Filosofický časopis (Aug 2021)
Rekurzivní čtení mysli: role vzájemnosti v myšlení a komunikaci
Abstract
The paper is a critical reaction to Christopher Gauker’s general attack on the Gricean way of thinking about linguistic communication and, in particular, on the role it assigns to the phenomenon of recursive mindreading. The author rejects the claim that the Gricean analysis of meaning something by an utterance is psychologically totally unrealistic, in particular because of the role which the element of recursive mindreading plays in the conditions in definiens. In this connection, the author defends a certain account of philosophical analysis, its functions and the proper interpretation of its results (Ch. 2). On the same basis, the author critically examines Gauker’s rejection of Grice’s analysis of conversational implicatures, as well as of the very reality of Gricean implicatures as a communicative phenomenon (Ch. 3). He concludes that Gauker’s alternative to Grice’s theory of implicatures, leaving no space for recursive mindreading, does not address the same questions as Grice’s theory, and its contribution to the explanation of the nature of communicative interaction is rather limited (Ch. 4). In opposition to a widely shared view, the author argues that Gricean semantics is compatible with the assumption that higher-order thoughts, required by recursive mindreading, are inaccessible to autistic speakers. There is still a good sense in which they can be regarded as meaning something by their utterances and performing speech acts (Ch. 5). The last part of the discussion concerns Gauker’s criticism of the “generalized Griceanism” in M. Tomassello’s work, in particular of the role that Tomassello assigns to the recursive mindreading in his analysis of coordination problems. Concerning this role, the author arrives at rather sceptical conclusions, for different reasons than those underlying Gauker’s criticism (Ch. 6).
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