Grice's Communicatum

“There is one further objection, not mentioned by Grandy and Warner, which seems to me to be one to which I must respond.”

“It may be stated thus.”

“One of the leading ideas in my treatment of meaning was that meaning is not to be regarded exclusively, or even primarily, as a feature of language or of linguistic utterances.”

“There are many instances of non-linguistic vehicles of communication, mostly unstructured but sometimes exhibiting at least rudimentary structure; and my account of meaning, based on Peirce, was designed to allow for the possibility that a non-linguistic and indeed a non-conventional 'utterance', perhaps even manifesting some degree of structure, might be within the powers of creatures who lack any linguistic or otherwise conventional apparatus for communication, but who are not thereby deprived of the capacity to mean this or that by things they do.”

“To provide for this possibility, it is plainly necessary that the key ingredient in any representation of meaning, namely intending, should be a state the capacity for which does not require the possession of a language.”

“Now some might be unwilling to allow the possibility of such pre-linguistic intending.”

“Against them, I think I would have good prospects of winning the day.”

“But unfortunately a victory on this front would not be enough.”

“For, in a succession of increasingly elaborate moves designed to thwart a sequence of counterexamples started by Strawson with his example of the ‘rat-infested house,’ I was led to restrict the intentions which are to constitute utterer's meaning to “M-intentions”; and, whatever might be the case in general with regard to intending, M-intending is plainly too sophisticated a state to be found in a language-destitute creature.”

“So the unavoidable rearguard actions seem to have undermined the raison d'etre of the campaign.”

“A brief reply will have to suffice; a full treatment would require delving deep into crucial problems concerning the boundaries between vicious and virtuous circularity.”

“According to my most recent speculations about meaning, one should distinguish between what I might call the factual character of an utterance (meaning-relevant features which are actually present in the utterance), and what I might call its titular character (the nested M-intention which is deemed to be present).

“The titular character is infinitely complex, and so cannot be actually present in toto.”

“In which case to point out that its inconceivable actual presence would be possible, or would be detectable, only via the use of language would seem to serve little purpose.”

“At its most meagre, the factual character will consist merely in the pre-rational counterpart of meaning, which might amount to no more than making a certain sort of utterance in order thereby to get some creature to think or want some particular thing, and this condition seems to contain no reference to linguistic expertise.”

“Maybe in some less straightforward instances of meaning there will be actually present intentions whose feasibility as intentions will demand a capacity for the use of language.”

“But there can be no advance guarantee when this will be so, and it is in any case arguable that the use of language would here be a practically indispensable aid to thinking about relatively complex intentions, rather than an element in what is thought about, as I suggest in the last of my William James lectures.”