EINFÜHRUNG IN DIE
THEORETISCHE
PHILOSOPHIE:
SPRACHPHILOSOPHIE
Nathan Wildman
nathan.wildman@uni-hamburg.de
GRICE’S
MEANING
Or, meaning, (non) naturally –
as God intended it to be
What is a theory of meaning?
Distinguishing two questions:
I.
The Meaning Question: For some sentence ‘S ’ in
language L, what does ‘S ’ mean (in L)?
II. The Foundational Question: What explains why ‘S ’
means what it does in L?



Answers to I:
Propositional theories assign to S a proposition as its
meaning. (Russell, Frege)
Verificationist theories say that to understand ‘S ’ in L
is to know what empirical observations would confirm
‘S ’. (Logical Positivists, Ayer)
Truth-conditional theories say that, to understand ‘S ’
in L is to know what it is for ‘S ’ to be true in L (i.e., to
know the ‘truth condition’). (Quine, Davidson)
But what about II?

Grice’s answer: a speaker’s intentions fix the meanings
of an expression!
The project of reducing talk of meaning to speaker
intentions (or other kinds of mental intentionality) is
known as intention-based semantics.
NATURAL & NON-NATURAL MEANING
There are two kinds of meaning:
Natural Meaning: This is the kind of meaning
something has when it is a non-conventional sign for
something.
Non-Natural Meaning (meaningnn): This is the kind
of meaning something has when it is a conventional sign
for something.
NATURAL & NON-NATURAL MEANING
Some examples of Natural meaning :
(a)
Those spots on your face mean you have measles.
 Could be true only if the italicized sub-sentence is true,
i.e. only if you really do have measles.
(b)

The recent budget means that we shall have a
hard year.
Could be true only if the italicized sub-sentence is true,
i.e. only if, given our budget, next year will be difficult.
NATURAL & NON-NATURAL MEANING
Some examples of Meaningnn:
(c)

Those three rings on the bell (of the bus) mean
that the bus is full.
It could just as easily have been four rings!
(d)

The sentence ‘Snow is white’ means that snow is
white.
We might have used that string of symbols to have
meant something else.
NATURAL & NON-NATURAL MEANING
Note:
It isn’t quite correct to draw the distinction in terms of
conventional/non-conventional signs



Words can have meaningnn but not be signs.
Some gestures can have meaningnn but not be
conventional.
The recent budget has a natural meaning but is not a
sign.
NATURAL & NON-NATURAL MEANING
Natural Meaning:




Success: ‘x means that p’ entails p (given x)
Agent Independent: ‘x meant that p’ doesn’t entail
‘Someone meant that p by x’.
Fact-Involving: ‘x meant that p’ can be restated as a
sentence of the form ‘The fact that . . . meant . . . ’.
Meaningnn :
Lacks these characteristics
NATURAL & NON-NATURAL MEANING
Rule of thumb:


It is consistent with something's having a particular
non-natural meaning that what it non-naturally
means is false;
It is not consistent with something's having a
particular natural meaning that what it naturally
means is false.
That is, meaningnn defies Success
ANALYSING MEANINGNN
In any case, the kind of meaning distinctive of linguistic
expressions is non-natural meaning
A quick distinction we’ll come back to later
Speaker meaningnn : Speaker S means something by x.
 Mike means something by ‘Snow is white’
Sentence meaningnn : Speaker S means by x that Φ
 Mike means by ‘Snow is white’ that snow is white
ANALYSING MEANINGNN

Causal Analysis: For x to meannn something, x must
have (roughly) a tendency to produce in an audience
some attitude and a tendency, in the case of a speaker,
to be produced by that attitude (dependent on an
‘elaborate process of conditioning attending the use of
the sign in communication’).
Grice finds two things wrong with the causal account:
(1) Omits intention – what must be specified is not the
effect produced, but the effect the speaker intends to
produce.
(2) Ignores what a particular speaker may mean on a
particular occasion.
ANALYSING MEANINGNN
Counterexample 1. Putting on a tail coat satisfies
Steven’s causal conditions by producing in an audience
the attitude that one is going to a dance and by being
produced by an attitude in the tail coat-wearer that he is
going to a dance; but the wearer meant nothing by
wearing the tail coat.
Counterexample 2. To say ‘Jones is an athlete’ tends to
make someone believe that it is true that ‘Jones is tall’.
But the latter is not part of what is meant by the former.
We cannot explain this away by invoking linguistic
rules, since that is just to invoke meaningnn.
ANALYSING MEANINGNN
1st proposal. S meantnn by x that P iff
(1)
S uttered x intending for his audience to form the belief
that P.
Problem: Handkerchief counterexample - If S leaves B’s
handkerchief at the scene of the crime with the intention
of getting the detective to believe that B did it, then my
leaving the handkerchief meantnn that B was the
murderer. But that’s just wrong!
Solution: add clause about recognizing intention!
ANALYSING MEANINGNN
2nd proposal. S meantnn by x that P iff
(1)
(2)



