Between Doing and Saying 'We' – On Analytic Pragmatism and the Progressive Development of Plural Self-Expression

Presti, Patrizio Ulf Enrico Lo

doi:10.5281/zenodo.13309975

Published April 17, 2024 | Version v1

Journal article Open

Between Doing and Saying 'We' – On Analytic Pragmatism and the Progressive Development of Plural Self-Expression

Presti, Patrizio Ulf Enrico Lo¹

1. University of Copenhagen

This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Contemporary Pragmatism. Lo Presti, P. U. E. (2024). Between Doing and Saying ‘We’ – On Analytic Pragmatism and the Progressive Development of Plural Self-Expression. Contemporary Pragmatism, 21(1), 120-153. https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-bja10083.

Abstract (English)

What do we do when we say ‘We’? This paper pursues a response from analytic pragmatism. The guiding idea of analytic pragmatism is to look to what one must implicitly know how do to be able to use expressions to say something, including how to make that implicit know-how explicit. Accordingly, the question we are tasked to answer is what one must know how to do to say ‘We’ – that is, what practical know-how saying ‘We’ requires and can be employed to make explicit. The concept normative ascent is introduced in developing an answer. On this approach, the know-how in question turns out to be a distinctively normative capacity. Both being and saying ‘We’ turns out to involve being able to do and say something normative.

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