Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective: Philosophical Essays Volume 3 by Donald Davidson

Author:Donald Davidson [Davidson, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0198237537

4 Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.

end p.111

speaker only if he knows that the speaker intends the interpreter to assign certain truth conditions to his (the speaker's) utterance.5 A full account of this thesis would require an explanation of the idea of 'assigning truth conditions' to an utterance, and this idea is no doubt as difficult to understand in relevant respects as the concept of meaning itself. But my aim here is not to solve that problem. It is only to emphasize, following Grice, the central importance of intention in communication. If, with Grice, we were sure that in order to mean something a speaker must intend to have a certain effect on a specific hearer or hearers, then language might already have been shown to be social to the extent of requiring the existence of at least two people (since it is arguable that one could not intend to have an effect on a specific other person unless such a person existed). I shall not take this direct and tempting line here. Nevertheless, we are in a position to say that if communication succeeds, there must be these intentions on the part of the speaker, and therefore if successful communication is essential to meaning, these intentions are essential to meaning. The presence of intentions is important, since it gives content to an attribution of error by allowing for the possibility of a discrepancy between intention and accomplishment. Intention, like belief and expectation, does not require attention or reflection, and intentions are not usually arrived at by conscious reasoning. Intentions are not normally attended by any special feelings, nor is our knowledge of our own intentions arrived at (usually) by inference or resort to observation. Yet intention has an indefinitely large scope, for intentions depend on the belief that one can do what one intends, and this requires that one believe nothing will prevent the intended action. Thus intention would seem to have just the properties needed to make sense of the idea that a speaker has failed to go on as before.6

The view I have just sketched deals only with interpretation, and so presupposes a social environment rather than providing an argument for it. Nevertheless, it will be useful at this point to consider

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