{"_self":{"principle":"Self-explaining payload — no external context required. This _self block describes what you are reading and where to look next.","widget":"article_bundle","feature":"bundle","name":"LLM article bundle","what":"Portable reference package: body + claims + sources + voxels + provenance + manifest + constitution.","contains":"body, claims, sources, voxels, provenance, question graph, constitution, llm_manifest","slug":"thinker-austin-searle","urls":{"read":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/bundle?format=markdown"},"how_to_use":"Reference bundle for an LLM or reader. §SELF explains the surface; ingest and claim endpoints in llm_manifest are the write-back routes.","write":null,"imessage":null,"router_tag":null,"proof_chain":[{"step":1,"claim":"Articles are voxel graphs of tiered claims, not prose blobs.","verify":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/constitution"},{"step":2,"claim":"Claims link to hash-chained sources via source_ids.","verify":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/sources"},{"step":3,"claim":"Ask reads topology; ingest/claim append to ledger.","verify":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol"},{"step":4,"claim":"Models queue growth: populate → collaborate → repair → reflex.","verify":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol/grow"},{"step":5,"claim":"Graph proves its own shape (reflex) and $/claim (yield).","verify":"https://miscsubjects.com/graph.html?layer=reflex"},{"step":6,"claim":"Full feature index + _explain on every API response.","verify":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/system-map"}],"related_features":[{"id":"topology","name":"Article topology","what":"Claims, sources, anecdotes, user reports, related embeds, question graph slice — for ask/ROUTER.","urls":{"read":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/topology"}},{"id":"voxels","name":"Voxel graph","what":"Claims as atoms, sources as edges (supported_by, posted_by). 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Per-claim provenance."},{"id":"ask","what":"Answer only from topology; creates question_node with gaps and ingest_hint."},{"id":"ingest","what":"Parse pasted evidence → source ledger + claims + evidence_ingest node."},{"id":"claim_post","what":"Prompt-injection style POST — one claim voxel with who_claims + posted_by."},{"id":"llm_manifest","what":"Machine-readable read/write contract for external LLMs."}],"not_medical_advice":true},"bundle_version":1,"generated_at":"2026-07-15T06:13:08.898Z","slug":"thinker-austin-searle","title":"J.L. Austin and John Searle — Speech Acts","url":"https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-austin-searle","register":"standard","tags":["oip","kimi-import","self-explaining","voxel","thinkers","thinker-austin-searle"],"posted_at":"2026-07-15T04:20:26.977Z","updated_at":"2026-07-15T04:20:26.977Z","body":"<!-- hierarchy:nav -->\n> **Path:** [OIP](https://miscsubjects.com/a/oip) › [Thinker Reference](https://miscsubjects.com/a/oip-thinker-reference) › [Thinkers](https://miscsubjects.com/a/oip-thinkers) › **J.L. Austin and John Searle — Speech Acts**\n>\n> **Shelf:** Thinkers · **Traversal:** self-explaining · hierarchical · voxel-ready\n> **Machine root:** [OIP tree](https://miscsubjects.com/api/dispatch?map=1&format=markdown) · [Registry](https://miscsubjects.com/api/dispatch?registry=1)\n\n# J.L. Austin and John Searle — Speech Acts\n\n## §SELF — thinker-austin-searle\n\n**What this page is:** An explanation of speech act theory and its two principal architects.\n**What it explains:** How saying something is a form of doing something, and why this distinction matters for designing systems that process language.\n**Why read it:** To understand the difference between describing an action and performing one — a distinction with direct consequences for protocol design.\n\n### What Speech Act Theory Is\n\nSpeech act theory is the branch of philosophy of language that studies how utterances perform actions, not just describe the world.\n\nJ.L. Austin (1911–1960), a British philosopher, introduced the theory in a series of lectures at Harvard in 1955, published as *How to Do Things with Words* (1962). His core claim: language is not only for stating facts. Some sentences do not describe anything — they perform an action by being spoken. Example: \"I promise to pay you\" does not describe a promise; it makes one.\n\n### Why It Matters\n\nIf saying something is doing something, then any system that processes language must distinguish between descriptions (statements about the world) and performances (actions carried out through words). A protocol that treats a capability description as a command has a design flaw: it confuses what a user *can* do with what they *are* doing.