Is meaning more than a matter of intention?

Is meaning more than a matter of intention? John Seale (1971, p. 189) argued that Grice’s account of meaning, where meaning is determined by the intention of the utterer, is incomplete. Is Searle right to make this assertion, is meaning in language more than a matter of Gricean intention? Searle admitted that Grice’s position is a good place to start in capturing what it is for an utterance to have meaning (Searle 1971, p. 188). Grice argued that meaning in an utterance comes from the mental state of the speaker, in particular their intention (Barber 2010, 15). To understand Seale’s argument it is necessary to outline Grice’s position. Paul Grice argued that the word ‘meaning’ is ambiguous and so he distinguishes between two kinds of meaning (Grice 1957, pp. 180-181). Natural meaning (referred to as meann) is where x meansn that p where x entail p (Grice 1957, p. 180). For example, those fox tracks in the snow meann that a fox has passed this way. The second kind of meaning is non-natural meaning (referred to as meannn), where x meansnn that p but does not entail p. An example being, three rings of the bus meansnn the bus is full (Grice 1957, p. 180). The bell ringing 3 times or x means p (the bus is full), but does not entail that the bus is full as the bell ringer may have made a mistake. Barber (2010, p. 18) argued that natural meaning is not mysterious and has little to do with language and so Grice’s account deals solely with meannn. Grice (1957, pp. 183-184) argued through three stages that meaningnn is to be found in the intentions of the utterer. By utterance Grice does not necessarily mean a verbal communication, but any communicative action. Grice (1957, p. 185) argued that meaning nn of an utterance was when A meantnn x was roughly equivalent to A uttered x with the intention of inducing a belief by means of the audience recognising x’s intention. To illustrate this Grice uses the example of convincing Mr. X that Mrs. X is having an affair with Mr Y. If Grice were to create and show a drawing of Mrs. X being somewhat friendly with Mr. Y to Mr. X, what Mr. X takes as the meaning of the drawing depends on what he takes the intention of Grice to be. If Grice’s intention is to doodle a work of art, then Mr. X’s recognition of Grice’s intention will make the meaning nn of the picture different from Mr. X believing Grice’s intention being to inform him of his wife’s untoward behaviour (Grice 1957, p. 184). Thus the meaningnn is in the intention of the utterer as interpreted by the understanding of that intention by the audience. Grice explained the meaning of verbal expressions in terms of the meaning of individual utterances (Barber 2010, p. 25). Grice argued that a linguistic expression, i.e. a sentence, means p within a certain linguist community if and only if that community uses that expression to mean p (Barber 2010, p. 25). So the sentence “the train is late” means that the train is late only if the English community uses that term to indicate their intention of communicating that the train is late (Barber 2010, p. 26). However, Grice’s argument presents some problems. Firstly, his account only describes how sentence meaning is derived from the intentions of the utterer and not how words derive their meaning (Barber 2010, p. 26). As Barber (2010, p. 26) points out most words with a few exceptions, for example fire, only make sense in conjunction with other words and in particular contexts. Secondly, even if Grice is right about meaning being derived from the regularity of the sentence used to communicate intentions, it still leaves a problem with sentences that have never been uttered before which should be meaningless (Barber 2010, p. 26). Searle on the other hand concludes that what is meant by an utterance is not exhausted by the speaker’s intention (Barber 2010, p. 35), but also in the intention to apply the conventions of language (Searle 1971, p. 190) enabling the audience to understand the speakers meaning; in a sense he adds another level of intention. Searle illustrates his criticism with the following example. Imagine that an American soldier has been captured by the Italians during the Second World War. The soldier, understandably, wants to convince the Italians that he is German but he only knows one line of German which translates as “Know the land where lemon trees grow”. In Gricean terms by uttering the phrase the soldier intends to convince the Italians that he is a German Officer by them recognising his intention. However Searle would be loath to say that the German phrase he used means, “I am a German Officer”, as it means something different by the conventions of the language (Searle 1971, pp 190191). The intention behind using the phrase is not the conventional meaning of the expression. Searle argued that Grice has overlooked the importance of the rules of convention in language (Searle 1971, p. 190). He agreed that intention is the source of meaning but added the consideration that the intention can only be communicated in an expression within the convention and rules of a particular language (Barber 2010, p. 39). If this is correct then meaning can’t be just a matter of intention and the mental state of the speaker but also depends on the mental states within the speaker’s community since these fix the conventions of language used in individual utterances (Barber 2010, p. 39). But this leaves the problem of how a linguistic community can fix word meanings in conventions of language. Hilary Putnam provided one solution to this problem through deferential theory, which does not rely on the intentions of the utterer. He argued that there is a division in linguistic labour (Putnam 1994, p. 196-198) where non-experts in