Convention and intention: a defence of internationality against meaning-relativism

In the dissertation are considered a number of ways in which one may discern, write and analyse conventions and intentions for the illocutionary forces of speech acts, and meanings, senses and references for statements and utterances, with the objective of suggesting alternatives to what is dubbed meaning-relativism. It is argued that the paradigm of the explicit performative is inexpedient, for it need not be considered the model of the congruence between content and force in an illocution, and the scepticism evinced by Derrida regarding the possibility and purpose of writing such conventions is correlatively challenged. (Discussion of respective arguments for the writing of senses and references for statements and utterances in truth-conditional semantics occupies most of chapter I, and develops themes shared with the discussion of speech acts contained in the introduction, and picked up in chapters II-IV. Derrida sets up qualitatively similar arguments in his study of the use of indexical or demonstrative expressions, considered in relation to Fregean semantics and Husserlian phenomenology in chapter I sections 2 and 3). The central thesis presented makes both a substantive argument and a related metaphilosophical point: firstly, the problems of indeterminable intentions and of non-saturable conventions can be resolved, and the fount of Derrida's (and Rorty's) work, viz. the failure of intentionality to mediate, or orientate, communication, self-consciousness and meaning, is contested by the theory offered, a theory, in the second point, rendering profitless Rorty's distinction between the 'objective knowledge' of traditional systematic (semantical) philosophy and less privileged discourse ('edifying' or 'historicist' philosophy).Derrida denies that the meanings given to the word 'communication', and vouchsafing the metaphorical application to definitions in semantics, semiotics and 'real' or 'gestural' collocution, can be settled by a priori definitions, or conventions. The consensus required to direct each such convention of communication, he argues, could never be found, or would remain irredeemably metaphorical, as the incomplete and illegitimate extension of a paradigm of rule or law to which it could never attain. This may be seen in the reshaping of speech acts in indexical, demonstrative and quantificational constructions, in the estrangement from speakers' intention brought by appearance in quotational contexts, and in the tolerance of insincerity, conditions rendered ubiquitous, Derrida continues, by the extensions of 'ideal' speech situations tolerated by writing. Derrida asks how writing and communication may confront these problems, and, a related point, how intentions in writing and communication can be read off from their reports in conventional (paradigmatically explicit performative) formulae. The effect of the relativisation to non-literal, fictional, or quotational contexts for Derrida, is to render incomplete all conventions and motivating intentions for locutions and illocutions, for they are perennially spliced to constructions for which they cannot account, and to the vocalisation of intentions indefeasibly more complex than those for which they were written. The arguments of chapters II-IV consider the ways in which Grice, Strawson, McDowell, Searle and Lewis address these problems, and the conclusion is drawn that conventions and intentions for locutions and illocutions can be written, via Lewis' conventions, without presupposition of any standard to which they must conform, and without the inevitable relativisation to literal and non-literal, fictional, or quotational contexts. (There is, it should be said, insufficient attention given to Derrida's reasons for holding that the explicit performative is the exemplar of a statement with illocutionary force).Rorty's arguments against theories of intentionality exhibit a similar motivation and tenor. Rorty denies that mentality, in its functioning and in its description, carries processes apt to be described by intentions and conventions, and his work is considered in the second section of the introduction. There is no problem of intentionality for Rorty, because man's faculties and operations with knowledge and language are, in their complexity, irreducible to cognitive or 'representationalisf models; there is, he argues, nothing gained by imposing such structures. An epistemology and a philosophy of mind can be written for man without any call upon 'representationalisf theories, and Rorty makes the case for a Deweyan, pragmatist conception of knowledge as justified belief in conjectures, best guesses, surmises and opinions that help '...us to do what we want to do'. (In chapter IV this is compared to the derivation and enduring of a convention as conceived by Lewis). To suggest difficult cases for Rorty's survey of systematic and edifying philosophy appeal is made to Leibniz as both a systematic metaphysician and yet as a critic of the Cartesian and Lockean traditions to which Rorty objects. Analogues of the details of Leibniz's response to dualism are found in Deleuze, and the role and importance, in any theory of intentionality countenancing possiblia, of notions of compatibility, incompatibility, compossibility and incompossibility, are presented. The applications of