Pragmatic Millianism and the Accessibility of What Is Said
This entry was posted on 12/16/2007 5:12 PM and is filed under Language and Communication.
As I explained, "pragmatic Millians" such as Ken Taylor and Fred Adams et al. explains our semantic intuitions about sentences containing empty names by distinguishing between what is said and what is implicated (in Grice's sense) by such sentences. In their view, although what is said is a gappy proposition, which is not truth-evaluable, what is implicated (or communicated) is a non-singular proposition, which is truth-evaluable. Such implicated propositions are the alleged source of our semantic intuitions about the original sentences.
Marga Reimer objects as follows:
"The problem with this account is that it does not withstand informed reflection. For even after we are apprised of the distinction between what is said and what is communicated, we still want to say that, in sincerely uttering sentences containing empty names, we say and do not just communicate, propositions that are truth-evaluable" (Reimer, 2001, 502).
As far as I can tell, this objection has been ignored by pragmatic Millians. (If anyone knows of a place where pragmatic Millians have replied to it, I would love to know about it.)
Even so, Reimer's objection is not devastating as it stands. Reimer appears to assume that speakers, at least upon informed reflection, can directly intuit what is said vs. what is implicated (or communicated). This assumption needs justification. The notion of what is said is a technical notion introduced by Grice. There are different views about the nature of what is said and whether it is processed consciously or unconsciously. It cannot be simply assumed that speakers, even upon informed reflection, have direct conscious access to what is said as such.
Nevertheless, Reimer’s remark points in the direction of an important question for pragmatic Millianism. In fact, it points in the direction of a question that faces many semantic theories, including hers. What relationship is there between what is said by an utterance and the semantic intuitions of speakers?
