Réseaux.

The French journal of

communication

The intentions of communication

Pierre Livet, Pauline Ridel

Abstract
Summary: Analysis of communication usually strives to define the conditions for successful communication either in terms of
tautologous definitions or by requiring an impossible use of reflexive talents. This article offers a critique of the pragmatists
'theory of 'model' communication through a consideration of three levels of interaction: informative intention, communicative
intention and the intention to communicate.

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Livet Pierre, Ridel Pauline. The intentions of communication. In: Réseaux. The French journal of communication, volume 2,
n°1, 1994. pp. 151-175;

doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/reso.1994.3265

https://www.persee.fr/doc/reso_0969-9864_1994_num_2_1_3265

Fichier pdf généré le 12/04/2018

8

THE INTENTIONS OF

COMMUNICATION

Pierre LIVET

Translated by Pauline Ridel

Summary: Analysis of communication usually strives to define

the conditions for successful communication either in terms of
tautologous definitions or by requiring an impossible use of
reflexive talents. This article offers a critique of the

pragmatists 'theory of 'model' communication through a

consideration of three levels of interaction: informative intention,
communicative intention and the intention to communicate. 151

8 THE
INTENTIONS
OF
COMMUNICATION
Pierre LIVET
Analysis of communication usu-
sally adopts what I will call the
point of view of 'model*
communication. This involves
defining the conditions in which a
communication can be said to be
successful and to correspond perfectly to the
model. Two approaches are possible: in
Searle's, defects of communication are
left out of consideration, reducing the
approach to a tautologous definition of
the conditions for satisfactory
communication, and above all for their verification
(Searle, 1985). The second path, taken for
example by Strawson, seeks to overcome
these defects in advance by adding
constraints to the definition of true
communication (Strawson, 1965). But while the
La Pertinence, Editions de Minuit, 1989, p. 33 (trans); Blackwell, 1986.
THE INTENTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
first approach leads us into tautology, the
second, as I shall demonstrate, requires
reflexive talents that we are unable to put
into practice.
A third line of thinking connects with the
approach of Sperber and Wilson (1986).
They criticize, as I shall, the classic
account according to which the object of the
pragmatists'
theory is 'a mechanism (of
communication) which, when it is
correctly operated and is not interfered with
by noise, guarantees the success of the
communication.'*
For them, these
mechanisms assure communication a success
that is 'at best probable, but not certain".
The pragmatists believe in this theory of
'model* communication because they
conceive of communication in terms of code.
Communication then becomes an
operation of encoding for the speaker and of
decoding for the hearer. For Sperber and
Wilson, this theory supposes that the
meaning communicated is defined by the
encoded utterance, which the hearer has
only to receive. To this notion of
communication as code, Sperber and Wilson
oppose an 'inferential' conception. The
hearer must not merely decode but must
add to the transmitted message a grasp of
contextual data. The message itself is
always incomplete. The hearer must round
it out by making inferences based on his
own knowledge and on the givens of the
situation. Such a theory is characterized
by the double concern of thinking of
communication as an expansion of the code
by inferences, while at the same time
setting limits on the inferences deemed
possible; they cannot be infinitely
extended and they must be efficient. We
shall see however that this efficiency is
not assured, at least with regard to the
problem of guarantees of the conditions
for successful communication, because
Sperber and Wilson, despite their
apparent rejection of the theory of 'model'
communication, still do not conceive of acts
of communication as means of remedying
153
Pierre LIVET
the defects of communication, rather
than aiming to achieve perfect
communication.
Instead of dwelling now on the tautologies
of Searle (we will come back to them in
connection with actualized language), I
shall try to demonstrate that taking the
theory of 'model' communication as a
framework for reflection soon leads to
aporia when we consider the problem of
the conditions for validating communica-
, tion, its guarantees of success, and the
conditions for its failure and breakdown.
I shall then attempt to understand
communication as a body of procedures that
enable us not to obtain model
communication but to identify the failures in
communication and overcome them in order
to restart the process. Communication
then is indeed, as Sperber and Wilson
assert, 'governed by an imperfect
heuristic'. It is also true that 'the fact that
communication encounters failures is
normal'. But instead of concluding that
the study of communication should start
from this 'normal' situation, which, as it
must face up to the possibility of failure,
must also comprise the means needed to
overcome it, so as to avoid a breakdown
of communication and carry out ongoing
corrections, Sperber and Wilson draw the
conclusion that 'what is mysterious, what
requires an explanation, is not the
failures of communication but its
successes.'*
In other words, the exception
(success), and only the exception, must
be explained in order to understand the
rule. But, since the heuristic is imperfect,
successes will be partial. Now, a partial
success is also a partial failure, or even a
failure that has been partially corrected
or prevented. Sperber and Wilson do not
however take these failures and their
correction procedures as their point of
departure. They do not really move beyond the
theory that considers failures and their
correction as makeshift solutions. They
content themselves with weakening the
* La Pertinence, p. 74.
154
requirements of the theory of 'model'
communication. But as we shall see, they
encounter the same difficulties as that
theory.
The first problem to be considered is
knowing to what extent a hearer can be
assured of having correctly identified the
meaning of a communication, its
intention or, if you will, the rule governing the
conduct of the communication. This is the
most general problem and it has been
raised by Kripke in his interpretive essay
on Wittgenstein (Kripke, 1982). It goes
hand in hand with the notion of
informative intention. The second problem is that
of the reflexivity of communicative
intention. Does this reflexivity require an
infinite regression of first-degree intentions
to second-degree intentions, and so on?
This problem was first raised by Straw-
son, following Grice (Strawson, 1965) and
I will refer to the ways in which it has been
handled first by Recanati then by Sperber
and Wilson. The third problem is posed
by language acts. It has been said that
uttering them is sufficient to perform
them, or even that to state an intention to
carry them out, and for this intention to
be recognized, is to have performed them.
They are therefore 'self-validating'. That
would be a remarkable privilege, which
would at last give us access to
self-assured communication freed from the
problems of validation and the need to
correct possible failures. We will see that
this privilege has been greatly
exaggerated.
In tackling these three problems I will
review three levels of communication: the
level of informative intention, which
informs without communicating; the level
of communicative intention; and the level
of what Recanati terms the intention to
communicate (Recanati, 1979; Recanati,
1987), in which the informative intention
concerns precisely the possibility of
modifying the attitudes of the communicating

