Grice: Meaning

About This Presentation

Title:

Grice: Meaning

Description:

Drawing, on the other hand, is different: unless the audience (Mr. X. ... Still, recognition leaves room for deliberation so this is more than a mere cause. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:428

Avg rating:3.0/5.0

Slides: 42

Provided by: zoltan9

Category:

more less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Grice: Meaning

1
Grice Meaning

Nyelv és elme, 2007
Jakab Zoltán

2
Natural meaning

(1) Error is not possible. The spots mean
measles, but when the spots occur without
measles, they do not mean measles perhaps they
mean whatever other cause has brought them about.
(2) The sentences cannot be written in passive
it is a non-intentional notion. The spots are not
there to mean anything.
(3) The natural signs are not intended by anyone.
(Supplements (2)).
(4) The indication in natural signs is
non-concept-involving (obviously). It is not a
cognitive relation in any sense.
(5) Facts indicate other facts The fact that he
has those spots means that he has measles ? this
can be paraphrased as The fact that he had those
spots indicated the fact he had measles.
A paraphrase that would obviously be incorrect
The fact that he had those spots represented the
fact he had measles, where represented is
understood roughly as had the function of
indicating. (This is closer to Dretske than to
Grice, still, it shows nicely what natural
meaning is not.)

3
Non-natural meaning

(1) Error is possible
(2) The sign is there to mean something.
(3) There was someone who meant something by the
sign.
(4) A conceptually mediated relation.
(5) What such sentences assert is not that facts
indicate other facts.
Another sense of mean (128)
A meant to do so-and-so by x Something was done
with a goal in mind, but the goal had nothing to
do with communication That building that was
meant for storage. The sentence By his remark,
John meant to criticize the editor is not what
Grice has in mind at this point.

4
The causal account of meaningNN

For x to mean something, (i) x must have a
tendency to cause in an audience a cognitive
attitude also, (ii) x must have a tendency to be
caused in the speaker by the same kind of
attitude.
Problems (i) putting on a tailcoat suggests
that the person who does it is going to dance.
This counts a meaning on this account, but it is
not meaning as a matter of fact. Thus we need
more the causal tendency theory is
insufficient. If we supplement this account with
the criterion of attending the use of the sign in
communication, then the account will be circular
the notion of comunication, and that of a sign
presupposes the notion of meaning.

(ii) on this account, part of the meaning of
Jones is an athlete is that Jones is tall.
But we do not want to count being tall as part of
being an athlete. We may want to allow that there
are nontall athletes.
So, contra the account being discussed, we do
want to say that being tall is not part of the
meaning of being an athlete.
The account, as it stands, does not allow us to
introduce this rule. Such a rule would be
semantic it would presuppose that athlete,
for instance, has a meaning, and that guides us
in applying such rules as the one just mentioned.

6
Criteria for meaningNN

(1) Intend to induce a belief in the audience
This alone wont do. Example manipulation
(murderer leaving a misleading trace at the
scene).
(2) Intend the audience to recognize the
belief-inducing intention behind the utterance
These two together are still insufficient.
Example pale kid St John the Baptists head.
The kid intended to induce in her mom the belief
that he needs help he also intended his mom to
recognize that he intended her to believe that he
needs help.

Example Showing a photo of adultery vs. drawing
a picture of adultery. The former is not meaning,
the latter is, or at least the performer of the
act of drawing means by this act that an adultery
has taken place.
What is the relevant difference?
In the photo case the audiences recognition of
the performers intention to make him believe
that (there has been an adultery) is irrelevant
to the production of the photos relevant effect.
If Mr. X simply finds the photo by accident, that
would have had the same effect.
Think of this to understand Grices point
casting a glance at the photo is analogous to
getting a chance to peep into Mrs. Xs bedroom
through the keyhole. There is no communication
here, and the mere fact that someone hands over
the photo to Mr X. is of little significance from
the point of view of communication.

Drawing, on the other hand, is different unless
the audience (Mr. X.) recognizes the addressers
relevant belief-inducing intention, the picture
drawn will not have the belief-inducing effect it
was created to have. (If the recognition does not
happen, then Mr X just keeps looking at the
drawing person wondering what the heck he is up
to.)
So we have a third condition
(3) The audiences recognizing the addressers
belief-inducing (informing) intention plays a
role in the effect of the transmitted sign.

