{"agent_id":"grice","agent_name":"H. P. Grice","slug":"the-intentional-analysis-of-meaning","label":"The intentional analysis of meaning: is non-natural meaning analyzable in terms of speakers' nested communicative intentions?","topic":"The intentional analysis of meaning","question":"Is non-natural meaning analyzable in terms of speakers' nested communicative intentions?","position":"An utterer U *means_NN* something by an utterance x just in case U intends to produce some response r in an audience A, intends A to recognize this intention, and intends A's recognition of the intention to function as A's reason for the response. Conventional meaning is to be defined in terms of speaker meaning, and speaker meaning in terms of the psychological phenomenon of intention. The reductive direction is from the semantic to the psychological, and the unity of meaning across literal speech, conversational implicature, irony, metaphor, and gesture is preserved at the level of the underlying intention-structure rather than at the level of surface convention or rule.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"An utterer U *means_NN* something by an utterance x just in case U intends to produce some response r in an audience A, intends A to recognize this intention, and intends A's recognition of the intention to function as A's reason for the response.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"Conventional meaning is to be defined in terms of speaker meaning, and speaker meaning in terms of the psychological phenomenon of intention.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The reductive direction is from the semantic to the psychological, and the unity of meaning across literal speech, conversational implicature, irony, metaphor, and gesture is preserved at the level of the underlying intention-structure rather than at the level of surface convention or rule.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"Meaning (Philosophical Review 1957; drafted 1948); Utterer's Meaning, Sentence-Meaning, and Word-Meaning (Foundations of Language 1968); Utterer's Meaning and Intentions (Philosophical Review 1969); the William James Lectures I and III on meaning, reprinted in Studies in the Way of Words (Harvard 1989); the Retrospective Epilogue, in the same volume. Reception: P. F. Strawson, 'Intention and Convention in Speech Acts' (Philosophical Review 1964) added the i₄ uptake amendment; John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge 1969) advanced the Italian-soldier counter-example arguing that meaning is rule-governed; Stephen Schiffer, Meaning (Oxford 1972) developed the account, and Remnants of Meaning (MIT 1987) argued the programme cannot succeed without conventional semantics; Wayne Davis, Implicature: Intention, Convention, and Principle in the Failure of Gricean Theory (Cambridge 1998) is the wholesale rejection; Stephen Neale, 'Paul Grice and the Philosophy of Language' (Linguistics and Philosophy 1992) is the canonical sympathetic retrospective; Jonathan Bennett, Linguistic Behaviour (Cambridge 1976) and Anita Avramides, Meaning and Mind (MIT 1989) are defenders.","works":["Meaning (Philosophical Review 1957","drafted 1948)","Utterer's Meaning, Sentence-Meaning, and Word-Meaning (Foundations of Language 1968)","Utterer's Meaning and Intentions (Philosophical Review 1969)","the William James Lectures I and III on meaning, reprinted in Studies in the Way of Words (Harvard 1989)","the Retrospective Epilogue, in the same volume"],"reception":"P. F. Strawson, 'Intention and Convention in Speech Acts' (Philosophical Review 1964) added the i₄ uptake amendment; John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge 1969) advanced the Italian-soldier counter-example arguing that meaning is rule-governed; Stephen Schiffer, Meaning (Oxford 1972) developed the account, and Remnants of Meaning (MIT 1987) argued the programme cannot succeed without conventional semantics; Wayne Davis, Implicature: Intention, Convention, and Principle in the Failure of Gricean Theory (Cambridge 1998) is the wholesale rejection; Stephen Neale, 'Paul Grice and the Philosophy of Language' (Linguistics and Philosophy 1992) is the canonical sympathetic retrospective; Jonathan Bennett, Linguistic Behaviour (Cambridge 1976) and Anita Avramides, Meaning and Mind (MIT 1989) are defenders.","status":"The founding move of the contemporary intention-based programme in philosophy of language and the most famous contribution of the Oxford period. Strawson's 1964 amendment introduced a fourth intention (that A recognize i₂) to handle counter-examples involving faked evidence; the amendment is friendly, not refuting. Schiffer's 1972 book is the most ambitious development; his 1987 reversal in Remnants of Meaning argued that the iterated intentions cannot ground conventional semantics. Searle's Italian-soldier counter-example argues that the soldier who utters the only German sentence he knows is not really meaning_NN that he is a German soldier because the rules of German do not allow this. Wayne Davis's 1998 book is the most sustained wholesale critique. Bennett, Loar, Avramides, and Neale defend versions of the account.","era":"1913-1988","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Studies in the Way of Words","page":"pp. 110–111","canonical":"","quote":"I do not see the force of this contention, nor indeed do | find it easy to apply the distinction which it makes. Consider just one example. I was listening to a French lesson being given to the small daughter of a friend. I noticed that she thinks that a certain sentence in French means \"Help yourself to a piece of cake,\" though in fact it means something quite different.","label":"Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 110–111"},{"n":2,"work":"Studies in the Way of Words","page":"pp. 111–113","canonical":"","quote":"I would like to suggest a revised set of conditions for \"U meant something by x,\" the third redefinition, version A: Ranges of variables: A: audiences features of utterance responses modes of correlation (such as iconic, associative, conventional) (BA) (Af) (Ar) (Ac): U uttered x intending (1) A to think x possesses f (2) Ato think U intends (1) (3) A to think of f as correlated in way c with the type to which r…","label":"Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 111–113"},{"n":3,"work":"Studies in the Way of Words","page":"pp. 100–101","canonical":"","quote":"I shall take as a starting-point the account of nonnatural meaning which appears in Essay 14 in this volume, treating this as an attempt to define the notion of utterer's occasion-meaning.","label":"Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 100–101"},{"n":4,"work":"Studies in the Way of Words","page":"pp. 102–103","canonical":"","quote":"A restriction seems to be required, and one which might serve to eliminate this range of counterexamples can be identified from a comparison of the two following examples: (1) I go into a tobacconist's shop, ask for a pack of my favorite cigarettes, and when the unusually suspicious tobacconist shows that he wants to see the color of my money before he hands over the goods, I put down the price of the cigarettes on…","label":"Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 102–103"},{"n":5,"work":"Studies in the Way of Words","page":"pp. 107–108","canonical":"","quote":"Potential counterexamples of the kind with which we are at present concerned all involve the construction of a situation in which U intends A, in the reflection process by which A is supposed to reach his response, both to rely on some \"inference-element\" (some premise or some inferential step) E and also to think that U intends A not to rely on E.","label":"Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 107–108"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-cooperative-principle-and-conversational-implicature","label":"The Cooperative Principle and conversational implicature: is conversation a rational cooperative endeavour governed by the four categories of maxims?"},{"slug":"modified-occam-s-razor-and-the-semantics-pragmatics-distinct","label":"Modified Occam's Razor and the semantics-pragmatics distinction: should apparent ambiguity in natural-language connectives be handled by positing distinct senses or by a single sense plus generalised conversational implicature?"},{"slug":"the-causal-theory-of-perception","label":"The Causal Theory of Perception: is sense data a defensible technical term, and does perception of a material object require a causal connection through a sense-impression?"},{"slug":"rationality-value-and-creature-construction","label":"Rationality, value, and creature-construction: can practical reason and value be constructed by a transcendental argument from the rational structure of action?"}]}