Grice on Meaning

1
Grice on Meaning

• Lecture 2

2
Is speaker or word meaning 1st?

• What Grice takes as primary is What S meant by x
  on a particular occasion of use.
• He assumes that word meaning is determined by
  what speaker generally mean by their uses.
• Is this right? Someone might argue its the
  other way around for when the two do not coincide
  its usually because the speaker misunderstood a
  word as when he says Obamas speech was
  climatic meaning that it provided a climax.
• Theres some support for this view since usually
  what a speaker can mean by his utterance is
  limited by what his words mean.
• In the other direction Grice gives lots of
  examples where what the speaker means and what
  the words mean diverge.

3
Grices central idea meaning is a kind of
intending

• As we noted last week, we sometimes use what I
  meant to mean what I intended to say.
• But if a speaker says something unclear and then
  explains What I intended to say was he is not
  reporting on what he intended to utter rather he
  means something like what I meant to say is more
  clearly expressed by that is, what he uttered
  means is not what he meant to say.

4
A more promising line

• If I say something to you, meaning by it that p,
  then I am presumably trying to get across to
  you to you that p and perhaps we can cash out
  the metaphor of trying to get across with
  trying to get you to believe that p.
• But (as noted last week) this cant be the whole
  story about meaning for I could try to get you to
  believe p in ways that obviously do not involving
  my meaning that p.
• E.g I could arrange for you to find evidence
  that p but this arranging does not mean that p.
• Granted my displaying evidence for p means
  that I want you to believe p but that what my
  behavior means in the way that furnitures
  rattling means earthquake. It is not what I
  meant by my behavior.

5
Natural vs Non-Natural Meaning

• Grice labels natural meaning the sort of
  meaning where something is a natural sign or
  symptom of or evidence for something else and he
  uses non-natural meaning for the sort of
  meaning which is involved when a person and not
  an event, fact or state of affairs means that p.
• Our interest is non-natural meaning.
• As just noted I can get you to believe p w/o my
  non-naturally meaning that p.
• Grice suggests, though, that we can analyze
  non-natural meaning as trying to bring it about
  that you come to believe that p in some special
  way.
• Grice is trying to explicate special way.

6
Elaborate on Evidence

• We can speak of an event or state of affairs e as
  being evidence for some proposition p where one
  can figure out that p based on e.
• This is not so with non-natural meaning
  minimally, you have to identify the intentions
  with which someone performed e in order to figure
  out that it supports p.

7
Example

• During a concert I see a friend our eyes meet,
  she grimaces in an exaggerated way holding her
  nose.
• She means that she was hating the concert.

8
Analysis

• My friend intended me to think she hated the
  performance.
• She might have tried other means to that end
  e.g., leaving the theater in a huff intending me
  to take this as natural evidence she hated it
  she might have shown me her hand trembling which
  is evidence that she hated it.
• In each of case I can take the events as evidence
  she hates the concert.
• But her acts are unlike that they are offered,
  deceitfully or not, as independent evidence she
  hated the performance.
• How are her acts intended to get me to think she
  hated the concert? We need only ask how they
  succeed.
• Her gesture led me to believe she hated the
  concert because that is what I thought she was
  trying to get me to believe, and I didnt think
  she was misinformed or deceitful.
• She intended to get me to think she hated the
  concert, intending this to be elicited through
  realizing her aim.
• Her gestures were intention-dependent evidence
  that she was hating the performance their status
  as evidence depended essentially upon why she
  displayed them to me.

9
Grices first effort

• 1-8 give us the core of Grices account of
  non-natural meaning
• If U does x, thereby meaning that p, then he does
  it intending
• that A should come to believe that p
• that A should recognize the intention (i) and
• that this awareness be part of As reason for
  believing that p.

10
Injunctions

• The account just presented obviously is for
  statements and not for injunctions. For the
  latter we might try
• U meant that A is to do X if U acted with the
  intention
• that A should do X
• that S recognized the intention (i) and
• that this recognition in (ii) should be part of
  As reason for doing X.

11
Recall for Grice sentence meaning precedes word
meaning

• Can anyone think of a reason why we should deny
  this?

12

• Creative Aspect of language

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Must distinguish two positions

• epistemic/psychological what do we learn first
  what comes first in order of explanation
• vs
• conceptual/metaphysical
• someone might accept word meaning first and still
  think we only learn the meaning of a word from
  seeing representative sentences in which it is
  used.