Frowning
- Can be spontaneous, without communicative
intent, and be a sign of displeasure.
- It can also be deliberate, such that the
onlooker recognizes all intentions properly, and
still result in the same effect (the audience
concludes that one is displeased).
Problem the communicative intent makes no
difference wrt. the effect of the frown do we
have an analogy with the photo case here, where
there is no meaning?
Grices reply The deliberate facial gesture has
the same effect as the spontaneous one only if
the audience recognizes the communicative
intention behind it.
So can there be an intermediate case, where the
gesture is neither taken to be spontaneous, nor
is the complete intentional structure behind it
recognized correctly?
What exactly might this amount to?

10
The interdependence of intentions

Intention to induce belief, and
Intention that the audience recognizes it as such
are not independent.
A uttered x with the intention of inducing a
belief by means of the recognition of this
intention

11
Imperatives

Grices principle seems to generalize smoothly.
(The policeman stopping a car.)
Assimilating interrogatives into the scheme of
speaker meaning
S may mean that A is to do such-and such (not
just that such-and-such is the case). The
policeman, raising his arm, means that the
motorist approaching is to stop.
Analogously
If S asks A her name, then S means that A tell
her name to S.
(However, if the question sounds What is your
name?, then it has to be given compositional
interpretation. Well return to this below.)

12
From speaker meaning to expression meaning

(1) Who exactly means something by a sign on an
occasion may become indeterminate (e.g., seeing
the red light at an intersection), still, the
communicative intention of some general agent
remains clear.
(2) Eternal meaning can be equated
(specified?) by a statement about what people
generally intend to effect by a sign.

13
What kind of effect will do for meaningNN?

Not just any kind, Grice says.
Grunting and blushing if the hearer blushes
(something like a conditioned response) whenever
the speaker grunts, then we do NOT have a case of
meaning. Why? Because the effect must be in the
control of the audience.
A reason for believing something is supposed to
be semantic, something understood, interpreted
by one.
A reason for doing something is more like a
cause.

Example Being hungry is a reason for eating.
However, being hungry is not a reason for
believing that one is hungry, only a cause of
that belief. A reason for believeing that one is
hungry is the recognition of signs of hunger as
such. (Listen, how my stomach rumbles. Gosh,
arent I hungry!)
Grice
Recognizing an utterers intention is a way of
having a motive for accepting what the utterer
says.
Still, recognition leaves room for deliberation
so this is more than a mere cause.
The recognition of the intention behind x is for
the audience a reason, and not merely a cause.
What I can mean by a gesture (what can be meant
by a gesture) is not completely up to me it is
within the control of the audience. For the
audience Ss utterance is a reason for, not a
brute cause of, the effect intended by S.

15
The reduction base intentions

The nature of intentions is not the target of
Grices analysis.
Argument for the mind-first option linguistic
and non-linguistic intentions are quite similar,
Grice argues. Thus it is not question-begging to
build a theory of meaning for language that is
based on the notion of intention. (If intention
presupposes language including, in this case,
semantics), then analyzing meaning in terms of
intention would beg the question.

16
Problems with Grices account

1. From speakers meaning and utterance meaning
to expression meaning. How is this project to be
carried out?
How do, for instance, unused sentences mean? To
take care of this question, compositionality is
the first option. But, for Grice, this would mean
saying what the intended effects of the
constituents of language (words, morphemes, etc.)
are.
2. Complex thoughts also raise the possibility
that having at least some intentions already
presupposes language. Which threatens the Gricean
account with circularity.

3. The assumption of complicated intentions. For
example, when a child says, I want candy (i)
she means that she wants candy, yet (ii) it
remains unclear whether she intends to induce the
belief in her mom that she wants candy, and do so
by means of moms recognizing her intention.
Perhaps all she wants is the candy, and she uses
the expression as an operant response?
Interestingly, recent findings about
mentalization and childrens theories of mind
might be taken to show that even young children
are pretty good at understanding, and predicting,
others intentional states. (Think of the
broccoli-cookie experiment in which 18-month-olds
are successful.)
Thus, perhaps it is not completely unreasonable
to attribute Gricean intentions to human
communication across the board (more or less).

18
Intention-Based Semantics and speaker-meaning

The goal of IBS is
- to define the semantic notions of (public)
language
- in terms of propositional attitudes
- such that the propositional-attitude concepts
themselves do not presuppose anything about
meaning in public language.
Speaker-meaning a persons act of conveying that
such-and-such is the case (or that the audience
is to do such-and-such). It should be definable
in terms of behavior underlain by intention to
activate belief (or behavior).
Expression-meaning the meaning of natural
language expressions. Should be definable as
correlations between word forms and speaker
meanings (types of acts).

