Prelinguistic Communication: Commitments and Intentions

Abstract

There are at least two ways of thinking about human communication: either from a primarily social point of view, or from a psychological one. The dominant tradition in both the philosophy of language and in the cognitive sciences has privileged the psychological, assigning the explanatory place of pride to the notion of intention. In this essay, I argue that the dominant tradition has provided an adulterated picture of prelinguistic communication, which lacks the experimental support that it often claims to have. I will outline an alternative view based on the notion of shared commitment, and I will argue that this eminently social view can do better justice to both the experimental results and the reality of infancy, thus paving the way toward a more coherent picture of infant development.