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Natural meaningArda Denkel aa Bogazici UniversityPublished online: 02 Jun 2006.

To cite this article: Arda Denkel (1992) Natural meaning, Australasian Journal ofPhilosophy, 70:3, 296-306, DOI: 10.1080/00048409212345191

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Australasian Journal o f Philosophy Vol. 70, No. 3; September 1992

NATURAL M E A N I N G

Arda Denkel

Natural meaning deserves closer attention than it has so far received. A better understanding of it will not only provide reliable boundaries for nonnatural meaning and thus subserve Grice's analysis; it will also satisfy independent interest. First, if drawn clearly, the distinction between natural and nonnatural meanings is the most promising method for delimiting what one may call 'typically human (or artificial) communication', and second it affords a fuller grasp of the basic and common features meaning bears, both in human languages and in the contexts of animal communication and natural signs. 1 It will emerge in what follows that the received notion of natural meaning is not as clear and satisfactory as it should be for securing such ends. My purpose is to try to cast light on a number of aspects and varieties of natural meaning.

I. Grice's Criteria and Anomalous Cases

Perhaps Grice himself is at least partly responsible for the neglect; where he draws the distinction or comments on it, he switches immediately to the consideration of nonnatural meaning, 2 thus leading research in this d i r e c t i o n : ' . . . of the two concepts it is "nonnatural" meaning which is more in need of further elucidation; it seems to be the more specialized of the pair, and it also seems to be the less determinate . . . I should look favourably on the idea that if further analysis should be required for one of the pair the notion of "nonnatural" meaning would be first in line'. 3 The already large literatur e concerning the topic has followed this instruction quite faithfully. The usual procedure has been to acknowledge the distinction and to get down to work on nonnatural meaning. Grice never maintained, however, that his 'test' was meant to draw anything more than a rough boundary or that he had offered it as a definition. 4 What is more, it will be seen that there is an abundance of cases which, on the basis of the recognition tests, defy inclusion in either category.

I Paul Grice, Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1989) -- henceforward SWW -- p. 291.

2 Grice offers the distinction in the form of 'recognition tests'. See his 'Meaning', The Philosophical Review 66 (1957) pp. 377-388; 'Meaning Revisited', Mutual Knowledge (New York: Academic Press, 1982 (ed.) N.V. Smith and the 'Retrospective Epilogue' of the SWW. These papers are contained in the SWW, and all my references to Grice's works will be to their reprints in this comprehensive collection.

a SWW, p. 350. 4 See, for example, SWW, p. 215.

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297 Natural Meaning

Grice's method of distinction presupposes a dualism of natural and nonnatural meaning. When Grice says that his 'recognition test' is rough, he is not compromising the (factual) dualism he presupposes. What he allows is that in some cases the criteria may not enable us to judge where meaning belongs, blurring the recognition of what in fact is well-placed. This makes it appear as though for the test to work there should not (in fact) be a third kind of meaning situation not classifiable as either of the two. Hence it is possible to envisage a criticism that the actual existence of anomalous cases will deprive the criteria of their function, thus blocking the proper recognition of nonnatural meaning essential for a reliable analysis of it. In section III below I will indicate that a reinterpretation will forestall such a criticism.

Cases of meaning that fall outside the context of what I have called 'typically human communication' are found chiefly in two areas. One is the realm of animal communicative behaviour shared by humans, the instinctive and automatic bodily displays which convey valuable information to members of the same or neighbouring species. Among examples we may cite 'This cat's purring means that he is happy (enjoying the strokes)', and 'Her blushing means that she is embarrassed'. The second area is of natural signs which do not arise in the context of communication. These are facts such as there being, in particular places, smoke, clouds or vegetation. This sphere provides some of the clearest examples of natural meaning. 'That oasis means water', 'These clouds mean rain', 'Smoke means fire', 'This mutilated head means that its owner is dead', etc. It should be noted that the apparent form 'X means r' of such claims reflects, and therefore is to be understood as, 'X means that r', where X and r are propositions. Explicitly stated, 'That oasis means water' is 'The existence there of an oasis means that there is water there'.

