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27Literalism and Contextualism: Some VarietiesIn Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds.), Contextualism in Philosophy: Knowledge, Meaning, and Truth, Clarendon Press. pp. 171--196. 2003.Both Literalism and Contextualism come in many varieties. There are radical, and less radical, versions of both Literalism and Contextualism. Some intermediate positions are mixtures of Literalism and Contextualism. In this paper I describe several literalist positions, several contextualist positions, and a couple of intermediate positions. My aim is to convince the reader that the Literalism/Contextualism controversy is far from being settled. In the first section, I look at the historical dev…Read more
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26Are 'here' and 'now' indexicals?Texte 27 115-127. 2001.It is argued there is nothing special or deviant about the use of 'now' to refer to a time in the past (or about the use of 'here' to refer to a distant place) — no need to appeal to pragmatic mechanisms such as context-shifting to account for such uses. Such uses are puzzling only if one (mistakenly) maintains that 'here' and 'now' are pure indexicals. In the paper it is claimed that they are more similar to demonstratives than to pure indexicals. Updated material on this can be found in *Truth…Read more
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26Some Remarks on Explicit Performatives, Indirect Speech Acts, Locutionary Meaning and Truth-valueIn John Searle, F. Kiefer & Manfred Berwisch (eds.), Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics, Dordrecht. pp. 205-220. 1980.
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24Meaning and Force: The Pragmatics of Performative UtterancesPhilosophical Review 100 (2): 297. 1991.
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22Collins (and Elbourne) on free pragmatic processesInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.The debate between literalism and contextualism bears on the (in-)existence of ‘free' pragmatic processes, i.e. pragmatic processes of interpretation which contribute to shaping intuitive truth-conditional content without being mandated by anything in the sentence itself. In his new book John Collins defends the contextualist position. He focusses on so-called ‘unarticulated constituents' (e.g. the unmentioned location of rain in a statement like ‘It is raining’) and argues against the idea that…Read more
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21My contribution to the 'MIMESIS, METAPHYSICS AND MAKE-BELIEVE' conference held in honour of Kendall Walton in the University of Leeds
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20IV*—Contextual Dependence and Definite DescriptionsProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 87 (1): 57-74. 1987.François Recanati; IV*—Contextual Dependence and Definite Descriptions, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 87, Issue 1, 1 June 1987, Pages 57–74, h.
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20Response to Dokic's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
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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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17It has often been observed that the meaning of a word may be affected by the other words which occur in the same sentence. How are we to account for this phenomenon of 'semantic flexibility'? It is argued that semantic flexibility reduces to context-sensitivity and does not raise unsurmountable problems for standard compositional accounts. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to assume too simple a view of context-sensitivity. Two basic forms of context-sensitivity are distinguished in the p…Read more
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17Jules Vuillemin et la philosophie analytiqueRevue de Synthèse 141 (1-2): 11-33. 2020.Résumé Dans cette communication, qui reprend en partie les idées exposées il y a trente ans dans un article de Critique, François Recanati entreprend de caractériser la philosophie analytique en discutant une demi-douzaine de traits supposés distinctifs de la discipline : l’usage de la logique, l’importance de la philosophie du langage considérée comme philosophie première, le refus de réduire la philosophie à l’histoire de la philosophie, l’idée que la philosophie est une discipline de second n…Read more
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16The limits of expressibilityIn Barry Smith (ed.), John Searle, Cambridge University Press. pp. 189-213. 2002.
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16Relativized PropositionsIn Michael O'Rourke & Corey Washington (eds.), Situating Semantics : Essays on the Work of John Perry, Mit Press. pp. 119-153. 2007.Can we solve the problem of the essential indexical, and account for de se belief, by appealing to 'relativized propositions' (functions from rich indices to truth-values)? According to John Perry, we cannot. This paper offers a detailed examination and a critique of Perry's argument.
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14Response to Carston's paper, 'How Many Pragmatic Systems Are There'?
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13Putnam is known for having demonstated the existence of a new form of context-dependence, namely that which characterizes natural kind terms. Terms like ‘tiger' and ‘water' are indexical, Putnam says, since their conditions of application varies with the context of use — in a suitably broad sense of ‘context'. In this talk I focus on the relation between Putnam's semantics and a body of views I call ‘contextualism'. Contextualism generalizes context-sensitivity : it claims that sentences carry c…Read more
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12Response to Voltolini's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
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10Philosophie du langage (et de l’esprit)Editions Gallimard. 2008.Philosophie du langage et philosophie de l'esprit constituent désormais un tout indissociable. Les expressions linguistiques «signifient». Qu'est-ce que cela veut dire? François Recanati distingue trois réponses possibles. Selon la première, signifier c'est (pour une expression linguistique) être associée à des représentations mentales. Selon la deuxième, signifier c'est «faire référence» et renvoyer à quelque chose dans le monde – une réalité extralinguistique. Selon la troisième, enfin, signi…Read more
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10Response to Iglesias' contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
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10Response to Brabanter's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
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10What is said and the Semantics/Pragmatics DistinctionIn Claudia Bianchi (ed.), The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction, Csli Stanford. pp. 45-64. 2002.A critique of pragmatic Minimalism.
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9How 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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8I distinguish, and discuss the relations between, five types of context-shift involving indexicals. For 'intentional' indexicals - indexicals whose value depends upon the speaker's intention - we can shift the context more or less 'at will', by manifesting one's intention to do so. For other indexicals we can shift the context through pretense. Following a number of authors, I distinguish two types of context-shifting pretense, corresponding to two sets of linguistic phenomena. The fourth type o…Read more
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8Loana dans le métro : réflexions sur l’indexicalité mentaleIn Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde (ed.), Les formes de l’indexicalité : langage et pensée en contexte, . pp. 19-34. 2005.Cet article propose un traitement de l'indexicalité mentale utilisant la notion de fichier.
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7Response to Predelli's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop