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Jeffrey Goldsworthy
for granted because they are so obvious they do not need to be mentioned
or (sometimes) even consciously taken into account.
90
Searle argued that if
background assumptions are not grasped, anything we say is open to being
misunderstood in unpredictable and bizarre ways. For example: if I order a
hamburger in a restaurant, and carefully list all the ingredients I want, I do
not think it necessary to specify that they should be fresh and edible, the meat
cooked and so on. If I thought about this at all, I would expect it to be taken for
granted. Even if I did specify those requirements, I would not think to add that
the hamburger should not be encased in a cube of solid lucite plastic that can
only be broken by a jackhammer.
91
My order implicitly requires a hamburger
that can be immediately eaten without much difficulty.
92
Such implicit assumptions may not be consciously adverted to either by
the speaker or the hearer. But how can speakers have any intentions about
matters that are not consciously in their minds? The answer may be that inten-
tions and many other mental states such as beliefs and desires, depend just
as much as meanings on a network of background assumptions. Searle, for
example, describes what is necessarily assumed by anyone intending to run
for President of the United States: that the United States is a republic, that
it has a presidential form of government, that it has periodic elections,
that these mainly involve a contest between candidates of two major parties,
the Republicans and the Democrats, that these candidates are chosen at nom-
inating conventions and so on, indefinitely. Searle concludes that ‘certain
fundamental ways of doing things and certain sorts of know-how about the
way things work are presupposed by any such form of Intentionality’.
93
Indeed,
in his view linguistic meaning depends on background assumptions precisely
because language is a means of expressing our intentional states, such as our
intentions, beliefs and desires.
94
Because those intentional states depend on a
network of background assumptions, their expression in language does too.
95
But how can we distinguish between assumptions that are implicit in an
utterance, without having been in the speaker’s conscious mind, and mat-
ters that the speaker neglected to address and are neither expressed by nor
implicit in the utterance? If the speaker has not consciously thought of
90
See Goldsworthy, chapter note, 150.
91
Searle ‘Literal Meaning’, Supra note 76, 127.
92
Patrick Emerton argues that, in this example, the implicit assumptions help to fix the ref-
erence of the word ‘hamburger’: P. Emerton, Supra note 78, 175. This does not affect the
argument here, but if correct, it adds a further reason for regarding even express meaning as
depending on pragmatic (contextual) enrichment.
93
Searle, Intentionality, Supra note 76, 20; see also
ibid.
, 141.
94
Ibid.
, 5, 176–9.
95
Searle, ‘The Background of Meaning’, Supra note 76, 231–2.
The Implicit and the Implied in a Written Constitution
133
either one, what is the difference? The difference must be that in the case
of implicit assumptions, it would probably have made no difference if the
speaker had consciously thought of the matter: he would still have expressed
no view, on the ground that it is too obvious to require expression. This may
be why MacKinnon LJ proposed that in the case of contracts, the test for an
implication should be whether, if an ‘officious bystander’ had suggested the
inclusion of some express provision, the contracting parties would have ‘testily
suppress[ed] him with a common “Oh, of course”!’
96
The phenomenon of implicit assumptions can be accommodated by
Gricean pragmatic theory.
97
The communicative principle of quantity
requires speakers to say as much as but no more than is required for effective
communication. Speakers who say more than that waste their hearers’ time
and effort as well as their own, and risk boring, patronising or confusing their
hearers. It follows that no mention should be made of assumptions so obvious
that one’s hearer can be relied on to take them for granted. And of course,
no mention can be made of assumptions so obvious that one takes them for
granted oneself.
But I am not sure, and do not have the expertise to determine, whether
implicit assumptions are a species of implicature. It might be argued that they
are inferred partly from the assumption that speakers have complied with
the communicative principles, especially that of quantity, and either did not
consciously advert to or did not bother to state, the obvious. But that seems
debatable. Implicit assumptions seem to be inferred, instead, directly from
the obviousness of the lawmaker’s purpose in uttering the express words and
what is needed to fulfil it. Assumed compliance with the principle of quan-
tity does not seem to play an essential role in identifying what is so obvious
that it was implicitly assumed. If anything, the inference seems to go in the
opposite direction: we infer compliance with the principle of quantity from
the obviousness of the implicit assumption. In the next sub-section I assume
that implicit assumptions are not implicatures. Even if they are a species of
implicature, they seem to be a special one.
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