Meaning As Intention

DISCLAIMER
EXAMINE THE FOLLOWING:
The scientific name
of
gumamela
is
Hibiscus
Rosa
Senensis sp.
EIC: Saan kayo

pupunta?
ME: Malayo sayo.
M. G: Ang gwapo ng
mga anak mo.
M. M: Ang ganda ng
misis mo.
GRICE PROPOSES
Intention based
semantics
MEANING
PAUL GRICE
NATURAL MEANING
[NONCOGNITIVE MEANING]
Those spots mean measles.

Those spots didnt mean
anything to me, but to the doctor

they meant measles.
The recent budget means that
we shall have a hard year.
I CANNOT SAY:
Those spots meant measles
but he hadnt got measles.

The recent budget means
that we shall have a hard year
but we shant have.
I CANNOT ARGUE:
What is meant by those spots?
What was meant by those spots
was that he had measles?

What is meant by the recent
budget is that we shall have a
hard year?
x meant p and
x means that p
entails p.
NATURAL MEANING
Natural and reliable sign or
symptom of or evidence for

something
Rests on law-like relations in
the world
indicator meaning
EXAMPLES OF NATURAL MEANING
Those spots mean measles.

Black clouds mean rain.
These tracks mean that a deer has
been here.
The recent budget means that we
shall have a hard year.
NONNATURAL MEANING (MEANINGNN)

[COMMUNICATIVE MEANING]
Those three rings on the bell
mean that the bus is full.

That remark, Smith couldnt get
on without his trouble and strife,
meant that Smith found his wife
indispensable.
Those three rings But it isnt full, the

on the bell mean
conductor made a
that the bus is full. mistake
That remark, Smith
But
in
fact,
couldnt get on without
his trouble and strife, Smith deserted
meant that Smith
her
seven
found his wife
I CAN ARGUE:
what is meant by
rings on the bell

what is (was) meant
by the quoted remark
x means p and x
meant that p does

not entail p
EXAMPLES
Those three rings on the bell (of the bus)
mean that the bus is full.
Tom Meant that the stranger should get
off his foot.
The light atop a taxi being on means it is
available.
Alvin meant that Jones is academically
weak when he wrote Jones has beautiful
Conventional Meaning
The standard, literal, or
conventional meaning of an
expression
Speaker-Meaning
What the speaker means by the

expression in a given context
GRICE
communicative
meaning, or
nonnatural
meaning
NATURAL VS.
NON-NATURAL
MEANING
GRICES ENDEAVOUR
IS TO PRODUCE AN
ACCOUNT
OF
MEANINGNN.
TESTS
FOR MEANINGNN
ENTAILMENT
Those spots mean measles, but
he hasnt got measles is self

contradictory.
Those three rings on the bell
mean that the bus is full, but the
bus isnt full is not self-
QUOTATION
In cases of natural meaning, the verb
mean cannot be followed by a

quotation (a phrase in inverted
commas); in cases of meaningNN, it can.
Example
* Those spots mean he has measles.
Those three rings on the bell mean the
REJECTION
OF CAUSAL
ACCOUNT
C.L.
STEVENSON
For x to means
something,
x must
have (roughly) a tendency to produce in
an audience some attitude and a
tendency, in case of a speaker, to be
produced by that attitude, these
tendencies being dependent on an
elaborate
process
of
conditioning
attending the use of the sign in
communication
NN
x meansNN something if x
has a tendency to produce

such and such a cognitive
effect in a hearer and to be
produced by that state in a
x meansNN something if x
has a tendency to
produce such and such
a cognitive effect in a
hearer and to be
produced by that state in a
GRICE FINDS TWO THINGS WRONG WITH THE CAUSAL

ACCOUNT:
It
omits the notion of

intention. What needs to be
specified is not the effect that
tends to be produced, but the
effect
that
the
speaker
intends to produce.
GRICE FINDS TWO THINGS WRONG WITH THE CAUSAL

