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Presumptions in speech acts
Cristina Corredor
University of Valladolid
corredor@fyl.uva.es
PREPRINT VERSION OF THE ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN: Argumentation, published online 1 March
2017 (DOI 10.1007/s10503-017-9425-y)
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to explore the viability of accounting for presumptions as a
subtype of verdictive speech act, within the framework of the Austinian approach to
speech acts. The available set of felicity conditions is examined and worked out, in order
to try and account in particular for a main feature of presumptions, namely, their function
in shifting the burden of proof. In order to extend the Austinian framework as required,
the notion of pragmatic presupposition accommodation is shown to be a useful device.
Keywords: presumptions, speech acts, verdictives, presupposition accommodation,
Austin
1. Introduction
The concept of presumption in the field of argumentation theory is usually introduced
with a historical reference to Whately’s Elements of Rhetoric (1846) and his discussion
of the probative duties and responsibilities incurred by the participants in a deliberative
discourse (s. Hansen 2003, Kauffeld 1998). As Lilian Bermejo-Luque (2016) has noticed,
there are two main views in the literature about presumptions, the inferential and the
dialogical ones. According to the inferential view, presumptions are the conclusions of
inferences drawn on the basis of a presumption rule and a premise stating a presumption-
raising fact. The dialogical view on presumptions takes these to be claims categorized by
a precise dialogical status. In contrast, Bermejo-Luque claims that presumptions can be
characterized as non-inferential speech acts. Sharing this intuition with her, my aim is to
further explore the presumptions-as-speech-act hypothesis, taking as a background the
standard framework of speech act theory. Yet there is a point in which I will depart from
her views. Bermejo-Luque contends that the correctness of presumptions does not depend
on the pragmatics of dialogical procedures. Contrastingly, my aim is to explore the
viability of accounting for presumptions within the framework of an Austinian approach
to speech acts, whereby illocutions are conceptualized as resulting from communicative
exchanges constrained by certain conditions.
Before starting, it is also obliged to mention Walton’s first speech-act account of
presumptions. In his (1993), he characterized these as a speech act “half way between
assertion and (mere) assumption (supposition)” (p. 125). Moreover, he gave a detailed set
of “essential conditions” for the speech act of presumption in dialogue (grouped in subsets
of preparatory, placement, retraction and burden conditions). These were seen as the
procedural and dialogical conditions for raising presumptions. In my view, the intuition
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underlying this approach is correct. My main objection to this pioneering model has to
do with the implausibility that such complex sets of rules can be seen as underlying the
performance of competent speakers. Moreover, it seems to me that Walton’s first speech-
act account of presumptions was not in fact theoretically independent from an
argumentative frame. On the contrary, he seems to have been presupposing an
argumentative setting where presumptions should have a role. Only under this
presupposition makes sense that the retraction conditions embed the notion of “giving a
good reason” (p. 139). This requirement was nevertheless not sufficiently supported.
Remember that, for Walton, presumptions where a type of assertive speech act. It would
be necessary at least to show how the requirement might be integrated within the
framework of speech act theory, on pain of being subject to the objection of
intellectualizing in argumentation-theoretical terms the well-founded notion of speech
act.
My aim in what follows is to try and approach a concept of presumption in speech-act
theoretic terms. This approach by no means aims to question the inferential account. It is
intended to just show the plausibility of an alternative speech-act approach able to explain
those pragmatic aspects of presumptions that cannot easily be accounted for in terms of
premises and conclusions. My contention will be that at least some pragmatic aspects of
presumptions can be accounted for in terms of illocutionary acts and their felicity
conditions. Before being in a situation to present my own analysis, however, I am going
to consider two prominent accounts of presumptions within the field of argumentation
theory, namely, those due to Ullman-Margalit and Walton. My aim is to benefit from the
significant work already available and approach the act of presuming taking into account
what seems to me some relevant and well-established findings.
2. Main features characterizing presumptions
Within the literature on presumptions, two main features have been identified as essential
to characterize presumptions: (i) their function in communicative exchanges to enable the
line of dialog to go ahead, even in the absence of sufficient evidence or reasons to support
a claim or conclusion; and (ii) their function in shifting the burden of proof and, as Walton
puts it, “the shifting of the burden of rebuttal” (1993: 140).
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The first aspect is already to be found in Ullman-Margalit (1983). She limits her inquiry
to presumptions viewed as “an assumption made in advance of practical deliberation” (p.
143), where they play the role of rational prerequisites to arrive at a decision about action.
Interestingly, when she discusses the particular example of a jury having to make a
decision, she remarks that in the absence of sufficient evidence, or in cases of conflicting
evidences, presumptions are allowed as long as no evidence or no sufficient evidence to
the contrary is produced (p. 146). In line with Ullman-Margalit, Walton has noticed that
presumptions in everyday dialog are very common devices used to assist dialog to move
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In everyday conversational argumentation, it can be said that the burden of proof, i.e. the obligation to
justify what has been asserted by providing evidence or reasons, falls on the proponent who makes an
assertion, provided that the respondent requires him or her to do so. The germane concept of burden of
rebuttal is attributed to the respondent who challenges a previous assertion made by another party (cf. e.g.