parties towards others or, more exactly,
their attitudes towards the attitudes of
others. This is the level on which
communication aims to modify itself, as it
were (Recanati, 1987, pp. 176-216).
We owe the definition of the first two levels
to Grice, who sought to reduce the
semantic notion of meaning to that of pragmatic
intentions, and to reduce pragmatic
intentions of 'non-natural' meaning to
ordinary intentions. In his 1957 article
'Meaning', and later in a 1968 article, he
defines the notion of 'non-natural'
meaning (linguistic meaning, but also
gestures, etc.) as follows: 'For hearer A,
speaker U has the intention that his
utterance x should produce an effect (reply)
E on A by means of recognition of that
intention.' (Grice, 1968).
The aim is to reduce the intention of
'non-natural*
meaning to a simple
intention. Let us suppose that Paul, by a hand
gesture, points one way at a crossroads.
The result of the intention of non-natural
meaning on the receiver, providing the
communication is successful, is that the
receiver infers that Paul has said x, or
made the gesture x, with the intention
that he, the hearer, should think that
Paul believes he knows the right way, and
draws the conclusion that Paul does know
it. But this result is precisely the
conjunction of the effect sought by the intention
of non-natural meaning (the belief that
Paul knows the right way) and the
recognition of the speaker's intention (he made
the gesture with the intention that the
receiver should have that belief).
Therefore, according to Grice, the intention of
non-natural meaning (the communicative
intention) can be reduced to a 'simple'
intention.
This simple intention is in fact rather
complicated. It encompasses a first sub-
intention 1 : 'to produce a certain effect on
the receiver'; a second sub-intention 2:
'that the receiver should recognize
sub-intention Г; and a third sub-intention 3:
THE INTENTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
'that the recognition of sub-intention 1
should be at least one of the reasons for
the reply by or the effect produced on the
receiver.* This sub-intention 1 comprised
in the communicative intention can be
termed the 'informative' intention. The
communicative intention is distinct from
the informative intention because it
requires recognition of the former. I shall
therefore start with the informative
intention, as it is the first level of
communication.
Identification of the
informative intention
It is necessary then, in order to
communicate, to wish to alert someone to a piece
of information and to make it available to
him. By breaking branches as I go, I can
inform my friend who is looking for me of
the path I have taken. This information is
not necessarily a communication, as my
friend might simply conclude that when I
passed that way I broke the branches as
I ran by. Or maybe I had the intention of
giving information about my passage
without necessarily having the intention
that he should recognize my intention to
inform (in fact, it is sufficient that he
should follow my trail) . It cannot therefore
be stated in this case that there has been
an intention to communicate, even
though there has been an informative
intention. It would perhaps be different if
I had used broken branches to form an
arrow shape on the ground. Nevertheless,
an informative intention is not the same
as a simple indication. It cannot be said
that fire has an informative intention in
letting smoke rise into the air, and yet
smoke is undoubtedly an indication of
fire. For there to be an informative
intention, we must have the intention of giving
an indication, but not necessarily the
intention that this intention should be
recognized.
The notion of informative intention can be
155
Pierre LIVET
translated into that of 'rule'. An
informative intention defines a rule of action
(make sure to break the branches, or to
let the smoke rise). It can be thought
possible to have an intention in an action
without following a rule (we would have
an end, but we would not define the
means). However, it seems impossible to
have an informative intention without
following a rule, because the idea of an end
(information) must be given using
available means (indications). But then the
problem of identification of the
informative intention is equivalent to the problem
of identification of the rule that is
followed. Certainly we can interpret clues
and acquire information without having
to identify the informative intention itself.
But when we wish to move on to the stage
of communication we must obviously be
able to identify the informative intention
because that is what gives meaning to the
clues. In considering the problem of
identifying the rule I am therefore already
raising the problem of communication, but
from the point of view of the hearer or the
interpreter. I will go on to pose the same
problem from the point of view of the
speaker, asking how the speaker can
hope for recognition of his communicative
intention. Up to this point the speaker or
informer does not need to have the
intention to communicate. He is not concerned
whether the communicative intention of
his action is recognized; it is sufficient for
him that the information is received or
inferred. The receiver however is already
trying to identify the informer's signifying
intention: what did he mean by breaking
branches, or making such a gesture?
But, as Kripke has shown, this
identification of the rule followed by the informer
cannot be guaranteed. Kripke starts from
Wittgenstein's paradox of the rule: no
action can be determined by a rule, because
rule.*
all actions can be determined by a
In other words, because we can always
imagine a rule, however odd, that
* Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 201.
156
counts for the action, we can never
guarantee that the rule we propose as an
interpretation of the action is the right
one. Kripke takes an as example the rule
of addition. I think I am applying the rule
'plus' when, by adding 68 and 57, 1 come
up with the answer 125. 1 know that the
rule 'plus' as I have used it in the past
should give me, in this case, that result.
But a sceptic comes up to me and asks
whether, in the past, I had not in fact been
applying the rule 'quus', which gives the
same results as addition so long as the
numbers to be added do not exceed 57,
but otherwise gives the answer 5. How
can I be sure that I have not until now
been applying the rule 'quus' with the
intention of reaching the answer 5 in the
case of 68 + 57? It can be seen that the
problemintentions
others' is one ofbutdiscerning
also our own.
not More
only
precisely, it is a question of being able to
prove to someone else that my intention
is such and such.
Kripke shows that it is impossible to give
this positive proof. All past facts are just
as compatible with the hypothesis that I
used the 'plus' rule as with the hypothesis
that I used the 'quus' rule (it was in fact
the first time that I had added numbers
exceeding 57). He says it is not a question
of a simple problem of induction, or more
exactly it is not a question of predicting
someone else's replies, or my own. In that
case we would remain at the level of
description. It is a matter of knowing what
meaning I wished to give to 'adding'. Was
it 'plus' or 'quus'? This question cannot
be answered by resorting to dispositions.
Disposition is defined as the potentiality
to produce given behaviour in given
conditions. That is also a descriptive notion,
which permits us to anticipate a certain
sequence of events. However, Kripke
stresses that the problem is not
descriptive but normative. The meaning of
'adding' is the intention to follow a rule. It is
therefore a normative intention, which

confers the meaning 'plus' or 'quus' to the
act of adding. It might be possible to make
the descriptive and the normative
intersect at infinity. But the difficulty is that,
in order to prove to ourselves that in the
past we have in fact had the normative,
and therefore infinite, intention
corresponding to the 'plus' rule, we have only
a body of finite data. The same difficulty
arises if we resort to our dispositions,
since as they describe a sequence of
potential events that can occur during our
lifetimes, they too are finite. Nor can we
hope to resolve the question by producing
a computational model of ourselves, a
sort of computer that would simulate us
perfectly, that we have built solely to
operate under the 'plus' rule - because
another computational model built to follow
the 'quus' rule would just as perfectly
simulate my past operations.
Kripke does not however abandon us to
this aporia. To be sure, he admits the
impossibility of giving the sceptic a
positive reply. But we can find a sceptical
solution to a sceptical aporia. I cannot
positively assure the members of my
community, including myself, that in the past
I have in fact used the 'plus' rule and not
the 'quus' rule. But as I recognize that I
am part of a community, I accept that
others can test my ability to use the 'plus'
rule. If, for adding numbers exceeding 57,
I give the answer 5, 1 have not applied the
'plus' rule. When the community,
according to Kripke, accepts the conditional: 'If
an individual follows such and such a
rule, he must do this and that on such
and such an occasion', it does so only in
its contraposed form: 'If he does not do
this and that on such and such an
occasion, then he is not following this rule'. In
short, we can have negative assurances
but not positive ones (Kripke, 1982, p.
108).
Nor could we prove that we were following
the 'quus' rule. This remark gives us an
indication of how this negative assurance
can be transformed into an apparently
THE INTENTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
positive assurance, how we can add a
more positive note to Kripke's sceptical
solution. We can be sure that no-one will
ask us to prove that we are not using the
'quus' rule. We would have to be
transported into a community that habitually
used the 'quus' rule to be asked questions
about the way we add up. These questions
would not be 'Can you prove to us that
you use the "quus" rule?' but on the
contrary *Why do you not use the "quus"
rule?' Or rather, they would simply say to
us, as on Putnam's Twin Earth, *Why do
you not use the "plus" rule?' and the
strangeness for us of this question would
make us suspect that the inhabitants of
that country meant some other rule by
that.
So, to find out the informative intentions
of the other party we have available these
two certitudes:
(1) As interpreters, we can always
perceive that they are not using the
rule that defines the meaning, the
intention, of their information in the
sense in which we understand it;
(2) As informers, when our use of
the meaning of words is not in clear
contradiction with the rules of the
community, they will never ask us
to prove that we are in fact using the
explicit information we are giving in
the sense we confer on it. They can
no doubt tell us that our
information was ambiguous or had lapsed
into error, that we did not give it its
proper meaning, but these are
simply refutations, not demands to
prove that our information does in
fact carry the meaning we say it
does rather than some other
meaning. What is more, those who
criticize us must either show us
that our information is in
contradiction with the rule that we say we are
following, or provide another rule,
another meaning, which does not
simply refer to the meaning we have
157
Pierre LIVET
proposed and add something to it.
On the contrary, they must base
our information on this other
meaning, and make the meaning we
intended into a proposition derived
from this new meaning.
Asking the questions 'In what sense are
you using such and such a word?', 'What
exactly is your informative intention?' is
therefore meaningless, if we do not
presuppose by that, and if we cannot
establish, that the use of the word or the
supposed informative intention are
difficult to accept and do not fit the situation.
We of course have to presuppose that the
situation has a meaning, without being
able to clarify it totally, since once again
the question of clarification itself only
takes on meaning if the information given
does not correspond with the situation.
This 'procedure' always requires a hypo-
thetically meaningful situation. This
hypothesis is either accepted, although it
can never be definitively confirmed, or is
called into question when the procedure
is set in motion.
We can observe this procedure in action
in a practical situation. Let us consider
the problem of driving in traffic. We will
suppose first of all that there is no
highway code laying down whether we should
drive on the right or the left. I tend to drive
on the right. Suddenly I see a vehicle
approaching in the other direction, on the
driver's left-hand side of the road. Taking
evasive action, I first move further over to
the right, following my first hypothesis. If
the other driver crosses back to his right-
hand side I conclude that he realizes that
he has not followed the correct rule. I
therefore maintain my own hypothesis. If
he moves even further to his left, I would
be obliged to steer to my left to avoid him
and I would question the validity and
generality of my hypothesis of driving. The
deviations from the original direction
therefore have an informative value in this
case: through them, each driver gives the
other the information that he has seen
158
him and that he is driving in a way
intended in principle to avoid him. Of
course the approaching driver might want
to crash into me, but in that case if I move
to my left, he will again move to my left,
thus giving me new information which
forces me to revise my hypothesis about
his original informative intention.
We can see how the procedure is
triggered. First of all we start with a
framework hypothesis: drivers will avoid each
other; and with a hypothesis of the act of
driving - most people drive on the right.
As long as we can maintain these
hypotheses by taking into account the
informative intentions of the driving methods
observed, we maintain these hypotheses.
When a distortion arises, a conflict that
endangers our action or which does not
correspond to the expectations based on
our hypothesis, then we revise our
hypothesis of the act of driving and we assume
that the other driver has an informative
intention to warn us of the necessity of
this revision. When this hypothesis about
the other's informative intention also
contradicts our action, we revise our
framework hypothesis.
In other words, it seems that the
informative intention is bound up in these re-
examinations of practical or framework
hypotheses. Having an informative
intention is therefore to take account of a
distortion of the situation in relation to
the hypotheses assumed to be followed by
others, or to our own, and preferring to
modify our action so as to sustain it rather
than see it fail. So information always
seems to be linked to a negation. It is a
weak negation, because it is no more than
a deviation, and it simply raises the
problem of revising an intention or a rule. But
we do not perceive the rule as such until
this difficulty arises. Rules are entities
that come into being, as retrospectively
supposed working or framework
hypotheses, only when their validity is
questioned. It is therefore not surprising that
we are unable to prove their existence