a word defer to its reference from experts (Barber 2010, p. 55). Putnam (1994, p. 196) argued that in order to use the word gold, to wear gold, buy or sell gold we do not have to know the exact details of the extension of the word, i.e. gold in the world. So despite not being an expert on gold, my use of the word ‘gold’ has gold as its extension (reference of the word in the physical world). According to Putnam this is made possible because there is a subclass of experts in gold who determine that it is appropriate to use that word only in reference to the chemical Au. He argued that a linguistic body possesses at least some terms whose associated criteria are only known by an expert sub class of speakers and whose use by other speakers depends on cooperation between the sub class and the general speaking population (Putnam 1971, p. 197). As such it is the sociolinguistic state of the collective speaking population rather than the psychological state of the speakers (including intention) that fixes what the word means, thus supporting Searle’s argument. Potentially undermining my argument is Tim Crane who has criticised Putnam’s deferential theory. He imagines a non expert who uses the term aluminium to describe anything that looks like aluminium, such as molybdenum (Crane 1991, p. 203), while allowing that for an expert, the word ‘aluminium’ just refers to the extension of aluminium alone. Barber (2010, p. 59) argued that when a non expert says that an appropriate rock is made of aluminium ore, Crane is committed to saying their statement is correct as the word refers to either aluminium or molybdenum. Barber (2010, p. 59) pointed out that Crane could argue that the non expert’s error is just a discrepancy between his usage of the word aluminium and that of an expert. But this means that the expert and the non expert mean something very different by the word, suggesting when a person becomes an expert they don’t come to know more about the same thing, but rather the word they share with the non expert comes to mean something different (Barber 2010, p.60). However Putnam argues through his twin earth thought experiment that a word’s meaning is also determined by physical facts about the world about us (Barber 2010, p. 55) so what determines what the word ‘aluminium’ means is not just its sociolinguistic properties but also that it refers to physical aluminium and physical aluminium alone, undermining Crane’s position. This leaves deferential theory intact supporting Seale’s claim of the importance of the rules of the conventions of language. Grice could endorse a weaker version of Searle’s added condition that the speaker’s intentions accord with the community wide language conventions of the sentence (Barber 2010, p. 37). The speaker’s intentions could accord with what they believe is the community wide meaning for the sentence, or that the audience believes that such and such is what the sentence means (Barber 2010, p. 37). Barber (2010, p. 37) argued that this would satisfy our intuition about Searle’s example of the American officer, as the soldier does not believe that the phrase means ‘I am a German officer’ and so Grice would not be committed to saying that it does. This also means that this weaker version of Grice’s treatment is still couched in terms of the psychological state of the speaker, i.e. their beliefs. However there are still problems for Grice. What if the American soldier actually believed that the phrase he used meant that he was a German Officer (Barber 2010, p. 37)? While this would still satisfy Grice’s position it would not satisfy Searle’s argument about the intentions to use the rules of the conventions of language. He may have intended to use the conventions of language but failed, and in considering Putnam’s argument from deferential theory it is difficult to see how the German phrase means anything other than the convention in which is used by German speakers. To conclude Grice asserts that non-natural meaning is in the recognition of the intention of the utterer by the audience to change their beliefs. According to Seale this account does not take into consideration the rules of the conventions of language, which are set by the community who use that language. Hilary Putnam provides an explanation of how the conventions of language come about through deferential theory. Crane has been critical of Putnam’s argument but can be countered by Putnam in this instance by pointing to meaning also being fixed by the physical extension of what the word refers and that Crane seems to be committed in saying that non expert becomes an expert by the word coming to mean something different. Grice could argue that a weaker version of his argument may depend on the utterer believing that the expression meant what it did by convention, but what if the utter believed that the meaning was other than the conventional meaning in language? In considering Putnam’s argument that there is a sociolinguistic component to meaning, expressions can only mean what they conventionally mean. Therefore I agree with John Searle that meaning is more than a matter of intention as proposed by Paul Grice. References Barber, A., (2010), Language and Thought, Milton Keynes, Open University Crane, T., (1991), All the Difference in the World, in Barber, A., (2010), Language and Thought, Milton Keynes, Open University pp.200-205 Grice, H., P., (1957), Meaning, in Barber, A., (2010), Language and Thought, Milton Keynes, Open University pp. 180- 187 Putnam, H., (1975), The Meaning of Meaning, in Barber, A., (2010), Language and Thought, Milton Keynes, Open University pp. 191-199 Searle, J.,R., (1971), What is a Speech Act?, in Barber, A., (2010), Language and Thought, Milton Keynes, Open University pp. 188-190