Walton 2010). However, the idea that the participants in a dialogue can incur justificatory duties and
responsibilities cannot be constrained to argumentation dialogues. In general, the performance of speech
acts is connected to certain responsibilities and duties undertaken by the participants, and some of these
may be justificatory as well. This is the view to be further developed here.
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forward towards reaching its goal by argumentation used for that purpose. In his (1993),
he already claimed that a presumption can be justified (“in reasoning”) on a practical
basis, “on the grounds that it can enable the line of reasoning to go ahead, even in the
absence of absolute knowledge of what will happen in a particular situation where some
commitment to action or inaction needs to be made.” (p. 129) Also in his new dialogical
theory (Walton 2008), where presumptions are conclusions resulting from a type of
inferential reasoning, this aspect is vindicated. In my view, this important function in
communication is directly related and may help to explain the second essential trait of
presumptions to be here considered.
For a second aspect of the pragmatics of presumptions to be taken into account concerns
its function in shifting the burden of proof and, as Walton put it, when considering the
essential conditions for the speech act of presumption “the key idea is the shifting of the
burden of rebuttal” (1993: 140) More importantly, also in his new dialogical theory he
still suggests that in everyday dialog presumptions can be seen as a kind of speech act
that shifts roles and burdens. He claims that presumptions are linked “to the shifting back
and forth of an existing burden of proof in a structured dialog setting.” (p. 214). This
essential feature has in fact been acknowledged and highlighted by most specialists
working on presumptions, notwithstanding their different views of the dynamics of such
effect.
Walton’s focus on everyday dialog is worth of notice. In legal argumentation, particularly
in presumptions of law the procedure is usually institutionalized so as to regulate the turn-
taking of participants and other aspects of the interaction. This regulation affects, among
other things, the assignment and shifting of the burden of proof. In non-formal, everyday
argumentative interactions, however, no such explicit arrangement is available. This
makes it disputable that the very notion of presumption should require being associated
to that of the burden of proof, which in its turn seems to presuppose an argumentative
setting. One reason to oppose this widely accepted view has to do with the fact that this
feature seems to challenge a straight approach to presumptions qua illocutions,
particularly so if presumptions are to be seen as a subtype of assertive speech act –for
which, in principle, no argumentative setting is called for. Nevertheless, it seems to me
that the need to account for this important function in shifting the burden of proof is also
what motivates the main intuition underlying the inferential account. For only in the
course of a dialogical interaction seems a requirement concerning the burden of proof or
rebuttal to make sense.
I take it to be correct that the very notion of presumption can be characterized by
connecting it to a conventional effect, namely its shifting the burden of proof, to the extent
that this effect can be seen as a defining feature that distinguishes presumptions from
other assertive speech acts. Nevertheless, I do not think that this assumption necessarily
entails that the communicative interaction is explicitly argumentative. For reasons to be
considered below, presumptions can be seen as a subtype of verdictives, where the usual
speaker’s obligation to support the utterance (by providing appropriate data, evidence,
reasons, etc.) is shifted to the interlocutor.
This second aspect of presumptions, their shifting the burden of proof (or the burden of
rebuttal) allows the exchange to go ahead under the presumption, that as such does not
need to be supported by the interactants. Only when new evidences or reasons make it
unreasonable to stick to the presumption (a circumstance that can adopt the form of the
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presentation of a rebuttal, but does not need to be so), shall the interactants reassess and
restate their positions. From a speech-act theoretic perspective, what needs to be
accounted for is the characteristic obligations and shifting of burden that presumptions
involve.
To recapitulate, I propose that the following points can be considered well established
and should constitute the points of departure of our exploration in what follows. Firstly,
presumptions can be viewed as a type of assertive speech act, close to (but not identical
to) assumptions or suppositions. Secondly, an important function of presumptions in
communicative interactions is to enable the dialog go ahead, even in the absence of
sufficient evidence or in cases of conflicting evidences, so as to facilitate the interaction.
Thirdly, this function is made possible by means of the peculiar shifting in the burden of
proof that characterizes presumption. In all that, I am here endorsing the analysis put
forward by the above mentioned accounts.
Nevertheless, and in contrast with them, the analysis I am going to suggest, if acceptable,
aims to show that an explicitly argumentative setting is not necessary for the act of
presuming to take place qua communicative action. This claim in no way attempts to
question other, well established models within the field of argumentation theory.
Undeniably, the act of presuming can and play a role in many argumentative dialogues.
Moreover, as the inferentialist models have showed, a presumption can be reconstructed
as the conclusion of an inference drawn with the help of an inference rule. The analysis I
am putting forward can be seen as complementary to those models. My reconstruction
does not focus on the underlying inference possibly backing the introduction of a
presumption, but on the pragmatic conditions and effects that characterise the act of
presuming, as seen from a participant’s perspective.
Still, I think that my account can be relevant to argumentation theory in the following
respect. As I am going to argue, a correct presumption is a reasonable endorsement that
a speaker presents to an addressee (or audience) and that, if acknowledged by him or her
as such, assigns a dialectical obligation to the addressee him or herself. The endorsement
can be seen as reasonable to the extent that it is based on reasons, or might be supported
by explicitating the reasons on which it is based. To that extent, the pragmatics of the
speech act of presuming deploys an underlying dialectical structure of obligations to
justify and acknowledgement of those obligations. It is this dimension of speech, as
applied to the particular case of presumptions, what I am trying to elucidate by means of
the present analysis.