19
The non-circularity of the notion speaker-meaning

In defining speaker-meaning, we make reference to
intentions
However, these intentions (propositional
attitudes) have content (aboutness regarding the
external world), which is a semantic notion.
Thus, meaning in public language is not
presupposed in defining speaker-meaning, but
mental semantics is presupposed.
Note Fodor gets this problem the other way
around
in his wiew, public-language meanings are
concepts and propositional attitudes which in
turn are sentences and their constituents in
mentalese. But how do concepts and mentalese
sentences become meaningful?

20
Summary speaker-meaning

S means by uttering X that p IFF
there is an audience A such that
(1) S intends to induce in A a belief that p
(2) S intends A to recognize behind the utterance
the belief-inducing intention mentioned in (1)
(3) S intends it that As recognizing Ss
belief-inducing intention play a role in inducing
Ss belief that p.
Is this a necessary and sufficient criterion for
speaker meaning?

21
Problems with sufficiency

Consider the following case (S. Schiffer)
S is staining the shirt of As husband (Joe) with
lipstick.
A observes S doing so
A thinks S does not observe her
A reasons thus S is creating evidence that Joe
has been unfaithful. S wants me to see the traces
of lipstick on Joes shirt, and infer that they
got there as a result of his closeness to another
female. But S is trustworthy he would not be
doing all this if he did not know that Joe has
been unfaithful. So Joe must have been
unfaithful.
This is exactly how S intends A to reason.

Now
(1) S intends to induce in A the belief that Joe
has been unfaithful
(2) S intends A to recognize his (Ss) intention
to induce the belief that Joe has been
unfaithful
(3) S intends that As recognizing his
belief-inducing intention play a role in inducing
As belief that Joe has been unfaithful
According to the definition, S means that Joe has
been unfaithful.
Yet this sort of evidence-manufacturing is not an
act of meaning that Joe has been unfaithful.
(What it appears to be, once again, is a
sophisticated form of manipulation, instead of
communication.)

23
Could we amend the definition?

Notice that
? since A thinks that S does not observe her,
? A does not know that S intends her to recognize
his (Ss) intention to induce the belief that Joe
has been unfaithful
Still, S does intend A to recognize his (Ss)
belief-inducing intention, therefore (2) is
satisfied.
So perhaps we can add a fourth condition

S means by uttering X that p IFF
there is an audience A such that
(1) S intends to induce in A a belief that p
(2) S intends A to recognize behind the utterance
the belief-inducing intention mentioned in (1)
(3) S intends it that As recognizing Ss
belief-inducing intention play a role in inducing
Ss belief that p.
(4) The first three conditions are mutually known
by S and A.
(I.e., S intends his meaning-constitutive
intentions to be known to A if two people
mutually know that p, then both know that p, and
both know that the other knows that p.)
This may still not be enough to reach sufficiency

25
A different counterexample to sufficiency

S Dear A, please believe in God, or else you
will get to Hell, and that would be terrible (for
both you and me)!
(S entreats A to bring it about that he, A,
believes that God exists.)
Here
S utters something intending to get A to believe
that God exists, by means of As recognition of
Ss intention to get A to believe that God
exists.
The original three conditions are satisfied so
is the fourth one, by the way for Ss act of
meaning that God exists.
Yet, obviously enough, what S means is not that
God exists.

26
Counterexamples to necessity

(1) Convincing arguments. When an argument is
presented, Ss intention is that A believe the
conclusion, but not because S wants A to, but
rather, on the merit of the argument.
(2) Producing/inducing a belief is not necessary
either. Think of a case when we simply remind
someone of something.
(3) Many other cases come to mind (i) a writer
writes a manuscript in solitude (ii) sometimes
we say things to an audience even when we know
there isnt a chance that the audience will come
to believe what we say (iii) we just recite what
our audience already has in mindetc.

27
Is there a way out?

One might try to argue that the non-necessary
cases are parasitic on a primary case captured by
the original definition.
If this case is made, then one might argue that
only the primary case is important from the point
of view of expression-meaning.
The next question is, supposing that we have
secured the notion of speaker meaning, can it
underlie an account of natural-language semantics?

28
Expression-meaning

(1) Noncomposite whole-utterance-types (e.g., a
police syren prearranged gestures, etc.). These
have sentence-like meanings, but their meanings
are not determined by the meanings of their
constituents.
Example
Grrr resembles the sound that dogs make when
angry.
Based on this similarity, one members of a
community C (or a few of them) use Grrr on
certain occasions, to mean that they are angry.
As a result, Grrr acquires the following
feature it is the sound by whose utterance
members of C have meant that they were angry.
It becomes mutual knowledge that Grrr has this
feature.

