Not Exactly Pretending

Abstract

In his paper ‘Pretending’ J. L. Austin says that (a) philosophers have exaggerated the scope and distorted the meaning of pretending, and (b) the clarification of this notion has a place in the ‘long-term project of classifying and clarifying all possible ways and varieties of not exactly doing things, which has to be carried through if we are ever to understand properly what doing things is.’