Abstract
In recent work on the semantics of ‘knowledge’-attributions, a variety of accounts have been proposed that aim to explain the data about speaker intuitions in familiar cases such as DeRose’s Bank Case or Cohen’s Airport Case by means of pragmatic mechanisms, notably Gricean implicatures. This paper argues that pragmatic explanations of the data regarding ‘knowledge’-attributions are unsuccessful and concludes that in explaining those data we have to resort to accounts that (a) take those data at their semantic face value (Epistemic Contextualism, Subject-Sensitive Invariantism or Epistemic Relativism), or (b) reject them on psychological grounds (Moderate Insensitive Invariantism). To establish this conclusion, the paper relies solely upon widely accepted assumptions about pragmatic theory, broadly construed, and on the Stalnakerian insight that linguistic communication takes place against the backdrop of a set of mutually accepted propositions: a conversation’s common ground.
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Notes
DeRose (1999) refers to pragmatic invariantist strategies as ‘Warranted Assertibility Manoeuvres’ or simply ‘WAMs’. I prefer, in this paper, the label ‘pragmatic invariantism’.
To my knowledge, the defenders of SSI and ER do not claim to be able to resolve sceptical paradoxes.
Critical assessments of PI can be found in (DeRose 1999, 2002, 2009, p. 117), (Halliday 2005), (Leite 2005), and (MacFarlane 2005, Sect. 3.1.1). For responses to the objections in these works see (Brown 2006), (Rysiew 2005) and §5 of this paper. For further critical comments concerning PI, see (Cohen 1999, p. 60, 2000, pp. 137–138), (Hawthorne 2004, pp. 115–118) and (Stanley 2005, p. 15).
Cp. (Lewis 1996). Note that Lewis doesn’t use the phrase of a ‘relevant counterpossibility’, but rather that of a counterpossibility that isn’t “properly ignored” in a given conversational context. The difference between Lewis’s and my formulation is merely terminological: a counterpossibility \(w\) is relevant in \(C\) iff it isn’t properly ignored in \(C\). In this paper I shall use ‘relevant’ and ‘irrelevant’ for reasons of brevity and terminological uniformity. Lewisian accounts have been popular recently. See, for instance (Ichikawa 2011a, b) and (Blome-Tillmann 2009, 2012), for interesting discussion.
For the original Bank Case see (DeRose 1992, p. 913).
As is standard procedure in the literature on ‘knowledge’-attributions, I assume that competent speakers’ in general have these intuitions and that they represent data that any account of the semantics of ‘knows’ has to account for.
According to some theorists (see, for instance, Schaffer 2006) the possibility that the bank has changed its hours recently is relevant in High Stakes but irrelevant in Low Stakes not because of what is at stake but rather because Sarah, in High Stakes, has made that possibility salient by mentioning it, which she has not done in Low Stakes. Schaffer and Knobe (2012) provide further evidence to this effect (see also (DeRose 2011), for interesting discussion). I shall leave aside these details about what exactly determines the relevance of possibilities at a context in this paper and focus on the fact that the data from the bank cases are to be accounted for—independently of what the exact source of our intuitions is.
It is sometimes argued that PI is theoretically especially economical, because it explains the data from the bank cases by means of pragmatic mechanisms that are in place already and independently motivated (see, for instance, Hazlett 2009, p. 609; Schaffer 2004b). Such arguments, however, mistakenly assume that the theoretical mechanisms employed by the opponents of PI are ad hoc and not independently motivated. It is far from clear whether this is the case.
I have borrowed the terms ‘sceptical’ and ‘moderate invariantism’ from Hawthorne (2004, p. 113).
Further explanations of the Bank Case data have been proposed in the literature. For instance, Bach (2005), proposes that Hannah does not ‘know’ in High Stakes because she ceased to believe the proposition at issue. However, Bach’s view is controversial, because it cannot readily account for familiar data from High Ascriber/Low Subject cases—that is, cases in which the subject is in a low stakes situation and clearly has an outright belief that the bank will be open tomorrow, while the ascriber is in a high stakes situation and so can seemingly truthfully assert ‘Hannah doesn’t know that the bank will be open tomorrow’. While Bach’s view is interesting and deserves an in-depth discussion, restrictions of space do not allow me to go into more detail here.
According to Schaffer (2004b), it is the subject who eliminates a counterpossibility, not her evidence. I shall ignore this difference and assume that a subject can eliminate a possibility iff her evidence eliminates it.
