Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
H.P. Grice
Oxford & Berkeley
Doesn’t distinguish:
1. MeaningN vs meaningNN: Putting on a cossie
meansNN one’s going swimming?
2. Literal meaning vs what can be inferred: ‘Jones plays
basketball’ meansNN ‘Jones is tall’?
3. Idiosyncratic meaning vs. standard meaning: ‘He’s
the very pineapple of politeness’ means that … he’s
a polite pineapple?
Intention-based approach
Explanation: meaningNN is grounded in goal-directed
communication – trying to get someone to understand
something.
Standard meaning:
x meansNN (timeless) that p iff:
• People (vague) m-intend to produce in hearers a belief that p.
Needs an theory of regularities/conventions of use in a community.
Standard public meanings
‘She’ll be right, mate’ meansNN (in Australian English) that
everything will be okay iff:
• Most people in Australia m-intend to produce in their
hearers a belief that everything will be okay when they say
this.
4. (1) occurs in virtue of H’s recognizing that S’s intention is a reason to believe that p.
But if we add a further intention, won’t we need to add another one to recognize this one too?
(iv) I intend that you recognize my intention (iii).
(v) I intend that you recognize my intention in (iv).
(vi) …
Schiffer’s solution (1972, 30ff): requires mutual knowledge of all the relevant intentions &
background info. No hidden agendas, everything is known.
2. Too restrictive?
The intended-belief requirement (i) seems to rule out genuine cases
of speaker meaning:
1. Soliloquies: talking out loud to yourself: you’re not trying to get an
audience to believe anything.
2. Exams: the audience already believes the true answer.
3. Proofs: I want you to believe Pythagorean theorem, but not just
because I’m telling you: I want to to recognize the proof is valid for
yourself!
Fixes:
1. Allow counterfactual audiences (Grice 1969)
2. Allow the speaker to be their own audience (Schiffer 1972, 80)
3. Require only that the belief content be ‘activated’ in audience (Grice
1969)
4. Weaken the requirement: (Grice 1969)
• (i’) I intend you to believe that I believe that p.
Worries
1. Communicative Intentions:
– Do we really have such complicated intentions?!
– Is there a circularity problem with self-referential content of intentions 2 & 3?
Alternative views:
– Locke: Maybe concepts are linked directly to words?