In a previous post, I mentioned some links, as they concern relevance
theory, between Ogden/Richards and the English Oxford philosopher HP Grice.
I was glad to see that such links have been furthered by RE Dale in an essay
presented to SR Schiffer, "disciple" of Grice at Oxford for a number of years.
I won't offer comments on RE Dale's essay other than pointing out that
his is an analysis of *XXth century* pragmatics. I would claim - as I have
elsewhere - that Grice's "insights" can be traced back, in the
English-speaking world, at least to the Oxford tradition inaugurated by
William of Ockham, T Hobbes, J. Locke, W. Digby, J Harris, and as developed
in the XIXth c. by JS Mill. But I was happy to see a revision of Lady
Victoria Welby - who's seldom acknowledged in the history of the
"discipline" (the connection between Gardiner and Grice Dale notes is
explicitly mentioned in the work of J Lyons).
JL
The Grice Circle
jls@netverk.com.ar
*****************
RE Dale writes:
"What might Grice have had in mind when he suggested that his programme for
an analysis of meaning was a matter of controversy? A good method for trying
to answer this question would be to examine every place where
intention-based theories are discussed, and to give special attention to all
of those places where both intention-based theories and causal theories are
discussed."
"It would, needless to say, be hard to know that one had ever successfully
looked at every such place. But I have done my best and the only places in
the twentieth-century literature I have been able to identify in which
intention-based theories are discussed before Grice's work are these".
1. Victoria Welby's "Meaning"
2. AH Gardiner's "Speech and Language"
3. Ogden & Richards's "The Meaning of Meaning".
"That's it. Perhaps I haven't looked enough, but I have looked pretty hard.
And the only place I have been able to find both intention-based theories
and causal theories discussed in the twentieth-century before Grice's
"Meaning" is The Meaning of Meaning."
"So, here is a hypothesis"
"Grice read Ogden & Richard's "The Meaning of Meaning" and saw that its
authors saw intention-based theories as "problematic" while themselves
offering a "causal theory," and that is why he took his programme to be
controversial."
"This is not at all an implausible hypothesis, I think, since "The Meaning
of Meaning" has been a widely read book from the time of its publication
until today."
"And if the hypothesis is correct, it gives all the more plausibility to the
view that there is an identifiable tradition of intention-based thinking
about meaning in the twentieth-century that begins with Welby, and runs
through Gardiner to Grice. And if I am right about Gardiner's influence on
Austin, then this tradition can be said to be responsible for an awful lot
of what has been important in twentieth-century theorizing about meaning."
"Of course, the idea of there being an intention-based tradition is by no
means false if it turns out that Grice NEVER READ OR WAS INFLUENCED by The
Meaning of Meaning. But the story that includes Grice as somehow influenced
by Welby and Gardiner is a much more interesting one."
"Why?"
"If Grice did read "The Meaning of Meaning," all the more is there reason to
give to Welby a place of importance in twentieth-century philosophy. For she
must be identified as the originator in twentieth-century philosophy of the
idea of seeing meaning as identifiable with a speaker's intention to affect
an audience, the idea that Grice would make the cornerstone of his
conception of meaning. And likewise, Gardiner should all the more be
acknowledged as the important thinker he clearly was. Of course, in my view,
both Welby and Gardiner should be much more recognized than they are whether
or not Grice read "The Meaning of Meaning".
"But if Grice plausibly read that work and WAS INFLUENCED IN WORKING ON
INTENTION-BASED THEORIES IN PART BECAUSE OF IT, clearly Welby and Gardiner
and Ogden & Richards deserve credit as originators of the sort of theory
that Grice was later to make such ingenious and influential contributions to."
"Grice gives reason to suspect that he took himself as engaging in a debate
between causal theorists and intention-based theorists of meaning. But Grice
didn't provide any clear suggestion about who the parties to this debate
might have been. I identified Victoria Welby as the originator of
intention-based theorizing in the twentieth-century. I noted a number of
important aspects of her work including suspicion of a notion of what I
called central meaning. Alan Gardiner, I suggested, synthesized important
issues in Welby - whether he did so consciously or not - by developing
further the speech/language distinction with a special emphasis on the
non-linguistic intentions of speakers in speech. Gardiner developed a number
of important themes which were widely influential later, though he was
little noted, including something like the notion of the illocutionary force
of an utterance and its relation to speaker's intentions, as well as the
notion that a necessary condition for an act of speech - as he called it -
is that the speaker should intend her or his audience to recognize her or
his communicative intention in making the utterance made. This latter
notion, I noted, is importantly related to Grice's analysis of the concept
of speaker-meaning. I pointed out that Welby and Gardiner could be seen as
taking part in a certain tradition in twentieth-century theorizing about
meaning which I called the intention-based tradition. I then discussed a
second tradition which I called the causal tradition. I noted the chief
theorists in this tradition and I gave something of a gloss of it. I next
returned to the question of where Grice might have come to learn of a debate
between intention-based theorists and causal theorists. I suggest that it
was through Ogden and Richards 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning which is the
only place before Grice that I have been able to find a discussion of
theories of both traditions."
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