Disimplicature

Speranza

Grice aims to shed new light on certain philosophical theories of perceptual experience by examining the semantics of perceptual ascriptions such as “Jones sees an apple.” I start with the assumption, recently defended elsewhere, that perceptual ascriptions lend themselves to intensional readings. In the first part of the paper, Grice defends three theses regarding such readings: 

I) intensional readings of perceptual ascriptions ascribe phenomenal properties, 

II) perceptual verbs are not ambiguous between intensional and extensional readings, and 

III) intensional perceptual ascriptions have a relational form. The second part of the paper describes the implications of I-III for theories of perceptual experience. I argue that I-III support and reconcile the three main views of perceptual experience, relationalism, disjunctivism, and representationalism. 

However, I-III leave open at least one important point of contention: particularism, the view that we experience external objects. I conclude by exploring the implications of accepting or denying particularism given I-III.