Grice's tests appeal to properties characterizing attributions of meaning: if an attribution bears all the common properties of natural meaning and lacks all of those associated with nonnatural meaning, it is discerned as a case of natural meaning, and vice versa. Obviously, such a procedure hinges on whether the properties referred to are genuine marks of these types of meaning, and are failed and satisfied invariably in the same order. The common properties Grice finds in attributions of natural meaning are that first, in these cases meaning is attributed to a fact, and second, they are such that if the attribution of meaning is true, then the truth of what is meant is entailed. In other words, for it to be true that something, a fact that X, means that r, it has to be the case that it is true that r. Grice later calls this 'factivity'.5 The common marks of nonnatural meaning, on the other hand, involve first, its being appropriate to give the specification of what is meant in quotes; second, its being possible to reformulate the attribution of meaning as 'What was m e a n t . . . '; and third, the admissibility of saying that what was meant was meant by an agent voluntarily.

The test takes the following form: given particular circumstances, for a statement such as 'X means that r' (e.g., 'The existence here of an oasis means that there is water here') to be a statement of natural meaning, (a) it should be the case

s SWW, pp. 291, 349.

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that 'X means that r' entails that r (i.e., that it be entailed that there is water here); (b) it should be possible to rephrase the assertion of meaning in the form 'The fact that X means that r' ('The fact that there is an oasis here means that there is water here'); (c) it should not be possible to restate the assertion of meaning in a form in which the verb 'means' precedes an expression in inverted commas (it should be improper to say 'This oasis meant "there is water here'"); (d) the paraphrase 'What is meant by X is that r ' ( 'What is meant by this oasis is that there i s water here') should be inadmissible; and finally (e) it should be inappropriate to claim that what is said to mean was issued or uttered deliberately, or that somebody meant something by X. I f in application to an assertion of meaning every item of this test fails, then, says Grice, the meaning asserted is nonnatural, e Encountering a case in which the criteria are satisfied only partially would indeed be perplexing.

How crucial is the fulfilment or failure of the tests all at the same time? In a way, Grice has not insisted on the fulfilment of every criterion at once. When. he reconsiders the issue twenty-five years later he mentions only the criteria of 'factivity' and 'quotability', corresponding to tests (a) and (b), and (c) respectively: 'If factivity is present and quotation marks would be inappropriate, we would have a case of natural meaning; otherwise the meaning involved would be nonnatural meaning'. 7 At first sight, it is unclear whether in doing this Grice is revising the criteria or is assuming that the twofold test is equivalent to the fivefold one. (and in particular, whether [c] alone is equivalent to It, d, e] together). 8 What of deliberateness, for instance? Although Grice does not mention this property explicitly in later writings, his analysis of nonnatural meaning being intentional, he should be taking for granted that quotability entails voluntariness. 9 For simplicity, we may assume along with him that factivity and quotability embody the other relevant criteria. Still, even in this condensed version, for the distinction to be captured by the test, factivity and quotability must behave in consistent contrariety, i.e., there should not be cases of meaning in which both are confirmed or denied together. Should such 'anomalies' occur, to save the difference between nonnatural meaning and what is not (and along with it much of the Gricean programme) from collapsing, the tests would have to be reinterpreted in a new light.

Consider the following claims of meaning: A) The existence of this oasis means that there is water here. B) The hair erection of this cat means that the animal is scared, lo 6 SWW, pp. 213-214. 7 SWW, p. 349. Also see p. 291. 8 See SWW, p. 291. 9 In passages immediately following his mention of factivity and quotability as tests for

making the distinction, Grice contrasts types of communicative behaviour: accordingly, communicative behaviour with- natural-meaning differs from the same sort of behaviour with-nonnatural-meaning in that the former lacks and the latter involves voluntariness or intentionality. SWW, pp. 292-297.

lo An anonymous referee for this Journal has pointed out to me that some hair erection in cats (localized along the spine and tail) is a display of aggression rather than fear. I acknowledge this and duly declare that 'hair erection' in the present text signifies total fur erection accompanied by the lowering of the body and eye dilation. See M. Beadle, The Cat.' History, Biology and Behaviour (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1977) p. 183.

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299 Natural Meaning

C) The bark of that vervet monkey means that an eagle is attacking. D) This gesture means that she is fond of him. Intuition inclines us to treat only (D) as a case of nonnatural meaning; we would be willing to regard only this as 'typically human communication'. The others either involve natural signs or the communicative behaviour of animals. How do the tests score here?