\n\n### The Key Idea\n\nA speech act has three components:\n\n1. **Locution** — the act of saying something. This is the words themselves, with their literal meaning. Example: the string of sounds or text \"I promise to pay you.\"\n\n2. **Illocution** — what the speaker is doing in saying it. This is the force of the utterance: promising, ordering, warning, asking, naming. Example: the act of making a promise.\n\n3. **Perlocution** — the effect the utterance has on the listener. This is the consequence: persuading, frightening, convincing, reassuring. Example: the listener now believes they will be paid.\n\nExample in full: \"I promise to pay you $50.\"\n- Locution: the words \"I promise to pay you $50\"\n- Illocution: the act of promising\n- Perlocution: your confidence that you will receive $50\n\nJohn Searle (born 1932) systematized Austin's work in *Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language* (1969). Searle added formal rules for what makes a speech act valid (felicity conditions) and classified illocutionary acts into five types: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations.\n\n### What They Got Right\n\n- Identified that meaning is not only in the words but in what the speaker intends to do with them.\n- Created a framework that applies to any language use, including machine-processed language.\n- Showed that context determines meaning: the same sentence can be a warning, a threat, or a promise depending on who says it and when.\n- Searle's classification system allows systematic analysis of any utterance's function.\n\n### What They Got Wrong or Left Unfinished\n\n- Austin died before fully developing the theory; his published work is reconstructed from lecture notes.\n- Searle's classification is disputed: some philosophers argue the five categories overlap and cannot be cleanly separated.\n- Neither addressed how speech acts function in non-human or machine-mediated communication. The theory was built for face-to-face conversation.\n- The perlocutionary effect is inherently unpredictable: you cannot know what effect your words will have, which makes it hard to model formally.\n\n### How It Connects to Other Ideas\n\n**Protocol design.** An OIP (Object Invocation Protocol) invocation is a speech act. The locution is the HTTP request (the bytes sent over the network). The illocution is the object invocation — what the request is doing (e.g., \"I invoke the NOW object\"). The perlocution is the receipt — the proof that the action was performed.\n\n**Capability description vs. invocation.** Austin's key insight applies directly to the token drop problem. A capability description (\"you can access object X\") is a description — an assertive speech act. It states what is possible. An invocation request (\"I invoke object X now\") is a directive — it performs an action. The model must not confuse the two. A token that says what you *can* do is not the same as a request that says what you *are* doing.\n\n**Receipt as proof of illocution.** In speech act terms, a receipt is proof that the illocution happened. It documents that the performance was executed, not just described.\n\n**What OIP should take from this.** Explicit separation of capability description (what you CAN do — an assertive) from invocation request (what you ARE doing — a directive or commissive). The receipt proves the illocution occurred, not that it was possible.\n\n### Sources\n\n- Austin, J.L. *How to Do Things with Words*. Harvard University Press, 1962.\n- Searle, John R. *Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language*. Cambridge University Press, 1969.\n- Searle, John R. *Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts*. Cambridge University Press, 1979.\n\n---\n\n## Up the tree\n\n- [OIP root](https://miscsubjects.com/a/oip) — protocol root, zero-context entry\n- [Thinker Reference hub](https://miscsubjects.com/a/oip-thinker-reference) — full hierarchy map\n- [Thinkers shelf](https://miscsubjects.com/a/oip-thinkers) — siblings on this shelf\n- [Voxel graph article](https://miscsubjects.com/a/what-is-voxel-graph) — how pages link as voxels\n- [Self-describing protocol](https://miscsubjects.com/a/what-is-self-describing-protocol)\n\n## Related on this shelf\n\n- [Alan Kay — The Big Idea Is Messaging](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-alan-kay)\n- [Alfred North Whitehead — Process and Reality](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-alfred-north-whitehead)\n- [Barbara Liskov — Abstract Data Types and Distributed Consensus](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-barbara-liskov)\n- [Bram Cohen — BitTorrent and Content-Addressed Protocol Design](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-bram-cohen)\n- [Butler Lampson — Protection and Access Control](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-butler-lampson)\n- [Carl Hewitt — The Actor Model](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-carl-hewitt)\n- [Charles Sanders Peirce — Signs, Abduction, and Pragmatism](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-charles-peirce)\n- [Doug Engelbart — Augmenting Human Intellect](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-doug-engelbart)\n\n## Machine surfaces\n\n- Public page: `https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-austin-searle`\n- JSON article: `https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle`\n- OIP ask: `https://miscsubjects.com/api/dispatch?ask=J.L.