ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines, rather, the intention inherent in acts of indicating: how somebody communicates to another person that there is something particular at the focus of his attention that he wishes to bring to the attention of that other person, in return for which he wants some indication that the other has, as it were, “got the message.” Parents and caregivers typically treat infants as if they had both epistemic and instrumental intentional states—goals, beliefs, desires, feelings, “things in mind.” Parents also stoutly believe that infants try to communicate their intentions to them. Formatting is typical of parents and their young children. But it is also used wherever a complex, symbolically mediated routine needs to be assembled or reassembled—whether in coaching a complex sport or in rehabilitating aphasia. For in acquiring language or any other rule-governed skill, one needs to grasp the ways in which the elements involved are “situated” in an accessible context.
