(it) (Stampe, Strawson, Schiffer)

(a) (D. W. Stampe in conversation) A man is playing bridge against his boss. He wants to earn his boss's favor, and for this reason he wants his boss to win, and furthermore he wants his boss to know that he wants him to win (his boss likes that kind of self-effacement).

He does not want to do anything too blatant, however, like telling his boss by word of mouth, or in effect telling him by some action amounting to a signal, for fear the boss might be offended by his crudity. So he puts into operation the following plan: when he gets a good hand, he smiles in a certain way; the smile is very like, but not quite like, a spontaneous smile of pleasure. He intends his boss to detect the difference and to argue as follows: "That was not a genuine giveaway smile, but the simulation of such a smile. That sort of simulation might be a bluff (on a weak hand), but this is bridge, not poker, and he would not want to get the better of me, his boss, by such an impropriety. So probably he has a good hand, and, wanting me to win, he hoped I would learn that he has a good hand by taking his smile as a spontaneous giveaway. That being so, I shall not raise my partner's bid."

In such a case, 1 do not think one would want to say that the employee had meant, by his smile (or by smiling), that he had a good hand, nor indeed that he had meant anything at all. Yet the conditions so far listed are fulfilled. When producing the smile:

1. The employee intended that the boss should think that the employee had a good hand.
2. The employee intended that the boss should think, at least in part because of the smile, that the employee intended the boss to think that the hand was a good one
3. The employee intended that at least part of the boss's reason for thinking that the hand was a good one should be that the employee wanted him to think just that.

1. To deal with an example similar to that just cited, Strawson' proposed that the analysans might be restricted by the addition of a further condition, namely that the utterer U should utter x not only, as already provided, with the intention that A should think that O intends to obtain a certain response from A, but also with the intention that A should think (recognize) that U has the intention just men-tioned. In the current example, the boss is intended to think that the employee wants him to think that the hand is a good one, but he is not intended to think that he is intended to think that the employee wants him to think that the hand is a good one. He is intended to think that it is only as a result of being too clever for the employee that he has learned that the employee wants him to think that the hand is a good one; he is to think that he was supposed to take the smile as a spontaneous giveaway.
2. (S. Schiffer in conversation) A more or less parallel example, where the intended response is a practical one, can be constructed,

1. P. F. Strawson, "Intention and Convention in Speech Acts," Philosophical Review 73

(1964): 439-460. But it is possible to imagine a

situation in which Grice's three conditions would be satisfied by

a person S and yet, in this important sense of "communicate,"

it would not be the case that S could be said to be trying to com-

municate by means of his production of x with the person A in

whom he was trying to produce the response r. I proceed to

describe such a situation.

S intends by a certain action to induce in A the belief that p;

so he satisfies condition (i1). He arranges convincing-looking

"evidence" that p, in a place where A is bound to see it. He does

this, knowing that A is watching him at work, but knowing also

that A does not know that S knows that A is watching him at work. He

realizes that A will not take the arranged "evidence" as genuine

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or natural evidence that p, but realizes, and indeed intends, that

A will take his arranging of it as grounds for thinking that he,

S, intends to induce in A the belief that p. That is, he intends

to recognize his (i1) intention. So S satisfies condition (i2). He

knows that A has general grounds for thinking that S would not

wish to make him, A, think that p unless it were known to S to

be the case that p; and hence that A's recognition of his (S's)

intention to induce in A the belief that p will in fact seem to A a

sufficient reason for believing that p. And he intends that A's

recognition of his intention (i1) should function in just this way.

So he satisfies condition (i3).

S, then, satisfies all Grice's conditions. But this is clearly not a

case of attempted communication in the sense which (I think it is

fair to assume) Grice is seeking to elucidate.

"Schiffer's rat-infested house" is a classic example from the philosophy of language. It is used as a counter-example in Gricean speaker meaning, originally developed by philosopher Stephen Schiffer in his 1972 book, Meaning. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The scenario asks us to imagine that you (S) want a prospective buyer (R) to believe that a house you are selling is infested with rats. You do not simply tell the buyer this, nor do you leave clues that point directly to your intentions. Instead, you let a live rat loose in the house while you know the buyer is secretly watching you, intentionally leaving it for them to find. [1, 2, 3]

The thought experiment raises questions about the definition of communication:

• The buyer sees the rat and concludes the house has an infestation.
• However, because the buyer found the rat based on a deceptive trick rather than overt communication, it fails to meet the criteria of traditional speaker meaning (or m-intention). [1, 2]

You can read more about this problem in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

If you are looking to explore philosophy of language, I can help you:

• Review Grice's Theory of Meaning
• Explain how Strawson and Schiffer critiqued early theories of communication
• Provide other classic thought experiments

Let me know what you'd like to discuss next.