Gricean Communication Research Articles

The origin and function of external representations

External representations ( ERs) are objects or performances in the world whose proper function is to communicate about other things in the world. Why and how did we make them, and what do they give us? We outline a simple framework for thinking about ERs grounded in modern machine learning. We propose a minimal set of neural mechanisms needed for open-ended ER production. Our constructivist enactive view contrasts with nativist views which propose specialist neural modules requiring symbolic internal representations. We propose a plausible set of (biological and cultural) evolutionary steps to full Gricean symbolic communication via a set of increasingly complex enactive algorithms for ER production. A pragmatic space of games is defined, which includes not only fully cooperative language games but also science, art, and evolved signal manipulation games. This space is defined by the complexity of learning needed by sender and receiver. We propose that one important step towards open-ended ER use was selection for bush reading, which like mind-reading is an inferential process requiring complex contextual and syntactic understanding of cues about events displaced in space and time. Bush reading pre-adapted receivers to be receptive, competent, and perspicacious interpreters of later intentionally produced signals about hidden topics such as felt mental states. This paved the way for minimally Gricean communication, which subsequently could be bootstrapped into explicit theories of mind, folk psychology narratives, and symbolic language in general. Recent findings in cognitive archaeology are integrated within the framework, and new experiments in machine learning suggested.

Going Dennettian about Gricean communication

ABSTRACT Grice’s analysis of human communication has proven to be highly influential among many philosophers and cognitive scientists, both past and present. At the same time, it has long been recognized that his analysis faces some difficult objections. In particular, a number of theorists have objected to the account Grice provides of the mental states and processes of those engaged in communication. For these theorists, communication as conceived of by Grice has seemed too mentally demanding and complex to be a good general model of human communication. In this article, I consider this challenge afresh from the perspective of Dan Dennett’s intentional stance theory. More specifically, I consider some recent remarks Dennett has made in this area, seeking to pin down and clarify his view. I then argue that while Dennett’s thinking is on the right track, his view stands in need of both a substantive adjustment and more positive detail. I seek to provide such improvements here. Finally, I consider some of the implications of this improved Dennettian account of Gricean communication for how great ape and human communication are related.

Art as communication: Fulfilling Gricean communication principles predicts aesthetic liking.

Art as communication: Fulfilling Gricean communication principles predicts aesthetic liking.

Supplemental Material for Art as Communication: Fulfilling Gricean Communication Principles Predicts Aesthetic Liking

Supplemental Material for Art as Communication: Fulfilling Gricean Communication Principles Predicts Aesthetic Liking

Gricean communication, language development, and animal minds

AbstractHumans alone acquire language. According to one influential school of thought, we do this because we possess a uniquely human ability to act with and attribute “Gricean” communicative intentions. A challenge for this view is that attributing communicative intent seems to require cognitive abilities that infant language learners lack. After considering a range of responses to this challenge, I argue that infant language development can be explained, because Gricean communication is cognitively less demanding than many suppose. However, a consequence of this is that abilities for Gricean communication are unlikely to be uniquely human.

Social cognition, Stag Hunts, and the evolution of language

According to the socio-cognitive revolution (SCR) hypothesis, humans but not other great apes acquire language because only we possess the socio-cognitive abilities required for Gricean communication, which is a pre-requisite of language development. On this view, language emerged only following a socio-cognitive revolution in the hominin lineage that took place after the split of the Pan-Homo clade. In this paper, I argue that the SCR hypothesis is wrong. The driving forces in language evolution were not sweeping biologically driven changes to hominin social cognition. Our LCA with non-human great apes was likely already a Gricean communicator, and what came with evolution was not a raft of new socio-cognitive abilities, but subtle tweaks to existing ones. It was these tweaks, operating in conjunction with more dramatic ecological changes and a significant increase in general processing power, that set our ancestors on the road to language.

From code to speaker meaning

This paper has two aims. One is to defend an incrementalist view of the evolution of language, not from those who think that syntax could not evolve incrementally, but from those who defend a fundamental distinction between Gricean communication or ostensive inferential communication (Scott-Phillips, Sperber, Tomasello, originally based on Grice) and code-based communication. The paper argues against this dichotomy, and sketches ways in which a code-based system could evolve into Gricean communication. The second is to assess the merits of the Sender–Receiver Framework, originally formulated by David Lewis, and much elaborated and set into an evolutionary context by Brian Skyrms and colleagues, as a framework for thinking about the evolution of language. Despite the great strengths of that framework, and despite the great value of a framework that is both general and formally tractable, I argue that there are critical features of language that it fails to capture .

