If 'speaking to oneself' is not a real speech act but a disposition to behave linguistically, then positing a structural hearer is an illegitimate reification of a mere functional description.

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Disposition(as used in metaphysics): A tendency or potential for something to behave in a certain way under specific conditions—like how sugar has the disposition to dissolve when placed in water.
Functional description(Bohr's philosophy of measurement): A description of the experimental apparatus in which it is treated as a means to an end, not merely as a dynamical system.
Speech act(core concept in the statement): An action performed by speaking or writing—like promising, requesting, or stating something. It's not just about the words themselves, but what you're actually doing by saying them.
reification(Lukács's theory of social rationalization): A theoretical framework, developed by Lukács, used to sketch a theory of social rationalization that extends beyond economic relations to cultural change.

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