See (Lewis 1996, p. 224) for his notion of evidence. For Lewis, our evidence consists in the totality of our experiences and memory states narrowly individuated.
Schaffer (2004b) does not discuss the issue whether the implicature at issue is triggered in all conversational contexts or only in non-sceptical ones.
See also (MacFarlane 2005, Sect. 3.1.1) on this point.
See (Grice 1989).
It might be objected at this point that the data are not as clear and straightforward as suggested here. Consider the following case:
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(i)
\({Loose Use}_{P}\) (context: looking at a patchwork piece on a bedspread) H: That piece is hexagonal. S: Well, strictly speaking that’s not true. H: ?Oh c’mon—I was just speaking loosely!
Given (i), it might seem that, unlike in the cases presented in the main text, the looseness of use is sometimes not immediately obvious. If this was correct, Davis could, in response to my examples, take the view that Hannah’s ‘knowledge’-claim in Low Stakes is also an example of loose use that is not obvious, but that can be revealed by giving some further information: say that Hannah cannot rule out the possibility that the bank has changed its hours recently. Once such additional information is added, it might seem quite natural for H in (14) to reply that she was just speaking loosely. Now, I am not entirely certain whether H’s second utterance in (i) is in fact as infelicitous as H’s second utterance in (14). In fact, I should mention that I have a rather strong tendency towards assessing (i) along the same lines as (11)-(13)—that is, as entirely felicitous. However, I realize that intuitions may vary concerning (i), and I shall therefore, in the paragraphs to follow, supplement the above argument against Davis’s view with a theoretical objection to all version of SPI (including Davis’s loose use account) that is independent of the above data.
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(i)
Grice considers the Maxim of Manner a “supermaxim”, that has the maxims ‘Avoid obscurity of expression’, ‘Avoid ambiguity’, ‘Be brief’ and ‘Be orderly’ as submaxims. There is no need to discuss these maxims individually here, as they are epitomised in the maxim of manner as presented above.
In fact, there is a strong argument against the view that Relation can do the work required by SPI. Note that the alleged semantic content of ‘I know \(O\)’ in Low Stakes—namely, the proposition that Hannah’s evidence eliminates every \(\lnot O\)-world—entails the allegedly implicated content—namely, the proposition that Hannah’s evidence eliminates every conversationally salient \(\lnot O\)-world: the conversationally salient \(\lnot O\)-worlds are a proper subset of the \(\lnot O\)-worlds. Thus, if the latter proposition is relevant, how could the former, logically stronger proposition be irrelevant?
This is even so when we utter negative ‘knowledge’-ascriptions: if we were to use ‘know’ literally in negative ‘knowledge’-ascriptions, then those negative ‘knowledge’-attributions should appear trivial and uninformative to us.
Note also that, since Schaffer has given up SPI, only Wayne Davis is left defending a version of SPI. I take it to be implausible that Wayne Davis is the lonesome expert determining all by himself the literal meaning of ‘know’ in English.
Rysiew (2001, 2007), Brown (2006) and Hazlett (2009, p. 605) accept \((\text{ L }_{\mathrm{MPI}})\) or a close version of it. Pritchard (2010) and Black (2005) do not formulate their views in terms of the elimination of counterpossibilities, but \((\text{ L }_{\mathrm{MPI}})\) is nevertheless firmly within the spirit of their views.
Rysiew (2007, p. 488) uses the terms “relevant” and “salient”, while in his (2007, p. 637) he discusses possibilities that are “considered” and “worth taking seriously”.
See also (Blome-Tillmann 2003).
Brown (2006, p. 420/425) seems to assume that CI holds at least for those implicatures that are triggered by violations of Relation. For illustration, Brown discusses Grice’s example of a man standing besides a car that has obviously broken down asking a passer-by:
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(1)
A: Is there a garage nearby? B: Yes, there’s one around the corner.
In the envisaged case, B’s utterance conversationally implicates that the nearby garage is open. Brown then considers the following discourse, in which B utters (roughly) the negation of (1B):
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(2)
A: Is there a garage nearby? B: No, there’s no garage nearby.
