In the tradition inspired by the ideas of Paul Grice, communication essentially consists in recognizing the intentions of the speaker and in the ability to provide enough clues for the hearer to guess his/her intentions. As it is well-known, this way of thinking is based on the difference between “sentence meaning”, that is, the semantic properties ascribed to a sentence by linguistic conventions, and the “speaker meaning”, that is, what the speaker actually intend to communicate by uttering a given sentence. This implies that linguistic communication cannot be reduced to a mere encoding-decoding process. Namely, it involves the attribution of mental states to the speaker. We are, therefore, committed to the idea that in the world there are things such as communicative intentions. The paper is addressed to show that, in addition to the commitment to consider that speakers have real intentions, the very idea of speaker’s intention also includes an epistemic commitment. On the whole, the idea of a speaker’s intention includes both an ontological commitment to the realm of the mind and an epistemic commitment, based on a cognitive asymmetry between the speaker and the hearer. In particular, the epistemic commitment is towards the idea that the speaker has a privileged access to his/her intentions and the existence of a mechanism devoted to introspection, which is the cognitive basis of the privileged access. If fact, if in the very idea of “speaker’s intention” were not included the commitment towards a privileged access by the speaker with regard to his/her intentions, the linguistic behavior performed by the speaker would not be the basis for a negotiation about his/her intentions, but simply a trigger for an equal interpretation between the interlocutors, like in the case two individuals interpret a picture in front of them. With a linguistic behavior equally interpreted by the interlocutors, however, communication is no longer something based on a speaker’s intention to be revealed, as implied in the Gricean tradition.

An epistemic commitment in the very idea of “speaker’s intention”

PERCONTI, Pietro
2017-01-01

Abstract

In the tradition inspired by the ideas of Paul Grice, communication essentially consists in recognizing the intentions of the speaker and in the ability to provide enough clues for the hearer to guess his/her intentions. As it is well-known, this way of thinking is based on the difference between “sentence meaning”, that is, the semantic properties ascribed to a sentence by linguistic conventions, and the “speaker meaning”, that is, what the speaker actually intend to communicate by uttering a given sentence. This implies that linguistic communication cannot be reduced to a mere encoding-decoding process. Namely, it involves the attribution of mental states to the speaker. We are, therefore, committed to the idea that in the world there are things such as communicative intentions. The paper is addressed to show that, in addition to the commitment to consider that speakers have real intentions, the very idea of speaker’s intention also includes an epistemic commitment. On the whole, the idea of a speaker’s intention includes both an ontological commitment to the realm of the mind and an epistemic commitment, based on a cognitive asymmetry between the speaker and the hearer. In particular, the epistemic commitment is towards the idea that the speaker has a privileged access to his/her intentions and the existence of a mechanism devoted to introspection, which is the cognitive basis of the privileged access. If fact, if in the very idea of “speaker’s intention” were not included the commitment towards a privileged access by the speaker with regard to his/her intentions, the linguistic behavior performed by the speaker would not be the basis for a negotiation about his/her intentions, but simply a trigger for an equal interpretation between the interlocutors, like in the case two individuals interpret a picture in front of them. With a linguistic behavior equally interpreted by the interlocutors, however, communication is no longer something based on a speaker’s intention to be revealed, as implied in the Gricean tradition.
2017
9783319434902
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11570/2234824
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