Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Russell's assertion about the creation of the world is like this.

With regard to a proposition about the external world or to a proposition of mathematics it is frequently asked "How do you know it?" There is an ambiguity here between reasons and causes.

I find it useful to characterize beliefs as having the mind-to-world direction of fit (the belief in the mind is supposed to fit the state of affairs in the world) and desires and intentions as having the world-to-mind direction of fit (if all goes well with the desires and intentions, the world comes to fit how it is represented in the mind).

The assertive class of speech acts: statements, assertions, etc., are expressions of beliefs and are supposed, like beliefs, to represent how the world is and thus they have the word-to-world direction of fit.

The commissive class: promises, offers, etc., are expressions of intention and so have the world-to-word direction of fit.

And, during the nine subsequent years, I did nothing but roam from one place to another, desirous of being a spectator rather than an actor in the plays exhibited on the theater of the world; and, as I made it my business in each matter to reflect particularly upon what might fairly be doubted and prove a source of error, I gradually rooted out from my mind all the errors which had hitherto crept into it.

These cases, such as pride and shame, gratitude and regret, contain beliefs and desires, which do have a mind-world or world-mind direction of fit In addition to the problem of expressive speech acts there is a special problem about declarations, speech acts that make something the case by declaring it to be the case, for example, adjourning a meeting by saying.

These have a double direction of fit, both word-to-world and world-toword in the same speech act. These are not two independent fittings but one fitting that goes both ways.

In these cases we have the double direction of fit, because we make something the case, and thus achieve the world-to-word direction of fit, by representing it as being the case, that is by representing it with the word-to-world direction of fit.

I will just state flatly that what typically gets communicated in speech acts are intentional states, and the point of doing that is that the intentional states already represent the world; so what gets communicated, by way of communicating intentional states, is typically information about the world.