EXAMPLES DIRECTED TOWARD SIIOWING THE THREE-PRONG ANALYSANS Too STRONG
Let us (for simplicity) revert to the original analysans of
"U means something by uttering x," and abbreviate
"U utters x intending A:
(I) to produce r
(2) to think U intends A to produce r
(3) to think U intends the fulfillment of (I) to be based on the fulfillment of (2)" to
"U utters x M-intending that A produce r."
In his original contribution to The Oxford Philosophical Society, Grice supposes that the identification of what U means by x would turn on the identification of the M-intended response or effect.
In particular Grice supposed in the Oxford Philosophical Society essay that generic differences in type of response would be connected with generic differences within what is meant.
To take two central examples, Grice supposes
(a) "U meant by x that so-and-so is the case" would (roughly speaking) be explicated by " U uttered x M-intending to produce in A the belief that so-and-so";
(b) " U meant by x that A should do such-and-such" would be explicated by "U uttered x Mintending to produce in A the doing of such-and-such."
Indicative or quasi-indicative utterances are connected with the generation of beliefs.
Imperative or quasi-imperative utterances are connected with the generation of actions.
At a later stage, Grice wishes to direct our consideration to the emendation of this idea: to substitute in the account of imperative or quasi-imperative utterances, as the direct, M-intended response, "intention on the part of A to do such-and-such" (vice "A's doing such-and-such").
This has the advantages (i) that symmetry is achieved, in that the M-intended response will be a propositional attitude in both cases (indicative and imperative);
(2) that it accommodates the fact that agreement, or cooperation, or reciprocal recognition of acceptance
("yes," "all right")
in the case of
"The engine has stopped"
signifies belief.
A: The engine has stopped.
B: (a) Yes. I agree.
(b) All right. I'm glad. We have arrived.
In the case of
"Stop the engine" signifies intention.
A: Stop the engine!
B: (a) Yes. I will.
(b) All right. I will.
Of course action is the ultimate objective of the utterer.
Cases of 'immediate response' or muscular response as Peirce (he was so UNacademic!) has it, by acting are treatable, however, as special cases of forming an intention -- viz., the intention with which the agent acts.
Imperatives always call for intentional action.
Self-imperatives, or hortatory, call for self-action.
A few alleged counterexamples (or scenarios that Grice has himself thought of, since he doesn't care to credit the source, as he does for the cases of his reductive analysis alleged to be too weak, where he credits, in this order, J. O. Urmson, and P. F. Strawson) are best seen as attempts to raise trouble, not for the suggested analysis for "U means something by uttering x," but for this analysis when supplemented by the kind of detail just mentioned, so as to offer an outline of an account of "By uttering x, U means (meant) that . . .."
In particular, it may be objected that to explicate
"By uttering x, U meant that so-and-so is the case"
by
"U uttered x M-intending to produce in A the belief that so-and-so"
is to select as explicans a condition that is too strong.
Quine wouldn't care. In the New World, strength is regarded as a virtue. We at Oxford are more ... Brit?
We need to be able to say on occasion that U means that so-and-so, without committing ourselves to the proposition that U M-intended to produce a belief that so-and-so.
The following examples seem to present difficulties:
Examinee:
Q: "When was the Battle of Waterloo"?
A: "1815" ("18I6")
Here the examinee meant that the Battle of Waterloo was fought in i8I5 (i8i6) but hardly M-intended to induce a belief to that effect in his examiner.
At most, to have the mind of the examinator MOVE in the direction of a belief involving that content.
The examiner's beliefs (whatever they may be) are naturally to be thought of by the examinee as independent of candidates' answers.
The M-intended effect is (perhaps) that the examiner knows or thinks that the examinee thinks the Battle of Waterloo was fought in I815 (i8I6); or (perhaps) that the examiner knows whether the examinee knows the correct answer to the question.
(Perhaps the former is the direct, and the latter the indirect, intended effect).
Confession (some cases):
Mother: "It's no good denying it: you broke the window, didn't you ?"
Child: "Yes, I did."
Here the child knows his mother already thinks he broke the window; what she wants is that he should say that he did.
And the Mother is using the question-tag because she is so British!
