Responding to indirect speech acts

Indirect speech acts, like the request Do you know the time?, have both a literal meaning, here “I ask you whether you know the time,” and an indirect meaning “I request you to tell me the time.” In this paper I outline a model of how listeners understand such speech acts and plan responses to them. The main proposals are these. The literal meaning of indirect speech acts can be intended to be taken seriously (along with the indirect meaning) or merely pro forma. In the first case listeners are expected to respond to both meanings, as in Yes, I do—it's six, but in the second case only to the indirect meaning, as in It's six. There are at least six sources of information listeners use in judging whether the literal meaning was intended seriously or pro forma, as well as whether there was intended to be any indirect meaning. These proposals were supported in five experiments in which ordinary requests for information were made by telephone of 950 local merchants.     

Learning about what others were doing: verb aspect and attributions of mundane and criminal intent for past actions

Scientists have long been interested in understanding how language shapes the way people relate to others, yet it remains unclear how formal aspects of language influence person perception. We tested whether the attribution of intentionality to a person is influenced by whether the person's behaviors are described as what the person was doing or as what the person did (imperfective vs. perfective aspect). In three experiments, participants who read what a person was doing showed enhanced accessibility of intention-related concepts and attributed more intentionality to the person, compared with participants who read what the person did. This effect of the imperfective aspect was mediated by a more detailed set of imagined actions from which to infer the person's intentions and was found for both mundane and criminal behaviors. Understanding the possible intentions of others is fundamental to social interaction, and our findings show that verb aspect can profoundly influence this process.     

The Linguistic Determination of Conscious Thought Contents

In this paper we address the question of what determines the content of our conscious episodes of thinking, considering recent claims that phenomenal character individuates thought contents. We present one prominent way for defenders of phenomenal intentionality to develop that view and then examine ‘sensory inner speech views’, which provide an alternative way of accounting for thought‐content determinacy. We argue that such views fare well with inner speech thinking but have problems accounting for unsymbolized thinking. Within this dialectic, we present an account of the nature of unsymbolized thinking that accords with and can be seen as a continuation of the activity of inner speech, while offering a way of explaining thought‐content determinacy in terms of linguistic structures and representations.     

Proximal Intentions,Non-executed Proximal Intentions and Change of Intentions

This paper investigates the conceptual and empirical possibility of non-executed, non-conscious proximal intentions, i.e., non-conscious proximal intentions to act that do not turn into a final act, but perhaps are vetoed or overcome by an alternative action. It constructs a conceptual framework in which such cases are justifiably considered ‘proximal intentions’. This is achieved by combining Alfred Mele’s notion of non-conscious proximal intentions together with the notion of trying or striving taken from Brian O’Shaughnessy’s model of action. With this framework in hand we analyze empirical electroencephalography (EEG) findings regarding ‘change of intention’ scenarios. Prior to EEG development (and other brain imaging techniques), one would never consider non-executed, non-conscious proximal intentions a case of intention at all. However, with technological and interpretable development of EEG, a whole group of so called ‘intentions’ appears, and the main aim of the paper is to justify this expanded usage.     

Verbal imitation is based on intention understanding

Using an elicited imitation paradigm, we investigated whether young children imitate the communicative intentions behind speech. Previous research using elicited imitation has shown that children tend to correct ungrammatical sentences. This finding is usually interpreted as evidence that children, like adults, remember and reproduce the gist of linguistic information. In three studies, we tested whether this tendency is also a product of their intention understanding. Replicating and extending previous research by Meltzoff [Meltzoff A. N. (1995). Understanding the intentions of others: Re-enactment of intended acts by 18-month-old children. Developmental Psychology, 31, 838–850], our first two experiments showed that children tend to correct ungrammatical sentences. A critical third experiment showed that children correct ungrammatical sentences only when they believe the model to be an intentional agent. These results complement previous findings from the action domain and strongly support the claim that imitation is based on understanding the intentions of others.     

