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16How Narrow is Narrow Content?Dialectica 48 (3-4): 209-229. 1994.SummaryIn this paper I discuss two influential views in the philosophy of mind: the two‐component picture draws a distinction between ‘narrow content’ and ‘broad content’, while radical externalism denies that there is such a thing as narrow content. I argue that ‘narrow content’ is ambiguous, and that the two views can be reconciled. Instead of considering that there is only one question and three possible answers corresponding to Cartesian internalism, the two‐component picture, and radical ex…Read more
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136Millikan’s Theory of Signs (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (3). 2007.Review of Millikan's book Varieties of Meaning (MIT Press/Bradford Books, 2004).
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119Contextualism: Some VarietiesIn Keith Allan & Kasia Jaszczolt (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 135--149. 2012.A number of distinct (though related) issues are raised in the debate over Contextualism in the philosophy of language. My aim in this chapter for the Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics is to disentangle them, so as to get a clearer view of the positions available (where a 'position' consists of a particular take on each of the relevant issues simultaneously).
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5Response to Egré's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
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117Immunity to error through misidentification: What it is and where it comes fromIn Simon Prosser & Francois Recanati (eds.), Immunity to Error Through Misidentification: New Essays, Cambridge University Press. pp. 180--201I argue that immunity to error through misidentification primarily characterizes thoughts that are 'implicitly' de se, as opposed to thoughts that involve an explicit self-identification. Thoughts that are implicitly de se involve no reference to the self at the level of content: what makes them de se is simply the fact that the content of the thought is evaluated with respect to the thinking subject. Or, to put it in familiar terms : the content of the thought is a property which the thinking s…Read more
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29PragmaticsIn Manuel García-Carpintero & Max Kölbel (eds.), The Continuum Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Continuum International. pp. 620-633. 1998.An abridged and slightly updated version of "Pragmatics", in Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Routledge 620-633 (1998).
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Remarques sur les verbes parenthétiquesIn Pierre Attal & C. Muller (eds.), De la Syntaxe à la Pragmatiqu, . pp. 319-352. 1984.
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4Indexical Concepts and CompositionalityIn Manuel Garcia-Carpintero & Josep Macià (eds.), Two-Dimensional Semantics, Clarendon Press. pp. 249-257. 2001.In the first part of this paper I sketch a theory of indexical concepts within a broadly epistemic framework. In the second part I discuss and dismiss an argument due to Jerry Fodor, to the effect that any epistemic approach to concept individuation (including the theory of indexical concepts I will sketch) is doomed to failure.
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The Pragmatics of Performative UtterancesIn Asa Kasher (ed.), Pragmatics: Critical Concepts, Routledge. pp. 511-518. 1998.
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62Mental Files and IdentityIn Anne Reboul (ed.), Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Kevin Mulligan, . 2011.Mental files serve as individual or singular concepts. Like singular terms in the language, they refer, or are supposed to refer. What they refer to is not determined by properties which the subject takes the referent to have (i.e. by the information stored in the file), but through relations to various entities in the environment in which the file fulfills its function. Files are based on acquaintance relations, and the function of the file is to store whatever information is made available thr…Read more
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222Crazy minimalismMind and Language 21 (1). 2006.Review of Insensitive Semantics, by H. Cappelen and E. Lepore.
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70Empty Thoughts and Vicarious Thoughts in the Mental File FrameworkCroatian Journal of Philosophy 14 (1): 1-11. 2014.Mental files have a referential role—they serve to think about objects in the world—but they also have a meta-representational role: when ‘indexed’, they serve to represent how other subjects think about objects in the world. This additional, meta-representational function of files is invoked to shed light on the uses of empty singular terms in negative existentials and pseudo-singular attitude ascriptions. -/- For a longer version see "Empty Singular Terms in the Mental-File Framework" In Manue…Read more
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499The Fodorian fallacyAnalysis 62 (4): 285-89. 2002.In recent years Fodor has repeatedly argued that nothing epistemic can be essential to, or constitutive of, any concept. This holds in virtue of a constraint which Fodor dubs the Compositionality Constraint. I show that Fodor's argument is fallacious because it rests on an ambiguity.
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Le potentiel illocutionnaire des phrases déclarativesCahiers de Linguistique Française 2 23-39. 1981.
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84Contextualism and anti-contextualism in the philosophy of languageIn Savas L. Tsohatzidis (ed.), Foundations of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical and Linguistic Perspectives, Routledge. pp. 156-166. 1994.A historical overview, with an attempt to rebut Grice's argument against Contextualism.
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Processing models for non-literal discourseIn Roberto Casati, Barry Smith & Graham Whiteca (eds.), Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences, Proceedings of the 16th International Wittgenstein Symposium, . pp. 277-290. 1994.
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73Anti-Descriptivism, Mental Files, And The Communication Of Singular ThoughtsManuscrito 32 (1): 7-32. 2009.In this paper, I argue that singular thought about an object involves nondescriptive or de re ways of thinking of that object, that is, modes of presentation resting on contextual relations of ‘acquaintance’ to the object. Such modes of presentation I analyse as mental files in which the subject can store information gained through the acquaintance relations in question. I show that the mental -file approach provides a solution to a vexing problem regarding the communication of singular thoughts…Read more
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40Situations and the Structure of ContentIn Kumiko Murasugi & Robert Stainton (eds.), Philosophy and Linguistics, Westview Press. pp. 113--165. 1999.An investigation into 'Austinian semantics'. Every utterance is said to express an 'Austinian proposition' consisting of a situation and a fact the situation is presented as supporting. A more recent statement of the theory is to be found in *Oratio Obliqua, Oratio Recta: an Essay on Metarepresentation* (MIT Press/Bradford Books, 2000).
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The Simulation of BeliefIn Pascal Engel (ed.), Believing and Accepting, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 267-298. 2000.
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Le langage et la penséeIn Alain Berthoz (ed.), Sciences de la Cognition: Actes du grand colloque de prospective, . pp. 137-141. 1991.
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19Descriptions and SituationsIn Marga Reimer & Anne Bezuidenhout (eds.), Descriptions and beyond, Oxford University Press. pp. 15-40. 2004.forthcoming.
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10Response to Iglesias' contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
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29Meaning and Force: The Pragmatics of Performative UtterancesPhilosophical Review 100 (2): 297. 1991.
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303Perceptual concepts: in defence of the indexical modelSynthese 190 (10): 1841-1855. 2013.Francois Recanati presents the basic features of the *indexical model* of mental files, and defends it against several interrelated objections. According to this model, mental files refer to objects in a way that is analogous to that of indexicals in language: a file refers to an object in virtue of a contextual relation between them. For instance, perception and attention provide the basis for demonstrative files. Several objections, some of them from David Papineau, concern the possibility of …Read more
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Contenu sémantique et contenu cognitif des énoncésIn Daniel Laurier & Francois Lepage (eds.), Essais sur le langage et l'intentionnalité, . pp. 201-226. 1992.