Mitchell Green* Think twice before paving illocutionary paradise https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2019-0003 We here assess Geurts’ proposal to understand the bulk of human communica- tion in terms of commitments undertaken in the service of action coordination. Our main points are as follows: (i) Geurts’ criticism of intention-based accounts rests on an unduly narrow notion of intentional action and its interpretation, and thus attacks a straw version thereof; (ii) properly understood, Geurts’ view of communication as being primarily a matter of action coordination does not rule out the simple sharing of information as a case of action coordination. It is accordingly not clear what position his view is meant to challenge; (iii) there is an internal tension in his view of the status of psychological states: although Geurts claims to de-psychologize the explanation of implicature, that explana- tion cannot in fact eschew such states; (iv) the notion of consistency invoked in the elucidation of commitment is apparently too weak to do the explanatory work required of it; (v) Geurts’ characterization of commitment elides the dis- tinctions among various types of commitment. Different members of what I have elsewhere called the assertive family, for instance, correspond to different kinds of commitment, but it is difficult to see how Geurts can accommodate those distinctions within his framework; (vi) his view likewise expands the notion of conversational implicature beyond recognition, entailing that one who asserts p conversationally implicates that p, and conversationally implicates that she believes that p. 1 Introduction Much of what makes human communication a fascinating area of study is its power to reveal a seemingly boundless ingenuity. 1 Linguistic communities have fashioned a formidable array of means for conveying messages, with those *Corresponding author: Mitchell Green, Department of Philosophy, University of Connecticut, 136 Manchester Hall, 344 Mansfield Road, Unit 1054, Storrs, CT 06269-1054, USA, E-mail: mitchell.green@uconn.edu 1 My thanks to Jan Michel for comments on an earlier draft of this essay. Theoretical Linguistics 2019; 45(1-2): 39–51 Authenticated | mitchell.green@uconn.edu author's copy Download Date | 6/24/19 5:16 AM