Disimplicature

Speranza

Grice raises a problem for standard precisifications of The Relational Analysis. The problem I raise involves so–called ‘counterfactual’ attitude verbs, such as ‘wish’. In short, the trouble is this: there are true attitude reports ‘S wishes that P’ but there is no suitable referent for the term ‘that P’. The problematic reports illustrate that the content of a subject’s wish is intimately related to the content of their beliefs. I capture this fact by moving to a framework in which ‘wish’ relates subjects to sets of pairs of worlds, or paired propositions, rather than — as is standardly assumed — sets of worlds. Although other types of counterfactual attitude reports, e.g. those involving ‘imagine’, may be similarly problematic, at this stage it is unclear whether they can be handled the same way.