(A) and (D) provide ideal application for the criteria: (D) is quotable as 'This gesture means "I am fond of you", it can be paraphrased in the form 'What was meant by this g e s t u r e . . . ', and the gesture is a voluntary communicative action of an agent. Moreover (D) fails factivity: its truth does not entail that she is fond of him. She may have performed thus under social pressure, or because of a certain ulterior motive while in fact she is disgusted by him. Also, it is not the fact that she produced this gesture; she meant it by the gesture. Earlier we have seen how (A) runs smoothly through the test of naturalness. But what of the others?

According to Grice, (B) is an example of natural meaning with special importance, for what it illustrates is crucial to an understanding of the so-called common core, 'the root idea' of natural and nonnatural meanings. In a logico- pragmatic - - though not a historical - - sense, it allows us to s e e ' . . , that natural meaning is in some specifiable way the ancestor of nonnatural m e a n i n g . . . among the things which have natural meaning, besides black clouds, spots on the face, and symptoms of this or that disease, are certainly forms of behavior: things like groans, screeches, and so on, which mean, or normally mean, that someone or something is in pain or some other state. '11 Examples are in abundance: the snarling, growling of some animals meaning that they are angry, the spots on the skin of the stickleback fish meaning that it is ready for mating, the blush of someone meaning that she is embarrassed, the purring cat, the wincing man, etc. Grice notes, and with this we can all agree, that if it is possible for an individual to produce such behaviour intentionally, by openly simulating it this individual may mean things nonnaturally. For example, by uttering the sound 'grrr', and signalling my intent to communicate I can make that sound mean nonnaturally that I am angry. 12

It is also possible, however, to bring about such behaviour through causes different from the normal (or usual), and without this involving (even the attempt of) simulation. By injecting a cat with some chemical extract it should be possible to induce fur erection without fear or anger, or to make blue spots appear on a fish out of the mating season, and without the 'urge'. Such behavioural displays will be as automatic and spontaneous as their ordinary release, but will be deprived of their ordinary cause. Certainly, though, they will deceive other members of the species, and not only other cats, but also dogs, mice and men perceiving the physical state of the cat will interpret it as an indication of its ordinary cause. An expression like 'The cat's hair erection means that it is scared, but of course in fact the cat is not scared (for we induced that response without scaring the animal)' is consistent and makes sense, and thus factivity

11 SWW, p. 292. 12 sww, pp. 290-297; also see my ~l'he Speaker's Communicative Intent', Journal for the

Theory of Social Behaviour 10 (1980), pp. 26-27, and 31 ft.

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remains unfulfilled in case (B), even though tests (b) to (e) are satisfied as expected from natural meaning.

Case (C) is more puzzling. Vervet monkeys live in trees; when a monkey sees an aerial predator attacking the herd it gives a bark, and the others hearing this, climb down the trees to hide in the thick foliage. When they are on the ground and a ground predator approaches them a different bark is released and this time the monkeys climb up the tree. Here factivity remains unfulfilled much more easily: a monkey may misperceive a falling leaf as an eagle swooping down on it. The bark will not mean a leaf, though. It will mean that an eagle is attacking, making other monkeys run for their lives, while there is neither an attack nor an eagle. In this case there is also room for some hesitation in paraphrasing the assertion of meaning in the form 'the fact that the monkey ~ave a bark meant that an eagle is attacking' for it is not quite clear that we cannot say here 'What was meant by the bark was that an eagle was attacking'. Intuition seems more confident in judging that the case should pass tests (d) and (e) as natural meaning. There is reason for supposing that in cases (B) and (C) we encounter an anomaly.

II. Factivity

My judgment that in (B) and (C) factivity remains unfulfilled may not have been fully persuasive yet. Substantiating it will require a more detailed discussion of the nature of factivity.

In many claims of natural meaning one speaks about particular facts as meaning other particular facts. On occasions where some fact X is said to mean that r, what is perceptually" available is only X and does not include r itself: the latter is inferred from X. I f this were not the case, the truth of r would be directly entailed by the (reliable) perceptual availability of this very fact, making the entailment of factivity redundant. If statements of meaning involved perceptual descriptions of the meaning, they would be otiose, leaving no point in indicating something through its natural sign. 13 Surely, though, claims of natural meaning are not at all redundant, and the point in indicating someth ingby its natural sign is precisely that it is not directly available. We do not see the water, but only perceive the oasis; we do not perceive the rain, but see the clouds, we do not perceive someone's death, but see his severed head. What is thus indicated by a natural sign is something inferred. We infer r, for X indicates that r, but the truth of the latter does not logically follow from that of X alone; it follows from 'X means that r ' in conjunction with 'X'.

