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Carlo Penco Inferential Responsibility

Since Grice's work many scholars, even in the field of jurisprudence, havebegun to give more and more space to the understanding of the so-called"implicit" aspect of language and communication. It is worth noting that the

origin of the discussion in Grice concerns the problem of giving anassessment of logical rules in everyday conversation. It is thereforereasonable to trace the main origin of the discussion in the debate aboutlanguage and logic which opened the field of discussions in philosophy oflanguage where Grice's remarks could grow. We need then to go back to theorigin of contemporary mathematical logic, to Frege's main ideas. I willpresent two main Fregean tenets in philosophy of language and logic andindicate two main problems connected with these tenets. I will then describehow these two problems are re-stated and faced, respectively, by Grice andBrandom. Given this background I will then try to give a definition of a newconcept, that is the concept of "inferential responsibility", which is the resultof the discussion of the problems derived by the Fregean tenets discussed at

the beginning of the paper.

1. Fregean tenets on inference and two problems

In his early work on logic, often referred to as the principal work on logicsince the Analytics of Aristotle, Frege delivers a terrible blow to all traditionallogic by declaring that the relation between subject and predicate has norelevance in logic. Logic deals with judgements (that is assertions) and "theonly thing that is relevant in a judgement is that which influences itspossibleconsequences. Everything that is necessary for a valid inference is fullyexpressed; but what is not necessary is mostly not even indicated; nothing isleft to guessing." [Frege, Begriffsschrift, 3] The example given by Frege toground this conclusion derives from a comparison of the following twosentences:

a) At Platea the Greeks defeated the Persiansb) At Platea the Persians were defeated by the Greeks

Frege notes that, even if they have different subjects, the conclusions thatcan be drawn from the first (when combined with certain others) also alwaysfollow from the second (when combined with the same judgements).

Therefore the subject-predicate distinction is not relevant to what isfundamental for logic, that is logical consequence. This argument isconsidered as a possible definition of the sense of a sentence: the sense of asentence is its "inferential potential" (a term which is not to be found inFrege's texts, but in the literature about Frege). In fact to speak of sentenceswith the same sense I need a criterion of identity of senses; and the criterionis identified with the ability to produce the same consequences in a chain ofreasoning. Given collateral premises, from both a) and b) manyconsequences follow, such as the better prospect of success for the Greeks,the difficulties of the Persians, the end of a period of war, and so on.Here we have two problems: (i) there is apparently some difference betweenthe two sentences; how could we explain that difference? (ii) apparently this


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conception of sense makes the sense of a sentence something unattainableby a human (how could we follow all the possible inferences derivable from asentence?). Let us see how Frege treats the two problems.

(i) a small difference in sense?Frege recognizes that there is a "small difference in sense" between the two

sentences. He does not say what it is, but he clarifies that the two sentencesmay have different effects on the audience, perhaps suggesting a differentorder in the derivation of the inferences. Here Frege is not so clear, becausewhat it is necessary for a valid inference must be "fully expressed"; however,in later works, Frege remarks that the clear cut difference between what isasserted and what is not asserted does not avoid the problem ofindividuating in communication what is not asserted, but somehow suggestedby the use of different lexical items or grammatical construction (as in thedifference of active and passive construction given in the example before). Incommunication we "have to make a distinction between the thoughts thatare expressed and those which the speaker leads others to take as truealthough he does not express them". Here another example is given by Frege

in his 1887 Logic1:a) this dog barked the whole nightb) this cur barked the whole night

Might we say that there is a small difference in sense? Certainly yes. Whatcan be derived by the contents of the two assertions is the same, that a dogbarked and, with collateral assumptions, that he had a bad effect on thesleep of people nearby, and so on. However, there is something that is notexplicitly asserted, but suggested by the term "cur", which is "pejorative" andsuggests that the speaker has a poor opinion of the dog. This further claim isnot asserted, but can be derived from the way in which sentence b) isconstructed (or by the difference in tone in which the word "dog" ispronounced). We have therefore at least two levels of sense as inferential

potential: what can be derived from what is explicitly asserted and what canbe derived from what is not asserted, but suggested by the peculiar grammarand lexicon of the sentence. We can therefore attribute to Frege a cleardistinction between what is said (what is asserted as true) and what iscommunicated, and inferred by pragmatic rules.