when this validity is not challenged, and
that we are able to establish only their
inadequacy.
The communicative intention
But does this not set us an even thornier
problem? How can we know that the other
party entertains such a hypothesis?
Where do these 'hypotheses' and
'suppositions' about hypotheses come from, and
on what are they based? The problem is
not really acute as long as we remain on
the level of informative intention, which
does not pretend to be recognized by
others but which aims simply to give
others the possibility of modifying their
hypotheses. In the case of the two drivers
it is not important that the other should
hold the hypotheses that I attribute to
him; it is sufficient that we avoid each
other, that our actions do not cancel each
other out. In a situation in which action
can be deferred, as in the case of the
broken branches, the informer leaves
others complete freedom to recognize his
intention or not. Knowing whether or not
the hypotheses imputed to him were
correct is therefore a matter of indifference to
him.
It is different when we turn to the subject
of communicative intention. In that case
the communicator wishes not only that
the receiver should receive the
information made available to him but also that
he should recognize the intention of the
communicator to give him this
information. Moreover, as the greater includes the
lesser, if the receiver is able to recognize
this communicative intention, he will also
have access to the information, since the
communicative intention consists in
having the informative intention recognized.
As Recanati notes, recognition of the
communicative intention is a sufficient
condition for its satisfaction.
In Meaning and Force, Recanati analyses
in detail the different ways of becoming
THE INTENTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
aware of this communicative intention.
The first is that proposed by Grice, which
I mentioned in my introduction. For
Grice, the communicative intention is
made up of three sub-intentions:
(1) To produce an effect on and
elicit a response from the receiver;
(2) That intention 1 should be
recognized by the receiver;
(3) That the satisfaction of 1
depends partly on its being recognized
(and therefore on the satisfaction of
2)
If we restrict ourselves to the informative
intention we could at a pinch accept the
behaviourist definition of 1. All we need
do then is observe behavioural responses,
provided that we are not concerned to find
out whether other people's hypotheses
have changed as a result of our
information. But since in the case of the
communicative intention we seek recognition
of our intention by other people, we must
pay attention to their intentions. The
effects that concern us are therefore no
longer simply in the order of behaviour
that can be observed from the exterior.
Recanti proposes redescribing intention 1
as an intention to give 'reason to believe*
that a certain number of 'prototypical'
conditions have been satisfied. In doing
this, we require both more and less than
an observable behavioural effect. More,
because we suppose an unobservable,
which refers to the mental states of the
receiver. Less, because the communicator
does not mean to make others believe
something, only to give reason for belief.
The receiver is free to believe or not. This
precaution is necessary because I can use
irony when communicating and therefore
not wish my receiver to take what I say
literally. Intention 2 should therefore be
rewritten as an intention that 1 should be
recognized as an intention to give reason
to believe P (P being the prototypical
conditions).
159
Pierre LIVET
We have thus both reinforced the wishes
of the communicator (he wants his
intention to be recognized) and weakened his
requirements for verification (he can only
hope to give reasons for this recognition,
and not to guarantee it). But this
reinforcement is in fact not yet sufficient.
Strawson has given a famous
counterexample. Paul intends to give Peter reason
to believe *p\ He therefore has intention
1. He displays proof that 'p' In a place
where Peter cannot fail to see it. He does
this knowing that Peter sees him do it. He
therefore has intention 2, that Peter
should have reason to believe that he has
intention 1 and should recognize
intention 1. However, Paul knows that Peter
does not know that Paul knows that Peter
is watching him. It therefore seems that
the communicative intention, as Straw-
son says, is not 'open' (Strawson, 1965)
and is not a real intention to
communicate.
To assure the 'transparency' of the
communicative intention we must therefore
strengthen our requirements. Paul knows
that Peter sees him, we said. To avoid the
counterexample and the dissimulation,
Peter must also know that Paul knows
that Peter is watching. But a particularly
sophisticated mind could imagine a
counterexample of dissimulation at a
higher degree. To have a guarantee
against all dissimulation, to have a full
communicative intention, Paul must
therefore know that Peter is watching
him, Peter must know that Paul knows
that Peter is watching him, Paul must
know that Peter knows . . . and so ad tnftni-
tum. We therefore come round to the
notion proposed by Lewis in his book
Convention (Lewis, 1969), that of common
knowledge.
The difficulty is that it is not clear what it
means to have an intention which
comprises an infinity of representations. Grice
recognized this regression to infinity
implicit in the communicative intention, but
he conceived of it as an ideal limit, which
160
cannot be reached in 'real life' (Grice,
1982). Recanati notes the equivalence,
from the cognitive standpoint, of this
notion of an infinity of representations piled
one on top of the other with the notion of
reflexivity. If we were to define intention 2
as being the intention that the
communicative intention itself should be
recognized, we would find ourselves in a
reflexive loop, circling from the
communicative intention - the overall intention - to
one of its sub-intentions, intention 2,
which refers us back to the
communicative intention. If we want to be able to
identify the content of these intentions,
we must be able to follow this circle to
infinity, and therefore have an infinity of
representations at our disposal.
But, Recanati says, we can weaken this
notion of reflexivity by using a notion of
'default reflexivity'. The intention of the
communicator is reflexive by default if he
has no intention which is inconsistent
with any of the (infinite number of)
intentions that would be implied by his
intention if it were authentically reflexive
(Recanati, 1987). So instead of having to
attribute an extremely complex intention
to the communicator, the reflexive
intention, we say simply that he does not have
a certain type of intention. If we
unfortunately happen to demonstrate that he did
indeed have an intention inconsistent
with the intentions that make up the
reflexive pile, then we say there was no
authentic communicative intention.
Grice put forward a similar solution:
when we come across a 'sneaky' intention,
we cancel the credit that we had given to
the speaker, who made us take his
communication as a 'real-life' approximation
of the infinite series of intentions which is
only an ideal limit (idem., p. 243). The
interest of 'default reflexivity1 lies in the
fact that we do not even have to specify
what this ideal limit could be and how we
could give it an approximation.
We can therefore rewrite intention 1 as a
default reflexive intention to give the re-

