An Examination of Grice's Approach to the Semantics of Indicative Conditionals

• Main Authors: Tsai Dylan Bo-shen, 蔡柏生
• Other Authors: Jerry Seligman
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1998
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/91712366371463318698

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 哲學研究所 === 86 === Are indicative conditionals are material conditionals? Are they truth-functional? Philosophers disagree. My dissertation primarily examines Grice's view on these matters. Grice claimed that the conventional meaning of an indicative conditional is the same as that of the corresponding material conditional. But, when a speaker uses an indicative conditional, we think he conveys more information. Grice thought that, in fact, this piece of information is an implicature to be explained by his pragmatic theory rather than part of the conventional meaning. Grice presented two main accounts: one is the cooperative principle account, and the other is the special function account. The former claims that the implicature results from an assumption,that speakers and hearers are engaged in cooperative conversation, observing the Cooperative Principle. Simply speaking, we can derive the additional information from the conventional meaning of the words being used and the assumption that the speaker observes the Cooperative Principle. Grice's other account is that indicative conditionals have a special expressive function,to present an inferential passage from the antecedent to the consequent. When a speaker uses an indicative conditional in this way, he indirectly suggests that there are some non-truth-functional grounds for passing form antecedent to the consequent.My dissertation addresses whether Grice's accounts provide a satisfactory explanation. In particular, I try to introduce them as clearly as possible in order to show the reasonableness of his approach. This is often obstructed by his text, which is not easy to understand. In doing so, I also address Grice's theory of implicature, and some problems concerning confirmation,informativeness, and embedded conditionals.