Making Meaning Manifest

1. Making Meaning Manifest Marilynn Johnson February 14, 2018 Florida International University, Miami, FL

2. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness Grice’s theory of speaker meaning is complex. As characterized by Sperber & Wilson (2015), on Grice’s view: “In order to mean something by an utterance, the utterer must intend the addressee, 1) to produce a particular response r 2) to think (recognise) that the utterer intends (1) 3) to fulfil (1) on the basis of his fulfilment of (2)” (118)

3. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness Grice presents this three-pronged account of speaker meaning in his 1957 paper “Meaning” He begins by distinguishing natural meaning from non-natural meaning Natural meaning includes the following: - Clouds mean rain - Spots mean measles

4. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness • His focus is on non-natural meaning, which is roughly that by some “utterance” x, some person meant something • Those three rings of the bell mean the bus is full • By “He couldn’t get on without his trouble and strife, Smith meant he finds his wife indispensable”

5. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness • With non-natural meaning, there is an intention on the part of the speaker to mean something by an utterance. • However, this first intention alone isn’t enough to pick out what Grice has in mind.

7. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness • I might leave B’s handkerchief near the scene of a murder in order to induce the detective to believe that B was the murderer; but we should not want to say that the handkerchief (or my leaving it there) meantNN anything or that I had meantNN by leaving it that B was the murderer. Clearly we must at least add that, for x to have meantNN anything, not merely must it have been “uttered” with the intention of inducing a certain belief but also the utterer must have intended an “audience” to recognize the intention behind the utterance.

8. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness “In order to mean something by an utterance, the utterer must intend the addressee, 1) to produce a particular response r 2) to think (recognise) that the utterer intends (1) 3) to fulfil (1) on the basis of his fulfilment of (2)” (118)

9. Herod presents Salome with the head of St. John the Baptist on a charger…

10. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness Here we seem to have cases which satisfy the conditions so far given for meaningNN. For example, Herod intended to make Salome believe that St. John the Baptist was dead and no doubt also intended Salome to recognize that he intended her to believe that St. John the Baptist was dead…Yet I certainly do not think that we should want to say that we have here cases of meaningNN.

11. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness “In order to mean something by an utterance, the utterer must intend the addressee, 1) to produce a particular response r 2) to think (recognise) that the utterer intends (1) 3) to fulfil (1) on the basis of his fulfilment of (2)” (118)

12. What I Will Argue: Two Problems Within the Gricean program there is debate about the degree to which meaning-intentions must be conscious.

13. What I Will Argue: Two Problems Grice himself writes that his theory of speaker meaning might best be understood as a “rational reconstruction” of what went on in the head of the speaker when she formulated her utterance. At the same time, a very weak understanding of what must go on in the speaker’s head for her to have have had an m-intention could be seen as rendering the Gricean program problematically vague.

14. What I Will Argue: Two Problems This is the first problem I will consider. What is the relationship between consciousness and meaning-intentions?

15. What I Will Argue: Two Problems I will also consider a second problem Grice discusses instances of meaning that are non-linguistic, and in which some agent displays direct evidence of some fact rather that stating the claim verbally. This was presented in a continuum between meaning and showing by Sperber and Wilson in the Croatian Journal of Philosophy in 2015

16. What I Will Argue: The Problem Sperber and Wilson present their account in terms of manifestness When some content p is shown or meant, this makes p more manifest on the Sperber and Wilson picture For them, manifestness is a combination of epistemic strength and salience

17. What I Will Argue: The Problem Manifestness is an explicitly epistemic notion, the extent to which, for any given proposition, the interlocutor “is likely to some positive degree to entertain it and accept it as true” (Sperber and Wilson 2015: 134) This framing brings to light some important questions for the Sperber and Wilson account:

18. What I Will Argue: The Questions What does the distinction between meaning and showing amount to? Why do we in some circumstances mean/state propositions and why in others do we show evidence? Is this a conscious decision? What is the relationship between consciousness and meaning/showing more broadly?

19. What I Will Argue: The Proposal I will begin by presenting the Sperber & Wilson proposal, which includes a continuum of meaning and showing, and a continuum of determinate and indeterminate content. I will then pose a number of questions to the Sperber & Wilson proposal, and suggest some enhancements.

20. What I Will Argue: The Proposal I argue that the emphasis Sperber and Wilson place on the epistemic nature of Grice’s proposal can be helpfully brought in line with Miranda Fricker’s work on testimony. I further argue that the Sperber & Wilson project can help clean up the debate surrounding problems of consciousness and intentions.

21. Outline • I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness • II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal • III. Linguistic & Non-Linguistic Content • IV. On Showing • V. Showing vs. Meaning • VI. Returning to Consciousness

22. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness The complexity of the Gricean account of meaning-intentions has led to criticisms.

23. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness Jennifer Hornsby, for example, writes the following of Grice’s theory: I think that this ought to seem ludicrous. Real people regularly get things across with their utterances; but real people do not regularly possess, still less act upon, intentions of this sort...notice that an enormous amount would be demanded of hearers, as well as speakers, if such complex intentions really were needed to say things. (Hornsby 2000: 95)

24. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness • Such protestations raise questions: • Are we supposed to really spell out all the intentions required for speaker meaning in our head? • If so, need we be conscious of doing this? • Wouldn’t that take a long time? (empirical question) • Do children really do that? (empirical question) • If not, in virtue of what can it be said that some speaker really has such an intention? • Or, in other words, can there be unconscious m-intentions?

25. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness Then, further complicating things, there are familiar cases such as the following, ‘Juliet is the sun’ which can be taken to express a range of propositions, but not including things like that Juliet is a giant ball of gas

26. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness - Must the speaker have intended all of the acceptable propositions the metaphor can be said to express? - Is it that intention in virtue of which they are acceptable? - If so, shouldn’t this take even longer than the ordinary cases of m-intention formation? Does it in fact take longer? (empirical question) - If not, what is the reason for their acceptability? (And for excluding unacceptable propositions)

27. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness Additionally, we have cases such as, Roy: Are you okay? Mary: I’m fine, Roy. Roy: I would have believed you if you hadn’t said ‘Roy’. (Kecskes 2016; 2014)

28. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness There are cases such as the following, taken from Bezuidenhout’s 2001 expansion of Stern (2000) A young woman Marie, who is in psychotherapy because she is suffering from anorexia nervosa, tells her therapist that her mother has forbidden her to see her boyfriend. Referring to her mother’s injunction, Marie utters: [1)] I won’t swallow that

29. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness Here ‘swallow’ is being used metaphorically, and Stern suggests that the content of Marie’s utterance (the proposition she expressed) can be paraphrased as [2)] Marie won’t accept her mother’s injunction. Given her eating disorder, it seems significant that Marie chose to frame her comment about her mother’s injunction by using the word ‘swallow’.

30. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness But once we’ve accessed the metaphorical interpretation it seems that we’ve lost the echoes of meaning that might connect what she is saying to her eating disorder and hence to any problems that she might be having with her mother connected to this disorder. (Bezuidenhout 2001: 33-34)

31. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness Should we be happy with this result? Or is it better so say that Marie really did mean something about her eating disorder here, although she may not have consciously intended it? What about when we apply the Gricean framework of meaning to poems, novels, paintings etc? Does this change things?

32. I. The Problem of Grice & Consciousness And lastly, what does the answer to these sorts of questions mean for slips of the tongue such as: ‘We are all cremated equal’ (Davidson 2006: 251)?

33. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal In their 2015 paper “Beyond Speaker’s Meaning” Sperber and Wilson argue that their notion of ostensive-inferential communication, which makes use of just the first two conditions of Grice’s theory of speaker meaning, better captures what we want from a theory of communication.

34. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal i.e. is more “conceptually unified” (117), picks out “the proper object of a philosophical definition or a scientific theory” (117), “does a better job of explaining how utterances are interpreted than a standard Gricean approach” (117) and “makes good sense of our fuzzy intuitions about speaker meaning” (117).

35. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal In order to mean something by an utterance, the utterer must intend the addressee, 1) to produce a particular response r 2) to think (recognise) that the utterer intends (1) 3) to fulfil (1) on the basis of his fulfilment of (2) (118) This is what they call ostensive-inferential communication

36. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal “In characterising ostensive communication, we built on the first two clauses of Grice’s definition and dropped the third. This was not because we were willing to broaden the definition of utterer’s meaning—we agreed with Grice that talk of ‘meaning’ is awkward in certain cases—but because it seemed obvious that there is a continuum of cases between ‘meaning that’ (typically achieved by the use of language) and displaying evidence that (in other words, showing) and we wanted our account of communication to cover both” (119)

37. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal Meaning Showing

38. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal In other words, Sperber and Wilson believe that by dropping the third clause--that the recognition of the speaker’s intention be the basis for a hearer to produce some response--their account covers not only ‘meaning that’ but ‘showing that’ This is because when presented with direct evidence of some fact, such as that I have a bad leg, recognition of my intention is no longer a reason to come to believe some proposition, such as that I cannot play squash; my intention is superseded by the direct evidence.

39. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal In both the Sperber & Wilson characterization and the Grice characterization of meaning, a meaningful utterance is made to “produce a particular response r” in the hearer This response can be 1) having a mental state, such coming to believe a certain proposition, or 2) performing a physical action, such as to go away (with the five-pound note out the window example (Grice 1989: 96))

40. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal In other words, these accounts can be understood as ways to get others to act That is, as ways to get others to believe certain things or behave in certain ways Sometimes we do this with utterances, and sometimes with displaying direct evidence, as the Sperber and Wilson continuum makes explicit

41. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal Why do we choose to attempt to get a hearer to have some response because of their recognition of our intention in some cases (meaning) and to have some response because we present them with direct evidence in others (showing)?

42. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal After they characterize ostensive-inferential communication Sperber and Wilson (2015) write, A second difficulty Grice was aware of with the notion of speaker’s meaning arises when one tries to complete a description of the form: “The speaker meant that ____”. As Grice recognised, it is not uncommon for at least part of the intended meaning to be less than fully determinate, so that the best rendering of it may be an open disjunction of propositions, and hence not itself a proposition. (120)

43. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal This is seen with examples such as the metaphor, Juliet is the sun These sorts of cases lead Sperber and Wilson to propose a second continuum between cases with more or less determinate meaning, which is orthogonal to the first continuum of showing and meaning.

44. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal Indeterminate Determinate Meaning Showing

45. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal Indeterminate Determinate Meaning 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Showing

46. “What time is the next train to Oxford?” “12.48” Indeterminate Determinate Meaning 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Showing

47. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal “Who is the tallest pupil in the class?” Pointing, “He is” Indeterminate Determinate Meaning 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Showing

48. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal Indeterminate Determinate Meaning “What is the time?” Points to a clock 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Showing

49. “I could kill for a glass of water” Indeterminate Determinate Meaning 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Showing

50. II. Sperber & Wilson’s Proposal Pointing, “What a view!” Indeterminate Determinate Meaning 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Showing