Perhaps the M-intended effect, then, is that the mother should think the child willing to say that he did (what does "say" mean here-how should it be explicated?); or that the mother should think the child willing not to pretend that he did not break the window (not to say things or perform acts intended to induce the belief that the child did not break the window). The child has to bring the thing to attain 'common-ground' status.
(Confession is perhaps a sophisticated and ritual case, as every Catholic should know!)
Reminding:
Q: "Let me see, what was that girl's name?"
A: "Rose" (or produces a rose).
"Hyacinth" (produces a hyacinth")
The questioner is here to be presumed already to believe that the girl's name is Rose (at least in a dispositional fasion).
It has just slipped his mind.
The intended effect seems to be that A should have it in mind that her name is Rose, or Hyacinth.
Review of facts:
Both speaker and hearer are to be supposed already to believe that p (q, and so forth).
The intended effect again seems to be that A (and perhaps U also) should have "the facts" in mind (altogether).
Conclusion of argument:
p, q, therefore r (from already stated premises).
While U intends that A should think that r, he does not expect (and so intend) A to reach a belief that r on the basis of U's intention that he should reach it.
The premises, not conversational trust in U, are supposed to do the work.
Descartes: Cogito; ergo, sum.
Locke: I don't get it.
The countersuggestible man:
A regards U as being, in certain areas, almost invariably mistaken, or as being someone with whom he cannot bear to be in agreement.
U knows this. U says
"My mother thinks very highly of you."
with the intention that A should (on the strength of what U says) think that U's mother has a low opinion of him.
Here there is some inclination to say that, despite U's intention that A should think U's mother thinks ill of him, what U means is that U's mother thinks well of A.
It's different with
"We should have lunch together sometime." which, even qua expression, means "Get lost."
All these examples that Grice carefully lists raise two related difficulties.
(i) There is some difficulty in supposing that the indicative form is conventionally tied to indicating that the speaker is M-intending to induce a certain belief in his audience, if there are quite normal occurrences of the indicative mood for which the speaker's intentions are different, in which he is not M-intending (nor would be taken to be M-intending) to induce a belief (for example, in reminding).
Yet, on the other side, it seems difficult to suppose that the function of the indicative (or informative) mode has nothing to do with the inducement of belief.
The indication of the utterer's intention that his audience should act (or form an intention to act) is plausibly, if not unavoidably, to be regarded as by convention the function of the imperative mode.
Surely the function of the indicative ought to be analogous.
What is the alternative to the suggested connection with an intention to induce a belief?
The difficulty here might be met by distinguishing questions about what an indicative sentence means and questions about what an utterer means.
A distinction apparently denied by Witters, and all too frequently underestimated by The Master (Austin).
One might suggest that a full specification of sentence meaning (for indicative sentences) involves reference to the fact that the indicative form conventionally signifies an intention on the part of the utterer to induce a belief.
It may well be the case that the speaker's meaning does not coincide with the meaning of the sentence he utters.
E. g.
"Strawson defeated Grice, eh!"
meaning that Grice defeated Strawson.
It may be clear that, though the utterer uses a device which conventionally indicates an intention on his part to induce a belief, in this case he has not this but some other intention.
To be jocular, to be an ironist. Or to refute a philosophical thesis by Witters!
This is perhaps reinforceable by pointing out that any device the primary (standard) function of which is to indicate the speaker's intention to induce a belief that p could in appropriate circumstances be easily and intelligibly employed for related purposes, for example (as in the "examinee" example), to indicate that the UTTERER believes that p.
The problem then would be to exhibit the alleged counterexamples as natural adaptations of a device or form primarily connected with the indication of an intention to induce a belief.
I think we would want if possible to avoid treating the counterexamples as extended uses of the indicative form, and to find a more generally applicable function for that form.
In any case, the second difficulty is more serious.
Even if we can preserve the idea that the indicative form is tied by convention to the indication of a speaker's intention to induce a belief, we should have to allow that the speaker's meaning will be different for different occurrences of the same indicative sentence.
Indeed, this is required by the suggested solution for the first difficulty.
We shall have to allow this if differences in intended response involve differences in speaker's meaning.
But it is not very plausible to say that if U utters,
"The Battle of Waterloo was fought in I8I 5":
i) as a schoolmaster (intending to induce a belief)
2) as an examinee
3) as a schoolmaster in revision class,
U would mean something different by uttering this sentence on the three occasions.
Indeed he does. He means that the Battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815.