Thinking outside the box: a metacognitive / theory of mind perspective on concrete thinking

Concrete thinking, an extraordinarily difficult condition to treat, has been psychoanalytically theorized to result from failures of symbolization-problems forming, linking, or fathoming the meaning of symbols-and/or failures of differentiation, resulting in difficulties distinguishing symbols from the thing being symbolized, fantasy from reality, self from other. Though difficulties symbolizing and differentiating are clearly evident in patients whose thinking is concrete, these may be a manifestation of concrete thinking rather than a root cause. Childhood thinking is characteristically concrete, and a persistence of such thinking into adulthood can be adequately explained as a failure to develop a more sophisticated theory of mind. Given that patients who exhibit such thinking tend to respond poorly to classic psychoanalytic interpretations, alternative technical approaches have been proposed. One such approach, "metacognitive" in nature, draws on a mode of thought used by gifted individuals that helps them "think outside the box" by dispensing with a typical pattern-recognition search so that novel meanings might be discovered. Metacognition, thoughts about one's thoughts and thought processes, facilitates symbolic thinking by creating sufficient distance from one's thoughts to allow the consideration of alternative meanings.     

The illusionist and the folk: On the role of conscious planning in intentionality judgments

Illusionism is a prominent hypothesis about action control, according to which acts that we consider voluntary are nevertheless caused by unconscious brain events, and thus our subjective experience of consciously willing them is ultimately illusory. Illusionism can be understood as either an ontological thesis or a phenomenological claim, but both versions are vulnerable to a line of attack based on the role of long-term planning (distal intentions) in action control. According to this objection, the evidence upon which illusionism rests is confined to short-term (proximal) intentions, so it is not sufficient to justify broader conclusions on the causal inefficacy of conscious will. In this essay we reconstruct the logic of this objection against illusionism, clarify why surveying folk intuitions on conscious distal intentions is essential to the debate, and present a study in which the role of conscious planning in intentionality judgment is clearly revealed. We also present other relevant findings, such as a gender effect on intentionality attributions, a moral influence on responsibility judgments, and confirmation of mechanistic incompatibilism.     

Understanding and sharing intentions: the origins of cultural cognition

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes (and some children with autism) understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality). Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: (1) the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and (2) a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The developmental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition.     

Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Pre-Reflective Intentionality

This article presents an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's notion of pre-reflective intentionality, explicating the similarities and differences between his and Husserl's understandings of intentionality. The main difference is located in Merleau-Ponty's critique of Husserl's noesis-noema structure. Merleau-Ponty seems to claim that there can be intentional acts which are not of or about anything specific. He defines intentionality by its directedness, which is described as a bodily, concrete spatial motility. Merleau-Ponty's understanding of intentionality is part of his attempt to rewrite the relation between the universal and the particular. He claims that meaning is intrinsic to the phenomenal field and impossible to analyse by a distinction between form and matter. Still, Merleau-Ponty's notion of meaning and philosophy is strictly opposed to any naturalized philosophy. This becomes explicated at the end of the article, where his attempt to embody intentionality is compared to Daniel Dennett's corresponding approach.     

IJPR: beyond the limit and limiting the beyond

It is now almost 20 years since Janicaud’s critique of the ‘theological turn in French phenomenology’ (Janicaud 1991, 2000), with its emphasis on phenomenology and theology as two and never one. Yet since that time there been an explosion of phenomenologies which are, if not overtly, implicitly religious and phenomenology. Thus, we have phenomenologies of prayer, or love, or hope, and the possibilities of further phenomenologies. The challenge of these emerging phenomenologies is that there seems to be no noematic correlate to a noesis in intentionality. To the fore in the reconsideration of this phenomenological challenge is Jean-Luc Marion (although there are others such as Levinas, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and Michel Henry): all aspects of lived experience appear now to belong to the proper scope of phenomenology. Marion considers the relation in Husserl between intentions and intuitions which fulfil these intentions, and suggests a reversal. In Marion, although intentionality is not rejected, the phenomenological flow which the reduction brings to light is from the object as such as it gives itself in intuition, and then from intuition to intention. For Marion, phenomena are saturated—they give too much. Religion becomes a test-case for all phenomenology. This bearing, drawing mainly on The Visible and the Revealed, offers some of the key things in Marion’s phenomenology.     