3. The framework of speech act theory: The Austinian approach
Now, my proposal is to see presumptions as a subtype of verdictive speech act,
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within
the framework of the Austinian approach. In order to explain the shifting in the burden of
proof (or rebuttal) that presumptions characteristically accomplish, I will resort to the
notion of Austinian presupposition accommodation, i.e. Austinian accommodation of
felicity conditions, as this notion has been worked out within the above-mentioned
framework.
2
In Austin’s (1962), the category of verdictives comprises such speech acts as find (as a matter of fact),
hold (as a matter of law), take it, describe, assess, diagnose, estimate, etc. Usually, Searle (1969)’s category
of assertives is considered to approximately overlap with the former.
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According to Austin (1962) seminal work, speech acts are actions having certain effect
on the social and interpersonal world of the interactants, an effect that he described as
conventional.
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The Austinian approach to speech acts takes it that this effect is
conventional due to the fact that it is brought about on the basis of an agreement, possibly
tacit (and possibly institutionalized), among the relevant participants (Sbisà 2002: 433).
Moreover, speech acts are seen as context-changing social actions (Gazdar 1981: 68),
whereby making a speech act can be seen as bringing about changes in the social and
interpersonal environment. The Austinian account contends that whereas locutionary acts
bring about representations of states in the world, illocutionary acts produce changes in
the normative states and relationships of the participants, namely, changes that affect their
commitments, obligations and duties, as well as their rights, entitlements and powers, and
other similar deontic stances (Sbisà 2002, 2006; Witek 2013, 2015) Briefly, the
contention is that illocutions modify the commitments and entitlements of the
interactants. Thus it is claimed that the central function of illocutionary acts is to bring
about changes in the normative structure of social and interpersonal reality. Thus,
following the Austinian account of speech acts,
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the pragmatic force of an illocutionary
act is to be explained in virtue of its conventionally determined effects. These effects in
turn should be described by reference to the normative states of the participants and the
changes that the speech act brings about. Different types of pragmatic force are to be
characterized depending on the type of conventional effects on the normative stances of
the interactants.
To better explain why I think that this framework can be of help for an account of
presumptions as speech acts, some clarifications can be in order here concerning the more
general setting of speech act theory. As stated above, my contribution attempts to show
that presumptions can be accounted for in purely pragmatic (illocutionary) terms and thus
that presumptions can be seen as speech acts. The account is not aimed to call into
question the inferentialist one, but to show how in conversational settings, where no
presumptive rules of inference have been introduced (not in an explicit or conscious way),
presumptions are nevertheless available as a speech-act conversational move. In my view,
Austin’s notion of verdictive speech act allows us to understand why the corresponding
illocution entails a justificatory obligation. Moreover, and considering other prominent
approaches to presumptions, I take it that presumptions qua verdictives transfer this
justificatory obligation to the addressee; how this move can take place is what remains to
be elucidated within an Austinian approach. From this perspective, my contention is that
the existence of justificatory obligations is inherent to the pragmatics of speech. Austin’s
notion of verdictive nicely accounts for the justificatory obligation that is constitutively
linked to these speech acts, without presupposing an inferential rule.
This is also a reason to prefer Austin’s vs. Searle’s perspective on speech acts. There are
many points in common between both approaches and, in particular, it can be considered
3
As is well known, Austin listed a group of “things that are necessary”, of “necessary conditions” for a
speech act to be correctly, successfully performed, which he worked out as a set of procedimental rules.
These comprised, (A.1) that there must exist a conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect,
this procedure including the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances, and (A.2)
that the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the
particular procedure at issue; (B.1) that the procedure must be carried out by all participants correctly and
(B.2) completely, and (C.1) that when the procedure is designed for use by persons having certain thoughts
and feelings, or (C.2) for the initiation of certain consequential conduct on the part of any participant, then
the participants must in fact satisfy these conditions as well. (Cf. 1962: 14-15)
4
In previous works, I have presented and further developed this approach (Author 2011, 2014)
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that Austin’s verdictives and Searle’s assertives overlap to a great extent, although not to
all extents. For Searle, assertives are essentially speech acts whose illocutionary purpose
is “to commit the speaker (in varying degrees) to something's being the case, to the truth
of the expressed proposition.” (1975: 12) Moreover, he declares that this class will
contain most of Austin’s expositives and many of his verdictives. Within Searle’s
taxonomy, presumptions could be seen then as assertives in informal, conversational
contexts. In in institutional or socially institutionalised contexts, the act of presuming
should in my view be typified as a declarative (i.e., an act able to “bring about some
alteration in the status or condition of the referred to object or objects solely in virtue of
the fact that the declaration has been successfully performed”, 1975: 17). This treatment,
if correct, would be fully in line with the analysis here suggested, in what concerns the
classification of presumptions within a given taxonomy.
