A Note on Commendation and Approval

According to some writers in moral philosophy, evaluations are performatives. Just as utterances beginning with "I promise" are acts of promising, statements of the forms "X is good," "Y ought to do A," or "Z is beautiful" are acts of commendation and approval.' Whatever one's criteria for goodness, etc., the central meaning of these evaluative terms is the performative function. Standards of goodness may vary, but to call a thing good is always to commend it or approve of it. It would be difficult to deny that, when one calls an action right, he is commending it or that, when he says something is good, he is expressing his approval. I shall not try to do so. What I want to argue here is that, even if evaluations always have the performative function of commending, approving, etc., this need not show, as Urmson argues,2 that this performative function is all or even part of the meaning of evaluative expressions. I shall argue that, if an act of commendation or approval is nothing more than the designation of some item as being in some way good, then this performative feature of "X is good" is not what this statement means. Furthermore, there are good reasons for thinking that commendation, etc., are merely the designations of things as good. If the commendation of a thing involves some performance other than a designation of goodness, and if all evaluations are commendations (or condemnations), then we may need to conclude that all evaluations have this other performative function as a central part of their meaning. But if I am right in thinking that there is not such an additional performative function, the argument given below will demonstrate the compatibility of descriptivism with the view that evaluations are acts of commendation or approval (or of condemnation or disapproval). Attitudes of approval are indicated in many ways. What we approve of we tend to desire or promote, to have pleasant feelings about, or to speak or think of in positive evaluative terms. But we can approve of something without responding to it in any particular one of these ways. It does not seem that an attitude of approval toward a