Did she mean to do it? Acquiring a folk theory of intentionality

The ability to both identify and explain others’ intentional acts is fundamental for successful social interaction. In two cross-sectional studies, we investigated 3- to 9-year-olds’ (n = 148) understanding of the folk concept of intentionality, using three types of intentionality measures. The relationship between this type of reasoning and false belief and interpretive mind understanding was also examined. Judgment of the appropriateness of an explanation was based on adult responses (n = 20). Overall, the results indicated that the ability to both identify and appropriately explain a range of intentional acts does not fully emerge until 7 years of age or later. The pattern of explanations revealed the gradual development of a folk concept of intentionality. Preschool- and early school-age children focused on the protagonists’ desires and actions, whereas 8- and 9-year-olds and adults were more likely to reference the protagonists’ awareness and skills.     

On the origins of endogenous thoughts

Endogenous thoughts are thoughts that we activate in a top-down manner or in the absence of the appropriate stimuli. We use endogenous thoughts to plan or recall past events. In this sense, endogenous thinking is one of the hallmarks of our cognitive lives. In this paper, I investigate how it is that we come to possess endogenous control over our thoughts. Starting from the close relation between language and thinking, I look into speech production—a process motorically controlled by the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Interestingly, IFG is also closely related to silent talking, as well as volition. The connection between IFG and volition is important given that endogenous thoughts are or at least greatly resemble voluntary actions. Against this background, I argue that IFG is key to understanding the origins of conscious endogenous thoughts. Furthermore, I look into goal-directed thinking and show that IFG plays a key role also in unconscious endogenous thinking.     

Conversation,speech acts,and memory

Speakers frequently have specific intentions that they want others to recognize (Grice, 1957). These specific intentions can be viewed as speech acts (Searle, 1969), and I argue that they play a role in long-term memory for conversation utterances. Five experiments were conducted to examine this idea. Participants in all experiments read scenarios ending with either a target utterance that performed a specific speech act (brag, beg, etc.) or a carefully matched control. Participants were more likely to falsely recall and recognize speech act verbs after having read the speech act version than after having read the control version, and the speech act verbs served as better recall cues for the speech act utterances than for the controls. Experiment 5 documented individual differences in the encoding of speech act verbs. The results suggest that people recognize and retain the actions that people perform with their utterances and that this is one of the organizing principles of conversation memory.     

Metaphors: How are they different for the poet,the child and the everyday adult?

This paper considers differences and similarities in the way children, poets and everyday adults make and understand metaphors. Samuel Levin (1976, in Pragmatics of language and literature, Amsterdam: North Holland Publishers; and 1979, in Metaphor and thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) has argued that metaphors involve changing concepts of the world rather than shifts in word meanings. His theory rests on the idea that metaphors are to be understood literally and that the poem is a kind of speech act containing an implicit invitation for the reader to enter the poet's world. Werner's (1948, The comparative psychology of mental development, New York: International Universities Press) theory of physiognomic perception is discussed in order to show how childrens' as well as poet's metaphors are meant to be taken literally. While the meaning structure underlying adult and child metaphors is similar the intentionality and boundaries of use may differ for young children. Goffman's (1974, Frame analysis, New York: Harper and Row) theory of frames in discourse is presented in order to explore contexts other than poems in which a metaphor user might issue an invitation for a listener to enter his or her world.     

