On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 7:08 PM, Zefram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > As has been repeatedly pointed out, failing attempts at speech actions > can still avoid false statements, provided that the statement carries an > appropriate qualifier. Formulations such as "If possible I do X." and "I > attempt to do X." have been commonly used in situations where someone is > aware of a reason why the action might not be possible, and no objection > to this has been raised. In the specific case of registering, "I wish > to register." will cause registration if it is possible while still > being a true statement if it is not possible.
"I wish to register" only works because Rule 869 says that it does. For every other action, "If possible I do X" and "I attempt to do X" do not satisfy Rule 478's criterion-- that the person performing the action announces that e performs it-- unless it can be treated as a reasonable synonym for "I do X", in which case Rule 2149 should apply. See CFJs 2069, 1996, 1971, 1609, 1307, 1302, and 1214-15. Whether statements of the form "If X, then I do Y", where X is publicly available knowledge, are effective depends on which CFJ you're using as precedent, but when X is unknown (such as if the action is possible in many ambiguous cases) it is definitely impossible to perform an action with such a conditional. If speech acts have truth values, then someone ought to sue me because I have attempted to perform more than one action in the past where I did not believe the action would be successful: I believed that the action could potentially be successful, but was probably not. Therefore I believed it to be most likely that I was lying. I would also like to note the case of Big Brother, the fictitious partnership which I claimed to be such in an email's subject title and which I claimed to register in its body. I did this specifically because I believed I could not get in trouble for making a purported statement of action, even if I believed that the statement was definitely unsuccessful. (At the time I was required as a knight to not publish statements that I believed were false or which I was reckless regarding the veracity of. I think "Big Brother hereby registers." could quite possibly fall into both categories.) I guess the latter is a boring scam, but I do hope speech acts continue to be treated more loosely than other statements. If I am doubtful about the veracity of any other statement, I can just avoid making it, or make it to the discussion forum. But if I want to perform a speech act, and I am doubtful about its veracity, I must make the statement. On the other hand, there is no need to help me if I want to attempt to perform a speech act which would result in an outright lie.