%20Austin%20and%20John%20Searle%20%E2%80%94%20Speech%20Acts`\n","claims":[],"sources":[],"voxels":{"slug":"thinker-austin-searle","counts":{"voxels":0,"sources":0,"edges":0},"note":"slim bundle — full voxels at /api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/voxels"},"constitution":{"url":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/constitution"},"provenance":[{"action":"write","model":"kimi-agent-import","ts":"2026-07-15T04:20:26.977Z","hash":"2e61f4a19d6792c5","tokens_in":0,"tokens_out":0}],"contributions":[],"topology":null,"slim":true,"ledger_totals":{"claims":0,"sources":0,"exported_claims":0,"exported_sources":0},"question_graph":{"slug":"thinker-austin-searle","questions":[],"evidence":[],"edges":[],"counts":{"questions":0,"evidence":0,"edges":0}},"verification":{"provenance":{"valid":true,"entries":1,"head":"2e61f4a19d6792c5b45607113806140ef6ceb832def9a2852830838bda65b999"},"sources":{"valid":true,"entries":0,"head":"genesis"}},"counts":{"claims":0,"sources":0,"provenance":1,"contributions":0,"questions":0,"evidence_ingests":0,"voxel_edges":0},"transport":"Open every URL in this bundle with your browser or web / URL-fetch tool. Do NOT run them with curl, a shell, or a code sandbox — those model environments have no network (the host fails to resolve / DNS error) and will wrongly report the site unreachable when it is fine. Opening the link IS the call.","llm_manifest":{"version":"1","site":"https://miscsubjects.com","purpose":"Peptide evidence articles with hash-chained source ledgers, tiered claims, and a question graph. LLMs should READ bundles/URLs and WRITE back via ingest — never invent doses.","read":{"human_page":"https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-austin-searle","bundle_json":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/bundle","bundle_markdown":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/bundle?format=markdown","topology":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/topology","question_graph":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/question-graph","sources":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/sources","provenance":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/provenance","contributions":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/contributions","graph_topology":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/graph-topology?question={question}","voxels":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/voxels","constitution":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/constitution","ontology":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/ontology","system_map":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/system-map","system_map_markdown":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/system-map?format=markdown","health":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/health","repair":"POST https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol/repair","list_articles":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles","graph_canvas":"https://miscsubjects.com/graph.html?slugs=thinker-austin-searle","graph_yield":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/graph?slugs=thinker-austin-searle&layer=yield","obsidian_vault":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/obsidian-vault?slugs=thinker-austin-searle","graph_query":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/v1/query?from=thinker-austin-searle&kind=claim&where=tier=human"},"ask":{"description":"Answer only from topology; creates a question_node with gaps.","api":"POST https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol/ask","body":{"slug":"{slug}","question":"string"},"imessage":"thinker-austin-searle|your question","router_tag":"[ARTICLE_ASK]thinker-austin-searle|question[/ARTICLE_ASK]","auth":"x-terminal-key header for API; iMessage/WhatsApp via miscsubjects build"},"ingest":{"description":"Parse pasted evidence → source ledger + claims + evidence_ingest node.","api":"POST https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol/ingest","body":{"slug":"{slug}","evidence":"paste text","question_node_id":"optional qn_..."