1

Joseph Tran
Dr. Jon Cogburn
12-18-11
PHIL 4914 Final Paper


On Lance and Kuklas Pragmatic Account of Calls and Moral Norms



1.) Introduction Speech Acts and Moral Norms

Over the ages, men have produced a vast number of normative codes with moral content.
The most ancient of these codes seem to be either magical in nature, mythical, or some
combination of both.
1
While magical belief systems have tended to fade, morally normative
mythic belief systems have tended to remain very strong. This is so even in our somewhat
intellectually advanced age wherein world religions tend to be the most common, and arguably
the most potent, sources of moral normativity. By contrast modern thinkers have tended to try
and ground such norms in human rationality. These systems of moral normativity therefore
constitute philosophical systems rather than mythic ones. Examples include the moral
philosophies of individuals like Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill. The former advocated an
(allegedly) deontological moral philosophy based on practical reason and resulting in a
categorical imperative while the latter advocated Utilitarianism, a teleological moral philosophy
based on the central normative principle that right actions will be those that produce the greatest
happiness for the greatest number.
2
In addition to these two philosophical moral theories there is
a third which has also been utilized to establish and account for moral norms; it is directly
relevant to this paper and is called social contractarianism.

1
By the term magical here I mean superstitious.
2
Personally I believe that Kants moral philosophy is teleological and that the good which determines right action
is the goodwill. I know that an argument can be made about the purely formal character of Kants morality but
practicing it for a few years has led me to see it as teleological rather than deontological.

2

To my knowledge, the 17
th
century philosopher Thomas Hobbes is the most famous
progenitor of the morally normative theory of the social contract. Hobbes, in his turn, became a
central influence in the work of the more contemporary philosopher, John Rawls, who famously
rehabilitated Hobbes social contract theory into his own theory, namely, justice as fairness.
3

The basic idea behind social contract theory is that moral norms are determined as a result of
contractual relations between the members of a social network. In the case of Rawls social
contract, moral norms are grounded in the utility maximization of rationally self-interested
contractors, viz., the citizens. The relevance of this social contract theory of morality for this
paper is that these norms are both produced by and derived from 2
nd
personal relations, namely,
those of the contractors.
Mark Lance and Rebecca Kuklas
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pragmatic account of speech acts also maintains that
moral norms are produced by (and in turn produce) certain kinds of second-personal transactions.
While L&K agree with the interactional ground of social contract theory, they argue that the
account of the normative moral and social space associated with second-personal interaction
which contractarianism provides us with is impoverished and incomplete. They claim that the
social contract model of moral normativity is insufficient because it only recognizes the
normative force of imperatival and reverse imperatival speech acts.
5
By contrast, L&K contend
that the space of moral normativity in society is impacted and modified by many non-imperatival
speech acts like requesting, inviting, suggesting, and entreating to name a few. Consequently
they advocate a theory of moral normativity which entails a much more nuanced, and perhaps
more accurate, account of moral normativity than any social contract theory.

3
This was and is a very popular theory. The text in which it can be found is: Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. New
Delhi: Universal Law, 2010.
4
Hereafter referred to as L&K.
5
Promises which John Searle classified as commisives are here considered to be reverse imperatives because the
speaker creates an obligation for themselves.
3

Given these claims, may aim in this paper will be to try and explicate L&Ks model of
the relation between second-personal interactions and moral normativity beginning with their
theory of the essential and pragmatic structure of calls. This will be followed by a sub-section
discussing L&Ks idea about the essential structural relationality of calls. Next we shall consider
L&Ks resultant pragmatic distinction between requests and imperatives. And finally, the paper
will conclude with an overall evaluation of their claims.
2.) A Theory of the Nature and Pragmatic Structure of Calls

As part of the necessary background for understanding L&Ks work, we need to
understand what a call is. L&K define a call as a speech act which issues a second-personal
address. Calls require that there be at least two beings involved, namely, a caller and a target of
the call. Functionally speaking, all calls are attempts by the caller to elicit some response from
his or her target.
6,7
The target can be an individual or a group as long as they are a second-
personal entity. Some examples of calls are commands, nags, orders, demands, requests,
solicitations, invitations, advisements, suggestions, promises, threats and entreaties to name a
few.
From a pragmatic point of view, calls attempt to impute a status to the second-personal
entity at whom they are directed. One of L&Ks basic tenets is that the imputed status will carry
with it normative claims. Calls thus attempt to make normative claims on their targets. The
second person must give uptake to the imputed status and its claims in order for the call to

