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Schiffer's 'mutual knowledge' objection shows that Grice'... — Carmelics

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Challenges→Speaker meaning requires intending that the audience form the belief on the basis of their recognition of the speaker's intention to produce that belief

Schiffer's 'mutual knowledge' objection shows that Grice's original reflexive intention schema generates an infinite regress requiring ever-higher orders of mutual recognition.

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Reasons For

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Reason for

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1.Grice's schema requires S intends that H recognizes S's intention, which itself requires H to recognize S's intention about that recognition—creating infinite nesting.
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2.Each new level of intentional embedding adds a distinct cognitive requirement that cannot be satisfied by finite minds, making the schema practically impossible to instantiate.
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3.Natural language communication succeeds regularly, yet Grice's account cannot explain how finite agents meet its infinite requirements without additional theoretical machinery.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

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1.The regress terminates at pragmatically sufficient levels of mutual recognition; speakers need not consciously entertain infinite intentions for communication to succeed.
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2.Schiffer conflates logical structure of intentions with the phenomenological or cognitive demands on agents—infinite structure doesn't require infinite processing.
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3.Grice's schema can be understood as a characterization of communicative content rather than a step-by-step cognitive procedure agents must execute, avoiding the regress problem.
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Key Terms

knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.): Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.

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Philosophy of Language1 linked

Related

Each new level of intentional embedding adds a distinct cognitive requirement th...Grice's schema can be understood as a characterization of communicative content ...Grice's schema requires S intends that H recognizes S's intention, which itself ...Natural language communication succeeds regularly, yet Grice's account cannot ex...

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Schiffer conflates logical structure of intentions with the phenomenological or ...Speaker meaning requires intending that the audience form the belief on the basi...The regress terminates at pragmatically sufficient levels of mutual recognition;...

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 2 (1 for, 1 against)
Edits: 1 edit