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158Compositionality, Flexibility, and Context-DependenceIn Wolfram Hinzen, Edouard Machery & Markus Werning (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Compositionality, Oxford University Press. pp. 175-191. 2012.It 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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134Millikan’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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132Opacity and the attitudesIn A. Orenstein & Petr Kotatko (eds.), Knowledge, Language and Logic: Questions for Quine, Kluwer Academic Print On Demand. pp. 367--406. 2000.A discussion of Quine's views.
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131Immunity to error through misidentification (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2012.In this collection of newly commissioned essays, the contributors present a variety of approaches to it, engaging with historical and empirical aspects of the subject as well as contemporary philosophical work.
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128Indexical Thought: The Communication ProblemIn Manuel García-Carpintero & Stephan Torre (eds.), About Oneself: De Se Thought and Communication, Oxford University Press. pp. 141-178. 2016.What characterizes indexical thinking is the fact that the modes of presentation through which one thinks of objects are context-bound and perspectival. Such modes of presentation, I claim, are mental files presupposing that we stand in certain relations to the reference : the role of the file is to store information one can gain in virtue of standing in that relation to the object. This raises the communication problem, first raised by Frege : if indexical thoughts are context-bound and relatio…Read more
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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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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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115Singular Thought: In Defense of AcquaintanceIn Robin Jeshion (ed.), New Essays on Singular Thought, Oxford University Press. pp. 141. 2009.This paper is about the Descriptivism/Singularism debate, which has loomed large in 20-century philosophy of language and mind. My aim is to defend Singularism by showing, first, that it is a better and more promising view than even the most sophisticated versions of Descriptivism, and second, that the recent objections to Singularism (based on a dismissal of the acquaintance constraint on singular thought) miss their target.
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114Le soi impliciteRevue de Métaphysique et de Morale 68 (4): 475-494. 2010.Le sujet qui perçoit, ressent, se remémore, ou imagine a conscience de son activité mentale, et notamment du mode — perceptif, mnésique ou autre — de ses états. Le mode des états expérientiels va de pair avec une relation spécifique (variable selon le mode) du sujet à ce que l'état représente. Par exemple, le sujet qui se remémore se trouve (normalement) dans une certaine relation à la scène remémorée : il a perçu celle-ci dans le passé. La thèse principale de l'article est que le sujet conscien…Read more
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111Open quotation revisitedPhilosophical Perspectives 22 (1): 443-471. 2008.This paper — a sequel to my 'Open Quotation' (Mind 2001) — is my reaction to the articles discussing open quotation in the special issue of the Belgian Journal of Linguistics edited by P. De Brabanter in 2005
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108Reference through Mental Files : Indexicals and Definite DescriptionsIn Carlo Penco & Filippo Domaneschi (eds.), What Is Said and What Is Not, Stanford. pp. 159-173. 2013.Accounts for referential communication (and especially communication by means of definite descriptions and indexicals) in the mental file framework.
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104Déstabiliser le sensRevue Internationale de Philosophie 2 (217): 197-208. 2001.Contribution au numéro spécial de la Revue Internationale de Philosophie sur John Searle.
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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).
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103The Alleged Priority of Literal InterpretationCognitive Science 19 (2): 207-232. 1995.In this paper I argue against a widely accepted model of utterance interpretation, namely the LS model, according to which the literal interpretation of an utterance (the proposition literally expressed by that utterance) must be computed before non-literal interpretations can be entertained. Alleged arguments in favor of this model are shown to be fallacious, counterexamples are provided, and alternative models are sketched.
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96Replies 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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90Predelli and García-Carpintero on "Literal Meaning"Critica 38 (112): 69-79. 2006.A summary of François Recanati's book Literal Meaning, followed by his response to the critical reviews of the same book by Stefano Predelli and Manuel García-Carpintero. /// Este texto da respuesta a los que, en este mismo número, Predelli y García-Carpintero dedican a mi libro Literal Meaning. En la primera seccíon hago un breve resumen de esta obra; en la segunda respondo a los comentarios críticos de Predelli y en la tercera a los de García-Carpintero.
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85Precis of *Truth-Conditional Pragmatics*Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 32 (2): 49-63. 2013.Precis of "Truth-Conditional Pragmatics" (Oxford University Press, 2010).
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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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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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82Varieties of SimulationIn Jerome Dokic & Joelle Proust (eds.), Simulation and Knowledge of Action, John Benjamins. pp. 151-171. 2002.
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79Précis of *Oratio Obliqua, Oratio Recta: an Essay on MetarepresentationDialectica 58 (2): 237-247. 2004.A summary of my book *Oratio Obliqua, Oratio Recta*, published by MIT Press in 2000 ('Representation and Mind' series).
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77Moderate 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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73The communication of first person thoughtsIn Petr Kotatko & John Biro (eds.), Frege: Sense and Reference One Hundred Years Later, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 95-102. 1995.A discussion of Frege's views concerning the meaning of 'I' and his distinction between the 'I' of soliloquy and the 'I' of conversation.
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72Reply 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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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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71First Person ThoughtIn Julien Dutant, Davide Fassion & Anne Meylan (eds.), Liber Amicorum Pascal Engel, . pp. 506-511. 2014.First person thoughts are the sort of thought one may express by using the first person ; they are also thoughts that are about the thinker of the thought. Neither characterization is ultimately satisfactory. A thought can be about the thinker of the thought by accident, without being a first person thought. The alternative characterization of first person thought in terms of first person sentences also fails, because it is circular : we need the notion of a first person thought to account for t…Read more
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71Anti-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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70Knowing that I See. Comments on Alex ByrneIn Francois Recanati (ed.), IJN Working Papers, . 2010.Response to Alex Byrne's paper 'Knowing what I see'.
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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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69Deixis and AnaphoraIn Zoltan Gendler Szabo (ed.), Semantics Versus Pragmatics, Clarendon Press. pp. 286--316. 2002.A defence of the 'pragmatic' theory of anaphora (which stresses the analogy between anaphora and deixis) against an argument put forward by Gareth Evans.