Doerge and Siebel on "Grice" for Erknenntnis (2008)

Abstract:

"Gricea[i]n communication is communication

between utterers and their audiences, where the utterer

means something and the audience understands what is meant. The weak

transmission idea is that, whenever such communication takes place,

there is something which is transmitted from utterer to audience; the

strong transmission idea adds that what is transmitted is nothing

else than what is communicated. We try to salvage these

ideas from a seemingly forceful attack ... [which] attaches too much significance to the surface structure of sentences of the type 'S communicates the belief (desire …) that p to A' by assuming that the communicated entity is denoted by the grammatical object following 'communicates'."


"On our proposal, what is communicated in all Gricean cases is a thought. And since S communicates the thought that p to A only if S means that p and A understands what S means, the thought that p will be transmitted from S to A."

----- Excellent counterattack to that most unGricean of authors: Wayne Davis!