My main reluctance to endorse Searle’s framework has to do with a conceptual point
concerning the normativity of speech. Both Austin and Searle agreed that successful
speech acts, correctly performed, produce an illocutionary effect. For Austin, this effect
must be seen as conventional. For Searle, the means to attain it are conventional (the set
of constitutive rules for the use of the force indicator device); yet the illocutionary effect
is in itself not so, at least not in the general case. Presupposing that other conditions hold,
the essential rule is stated in terms of the speaker’s illocutionary purpose, and the
illocutionary effect amounts to the hearer’s uptake of this purpose. For Austin, the
hearer’s uptake was a necessary condition, but he stressed the further condition that the
effect of the speech act should take place as a result of the procedure being followed, as
a conventional effect. In contrast to this notion of conventionality, in some of his writings
Searle has explicitly accepted that the illocutionary effect be interpreted as the hearer’s
uptake of the speaker’s intentions: “Illocutionary effect is a matter of understanding the
utterance, and is roughly equivalent to Austin's ‘illocutionary uptake’.” (Searle 1992:
140). We should remember here that uptake was for Austin only one necessary
condition for a speech act to be successfully performed, the second one being the
bringing about of a conventional effect.
In my view, Searle’s tenet makes it difficult to account for the main traits of
presumptions concerning the kind of obligations and rights, and other normative stances
that the interlocutors engage in. Even if, from Searle’s perspective, the speaker’s
commitment to the truth of his/her statement can give rise to an obligation to justify, this
cannot be seen as part of the illocutionary effect of the utterance. Moreover, it is difficult
to considerer as part of the illocutionary effect what can be seen as one of the main
specificities of the act of presuming, namely, its shifting of the burden of proof. For one
thing, the fact that this shift takes place requires more than the speaker’s intentions that it
be so. It requires the addressee’s recognition of his/her obligation in the context, given
his/her acknowledgement of the meaning and force that the speaker’s utterance has had
in the context.
Notwithstanding these considerations, and although Austin’s attention to the normative
aspects of speech acts is more detailed than Searle’s, the above-stated tenets cannot be
attributed to him in a straightforward way. This is why I am here applying and further
extending what I have already termed the Austinian approach to speech acts (Sbisà’s
(2002, 2006; see also Witek 2015.) Sbisà’s original interpretation of Austin’s views
proposes to consider the conventional effect of speech acts as conventional in that this
effect depends on the interactants’ agreement that it has taken place: “I suggest (…) that
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the bringing about of conventional effects depends on agreement about their coming into
being among members of the relevant social group” (Sbisà 2002: 48) Moreover, these
effects are understood as changes in the normative relationships of the interactants,
namely, in their mutual obligations and rights, and other similar deontic stances (cf. Sbisà
2006). Therefore, and taking into account the previous considerations, in order to extend
this framework to presumptions, I will take a point of departure in Sbisà’s characterization
of verdictives. This move can allow us a first, tentative approach, in which the usual
felicity conditions for verdictives should integrate the two main features of presumptions
as identified above.
4. Presumptions as a subtype of verdictive speech acts
According to Austin, verdictives are typified as the act of giving a verdict or finding,
formal or informal, final or provisory, “upon evidence or reasons as to value or fact”
(1962: 150, 152) In her reworking of this notion, Sbisà has proposed that verdictives are
characterized by the following interactional effects:
“A speaker performing verdictives in an interactional situation such as a public
debate presents him or herself as willing to take on responsibility for the
correctness of his or her claims and as acting on the basis of some kind of reliable
and testable cognitive competence. The audience is supposed not merely to
acquire the speaker's findings, but also some of his or her evidence or reasons and
thereby of his or her competence.” (Sbisà 2006: 167)
Taking this extended analysis as a starting point, I take it that verdictives are illocutionary
acts that consist of the issuing of a (possibly provisional) finding on the basis of evidence
or reasons (i). They presuppose, as a preparatory condition, that the speaker has access to
the elements required for a justified finding (data, criteria, and the like) on the relevant
subject matter, so that she must count as cognitively competent (ii). They commit the
speaker to giving evidence or reasons for her verdictive if requested (iii), and give license
to the addressee to issue analogous verdictives on the same subject matter (iv).
My intention in what follows is to explore and give support to the suggestion that
presumptions are a subtype of verdictive speech act. For the sake of simplicity, we are
going to consider presumptions that are or can be made explicit in the context of a
communicative exchange, so that it makes sense from the beginning to consider them to
be a type of speech act.
5
In such cases, my suggestion is that felicity conditions for
presumptions should include,
1) the speaker’s power/right/entitlement to endorse the presumption and to legitimately
expect that the addressee also endorses it, and
2) the participants’ license to issue analogous verdictives on the same subject matter.
Condition (1) can be seen as a basic, general requirement for any pragmatically correct
verdictive, as based on the Austinian analysis presented above. If the condition is not
satisfied, the speech act can be said to be unhappy or failed and thus not correctly
5
Remember that, following Austin’s insight, theoreticians working in speech act theory agree that language
is not required for an action to count as a speech act. What is required is that the action be performed in
accordance to the conditions that determine the felicity of the illocution.
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performed.
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Condition (2) takes into account the response that the act, being correctly
performed, conventionally invites on the part of the addressee, also in agreement with the
analysis.