Two consequences
(i) Due to this feature, a member of C is able to
mean that he is angry by uttering Grrr in a
wide range of circumstances.
(ii) For the audience, Grrr constitutes very
good evidence that the utterer means that he is
angry.
The use of Grrr to this end spreads in C. As a
result, Grrr now has a feature that is mutually
known, namely that members of C utter it whenever
they mean they are angry.
Thus Grrr becomes a reliable device for meaning
that one is angry, and members of C will use it
in communication.
In other words, it becomes a convention that
Grrr means that one is angry.

30
Conventions

Conventions (conventionalized acts of
speaker-meaning) thus constitute a base for
expression-meaning.
On the other hand, the notion of convention is
itself defined in wholly psychological and
nonsemantic terms.

31
However

Whole-utterance-types in natural language are,
most often, sentences.
Often enough, they are sentences that have never
before been uttered.
Despite this, we understand such sentences
instantaneously.
But we cannot accont for the meaning of
never-before-uttered sentences in terms of what
other members of the community mean by them.
This is where compositionality enters the picture

32
Now we proceed in big steps

Intentions are propositional attitudes.
Propositional attitudes include propositions
they are relations to propositions.
NOTE Propositions are semantic entities, but we
pointed out above that they belong to mental
semantics, not to natural-language semantics on
the IBS account anyway and mental semantics
apparently cannot be eliminated from an idea
theory of linguistic meaning.
Propositions have constituents (so we assume
compositional semantics) properties, relations,
particulars, connectives, and so on.

The sentences that we utter are sentences of a
language L.
L has a grammar, which consists of
(i) correlations between vocabulary items
(morphemes) and propositional constituents (i.e.,
their meanings),
(ii) a finite set of combining operations that
derive the meanings of any sentence S out of the
correlations mentioned in (i), for the vocabulary
items in S.
An example of how propositional constituents
become the meanings of vocabulary items
For example, when S utters Mark Twain, she
means Mark Twain. This is a conventionalized act
of speaker meaning which is reliably correlated
with the vocabulary item Mark Twain. Mark
Twain has a mutually known feature, namely that
it is used to mean the author Mark Twain.
(Compare this with Grrr.)

In order for the grammar to explain the ability
of subjects to understand infinitely many novel
sentences, we attribute knowledge of the grammar
to subjects (tacit, and not conscious,
knowledge). A Chomskian internal realization.
Due to knowledge of a grammar for L, members of C
who speak L can segment the sentences they hear,
and assign to the segments (vocabulary items)
their meanings. (A crude picture, but details can
be supplied.)

35
So

The original Gricean picture needed to be
supplemented with familiar psycholinguistic
notions, in order to account for the recognition
of novel sentences.
Since this is an idea-theory of meaning whose
goal is to reduce natural-language semantics to
psychological notions, this is not a very strange
result.
Still, one outstanding issue remains

Acts that are speaker meanings always seem to be
(or correspond to) sentence-level utterances, not
subsentential constituents. When an utterer means
something, what he means is properly expressed by
a sentence, even in cases where no spoken
sentence is produced (think of the policaman
stopping a car).
When a child points at an interesint object, and
says Lamp, as in proto-declarative pointing,
what she means arguably has the logical form of a
sentence (ie., That is a lamp Look at that
lamp or so).
Thus it remains a somewhat implausible idea that
we can systematically ground sentential
constituents in speaker-meaning.
Ergo Compositionality remains a significant
problem for the Gricean enterprise.

37
(No Transcript)
38
(No Transcript)
39
(No Transcript)
40
Criteria for meaningNN

Qwertyuiop asdfghjkl zxcvbnm.qaz wsx edc rfv
tgb yhn ujm ik0,olp.\lt,gt.?/)0(_at_!
!!!!!!!!!!
12345678947/-9goqkufhfugsfyggreitgfgsdhqer
hgwrtg
Jhulghfughljfhxjvpeiefaeujeirghskfughsgugrefeubhs
fjgh

41
Problems with sufficiency

S removes the wheels of As bike in As basement,
in order to make it seem that the axles are worn
out.
A observes S doing so
A thinks S does not observe her
A reasons thus Surely S wants me to realize
that my bike needs repair, that is, he is
removing the wheels to show me just this. S is
trustworthy, he would not be doing all this if my
bike were in good shape.
This is exactly how S intends A to reason.
Now
(1) S intends to induce in A the belief that the
bike needs repair
(2) S intends A to recognize his (Ss) intention
to induce the belief that the bike needs repair
(3) S intends that As recognizing his
belief-inducing intention play a role in inducing
As belief that the axles are worn out
On the definition, S means that the