Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Descartes is committed to a wacky ontology, the couple feels committed to help the drowning child and I have commitment problems. The term ‘commitment’ is ubiquitous not only in ordinary language but also in many philosophical and linguistic theories, e.g., of collective intentionality or speech acts like promises and assertions. It is surprising that despite the ubiquity of the term there is very little discussion on what we mean by ‘commitment’. After presenting an account of commitments, I show why commitment accounts of assertion only account for a small number of assertions and how we can use this account to give a unified theory of conceptual engineering.