Moorean utterances and the illocutionary dynamics of assertion

This paper aims to show, in the light of an Austin-inspired speech-act theoretical framework, that there is a fundamental difference in the absurdity that occurs when one utters either the belief or the knowledge version of Moorean sentences (whose linguistic form amounts to “p, but I don’t believe/know that p”) and that this difference lies in the kind of speech act norms that their utterance overtly violates. To do so, I will consider the conversational patterns in which the two versions might emerge and, in particular, what linguistic reactions they might elicit in the audience. I will show that, while it is possible to imagine conversational patterns in which someone asserts something and also says that she cannot believe it to be true (although they seem to occur very rarely), the same cannot be said for the knowledge version. I shall argue that while in both cases, a speech act norm appears to be overtly violated, these violations regard different kinds of speech act norms, and thereby result in two different kinds of absurdity.