I suggest that the reason why r is entailed by 'X means that r ' is to be found in what makes such a statement of meaning true. X indicates the r in virtue of a correlation existing between the two, and the strength of such a correlation varies in the different types of cases to which statements of meaning are applicable.

la I borrow the expression 'indicating' as a translation of natural meaning from Fred Dretske. See Explaining Behavior (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988) p. 53 ff., esp. p. 55. Something X will be said to indicate r if and only ifX can be said to mean naturally that r. Indication aims at capturing the objective connection which exists between X and r.

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301 Natural Meaning

Thus the truth conditions of statements of natural meaning do not always link X and r with equal firmness. Where the type of relation expressed is so strong that the existence of X becomes sufficient for the occurrence of r, 'X means that r' just means 'X implies r', and since under such circumstances the statement of meaning is true and X is the case, r follows by modus ponens.

One account of why there exists such an implication and hence factivity, is 'singularistic'. This account will have to refuse my judgement that in (B) and (C) factivity does not hold. Accordingly, 'X means that r' expresses the particular fact that X is sufficient for r, and its truth is said to be determined by the particular circumstance that X caused (or is caused by) r: 'This particular hair erection of this cat here means that the animal is scared' is true in virtue of the circumstances under which the particular bodily event of hair erection happening in this cat /s actually caused by this cat's being in fear (regardless of whether we actually know that the animal is scared: the issue is not epistemic). Therefore, the quoted statement asserts that, under these particular circumstances, the cat's having a hair erection guarantees that the cat is scared. If it is true that X means that r, then X implies that r, for speaking of particular cases, 'means' in the natural sense just signifies 'causes' or 'is caused by'. In the so-called 'anomalous' cases where, because the usual cause is overridden the entailment appears to be unfulfilled, the statement of meaning is just not true. The proposition 'This cat's erect hair means that it is scared' is false, if in fact, on the relevant occasion, the cause of hair erection happens to be a shot of adrenalin rather than fear. If in such an exceptional case r happens to be false in spite of the fact that X obtains, it cannot be true that x implies r, and a fortiori it cannot be that X means that. Factivity has not been defeated, for under these circumstances what would have otherwise entailed r is not true; X does not mean that r.

I believe that the singularisti¢ account should be rejected, and my reasons are the following:

(i) This approach hinges on the assumption that the unique condition making a certain statement of meaning true is a given X's being caused by a given r. Once it is granted that on the occasion of X's coming about the true proposition 'X means that r' signifies 'X is sufficient for r', the truth of r is indeed ensured: the occurrence of a particular X (physically) necessitates that a particular state r bringing it about has actually occurred. Too much is secured here, however, and now r follows trivially: given the assumption and the conditions above, r cannot fail to be true. 14 It becomes logically impossible to state truly of any X that it means r without r being the case. Thus the assumption makes the failure of factivity a logical impossibility. Apply it, and any claim of meaning is made consistent with factivity. This defeats the purpose: the assumption will make statements of nonnatural meaning false, too, and consequently such contexts will not defeat factivity, and nothing will be meant nonnaturally. Suggesting that the assumption applies only to cases that are factive already won't do. Surely no one would challenge that this feature is present in (A) independently of the

14 For example, in his Explaining Behavior, p. 55 Dretske says: 'As Gric¢ observes, nothing can mean that P in the natural sense of meaning ff P is not the case.'

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assumption, but in (B) and (C), as seen, the matter is controversial. That the latter are not counterexamples is assertible only on the basis of the assumption. It will be arbitrary, however, to apply it to some claims of meaning and not to others, if any to which it applies preserves factivity.