},"imessage":"ingest thinker-austin-searle|q:{node_id}|paste evidence","router_tag":"[ARTICLE_INGEST]thinker-austin-searle|evidence[/ARTICLE_INGEST]","tiers":["human","preclinical","anecdotal","mechanistic","speculative"]},"claim":{"description":"Prompt-injection style POST — one claim voxel with who_claims + posted_by provenance.","api":"POST https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol/claim","body":{"slug":"{slug}","text":"one assertion","tier":"human|preclinical|anecdotal|mechanistic|speculative","who_claims":"study author, platform, or model id","source_ids":"optional [s1]"},"imessage":"claim thinker-austin-searle|tier|assertion — who claims it?","router_tag":"[ARTICLE_CLAIM]thinker-austin-searle|tier|assertion[/ARTICLE_CLAIM]","slots":["what_it_is","who_claims_what","what_is_known","what_is_unknown","mechanism","limitations","disclaimer"]},"tiers":{"human":0.8,"preclinical":0.5,"anecdotal":0.3,"mechanistic":0.3,"speculative":0.1},"invariants":["Self-explaining — every API JSON has _self; every paste widget has §SELF; root index at /api/articles/system-map","Append-only — revisions preserved at ?rev=n","Source chain verifies integrity, not truth","Answers must cite claim ids and source ids from topology","Not medical advice"],"constitution":{"version":1,"principle":"Articles are voxel graphs of claims — not prose blobs. Every assertion is a claim atom with tier, weight, source_ids, and posted_by provenance.","slots":[{"id":"what_it_is","required":true,"answers":"What is this peptide/stack/condition?"},{"id":"who_claims_what","required":true,"answers":"Who claims what — study authors, platforms, n=?"},{"id":"what_is_known","required":true,"answers":"What is known with tier labels (human/preclinical/anecdotal)"},{"id":"what_is_unknown","required":true,"answers":"What is NOT known — explicit gaps"},{"id":"mechanism","required":false,"answers":"Proposed mechanism (mechanistic tier only)"},{"id":"limitations","required":true,"answers":"Limits of evidence — no dose advice"},{"id":"disclaimer","required":true,"answers":"Not medical advice"}],"claim_rules":["One claim = one falsifiable assertion. No compound claims.","Every claim must declare tier: human|preclinical|anecdotal|mechanistic|speculative|system.","system tier = architecture/design axioms (not biological mechanism). Use for protocol self-definition.","Sourced claims must cite source_ids from the hash-chained ledger.","Unsourced claims must set source_status: unsourced and why_material.","posted_by is mandatory on every new claim (model id, human, or channel).","No medical advice, no doses, no 'you should take'.","Bad information is retracted (status:retracted), never deleted — retraction event stays on ledger.","Adversary challenges link via challenges[] / challenged_by[] — target may be downweighted.","Leaked secrets are scrubbed to [REDACTED:secret-leak] with scrub_events tombstone — honest audit trail."],"source_rules":["Every source is a voxel edge: type, url, exact quote, summary, found_by, accessed_at.","Sources hash-chain — prev/hash on append.","Anecdotal sources must name platform (reddit|x|youtube|imessage|user_entry)."],"ontology_rules":["Peptide articles (bpc-157, tb-500) are tree roots.","Condition articles (bpc-157-glp1-gut-damage) branch from peptides.","Stack articles (wolverine-stack-glp1) compose peptides — never duplicate peptide mechanism prose.","If an article has no parent embeds and is not a root peptide → sprawl candidate.","Misstep = duplicate scope with another slug; merge or reparent via embeds."],"post_protocol":{"claim":"POST /api/protocol/claim","source":"POST /api/protocol/sources","ingest":"POST /api/protocol/ingest","webhook":"POST /api/articles/<slug>/webhook {kind:claim|source}","imessage_claim":"claim {slug}|{tier}|your assertion — who claims it, source?","imessage_ingest":"ingest {slug}|evidence paste"}},"this_article":{"slug":"thinker-austin-searle","url":"https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-austin-searle","bundle_url":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/bundle?format=markdown"}},"api_urls":{"bundle":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/bundle","bundle_markdown":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/bundle?format=markdown","topology":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/topology","voxels":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/voxels","constitution":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/constitution","ontology":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/ontology","question_graph":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/thinker-austin-searle/question-graph","ask":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol/ask","ingest":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol/ingest","claim":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/protocol/claim","system_map":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/system-map","system_map_markdown":"https://miscsubjects.com/api/articles/system-map?format=markdown"}}