My justification to introduce these conditions is the following. According to Austin, a
verdictive is uttered on the basis of some evidence, data, reasons, etc. In the particular
case of presumptions, and given what we could describe as its counterfactual character
(something is presupposed in the event that it is not proven otherwise), we may think that
it must be a basis of reasons what allows one to state a presumption. Thus, the
precondition that the speaker may count as cognitively competent amounts to his/her
power/right/entitlement to endorse the presumption, on the basis of some available
reasons to do so. Furthermore, it is this very availability of reasons what entitles the
speaker to a legitimate expectation concerning the addressee’s endorsement.
To a certain extent, the precondition stating that there should be some reasons giving
support to the presumption may be seen as answering to an intuition which is close to the
inferentialist model. In particular, the present reflection can be seen in line with both
Ullman-Margalit’s and Kauffeld’s appeal to the kind of justificatory basis that lends
support to the presumption (more on that below). The difference between the inferentialist
model and the present account is that, from the point of view of the pragmatics of
communication, no concrete rule of inference must be supposed in order for a
presumption to be taken as correctly performed. The reasons giving support to the
presumption can be very different in kind. Yet this is the basis that authorizes the
introduction of the presumption as a reasonable endorsement.
The notion of reasonableness has been broadly discussed in the literature on
argumentation.
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Here, I am using this notion in an intuitive, pre-theoretical sense. It is
applied to a verdictive speech act that counts, for the participants in the communicative
exchange, as reasonable enough to be endorsed. Thus the speech act is reasonable (or not)
from the participants’ point of view. My claim only amounts to saying that, in
interpersonal exchanges in informal contexts, the speaker (whenever s/he is seriously
following the procedure for correctly performing a presumption, and is not acting on
secondary intentions) puts forward his/her utterance as a reasonable endorsement. This
amounts to considering, from a participant’s point of view, that there must be some
reasons available to the participants which justify the presumption.
Yet this does not by itself decide the question of whether the utterance must be taken as
a presumption. From the point of view of the Austinian approach that is being worked out
here, the addressee’s response plays a decisive role for the utterance to reach its intended
6
This condition could be considered a strong requirement, for it would make an utterance of "I presume
that the Holocaust never happened; correct me if I’m wrong", as said by a cynical fascist in an attempt to
unduly shift the burden of proof, a failed illocution and not a possibly felicitous illocution (possibly
correctly performed), even if incorrect for other reasons. - The example is put forward and discussed by
Freeman (1996: 289). See Bermejo-Luque (2016: 6) for a discussion and a different position on the matter.
Yet I think my approach is faithful to Austin’s original view. More on that is said below.
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A prominent model within the theory of argumentation, pragma-dialectics, declares argumentation to be
rational or reasonable if the arguer “performs only speech acts which accord with a system of rules
acceptable to all the discussants which furthers the creation of a dialectic which can lead to a resolution of
the dispute at the center of the discussion” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984). This notion of
reasonableness, which presupposes the pragma-dialectics theoretical framework, has been criticized by
Biegel and Siro (see their 2010: 458-459).
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illocutionary effect. For only if the addressee accepts the utterance as a presumption, and
thus as a reasonable endorsement, can the speech act of presuming be said to have
achieved its conventional effect and thus to have been correctly and fully performed. This
fact does not exclude the possibility that, in the course of the exchange, the addressee
may be willing to rebut the accepted presumption and to act accordingly, since accepting
an utterance as a reasonable presumption does not commit one to accept it as true to the
facts or correct (righteous, pragmatically appropriate, etc.) Finally, one may observe that
in formal and institutional contexts, in contrast, presumptions are introduced and
sustained by some authority. To that extent, their being reasonable presumptions is
additional to their being in force and thus to their reaching the conventional effect they
have.
Now, coming back to our hypothesis, we can examine more closely conditions (i)-(iv) as
stated in the definition of verdictives, in order to try to determine whether or not they
answer to presumptions. Condition (iv) above corresponds in a straightforward way to
condition (2). But we may wonder whether conditions (i)-(iii) still hold. Condition (i)
seems to be weakened in the following sense. In presumptions, as stated above, the
reasons or evidence backing them do not need to be definitive or conclusive, but just
enough as to make the finding reasonable. In this sense, the type of verdictive
corresponding to presumptions could be said to be a reasonable endorsement (of a
propositional content p). Moreover, condition (ii) invokes the speaker’s cognitive
accessibility to the source of authority or to the grounding that supports the presumption.
There will be cases in which this source or grounding is of a social or institutional
character, so that the speaker who introduces the presumption can be seen as deferring
her cognitive competency to this social or institutional setting.
This point has been nicely approached by professor Kauffeld, even if from an inferential
point of view, when he claims that “To presume that p, in the ordinary sense of the term
is to infer that p on the supposition some agent has made, is making, or will make it the
case that p, rather than risk criticism, retribution, etc. for failing to do so” (2009: 3)
Somewhat in accordance with this idea is also Ullman-Margalit, when she considers the
particular case of conversational presumptions of truth, sincerity, and appropriateness of
contribution to interpersonal communication. In those particular cases, these normative
presumptions have to do “(i) with the question of which sort of error is morally or socially
more acceptable, and (ii) with the moral or social evaluation of the regulative effect on
people’s behavior of the presumption rules being instituted and operative” (1983: 161)
Notice that in this second type of deference, in contradistinction to Kauffeld’s, it is not
required that anyone be able to make it the case that p. What is merely required is that
endorsing p be seen as preferable to not endorsing p, for reasons of a moral, practical, etc
character. There will be other cases, however, in which deference to an authority or to a
social or practical regulation is not needed.