(ii) There is a further awkward consequence: conditional upon whether in the circumstances r obtains, different tokens of X-type will, on different occasions, be said to mean and not to mean that r. This is at odds with the concept of natural meaning. Natural meaning ought to be 'timeless', and should not change according to circumstances. I f X means naturally that r, it ought to do so consistently, and not on a part-time basis. If sna r ing means anger, just as smoke means fire, it should always mean that. TM

(iii) Another odd consequence of the singularistic explanation is epistemic: earlier, I have indicated that since it is not pointless to make claims of natural meaning, it must be that independent of the perceptual presence of X we do not have empirical grounds for believing that r. Conjoining this with the singularistic account yields that in most cases knowledge of natural meaning will not be available; it will not be knowable whether or not 'X means that r' is true. Although accordingly X will mean r only when r occurs, which of the X's encountered mean that r, will remain concealed: only some X's are brought about by r's, and the latter not being directly available, we won't know which.

(iv) Finally, regarding cases of type (B) and (C) where X is not caused by r, the singularistic explanation contradicts the belief of every (human or animal) individual encountering X in a relevant ordinary communicat ion situation. In such circumstances every member of the species (and those of the neighbouring ones) will take r to mean what it ordinarily indicates, while this account will deny that there was anything meant. It will judge that X fails to indicate anything, while in ordinary practice everyone concerned will act as if we should suppose that X misindicated something. I think the singularistic account has too many implausible - - if not absurd - - consequences and should be abandoned.

The assumption criticised robs the singularistic approach of an account of weaker indication: if there exists an oasis, it is physically impossible for water not to be there, but there may be hair erection in the absence of excitement, or alarm barks without impending danger. In the latter the relation between 'X means that r' and r is not an entailment, but nevertheless there is: a factual (natural) connection between the two; if in such contexts X means that r, and X occurs, the occurrence of r seems just probable. A satisfactory treatment of natural meaning should not remain blind to these considerations, and hence in dealing with anomalous cases, instead of holding the singularistic assumption to be true, and consequently judging that the statement of meaning is false, one should do the converse.

15 This point cannot be forestalled by distinguishing normal natural meaning from what is not so: first, the oddity to be accounted for is not a difference between grades of natural meaning, but one between the possession and total lack of natural meaning by the same X-type. Second, singularistic criteria that draw the normal-abnormal distinction will be the same as those determining the difference between bearing and lacking natural meaning, and hence devoid of explanatory value.

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303 Natural Meaning

! have said that the reason why r is entailed by 'X means that r' is to be found in what makes this assertion true. Now I submit that when the co-occurrence of (the likes of) X and (the likes of) r is so strong that X's indicate r's invadably, then (and only then) the indication is an implication. With such a background, the occurrence of an X becomes sufficient for the occurrence of an r, and since 'X means r' amounts to 'X implies r', granting the truth of the latter and that X is the case, it follows that r. A statement of natural meaning expresses an 'indication' backed by the lawful co-occurrence of the items it relates. The firmness (or degree of generality) of such a co-occurrence determines the 'strength' of the meaning asserted. Co-occurrences take the form of a causal relation, or an essential coincidence, TM and items falling under such generalities indicate each other mutually. If a co-occurrence is a physical necessity captured by a deterministic law, each of the items so related is sufficient for the other. This is what we have in case-type (A). The existence of an oasis is sufficient for the existence of water there, for there is a firm lawful co-occurrence of the existence of water and that of vegetation (on suitable soil), and from the truth of the antecedent, along with the truth of such a strong indication it follows that water exists there.

In (B) and (C), on the other hand, co-occurrences are not strong. In these cases the item that is said to bear the meaning may be brought about through alternative causal chains, i.e., by other causes than the ones that usually co-occur with them. The latter are weaker co-occurrences connected by longer chains, and hence get intersected more easily: among other things these mark the relation between animal communicative displays and what such things indicate. Fur erection in cats means that the animal is scared. It is fear that causes it, and there is a generalizable co-occurrence between the two. The same type o f response can be obtained, though, by injecting a drug; behavioural mechanisms can be triggered without their usual cause. It is even imaginable that owing to a biological accident or to some surgical intervention, the nervous system could be so modified that, in an individual, a response such as hair erection is now regularly induced by a different cause (e.g., eating sweets) than the 'lawful' one. In (B) and (C), therefore, X's indication of r is not an implication. Consequently, factivity fails: the statement of meaning does not entail the meaning.