a possible worlds theory of intentionality are explored in chapter I sections 3 and 4, and the discussions raise an incidental matter of some importance: the desire throughout equally to consider the lessons of the semantical and the phenomenological traditions, with the ambition of, at the very least, intimating that Rorty's caricatures do no useful work. One example must suffice for illustration: in section 2 Evans' arguments concerning the notion of the mediation of sense by reference in Frege's semantics are considered, and, in section 3, an application of his conclusions made to matters derived from a discussion of Husserlian noema. It is shown that one can, by the selfsame reasoning, derive a case, contra Derrida, for conventions of meaning in a truth-conditional semantics.In chapter I section 1 the case is made for an extensional semantics as conceived by Davidson, by way of intimating a means of defining conventions for language without the presupposition of standard, constituent or enduring meanings. Anomalous monism is presented as a theory of intentionality holding none of the concerns that, Rorty argues, such theories inevitably raise; it is palpably not a 'representationalisf or dualist theory, and is a powerful response to typically Rortyan post-structuralist scepticism concerning meaning and truth. The debts of anomalous monism to Tarski's truth definition, and of the informational theory advocated in chapter I section 3 to principles of charity, are defined, and the prospect mooted of describing a possible worlds theory of intentionality for distributed systems as a development of models provided by Tarski semantics. (Reasons for advocating an informational theory are explored also in relation to Lewis' description of the structures of convention and of possible worlds). In recommending anomalous monism as a theory of intentionality Davidson allows no strict psychophysical laws between mental and physical; the mental and the physical perennially fulfil 'disparate commitments'; the irreducibility of the mental derives neither from the property of intentionality, for such interdependence is compatible with there being a correct way to interpret speakers without relativisation to conflicting translation manuals, nor from the existence of many equally plausible manuals, for this is compatible with their arbitrary selection: the contrast aptly sets up the choice between Kripke or situation semantics and Tarski semantics.In section 2 Evans' arguments for the role of singular terms in Fregean semantics are presented, the better to make a case, in section 3, against Derrida's objections to the possibility of achieving the mediation of sense by reference or context in Husserlian phenomenology. The notion, central to Fregean semantics, of the context of a sentence as the modulus of meaning, is soundly challenged by Evans, for, he shows, the sense of singular terms in Fregean semantics need not be given in the determination by a reference: singular terms (empty or not) can carry sense without the mediation of a reference, in literal and fictional contexts alike. In section 3 the correspondence between Fregean Sinn and Husserlian noema is presented, specifically to make the case that intentional acts do not require the mediation to which Derrida objects. Conditions as strict as Derrida demands of Sinne and noema do indeed make Fregean semantics and Husserlian phenomenology unworkable as theories of intentionality, but one need not countenance such strictness. It is argued that Hintikka shows a way in which Husserl's difficulties with a foundational phenomenological notion, namely that reduction reveal all mediating noematic acts as open to consciousness and reflection, can be resolved, and consequently that Husserl's equivocations regarding the presence and importance of hyle in connecting up sensation and sense can be eliminated. Arguing against a conception of intentionality as mediated or directed there is suggested, as a sound and fruitful alternative, an informational (or intensional) theory, one, it is noted, allaying the fears of Sartre and Ricoeur regarding hyle and the presentness to consciousness and cognition of perceptual acts. A connection to Merleau-Ponty and his work on intentionality and the situated body is ventured, aiming to compel the abandonment of Husserl's form-matter distinction; for Merleau-Ponty matter always contains and precedes form; the perceived world constitutes the basis of rationality, value and existence, even a 'nascent logos'. (There is missing a compelling argument to say that the intrinsic intentionality or mediation of hyle allows that senses may arise without the mediation of a noema as do singular terms in Fregean semantics, as per the discussion of section 2).The description of possible states of affairs in worlds as instantiating, with greater or lesser success, the constitution of the actual world {viz. that of the speaker), requires a means of discerning the ways in which reports of states of affairs can be declared true of the world or incorrect or false, and it is the burden of section 4 to suggest a way in which this may be provided. Developing Hintikka's possible worlds theory in which descriptions of sense are descriptions of possible states of affairs, the picture theory of the early Wittgenstein is considered for its contention that statements reporting possible states of