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Department of Computer Science Center for Cognitive Science
Rutgers University
Intention in Communication
Matthew Stone
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Background
Two ideas from Grice • Conversation is a case of collaboration • Meaning is a kind of intention
Part of a common program (Neale 1992) • Ground language in a more general
understanding of the social
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Goal for today
Explain and motivate Grice’s views Get precise on what’s involved • What are intentions? • How are they used in collaboration? • What makes communication special? • How do we put these ideas together?
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Outline
Introducing Intentions Approaches to Communicative Intentions The Appeal of the Gricean Picture Defending the Simple View Putting things together
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Introducing Intentions
Background: RTM
Key idea for deliberation (Newell & Simon) – Agent has symbols that designate
its own processes – Agent “programs itself” – Church-Turing thesis
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Introducing Intentions
RTM and action: Practical syllogism
Infer Judgment: ‘A would be good’ Make Commitment: ‘I will do A’ Go: Agent therefore undertakes action A
Represented judgments with particular content cause agent to take action
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Symbolic perspective
Agent infers: ‘good(A)’
From there, agent makes commitment: ‘do(A)’
System exploits designation relation from symbol ‘A’ to action A: brings A about
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Special kind of intention
Basic intentions
Describe action as agent can actually run it – Causally grounded in system architecture
and its relationship with environment – Indexicality, affordances, experience
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Two examples
Hanging a picture • Basic intention: hit nail with hammer • Immediate effect: drive nail in
Uttering a sentence • Basic intention: produce linguistic expression
under specific grammatical analysis • Immediate effect: contribute conventional
meaning
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Another kind of intention
Future-oriented intentions – Abstract commitments – Constrain deliberation – Gradually refined – Issue in intentions-in-action
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Example
Hanging a picture • Decide to get some art for a patch of wall • Constrains other decorating decisions • Leads to trip to gallery, hardware store • Eventually you find yourself with a picture
hook, a hammer and a nail, ready to go
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Example
Planning a date • Decide on dinner and a movie • Constrains time and place of dinner • Leads to choice of venue, call for
reservations • Eventually, you find yourself asking maitre d’
for a table at a specific date and time
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Another kind of intention
Intentions in action • Link basic intentions to future intentions • Complex, assumed network of cause-effect • Tracking broader commitments
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Example
Hitting the nail with the hammer • To drive the nail in, • To mount the picture hook, • To hang the picture on, • To complete the decor
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Example
Asking if there’s a table available • To make a reservation, • To arrange dinner, • To have a nice date
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Intention recognition
Important social skill • Basic intentions • Future-oriented intentions • Intentions in action
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Intention recognition
Evidence • Observed action • General human cognitive capabilities • Knowledge of cause and effect • Knowledge of others’ goals and beliefs • Observed deliberation
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Intentions in collaboration
Two people hang a picture • One positions picture
the other judges placement, marks hook • Hook goes up • One positions picture
the other threads wire onto hook
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Intentions in collaboration
Agreements in advance can make this work • Network of commitments
for one’s own actions • Corresponding expectations
for others’ actions • Appropriate shared status
to coordinate and agree activity
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Intentions in collaboration
Intention recognition can make this work • One commits to course of action • Embarks on the plan in a recognizable way • Others catch on and play their parts
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Outline
Introducing Intentions Approaches to Communicative Intentions The Appeal of the Gricean Picture Defending the Simple View Putting things together
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Conversation as collaboration
Interlocutors often have a joint interest in • Getting their ideas across • Reaching agreements with one another • Accomplishing shared projects These can ground out in joint intentions
They may recognize—or signal—how utterances contribute to these intentions
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Case study
A: I want to talk to Kathy. Can you give me the phone number to St. Eligius?
S: St Eligius closed last month. Kathy was at Boston General. She’s already been discharged. You can call her at home at 555-1238.
Pollack 1990.
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Case Study
Getting ideas across • Do you mean Kathy Smith or Kathy Jones?
Reaching agreement • Kathy was at Boston General.
Getting things done • You can call her at home at 555-1238.
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Conversation as collaboration
Note: it’s an open question exactly when these kinds of collaboration are engaged.
Unhelpful customer service—no uptake of practical goals
Political debate—no real interest in agreement Monkey paw—deliberately construing
ambiguous language in unintended ways
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Communicative Intentions
Option 1: Dynamic Semantics • Basic intention: using an utterance,
under a specific linguistic analysis, contributes conventional meaning to the conversation
Requires separate understanding of meaning, conversation
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Communicative Intentions
Simple application of RTM: – agent wants to get idea across – “P” – agent uses grammar to infer S means P – agent concludes saying S would be good – agent commits, says S
Intention like any other – causal mechanism tracing action to complex
antecedent mental state
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Communicative Intentions
Option 2: Grice • Intention in action: using an utterance
fits into a broader network of expectations • Speaker is ultimately committed to getting
idea across in a special way • Audience recognizes whole package
Speaker’s commitments anticipate audience’s reaction, in conventional or ad hoc ways.
