1. Verificationist theories on language take a logical positivist stance, that is, a sentence is meaningful is it can be logically analyzed, so if it is truth functional. This runs into the problem of the descriptive fallacy, because really only descriptive sentences, that is, sentences that attempt to describe something about reality, are truth functional and there are myriad utterances in language that are meaningful without being truth functional.
2. Austin's conception of performative utterances avoids the descriptive fallacy because it's goal is to literally conceive of language as being more than just mere descriptions of the world. Performative utterances suggest that there are kinds of linguistic utterances that are meaningful without being true or false by virtue of the utterance itself being the action being performed by the utterer. Utterances such as "I agree" or "I name this 'so-and-so'" are meaningful as they are themselves the action of the utterer and they do not attempt to describe anything about the world.
3. I'm wondering what meaning we can describe with these examples of performative utterances if we do not have an utterer. So, for example, what is the meaning of "I bet" if it is not uttered by anyone else? Does it have meaning only when there is an action performed by an agent?
Regarding performative utterances with no utterer, I think there are a couple ways we can look at this. We can either say it only has meaning when it is uttered, or we can take a sort of dictionary approach. I think it is pretty clear that 'I bet' has no real operative force when it isn't uttered by a person in particular. However, we can talk about the meaning of the phrase 'I bet' itself. A dictionary might say something about stating or implying one's belief about a particular issue or something about an actual gamble. I understand the meaning of such a statement as whatever function that statement would perform if it were in fact uttered by a particular person.
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