Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Gricean pragmatics has a reputation for being unrealistic from a psychological point of view. There are several reasons why this reputation is undeserved, the most important of which is that Gricean pragmatics was never intended as a processing theory. A related issue is that there is a quite general tendency to overinterpret psychological notions like "intention", "belief", and "desire" in mentalistic terms. Misunderstandings like these have caused rampant confusion not only in pragmatics but in the behavioural sciences more generally. Fortunately, things sort themselves quite nicely once we remind ourselves that information-processing systems can and must be analysed at multiple levels. Then it also becomes possible to consider how Gricean pragmatics may impose constraints on processing models.