ACCOUNT:
It concentrates on the idea of
a standard meaning (of an

expression or utterance), and
ignores what a particular
speaker may mean on a
particular occasion.
KUMUSTA KA?
AYOS
LANG.
HOW ARE YOU?
I AM FINE, THANK
YOU
Jones is tall.
Jones is an athlete.
Grice
further
objects,
more
controversially, that the causal
theory gets the priorities between
utterance meaning and speaker
meaning backwards. That is, the
meaning of a sign needs to be
explained in terms of what users of
the sign mean by it on particular
CAUSAL THEORY ignores the
fact that the meaning of a

sign needs to be explained in
terms of what users of the
sign do (or should) mean by it
on a particular occasions.
CAUSAL THEORY ignores the
fact that the meaning of a

sign needs to be explained in
terms of what users of the
sign do (or should) mean
by it on a particular
occasions.
meanNN something (on a particular

occasion)
x meanNN that so-and-so (on a particular
occasion)
a meanNN something by x (on a particular
occasion)
a meanNN by x that so-and-so (on a
particular occasion)
x meanNN (timeless) something (that so-andso)
REFLEXIVEINTENTION
ACCOUNT
GRICE
DEVELOPS HIS ACCOUNT IN STAGES.
Stage 1 introduces an intention.
Stage 2 adds a reflexive

intention. Stage 3 introduces an
additional
reflexive
intention
connecting the first intention to
the intended effect on the hearer.
STAGE 1: INTENTIONS
x meansNN something if x is
intended by its utterer to induce a

belief in an audience.
x meansNN that p if x is intended
by its utterer to induce in an
audience the belief that p.
STAGE 2: REFLEXIVE
INTENTIONS
x meansNN that p if x is intended by
its utterer to induce in an audience

the belief that p and the utterer
intends that the audience should
recognize that intention
X MEANNN SOMETHING
x was intended by its
utterer to induce a belief in

some audience
The belief would be to say
what x meanNN
X ------ MEANNN ANYTHING

Uttered with the
intention of
inducing belief
Must have
intended an
audience to
recognize the
intention
HEROD PRESENTS SALOME WITH THE HEAD OF ST. JOHN

THE BAPTIST ON A CHARGER.
Herod intended to make
Salome believe that he is

dead.
Herod intended Salome to
recognize that he intended
her to believe that he is dead
STAGE 3: THE FINAL ACCOUNT

The speaker must have these three intentions:
(i1) that the audience should believe that p.
(i2) that the audience should recognize the speakers

intention (i1).
(i3) that it be by means of the recognition of (i1) that
the audience comes to believe that p.
That is: A meantNN something by x is roughly
equivalent to A uttered x with the intention of
inducing a belief by means of the recognition of this
WE WANT TO FIND:
Deliberately and openly
letting someone know

vs. telling
Getting
someone to
think vs. telling
COMPARE
I show Mr X a photograph of
Mr Y displaying undue
familiarity to Mrs X.
I draw a picture of Mr Y
behaving in this manner and
show it to Mr X.
FROWN
spontaneousl deliberately
y
Natural sign Intention to
of
show
displeasure
IF
WE
TAKE
AWAY
THE
RECOGNITION
OF
INTENTION,
LEAVING
THE
OTHER
CIRCUMSTANCES,
THE
BELIEF
PRODUCING TENDENCY OF THE
FROWN MUST BE REGARDED AS
BEING IMPAIRED OR DESTROYED.
EXPANSION
In uttering x S means
NN
that p iff S intends by
uttering x:
(i1) to produce in H the belief that p, and
(i2) that H should recognize Ss intention (i1),
and
(i3) that H should base his belief that p on his
recognition of (i1).
[Strawson thinks that we have to add (at least)
a fourth intention to this, viz.:
GENERAL MORAL OF THE ACCOUNT
MeaningNN is to be analyzed in
terms of reflexive intentions

i.e., the intention to induce a
psychological state in a hearer by
means of a recognition of that
very intention.
SPEAKERS MEANING
(what a speaker intends to
communicate) is a
fundamental
notion
sentence meaning.
more
than
GENERALIZATIONS
A meanNN something by x
x meanNN something (traffic
lights)
x meanNN (timeless) that soand-so
CRITICISMS OF GRICE
SEARLE
In What is a Speech Act? in Philosophy in America, 1965.

