ABSTRACT
The question of whether nonhuman animals participate in intentional communication has become central in the comparative research on animal communication. Current research has focused on the signaler displaying intentional behavior (Townsend et al. 2016) mostly by applying the features of the concept of intentional signals (Call and Tomasello 2007; Liebal et al. 2014). Here, we will show that current empirical evidence may pick out a signaler’s informative and communicative intention, and a recipient’s ability to understand “the meaning of the signal” linked to the signaler’s intentions, only if researchers adopt a Neo-Gricean definition of intentional communication that views communication as fundamentally inferential. However, adopting such an approach happens mainly for reasons of methodological access to intentional communication in animals and does not exclude calling out to non-inferential accounts of communication, such as the one developed by Millikan (2005).