6
Initially many of these will resemble the speech acts in Searles category of directives since they express desire,
but really all 5 of Searles categories fit in here esp. commisives.
7
There is an odd point about L&Ks definition of a call that I will mention here. At first it seemed to be that the
caller sought a behavioral action from the one called but later claims seemed to imply that a purely attitudinal or
psychological response could be sought. I could thus call on you to be grateful if I have granted your request. But
being grateful is a state of consciousness and not an action. It is possible however that some actions could follow
from this gratitude and that the caller just mentioned is calling for these kinds of actions. But this is too vague for
me.
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potentially succeed. The target of the call can either give appropriate uptake to the call or
inappropriate uptake. The nature of the appropriate/inappropriate kind of uptake for any call will
depend upon the specific kind of call that is issued. In the case of an entitled order the correct
uptake will be the acceptance of the obligation that the order seeks to impute. In the case of an
entitled request the correct uptake will be the acceptance of a petitionary reason which the
request seeks to impute. Being uptaken is therefore an essential step in the success of any call.
Calls acquire their ability to impute normative claims from a pre-existing background of
established norms, a context if you will esp. one of ascribed roles and statuses. As such, the
validity and consequent success of any call hinges on whether or not background norms entitle
the caller to produce the call. Once a call is enabled by a normatively salient background it can
then generate normative effects upon certain 2
nd
personal beings. In this way, a call can institute
a new normative space by bringing into being new relations and statuses or modify an existing
normative space by modifying existing relations and statuses. Thus there are many ways for calls
to succeed or to fail. It is these ways that reveal the pragmatic structure of calls. By examining
these ways, L&K developed a pragmatic theory of the structure of a call. In doing this they
hoped to show just how much of the nature of calls is obscured by the focus on imperatives as
the paradigmatic second-person addresses in meta-ethics.
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To begin with, in order for a call to achieve its constitutive goal several stages must be
successfully negotiated. First, the utterance itself must be the right kind of utterance; it must be a
valid call. Next, the call must be entitled; it must be enabled by pre-existing norms. On the
targets end, the call must be received and recognized as the specific kind of call that it is (e.g. an
order, a request, a threat, a suggestion, an advisement, an entreaty etc.). The target must next
acknowledge the callers entitlement to issue the call, recognize himself as the target of the call,

8
Lance, Mark, Leave the Gun; Take the Cannoli: Overcoming the Imperatival Fallacy in Metaethics, p. 16.
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and give appropriate uptake to the status which the call imputes. Finally, in order for the speech
act to ultimately succeed, the target must respond in accord with the aim of the call. For L&K, if
a call fails at any of these stages it fails overall.
Given these determinations of the stages which a call must negotiate in order to count as
a successful call, L&K were able to work out a pragmatic theory about the structure of calls.
Every call is a speech act (SA) which seeks the uptake of a status by its target.
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If the call is
enabled by a normative background it restructures the normative space in which it has been
produced and enables the performance of new actions for its target as well as precludes the
possibility of others; it creates a space of action possibilities or an (SAP). As such, any action
which the target makes will be taken as some kind of response to the call. The SAP which the
call creates will include a space of appropriate uptake or an (SAU). We thus have the original
speech act, the SA, which generates a normative space of action possibilities, the SAP, which in
turn includes a sub-space of appropriate uptake, the SAU. It is interesting to note that although
the normatively articulated space of action possibilities is utterly inescapable, the space of
appropriate uptake is not; there will always be some way, in theory, to escape or defy it.
2.1) Successful Calls are Necessarily Relational

Like other calls, imperatives and requests function within a relational context. Such
speech acts are specifically directed at their targets. Relatedly, the target in legitimately
responding to a call must direct their response back to the caller. It is necessary then, in accord
with the character of a call, for there to exist a concrete and substantive relation between the
caller and the one called in which the transaction of attempting to elicit a response occurs. There

9
The following model is paraphrased from Lance, Mark, Leave the Gun; Take the Cannoli: Overcoming the
Imperatival Fallacy in Metaethics, p. 20.
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must be a second-person and a relation to that person in order for a speech act to constitute a call
qua call.
In terms of imperatives this can be seen in the following example. If you give someone
an order to run a mile, it is not enough that the person just happens to go home that day and do
just that. Your speech act and their exercise could in principle be completely unrelated. What if
they were running purely for their health and completely forgot that you gave them an order? In
order for your imperative to be considered a successful one its target must obey it out of
beholdenness to you. In the example, the person must run the mile not only because you ordered
it but they must do it for you. What is important here is the fact that the order makes a claim on
its target, that he or she is obligated to act in a certain way, and that the order is actually
successful if and only if the target recognizes the claim that it makes in relation to the caller as
something which is owed to them and then does it. In the same way, defying an order is also an
inherently relational act. In order to legitimately defy an order one must take up a confrontational
position which relates to the orderer. To simply not act in accord with the order is not defiant in
the same way that the person who ran a mile in the earlier example was not actually obedient.
Instances of being obedient to an order or being defiant to one require that the actions be
performed as relational acts directed at the orderer. This feature of being essentially relationally
directed is a necessary element of both a call and a response to a call. Without this relationality
we would not be dealing with a call at all but some other type of speech act instead.
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The acts of requesting and granting also bear this property of inherent relationality.
Normatively, it only counts as granting a request to perform an action if the one requested
performs the act specifically for the requester. To do so is to acknowledge both the requesters

10
There is a complex caveat here in that L&K maintain that all speech acts are in fact calls since all contain a 2
nd

personal address referred to as a transcendental vocative. The point here, however, is that a loss of relationality
results in a loss of the calls essential characteristic.
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normative standing, their entitlement to make the request, and the reason that it gives the grantor
to grant the request, namely the petitionary reason. If someone asks me to do something, then my
doing it counts as granting the request if and only if I take myself to have a petitionary reason to
do it for the requester. It should now be clear that calls both institute and modify relations
between callers and their second-personal targets. Thus the institution of moral norms via
second-personal transactions can change the moral character of ones actions in any morally
salient circumstances.
On a final note, it is the existence of these second-personally instituted, directed reasons
and commitments, which enable us to make sense of the fact that it is often inappropriate to call
someone to perform some action which that person already has some reason to perform. This is
because it would be misplaced for a caller to ask someone with whom they do not have the
appropriate normative standing to do something, for them in particular, even if it is something
which the other ought to be doing anyway. With this we can see that there are directed second-
personal moral reasons for action which are instituted by calls. 2
nd
personal calls add the element
of a second-personal holding to the reasons which a person has for performing an act or giving a
particular response.
3.) The Pragmatic Distinction between Requests and Imperatives

