 Austin appears to have thought that the various modes of assessment that he discusses—e.g., true/false, happy/unhappy—apply most fundamentally to the illocutionary act, rather than the locutionary or the perlocutionary  act.[18]  One point is that Austin thought that philosophers have had a tendency to view some assessments as to happiness (or felicity) as really applying to perlocutionary acts, so as not bearing on the specifically linguistic things that speakers are up to. Another point—and perhaps the point of primary importance—is that Austin thought that philosophers have had a tendency to view assessments as to truth as applying most fundamentally to locutionary acts. Moreover, he thought that philosophers had conceived locutionary acts, not as abstractions from illocutionary acts, but rather as things that might be done without any illocutionary purpose, just by virtue of the linguistic expressions employed or their meanings. By contrast, Austin held that locutionary acts are abstracted from instances of illocutionary acts, and that assessment as to truth is directed most fundamentally to the illocutionary act. (We’ll consider below a stronger and a weaker reading of the idea that assessment as to truth applies most fundamentally to the illocutionary act.)