S uttered x intending for his audience to form the belief that
P; and
S also intended that his audience recognize that’s what he
intended to do.
Problems:
St. John: Herod didn’t meannn that St. John was dead
when he brought his head to Salome
Child: The child didn’t meannn that it was sick when it
showed how pale she was
Broken China: I didn’t meannn that daughter broke
the china, when I left it out
Solution: invoke difference between showing &
drawing a picture
ANALYSING MEANINGNN
3rd proposal. S meantnn by x that P iff
(1)
(2)
(3)
S uttered x intending for his audience to form the belief that
P; and
S also intended that his audience recognize that’s what he
intended to do; and
S also intended that his audience form the belief that P at
least partly because they recognize that’s what he intended
to do.
Slightly shortened: A uttered x with the intention of
inducing a belief by means of the recognition of this
intention.
MINOR OBJECTIONS?
Two Quick Objections:
(1) This requires an audience – can’t I soliloquize?
(2) I don’t always intend to produce any beliefs in you
when I utter meaningful sentences – I might tell you a
proof for 2+2=4.
SUMMING UP
1)
Grice suggests that x meantnn something is
(roughly) equivalent to somebody meantnn
something by x.
That takes care of Speaker meaning!
1)
Finally, x meansnn that so-and-so is (roughly)
equivalent to what people generally intend to
meannn by uttering x.
That takes care of Sentence meaning!
SUMMING UP
Meaningnn is to be analyzed in terms of reflexive
intentions—i.e., the intention to induce a psychological
state in a hearer by means of a recognition of that very
intention.
If Grice is right, speaker’s meaning (what a speaker
intends to communicate) is a more fundamental notion
than sentence meaning – sentences mean what they do
because of what speakers intend to communicate by
means of them; rather than, speakers mean what they
do because of what the sentences they use mean.
SUMMING UP
As Grice later puts it, we can distinguish between:
Relativized meaning, the explication of which
essentially involves reference to word users or
communicators
 Nonrelativized meaning, where no such reference is
required

Nonrelativized meaning is the secondary notion, capable
of being reduced to, or analyzed in terms of, relativized
meaning; and no corresponding analysis or reduction in
the other direction is possible
SOME PROBLEMS?
A red traffic light meansnn stop; but who meantnn
stop?
 Sometimes, the intended effect must be under the
audience’s control.
 Speakers can mean anything by anything, but
sentences are constrained.
 Some sentences almost always are used to mean
something other than their literal meaning.
 Most sentences are never uttered at all, but are still
meaningful; novel sentences have no pre-established
conventions for use, and yet we still instantly find
them meaningful.

SOME PROBLEMS? – SEARLE‘S OBJECTION
Suppose that I am an American soldier in WW II and that I
am captured by Italian troops. And suppose also that I wish
to get these troops to believe that I am a German officer in
order to get them to release me. What I would like to do is to
tell them in German or Italian that I am a German officer.
But let us suppose I don’t know enough German or Italian to
do that. So I … put on a show of telling them that I am a
German officer by reciting those few bits of German that I
know, trusting that they don’t know enough German to see
through my plan. Let us suppose I know only one line of
German, which I remember from a poem I had to memorize in
a high school German course. Therefore I, a captured
American, address my Italian captors with the following
sentence: “Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühen?”
SOME PROBLEMS? – SEARLE‘S OBJECTION
Searle claims that the three clauses of Grice’s account of
meaning are satisfied: I intend to produce a certain
effect in them, namely, the effect of (i) believing that I
am a German officer; and I intend to produce this effect
(iii) by means of their (ii) recognition of my intention.
But when I say “Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen
blühen?” I don’t meannn ‘I’m a German Officer’ – rather,
… because what the words mean is, “Knowest thou the
land where the lemon trees bloom?” … Meaning is more
than a matter of intention, it is also a matter of
convention. [Searle, “What is a Speech Act?”]
NEXT WEEK
J. Austin’s ‘Performative Utterances’
A scan will be uploaded this evening
We’ll discuss the practice exam a bit, but mostly just
work though Austin (though I’m happy to answer any
questions people have)