Let's consider Davidson's argument against any attempt to base an account of force on mood. His first step is to pull apart mood and force by highlighting the obvious fact that an utterance of one or another force can be made by uttering a sentence in a number of different moods. An assertion may be made by uttering an interrogative (“Did you notice that Joan was wearing her purple hat again?”), an enquiry may be made by uttering an imperative (“Tell me who won the third race”), and so on. Now Davidson's commonplace observation won't come as news to anyone who wants to base force on mood. Rather they will insist on the connection but explain away Davidson's cases as somehow deviant, either because they diverge from the normal or because they diverge from the conventionally established link between mood and force. Davidson finds the first thought muddled since it either fails to explain why a command issued by means of an indicative is abnormal or involves a spurious appeal to statistical regularities.

The appeal to convention is more interesting but ultimately, he claims, just as spurious. Although he allows that there may be conditions that guarantee that an utterance is, say, an assertion, Davidson doesn't think that these conditions are conventional in character. If there were such conventions then we should be able to say what they are. But any such conventions could be exploited by a prankster or actor in conjuring the (false) appearance of having made an assertion.