It occurs to me after reading your post that this is a nice way of understanding what some theological and philosophical writers are doing in the history of religious thought, where they endorse orthodox creeds and the like, but semi-secretly have an esoteric understanding of them that will be missed by laypeople (and, they often hope, censors). Specifically, these writers are purposefully achieving merely verbal agreement and creating a "cover" for disagreement as you say at the end.
Yes, purposeful merely verbal agreement is a very interesting case, not just in theology and philosophy, but also in politics. But it also raises some tricky questions: Can you really have the communicative intention to convey that p with an utterance U whilst knowing that people will think that you've said that q? On A Gricean picture, there are limits to that. However, mixed cases seem plausible: You intend to convey p to one group (who you expect to agree with p) whilst knowing that some other group will interpret you as having said that q, and you expect them to agree with q but disagree with p. That's purposeful merely verbal agreement via a dogwhistle.
It occurs to me after reading your post that this is a nice way of understanding what some theological and philosophical writers are doing in the history of religious thought, where they endorse orthodox creeds and the like, but semi-secretly have an esoteric understanding of them that will be missed by laypeople (and, they often hope, censors). Specifically, these writers are purposefully achieving merely verbal agreement and creating a "cover" for disagreement as you say at the end.
Yes, purposeful merely verbal agreement is a very interesting case, not just in theology and philosophy, but also in politics. But it also raises some tricky questions: Can you really have the communicative intention to convey that p with an utterance U whilst knowing that people will think that you've said that q? On A Gricean picture, there are limits to that. However, mixed cases seem plausible: You intend to convey p to one group (who you expect to agree with p) whilst knowing that some other group will interpret you as having said that q, and you expect them to agree with q but disagree with p. That's purposeful merely verbal agreement via a dogwhistle.