Suppose that I am an American soldier in WW II and that I am
captured by Italian troops. And suppose also that I wish to get these
troops to believe that I am a German officer in order to get them to
release me. What I would like to do is to tell them in German or
Italian that I am a German officer. But let us suppose I dont know
enough German or Italian to do that. So I put on a show of telling
them that I am a German officer by reciting those few bits of
German that I know, trusting that they dont know enough German
to see through my plan. Let us suppose I know only one line of
German, which I remember from a poem I had to memorize in a
high school German course. Therefore I, a captured American,
address my Italian captors with the following sentence: Kennst du
das Land, wo die Zitronen blhen?
SEARLE CLAIMS THAT THE THREE CLAUSES OF GRICES

ACCOUNT OF MEANING ARE SATISFIED:
I intend to produce a certain effect in
them, namely, the effect of (i1) believing

that I am a German officer; and I intend
to produce this effect (i3) by means of
their (i2) recognition of my intention.
BUT WHEN I SAY KENNST DU DAS LAND, WO DIE ZITRONEN BLHEN?

DO I MEAN I AM A GERMAN OFFICER? NOT AT ALL, SAYS SEARLE:
because what the words mean
is, Knowest thou the land where

the lemon trees bloom?
Meaning is more than a matter of
intention, it is also a matter of
convention.
GRICE RESPONDS TO THIS EFFECTIVELY IN UTTERERS

MEANING AND INTENTIONS.
He
refuses to accept Searles proposed

amendment about conventional meaning.
The reason, he says, is that I would like to
treat meaning something by the utterance of
a sentence as being only a special case of
meaning something by an utterance (p.
161). In other words, conventional meaning
(sentence meaning) is to be analyzed in
terms of speakers meaning, and not the

As for the example, Grices basic
line is that it is underdescribed,

and can be fleshed out in various
ways. In any event, it is not really
a counter-example.

On one elaboration, the soldiers intention is not to get the
Italians to believe that he has said that hes a German

officer, but just to get them to believe he has been
speaking German. (He hopes that theyll go on to draw
the conclusion that hes a German officerwho else
would be speaking German around here?) So although he
intends (i1) them to believe that hes a German officer, he
does not intend (i2) that they should believe this on the
basis of their recognition of (i1) he intends that they
should believe on the basis of their reasoning as above.

MEANING
AND
INTENTIONS.
Fleshed out
in another way, the soldiers intention is to get the
Italians to believe that he has just said that hes a German officer
i.e. that he was uttering a sentence of German whose conventional
meaning in German is I am a German officer. But if so, Grice says,
it is not so implausible to suppose that he did mean that he was a
German officer. After all, he didnt intend the Italians to take his
words literally, for he knew they would have no idea what they
meant literally. So what he meant in the circumstances was not the
same as what his words literally meant. (Its like the Egyptian
shopkeeper who invites his English visitor into his shop: in dulcet
tones and with an alluring smile [the shopkeeper] says to [the
visitor] the Arabic for You pig of an Englishman. What his words
meant was an insult; but what he meant was for the visitor to enter
the shop.)
PLATTS
(In Ways of Meaning, 1979.) This line of
objection is directed against the entire

program
of
(what
Schiffer
calls)
intention-based
semantics.
The
objection is that Grice cannot provide a
non-circular account of the meanings of
(the
infinitely
many)
unuttered
sentences.
Grice tries to reduce sentence-meaning
to the (logically prior) notion of speakers

meaning, which is itself spelled out in
terms of speakers intentions to produce
beliefs in hearers. Since belief is a
propositional attitude, this means that
for Grice the basic unit of meaning is the
sentence.
But natural languages contain infinitely
many meaningful sentences. And

only finitely many of them have ever
been uttered. So there are many
meaningful sentences that have never
been utteredwhat accounts for the
meaning of these unuttered sentences?
One line that seems open to
Grice is to appeal to
hypothetical intentions
what a speaker would have
intended by uttering such a
sentence.
But there must be some constraints on these
hypothetical intentions. Consider some

sentence that has never (before now) been
uttered: 57% of the armadillos in Texas
prefer Wheaties to caviar. One hypothetical
intention is that the hearer should believe
that snow is white. Clearly that hypothetical
intention has to be ruled outotherwise, our
sentence could mean anything.
The problem is to say what would have been
intended by an utterance of this sentence, but to