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All what is required by conditions (i)-(ii) is
that either the speaker is herself able to provide the basis of evidence or reasons that
support the presumption as a reasonable endorsement, or that she is able to defer this
obligation to a social or institutional instance.
Notwithstanding this, it seems that condition (iii) is difficult to comply with. As a
verdictive, presumptions seem to contradict the felicity condition mentioned above,
namely, they do not seem to commit the speaker to giving evidence or reasons for her
8
For a systematic review of the different sources and groundings that can be in correspondence to
presumptions, see Godden and Walton 2007.
10
verdictive if requested. As we had highlighted, presumptions free the speaker from such
burden, assigning at the same time a similar but opposite burden to the addressee
concerning the questioning, rebuttal, weakening, etc. of the presumption. We can
formulate this (reverse) condition in the following terms:
(iii)’ A presumption creates the obligation on the part of the addressee to give
evidence or reasons for his opposition to endorse the presumption, whenever he
or she does oppose it.
Now, the question to be explored is whether and how the Austinian approach can account
for this central aspect of presumptions. A first attempt to solve this problem could consist
of trying to identify, among the different types of speech act, the type that best answers
to condition (iii)’. It seems to me that the type more appropriate in this respect would be
that of exercitives. For, as we are going to see, exercitive speech acts can be characterized
as acts which assign an obligation, duty, commitment, etc. to the addressee, by virtue of
the influence, power, authority, etc. accorded to the speaker.
According to Austin, “An exercitive is the giving of a decision in favour of or against a
certain course of action, or advocacy of it.” (1962: 154). Sbisà has proposed to reinterpret
these speech acts as follows:
“Exercitives [are] illocutionary acts consisting of the exercise of authority or
influence. They presuppose some degree of authority or authoritativeness on the
part of the speaker and assign or cancel rights or obligations to or from the
addressee.” (2006: 165)
As in the case of verdictives, we may say that the speaker’s authority or authoritativeness
can be (although does not need to be) subsidiary to that of an external source or grounding.
This analysis would allow us to consider presumptions as a type that shares a main trait
of verdictives (since verdictives carry with them the burden of justification) and of
exercitives (since exercitives assign an obligation to the addressee). But this solution
could be subject to an important objection. Firstly, in those cases in which the addressee
succeeds in challenging the presumption, because he or she convincingly shows that it
was not sufficiently reasonable or because he or she has rebutted it, the speaker’s
authority is cancelled with the presumption. Yet we had suggested that the speaker’s
authority or authoritativeness (to assign an obligation to the addressee to the effect that it
is the addressee who must challenge the presumption) could be inherited from an external
source or grounding. How can this cancellation be effected in the local context of the
interaction? The shifting in the burden of proof presupposes that the speaker’s authority
or authoritativeness was from the beginning conditional, but it is not clear how the felicity
conditions of exercitives could and should codify this.
A second attempt to deal with presumptions in terms of other types of speech act might
be the following. Searle (1969) famously proposed a type of speech act, that of
declaratives, to have a double direction of fit, that of words-to-world (like assertions) and
that of world-to-words (like directives and commissives). Although Austin’s and Searle’s
taxonomies do not completely coincide (and they answer to different criteria), for present
purposes we may wonder whether presumptions could be seen as a declaration in Searle’s
sense. For, according to him, “Declarations bring about some alteration in the status or
condition of the referred to object or objects solely in virtue of the fact that the declaration
11
has been successfully performed.” (1975: 17). In the case of presumptions, the suggestion
would be that the particular alteration they bring about is precisely a shift in the burden
of proof. This suggestion is nevertheless subject to an important objection. Taking
presumptions to be declarations may be considered appropriate in certain cases,
particularly in those in which the presumption is grounded on moral or legal reasons and
there is an institutional framework supporting it. But it is doubtful that more informal
presumptions as those raised in everyday interaction do require an institutionalized setting
of that kind.
Alternatively, a second attempt to account for presumptions as a subtype of verdictive
could take into account the notion of Austinian presupposition accommodation, as
worked out by Witek (2013). This concept takes a point of departure in David Lewis’
notion of presupposition accommodation, understood as a rule-governed process whereby
the context of an utterance is adjusted to make the utterance acceptable. Applied to
illocutionary acts, the notion of Austinian presupposition accommodation aims to capture
a rule-governed context-adjusting process whose function is to repair the context of an
utterance to make the utterance a felicitous performance of a particular type of illocution.
We should remember that, according to Austin (1962), the felicity of an illocutionary act
presupposes (in the sense of conditions that must be seen as satisfied) that (a) the
circumstances for the performance of the act are appropriate, and that (b) the speaker of
the act is endowed with an appropriate illocutionary role (particularly, with the required
normative power/authority/authoritativeness).