ceiver reason to believe P (that a certain
number of prototypical conditions have
been met). But we must also admit that
intention 2 must aim to recognize 1 as
default reflexive. Moreover, 2 must itself
be 'open' and therefore default reflexive,
which is the same as saying that the
overall intention made up of 1 and 2 is
default reflexive.
This notion of default reflexivity is one of
the most interesting points, but also one
of the weakest, in Recanati's argument.
We find in it the idea later elucidated by
Kripke: as long as we do not encounter
any inconsistency with our hypotheses,
we should maintain them. But we can
question the interest of this notion of the
'cognitive' standpoint. Does it save us the
infinity of representations necessary for
common knowledge? Does it provide us
with a really 'finitisť procedure for testing
the communicative intention?
To see things a little more clearly, we can
compare this notion of default reflexivity
with the notion of 'default reasoning' in
non-monotonic logics (Ginsberg, 1987;
Besnard, 1988; Grégoire, 1991; Kraus,
Lehman & Maggidor, 1990, pp. 167-207).
These logics seek to formalize reasonings
based on hypotheses of typicality or
normality. Typically, or normally, birds fly. As
long as we are told, without eleboratlon,
that Titi is a bird, we continue to suppose
that it can fly and we use this hypothesis
as a basis for our predictions of its
behaviour, for example that it would be useless
to try to shut it up between four walls with
no roof. But when we learn that it is an
ostrich, we revise our conclusions. The
parallel is clear. As long as we have no
information that is inconsistent with the
normal characteristics of a bird, we
continue to draw the conclusion that it can
fly. As long as we have no information that
is inconsistent with the normal condition
for a communication — its 'openness' —
we continue to think that it is 'open*.
But the non-monotonic logics pose
THE INTENTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
lems. In order to reach a conclusion, we
must know that no fact is inconsistent
with our hypothesis of normality. But
knowing that a conjunction of
propositions is inconsistent means knowing that
it is not a theorem. Now, although we have
an efficient and decisive procedure for
saying whether a proposition is a theorem
(ifwe run through the list of theorems that
can be generated, sooner or later we will
come across the theorem we are looking
for), we do not have an efficient and
decisive procedure for saying whether a
proposition is a non-theorem. In fact, even if
we have not yet found it in the list of
theorems, that does not mean that it is
not further down the list, or possibly, in a
logical calculus that takes Peano's
arithmetic into account, and which is therefore
subject to Gôdel's theorem, that it is
unknowable.
Non-monotonic logics cannot therefore
provide an efficient definition of all their
conclusions. We are obliged to use the
procedure of the 'fixed point'. We start
from known facts. Then we bring into play
the hypotheses of normality, which we
term 'defaults'. We check whether
anything in the facts is inconsistent with
these hypotheses of normality. We then
draw conclusions which have this
absence of inconsistency as their
'justification*. We have thus generated what we call
an 'extension', since we have drawn
conclusions that the facts alone would not
permit us to reach. Then we apply other
defaults, based on these conclusions, and
so forth. The problem is that, in order to
be sure that no inconsistency with one
hypothesis of normality or another will
arise, we must wait until we have drawn
all the conclusions from all these defaults:
the 'fixed point' is the whole body of the
stable conclusions reached once all the
defaults have been applied. We must
make sure that no justification will be
challenged in any extension and, as we
have seen, we have no definitive
procedure to permit us to do this.
161
Pierre LIVET
It is therefore not clear that the notion of
'default' is much more satisfactory from a
'cognitive' point of view - which requires
mental operations that can be modelled
by an efficient calculus programme - than
the notions of reflexivity or common
knowledge. Recanati admits that from a
logical point of view his notion offers no
advantage over that of reflexivity. But he
asserts that it is more satisfactory from a
psychological point of view. If by that he
means the cognitivist point of view, it is
nothing of the sort. To be sure, Recanati's
notion of default reflexivity is perhaps not
identical with the default reasoning
notion of the nonmonotonic logics. In these,
if we encounter an inconsistency we
revise the conclusion of the default
reasoning but not its hypothesis; having
encountered a penguin, we continue to
think that birds normally fly. But it could
be asserted that the same goes for
communication. When we encounter a case of
dissimulation, we do not however
question the hypothesis that 'normally' people
who are communicating do not wish to
have communicational intentions not
known to the other party.
It seems nevertheless that we must retain
the 'Kripke-esque' core of this argument.
We can challenge the transparency, the
'openness', of a communication, but we
cannot prove this openness. Similarly, we
will never be asked, when we are
communicating, to prove that we really intend
to communicate 'openly'. This hypothesis
that non-dissimulation is 'normal' must
be thoroughly understood. It in no way
rules out the possibility that a
communicator may keep certain information to
himself, and thereby dissimulate it. It
simply rules out dissimulation in the
communicative intention, and not in the
information communicated. Strawson's
example does not point the finger of
suspicion of dissimulation at 'the proof of p'
- which could easily be tampered with -
the
• Wenotion
can of
therefore
planning
at (we
thismake
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take up
only
thewhen
ideasroutine
162
but at the fact that Paul displays this
proof in the presence of Peter, without
Peter knowing that Paul has seen him and
at the fact that Paul claims to be
communicating 'openly'. It is clearly not
'normal' to wish to communicate while
making the communicative intention
itself non-communicable.
Then it is only in the case of a
'breakdown', of discovery of such an
inconsistency in the communicative intention, that
we envisage the notion of 'openness'.* It is
like the notion of rules. They are both
retrospective notions which take shape
only in the case of failure, which must be
understood to mean the construction of a
negative proof.
So we can perhaps glimpse an escape
route out of the inconclusiveness
inherent in default reasoning. It is indeed true
that the positive notion of 'openness' is
not in the order of the knowable, because
it is simply waiting for a possible
inconsistency, and because this is never
definitively ruled out. But this matters little,
since we use this notion as such, in all its
ineffectiveness. On the contrary, it is
proofs of 'non-openness' that must be
effective. We have thus inverted the
problem in relation to the givens of logic. It is
the positive notion that is not knowable
and it is non-theorems that we can
encounter with certainly and construct. Of
course this depends on our 'positive'
notion referring to the absence of an
inconsistency, while our 'negative' notions refer
to efficient proof constructions.
Mutual manifestness
But one question remains. How can we
recognize that a gesture or a sign
manifests a communicative intention, that is,
precisely that type of intention that is
satisfied simply by recognition? How can
a gesture demonstrate that it bears a
that Lucy
conduct
Suchman
breaks
(1987)
down).
defends concerning

communicative intention and not simply
an informative intention? Sperber and
Wilson have tried to give a solution to this
problem and, in examining their reply, I
will come back to the problems involved
in the notion of common knowledge.
Sperber and Wilson propose a weaker
version of this notion, that of *mutual
manifestness*. What does 'being manifest
for an individual' consist of? He must be
capable at the present moment of having
a mental representation of this fact and of
accepting this representation as true or
plausibly true [Pertinence, p. 65). An
individual's 'cognitive environment' is defined
as all the facts that are manifest to him,
that is, either those that are perceived or
inferred or those that he is caqpable of
perceiving or inferring. The authors then
emphasize the point that saying of a piece
of information that it is manifest for an
individual is to attribute to it a much
weaker property than saying that it is
known to him, or even that he supposes
it. A known fact is a true fact, at least if
we take the epistemic operator 'know that'
in its classical logical sense. A manifest
(inferable) fact can be false. I may either
have false information or I may have
applied my inferential procedures in an
overbold way. For what is termed
inference here is not restricted to logical
deductions, which are infallible. We
accept 'non-demonstrative' inferences,
which are for example inferences that are
merely plausible, hazardous
generalizations, hypotheses created from a single
case, and so on. Such inferences can lead
us to draw conclusions that do not fit the
facts.
From the notion of the 'manifest fact', the
authors shift to the notion of 'mutual
manifestness', replacing and weakening
that of common knowledge. They suppose
the existence of an intersection, a body of
facts that are common to the cognitive
environments of two individuals. These
common facts can include the identities
of the individuals themselves. It is then
THE INTENTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
manifest for each of them that they are
these individuals with such and such
characteristics, primarily that of being in
this cognitive environment of
intersection. It is therefore manifest to each of
them that they are sharing this cognitive
environment. Since that is manifest to
them, 'for any manifest hypothesis, the
fact that this hypothesis is manifest for
the individuals who share this
environment is itself manifest.' This hypothesis is
then 'mutually manifest' [Pertinence, p.
70).
But some difficulties must still be
clarified. What is an intersection between
cognitive environments, if the cognitive
environments are not realized but simply
possible mental states? We can of course
have recourse to the notion of the possible
world. A common cognitive environment
would be the intersection between all the
possible worlds accessible to each
individual, that is, the mental states accessible
to each individual starting from their
present mental states. But as the
inferential procedures are non-demonstrative,
they can be different. The relations of
accessibility will therefore also be
different. A question arises at this point: what
procedure will give me access to the
common cognitive environment, at the
intersection of these possible worlds? In other
terms, either this intersection is defined
from the point of view of an omniscient
outside observer- and more than logically
omniscient, since he has to be in
possession of all the non-demonstrative
inferential procedures, which can
sometimes be bizarre, like Kripke's 'quus'
rule - or it is accessible to normal
individuals. If it is defined by a completely
omniscient observer, there is every chance
that it will not be enumerable. In fact, as
we can always add some oddity, even a
harmless peculiarity, at any stage of a
non-demonstrative inference, nondemon-
strative inferential procedures form a
non-recursively enumerable list, as I can
never be sure that I can exclude such an
163
Pierre LIVET
inference from the list of
non-demonstrative inferences. Each of these procedures
gives rise to a potentially infinite body of
conclusions, of manifest facts. I cannot
therefore guarantee to have taken into
account all the manifest facts in two or n
cognitive environments so as to say
whether a fact is not accessible and
manifest in them. But then neither can I define
the intersection of these cognitive
environments, because certain facts which
could nevertheless belong to this
intersection might have evaded me.
The difficulties are redoubled when Sper-
ber and Wilson link the notion of mutual
manifestness with the principle of
pertinence to define what they call ostensive
communication.
'Ostensive' stimuli are those gestures,
cries or, more often, words and
utterances, that enable a speaker to draw the
attention of a receiver to what he is doing,
and at the same time direct that attention
to the intentions of the communicator
[Pertinence, p. 331). In other words, the
'ostensive' stimulus is regarded as solving
the modern equivalent of the problem of
the origin of languages. It is a question of
knowing how we can draw the attention
of others not only to our gesture but also
to the fact that this gesture is a vector of
communication. The 'ostensive' gesture
should enable the receiver to draw
inferences not only about our intentions but
also about our communicative intentions.
For Sperber and Wilson then,
communication is 'ostensive-inferentiaT. The
'ostensive' is regarded as triggering
inferences that are specific to
communication. The 'ostensive' stimulus derives its
communicational specificity precisely
from its pertinence, or more exactly from
the fact that it arouses an anticipation or
presumption of pertinence.
We see that in fact pertinence is not
directly a property of the ostensive
stimulus. It is much more the
presumption of pertinence that makes the
164
stimulus ostensive. Is this not a circular
argument? No, because the presumption
of pertinence depends simply on the
intention of the communicator. Here we
come back to mutual manifestness. The
communicator must have the intention of
making it manifest to the receiver that the
stimulus is pertinent. Sperber and Wilson
go one step further: 'Let us suppose that
it is mutually manifest for the
communicator and the receiver that an ostensive
stimulus has been produced' (p. 235). It
is then mutually manifest that the
communicator must intend the stimulus to
appear pertinent to the receiver.
Of course, we reach this stage if the
communication has been successful. But
what happens when we are on the point
of communicating, when we imagine a
gesture and wish to make it 'ostensive'?
Does the communicator have to wish to
make it mutually manifest that the
stimulus is ostensive. No doubt, but how
can he be sure that this is the case, or
hope to realize that intention? After all, he
has no proof that what he wishes to
communicate will belong to the mutual
cognitive environment, because he does not
know how to define the intersection of
cognitive environments.
Sperber and Wilson seek to avoid this
difficulty by defining pertinence.
Pertinence for them is the optimal context,
the one that permits the best possible
balance between effort and effect (p. 219),
between the cognitive effort and the
number of inferences and contextual
implications that can be drawn from the
information in that context. If only one
stimulus is the most pertinent among
those that the communicator could use,
then that is the ostensive stimulus. In
fact, as the receiver also thinks that all
ostensive communication differs from
other stimuli by a presumption of
pertinence, and that he too is capable of
identifying this stimulus as the most
pertinent, he recognizes that the optimal
pertinence of a stimulus means that it is