Convergent minds: ostension, inference and Grice's third clause

A prevailing view is that while human communication has an 'ostensive-inferential' or 'Gricean' intentional structure, animal communication does not. This would make the psychological states that support human and animal forms of communication fundamentally different. Against this view, I argue that there are grounds to expect ostensive communication in non-human clades. This is because it is sufficient for ostensive communication that one intentionally addresses one's utterance to one's intended interlocutor-something that is both a functional pre-requisite of successful communication and cognitively undemanding. Furthermore, while ostension is an important feature of intentional communication, the inferences required in Gricean communication may be minimal: ostension and inference may come apart. The grounds for holding that animal communication could not be Gricean are therefore weak. I finish by defending the idea that a 'minimally Gricean' model of communication is a valuable tool for characterizing the communicative interactions of many animal species.

Gricean Communication and Cognitive Development

Gricean Communication and Cognitive Development

Gricean Communication, Joint Action, and the Evolution of Cooperation

It is sometimes claimed that Gricean communication is necessarily a form of cooperative or ‘joint’ action. A consequence of this Cooperative Communication View is that Gricean communication could not itself contribute to an explanation of the possibility of joint action. I argue that even though Gricean communication is often a form of joint action, it is not necessarily so—since it does not always require intentional action on the part of a hearer. Rejecting the Cooperative Communication View has attractive consequences for our theorising about human cognitive development, since it opens up the possibility of appealing to communicative interaction to explain the emergence of joint action in phylogeny.

On trying and lying: Cultural configurations of Grice's Maxim of Quality

Gricean communication takes place when an audience recognizes an utterer’s intention to communicate some specific content by producing a particular locution. This general view is discernible in Grice’s wording of the maxim of Quality, which pivots on the idea of utterer ‘‘trying’’ to avoid falsehood. The cultural model of utterance interpretation among the Mopan Maya of Eastern Central America however, does not refer to the intentions of the utterer. For example, falsehoods are categorized by Mopan as blameworthy violations of Quality (‘‘lying’’) whether or not the utterer was aware of the falsehood at the moment of utterance. Ethnographic evidence suggests that even mutually known falsehoods are not interpreted figuratively among traditional Mopan, who do not produce or recognize fiction. But since Mopan conversation otherwise proceeds in general very much as it does in other languages, the Mopan findings suggest that intention-seeking must not in fact be necessary to most ordinary conversational interaction. This conclusion supports post-Gricean views in which routine conscious interrogation of interlocutors’ intentions are not necessarily required for the conduct of ordinary conversation in any society. Overall, the data suggest that Grice was perhaps right that the figurative interpretation of novel flouts requires intention-seeking on the part of audiences. It also suggests, however, that intention-seeking in conversation may be reserved for cases in which a maxim violation is suspected, and may be confined to those cases in which the status of utterer’s intentions is culturally understood to be relevant to the question of whether a violation has indeed taken place. Intercultural Pragmatics 7-2 (2010), 199–219 DOI 10.1515/IPRG.2010.01

Gricean Communication and Transmission of Thoughts

Gricean communication is communication between utterers and their audiences, where the utterer means something and the audience understands what is meant. The weak transmission idea is that, whenever such communication takes place, there is something which is transmitted from utterer to audience; the strong transmission idea adds that what is transmitted is nothing else than what is communicated. We try to salvage these ideas from a seemingly forceful attack by Wayne Davis. Davis attaches too much significance to the surface structure of sentences of the type ‘S communicates the belief (desire …) that p to A’ by assuming that the communicated entity is denoted by the grammatical object following ‘communicates’. On our proposal, what is communicated in all Gricean cases is a thought. And since S communicates the thought that p to A only if S means that p and A understands what S means, the thought that p will be transmitted from S to A.

On Defining Communicative Intentions

Mind & LanguageVolume 1, Issue 3 p. 213-241 On Defining Communicative Intentions FRANÇOIS RECANATI, FRANÇOIS RECANATI Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 87, Boulevard St. Michel 75005 ParisSearch for more papers by this author FRANÇOIS RECANATI, FRANÇOIS RECANATI Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 87, Boulevard St. Michel 75005 ParisSearch for more papers by this author First published: September 1986 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0017.1986.tb00102.xCitations: 33AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume1, Issue3September 1986Pages 213-241 RelatedInformation