GHEORGHE ȘTEFANOV
Abstract
My paper is an attempt to show that the best way in which we could distinguish between conscious and unconscious opinions in everyday cases is provided by a linguistic approach in the speech act theoretical framework. For this, I distinguish between ‘expressing an opinion’ and ‘attributing an opinion to oneself’, in order to point out that a typical case in which we would speak of unconscious opinions is that in which a person attributes an opinion to herself for the past without having expressed it in the past. Alternative approaches – analyzing the distinction as one between different types of objects or relations, or as a distinction between epistemically different belief attributions – are considered and rejected in turn. Since my treatment is not exhaustive, a few other interesting cases which could require us to talk about unconscious opinions and, as such, could function as test cases for the proposed linguistic approach are listed at the end.
AnnalsUnibuc-2011-60-02Ștefanov