Jennifer Saul

What is said and psychological reality; Grice's project and relevance theorists' criticisms

One of the most important aspects of Grice’s theory of conversation is the drawing of a borderline between what is said and what is implicated. Grice’s views concerning this borderline have been strongly and influentially criticised by relevance theorists. In particular, it has become increasingly widely accepted that Grice’s notion of what is said is too limited, and that pragmatics has a far larger role to play in determining what is said than Grice would have allowed. (See for example Bezuidenhuit 1996; Blakemore 1987; Carston 1991; Recanati 1991, 1993, 2001; Sperber and Wilson 1986; Wilson and Sperber 1981.) In this paper, I argue that the rejection of Grice has moved too swiftly, as a key line of objection which has led to this rejection is flawed. The flaw, we will see, is that relevance theorists rely on a misunderstanding of Grice’s project in his theory of conversation. I am not arguing that Grice’s versions of saying and implicating are right in all details, but simply that certain widespread reasons for rejecting his theory are based on misconceptions. 1 Relevance theorists, I will suggest, systematically misunderstand Grice by taking him to be engaged in the same project that they are: making sense of the psychological processes by which we interpret utterances. Notions involved with this project will need to be ones that are relevant to the psychology of utterance interpretation. Thus, it is only reasonable that relevance theorists will require that what is said and what is implicated should be psychologically real to the audience. (We will see that this requirement plays a crucial role in their arguments against Grice.) Grice, I will argue, was not pursuing this project. Rather, I will suggest that he was trying to make sense of quite a different notion of what is said: one on which both speaker and audience may be wrong about what is said. On this sort of notion, psychological reality is not a requirement. So objections to Grice based on a requirement of psychological reality will fail.

Simple sentences, substitution, and intuitions

Introduction 1. Substitution and Simple Sentences 2. Simple Sentences and Semantics 3. Simple Sentences and Implicatures 4. The Enlightenment Problem, and a Common Assumption 5. Abandoning (EOI) 6. Beyond Matching Propositions Appendix A: Extending the Account Appendix B: Belief Reporting

Simple sentences, substitutions, and mistaken evaluations

Many competent speakers initially judge that (i) is true and (ii) isfalse, though they know that (iii) is true. (i) Superman leaps more tallbuildings than Clark Kent. (ii) Superman leaps more tall buildings thanSuperman. (iii) Superman is identical with Clark Kent. Semanticexplanations of these intuitions say that (i) and (ii) really can differin truth-value. Pragmatic explanations deny this, and say that theintuitions are due to misleading implicatures. This paper argues thatboth explanations are incorrect. (i) and (ii) cannot differ intruth-value, yet the intuitions are not due to implicatures, but ratherto mistakes in evaluating (i) and (ii).

The Road to Hell: Intentions and Propositional Attitude Ascription

Accounts of propositional attitude reporting which invoke contextual variation in semantic content have become increasingly popular, with good reason: our intuitions about the truth conditions of such reports vary with context. This paper poses a problem for such accounts, arguing that any reasonable candidate source for this contextual variation will yield very counterintuitive results. The accounts, then, cannot achieve their goal of accommodating our truth conditional intuitions. This leaves us with a serious puzzle. Theorists must either give up on the goal of agreement with our truth conditional intuitions, or find a different source for contextual variation.

Subordination, Silencing, and Two Ideas of Illocution

1. It is wonderful that Rae Langton’s existing essays on pornography, on objectification, and on the links between them should be assembled and supplemented with three new ones. For some of us it is especially gratifying to have a book to recommend which is at once a compelling work of feminism and an excellent work of analytic philosophy. But one need not be a feminist or an analytic philosopher to admire Langton’s distinctive, engaging style, and to wonder at the care and rigour of her arguments. One does have to be a philosopher, perhaps, fully to appreciate the imaginative uses to which Langton puts ideas from historical figures, and from recent work in political philosophy, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Langton gets difficult things across with ease, and thanks to her extraordinary clear-headedness, her writing is a special pleasure to read. I’m not going to attempt to review the overall project of Sexual Solipsism. I want to take this opportunity to say something about one aspect of Langton’s treatment of the subject of pornography. As I see it, two normative principles inform the treatment. There is a political principle: that a right to equality is fundamental, being the wellspring for rights to liberty. And there is an ethical one: that there is something wrong about treating a person as a thing. So unexceptionable does each of the principles seem to many (2011) 2(2) Jurisprudence 379–385

On speakers and audiences, feminism and the lying/misleading distinction

Kecskes: You criticized Relevance Theory on the grounds that RT does not take into account the speaker’s intentions (e.g., Saul 2002a). If the speaker’s actual intentions figured in the theory, then there is no way interpretative processes could go wrong. Do you think that the speaker’s intentions should figure in the interpretation process in the sense that the hearer must be fully aware of them?

II—Jennifer Saul: What are Intensional Transitives?

This paper discusses the question of which verbs are intensional transitives. In particular, I ask which verbs Forbes should take to be intensional transitives. I argue that it is very difficult to arrive at a clear and plausible understanding of what an intensional transitive is— making it difficult to answer these questions. I end by briefly raising some questions about the usefulness of the category of intensional transitives.