Petr Koťátko

In late 1970's and 1980's I have focused on philosophical problems of logic in broad sense (diploma thesis on Husserl's project of transcendental logic, disertation thesis on logical categories in Kant, Hegel and Marx, articles on Kant's account of apriori, on his transcendental deduction of categories, on Hegel's processual account of predication etc.). Since late 1980's I have been working on various topics within the analytical philosophy of language, in particular: speech acts theory, theory of descriptions, the subject-predicate distinction, intentional semantics, the Davidsonian project in the theory of meaning and interpretation, the rule-following problem, the externalism-internalism dispute, the role of intentions and conventions in meaning constitution, the text-work relation and the nature of literary interpretation. One of my aims has been to introduce some of the central topics discussed in the analytical philosophy of language into the Czech philosophical context. Since late 1990's I have been focusing mainly on the theory of interpretation - in a broad sense including both interpretation of utterances in everyday communication and interpretation of literary texts.

1. I have suggested definitions of speech act types in terms of manifestations, in which the speaker presents himself as having certain beliefs and intentions. For instance, in asserting that p the speaker (S) presents himself as believing that p, as intending to create (or activate) the belief that p in the audience (A), as believing that A does not yet know (or does not fully take into account) that p etc. I have argued that these manifestations (self-presentations) cannot be accounted for in terms of actual S's intentions (intentions to create beliefs in A concerning S's attitudes), neither in terms of giving A reasons to believe that S has certain attitudes (as suggested by F. Récanati). I have attempted to show that the normative account of the manifestations (as presentations committing S to the attitudes presented in them) meets tests in which the alternative accounts fail.
2. I take it that the set of these definitions of basic spech act types generally characterizes the basic scale of possible utterance meanings and provides schemes for complete specification of meanings of particular utterances. Thus the complete analysis of the meaning of particular utterance with assertive force differs from the definition of assertion just on the place of the propositional variable: it is to be filled in by whatever is needed on that place to complete the specification of the commitments incurred by the speaker. And correlatively: the way in which the propositional variable is localized in the specification of particular manifestations shows what it is for a proposition to be sent into communication with assertive force.
3. Since utterance meaning is understood as a complex of normative consequences of the utterance (consequences of the kinds specified in definitions of speech act types), it is accounted for in terms of what happens in the utterance (briefly: the utterance places S into certain normatively defined position) - rather than in terms of intentional conditions which must be fulfilled on the part of S. Sentence meaning is then characterized as its communicative potential consisting in its ability to establish, when uttered, certain types of commitments. Word meaning consists in the word's systematic contribution to the communicative potential of sentences in which it occurs. According to this view, language is anchored in a population through the communicative potential of its sentences in that population, consisting in the sentences' ability to establish certain sets of commitments, when uttered.
4. I have argued that this account of speech acts and utterance meaning provides more productive basis for the analysis of communicative intentionality than the intentionalist accounts (of Grice, Schiffer or Searle). When we define assertion in non-intentional terms, we have free hands for analyzing a large variety of possible ways in which S's intentions can be combined with his beliefs in his exploitation of the institution of assertion. This variety is, on the other hand, a priori reduced, once we define speech act types in terms of actual S's intentions. I have also atempted to show that the normative account of speech acts does not impose unrealistic requirements on S's intentions (for instance, it does not imply that to intend to assert that p means to intend to incur all the particular commitments established by the act of assertion). I have also described various kinds of linguistic tricks, linked to the manifestations performed in assertions and other types of speech acts.
5. I have exploited the account of utterance meaning as a set of manifestations in analysing various performatively deffective ways of using language: for instance, S's asserting that p combined with his denial that he has one (whichever) of the attitudes manifested in his assertion results in some version of Moore's paradox (an analogically for other speech act types).
6. I have tried to show that the specification of utterance meaning in terms of commitments (imposed on S by the utterance) accounts for the phenomenon of communicative transparency, which Grice and his followers attempted to capture, and that it does so without the technical complications (infinite regresses and sophisticated attempts to stop them or to make them harmless) typical for various versions of the definitons of "speaker's meaning". In analyzing the development of Gricean semantics I have tried to demonstrate that these complications have been generated by the intentionalist basis of this project.
7. I have attempted to show that the account of speech acts and utterance meaning I am suggesting enables us to explain the phenomenon of conversational implicatures in a simpler way than Grice's theory (among other things, we need not postulate anything like Gricean maxims of conversation). For instance, if asserting that p consists in performing a set of manifestations, each of these manifestation can (in a suitable context) appear in the focus of communicative interest (can become the central message intended by S and recognized as such by A).