Subjectivity: Locating the First-Person in Being and Time

It is often held that, in contrast to Husserl, Heidegger's account of intentionality makes no essential reference to the first-person stance. This paper argues, on the contrary, that an account of the first-person, or 'subjectivity', is crucial to Heidegger's account of intelligibility (world) and so of the intentionality, or 'aboutness' of our acts and thoughts, that rests upon it. It first offers an argument as to why the account of intelligibility in Division I of Being and Time , based on a form of third-person self-awareness, provides a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for intentionality. It then shows that Heidegger provides a further necessary condition in his analysis of the collapse of the one-self in Division II. This condition is 'conscience', which is both a genuine first-person mode of self-awareness and, it is argued, the origin of reason as that which distinguishes factic 'grounds' from normative 'justifications'.     

NARRATIVE AND MEANING IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Differences of understanding in science and in religion can be explored via the distinction between paradigmatic and narrative modes of explanation. Although science is inclusive of the paradigmatic, I propose that in explaining the behavior of complex adaptive systems, and in the human sciences in particular, narratives may well constitute the best scientific explanations. Causal relationships may be embedded within, and expressions of higher-order constraints provided by, complex system dynamics, best understood via the temporal organization of intentionalities that constitute narrative. Complex adaptive systems, out of which intentions emerge, have behavioral trajectories that are in principle unique, contingent, and nondeterministic even in stable states and unpredictable across phase transitions. Given such unpredictability, the only explanation can be an interpretive story that retrospectively retraces the actual changes in dynamics. Without narrative, personality traits and human actions are incomprehensible. Such phenomena do not permit a reduction of purposive acts to nonpurposive elements or of reasons to the causes they constrain. Causality does not exhaust meaning. Given the role of narratives in human lives, religion and mythology provide larger stories within which individual stories make sense. Differences between narrative and historical truth suggest how we can be constituted by what we imagine ourselves to be.     

How to Silence Content with Porn,Context and Loaded Questions

Catharine MacKinnon claimed that pornography silence's women's speech where this speech is protected by free speech legislation. MacKinnon's claim was attacked as confused because, so it seemed, pornography is not the kind of thing that can silence speech. Using ideas drawn from John Austin's account of speech acts, Rae Langton defended MacKinnon's claim against this attack by showing how speech can, in principle, be silenced by pornography. However, Langton's defence requires us to deviate from a widely held understanding of what kind of speech is protected; namely the expression of opinions, ideas, and thoughts. In this paper I provide an alternative defence of MacKinnon's claim which requires no such deviation. I argue that because the truth‐conditions of sentences are context‐sensitive it is possible for there to be contexts in which, when those in attendance believe rape myths, it is not possible to express certain opinions, ideas, or thoughts. Given that pornography is a significant contributor to rape myth acceptance, this argument addresses the accusation of confusion facing MacKinnon without the need for deviation. The cross‐examination of a complainant in a rape trial is used as an illustration.     

Infant intentionality as object directedness: A method for observation*

It is argued that a definition of intentionality in terms of object directedness is more adequate than the traditional definition in terms of goal directedness. Inconsistencies in the use of “intentionality” among infant researchers are pointed out. A method of observation is explored, based on the definition in terms of behavioral object directedness, that takes into account precursors to fully-fledged intentional actions by approaching intentionality as a matter of degree rather than as an all or none issue. The method, when used on longitudinal video recordings of parent-infant interaction, produced results that substantiated Tre-varthen's observations of infant intentionality before the age of six months. Furthermore, the results suggest that the parent's attribution of intentions to the infant is based on the perception of the infant's intentionality, whether in social interaction or in interaction with “physical” objects.     

The return of the trauma theory: Implications for hermeneutic psychotherapy

Abstract

Myth is a narrative that can preserve or alter social and political structures by its authoritative utterance under appropriate conditions. This kind of narrative shares the same normative rules as perlocutionary or performative speech acts. A performative is a category of speech act which, by its very pronouncement, can change a person's role, status or identity, or an object's significance or meaning. Speech acts have the performative power to change behavior if they are institutionalized and taken seriously by a community.