The general nature of the speech act fallacy can be stated as follows, using “good” as our example. Calling something good is characteristically praising or commending or recommending it, etc. But it is a fallacy to infer from this that the meaning of “good” is explained by saying it is used to perform the act of commendation.
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P. 139John Searle
The assertion fallacy ... is the fallacy of confusing the conditions for the performance of the speech act of assertion with the analysis of the meaning of particular words occurring in certain assertions.
John Searle
Apartheid was based on a fallacy: the fallacy that nonwhites could be used as labor to drive society; that nonwhites could physically form a majority inside South Africa, but that they could not determine the nature of South African society.
Arthur Kemp
From what can "ought" be derived. The most compelling answer is this: ethics must be somehow based on an appreciation of human nature - on a sense of what a human being is or might be, and on what a human being might want to have or want to be. If that is naturalism, then naturalism is no fallacy. No one could seriously deny that ethics is responsive to such facts about human nature. We may just disagree about where to look for the most compelling facts about human nature -n novels, in religious texts, in psychological experiments, in biological or anthropological investigations. The fallacy is not naturalism but, rather, any simple-minded attempt to rush from facts to values. In other words, the fallacy is greedy reductionism of values to facts, rather than reductionism considered more circumspectly, as the attempt to unify our world-view so that out ethical principles don't clash irrationally with the way the world is.
Daniel C. Dennett
I have not yet had enough experience with women. What we were taught about them in our youth is quite wrong, that is sure, it was quite contrary to nature, and one must try to learn from experience. It would be very pleasant if everybody were good, and the world were good, etc. — yes — but it seems to me that we see more and more that we are not good, no more than the world in general, of which we are an atom — and the world no more good than we are. One may try one’s best, or act carelessly, the result is always different from what one really wanted. But whether the result be better or worse, fortunate or unfortunate, it is better to do something than to do nothing. If only one is wary of becoming a prim, self-righteous prig — as Uncle Vincent calls it — one may be even as good as one likes.
Vincent van Gogh
I have not yet had enough experience with women. What we were taught about them in our youth is quite wrong, that is sure, it was quite contrary to nature, and one must try to learn from experience. It would be very pleasant if everybody were good, and the world were good, etc. — yes — but it seems to me that we see more and more that we are not good, no more than the world in general, of which we are an atom — and the world no more good than we are. One may try one’s best, or act carelessly, the result is always different from what one really wanted. But whether the result be better or worse, fortunate or unfortunate, it is better to do something than to do nothing. If only one is wary of becoming a prim, self-righteous prig — as Uncle Vincent calls it — one may be even as good as one likes.
Vincent Van Gogh
Searle, John
Sears, Edmund
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