NEW DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH IN PRAGMATICS AND MODULARITY
NEW DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH IN PRAGMATICS AND MODULARITY

Summary/Abstract: This paper considers the relation between the pragmatic abilities used to interpret communicative behaviour and more general mind-reading abilities used to interpret ordinary actions. According to the classical Fodorian view (Fodor 1983), pragmatics and mindreading are central cognitive systems which are used to attribute mental states to others on the basis of general-purpose reasoning abilities. I will outline an alternative, relevance theoretic account on which mind-reading is a dedicated inferential module, and pragmatics is a sub-module of the mind-reading module, with its own special-purpose principles and mechanisms.

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