Suppes on Grice

Speranza

Suppes writes:

"A central aspect of H. Paul Grice's theory of MEANING
is the basic character of utterer's meaning".

And it is.

"This feature of Grice's theory has been criticized
severely because of its deviation from the conception
of semantics as an autonomous discipline independent
of such general psychological concepts as speakers'
intentions and listeners' recognition of intentions."

Only I prefer 'utterer' and 'addresee'.

Suppes goes on:

"I believe that Grice is right and his critics are wrong."

As most here at this club!

Suppes writes:

"The purpose of this essay is to offer my reasons for holding this view".

So let's review the view.

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"Before getting down to business, there are some preliminary matters to get out of the way."

"First, concerning the statement of Grice's views I primarily depend upon his three important
essays ("Meaning", "Utterer's Meaning and Intentions", and "Utterer's Meaning, Sentence Meaning, and Word Meaning")."

"The critics I shall explicitly consider are Chomsky ("Reflections on language"), Yu (On Grice) and Biro (Intentionalism)."

Suppes has a footnote:
"It is a pleasure to dedicate this essay
to H. Paul Grice, who over the years
has patiently instructed me on more
philosophical points than I can HOPE
to remember."

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Suppes:

"Grice's programme is to use the
basic notion of utterer's meaning
to EXPLICATE at the next level
of abstraction the concept of
utterance-type occasion-meaning."

"At the next higher level is the analysis of the concept of the applied timeless meaning of an utterance-type (complete or incomplete) on a particular occasion of utterance."

"Finaly, we reach the timeless meaning of an utterance-type."