He means that the Battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815, so that his addressee knows.
He means that the Battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815, so that the addressee gives the utterer a pass.
He means that the Battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815 lest the utterer and the addressee forget.
Even if the examinee M-intends to induce a belief that he (the examinee) thinks that the Battle of Waterloo was fought in i8I5, it does not seem attractive to say that when he utters "Waterloo was fought in I8I5" he means that he thought that Waterloo was fought in i8I5 (unlike the schoolmaster teaching the period for the first time).
No. He just means that Waterloo was fought in 1815.
Where he using "Waterloo" figuratively.
We might attempt to deal with some of the examples (for example, reminding, fact-reviewing) by supposing the standard M-intended effect to be not just a belief but an "activated belief" (that A should be in a state of believing that p and having it in mind that p).
One may fall short of this in three ways: one may (i) neither believe that p nor have it in mind that p (2) believe that p but not have it in mind that p (3) not believe that p, but have it in mind that p.
So one who reminds intends the same final response as one who informs, but is intending to remedy a different deficiency.
This (even for the examples for which it seems promising) runs into a new difficulty.
If U says (remindingly)
"Waterloo was fought in i8I5."
two of Grice's conditions are fulfilled:
(i) U intends to induce in A the activated belief that Waterloo was fought in I 8 I 5
2) U intends A to recognize that (i).
But if the date of Waterloo was "on the tip of A's tongue" (as it might be), U cannot expect (and so cannot intend) that A's activated belief will be produced via A's recognition that U intends to produce it. If A already believes (though has momentarily forgotten) that Waterloo was fought in i8I5, then the mention of this date will induce the activated belief, regardless of U's intention to produce it.
This suggests dropping the requirement (for speaker's meaning) that U should intend A's production of response to be based on A's recognition of U's intention that A should produce the response.
It suggests the retention merely of conditions (i) and (2) above. But this will not do: there are examples which require this condition.
To go back to an example in the Oxford Philosophical Society talk given at St. John's -- hence the reference to the Baptist:
a) Herod, showing Salome the head of St. John the Baptist, cannot, I think, be said to have meant that St. John the Baptist was dead.
b) Displaying a bandaged leg (in response to a squash invitation).
In (b) the displayer could mean (i) that he cannot play squash or (dubiously) (2) that he has a bad leg (the bandages might be fake) but not (3) that his leg is bandaged.
Although he is POINTING his addressee's attention to that fact -- the propositional complex: "Can't you see that my leg is bandaged? You do the maths."
The third condition seems to be required in order to protect us from counter-intuitive results in these cases. Possible remedies (i) We might retain the idea that the intended effect or response (for cases of meaning that it is the case that p-indicative type) is activated belief, retaining in view the distinction between reaching
this state (i) from assurance-deficiency (2) from attention deficiency; and stipulate that the third condition (that U intends the response to be elicited on the basis of a recognition of his intention to elicit that response) is operative only when U intends to elicit activated belief by eliminating assurance-deficiency, not when he intends to do so by eliminating attention-deficiency.
This idea might perhaps be extended to apply to imperative types of cases, too, provided that we can find cases of reminding someone to do something (restoring him to activated intention) in which U's intention that A should reach the state is similarly otiose, in which it is not to be expected that A's reaching the activated intention will be dependent on his recognition that U intends him to reach it.
So the definition might read roughly as follows: (*b is a mood marker, an auxiliary correlated with the propositional attitude b from a given range of propositional attitudes)
"U means by uttering x that *ap" = "U utters x intending (i) that A should actively b that p (2) that A should recognize that U intends (i) and (unless U intends the utterance of x merely to remedy attention-deficiency) (3) that the fulfillment of (i) should be based on the fulfillment of (2)."
This remedy does not, however, cope with (i) the "examinee" example, (2) the "confession" cases, or (3) the countersuggestible man.
(ii)
Since, when U does intend, by uttering x, to promote in A the belief that p, it is standardly requisite that A should (and should be intended to) think that U thinks that p (otherwise A will not think that p), why not make the direct intended effect not that A should think that p, but that A should think that U thinks that p? In many but not all cases, U will intend A to pass, from thinking that U thinks that p, to thinking that p himself ("informing" cases).
But such an effect is to be thought of as indirect (even though often of prime interest).
