Re: THEORY: Are commands to believe infelicitous?

>Imperatives are usually not felicitous if they cannot be obeyed.  If
>one person commands another to turn green immediately, this is not
>felicitous, because people cannot change color so fast or so
>drastically, and green is not one of the colors people can change to.
>Even commanding a chameleon to turn green may be considered
>infelicitous, because a chameleon's chromatophores are under
>unconscious, not conscious, control.
At best, the felicity to which you refer is not truely determinable due to
subtleties of relativity in nature.  First, imagine a system containing a
speaker who will issue the command, a hearer to which the command will be
spoken, and you-- the observer of the other two.

The only way the speaker can evaluate the capability of a hearer to carry
out a command is by the behavioral evidence the speaker observes (or has
observed) in the hearer along with the relative context of the hearer.

Such observations are filtered in several ways.  First, due to the unique
aspect of the speaker in space-time, his observations of any event in
space-time are unique.  Second, (assuming the speaker is human, as you
said) the speaker observes only what his/her sensory capabilities allow.
This does not include the *actual* mental motives and beliefs behind the
behavior of the hearer.  Third, the observations that make it past his/her
sensory limitations are selectively shaped and trimmed by conscious and
non-conscious processes in his/her brain-- many of which are the product
of an ever-changing flux of absolutely unique experiences had by the
speaker.

On top of all this is the scientifically valid point (according to quantum
physics) that anything *can* happen.  The probability that a human will
turn green upon command may be astronomically small.  However, the
possibility exists.

Hence it impossible for the speaker, him/herself to ever truly know
whether or not they are felicitous in giving a particular command.

Now, you, the observer-- being subject to the same subtle realities,
attempt to determine whether or not the speakers command is felicitous.
Your inability to determine felicity is twice that of the speaker.  You
are attempting to determine the motives and capabilities of both parties.
Your space-time vantage and experiential filters are as unique as theirs.
You see the hearer and evaluate his capabilities differently than does the
speaker.  You observe the speaker and perceive him/her differently than
he/she perceives him/herself.  You cannot know what either of them
actually thinks or believes.

Having conducted this little thought experiment, I propose that the
imperative form of "to believe" only betrays the deeper reality that
felicity is never determinable.  And just to go the extra distance in
making my (likely-to-be-labeled-as-radical) point, I propose that language
is actually an act of faith.

Trent P.