Scepticism about reflexive intentions refuted

• Authors: Maciej Witek
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The aim of this paper is to resist four arguments, originally developed by Mark Siebel, that seem to support scepticism about reflexive communicative intentions. I argue, first, that despite their complexity reflexive intentions are thinkable mental representations. To justify this claim, I offer an account of the cognitive mechanism that is capable of producing an intention whose content refers to the intention itself. Second, I claim that reflexive intentions can be individuated in terms of their contents. Third, I argue that the explanatory power of the theory of illocutionary reflexive intentions is not as limited as it would initially seem. Finally, I reject the suggestion that the conception of reflexive communicative intentions ascribes to a language user more cognitive abilities than he or she really has.

Keywords

EN

Speech act theory; illocution; communicative intentions

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Journal: Lodz Papers in Pragmatics
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 69-83

Dates

published

2009-01-01

online

2009-07-06

Contributors

author

Maciej Witek

• University of Zielona Góra

References

• Austin, John L. Sense and Sensibilia, reconstructed from the manuscript notes by G. J. Warnock. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.
• Bach, Kent, "On Communicative intentions: A reply to Récanati." Mind & Language 2.2 (1987): 141-154, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0017.1987.tb00112.x.[Crossref]
• Bach, Kent, and Robert M. Harnish. Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1979.
• Burge, Tyler. "Vision and Intentional Content." In John Searle And His Critics, edited by Ernest Lepore and Robert van Guick, 195-213. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
• Farmer, Ann K. and Robert M. Harnish. "Communicative reference with pronouns." In The Pragmatic Perspective. Selected Papers form the 1985 International Pragmatics Conference, edited by Jef Verschueren and Marcella Bertuccelli-Papi, 547-565. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1987.
• Harnish, Robert M. "Communicative reference: An inferential model." Conceptus 17.44 (1984): 20-41.
• Harnish, Robert M. "Book review: Meaning and Force: The Pragmatics of Performative Utterances, by François Récanati. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. pp. x, 278." The Philosophical Review 50.2 (1991): 297-300, doi: 10.2307/2185308.[Crossref]
• Harnish, Robert M. "Commitments and speech acts." Philosophica 75 (2005): 11-41.
• Harnish, Robert M. "Internalism and externalism in speech act theory." Lodz Papers in Pragmatics. Special Issue on Speech Actions, edited by Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka & Maciej Witek 5.1 (2009; this volume), doi: 10.2478/v10016-009-0001-2.[Crossref]
• Millikan, Ruth G. "Biosemantics." The Journal of Philosophy 86.6 (1989): 281-297.[Crossref]
• Millikan, Ruth G. Varieties of Meaning. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004, doi: 10.2307/2027123.[Crossref]
• Perry, John. Reference and Reflexivity. Stanford, California: CSLI Publications, 2001.
• Récanati, François. Meaning and Force: The Pragmatics of Performative Utterances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
• Siebel, Mark. "Illocutionary acts and attitude expression." Linguistics and Philosophy 26 (2003): 351-366.
• Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
• Strawson, Peter F. "Intention and convention in speech acts." The Philosophical Review 73.4 (1964): 439-460, doi: 10.2307/2183301.[Crossref]
• Szymura, Jerzy. Język, Mowa i Prawda w Perspektywie Fenomenologii Lingwistycznej J. L. Austina. [Language, Speech, and Truth in J.L. Austin's Linguistics Phenomenology Perspective] Wrocław, Warszawa, Kraków, Gdańsk, Łódź: Zakład Narodowy Imienia Ossolińskich, Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1982.
• Twardowski, Kazimierz. On the Content and Object of Presentations. A Psychological Investigation. Translated and with an introduction by Reinhardt Grossmann, Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977.
• Witek, Maciej. "Searle, Burge and Intentional Content." In Experience and Analysis. Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, volume XII, edited by Johann C. Marek and Maria E. Reicher. Kirchberg am Wechsel: Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 2004.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10016-009-0005-y