Pragmatics & rationality
This thesis is about the reconciliation of realistic views of rationality with inferential-intentional theories of communication. Grice (1957 1975) argued that working out what a speaker meant by an utterance is a matter of inferring the speaker's intentions on the presumption that she is acting rationally. This is abductive inference: inference to the best explanation for the utterance. Thus an utterance both rationalises and causes the interpretation the hearer constructs. Human rationality is bounded because of our 'finitary predicament': we have limited time and resources for computation (Simon, 1957b Cherniak, 1981). This raises questions about the explanatory status of inferential-intentional pragmatic theories. Gricean derivations of speakers' intentions seem costly, and generally hearers are not aware of performing explicit reasoning. Utterance interpretation is typically fast and automatic. Is utterance interpretation a species of reasoning, or does the hearer merely act as ~reasoning Within the framework of cognitive science, mental processing is under stood as transitions between mental representations. I develop a traditional view of rationality as reasoning ability, where this is essentially the
Allott, Nicholas Elwyn
Pragmatics & rationality. This thesis is about the reconciliation of realistic views of rationality with inferential-intentional theories of communication. Grice (1957 1975) argued that working out what a speaker meant by an utterance is a matter of inferring the speaker's intentions on the presumption that she is acting rationally. This is abductive inference: inference to the best explanation for the utterance. Thus an utterance both rationalises and causes the interpretation the hearer constructs. Human rationality is bounded because of our 'finitary predicament': we have limited time and resources for computation (Simon, 1957b Cherniak, 1981). This raises questions about the explanatory status of inferential-intentional pragmatic theories. Gricean derivations of speakers' intentions seem costly, and generally hearers are not aware of performing explicit reasoning. Utterance interpretation is typically fast and automatic. Is utterance interpretation a species of reasoning, or does the hearer merely act as ~reasoning Within the framework of cognitive science, mental processing is under stood as transitions between mental representations. I develop a traditional view of rationality as reasoning ability, where this is essentially the
pragmatics rationality reconciliation realistic view rationality inferential intentional theory communication grice argue work speaker mean utterance matter infer speaker intention presumption act rationally abductive inference inference best explanation utterance thus utterance cause interpretation hearer construct human rationality bound predicament limited time resource computation raise_question explanatory status inferential intentional pragmatic_theory gricean derivation speaker intention seem costly generally hearer aware perform explicit reasoning utterance_interpretation typically fast automatic utterance_interpretation specie reason hearer merely act reasoning within_framework cognitive_science mental processing stand transition mental_representation develop traditional_view rationality reason ability essentially