ostensive and, using the same inferential
operations that permitted him to verify
that pertinence, he finds the pertinent
interpretation of what is being
communicated. So at a stroke he verifies the os-
tensiveness of the stimulus and identifies
the communicative intention.
The problem is that all this relies on the
unicity of the pertinent stimulus. Now,
this stimulus is unique if the optimum of
pertinence is unique. But although it can
be unique, when context A comes before
context В in dimension x of contextual
implications and dimension у of
minimized cognitive effort, this is not the
case when the two ranks on x and у
intersect: we come up against the classic
problems of maximization in several
dimensions. We must then put the
criteria in some order, put either effort or effect
first. But our authors prefer not to
choose, and for a while they assert the
notion of comparison 'other things being
equal', which judges by effect, with the
effort presumed to be the same, or vice
versa, which nevertheless brings us back
to the notion of optimality.
Sperber and Wilson cannot in any case
guarantee that the interpretation of the
stimulus as pertinent by the receiver will
be the same as the intention with which
the communicator chose the stimulus as
pertinent - and so they decline to give us
such a guarantee. For them, and we can
only agree, communication is not a
process whose symmetry or reciprocity can
be guaranteed. There is no assurance that
the selection of a pertinent stimulus and
the interpretation of this stimulus as
pertinent will be operations that produce the
same result. Communication is always
hazardous, and the risk is taken by the
communicator. Unfortunately, giving the
communicator the role of guide does not
solve the problem. It is like dancing a
tango.* How can we know who has taken
the lead in the dance? If each partner
• Pertinence, p. 72.
THE INTENTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
thinks that the other is leading, and one
of them does not dance the tango very
well, we are heading for a fall. Moreover,
the communicator must obviously
anticipate what will be pertinent to the receiver,
or else we could suspect him of not having
a real communicative intention. He is
therefore a guide who must be guided by
the person he is guiding!
There are many points in their argument
at which Sperber and Wilson seem to
assume what is in question. The first
unexplained point is this: if we share the
same cognitive environment, and this
shared cognitive environment includes
the identities of the parties, then it is
manifest to us that we are sharing this
cognitive environment. But what meaning
should be given to 'the identity of the
parties'? For it to be manifest to each of
us that we are sharing this cognitive
environment, this identity should be
described in detail. We are in a room in
which a telephone is ringing, we both
know that we are both in the room, we
suppose that each of us can hear the
telephone, we suppose that neither of us
is particularly expecting a call. So it is
part of our mutual cognitive environment
that either of us could take the call. But
there again, the notion of 'nearer' can be
judged differently by each of us and it
becomes difficult to say that the other
parry's notion of 'nearer' forms part of
what is mutually accessible to us: he
might usually react much faster than me,
but be more wrapped up in his thoughts
at that precise moment. Once I have been
given such specific information, his
temporary slowness will be accessible to me
and I will be able to infer it from the fact
that he does not rush to the telephone.
But perhaps I have entered an individual
extension of the 'mutual cognitive
environment', an extension which is peculiar
to me and which is not in fact accessible
to the other party, because he himself has
entered another possible extension.
165
Pierre LIVET
Here we come back to the problem of
multiple extensions in non-monotonic
logics, which is natural since the notion
of accessible or inferable depends on
hypotheses of normality, on premises
agreed to be normal and inferences
agreed to be normal. Until we have settled
this problem we cannot say that, in a
cognitive environment that is presumed
to be shared, knowing the identity of the
parties makes it mutually manifest that
they share this cognitive environment,
and still less that, for any hypothesis that
is manifest to each individual, the fact
that this hypothesis is manifest to them
is itself manifest. Once again, what is
manifest can be situated in extensions to
the basic body of information that are
different for each individual. And if we
wish to assure the identity of these
extensions, it seems that we will have to fall
back on a stronger notion than that of the
mutual cognitive environment: common
knowledge, the drawbacks of which we
have already seen.
The second unclear point is that of the
possibility of defining an intersection
between cognitive environments, in order to
establish a mutual cognitive
environment. We have seen that, as in the
nonmonotonic logics, we must be able to
exhaust the list of non-demonstrative
inferential procedures before we can say,
from the outside and knowing all the
information about the two parties, what
is not accessible to one or the other of
them, and therefore what is mutually
accessible. This list of non-demonstrative
conclusions cannot be completely
exhausted even by an omniscient observer,
and even less by the parties, who do not
know what information and inferential
procedures the other has at his disposal.
There remains the possibility of sharply
curtailing this list, using only inferential
procedures contained by the principle of
pertinence. But a nondemonstrative
inferential procedure can be short and
bizarre, as in a generalization like 'all
166
Englishwomen are redheads'. The
constraint of minimizing effort does not
therefore permit us to define a limited list
of inferential procedures that are shared
by all. Nor does the constraint of
maximizing contextual implications: the
contextual implications of saying 'all
Englishwomen are redheads' in the
presence of a brunette are richer than
those of 'Englishwomen have hair of all
colours'.
So for all its interest and cleverness, Sper-
ber and Wilson's argument includes
several uncertain steps, which all repeatedly
pose the same obsessing problem: how
can we assure ourselves that others
understand us and interpret our communi-
cational stimuli in the same way as we do?
It seems that we can nevertheless accept
the authors' preliminary statements:
communication is a bet by the
communicator and its success is therefore not
guaranteed. The notion of the openness of
communication corresponds to this
wager. But we must then draw the
following conclusion: this notion of 'openness'
of communication corresponds to a bet,
therefore it is a non-definitive,
non-efficient notion, and we use it exactly as
such. On the other hand, the proofs of
'non-openness' must be constructed in an
efficient way. This therefore allows us to
know when the bet has been lost. Sperber
and Wilson give the impression that there
is always a pertinent interpretation, and
that the bet is always a winner ...
We can see that here we are moving away
from Grice's conception, which made
'openness' an ideal communicational
limit, always approached but never
reached. In fact it is never a question of
approaching open communication as an
ideal in which dissimulations would be
failures. On the contrary, proofs of
dissimulation are the only 'successes', the
only efficient proof constructions that we
can demonstrate, and 'open'
communication is only an inefficient outline hypo-

