Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 13.07.1981, Page 230

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Páll S. Árdal
who says he is going to do something that is understood to be favour-
able to another person (perhaps a friend) might be offended if he is
asked to promise. He might insist that a promise, in the sense of a
solemn assurance, is unnecessary. “Surely you know me better than to
demand a promise from me,” he might say. And yet when, at the time
for doing what he said he would do, he fails to do it, the charge that he
broke a promise may be entirely reasonable. “You promised” may
often be correct when no promise in the form of a solemn assurance is
given. The solemn assurance is unnecessary in cases of this kind, for
the promisee has a right to take the statement of intention as a promise
without it.
The fact that we do distinguish between threats and promises in terms
of the content of statements of intention and the interests of the people
concemed in that content, strongly suggest that it is in the content that
one must seek for a clue to the source of our obligation to keep prom-
ises. Although, no doubt, we often ought to carry out our threats, no
one has suggested that we always have a prima facie obligation to do so,
though many philosophers argue that we have a príma facie obligation
to keep our promises. The expressions I have called emphasising ex-
pressions are used in the making of emphatic threats as well as em-
phatic promises, so these can hardly unambiguously distinguish between
the two. I argued that a man has promised if it is reasonable to charge
him, in case of his failure to perform, by using the critical expression
‘But you promised’. This is, roughly speaking, a justified charge when
it was reasonable for the promisee to assume that the promiser would
not have made a certain statement of intention to him, unless the prom-
iser had meant to arouse in him special favourable expectations the
fulfilling of which he is guaranteeing. Of course I may deliberately
arouse favourable expectations in people without promising them any-
thing. Thus it might suit my purposes to mislead people about some
state of affairs by misrepresenting the facts. I may also by purely non-
linguistic behaviour hold out a promise to people. In such cases I can
be criticized for disappointing people, although I cannot be said to have
broken a promise. Generally speaking one must in an ordinary promise
be guaranteeing to do something for the promisee and this is so even
in cases when what one promises is for one’s own good. In what I have
called a salesman’s promise, the guarantee is that a certain state of