9
Conditions (a) and (b) are then the
conditions that can be accommodated by means of the Austinian presuppositions of an
act. Witek has put forward the following rule:
“If at time t speaker S makes binding illocution I, and if the felicity of I requires
presupposition F to be satisfied by the objective context, and if F is not part of the
objective context just before t, then -ceteris paribus and within certain limits-
presupposition F becomes part of the objective context at t.” (2013: 10)
Here, a binding illocution is a felicitous illocutionary act bringing about the conventional
effect that is constitutively linked to this type of illocution. The Austinian presupposition
is to be understood as a contextual state of affairs that is required by the felicitous
performance of the illocution and is determined by the conventional procedure under
which the act is performed. Austinian presupposition accommodation allows the
interactants to adjust the context so as to make that certain conditions hold. This move
has the effect of turning an utterance into a felicitous illocutionary act.
How is this process of presupposition accommodation related to presumptions?
Remember that our problem was to account for the peculiar shift in the burden of proof
that characterizes presumptions, and this aspect seems to go against condition (iii) for
verdictives. In our attempt to explain this aspect of presumptions, we had stated the
reverse condition (iii)’ (stating that a presumption creates the obligation on the part of the
addressee to give evidence or reasons for his opposition to endorse the presumption,
whenever he or she does oppose it). But in so doing, we had to acknowledge that this
reversion seemed to approach presumptions to exercitives. Now, in order to account for
the speaker’s authority or authoritativeness, our proposal is that the notion of Austinian
presupposition accommodation can be appropriate and a useful device. Given condition
9
Remember procedimental rules (A.1) and (A.2) in footnote 3, which (a) and (b) appropriately reformulate
here.
12
(iii)’, the felicity of the speaker’s presumption requires that she be seen in the course of
the interaction as endowed with the corresponding authority or authoritativeness. This in
turn depends on the participants agreeing on this very fact, an agreement that can be
implicit or tacit –in which case it is the interaction itself, and the response given by the
addressee, what ultimately determines the accommodation. But presupposition
accommodation can take place only against a background of pragmatic conventions,
namely, the Austinian felicity conditions that jointly determine the performance of an act
as a felicitous illocution of a given type.
For illustration purposes, we can imagine the following alternative dialogues between A
and B about a third colleague of them, C.
(Example 1)
A. Do you think it a wise idea to let C to manage the accounts?
B. C has the required expertise. Besides, I presume his honesty.
A. Ok.
(Example 2)
A. Do you think it a wise idea to let C to manage the accounts?
B. C has the required expertise. Besides, I presume his honesty.
A. I wouldn’t, remember that in his previous position as a bookkeeper disciplinary
proceedings were opened against him that haven’t yet been closed.
In Example 1, B can be said to have performed two conjoint verdictive acts. In the second
one, “I presume his honesty”, the explicit performative “I presume” indicates the force
with which the speaker is putting forward his utterance, as a necessary step to search his
addressee’s agreement. For only if this condition is satisfied can the speech act of
presumption be said to have been satisfactorily performed. Still, as a verdictive and
according to the standard analysis, B has committed himself to providing evidence or
reasons for his verdictive if requested. A’s answer indicates that she agrees with accepting
B’s authority or authoritativeness to introduce the presumption as a reasonable
endorsement in the consequential succession of events. In this way, A is conferring to B’s
utterance, with her agreement, the status of a felicitous presumption, and moreover
discharging B of justifying his verdictive.
In Example 2, however, A does not accept the presumption. The standard analysis of
verdictives would take it that it is B who should support his questioned utterance by
giving appropriate evidence or reasons. Nevertheless, the explicit performative as uttered
by B prompts from A, together with her (indirect, yet explicit) refusal, an explicit reason
that supports her refusal to agree with the verdictive as a reasonable endorsement. In so
doing, she is answering to the obligation of carrying the burden of proof. This shift in the
burden of proof can be pragmatically explained, as argued above, by an accommodation
of the pragmatic presuppositions that are available in the context concerning the status
and role of the participants. With her last turn of reply, A shows that she accepts to carry
herself the burden of proof, thus tacitly recognizing the principled authority or
authoritativeness of B to issue a presumptive speech act.
To the extent that B’s presumptive speech act is finally questioned and not agreed upon
by A, it could be said to be a failed, infelicitous speech act. In terms of the Austinian
approach, the lack of agreement in an informal, not institutionalized context (as is the
13
case here imagined) determines that the utterance does not attain its (intended)
conventional effect, namely, it does not acquire the force of a working presumption in the
succeeding interaction. Yet, in order for A to express her refusal, she has tacitly
acknowledged that the speech act was a presumption (since she has assumed the burden
of proof), though a defective one (given that the utterance was rejected as an unreasonable
endorsement).
10
This outcome, paradoxical as it may seem, is nevertheless standardly
assumed as a fertile result of speech act theory. An utterance can be said to be a defective,
flawed or infelicitous speech act, yet be recognized as a performed speech act.
11
To sum up, under the proposed account presumptions are viewed as a subtype of
verdictive acts, in which the Austinian felicity condition (iii) is accommodated by means
of a process that confers to the speaker the authority or authoritativeness that is required
by the alternative condition (iii)’.