thesis. No-one therefore tries to attain it,
since everyone supposes that it is valid
until it has been disproved.
We can see the thinking common to both
this solution and the problem of indenti-
fying the informative intention. There too
we suppose that we can maintain our
hypotheses about the situation as long as
we are not forced to revise our opinions.
Conversely, giving a piece of information
amounts to manifesting the possibility or
necessity of such a revision. These two
aspects of the procedure are always
linked, since we interpret deviations from
our hypotheses as being révisable
according to the hypotheses that we maintain:
for example, I see the other driver moving
to his left, I maintain the hypothesis that
he wishes to avoid me, and I infer from
this that he drives on the left. This
procedure permits us to attribute informative
meaning to deviations from expected
behaviour, that is, to know exactly which
hypotheses we have to revise. But in
interpreting the informative intention, we
do not envisage requiring the absence of
a counterexample in order to continue to
maintain our hypothesis.
The hypotheses that we maintain are in
fact simply our own. We can suppose that
they are also other people's, but we
require no proof of this. It is in practice
sufficient for us to co-ordinate our
actions, whatever our real hypotheses might
be. Thus in the informative intention we
restrict ourselves to decoding information
as so many efficient revisions.
We do not venture into the domain of the
inefficient. In the communicative
intention on the other hand, we envisage
requiring the absence of a contrary proof, a
demand that we maintain even though it
is inefficient. In the communicative
intention we use the inefficient as such.
* See Meaning and Force, p. 210, and in general the French source for this book: Les énoncés
performattfs. Editions de Minuit, 1979.
THE INTENTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
The intention to communicate
and language acts
Can the model of the communicative
intention be used to analyse language acts?
This is what Recanati holds/ Language
acts refer to an 'intention to
communicate'. The intention to communicate
comprises, as does the communicative
intention, two sub-intentions:
(1) The intention to manifest by our
utterance that we have a certain
communicative intention;
(2) The intention that the receiver
should recognize this
communicative intention.
It is therefore sufficient for the receiver to
recognize the communicative intention
for the intention to communicate to be
satisfied, since the receiver recognizes it
only if it is manifest. Recanati concludes
that this is what happens in the case of
explicit performatives, such as 'I promise'.
By declaring in a performative way that he
is carrying out a certain language act
(promising), the speaker expresses his
intention to perform this act by this same
utterance. If the hearer takes him
seriously - the speaker could be using irony
- and attributes to him the intention thus
expressed linguistically, then this
intention is satisfied by that attribution.
Yet it is clear that we cannot take analysis
of the communicative intention as a direct
model for analysis of the intention to
communicate of the language act. The latter
differs in one respect: the receiver must
recognize not only our communicative
intention but also our intention to carry out
this precise performative act. In contrast,
the communicative intention is general,
as its individual content derives from the
informative intention, and because what
the communicative intention adds to the
informative intention is simply the wish
167
Pierre LIVET
that the receiver should recognize this
informative intention as open.
It is therefore not easy to see the meaning
of 'the intention that this (a certain)
communicative intention should be
recognized'. Does this specificity refer to the
informative intention comprised in the
language act? This is difficult to defend,
as language acts indicate modalities of
communication as well as information
that is already present. Saying 'I promise'
is the same as saying *I promise to do this
thing'. We do not give an order without
indicating what act must be performed.
So it is first these promised or ordered
acts that are the object of the informative
intention, that which specifies. But then
there comes the additional specificity of
the language act, which must therefore
also be informative. Now, giving a piece of
information allows us to revise a
hypothesis. This is indicated by an imperative,
for example, 'Close the door*. The door
must be shut despite what we previously
believed, or maybe we are thought not to
have noticed that the door was open, and
we are being told to revise our hypotheses
on this point.
But as the language act adds a
supplementary specificity, information of the
second degree, it too must therefore aim
at a revision of hypotheses. This is in fact
the case. When we give an order, we tend
to revise the other person's hypotheses
about his own information, and especially
about the way in which he conceived of
our own attitudes. Contrary to what he
thought, we did not regard it as
permissible that the door should be open. Or
else, by giving an order, we show that we
did not expect that the person spoken to
would have closed the door on his own
initiative. In a way, we are enjoining him
to enable us to revise our hypotheses and
our attitudes about him.
We see that the informative content of
language acts properly so-called consists
of revisions not only of states of the world
168
but of the attitudes of our communica-
tional partners with regard to the world
and to our own attitudes. Thus the
analysis offered by Searle, which sees
directives as an attempt to change states of the
world by means of words, is quite
insufficient. The same goes for his analysis of
declaratives, which he says are intended
to make our words conform to states of
the world. On the contrary, they are
aimed either at modifying the supposed
attitudes of others towards a fact (the
others were presumed to have doubted it)
or at enjoining them to modify their
hypotheses about our own attitudes (contrary
to what others thought, we continue to
believe this fact). And usually they have
both these functions.
But how then can it still be asserted that
language acts, at least explicit
performatives, are 'self-realizing' or 'self-verifying'?
They are no more so than any informative
intention. Receivers must still not only
recognize the intention to communicate of
the performative, but also modify their
attitudes in the way indicated by the
language act. And we have no guarantee of
that, any more than we could guarantee
that our receivers were taking our
informative intention into account. But then
why say, following Austin, that it is
sufficient to utter a performative for the
language act to be thereby accomplished,
and following Searle, that it is not possible
to express a language act without
expressing the corresponding intentional
state (to apologize without expressing a
state of regret) (Searle, 1985, p. 24).
Because informative intentions already
possess the 'reflexivity' (in a weak sense
that I shall define) of communicative
intentions. When I have only one simple
informative intention I am not in fact
concerned about modifying the attitudes
of the other party towards my informative
intention. I simply suggest to him a
revision of his hypotheses. I do not try to
make him revise his attitudes towards my
attitudes. But this is just what I want to

