Grice's constatum

CONSTATUM -- constative: J. L. Austin’s term for utterances such as “John is running,” which state, report, or describe facts in the world. The utterance “John is running,” depends for its truth or falsity on whether it is the case that John is running. Here the act or fact and the utterance are distinct and the former decides the truth of the latter. Most language clearly belongs to this kind of utterance. Constative utterances are contrasted with performative utterances, which have a similar linguistic structure but do not issue true or false statements about the world. However, Austin was not satisfied with this distinction, and he later replaced it with his theory of illocutionary acts. “Not all true or false statements are descriptions, and for this reason I prefer to use the word ‘Constative’.” Austin, How to Do Things with Words constitutive principles Metaphysics Kant’s term for the principles that objectively state what is present in the object itself, that is, what is the constitution of appearance. Constitutive principles are principles of pure understanding that are laid down by us as standard and necessary constituents of the world of appearance. Constitutive principles are contrasted with regulative principles, which are rules to show how experience may be organized or regulated without reference to the constitution of the object. Regulative principles, such as transcendental ideas, play no part in determining the objective character of the world of appearance. They are maxims, neither provable nor disprovable, and are not to be understood as true or false. They serve to guide our inquiry within experience and can lead us to transgress the limits of reason from the conditioned to the unconditioned. For Kant we must observe the distinction between these two kinds of principles. If we use regulative principles as constitutive, dialectical illusions or errors arise. Kant’s transcendental dialectic is a presentation of what these errors are.