 Social Acts. An act is social if it stands under the requirement of being understood by its addressee in order to be successfully or happily performed. On this definition, acts like promises, orders, bets, apologies, and more in general: all so-called “speech” acts, are social acts. (It is worth noting that the concept of “social act” as “social operation of the mind” can be found in Thomas Reid already, see Schuhmann &amp; Smith 1990. Reid was not unknown within the two circles of phenomenology, see Peters 1909, but there is no solid evidence that early phenomenologists adopted this idea from Reid, see Mulligan 1987a: 33f n 5.) One main difference between the phenomenological and the ordinary language approach to speech acts is that the tradition inaugurated by John Austin understands speech acts as conventional or ritual actions (Austin 1962: 14), whereas phenomenology describes them as mental acts or experiences (Smith 1990).