III. Revision

If in (B) and (C) factivity remains unfulfilled, then what satisfies the criteria of natural meaning fully constitutes a much smaller and more restricted set of cases than has so far been surmised. Many situations we intuitively regard as containing natural meaning do not fulfil the relevant criteria adequately. There seems to be a spectrum of cases failing between clear examples of natural and nonnatural meanings. To lose the dichotomy, however, is to lose the dualism of natural versus nonnatural. Does it follow that we thereby also lose the clearness and distinctness of nonnatural meaning, and that the criticism mentioned in section I gets justified? Such a thing does not follow, for Grice's tests identity

16 E.g., being gold and having the atomic number 79, and derivatively, qualities such as being a metal, yellow, malleable, noble, etc.

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successfully every case of nonnatural meaning which we recognize intuitively: these cases indeed fail every criterion from (a) to (e). The incapacity of the test as a whole consists in its failure to capture every case which is not nonnatural as a

case o f natural meaning. I suggest that we ramify meanings: let us begin by acknowledging the polar

natural and nonnatural meaning-types exemplified by particular situations that satisfy (and fail) every test from (a) to (e). I will call the gradation of case-types falling between these two poles 'quasinatural meaning' , and this will cover different sorts of animal communicative behaviour. As is desirable, we obtain a dualism between 'typically human comtnunication' and what is not by marking out nonnatural meaning from what is not: let us call any case of meaning which does not fail every test from (a) to (e), 'broadly natural meaning'. Hence broadly natural meaning comprises natural and quasinatural meaning. This is what in fact the Gricean test attempted to distinguish from nonnatural mean ing though in the end succeeded in capturing only a subset of cases that fall under it. In summary, therefore, any case failing factivity but satisfying quotability is nonnatural meaning; any, on the other hand, that simply fails quotability is broadly natural meaning. Those failing quotability as well as factivity constitute quasinatural meaning. Finally, those fulfilling factivity but failing quotability make up the set of cases bearing natural meaning.

A second reinterpretation concerns the notion of 'consequentiality' . According to Grice, ' . . . the root idea in the notion of m e a n i n g . . , is that if x means that y, then this is equivalent to, or at least contains as a part of what it means, the claim that y is a consequence of x. That is, what the cases of natural and nonnatural meaning have in common is that, on some interpretation of the notion of consequence, y's being the case is a consequence of x. ' lr Accordingly, the idea of entailment marking factivity is to be understood as deriving from the general character of ~consequentiality' found in every case of meaning, regardless of whether it is confined to (human or non-human) communication. Here Grice characterizes the relation I have called ' indication' as a consequence. I think this is an excessive circumscription committed to narrow explanatory power. No doubt there is a sense in which the existence of a certain feature essential to an object is a consequence of the existence of that object, as it depends upon the latter. This is not, however, a causal consequence. Furthermore, a causal consequence presupposes directionality: such a thing must be the effect of the causal relation involved or some aspect associated with it. Natural meaning is not so restricted and discrepancies between indications and consequences require a reinterpretation of Grice's 'consequentiality'.

In a statement such as 'The drought of the past few months means that the crops are mined this year', natural meaning is indeed a consequence of that which is said to bear it. There are, however, numerous cases in which the item that means and the item meant by it are linked by a lawful co-occurrence of causal type in the reverse direction, where what is expressed as the meaning is the

17 SWW, pp. 291-292. Bracketed expressions are my additions. The consequence in question is not, however, merely a belief: 'In "natural meaning" consequences are states of affairs', SWW, p. 292.

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305 Natural Meaning

cause of what is said to mean it and not a consequence. Here, the consequence is what indicates and not what is indicated by it. 'The head on Herod's charger means that St. John was killed', 'This oasis means water', 'That smoke there means fire', 'The snarling of the dog means that it is angry', exemplify the point. I think we should reject Grice's suggestion that 'if x means y, then y, or something which includes y . . . is a consequence of x'2 8 Clearly, the killing is not a consequence of the head's presently detached existence from what used to be its body, and parallel evaluations apply to the other examples. Whatever the firmness of the indication involved, 'consequentiality' should cede its place to 'lawful co-occurrence' without any imposition of directionality. On an occasion where X can be claimed to indicate that r, if strong enough, the lawful co- occurrence backing such a claim will allow reading the latter as 'X implies r', without necessarily making X the cause of r.