We can now retain the third condition, since even in reminding cases A may be expected to think U's intention that A should think that U thinks that p to be relevant to the question whether A is to think that U thinks that p. We have coped, not only with the reminding example, but also with the examinee example and with the countersuggestible man (who is intended to think that U thinks that p, though not to think that p himself). And though the fact-review example is not yet provided for (since A may be thought of as already knowing that U thinks that p), if we are understanding " U believes that p" as " U has the activated belief thatp," this example can be accommodated, too.
A, though he is to be supposed to know that U believes that p, does not until U speaks know that U has it in mind that p. But while a solution along these lines may be acceptable for indicative-type cases, it cannot be generalized to all non-indicative cases.
Contrast: (a)
"You shall not cross the barrier."
or
Thou shalt not kill.
(b) "Do not cross the barrier."
Do not kill.
When uttering (a),
U would characteristically intend A to think that U intends that his addressee will not cross the barrier.
But it seems that a specification of U's meaning, for a normal utterance of (b), would be incompletely explicated unless it is stated that U intends A
not merely to think that U intends that his addressee will not cross the barrier,
but also himself to form the intention not to cross.
Unless he takes the authority as sufficient. A soldier is not expected to form an intention to stop marching (unless it relates to the 'muscular response' Peirce talks about).
In any case, there is 'will' and there is 'shall.'
It may be argued that already in
"Thou shalt not kill"
God's intention is that Moses will not kill, i.e. form the intention not to kill.
Let us then draw a distinction between what one might call "purely exhibitive" utterances (utterances by which the utterer U intends to impart a belief that he [ U] has a certain propositional attitude), and utterances which are not only exhibitive but also what one might call "protreptic" (that is, utterances by which U intends, via imparting the belief that he [U] has a certain propositional attitude, to induce a corresponding attitude in the hearer).
We reach, then, Redefinition IV, Version A: "By uttering x U meant that */ip" is true iff (3A) (3f) (3c):
U uttered x intending (i) (2) (3) (4) [as for III(A), with "4-ing that p" (5) substituted for "r"] (6) (7) and (for some cases) (8) A, on the basis of the fulfillment of (6), himself to /b that p. Whether a substitution-instancc of subclause (8) is to appear in the expansion of a statement of the form represented in the dcfinicndum will depend on the nature of the substitution for "*s" which that statement incorporates.
We can also reach Rcdcfinition IV, Vcrsion B, by adding what appears above as subclause (8) to the dcfinicns of III(B) as subclausc (a) (5), together with a modification of clause (b) of III(B) to take into account that the intended response r is now specified in terms of the idea of b-ing that p.
Whether either version of Rcdcfinition IV is correct as it stands depends crucially on the view to be taken of an imperatival version of the "countcrsuggestiblc man" cxamplc.
Mr. A, wishing to be relieved of the immediate presence of Mrs. A, but regarding her as being, so far as he is concerned, counter-suggestible, says to her,
"Now, dear, keep me company for a little."
Is it true or correct to say, or would it be correct to say that Mr. Smith, who clearly did not mean Mrs. Smith TO keep him company, means, by his remark that Mrs. Smith was to (should) keep him company?
If the answer is "yes," the Rcdcfinition IV is inadequate, since according to it to have meant that Mrs. A was to keep him company, Mr. A would have had to intend that she form the intention to keep him company, an intention which he certainly did not have.
Emcndation, however, would not be difficult; we alter the new subclause from "A, on the basis of the fulfillment of (6), himself to p to that p" to "A, on the basis of the fulfillment of (6), to think Uto intend A top/ thatp."
If, however, the answer is "no," then Rcdcfinition IV is left intact.
Fortunately, I do think the answer is "No."
Mr. Smith means that Mrs. Smith is not to keep Mr. Smith company.
Because Smith m-intends that Mrs. Smith is not to keep Mr. Smith company.
By recognising the intention, Mrs. Smith abides.
However, is she can read between the lines, she SHOULD keep Mr. Smith company.
HER REASONING:
1. He wants me to leave.
If it is common ground between Mr. and Mrs. Smith that she is, as far as Mr. Smith is concerned, countersuggestible, then
Mr. A would have had to intend that she form the 'fake' intention to keep him company (and a fortiori act disaccordingly), an intention which he certainly did not have.
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