Meaning and speaker's intentions

Abstract

In "Meaning and Truth" Strawson draws a contrast between what he calls "communication-intention theories" and "formal semantics theories" of meaning. According to the former it is impossible to give an adequate account of the concept of meaning without reference to the possession by speakers of audience-directed intentions of a certain complex kind. The opposite view is based on the thought that the sense of a sentence is determined by its truth-conditions. Strawson described the conflict between these two theories as a "Homeric struggle", and groups together Grice, Austin and the later Wittgenstein as exponents of the first type of theory, and Chomsky, Frege and the earlier Wittgenstein as exponents of the second.