Where does act collide?

In the philosophy of language, a speech act is an utterance that does not merely describe the world but performs an action by being said, such as promising, ordering, naming, or warning. J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words, delivered as lectures in 1955 and first published in 1962, argued that in saying 'I promise' a speaker performs the act of promising, and it separated the words uttered from the action, the illocutionary act, done in uttering them. This referent is a thing a person does with language, classified by the action it performs, and it is not a law passed by a legislature, a division of a play, or a way of existing rather than merely being possible.[1]

Unit

One utterance that performs an action in being said

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Analysed by the illocutionary force of the utterance and by its felicity conditions, the circumstances that make it succeed

In Aristotelian and Scholastic metaphysics, act, from the Latin actus, names the pole of being in which a thing is realized or at work, and it is paired against potency (potentia), the capacity a thing has but has not yet exercised. An acorn is an oak in potency and a grown oak is that tree in act, and the same being can be in act in one respect while remaining in potency in another. John F. Wippel's 1993 chapter Metaphysics, on Thomas Aquinas, traces how Aquinas built his account of being, essence, and existence on this pairing of act and potency. This referent is a mode of being, a thing considered as realized rather than merely capable, argued about in metaphysics, and it shares nothing with a statute, a division of a play, or an utterance that performs an action.[2]

Unit

One thing considered as realized (in act) rather than merely capable (in potency)

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Argued philosophically by distinguishing what a thing actually is from what it has the capacity to become