5. A note on conversational presumptions
The notion of conversational presumptions is introduced by Kent Bach and Robert M.
Harnish in their (1979). As is well known, they follow Grice in viewing communication
as an inferential process where the speaker provides, by what she says, a basis for the
hearer to infer what the speaker intends to be doing. Still following Grice, part of the
speaker’s intention is that the hearer identify the very act the speaker intends to be
performing, and successful communication requires fulfilment of that intention (p. 4) As
they say, “In general, the inference the hearer makes and takes himself to be intended to
make is based not just on what the speaker says but also on mutual contextual beliefs” (p.
5) But in addition to mutual contextual beliefs, “there are two general mutual beliefs that
the hearer relies on to make his inference. They are shared not just between S and H but
among members of the linguistic community at large” (p. 7) These general mutual beliefs
are called the linguistic presumption and the communicative presumption. Furthermore,
they assume that cooperative conversations are governed by certain maxims (of quality,
quantity, relevance, and manner) that they prefer to call conversational presumptions (pp.
62-63)
Bach and Harnish’s approach to communication is intentionalist. According to them, “to
communicate is indeed to express a thought or, more generally, an attitude, be it a belief
an intention, a desire, or even a feeling” (p. 15).
12
Thus the intended illocutionary effect
is that the hearer should recognize that reflexive intention of the speaker. An illocutionary
act is communicatively successful if the speaker’s illocutionary intention is recognized
by the hearer. Now, observe that this concept of presumption accomplishes a cognitive
role, in the cognitive context of mutual beliefs. Even if success in communication depends
on the speaker’s complying with these presumptions, they argue, “When a person fails to
fulfil one of them, H will take S as having spoken contextually inappropriately until or
10
This case is thus different from the case considered in note 5, where I would rather say that the fascist is
not recognized by his addressee to have authority or authoritativeness to shift the burden of proof. In the
case of Example 2, the recognition of such a role to the speaker is a precondition for the issuing of a reason
not to endorse his utterance as a reasonable endorsement. – The present account helps to explain this
distinction.
11
In line with this, an insincere promise can be said to be a promise, though it is typified as an abuse. An
order issued by a speaker who lacks the required authority can be typified as a misfire and thus as an
infelicitous, defective order. (Cf. Austin 1962, pp. 15-19)
12
Moreover, by “express” they mean the following: “Expressing: For S to express an attitude is for S to
R[eflexively]-intend the hearer to take S’s utterance as reasons to think S has that attitude.” (ibid.)
14
unless H finds a suitable explanation to the contrary.” (p. 63) In this sense, I would say
that conversational presumptions as endorsed by the hearer accomplish the sort of shift
in the burden of proof that is characteristic of presumptions in general. They also allow
the exchange to go ahead, since only under the presumptions can the inferential process
take place. To that extent, the notion of presumption in play in Bach and Harnish (1979)
seems to feature the two main functions above mentioned.
Nevertheless, I think that this Gricean framework is subject to some objections. My first
objection to Bach and Harnish’s view is the following. In agreement with the Austinian
account, I take it that the norms of linguistic appropriateness in general should be
formulated in terms of the objective context, rather that the cognitive (subjective) one.
Gauker (1998: 153) has observed that we refer to the cognitive context of an utterance if
our aim is to explain and interpret the speaker’s behaviour by attributing certain beliefs
and intentions to her; but if our aim is to evaluate the speaker’s act, we have no alternative
but to refer to the objective context of her utterance, namely, the set of worldly states
relative to which the appropriateness of the utterance is to be evaluated.
The Austinian view on speech acts here assumed contrasts with the standard Gricean
view, for which the force of an illocution is determined by the (reflexive, complex)
communicative intention with which the corresponding utterance is made. In contrast, the
Austinian approach contends that it is not the cognitive context of mental states and
mutual beliefs what has to be taken into account in order to determine what counts as a
felicitous speech act, but the objective, external contexts of social facts and interpersonal
relationships. It is therefore assumed that there are normative facts (commitments,
entitlements, and the like) constituting the objective context of speech actions as such.
My second objection has to do with the cognitive level in which the above mentioned
presumptions are said to be at work. Remember that, according to the Gricean framework,
the inferential processes that allow communication to proceed do not need (and are
usually not taken to be) to be conscious, but can and do take place on a subpersonal level.
In the current debate in argumentation theory, the notion of presumption which is at issue
is an explicit or explicitable one, taking the form of an utterance on the level of the
communicative dialogue. To that extent, it seems that Bach and Harnish’s communicative
presumptions should be seen as a type of presupposition, in line with Grice’s original
work.
6. Conclusion
We have put forward a tentative account of presumptions as a type of verdictive, within
the framework of an Austinian approach to speech acts. In order to account for the
peculiar shifting in the burden of proof that presumptions accomplish, we have proposed
a reformulation of their felicity conditions, contending that presumptions (whenever they
can be considered to be correctly, felicitously performed) assign to the addressee an
obligation to justify, thus shifting the burden of proof that is constitutive of verdictives.
To show how this can be effected, we have made use of the notion of presupposition
accommodation. This pragmatic device helps to explain the process in virtue of which
the speaker is endowed with the authority or authoritativeness that is required in the
context of interaction.
15
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