(ii) limited understandingChains of inferences which can derived from a sentence together withpossible collateral assumptions are infinite; a complete mastery of themeaning of a sentences therefore seems impossible. This happenseverywhere, even in the most abstract fields of thought; in a later paper of1914 (Logic in Mathematics) Frege remarks that "Chains of inferences areformed connecting truths; and the further the science develops the longerand more numerous become the chains of inference and the greater thediversity of the theorems" and concludes that "there is no limit to thenumber of steps forward we can take." If even a great mathematician cannotbe said to master completely the sense of a theorem, what can we say of anormal person's understanding of the sense of a sentence? We are bound tosay that we understand the sense of what we say only partially and in a very

11887; all references to Freges works are quoted from Frege 1997.


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limited manner, at least given our computational capacity. God mightperhaps follow all the possible inferences from a sentence, but infinitarypower is not in the capacity of humans. Why, then, define a concept of senseso unattainable for humans? Frege is a very passionate "platonist" and doesnot appear to care about human limitations; what is relevant is truth andlogical consequence; humans can only try to get the best they can, given

their limitations; logic, perhaps, will deal with what we are unable to.Passionate platonist as he was, Frege realized before other scholars the ideaof limited understanding.

(iii)Two problemsIt is time now to see how these tenets provoke two problems whichcontemporary philosophers are dealing with:(i) PCI: PROBLEM OF THE COMMITMENT TO THE IMPLICIT - Even if we have todistinguish between what is explicitly asserted and what is only suggested,expressed but not asserted, to what point are we committed to what we donot assert and only suggest? Once we realize the difference between what isexplicitly asserted and what is derived implicitly by what is expressed we are

led to consider the way others may interpret not only the content of ourassertions, but also the content of what is left to be derived, which counts assomething which is implicitly suggested.(ii) PCC: PROBLEM OF THE COMMITMENT TO CONSEQUENCES - Given that wecannot follow all the consequences of our assertions, to what point are webound to recognize or accept the consequences of what we say (and of whatwe implicitly communicate)?

There are two standard answers to these problems in the philosophicalliterature, the first given by Grice and the second by Brandom. We will have alook first at one and then the other.

2. Gricean solution to the problem of the difference between saying and

communicating

Grice's stance is very well known in pragmatics: we have to distinguish whatis said from what is communicated, following the distinction betweensemantic meaning and speaker's meaning. Speaker's and semantic meaningdo not always coincide; sometimes in saying one thing - with its conventionalmeaning accepted by the linguistic community - we mean something else.What is communicated is often not asserted explicitly, but suggestedimplicitly. So far, this is no different from the Fregean stance. The innovationof Grice 1975 lies in the elaboration of a system of rules which permit anunderstanding (or explanation) of the way in which what is communicated isderived from what is expressed. This step goes beyond Frege's analysis.Grice accepts a traditional distinction between explicit and implicit, alreadydiscussed in Frege, and develops a further idea, the idea of conversationalimplicature, that is a kind of calculable set of rules which - starting from whatis said, the context, and a set of rules of conversation - permits the derivationof what is implicitly communicated. This analysis of the rules of conversation(following a general principle of cooperation in dialogue) permits a partialanswer to the first problem

Conversational implicatures - derivation from what is said plus rules of


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conversation in context - are calculable and cancellable. Implicatures aredifferent from normal derivation, because they are not the consequences ofwhat is explicitly asserted, but are applied to what is asserted plus thecontext and the rules of conversation to infer what is implicitly suggested.Grice insisted on the analysis of the "intention" of the speaker incommunicating her intention through implicatures. But there is also the side

of the hearer. My point here is that "good" conversational implicatures aresubmitted to certain general principles or - to borrow a term from Austin -"felicity conditions":(i) the speaker shouldbe conscious of the inferential environment (sharedpresuppositions, common ground)(ii) the speaker should take into account the point of view of the hearer(iii) the speaker should check which implicatures have been derived from herassertionsHere, for the first time, we encounter our topic: inferential responsibility.Given (i)-(iii), we have the problem of defining the responsibility people haveconcerning the implicatures derived by others from their assertions. On theone hand we have the intention to communicate some content of thought; on

the other we have general objective rules and a shared context which permitthe hearer to derive implicatures, even if the speaker is not - although sheshould be - always aware of their possibility. Be it intentional or not, animplicature is objectively derivable from the context and the rules ofconversation. Therefore, following the felicity conditions given above, it isreasonable to assume that:(iv) there is a period of time beyond which what is implicated - if notcancelled - is intended as accepted

This topic is of real importance in public discourse, where politicians are oftencompelled to explicitly reject what is derived from the content implicitlysuggested by their assertions. This general conclusion given as assertionactually - at the moment - conceals at least two questions:

(v) when can a person be held responsible for unexpected implicatures of hisassertions?(vi) when must what is implicated be explicitly rejected to avoid undesiredimplicatures?Questions (v) and (vi) concern a requirement of cancellation; I cannot be heldresponsible for any implicatures people may derive from what I say; however,when I am considered responsible for implicatures derived from what I say,then the cancellation should arrive quickly. A prototypical example in publicaffairs involves the implicatures derived from a speech given by the CatholicPope quoting a sentence which was critical towards Mohammed. Even if thePope did not assert anything against Mohamed, a general implicature wasthat the Pope was against Muslim world. There is always a first time for aPope, and for the first time - through his secretary - the Pope explicitlycancelled the implicature, within a very short period of time (two-three days).Grice's idea of implicatures, their calculability and cancellability (check) hassuggested a most elegant manner of framing the problem of inferentialresponsibility. Discussions on implicatures in legal matters have been apromising field of common research between philosophers and lawyers.However, Grice's implicature is just a specific instance of the more generalproblem of inferential responsibility. One side of the problem concerns the


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indirect inferences derived through conversational implicatures, as aspecification of PCI, the other side concerns the second problem devisedabove (PCC), with both of them falling under the general problem ofinferential responsibility. Even though some cognitive results may come fromthe great amount of work done in Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson19XX), I think we may find more help in clarifying our problem in Brandom's

inferential semantics and pragmatics and in its normative character.

3. Brandom's suggestion on the boundaries of inferential commitment

Brandom's view of assertion can be considered as a specification of thefelicity conditions for the utterance of an assertion; an assertion is a wellformed speech act if the person performing the assertion satisfies thefollowing two conditions:(i) the speaker must be entitled to make the assertion, that is she has topossess some justification for it.(ii) the speaker must be committed to accepting the consequences whichlogically follow from her utterance (assuming then that the consequences are

closed under the relation of logical consequence, even if aspects of non-monotonicity can be accounted for in peculiar situations).From this point of view understanding the sense of a sentence amounts tothe capacity to answer questions on what justifies an assertion of thesentence, and to answer questions on the consequences of the assertion.

There is however a peculiar version of the PCC problem above; in fact,there is a contrast between Brandom's notion of commitment and his notionof understanding. If understanding implies awareness of the consequences,commitment is not necessarily "conscious". Commitment is a normativeattitude; we are committed to what our assertion objectively implies, even ifwe are not always conscious of those consequences. Therefore there is a splitbetween the notion of objective commitment and the notion of

understanding. Understanding is a human capacity bound to our resourceand computational capability, while commitment is a normative status whichis partially independent of our human capacity. Summarizing:- Commitment as a normative status binds people to (a) hold as true thetheoretical consequences of their assertions and (b) recognize the practicalconsequences to be performed- Undestanding as human capacity is bound under different humanlimitations: in general, limitation of computational capacities and, moresimply, limitation of information regarding presuppositions shared in thecontext in which we perform our speech acts.We cannot grasp all the consequences of our assertions because we cannotbe aware of all the possible consequences (both explicit consequences andconversational implicatures) accessible to our listeners, together withcollateral assumptions. The main problem derives from the fact that what isnot said, but is socially presupposed, is always a potential collateralagreement which should be taken into account.In fact, no assertion or other speech act appears in a void; there is always acontext of presupposition, and speech acts are always understood in localcontexts together with collateral assumptions. But no one is able to follow allthe consequences of her assertions, expecially given collateral assumptions.


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If we adhere to a strict holistic view of language and meaning as inBrandom 1994, we find ourselves, consequently, in the following situation:unexpressed collateral assumptions belong to the context of utterance; theinferential potential of an utterance (an assertion, for instance) is given bythe set of all possible inferences derivable from that assertion together withcollateral assumptions. PCI, or Grices' problem of accepting implicatures

derived by listeners, is just a peculiar case of a general vision of meaning asinferential potential, and of the definition of entitlement and commitment asfelicity conditions of our speech acts. Brandom's intuition is that we areresponsible for what can be derived from our assertions and other speechacts given collateral assumptions2. But collateral assumptions are a short wayof including both inferences from explicit contents of assertions andinferences from implicit content (conversational implicatures). Ultimately, theproblem we have called PCC is the most general problem which prompts thequestion about inferential responsibility, which can be reframed in thefollowing way:

given limited knowledge of the inferential surroundings of our

assertions and probable collateral shared commitments: when andhow can we be considered responsible for the theoretical and practicalconsequences of what we say?