1. I have criticised the Davidsonian account of utterance meaning as established by the match between S's communicative intention and A's interpretation: it is not applicable on the institutionalized types of discourse (legal enactments, pronouncements of court verdicts or wedding formulas etc.) and even in the sphere of private conversation it imposes improper restrictions on S's intentions (they can be communicative and coherent without being directed to the match in question). I have pointed out that we need a general notion of utterance meaning applicable in various kinds of discourse differing in the factors engaged in the determination of utterance meanings.
2. I have argued that the notion of utterance meaning as a set of commitments established by the utterance meets this test. In particular, normative consequences of an utterance (commitments imposed by it on the speaker) can be established by mere agreement between S and A concerning what happened in the utterance: they need not be based on any conventionally fixed principle in virtue of which the utterance counts as having those consequences (as establishing those commitments). So, my polemics with intentionalists concerning the definition of speech acts and of utterance meaning (cf. I) does not commit me to anti-intentionalism or conventionalism concerning the determination of meanings of particular utterances. On the contrary, I have pointed to several respects in which conventionalism cannot account for what is going on in communication, and in particular, I have (following Davidson) rejected the account of conventionally fixed language as imposing a priori limits on what can be meaningfully said.
3. I have attempted to clarify the specific character of the intentionalism-conventionalism dispute in the area of literary interpretation. With this aim I have suggested and defended certain notion of literary work (as a complex of literary aspirations of the text and of literary values which fulfil these aspirations - if they are fulfilled) and certain account of the text-work relation. I have distinguished various versions of the principle of charity which can govern literary interpretation and on this basis characterized various versions of intentionalism and conventionalism in this field.
4. In the theory of fiction I attempt to combine the (crittically revisited) Martínez-Bonati's idea that the world of a literary work is constituted by imaginative fulfillment of conceptual schemes (expressed by sentences of the literary text) with the theory of fictional worlds. Against the Dolezel's version of this theory I have defended the claim that fictional worlds can share entities with the actual world (and the parallel claim that ordinary singular terms can preserve their referential functions when used in a literary text) and criticised the widely adopted thesis of incompletness of fictional worlds. In the theory of narration, I have suggested distinction between two narrative modes: "radical" and "immune". In the former, essential features of the fictional world are exhibited in the performative parameters of narration, rather than being "merely" talked about, due to the consequent involvement of the narrator's position (including the arsenal of tools accessible to him) within the world narrated about.

1. I went into polemics with "linguistic constructivism", according to which language imposes its structure on anything we are speaking about, so that we can speak only about lingustic constructs and never about world as it is in itself. I have tried to show that while this view is self-defeating, the straightforward realism (concerning the language-world relation) is a coherent position, safe against arguments raised by linguistic constructivists. I have argued in favour of a theory of meaning based consequently on the account of language as anchored in the life of real human beings, coordinating their behavior with respect to objects, situations and events of the real world.
2. In this context I have highly appreciated the stress put by externalists (like Putnam, Burge or Davidson) on the role of external factors in the constitution of thought contents and meanings. At the same time I have rejected the account of this role of external factors as an internally unmediated intervence from the outside. I have accepted and attempted to develope J. Searle's way of the "internalization" of external factors. In principle, all external determinants of thought and communicated contents mentioned by externalists can be introduced by the subject himself into the articulation of his thought and communicative acts: this can be achieved by means of their descriptive identification, even if they are otherwise (besides the fact that they uniquely satisfy the descriptive identification applied by the subject) cognitively unaccessible to him. I have attempted to work out and defend this way of construing the contribution of indexical elements, proper names and natural kind terms to the meaning of utterances in which they appear. In the same manner I have interpreted the way in which an individual subject defers to the communal conceptual repertoire in his thought and communicative acts. I have pointed out that the form of the propositional attitude ascriptions depends on a specific combination of two parameters: /a/ on the interpreter's evaluation of the interpretee's position in the division of linguistic and intellectual labour (regarding the relevant area of discourse); /b/ on the interpreter's understanding of his own position in this respect.
3. This account of the subjectivity of thought and communication assigns prominent role to the descriptive identification of external determinants of content. I have defended the identificatory potential of descriptions, arguing that it is in no respect weaker than that of indexical expressions or proper names. In this connection I have also argued in favour of the referential account of descriptions and attempted to show its compatibility with the Russellian analysis of the truth conditions of sentences with descriptions. According to this view, these sentences are standard (occasionally failing) linguistic instruments for expressing singular propositions, while epressing complex Russellian propositions is a by-product of this communicative function (generated by the instrumental side of an attempt to identify an individual and to say something about it). All potential limits of the identificatory and referential role of descriptions I am aware of have straightforward analogies in case of indexes and proper names.

• Ad I.
  • Význam a komunikace (Meaning and Communication), Filosofia, Praha 1998
  • Meaning and the Third Realm, in: Frege: Sense and Reference One Hundred Years Later, ed. J.Biro and Petr Koťátko, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht-Boston-London 1995, p. 47-58
  • Speech Acts, Commitments and Linguistic Tricks, in: J. Doubravová (ed.), Společenské hry, Fakulta humanitních studií ZUČ, Plzeň 2003, p. 165-177
• Ad II.
  • Význam a komunikace (Meaning and Communication), Filosofia, Praha 1998
  • Interpretace a subjektivita (Interpretation and Subjectivity), Filosofia, Praha 2006
  • Two Notions of Utterance Meaning, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society III/1998, p. 225-239
  • Truth Conditions and Literary Aspirations: Basic Correlations, in: G. Rossholm (ed.), Fiction and Perspective, Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt-Ney York-Paris 2004
  • Text, Work, Interpretation: Some Implications of the Menard Case, in: P. Koťátko, M. Pokorný, M. Sabates (eds.), Text and Work: The Menard Case, Rodopi 2010 (in press)
  • Who Is Who in a Fictional World, in: P. Koťátko, M. Pokorný, M. Sabates (eds.), Fictionality-Possibility-Reality, aleph, Bratislava, p. 89-102
• Ad III.
  • Interpretace a subjektivita (Interpretation and Subjectivity), Filosofia, Praha 2006
  • Frege, Tichý and the U.S. President, From the Logical Point of View, 2/1993, p. 28-42
  • Having a Concept, in: T. Marvan (ed.), What Determines Content? The Internalism/Externalism Dispute, Cambridge Scholars Press, Newcastle 2006, p. 55-68