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301Does linguistic communication rest on inference?Mind and Language 17 (1-2). 2002.It is often claimed that, because of semantic underdetermination, one can determine the content of an utterance only by appealing to pragmatic considerations concerning what the speaker means, what his intentions are. This supports ‘inferentialism' : the view that, in contrast to perceptual content, communicational content is accessed indirectly, via an inference. As against this view, I argue that primary pragmatic processes (the pragmatic processes that are involved in the determination of tru…Read more
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12Response to Voltolini's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
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82Pragmatics and Logical FormIn Esther Romero & Belen Soria (eds.), Explicit Communication: Robyn Carston's Pragmatics, Palgrave. pp. 25-41. 2007.Robyn Carston and I share a general methodological position which I call ‘Truth-Conditional Pragmatics' (TCP). TCP is the view that the effects of context on truth-conditional content need not be traceable to the linguistic material in the uttered sentence. Some effects of context on truth-conditional content are due to the linguistic material (e.g. to context-sensitive words or morphemes which trigger the search for contextual values), but others result from ‘free' pragmatic processes. Free pra…Read more
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125Deixis and AnaphoraIn Zoltán Gendler Szabó (ed.), Semantics Versus Pragmatics, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 286--316. 2004.A defence of the 'pragmatic' theory of anaphora (which stresses the analogy between anaphora and deixis) against an argument put forward by Gareth Evans.
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5Response to Fernandez-Moreno's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
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81Moderate relativismIn Manuel Garcia-Carpintero & Max Koelbel (eds.), Relative Truth, Oxford University Press. pp. 41-62. 2006.In modal logic, propositions are evaluated relative to possible worlds. A proposition may be true relative to a world w, and false relative to another world w'. Relativism is the view that the relativization idea extends beyond possible worlds and modalities. Thus, in tense logic, propositions are evaluated relative to times. A proposition (e.g. the proposition that Socrates is sitting) may be true relative to a time t, and false relative to another time t'. In this paper I discuss, and attempt …Read more
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272Content, Mood, and ForcePhilosophy Compass 8 (7): 622-632. 2013.In this survey paper, I start from two classical theses of speech act theory: that speech act content is uniformly propositional and that sentence mood encodes illocutionary force. These theses have been questioned in recent work, both in philosophy and linguistics. The force/content distinction itself – a cornerstone of 20‐century philosophy of language – has come to be rejected by some theorists, unmoved by the famous ‘Frege–Geach’ argument. The paper reviews some of these debates.
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14Response to Carston's paper, 'How Many Pragmatic Systems Are There'?
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Une solution médiévale du paradoxe du menteur et son intérêt pour la sémantique contemporaineIn Lucie Brind'Amour & Eugene Vance (eds.), Archeologie Du Signe: Colloque : Papers, Pims. pp. 251-264. 1983.
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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