4. Inferential responsibility: attempted definition

There is a specific contribution given by Brandom on the concept ofresponsibility: his peculiar definition of "task responsibility". Taskresponsibility is the ability to answer3 about (demonstrate? Justify?Authorize?)entitlements. [explain or give quotation in footnote]Strangely enough, Brandom speaks about only one of the two kinds of his

"normative" aspects, entitlement. But we are bound to answer not only tothe entitlements of our speech act, but also to the commitments.Certainly, as Brandom says, we are bound to accept the consequences ofour assertions. But we might also think that we are not only normativelycompelled to accept the consequences of our assertions, but also toforesee them. We may then give a first definition of inferentialresponsibility as follows:

(i) task responsibility: ability to answer about(demonstrate?)entitlements or justifications of assertions(ii) foresight responsibility: ability to foresee the possibleconsequences of assertions

What interests us is the second form of responsibility. We obviously cannotask for a future reading, but we should provide some restrictions regardingwhat can be reasonably foreseen. We might say that

a person is inferentially responsible if she foresees what may be

2Following what is called Bentham's intuition: we are responsible for what we obliquely intend

(for more than appears)3 Responsibility is even etimologically "ability to answer", given that "respondere" in latin

means "to answer"


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reasonably derived from her assertion and from collateralassumptions given in the context of reception.

The problem obviously is what we can mean by "reasonably". A firstapproximation can be that a person is inferentially responsible if she canforesee what can be derived - in few steps - from an assertion together with

the presuppositions shared among the audience of the utterance in the givencontext. This means that we can take into account the inferentialenvironment. Inferential responsibility is a requirement concerning theomission in detecting possible and reasonable consequences of assertions incontext. A certain amount of vagueness is unavoidable; we cannot define apriori "how many steps?" of the exact list of presupposed sentences in acontext. When reasonability is at stake we have to deal with commonagreement and experts. So far we have the indication of some requirementsabout the concept of inferential responsibility:

Basic Requirements:Foresight requirement: an inferentially responsible person is committed to

look for some level of understanding of the sense of what said (its inferencepotential); before asserting something relevant in a context, a responsibleperson should devise the main inference which can be reasonably derivedfrom her assertion in context.Reasonabilityrequirement: an inferentially responsible person should beaware of her cognitive context; without a basic knowledge of sharedpresupposition assertions undesired and unexpected consequences andimplicatures may be provoked. A basic understanding of the reasonableconsequences of assertions implies a basic knowledge of the inferentialenvironment of the assertion, the common ground of shared presuppositionsof the audience4.

The term responsibility remains too vague until some clarification of

the levels of responsibility is provided; I suggest an attempted classificationof different levels and kinds of inferential responsibility, following an intuitivedivision among actual, moral and legal responsibility concerning theconsequences of our speech acts:

1. Actual R: we are actually responsible for any consequence actuallytaken from our assertions (or other speech acts)

2. Moral R: we are morally responsible for any consequence we should

foresee given location+time+audience3. Legal R: we are legally responsible for any consequence we actually

foresee given location+time+audience4. Legal R: we are legally responsible of any consequence we intend to

provoke given location+time+audienceAs it is easy to note I have distinguished two levels of legal

4 An assessment of kinds of context where an assertion (or other speech act) is performed is

theoretically difficult, but easy to devise at an intuitive level, to begin with some elementarydistinctions among Public spaces (television, internet), Educational spaces (school, training,), Local spaces (bar, supermarkets), Private spaces (home, friends,). Starting from herewe might define context dependent inferential responsibility defining in such a way boundariesfor possibile collateral assumptions.


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responsibility, distinguishing between foresight and intention. There is greatdebate concerning the relation between foresight and intention (see forinstance Irvin 1998); I just want to hint at the problem here. The point of mypaper is to point out an idea of responsibility for what we often do notforesee, the consequences of our assertion. Our ignorance cannot be anexcuse in case of unexpected consequences of our assertion. In dubious

cases, inferential responsibility requires emendation.

Bibliography

Frege, G. 1879, Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischennachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens, Nebert, Halle;Engl. Transl. Frege G. 1897

Frege, G. 1997, The Frege Reader, edited by Michael Beaney,Blackwell, Oxford.Brandom R. 1994 Making it Explicit, Harvard U.P., Cambridge (Mass.)Grice H.P. 1975 "Logic and Conversation", in Cole Morgan (a cura di)Syntax and Semantics, vol.3, Academic Press, New York 1975, (41-58); reprinted in Grice H.P. 1989 Studies in the Ways of Words,Harvard U.P., Cambridge (Mass.).Irvin W. 1998 "Intention and Foresight in the British Law of Murder"in Sorites, 9, pp.6-15.Sperber D. Wilson D. Relevance. Communication and cognition,Oxford, Blackwell, 1986.

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