Brown claims that B’s utterance in (2) conversationally implicates (or “pragmatically conveys”)—in line with Converse Implicatures—that there is no open garage nearby. Now, I agree that B’s utterance in (2) conveys that there is no open garage nearby. But this is so because (2B) semantically entails—and thus semantically conveys—that proposition. The fact that the phenomenon at issue is not a conversational implicature can be demonstrated further by the cancellability test: ‘There’s no garage nearby; but there’s an open garage nearby’ is contradictory in all contexts, because it semantically expresses a contradiction. Thus, B’s utterance in (2) does not conversationally implicate that there is no open garage nearby and Grice’s garage example does not lend support to Converse Implicatures. To the contrary, it is, in fact, a counterexample. Now, while this problematic consequence can be circumvented by claiming that the actual implicature in the garage case is the proposition that A can get fuel around the corner, which is not semantically entailed by (2B), it is nevertheless the case that other paradigmatic cases of Relation implicatures (such as Grice’s famous letter writer) are counterexamples to (CI).
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(1)
For critical discussion of the data in the bank cases based on empirical studies see (May, Sinnott-Armstrong et al. forthcoming) and (Feltz and Zarpentine forthcoming). I take it that there are good reasons to meet the results of these studies with scepticism; however, this article is not the place to for a detailed discussion. Moreover, note that the studies at issue claim to have shown that ordinary speakers have the intuition that Hannah speaks falsely in High Stakes. Thus, if we took those data seriously, no pragmatic mechanisms would be needed in the first place: Pragmatic Invariantism would be unmotivated. For further interesting discussion and experimental research on the Bank Cases see (Schaffer and Knobe 2012). For critical discussion of the mentioned studies see (DeRose 2011).
More generally, note that it is not very promising to object to Rysiew’s view by claiming that the proposition expressed by (16)—the alleged semantic content of Hannah’s utterance in High Stakes—is in fact conversationally relevant: Rysiew can respond to such arguments by pointing out that Hannah and Sarah are interested in whether the bank has changed its hours recently and thus in whether Hannah’s evidence eliminates the relevant \(\lnot O\)-worlds in which it has. This issue is unaffected by the fact that Hannah’s evidence does not eliminate all epistemically relevant \(\lnot O\)-worlds, given that those \(\lnot O\)-worlds in which the bank has changed its hours are not epistemically relevant. To make the epistemic fact relevant would require an additional assumption, to the effect that knowledge (or the elimination of epistemically relevant worlds) is the norm of practical reasoning. But this is clearly a principle that Rysiew would reject, given that he divorces conversational and practical facts from epistemic facts.
Stalnaker formulates his view in terms of reducing the context set. Since the context set is the complement of the common ground the two formulations are equivalent.
If no conversational implicature is forthcoming, speakers will, of course, consider revising the common ground.
As the reader will be aware by now, I use the phrase ‘utterance \(u\) semantically expresses \(p\) in \(C\)’ as shorthand for ‘\(u\) is an utterance of a sentence \(S\) that semantically expresses \(p\) in \(C\)’. Moreover, I should like to emphasise that I do not claim here that all conversational implicatures whatsoever are easily detectable.
Note that detectability in the sense at issue here does not entail that hearers always discover an implicature right after hearing the utterance carrying the implicature. Rather, an implicature is, on the present use of the notion, ‘detectable’ just in case we can construe a felicitous dialogue of the type discussed on pp. 9–11. Thus, a \({ Quality}_{1}\)-implicature is detectable just in case it allows for the construction of a felicitous dialogue in which (a) the hearer does not discover the implicature and interprets the initial utterance literally and (b) the speaker then clarifies her initial intentions by admitting that she hasn’t spoken literally but exaggerated, spoken ironically, etc.
Note again that the defenders of PI need to avoid the claim that Hannah and Sarah are mistaken about the semantics of ‘knows’, for if they do not, they owe us an explanation of why Hannah and Sarah—and thus competent speakers more generally—are wrong about High Stakes. But that explanation, if successful, would render superfluous a pragmatic explanation of the data. See below for an elaboration on this point.
A referee for this journal points out that S’s utterance in (20) is infelicitous because S herself has just brought up the error-possibility that the bank has changed its hours recently (before A’s first utterance). Given that S brought up that error-possibility, it follows directly that she does not presuppose that H knows \(O\), for otherwise S’s bringing up the mentioned error-possibility would be incompatible with her own presuppositions.
