The Grice Is Right: Grice's Non‐Cooperation Problem and the Structure of Conversation

Abstract

H. P. Grice seemed to rest his theory of conversational implicature on the assumption that speakers aim to cooperatively exchangeinformation with each other. In the real world, speakers often don’t. Does one of the most influential theories in 20th-centuryphilosophy of language rest on a mistake? Yes—but not in the way that philosophers have thought. I argue that Grice shouldhave rested his theory on a different assumption: that speakers aim to appear to aim to cooperatively exchange informationwith each other. This proposal dissolves Grice’s Non-Cooperation Problem but preserves Grice’s central insights about the natureof conversational implicatures. More generally, it enables the Gricean to illuminate the structure of many non-cooperative orotherwise “non-ideal” conversations.