative Statuses
3. A Typology of Speech Acts
4. More about Agent-Relativity and Agent-Neutrality
5. Several Caveats
6. Entitlement and Epistemic Responsibility
7. Where We Go From Here

2. Observatives and the Pragmatics of Perception
1. Observatives
2. Observatives and Occasion Sentences
3. Observing-That and the Declarative Fallacy
4. The Ineliminability of the First-Person Voice

3. The Pragmatic Structure of Objectivity
1. Observatives, Observation, and Answerability to the World
2. Intersubjectivity
3. Objectivity

4. Anticlimactic Interlude: Why Performatives Are Not That Important to Us
5. Prescriptives and the Metaphysics of Ought-Claims
1. The Pragmatics of Prescriptives
2. Four Ways of Telling Someone What to Do
3. Two Alternative Accounts
4. Reasons, Claims, and Addresses
5. Coda: Categorical Imperatives

6. Vocatives, Acknowledgments, and the Pragmatics of Recognition
1. Two Kinds of Recognitives
2. Vocatives
3. Acknowledgments

7. The Essential Second Person
1. Concrete Habitation of the Space of Reasons
2. Second-Person Speech
3. Tellings, Holdings, and Transcendental Vocatives
4. Speech as Communication and as Calling

8. “We called each other Yo”
1. Interpellation and Induction into Normative Space
2. Membership in a Discursive Community
3. How Many Discursive Communities Are There?
4. Sharing a World and Learning to See
5. On the Equiprimordiality and Entanglement of ‘Yo!’ and ‘Lo!’
6. Fugue

• Appendix (with Greg Restall): Toward a Formal Pragmatics of Normative Statuses
• Index

What People are Saying About This

'Yo!' and 'Lo!' is an innovative investigation into the philosophy of language. It moves the pragmatics of language center-stage in a way unlike anything I have seen before. The authors offer us a new way of approaching important questions about what language does and what we can do with it. This is a truly seminal work.

Joseph Rouse

This project is important and exciting for many reasons, including its new themes for philosophical work, and its compelling new perspectives on some familiar issues. I found myself repeatedly finding unexpected insights and novel ways of formulating or addressing issues, or making wider philosophical connections.
— Joseph Rouse, Wesleyan University

Willem deVries

'Yo!' and 'Lo!' is an innovative investigation into the philosophy of language. It moves the pragmatics of language center-stage in a way unlike anything I have seen before. The authors offer us a new way of approaching important questions about what language does and what we can do with it. This is a truly seminal work.
— Willem deVries, University of New Hampshire

Editorial Reviews

This project is important and exciting for many reasons, including its new themes for philosophical work, and its compelling new perspectives on some familiar issues. I found myself repeatedly finding unexpected insights and novel ways of formulating or addressing issues, or making wider philosophical connections.

Joseph Rouse

'Yo!' and 'Lo!' is an innovative investigation into the philosophy of language. It moves the pragmatics of language center-stage in a way unlike anything I have seen before. The authors offer us a new way of approaching important questions about what language does and what we can do with it. This is a truly seminal work.

Willem deVries

'Yo!' and 'Lo!' is an innovative investigation into the philosophy of language. It moves the pragmatics of language center-stage in a way unlike anything I have seen before. The authors offer us a new way of approaching important questions about what language does and what we can do with it. This is a truly seminal work.

Willem Devries