Note that it will not do to claim that Hannah and Sarah mistakenly believe that Hannah does not know \(O\), because utterances expressing the proposition that she does not know \(O\) would, in High Stakes, trigger a false implicature. Whether we believe a proposition is, if implicatures with differing truth-values are involved, independent of whether we accept an utterance expressing it: if you know that John ate all the cookies, you may reject as false an utterance of ‘John ate some of the cookies’, but you will nevertheless believe that John ate some of the cookies. You do, after all, believe that he ate all of them.
As a referee for this journal points out, it is worthwhile discussing another issue brought up by Rysiew: as Rysiew (2005, p. 62) points out, “it is among the sophisticated [pragmatic] invariantist’s central claims that our pretheoretic intuitions as to what we’re ‘saying’ are insensitive to the semantic/pragmatic distinction.” In response, note firstly that Rysiew’s claim does not affect the argument presented in the main text. According to the above argument, either the proposition that Hannah knows \(O\) is part of the common ground in High Stakes or it is not. If it is, the argument goes, MPI violates the independently plausible (DP). If it is not, MPI is explanatorily self-defeating. Thus, Rysiew’s comment to the effect that our intuitions are generally insensitive to the semantics/pragmatics distinction leaves the argument in the main text untouched.
Furthermore, note that Rysiew’s view itself is too strong and subject to an enormous battery of counterexamples: any uncontroversial and recognized case of conversational implicature is one in which our intuitions distinguish clearly and precisely between speaker meaning and sentence meaning or what is said and what is merely meant or implicated (e.g., Grice’s gas station). Thus, pace Rysiew, the intuitions of competent speakers are, in standard cases of conversational implicature, rather obviously sensitive to Grice’s distinction and tend to pinpoint in a reliable way the relevant differences in content.
Of course, the defender of MPI might at this point retreat to the considerably weaker claim that our intuitions do not always distinguish reliably between what is said and what is conversationally implicated, and then claim that Hannah’s utterance in High Stakes is precisely such a case in which our intuitions go awry. However, if the defender of MPI were to argue along these lines she would have to provide us with evidence for her view by producing clear and uncontroversial examples of conversational implicatures with respect to which our intuitions are insensitive and then provide further evidence that Hannah’s utterance in High Stakes functions analogously to those uncontroversial cases. In the absence of such analogous examples or, as we might put it, ‘partners in crime’, the claim that our intuitions “are insensitive to the semantic/pragmatic distinction” in a way that can be utilized by the pragmatic invariantist remains ad hoc and unsubstantiated.
Cp. (Bach’s 1999, p. 331) definition of the notion of a conventional implicature.
Moreover, note the truth-conditional content also has primacy over the conventionally implicated content in cases in which the a-content is false while the b-content is true. To see this, consider (22) and assume that its a-content is false while its b-content is true. Clearly, in such a situation we have the intuition that utterances of (22) are false, even though their conventionally implicated content is true.
Rysiew prefers this approach because, as he puts it, “in implicatures, properly so-called, one means what one says but also something else” (Rysiew 2001, p. 510, fn. 32); also (Rysiew 2007, p. 643), which is (apparently) not so with Bachian implicitures. However, Rysiew’s claim about conversational implicatures is surely incorrect, as the Gricean treatment of phenomena such as metaphor, irony, hyperbole, and loose use—that is, of violations of \({ Quality}_{1}\), suggests.
(Bach 2001, p. 251).
(Bach 2001, p. 253).
Bach (1994, p. 126).
(Bach 1994, p. 154).
For further examples see (Bach 1994, p. 128).
(Bach 1994, p. 134).
(Bach 1994, p. 140).
(Leite 2005, p. 226) makes a similar point.
Note also that since my arguments rest only on the Detectability Principle, the claim that linguistic meaning is determined by ordinary use, and other platitudes concerning Stalnaker’s notion of common ground, resorting to alternative pragmatic frameworks such as Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) relevance framework or Horn’s (2004) neo-Gricean approach will not help the pragmatic invariantist: those frameworks are equally committed to the theoretically neutral Detectability Principle, the connection between meaning and use, and the relevant platitudes concerning Stalnaker’s notion of the common ground.
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Acknowledgments
For comments on earlier versions of this paper I am indebted to Jessica Brown, Mikkel Gerken, Patrick Rysiew, Robert Stephenson, Tim Williamson, and two anonymous referees for this journal. Research for this paper was partly funded by SSHRC - the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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Blome-Tillmann, M. Knowledge and implicatures. Synthese 190, 4293–4319 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0274-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0274-4