Chapter 3 deals with how ostensive communication works in the mind. The key is pragmatic competence: the ability to read intended meaning from context.
The lesson of Humpty Dumpty (3-1)
In Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty insists that his words mean whatever he intends them to mean. The book uses this as an extreme case of a fact about hearers: they read more into words than is literally said. If a hearer cannot infer the speaker’s intention, communication fails (pp. 109–113).
Grice’s cooperative principle (3-2)
The philosopher Grice described conversation as a cooperative activity in which speakers ordinarily follow four maxims (p. 115).
| Maxim | Content |
|---|---|
| Quality | Say what is true |
| Quantity | Say neither too much nor too little |
| Relation | Say what is relevant |
| Manner | Be clear and brief |
Answering “Where’s Bill?” with “There’s a yellow Volkswagen outside Sue’s house” does not literally answer the question. Yet the hearer infers that Bill owns a yellow Volkswagen and is probably at Sue’s (pp. 115–116).
Relevance theory, another route (3-3)
Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory recasts this in cognitive terms. Its center is relevance. The relevance of a piece of information is
- higher the greater its positive cognitive effects (worthwhile changes in the mind), and
- higher the smaller its processing effort (p. 120).
Take asking Alice her age. “Seven and a half” is more informative than “under eighteen” at about the same effort, so it is more relevant. Answering with a long arithmetic expression only adds effort (p. 121).
The theory sets out two principles.
- The cognitive principle: human cognition tends to maximize relevance, which also decides what we attend to (pp. 122–123).
- The communicative principle: every ostensive stimulus conveys that it is worth the hearer’s attention (pp. 124–125).
So when someone deliberately shows you something, you can expect it to be worth attending to. These two principles make ostensive communication possible (p. 129).
Recursive mindreading (3-4, 3-5)
Ostensive communication requires reading other minds (theory of mind), and it nests: “I know that you know that I know…” (pp. 131–134).
The chapter reviews research on this.
- Children under about four typically fail the false-belief task (the Sally-and-ball story) (p. 143).
- Yet nonverbal tasks based on gaze and the like show success in infancy (p. 146).
- Some autistic people have pragmatic ability yet fail false-belief tasks (pp. 144–145).
The author uses these to question the assumption that mindreading is cognitively costly, arguing that it is often fast and unconscious (pp. 147–153).
Cooperation and communication (3-6)
The chapter also touches on Tomasello’s shared intentionality: humans can hold joint goals as ours. The author divides cooperation in communication into two kinds (p. 155).
- Communicative cooperation: using linguistic code conventionally so the hearer can infer the intended meaning.
- Informative cooperation: honest intent, with no aim to deceive.
The book says this distinction returns in chapter 6, on honesty and dishonesty.
Note
The Gricean and relevance-theoretic approaches are the frameworks the author chose; other pragmatic theories exist. The author uses relevance theory as one that, in his view, withstands empirical testing (p. 130).