do so without appealing to the meanings of
the words it contains. For to do that would be
circular. As Platt says:
Generally, the constraint upon the hypothetical
intentions with which a sentence can be uttered
is precisely the meaning of the sentence. If this
is correct, the attempt to define the meanings of
unuttered sentences in terms of hypothetical
intentions and responses is hopeless: for it
Notice that although natural languages contain
infinitely many meaningful sentences, they contain

only finitely many words. It is for this reason that
Fregean (and truth-conditional) accounts of
meaning are not bothered by the infinity of
meaningful sentences objection. They can handle
this by means of the compositionality of
meaning. (Cf. a Fregean account of the meaning of
our example above.) Can a Gricean come up with a
counterpart principle of compositionality?
Consider the case of the meanings of predicates
and proper names. What are the intentions

associated
with
them?
They
cannot
be
propositional attitudes. That is, the intention
associated with the sentence Brutus slew Caesar
is the intention that the hearer should believe that
Brutus slew Caesar. But what is the intention
associated with Brutus and slew and Caesar?
The only plausible candidates are, e.g., the
intention to use Brutus to refer to Brutus, etc.
But then we face the circularity problem: we are
appealing to the semantic properties of a linguistic
CONCLUSION
An examination of Grices account of
meaningNN will reveal that very little

weight is placed on the role of the words
the speaker uses. That is, on Grices
account, a speaker, in uttering x, might
very well meanNN something (i.e.,
reflexively
intend
to
communicate
something) that goes well beyond what
anyone might think is meant by the
CONCLUSION
The result is that
the account of
meaningNN so far provided does not
distinguish between what a speaker
(literally) says from what else he may
succeed in conveying by means of
some utterance. Making out that
distinction becomes the burden of
Grices
theory
of
conversational
implicature.
GAMSAHAMNIDA!
AS GRICE LATER PUTS IT,

WE CAN DISTINGUISH BETWEEN:
Relativized meaning
Nonrelativized
meaning

Meaning As Intention

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Meaning As Intention

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Meaning As Intention

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

DISCLAIMER

EXAMINE THE FOLLOWING:

The scientific name

EXAMINE THE FOLLOWING:

EIC: Saan kayo

EXAMINE THE FOLLOWING:

Those spots mean measles.

anything to me, but to the doctor

but he hadnt got measles.

was that he had measles?

Natural and reliable sign or

symptom of or evidence for

EXAMPLES OF NATURAL MEANING

Those spots mean measles.

These tracks mean that a deer has

NONNATURAL MEANING (MEANINGNN)

Those three rings on the bell

mean that the bus is full.

Those three rings But it isnt full, the

rings on the bell

meant that p does

What the speaker means by the

he hasnt got measles is self

mean cannot be followed by a

has a tendency to produce

GRICE FINDS TWO THINGS WRONG WITH THE CAUSAL

omits the notion of

GRICE FINDS TWO THINGS WRONG WITH THE CAUSAL

It concentrates on the idea of

a standard meaning (of an

CAUSAL THEORY ignores the

fact that the meaning of a

CAUSAL THEORY ignores the

fact that the meaning of a

meanNN something (on a particular

Stage 2 adds a reflexive

intended by its utterer to induce a

its utterer to induce in an audience

utterer to induce a belief in

X ------ MEANNN ANYTHING

HEROD PRESENTS SALOME WITH THE HEAD OF ST. JOHN

Herod intended to make

Salome believe that he is

STAGE 3: THE FINAL ACCOUNT

(i2) that the audience should recognize the speakers

letting someone know

that p iff S intends by

GENERAL MORAL OF THE ACCOUNT

terms of reflexive intentions

(what a speaker intends to

In What is a Speech Act? in Philosophy in America, 1965.

SEARLE CLAIMS THAT THE THREE CLAUSES OF GRICES

I intend to produce a certain effect in

them, namely, the effect of (i1) believing

BUT WHEN I SAY KENNST DU DAS LAND, WO DIE ZITRONEN BLHEN?

because what the words mean

is, Knowest thou the land where

GRICE RESPONDS TO THIS EFFECTIVELY IN UTTERERS