Communication before communicative intentions

Abstract

This paper explores the significance of intelligent social behavior among non-human animals for philosophical theories of communication. Using the alarm call system of vervet monkeys as a case study, I argue that interpersonal communication (or what I call "minded communication") can and does take place in the absence of the production and recognition of communicative intentions. More generally, I argue that evolutionary theory provides good reasons for maintaining that minded communication is both temporally and explanatorily prior to the use of communicative intentions. After developing these negative points about the place of communicative intentions in detail, I provide a novel alternative account according to which minded communication is characterized in terms of patterns of action and response that function to coordinate the representational mental states of agents. I show that an account which centers on patterns of representational coordination of this sort is well suited to capture the theoretical roles associated with minded communication and that it does so in a way that provides a good fit with comparative facts about the presence of minded communication among non-human animals.

A case for animal reference: beyond functional reference and meaning attribution

“…that monkeys do not have control on whether to produce their calls and on other aspects of their use). Something similar has been recently argued by Bar-On (2021, p. 10) in relation to primate vocalisations (see also Armstrong, 2023).…”

“…Recent work on primate gestural communication, which is under voluntary control, has already led some scholars to propose psychological accounts of animal communication (see Moore, 2017a;Bar-On, 2021;Warren & Call, 2022;Armstrong, 2023;Scott-Phillips & Heintz, 2023a, 2023b. These accounts make different claims about the extent to which human and animal signalling are continuous.…”

Great ape interaction: Ladyginian but not Gricean

“…As a description of the cognitive basis of ordinary great ape interaction, our conclusion that it is Ladyginian but not Gricean is potentially convergent with some other analyses ( 8 , 55 – 59 ). However, those other analyses do not make a clear distinction between Ladyginian and Gricean modes of interaction.…”

Reference and morphology*

“…We can use the capacities made available by the language faculty to publicly identify individuals in ways that allow others to latch onto them. But language is not, unlike most animal communication systems (Armstrong, 2021), a specialized device for doing this, and the relationship between these general cognitive capacities and the structures made available by language is highly messy. Philosophy and cognitive science would be furthered by not assuming any simple relationship here, as is assumed when it is claimed that linguistic items are tools specifically for reference.…”