Arguing for different types of speech acts - and other acts

Description

Assertives have a word-to-world ’direction-of-fit’: they are validated when true, i.e., when the word fits the world. By contrast, Commissives and Directives have a world-to-word direction-of-fit: they are validated by making the world fit the word. Hence they have no truth value. In politics (and practical argumentation generally) arguments are typically about Commissives or Directives. Nevertheless, many philosophers theorize as if all arguments are about Assertives that have truth values, thereby unduly simplifying matters.