Abstract

This thesis is a consideration of some issues that arise in connection with theories of meaning developed along the lines suggested by H. P. Grice. I address three questions which, left unanswered, diminish the appeal of Grice's program. First, what should the Gricean say about word reference ? I argue in Chapter I that we can explain the role of word reference in sentence meaning only if we recognize, among the linguistic conventions observed by a community of speakers, a conventional compositional semantics for representing their language. Next, what should the Gricean say about understanding ? Chapter II suggests a view of language-mastery that requires of speakers considerably less knowledge about the referents of expressions, particularly of predicates, than some contemporary accounts. Finally, what should the Gricean say to skeptical arguments against the possibility of meaning or intentionality, of the sort recently advanced by Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke? In chapter III, I argue that semantic theory has available at least three defensible responses to such arguments: The defender of semantics can accept the skeptical conclusion and still talk about meaning. Espousing a theory according to which the content of mental states is determined in part by features of the world not intrinsic to the bearers of those states allows us to rebut the skeptical arguments successfully. The believer in meaning can plausibly maintain that facts about meaning or intentionality are primitive and unanalyzable