affairs can be proxies for the state of affairs themselves, or substitutes for their direct experience, sharing as they do, the logical form of the atomic structure of the world in which the statements are made. If accurate, a report both mirrors, with all due Leibnizean conditions on compossibility, the state of affairs described, and, it is argued, limns the forms in which sense-data may cognitively be received: in Wittgensteinian terms, as always under the aspect of states of affairs or ways of seeing. (This is, again in response to Rorty, an avowedly 'representationalist' theory. There are, it should be said, a number of equivocations, in both sections 3 and 4, on 'sense-data', 'sensation' and 'sense'). The argument of Hintikka and Hintikka, that the lessons of Husserlian phenomenology are evident in the work of the early Wittgenstein is broached, and some of the themes of the theory of intentionality as developed in his middle period works considered.Another source of arguments against Rorty is examined in chapter I section 5, arising from his advocating Quine's holism as the best response to theories of intentionality countenancing necessary conditions of linguistic and mental representation and analyticity, and from Quine's reply that his claim that there is no first philosophy is not a naturalistic but a holistic claim. Quine's stimulus and response theory of meaning is presented, and the argument made that he cannot disregard intentionality, but must appeal to what Christopher Norris calls 'a priori structures of mind', provided in Quine's late acquiescence to anomalous monism. Quine is, on Rorty's terms, an historicist, offering, in his holistic theory of meaning and knowledge, an eminently pragmatist position, and it is argued that while this should be well taken, it need not engender scepticism about meanings and intentions or repudiation of the semantical tradition. The voices of the excluded for which Rorty makes the case are surely to be heard, but not at the price of an unthinking relativism or anti-realism. The debt of Davidsonian holism to semantical and pragmatic theories for the writing of the cooperative function of the principle of charity (in which there is equally no first philosophy but in which there are conventions of practice), reveals Davidson's debt to Grice, and the details of Grice's work are considered in chapter II. A number of ways in which the content and force of a speech act may be written, divined and analysed are surveyed in chapter H The discussion is focused by examination and criticism of Grice's theory of meaning intentions and of critical work on Grice and Gricean theory, and the need is established for enduring (or, as per Grice, 'timeless') conventions for meanings in communication. There are a number of matters which would be recast in a differently formulated argument, but the important matter to be taken from the discussion arises in Strawson's response to Grice in his work on truth theories and speech act conventions and intentions. Strawson writes that Austin's notion of the form of the explicit performative is not the unequivocal, unambivalent formulation to which Derrida cleaves in interpretation, and that there are two pertinent facts to be noted regarding Austin's theory of illocutions. Firstly, it is sufficient but not necessary that a verb being the name of an illocutionary act permits it to appear in the first person indicative as an explicit performative: Strawson illustrates his point with reference to a plethora of counter-examples to make the case that there are prototypical illocutionary acts that can have no performative formula. (Skinner gives a taxonomy of central cases). Secondly, Strawson considers that Austin was fully aware ofthis, for he sees that, in the affirmation of the conventional nature of illocutions, explicitly in contrast to the production of perlocutionary effects, Austin is never unequivocal. Indeed, on the first statement of the conventionality of illocutions, Austin's profound insights regarding the performative and its functions are importantly qualified: he writes that illocutionary force is conventional in the sense that it can in some singular cases be made explicit by the performative formula, and, with regard to prototypical illocutions without performative constructions, Strawson examines the verity that there exists an insufficiently understood supererogation in the potential force of an illocution, a surplus of what is called, in an awkward portmanteau, extra-linguistic convention.Strawson draws a distinction in light of these remarks between the semantically-determined conventions of a locution, those, say, determining a single, unitary illocutionary force, and their nonsemantically-determined conventions (being those that permit the designation of an illocution when no performative is appropriate, or compel its capacity to articulate other illocutionary forces when used in different contexts, or in quantificational, demonstrative constructions). As Strawson writes, the forces not exhausted by semantically-determined meaning (the non-semantically determined conventions) may themselves be determined by conventions (those of mutual, social coordination, collocution and, following Davidson, of charity), and it is discussions arising from matters relating to this thesis that occupy the rest of the dissertation. Chapter IV describes