Oct. 28, 1936 – Dec. 28, 2023 John T.
Kearns, a professor of philosophy at the University at Buffalo for more than 40 years, applied deep thought to something most people do without thinking – the way we talk and write. Among the things he looked into were "speech acts” – how people do things with words, like simple commands and declarations of fact, which are expected to be understood and accepted. One of the things he pondered was whether there is a logic that can be applied to paradoxes and lies.
He argued that the rules should still be in effect. “Ordinary language, our ordinary practice of using language, is not inconsistent or incoherent because of the Liar,” he proposed in the abstract for a paper he published in 1997. “He developed an idea about the logic of speech acts and then used that as an approach to the history of philosophy,” said UB philosophy professor Barry Smith.
“Speech act theory was a big deal and it’s becoming a big deal again because of ChatGPT. This topic is of interest today, for example, in light of the question: What sorts of speech acts can ChatGPT perform?” A UB professor emeritus since 2018, Dr. Kearns died Dec.
28 in Erie County Medical Center after a brief illness. He was 87. A native of Champaign, Ill.
, he earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1958 and completed his doctorate in philosophy at Yale University in 1962. He first intended to go on to law school, but became fascinated with symbolic .
