To do and to be: How imperatives shape and regulate the social world
Imperatives are used to command, request, order, and instruct. Here’s a simple picture of how this might go. An imperative D! is aimed at getting its addressee to do the action specified by D. Imperatives have world-to-word direction of fit, and are satisfied if the action specified by D is done. Doing D also satisfies one of the speaker’s goals or desires. We’ll argue against this picture in two ways. First, we’ll consider different approaches to the uptake of an imperative (e.g., rationalist, normativist, Spinozan) and suggest these provide reason to think imperatives might function in a multitude of ways. Second, we’ll consider a broader range of imperatives than usually considered within pragmatic theory—imperatives that are habituals, generic, instructions, and imperatives about how to be (“Be kind”). These suggest that the simple picture fails as a complete view of what imperatives do, how they are satisfied, and what speakers aim to do with them. We’ll conclude by considering how this provides further support for the view that imperative uptake is mediated through a variety of cognitive activities and mechanisms, including rational attitude change, arational ‘triggering’, and in some cases via the exploitation of rational mechanisms to produce more holistic, longer-term changes.