Lewis' account of the emergence of conventions for communication and for tensed and mood-relative language from such elemental notions of mutual, social coordination, but to complete chapter II an argument is considered to the end that in cases in which expression in no abiding conventional, performative formula is applicable or possible, a speaker can make clear his intended meaning. Millikan writes that speakers may be thought of as fulfilling not intentions but 'purposes', the latter being reproduced functions or figures good for communication, and completed by further repeated acts of mutual recognition by hearers; by virtue of being repeated and disseminated such figures become established as means of achieving relevant purposes, while requiring nothing of a paradigm or archetype of literal or semantically-determined illocutionary force. New means of achieving communication may emerge or become attached to established means, but this is only by grant of mutual agreement on terms, and not to the discerning of a priori standards; non-literal illocutions are, for Millikan, divined in context or found to do no enduring, useful work and classified accordingly. The Millikan arguments are given too much space, their points being better made by Strawson and Lewis, to the discussion of whose work they still serve as a prelude. The argument of the chapter, and indeed the deeper exploration of themes from Derrida, might better have examined the debt of McDowell's work on meaning and intentions to Tarskian truth theories, a debt that significantly tempers Strawson's doubts regarding Davidson's anomalous monism; nevertheless, the strength of the argument made against Derrida and Rorty is that Davidson, Grice and Lewis write an analogue of Strawson's distinction into their theories, while it yet eludes Derrida, and vitiates his work on convention and intention.Chapter in is an examination both of the detail of Searle's theory of illocutionary force, and, with greater focus, of the roles of conventions of semantically and non-semantically determined illocutions. It is shown that Searle's theory contains a core, fundamental ambiguity. One is asked to consider again illocutions articulated in locutions, both those whose force is fully denoted in a description of their semantically-determined content (that is, paradigmatically, in explicit performative formulae), and those locutions that may instantiate more than one illocutionary force in discrepant contexts (or the illocutionary forces of which may fulfil more than one non-semantically-determined role). A summary of the argument made against Searle follows: a sentence (Sa), the semantical rules of which fully determine or exhaust the force of the utterance (U), may also determine the force of an utterance (Sb) in a context (C), one which may, in another context, articulate another illocutionary, non-semantically determined force. This is so by Searle's principle of expressibility, to every detail of which the argument holds Searle; the principle says that for any meaning and for any speaker, whenever the speaker intends the meaning in a speech act, it is the case that there may be given an exact expression or formulation of the meaning (one might suppose that this is, again, the explicit performative). On this the meaning of (Sb) in C is fully determined by the sentence of (Sa), or the 'exact expression' of the force of the utterance (Sb) in C. By an application of a Leibniz's law type equation, that (Sa) is an utterance which fully determines the illocutionary force of (Sb) in C entails that the meaning of the utterance (Sa) is equivalent to the meaning of the utterance of (Sa) in C. From Searle's addition, viz. that all sentences contain at least one illocutionary act device, and the argument that the proposition of (Sa) entails that of (Sb) in C, a similar determination of illocutionary force (from (Sb) to (Sa)) does not follow, (Sb) bearing the force of potentially many locutions. In the idioms of critical work on Searle, a speaker may mean more than he says in a speech act, owing to the articulation of illocutionary force in discrepant contexts, but he must always mean as much as he says: as Searle has it, he must report at least the force of one illocutionary act device. By the argument, the meaning of (Sb) in C is exactly expressed by an utterance of (Sa), and if the proposition (p) expressed by (Sa) entails the proposition expressed by (Sb) in C, then pU(Sa) is equivalent to pU(Sb). The thesis motivating the argument questions whether Searle could accept that the utterance of a sentence (fully semantically-determined) can determine the forces of utterances in non-semantically determined contextsThe chapter concludes with an uneven consideration of Searle's later work on speech act conventions. Searle argues that a type of speech acts, dubbed declarations, and in which semantically determined content fully determines the act's illocutionary force, function as models of the way in which conventions arise for locutions and illocutions. Again, the fullest treatment of the ways in which illocutions may be conventional is taken up in chapter IV; in III the structure of declarations is examined for its consequences for study of the conventionality of locutions. Declarations may, Searle continues, require the Austinian (extra-linguistic) conditions on appropriate utterance, viz. that speakers be