do with language acts. Thus a promise
makes it manifest that I have revised my
attitude because of the attitude of the
other party (I see that it could be an
attitude of doubt) and that I want to
convince him of my new (determined)
attitude, so that he will revise his attitude
with regard to me. An order shows that I
want the other party to revise his attitude
(indifference or resistance), and so enable
me to revise my attitude of doubt about
his attitude, and so on. When we take into
account the attitudes of others with
regard to our own, and we wish to revise
those attitudes, we come close to the
communicative intention, which aims for
recognition of our informative intention, and
therefore an attitude with regard to our
attitude.
However, we could easily take into
account the attitudes of the other party with
regard to our attitdes, and try to get them
revised, merely by adopting some
strategically appropriate behaviour, and
avoiding any communication. The
informative content of language acts does
therefore possess the same property as
the communicative intention - that of
aiming to influence second-degree
attitudes - but this property is not sufficient
to identify this content and a
communicative intention.
But of course language acts are 'non-
natural' utterances, or the expression of
a communicative intention. It is then
clear that recognition of such a
communicative intention, which is equivalent to
aiming at a modification of the attitude of
the receiver with regard to the attitudes of
the speaker, already assures the
modification of a second-degree attitude aimed
at by the informative intention. When, by
giving an order, I manifest to another my
attitude towards the state of affairs, or
towards my attitudes (if I think he is
inclined to disobey me), it is sufficient for
him to recognize this attitude to revise his
hypotheses about the state of affairs. He
can no longer be unaware that closing the
THE INTENTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
door is important to me, and he can
therefore no longer be indifferent with regard
to this open door. Maybe he did not in fact
care whether the door was open or closed,
but now he is at least concerned by the
fact that I would like the door shut. More
precisely, my concern may still be a
matter of indifference to him, but my attitude
towards the door is henceforth 'marked'
by a reference to my attitude towards the
door. If the other recognizes my
informative intention, I have modified his
cognitive environment, whether he obeys my
order or not. The same thing applies to a
promise. So if the other recognizes my
informative intention, he knows that
instead of not noticing his doubtful attitude,
I have taken it into account. Of course this
awareness can be limited to expressing a
change of attitude without acting on this
change, but the modification, whatever
effect it may have, nonetheless exists.
So recognition of the communicative
intention is sufficient to modify the
attitudes of the hearer with regard to the
attitudes of the speaker, quite simply
because this recognition is itself a change of
attitude. It is of course recognition of the
communicative intention in general
terms. But by recognizing the
communicative intention we also recognize the
informative intention that it contains. The
general modification of attitude linked to
the communicative intention is therefore
specified via the informative intention.
But the aspect of modification of second-
degree attitudes is already present in the
recognition of the general communicative
intention. Recognition of the informative
intention does not therefore need to
establish this link between the attitudes of
the speaker and those of the hearer, and
vice versa; it simply assures the specificity
of this reciprocal relationship.
Of course, this 'recognition' does not
extend to fulfilling all the intentions of the
speaker concerning these changes of
attitude. The order does not automatically
produce obedience and does not even
169
Pierre LIVET
eliminate indifference towards the giver of
the order. It only modifies the indifference
of the receiver to the attitude of the
speaker concerning the state of the world
that the order is intended to change. By
the same token the attitude of the receiver
with regard to this state of the world
becomes 'marked' with reference to the
attitudes of the giver of the order. But this
recognition, limited though it may be, is
still a recognition of the intention of the
language act in its specificity.
We see the difference between the
satisfaction of an ordinary communicative
intention and that of its informative
intention. The classic informative
intention was satisfied as soon as it was recog-
nized, because recognition of the
informative intention, and even more so
of the communicative intention, was more
than what was aimed at by the
informative intention (it aimed at modifying an
attitude with regard to the world, and the
recognition was an attitude with regard to
an attitude). Saying that it was sufficient
to recognize the communicative intention
in order to satisfy the informative
intention was therefore a triviality. The greater
includes the lesser. The informative
intention of the language act aims at this
recognition as a modification of an
attitude with regard to attitudes. It therefore
already has as broad an aim as the
communicative intention. To say that
recognition of the communicative intention is
sufficient to activate the satisfaction
process of the informative intention is
therefore no longer a triviality. But it is
nevertheless true, since manifestation of
the communicative intention is sufficient
to trigger reciprocal reflections on the
attitudes of the other. Moreover, as what is
communicated is a particular type of
reciprocal reflection, manifestation of the
communicative intention, when it is
recognized, is sufficient to produce the effect
of modification of attitudes aimed at by
the informative intention - but this effect
is guaranteed only in its minimal form.
170
We also do not see what a 'non-open'
language act could mean. But this is quite
simply because we do not see what
meaning there could be to a non-open
linguistic utterance, at least if we are
speaking in the presence of the person to
whom it is addressed. We can of course
dissimulate underhand intentions
behind promises, but that in no way affects
the realization of the intention to modify
the attitudes of one party with regard to
the attitudes of the other.
However, if this analysis is correct, the
particular importance given to language
acts by Austin loses many of its
justifications. Language acts fascinated us
primarily because we thought they enabled
us to act simply by speaking (that it is
sufficient to promise to have made a
promise). Berrendonner has shown that,
on the contrary, we speak because we
cannot act (Berrendonner, 1982). In any
case, Austin was more interested in the
illocutionary aspect of all utterances than
in these particular cases of explicit
performatives. But then Searle drew from this
the idea that the illocutionary force of the
language act permits us to pass from the
fact (the utterance) to the law (the
obligation of the promise). He also maintained
that language acts represent their own
conditions for satisfaction. As he
constructs intentional acts as also
representing their conditions for satisfaction,
he then has only to turn the process on
its head and imagine that the conditions
for satisfaction of my intentional states
are expressed conventionally by an
illocutionary form. This illocutionary form
indicates a communicative intention aimed at
making the hearer recognize the
conditions for satisfaction of my statement,
which spring from the conditions for
satisfaction of my intentional states.
For Searle, it then becomes bizarre to
express a language act, apologizing for
example, without meaning to express the
corresponding intentional state (regret for
having hurt or upset someone). Moreover,

it seems necessary to him that the
conditions for satisfaction of the language act
(the promise or the order) should also
refer to the language act itself, since we
are deemed to be aiming at recognition of
the communicative intention of these
conditions for satisfaction.
But our analyses do not permit us to
make statements of this sort. To start
with, language acts obviously do nothing
but make some statement. We have seen
that they have no special privilege, that
their aim is limited to modifying attitudes
towards the attitudes of others, instead of
simply wishing to modify the basic
information that others might have. If it is
sufficient to say these acts to perform
them, this is simply because the
communicative intention of any utterance
opens the way to realization of these
modifications of second-degree attitudes.
Furthermore, the modifications that we
are certain of obtaining as soon as the
communicative intention is realized are in
no way equivalent to the conditions for
satisfaction of the intentional states set
out by Searle, and even less to the
conditions for satisfaction that would refer to
the language act itself. When I give an
order, the only result I can be sure of
obtaining if my communicative intention
is recognized is that the state of affairs my
order aims to change will be identified as
being linked to my hypotheses about the
attitude of others. If I say: 'I order you to
close the door', my hearer will 'mark' his
own attitude towards this door with the
stamp of my concern. But we can clearly
guarantee neither that he will close the
door, nor that he will close it to obey my
order, nor even that he will not be
indifferent to my concern that the door should
be shut. In the same way, when I
apologize I can very easily have no regrets at
all. But I cannot not wish to modify the
opinion of the other party about my
attitude (I presume that he thought I was not
taking enough notice of his indignation,
and I endeavour to make him believe that
THE INTENTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
I have changed my attitude, and so to
modify his as well). All he can be sure of
about me is that I have 'marked' my
attitude with the stamp of recognition of his
concern.
Similarly, it is not true that an order has
been obeyed only if the act that the hearer
has been told to do is carried out in
obedience to the order. The possible self-
reference of the conditions for satisfaction
of promises and orders to the orders
themselves cannot justify this
requirement. In fact, if orders refer, in their
conditions for satisfaction, to the orders
themselves, it is simply because it is
recognition of the communicative intention
that ensures the only modification of
attitude that we can expect to obtain. In
other words, any obedience to an order
refers to recognition of the utterance of
the order as recognition of its
communicative intention. It is then necessary that
this act be carried out with reference to
recognition of the communicative
intention, and that at the same time this
recognition should be carried over to the
specific intention of the order - to mark a
state of affairs to be changed, with
reference to the attitudes of the speaker. But
it is in no way self-referential, because the
intention of the order, from the speaker's
point of view, was more far-reaching and
was aimed at not simply marking, but at
revising, the attitudes of the hearer in
such a way as to eliminate any doubts
about the attitude of the speaker. The
modification ensured by recognition of
the utterance is therefore not the one
aimed at by the 'full' informative
intention. There is indeed a loop, but it is not
complete. Searle rightly notes that
someone who replies: 'Look, I was Just going
out, so if I leave it is not because you have
ordered me to* cannot easily be said to
have obeyed (Searle, 1985). But this is
because this sentence makes a point of
denying that the marking of the act of
leaving has the slightest connection with
the attitudes of the giver of the order
171
Pierre LIVET
towards our man. And yet someone who
replies: 'I am going to shut this door
because it bothers you, but I find your
obsession with closed doors laughable and
I couldn't care less about your wishes'
cannot be said to have disobeyed the
order.
To sum up, it seems that the specificity of
language acts has nothing to do with the
self-referentiality of their conditions.
What self-referentiality they have derives
simply from the fact that they are
utterances, and that they manifest a
communicative intention. And the miraculous
self-realization of performatives comes
down to their seeking to obtain acts
through modification of the attitudes of
others about our attitudes, or through
recognition of our attitudes about their
attitudes. As they merge into the
recognition of communicative intentions, they
obtain at least one minimal modification
of these second-degree attitudes. It is not
forbidden to require more of others, but
that is all we can be assured of obtaining,
and that constitutes the limit of the self-
performatives.*
realization of
What then should we think about Reca-
nati's analysis of explicit performatives?
(Recanati, 1979). The act accomplished
by the performative, he tells us, is always
a declarative act. We declare an intention,
that of performing the language act
(speech) in question. This speech act is
therefore accomplished only indirectly. In
fact, when I say: 'I affirm that I am
innocent', the content of the utterance is that
I am innocent, and not 'that I affirm' my
innocence. What the speech act declares
does not therefore have a bearing on the
act itself. But it is certainly accomplished,
as in order to perform a speech act it is
sufficient to express the intention of
performing it. The efficiency of this
* the
to
as an
Weeffect
self-verification
should
thenote
self-that
verification
ofeven
performatives,
Recanati
'A cleans
hints,
since
thein
latrines',
fora slip
the statement
order, and which is certainly not a self-verification. The only self-verification, and that is not totally
reflexive, is the marking of the attitude of A towards the latrines as a function of the concern of
the speaker.
172
tion can either be immediate (when I
declare I am giving an order I cannot fail to
give the order) or depend on a context
(when I declare 'the session open' I
accomplish the act only if I have the authority
to open the session).
We can see immediately that it is not in
fact necessary to superimpose two speech
acts, one the declaration and the other
what we wish to accomplish. It is
sufficient to reduce the declarative act to the
communicative intention.
Communicating a speech act is sufficient to
accomplish it, as soon as this communicative
intention is recognized. Otherwise it is
difficult to see how expressing the
intention to perform the speech act could
realize it, since we would then have to
recognize not only the speech act
expressed but also the declarative speech
act.
Now, the declarative act implies that the
speaker attributes to others attitudes of
doubt about the utterance of the speech
act in question, and about the validity of
this utterance. Saying 'I declare the
session open' is aimed at changing such
doubtful attitudes: yes, I really do have
the authority to declare the session open;
yes, the session really has been declared
open. It is clear that in a simple speech
act (an order, a promise etc.) we do not
suppose that others have doubtful
attitudes outside those directly related to the
speech act itself. It is not clear what
bearing this analysis could have in the case of
the declarative speech act itself. Are we
declaring what we declare? Do we
suppose that the hearer entertains doubts
about the fact that we have made this
declaration? That would undermine the
accomplishment of the performative
declarative act. So we must obviously reduce
this recognition of the would-be déclara-
ofwhich
the pen,
of course
that will
'you he isattributes
clean
not sufficient
the alatrines'
strong
to verify
meaning
he gives
the

