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8How 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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128Millikan’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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69Reply to Romero and SoriaTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 32 (2): 175-178. 2013.Response to Romero's and Soria's paper in the Symposium on *Truth-Conditional Pragmatics* (OUP 2010).
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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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207Crazy minimalismMind and Language 21 (1). 2006.Review of Insensitive Semantics, by H. Cappelen and E. Lepore.
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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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30Truth-conditional pragmatics: an overviewIn Richmond Thomason, Paolo Bouquet & Luciano Serafini (eds.), Perspectives on Context, Csli Stanford. pp. 171-188. 2008.
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445What is saidSynthese 128 (1-2): 75--91. 2001.A critique of the purely semantic, minimalist notion of 'what is said'.
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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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85Replies to the papers in the issue "Recanati on Mental Files"Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (4): 408-437. 2015.
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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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71The dynamics of situationsEuropean Review of Philosophy 2 41-75. 1997.Every statement represents a certain state of affairs as holding in a certain situation, which the statement concerns. The situation which a statement concerns is indicated by the context. It must be distinguished from whichever situation may be explicitly mentioned in the statement. In this framework, two cognitive processes are analysed: projection and reflection. Both involve two representations: one which concerns a situation s, and another one which explicitly mentions that situation. Throu…Read more
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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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67Anti-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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82Varieties of SimulationIn Jerome Dokic & Joelle Proust (eds.), Simulation and Knowledge of Action, John Benjamins. pp. 151-171. 2002.
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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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291Perceptual 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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19Descriptions and SituationsIn Marga Reimer & Anne Bezuidenhout (eds.), Descriptions and Beyond, Clarendon Press. pp. 15-40. 2002.forthcoming.
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50Reply to GaukerTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 32 (2): 81-84. 2013.Response to Gauker's paper in the Symposium on *Truth-Conditional Pragmatics* (OUP 2010).
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23Meaning and Force: The Pragmatics of Performative UtterancesPhilosophical Review 100 (2): 297. 1991.
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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.
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104Reply to DevittTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 32 (2): 103-107. 2013.Response to Devitt's paper in the symposium on *Truth-Conditional Pragmatics* (OUP 2010).