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Getting clear on the difference
Dynamic semantics • Basic intention determines utterance used • Settles ambiguity—attachment, coindexing,
deixis, lexical senses, etc. • Interpretation thus involves recognizing
what speaker had in mind
But grounded in appropriate indexical mental representations of speaker’s
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Limits on intention in D.S.
Deixis—refers to the entity causally involved in guiding gesture • Even if speaker is committed to talk about other
entities, via false beliefs
Words—retain meaning they have in the community, if speaker represents them in the usual way, via deference • Even if speaker is committed to use other
meanings, via false beliefs
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Limits on intentions in D.S.
Distinguishes conventional meaning from indirect effects
No requirement of cooperation
Creativity requires a special explanation • speaker extends language via coining • still work to be done to link new term to its
meaning, perhaps as speaker intended
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Getting clear on the difference
Grice’s approach • Contributions are fundamentally similar,
whether conventional or indirect • Both have commitment to uptake,
which is where the action is
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Getting clear on the difference
Grice’s approach • Creative uses of language and conventional
ones are fundamentally similar • Both involve similar commitment to uptake
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Getting clear on the difference
Grice’s approach • No reason to privilege any description of
communicative effects • For example in cases of false beliefs about
meaning and reference • We look in an aggregate way at network of
speaker’s commitments
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Getting clear on the difference
Grice’s approach • Requires collaboration • Without collaboration, speaker not
committed to uptake in right way and hence has no communicative intention
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Getting clear on the difference
The difference is not • what intentions get recognized • how intention recognition smooths
collaboration
Dynamic semantics allows that interlocutors can and often do link basic intention to broader understanding of interlocutor’s present and future intentions
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Outline
Introducing Intentions Approaches to Communicative Intentions The Appeal of the Gricean Picture Defending the Simple View Putting things together
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Creativity
Improvised meaning and nonlinguistic action • Reaching to grab something in pretense
(Sperber & Wilson)
Coining new meanings of words
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Ambiguity
Offers a very straightforward understanding of the idea that understanding recovers what the speaker had in mind
Difficult to describe ambiguity without talking about intentions in some way
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Open-endedness
Communication is arbitrary
Intentions give an open-ended and inferential understanding of what utterances communicate
Seems like a promising way to flesh out what’s up to us about communication
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Outline
Introducing Intentions Approaches to Communicative Intentions The Appeal of the Gricean Picture Defending the Simple View Putting things together
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Malapropisms
Inconceivable!
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Seems like we sometimes hold people to interpretations that they didn’t intend.
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Inadvertent deixis
That’s a great philosopher. [pointing at a picture of Spirow Agnew]
Seems like we sometimes hold people to interpretations that they didn’t intend.
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Comparison with chess
We have social rules • effect of moves is determined by the rules,
not by our intentions or occurent mental states
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Outline
Introducing Intentions Approaches to Communicative Intentions The Appeal of the Gricean Picture Defending the Simple View Putting things together
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Grice on Herod
Herod presents Salome with John’s head. His act informs her John is dead but Herod act
doesn’t mean that John is dead. He expects her to draw this conclusion from
seeing John’s head, not from recognizing his intention.
Herod’s act reveals but does not communicate, this info
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A “Gricean derivation”
1. Herod is cooperative, so he must be trying to get info across to me with his demonstration.
2. Not about the platter; that would be irrelevant & Herod is following Maxim of Relation.
3. So, must be about John. 4. But then it must be that he’s dead, by Maxim
of Manner. Brandishing his head is a weird way to convey he has a beard or brown hair.
5. So, if Herod is being cooperative, I can infer he intends to show me that John is dead.
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Intention recognition is everywhere S says “bank.” A recognizes if S intends river
or finances. Intention recognition in semantics.
S says “Can you pass the salt?” A recognizes if S intends to request or to ask. Intention recognition in pragmatic rules.
S says “There’s a bug!” A recognizes that S expects A to swat bug. Intention recognition in common-sense background.
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Intention recognition is everywhere So what? • claim that intentions disambiguate is boring
Grice’s CIs, Relevance’s enrichment say more • claim is general inference delivers content
Reasonable to challenge this claim