tive speech act to recognition of the
communicative intention.
We can therefore simplify the analysis of
performatives. The speaker does not
express the intention to perform a language
act. He expresses an informative
intention. As in the case of all other informative
intentions, it is simply a matter of
modifying the attitudes of others. The difference
is that we have the intention of modifying
the attitudes of the hearer with reference
to the attitudes of the speaker. Moreover
the speaker has the intention to
communicate this informative intention.
We have seen that the 'openness' of the
communicative intention could never be
verified, because the absence of a
counterexample could never be verified in
an efficient way, and that on the contrary
it is these counterexamples that could
(and must) be constructed efficiently. But
the case of language acts shows us that,
in the framework of linguistic
communication, it even becomes impossible to
construct a counterexample to the minimal
realization of the informative intention. If
the communicative intention has been
recognized, then this minimal
modification of attitude must be supposed to have
been realized, because whatever escape
route the hearer might invent, he cannot
refute the existence of this minimal
modification. Or, if he does so, then he admits
that he has not recognized the
communicative intention (or that he is in
contradiction with this recognition: this is the case
in Searle's example, in which the subject
denies having revised his attitudes in any
way after being given an order, which he
nevertheless admits). But this
impossibility of constructing counterexamples to
the minimal realization of the informative
intention, once the linguistic
communication has been recognized, is not limited to
language acts, it is a property of all
linguistic communication.
But even if we cannot find a
counterexample to the realization of the
THE INTENTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
tive intention once it has been recognized,
can we not find a counterexample to the
'openness' of the communicative
intention? No, because the privilege of
language over gestures lies precisely in its
assuring an 'openness' in a minimal
sense. If I know the language, if I am in
the presence of the person who is
speaking to me and if the identification of the
speaker and the receiver present no
difficulties, then a counterexample to the
hypothesis of openness can no longer be
constructed. In fact, these
counterexamples suppose systems in which, for
example, the communicator's gesture can
be seen by the receiver, who is not visible
to the communicator, so that the receiver
may be unaware that the communicator
knows that he can be seen. But in the
face-to-face linguistic utterance, the only
things that can be called into question are
knowledge of the language, hearing
abilities, and each party's knowledge of the
precise identity of the other.
Dialogue assures us on the first two
points, and even if the third is not
realized, minimal recognition of the fact that
the speaker is the one who is talking and
that he is addressing the hearer (even if
he mistakes him for someone else) is
realized. Thus we cannot construct
counterexamples to the openness of linguistic
communication, even if we cannot always
prove this openness in an efficient way.
That is a characteristic of any linguistic
utterance, whether it brings a speech act
into play or not. What the speech act adds
is the guarantee of minimal realization of
the informative intention. Nevertheless,
any linguistic utterance, when it is
recognized as such, induces a modification of
attitude in the hearer (if only to make him
recognize it as the utterance of a piece of
information, even if the hearer takes no
notice of the Information) and therefore
guarantees minimal realization of its
informative intention. The language act
guarantees that the modification
obtained is the modification of an attitude
173
Pierre LIVET
concerning the attitudes of the other
party. It can be seen that this is not such
a great privilege.
But there is another property possessed
only by language acts. When I reply: 'I
obey you' (while performing the required
act) to someone who has given me an
order, I guarantee the giver of the order
the minimal modification of attitude that
is realized by any recognition of a
language act. But he cannot hope that this
reply will also guarantee him that I am
acting only, or even essentially, in
obedience to his order. If I reply: 'I am doing
this to obey you', I am in fact suggesting
to him that he can reconsider his anxiety,
that I am really acting in order to obey
him. But since this reply aims at the
attitude of the speaker towards the
attitude of the hearer, affirming to the giver
of the order that the attitude of his hearer
is really that which he wishes merely
shows that the speaker's intention has
been understood and that the hearer
wishes him to revise his doubtful attitude.
But that gives no assurance that this
revision would be well founded. We may
wish to dispel doubts about our reasons
for closing the door precisely because we
have closed it for reasons other than
obedience. All that is stated by this reply is
that the hearer has taken note of the
order-giver's doubts. But wishing to
dispel these doubts could mean that we
consider them either invalid or valid.
We therefore find ourselves in a situation
which is the inverse of that of the face-to-
face linguistic utterance, as distinct from
indirect communication, in which we
could construct counterexamples to the
openness of communication. In the face-
to-face utterance this construction of
counterexamples is no longer possible,
although the openness of communication
still remains a hypothesis which is un-
verifiable by efficient means. In this case,
on the other hand, it becomes impossible
to refute possible counterexamples to the
total (and not minimal) realization of the
174
speaker's intention. There is no efficient
procedure for separating the wheat from
the tares, for saying whether we intended
to manipulate the order-giver or satisfy
his demands, since manipulation
consists precisely of assuring the other party
that his demands have apparently been
satisfied.
We have therefore encountered in
communication several relationships between
the efficient and the non-efficient,
between what we can conclude and what we
can only surmise.
(1) In the simple informative
intention we do not concern ourselves
with the non-efficient we restrict
ourselves to efficiently constructing
reasons for revisions of our
hypotheses and those of others.
(2) In the communicative intention
we use the non-efficient as such;
and there again it is
counterexamples to the openness of the
communicative intention that have
to be constructed in an efficient
way.
(3) When the communicative
intention is expressed in a linguistic
utterance and in a face-to-face
situation, it becomes impossible to
construct such counterexamples. The
openness of the communicative
intention is proved negatively,
although positive proof is always
beyond our reach.
(4) Finally, with utterances by
which we recognize satisfying the
intentions of a language act ('I obey
you', 'I promise' etc.), it becomes
impossible to refute the
counterexamples, which can therefore no
longer be efficiently constructed. As
the positive demonstration of this
satisfaction also remains non-
efficient, neither the refutation nor
the demonstration can be efficient.
Have we therefore passed into the domain

of the non-efficient and the undecidable?
Not altogether: the existence of the
utterance itself is always efficient and
definitive. The minimal realization of language
acts is always guaranteed. But we have
invented language acts because we are
impelled by the desire to obtain
guarantees about the attitudes of others, towards
our own attitudes, and this desire leads
us to make non-definitive requirements,
even though we can base them on the
impossibility of invalidating recognition of
the communication and coin them
through the minimal realization of
language acts.
When these conclusions are accepted, it
seems possible to reconcile a cognitive
approach to communication (which
strives to construct efficient procedures)
with some ethnomethodological theses on
situated communication (the rules of an
act are only defined retrospectively,
always on the basis of the current situation,
and while making continual revisions). In
fact we can use non-efficient hypotheses
provided we have readjustment
procedures based on efficient counter-
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THE INTENTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
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175