Peet, A (2023) Collective Communicative Intentions in Context. Ergo, 10 (8). pp. 211-236. ISSN 2330-4014
Abstract
What are the objects of speaker meaning? The traditional answer is: propositions. The traditional answer faces an important challenge: if propositions are the objects of speaker meaning then there must be specific propositions that speakers intend their audiences to recover. Yet, speakers typically exhibit a degree of indifference regarding how they are interpreted, and cannot rationally intend for their audiences to recover specific propositions. Therefore, propositions are not the objects of speaker meaning (Buchanan 2010; MacFarlane 2020a; 2020b; and Abreu Zavaleta 2021). In this paper I do two things. Firstly, I outline a collective analogue of this challenge that undermines the most prominent responses to the original challenge. Secondly, I provide a new solution: typical utterances are backed by a cluster of partial communicative intentions. This response resolves both individual and collective variants of the problem and allows us to retain the traditional propositional view of speaker meaning.
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This is an open access article under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. license. | ||||
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Institution: | The University of Leeds | ||||
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) | ||||
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Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications | ||||
Date Deposited: | 06 Oct 2022 15:22 | ||||
Last Modified: | 19 Dec 2023 16:13 | ||||
Published Version: | https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article... | ||||
Status: | Published | ||||
Publisher: | Michigan Publishing | ||||
Identification Number: | https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.4638 |