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• The explanatory primacy of sentence meaning goes
  as follows first we learn the meaning of some
  sentences in use then we abstract word meaning
  then we can use that word meaning to understand
  an infinity of new sentences not yet encountered.
• How plausible is explanatory sentence primacy?
  Very the moves in the language game are all
  sentential asserting, asking, commanding
  these are what we do with whole sentences.

15
Definitions

• What about definitions? Cant we define a word
  straight out without using it in a sentence to
  give its meaning?
• Not necessarily what we do with a definition is
  reveal that sentences with the definition can be
  replaced with sentences with the term being
  defined without changing the meaning.

16
Returning to Grices analysis intentions to
produce beliefs.

• To be entitled to say that S intended by doing X
  to get A to believe that p it must be reasonable
  for us to conclude that S did X because S thought
  it would get A to believe that p if S did not
  think so, S would not have acted as S did.

17
Grices original account

• on the basis of Grice tells us cant mean is
  caused by or is the result of why not?
• Heres his counter-example suppose I stick my
  tongue out at you intending you to be amused and
  intending you to recognize I intend for you to be
  amused and suppose your realizing I intend for
  you to be amused causes you to be amused.
• Then all the conditions are met but Grice says my
  tongue out does not mean you are to be amused.
• We lack justifications for being amused and so
  its not what that can be speaker meant by an act.

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Another sort of counter-example

• Suppose S is being test for the military and S
  thinks the test is bogus and moronic and so when
  asked by A what would you say if asked to
  identify yourself? replies bugabugabugabug
  intending to offend A and hoping that A will
  recognize that S intends to offend A by his
  utterance and that A will be offended because A
  recogizes that S intends to offend A with Ss
  utterance.
• It follows from Grices account that
  bugabugabugabug S means that A is to be
  offended.
• But it clearly doesnt mean this!

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Intending and Meaning

• In making his utterance S intended to offend A
  but from this it does not follow that Ss
  utterance means that A is to be offended.

20
Recognition Properties

• Suppose I suffer a stroke and you ask me later
  how I feel and I think the way to say I feel
  fine in English is ugugugu and suppose I have
  all the relevant intentions.
• Does it follow that I mean that I feel fine with
  I uttered as I did?
• If not, why not?

21
Heres another version of Strawsons
counter-example

• A, thinking she is unobserved by S, sees S
  applying lipstick to her husband Harolds shirt,
  and reasons thus S is manufacturing evidence
  that Harold has been unfaithful. S intends me to
  see the lipstick stains and to infer that they
  got there as a result of a lipstick-wearing
  female. But dear old S wouldnt try to deceive
  me in this way if he didnt know thiat Harold has
  been unfaithful. So Harold must have been
  unfaithful.
• Why is this a counter-example to Grice?

22
It is not an act of S communicating to A that
Harold has been unfaithful

• Whats missing?
• S does not intend for A to recognize S intends
  for her to reason in this manner. Theres deceit.
  
• The intention S has towards A is distinct from
  the one A is intended to think S intends her to
  have.
• HOW ARE THEY DIFFERENT?

23
Whats missing?

• What keeps Ss act from being a legitimate case
  of his meaning something is that his intention is
  hidden.

24
Fix up

• S meant something by uttering x iff S uttered x
  intending
• A. that Ss utterance of x produce a response r
  in A
• B. that A recognize Ss intention (a) and
• C. that As recognition of Ss intention (a)
  shall function as part of As reason for r
• D. that A should think S intended (c)

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That is Strawson adds

• that A must also recognize that S intends for A
  to recognize that S intends A to recognize S has
  this intention to produce the belief that the
  house is rat infested by letting the rat loose in
  the house.

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• Strawson is saying that meaning is essentially an
  attempt to communicate but in real communication
  everything is open and above-board and so
  meaning cannot exploit contrived cross purposes.
• Another way to put it S intends but does not
  intend A to recognize that S intends that A
  recognizes that S intends to produce in A the
  belief that p

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Fix up

• The problem is that in this example my intentions
  are not, as Strawson puts it, wholly overt. One
  possible remedy involves adding a fourth clause
• (d) A to recognize that U intends (b).
• But as Strawson points out, with enough ingenuity
  the same sort of
• counterexample can still be generated, and then
  we need a fifth clause, then a sixth, and so on.
  At the end of Utterers Meaning and Intentions,
  and again at the end of Meaning Revisited,
  Grice proposes a way out of blocking an infinite
  regress by adding a condition that would prohibit
  any sneaky intention instead of adding a
  fourth (fifth, .. .) clause, the idea is to add a
  second part to the entire analysis, the rough
  import of which is that S does not intend A to be
  deceived about Ss intentions (a)-(c). As long as
  S does not have a deceptive intention of this
  sort, s is deemed to mean that p.

