Commissive Intelligence Theory: Recognition, Commitment, and the Making of Mutual Meaning

What is it for two people to share a single meaning, one that is neither’s alone? They hold one another in mutual recognition, and within it each binds herself toward the other; recognition and the binding on both sides make a meaning that is theirs in common. The binding is a commitment, not a report, and the capacity exercised in it is treated as a distinct form of intelligence, not a byproduct of language or reasoning. That capacity recognizes, binds, reads its occasion, and holds itself open to correction, at once and formed in company with others. Its relation is mutual, not a matter of return, and its binding is owed in truthfulness. The view is set against other substantive accounts that place commitment in the lone agent or in a collective practice. A closing gesture marks how the same capacity bears on care and on the deliberation in and governance of a pluralistic liberal democracy.