Given these determinations, it is possible to provide a pragmatic analysis of the speech
acts of imperatives and requests in order to make clear the essential and structural difference
between the two. We have discussed the fact that all calls are second-personal addresses and that
they all attempt to institute or modify normative statuses and to elicit a response from their
targets. Thus requests and imperatives are both types of calls. What distinguishes them is the
different kind of normative claims of appropriate uptake that they impute. For L&K, it is this
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structural difference in normative imputation that establishes the essential non-interchangeability
of requests and imperatives.
A successful, entitled, imperative imputes a duty to its target. The call thus gives its target
the normative status of being obligated. Conversely, a successful request imputes a petitionary
reason to its target - thus giving the target the normative status of being petitioned. It is
therefore a pragmatic, structural, feature of a request that it precisely does not impute any sort of
obligation to its target. For pragmatic purposes, if it did, it would in fact be an order. And as we
have made clear, if the target of an imperative does not acknowledge that he has a duty to obey
the order then the call fails to be a successful order. Requests, by contrast, present their target
with a choice. The normative status of being requested to do something is one in which the target
is free to make a decision about whether or not to commit to fulfilling the request (and possibly
fulfilling it) or to refuse it outright (thus not taking up a commitment.)
Importantly, for L&K, this difference between requests and imperatives cannot be one of
mere strength. For them, the freedom which the party with the normative status of being
requested has (to either fulfill or deny the request) cannot be the result of a speech act that is
merely too weak to obligate. Instead this freedom to make a decision is an essential, pragmatic,
structural aspect of requests, while a lack of freedom to make a decision is an essential,
pragmatic and structural aspect of imperatives. Interestingly, in cases of requesting, the freedom
which the normative status imputes to the target is not intended to make it so that the targets
decision is completely uninfluenced. As mentioned, the act of requesting intends to give its target
a petitionary reason to grant the request, a large part of which will involve the targets relation to
the speaker, i.e., oftentimes the target will be motivated to grant the request precisely because it
is that particular speaker who is calling. Thus, even though calls like requests and invitations
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impute a freedom to decide upon their target this freedom does not entail that the caller is neutral
in relation to the targets response. Requests and invitations both generally have an added
(oftentimes powerful) non-neutral interest included within the space of freedom that they create.
Pragmatically, both types of calls include a desire for the targets acquiescence to the call which
varies in strength. This is in spite of the fact that structurally such calls do not seek to obligate. If
they do they constitute imperatives/orders from a pragmatic view.
L&K seem to be breaking ground in terms of mitigating the role of imperatives in
relation to moral norms with their discovery and analysis of the sub-space of appropriate uptake
for both imperatives and requests. This is because there has generally been only one response
which constituted success in the case of orders, namely obeying the order. Thus the overall goal
of the imperatival call appears to be identical to the only appropriate response to it. On the other
hand, speech acts like requests, suggestions, advisements, and entreaties, entail more than one
possible appropriate response. It is therefore possible in the case of these kinds of calls to give
appropriate uptake to the call but to not respond in a way that achieves the constitutive goal of
the call. In pointing this out, L&Ks pragmatic account of second-personal addresses reveals a
complexity which the purely imperatival model obscures. In fact, through the paradigm of
L&Ks structural theory, imperatives are shown to create a much broader space of possible
responses than just obeying and defying. With the result that it is possible to obey an order and
yet do so in a way which demonstrates an inappropriate uptake. It is also possible to disobey an
order in a way which demonstrates that the target, in fact, gave appropriate uptake to the order
and was therefore not being defiant in their failure to follow the order.


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4.) Conclusion - An Evaluation
In my opinion, L&K make a really good case in favor of the idea that transactionally
imputed moral normativity involves many different kinds of second-personal transactions rather
than just imperatival and reverse imperatival calls (promises). I think this is their big idea and I
feel like it is important. As part of my critique, however, I wish to note that the actual moral
impact of non-imperatival calls may, in the final analysis, prove to be somewhat trivial in
comparison to that of imperatival calls. Thus, my feeling is that L&K do not have a strong
argument in favor of a substantial concern for the moral normativity associated with non-
imperatival calls. Even if we grant that the overall deontic structure of any particular moral
situation may be impacted and modified by non-imperatival calls, it remains to be seen how
significant such impacts and modifications will be. In spite of this, I contend that the fact remains
that the majority of the morally relevant calls that we issue are, in terms of L&Ks pragmatic
model of calls, precisely non-imperatival calls, especially if we consider insisting and demanding
to be non-imperatival. This is just to say that the bulk of the calls which we actually have the
entitlement to issue tend to be entreaties, requests, suggestions, invitations, and advisements. As
such, we can only understand the overall deontic structure of any moral situation which involves
these kinds of calls if we consider the (possibly secondary) morally normative inflections which
these types of non-imperatival calls create in the situation. It should also be noted that L&Ks
insight into the structure of non-imperatival calls also produces a much better understanding of
the pragmatic texture of the imperatival. Thus in addition to the light that they shed upon non-
imperatival calls L&K also shed light on the character of imperatival calls as well. Their analysis
reveals that one can perform the action which the caller orders and still fail to obey the order and
one can not perform the action which has been ordered and fail to defy it.
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To me, there does seem to be much in L&Ks pragmatic philosophy of calls that seems
incomplete and/or highly questionable. For one, they do not seem to fully consider the issue of
the strength with which a caller issues his or her call. It must surely qualify as a different moral
scenario when we have someone desperately requesting our help (or are desperately requesting
theirs!) than when either party makes a request with little or no indication of urgency or despair.
Personally, I feel that their theory would be more comprehensive and accurate if they considered
the issue of call strength in the analysis of calls.
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I say this because it is seems to be the case
quite often that people who are not entitled to give orders still seem to issue really strong
demands. People dont just ask, they often bug or nag. It can sometimes be quite irritating the
way someone can pester a person with calls. In the most extreme cases, calls may be issued
which constitute serious threats. Such calls will be attempts to get responses from their targets by
threatening to bring harm of some kind to them. As any politician can tell you, sometimes the
best way to elicit a desired response from others is to threaten them with some kind of punitive
measures. L&K do not even mention these sorts of calls. I believe that this is in fact related to
part of the confusion around the imperative. The confusion stems from the fact that someone
may seem to be giving an order by virtue of the strength or force with which they issue their
imperative. Such a person is clearly commanding someone to respond. In this way serious threats
and demands certainly give one the feeling that the caller is at least trying to issue orders even if
we may realize that the person is not entitled to enact a normative moral obligation for our
response. L&K, however, would insist that unless such a person were entitled by virtue of a
background context of moral normativity to issue their order and unless their targets recognize
themselves as being obligated to obey the call in relation to the caller then the call does not meet

