Externalizing Communicative Intentions

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that an embodied cognition theorist has resources available to her to fulfill the explanatory role of communicative intention without postulating inner, private intentions, as is typically done by cognitivists. I argue for this conclusion by identifying a publicity requirement and a sensitivity requirement that must be satisfied by realizers of communicative intentions a theoretical posit that explains the difference between linguistic meaning, as in John means cats are mammals by his utterance cats are mammals, and other sorts of meaning, as in that bell means the train doors are closing. I then show that a cognitivist model and an embodied model of communicative intentions can satisfy these requirements. However, because the embodied model is more theoretically parsimonious than its cognitivist competitor, the embodied model is superior. In the first section, I argue that communicative intentions exhibit the properties of publicity and sensitivity and that whatever satisfies the role of communicative intentions in a theory about cognition must also exhibit those properties. In the second and third sections, I present a cognitivist model and an embodied model of communicative intentions and show that each model exhibits the properties of publicity and sensitivity. In the fourth section, I argue that while both models equally explain the data, the embodied model does so more parsimoniously than the cognitivist model, and this gives us good reason to endorse the embodied model. Finally, I present an objection concerning explanatory power on behalf of the cognitivist and reply to it.