John Perry (reporting joint work with Kepa Korta)
University of California, Riverside and Stanford University

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I.            Introduction

1. Kaplan’s well-known remark re vagaries of action versus clarity of meaning.

2. Still, from the point of view of pragmatics, action is hard to avoid.

3. Actually, on a more positive view, philosophy of action offers not only vagaries, but also interesting structure, attention to which may clear up  some puzzles about reference.

II.            The Structure of action

1. Executions of movements; Accomplishments; Circumstances; Way-of; Constraints.

2. Roles are a way of thinking about relations, relative to a given object (agent, thinker, speaker) or episode (act, thought, utterance).

3. Acts are directed at objects that play certain agent-relative and act-relative roles.

4. Linking, transferring, and embedding of roles

5. Pragmatic roles, direct and indirect.

III.            Signs

1. A similar structure in the case of signs.  Being in a state, in certain circumstances, provides information about objects that play certain agent-relative and perception relative roles: direct pragmatic roles.

2. Given wider circumstances (and constraints), information is provided about less directly related objects.

3. So we have epistemic roles, direct and indirect.

4. Attunement versus explicit knowledge and understanding.

IV.            Roles in Cognition

1. Notions keep track of things, via their thinker- and agent-relative roles.

2. Buffers keep track of things that we are perceiving, or picking up information about through perception.

3. Detached notions keep track of things that we have picked up information about, and expect to in the future.

4. Detached notion do not enter into actions except by being (re-) connected with buffers.

V.            Roles in Communication

1. A Gricean picture of communicative intention; S is the speaker, H the hearer.

2. S refers to an object in order to get H to think about it via an apt cognitive fix, that is, a way suited to the belief S is trying to instill in H having effects that suits S’s purposes.

3. Various referring devices (indexicals, demonstratives, names) are suited for manipulating roles, to produce apt ways of thinking, in common situations.

4. The elements of reference:

    

   1. The motivating belief (the one the speaker has, and wants the hearer to have in a certain way), and its content.

   2. The directing intention (the intention the speaker has to refer to a constituent of the content of the motivating belief, by exploiting the meaning of a referring device).

   3. The target intention (the intention for H to have the relevant apt cognitive fix)

   4. The path intention (S’s plan for H to arrive at the target cognitive-fix, given the information provided by S’s act of reference).

5. Examples

    

   1. Passing the salt

      • I’d like the salt

      • She would like the salt

      • Julia Roberts would like the salt

   2. Union Station in Chicago

      • That is Union Station

      • So is that

6. Final Deep Remarks