11
Of course this is not in line with what L&K are trying to do and, in fact, they explicitly state that they are not
interested in call strength but only the pragmatic structures related to the call.
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the criteria for being an order. To me this really pushes hard on the idea of the freedom which a
request allegedly imputes (and an order does not). I feel that a demand with enough force behind
it can certainly begin to feel as though one is not being accorded a freedom to choose to fulfill
the demand (such as in the case of threats) with the result that it has the feel of an order even if
the agent lacks the entitlement to produce it.
The most substantial issue that I take with the pragmatic account of language that L&K
put forward is their idea that calls can only institute and/or modify morally normative statuses
insofar as they themselves are grounded in pre-existing moral norms. L&K, as usual, do not
explain the causes of the underlying norms in which the calls are grounded and from which they
receive their legitimation. Is it possible that the moral norms which calls make use of are
themselves the result of some non-interactional moral cause? I believe that L&K would respond
to this with their pragmatic account of normativity.
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In this account a normative claim is an
explicit endorsement for how an already existing (and therefore implicit) social practice should
proceed. As such, we would have to accept and integrate into their view the idea that the moral
norms which entitle and legitimate calls are subject to change. One consequence might be that
changing norms would change the determination that all orders obligate or that the appropriate
way to turn down an invitation is with an expression of regret or that the appropriate response to
the fulfillment of a request is gratitude. Couldnt there be a morally normative background that
changes all of the pragmatic structures of calls which L&K endorse, namely, a different code of
etiquette and manners as well as deep morality? I can certainly attest to one fact, namely, that the
pragmatic model which L&K endorse certainly stimulates me to question what kinds of
responses would be considered appropriate and inappropriate in relation to the various types of

12
Cf. Ch. three of Lance, Mark Norris., and John Hawthorne. The Grammar of Meaning: Normativity and Semantic
Discourse.
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calls i.e. it leads me to inquire into the precise, concrete, content of the norms that govern calls in
particular and speech acts in general.
It thus seems as though L&Ks analysis fails to consider some of the real nuances which
human communicative interaction bears while at the same time being overly nuanced in terms of
making distinctions between types of calls. After all, is there really a noticeable and theoretically
or practically relevant structural difference between, say, a suggesting call and an advising
one? And furthermore, as I previously mentioned, L&Ks philosophy seems as though its claims
are never grounded in anything other than the particular norms of society. As such there is this
sense that their ideas are subject to relativism. The result is that their readers may be left with a
lot of questions and a feeling of uncertainty about their claims. Finally, I do think that the
considerations which L&K raise are highly relevant if not essential to the study and application
of human communication, and possibly even of morality at least in a way that ties to rules of
etiquette and principles of manners. Finally I feel that they could also flesh their ideas out even
more than they have in order to at least indicate the possibility that their claims might be
grounded in something.



Bibliography

Kukla, Rebecca, and Mark Lance. "Yo! and Lo!": the Pragmatic Topography of the Space of
Reasons. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2009. Print.

Kukla, Rebecca, and Mark Lance. Leave the Gun; Take the Cannoli: Overcoming the
Imperatival Fallacy in Metaethics.

Lance, Mark Norris., and John Hawthorne. The Grammar of Meaning: Normativity and Semantic
Discourse. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print.

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. New Delhi: Universal Law, 2010. Print.

14

Searle, John R. "A Classification of Illocutionary Acts." Language in Society 5.1 (Apr., 1976):
pp. 1-23. Print.