IV. The Fringes of Quasinatural Meaning TM

Animal communicative behaviour does not solely cover the variety of spontaneous displays of innter states or attitudes, which humans, too, use so frequently. Other behavioural patterns, exemplified by (C), are not merely indications of internal states: they have acquired an extra, non-reflexive content, and are no longer directly connected with what they represent. The barking monkey conveying a highly specific message, produces behaviour that has been finely specialized through evolution. Alarm barks are released spontaneously, as automatic responses to particular types of stimuli, but the crucial information they contain is not just about the animal itself; it concerns a n important fact in the immediate environment. Similar examples will include birds singing to communicate territorial claims, and bees dancing to convey information about the position and quantity of nectar.

Cases illustrated by (B) and (C) compare as follows: (1) Both fail factivity in the sense of an entailment. In both, the truth of the statement of meaning makes the truth of the meaning it states probable: X indicates r factually, but weakly. (2) The probability involved in (C) is lower, for in addition to the ways in which the truth of r can fail in (B), in (C) r may fail due to a variety of perceptual mistakes of the sort we find in skeptical arguments. It is even conceivable that a vervet monkey should call out in sleep because it dreams of being attacked by a leopard. So, in (B) the correlation between the occurrences of X and r is firmer than in (C), and this places the latter closer to nonnatural meaning. (3) (B) represents internal states while (C) communicates the existence of certain surrounding external conditions. (4) Both fall short of the positive marks of nonnatural meaning: they do not satisfy quotability, they cannot be attributed to an agent, and they admit no

la SWW, p. 350. la In this section I use some of the material of an earlier paper, 'The Fringes of Natural

Meaning', Philosophia 12 (1983) pp. 337-341. In the meantime, however, I have revised my views on the matter considerably.

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translation beginning with 'What was meant by . . .'. They do not involve deliberate or intentional communication. (5) In both cases, the co-occurrence of X and r is an objective regularity and is unlike the arbitrary choice and explicit intersubjectivity of a convention.

In nonnatural meaning bearers of meaning are 'artificial'. Even in the communication situations where the meaning can be said to cause the utterance, as in the case of a person who, looking out of the window, utters 'It is raining', the meaning (the fact that it is raining) brings about the utterance only if it embodies the speaker's relevant intention. Without this intention, a circumstance cannot give rise to an utterance that means it nonnaturally. In contrast, however, provided that perceptual mechanisms, etc., function as usual, the sight of an eagle will be singly responsible for the release of the monkey's cry. When a nonnatural meaning and a certain utterance-type display a regular co-occurrence, the character of the co-occurrence is not lawful: it is a convention (or a state of mutual knowledge leading to a convention), a° Different human communities associate different utterances with the same nonnatural meaning, while all vervet monkeys issue (roughly) the same bark as a signal of alarm.

Without an unnecessary commitment to a genetic or historical thesis, the present view that clear cases of natural and nonnatural meaning are polar ends joined by grades of quasinatural meaning reinforces Grice's model according to which successive stages extend from natural meaning to what may be called typically human communication: al

Although humans are the only species that communicate so extensively in the artificial way, it does not seem totally impossible for other higher animals to do the same, for they possess much of the necessary basis for communicating through the use of nonnatural meaning. One (arguably) 'artificial' case is that of chimpanzees being taught a human sign-language. 22 Another involves a perfectly 'natural ' context for nonnatural meaning: like many other higher species, monkeys too use play extensively in teaching and learning skills. One can then envision a large number of situations in which individuals issue barks without a serious purpose, as when, for example, younger animals practise the bark in the context of play. Unless good reasons are offered, showing that in situations of play there is no attempt to communicate anything, and that participating agents act like Cartesian playing machines, Grice's test may have to place the meaning of the sham-bark within the category of nonnatural meaning. Why not? 2a

Bogazici University Received July 1990 Revised April 1991

ao For 'mutual knowledge', see D. Lewis, Convention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), and S. Schiffer, Meaning (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).

a~ SWW, pp. 290-297. 'My succession of stages is not, of course, intended to be a historical or genetic account of the development of communication and language; it is a myth designed, among other things, to exhibit the conceptual link between natural and nonnatural meaning' (p. 297).

aa For doubts see J. Bennett, 'Thoughtful Brutes', APA Proceedings and Addresses 62, supp. to no. 1 (1987) pp. 202-203.

aa I am grateful to Gurol Irzik and Elaine Miller for their comments.

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