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Strawsons Analysis V

• V. S meant something by uttering x iff S uttered
  x intending
• a. that x have a certain feature f
• b. that A recognize that x has f
• c. that A infer at least in part from the fact
  that x is f that S uttered x intending
• d. that Ss utterance of x produce response r in
  A
• e. that As recognition of Ss intention (d)
  should function as partly As reason for having
  r.
• f. That A should recognize Ss intention (c).

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Counter-example to V

• S intends to get A to leave the room by singing
  Hey Jude. S intends A to recognize that S is
  singing Hey Jude and that A should infer from
  this that S is singing to get A to leave the
  room. (S sings horribly and A is sensitive to
  this.)
• Further S intends A to recognize Ss intention to
  get A to leave, for S wishes to show his contempt
  for A.
• Also, S intends that A believe that S plans to
  get A out by means of his singing S intens that
  As reason for leaving will be As recognition of
  Ss intention to him to leave.
• This satisfies V but is it a case of
  communication?

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Moral of Counter-Examples

• Im less interested in intricacies of the
  counter-examples than in why they keep arising.
  Theres a pattern here.
• In each case genuine communication is frustrated
  because of an element of deceit.
• And just as there is a pattern to the
  counter-examples theres a pattern to the
  remedies. We keep adding intentions for say, an
  analysis invokes n intentions, with a new
  counter-example we ask that A recognize Ss n-th
  intention in the next analysis.
• Each time we do that we are trying to transform a
  case of merely getting something across into a
  genuine case of communication (by eliminating
  deceit).

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Problems with this strategy

• 1. It threatens a regress. In Grices 1969 paper
  he suggests we have to stop at a certain point
  because speakers cannot have such complex
  intentions. Problem is any cut off point leads
  to counter-examples.
• 2. Another way of thinking of whats going on
  here is to notice that we are constantly in a
  defensive stance. We are always trying to
  eliminate deceit.

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Grices solution

• In the more sophisticated analyses we looked at,
  there exist two avenues of communication info
  can be passed along either as a result of As
  recognition of Ss intention that A recognize the
  meaning-bearing feature of Ss utterance or it
  can be passed on as a result of As recognition
  of some wider intention that S possesses.
• In each counter-example S exploits the split in
  intentions to deceive A.
• Grice tries to force the speakers communicative
  intentions into line with the utterances
  meaning-bearing features

33
Grices new analysis VI

• VI. S meant something by uttering x iff
• (1) S uttered x intending
• a. that x have a certain feature f
• b. that A recognize that x has f
• c. that A infer at least in part from the fact
  that x is f that S uttered x intending
• d. that Ss utterance of x produce response r in
  A
• e. that As recognition of Ss intention (d)
  should function as partly As reason for having
  r.
• (2) there is no inference-element E such that S
  uttered x intending both
• That As determination of r should rely on E and
• That A should think S to intend (a) to be false.
  (Grice 1969l, sec. 3)

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Explanation of VI

• (2) is added to rule out deceit.
• He wants to avoid positing an infinity of
  backwards looking intentions since that he says
  would give us a model that cannot be implement
  (by us).

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Mutual Knowledge

• Infinite Regress
• Psychological Reality
• Mutual knowledge Schiffer and Lewis
• Absolute Concepts Grice

36
Lewis and mutual knowledge

• A and B mutually know that p iff A knows that p
  and B knows that p and A knows that B knows that
  p and B knows that A knows that p. And so on
• Example A and B are seated at a table with a
  candle in between them. If they both have normal
  vision, normal intelligence, etc. both have their
  eyes open we can say both iknow that there is a
  candle before them. Both know the other knows
  there is a candle in front of them. And so on.

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Some qualifications

• Not claiming both can articulate this knowledge
  but only that it would be true to say of each
  that he has it.
• Dispositions