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40Natural Meaning and the Foundations of Human Communication: A Comparison Between Marty and GriceIn Giuliano Bacigalupo & Hélène Leblanc (eds.), Anton Marty and Contemporary Philosophy, Palgrave. pp. 13-31. 2019.Several authors have noted the proximity of Marty’s and Grice’s ideas. Both Marty and Grice distinguish natural meaning and the sort of meaning involved in human communication; and they both attempt to provide a characterization of human communication that does not essentially appeal to the conventional nature of its linguistic devices. In this contribution, I single out what I take to be a main difference between Marty and Grice. Marty views linguistic communication as continuous with natural m…Read more
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About the Lekton: Response to KölbelIn Raphael Salkie & Ilse Depraetere (eds.), Semantics and Pragmatics: Drawing a Line, Springer Verlag. 2016.
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40Context Dependence, Perspective and Relativity (edited book)Mouton de Gruyter. 2010.Aims and Scope This volume brings together original papers by linguists and philosophers on the role of context and perspective in language and thought. Several contributions are concerned with the contextualism/relativism debate, which has loomed large in recent philosophical discussions. In a substantial introduction, the editors survey the field and map out the relevant issues and positions.
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66Transparent CoreferenceTopoi 40 (1): 107-115. 2019.Because reference is not transparent, coreference is not transparent either: it is possible for the subject to refer to the same individual twice without knowing that the two acts of reference target the same individual. That happens whenever the subject associates two distinct yet coreferential files with two token singular terms. The subject may not know that the two files corefer, so her ascribing contradictory properties to the same object does not threaten her rationality. But if the subjec…Read more
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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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54From Meaning to ContentIn Derek Ball & Brian Rabern (eds.), The Science of Meaning: Essays on the Metatheory of Natural Language Semantics, Oxford University Press. 2018.According to a widespread picture due to Kaplan, there are two levels of semantic value: character and content. Character is determined by the grammar, and it determines content with respect to context. In this chapter Recanati criticizes that picture on several grounds. He shows that we need more than two levels, and rejects the determination thesis: that linguistic meaning as determined by grammar determines content. Grammatical meaning does not determine assertoric content, he argues, but mer…Read more
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224Fictional, Metafictional, ParafictionalProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 118 (1): 25-54. 2018.
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77Contextualism and PolysemyDialectica 71 (3): 379-397. 2017.In this paper, I argue that that polysemy is a two-sided phenomenon. It can be reduced neither to pragmatic modulation nor to ambiguity, for it is a mixture of both. The senses of a polysemous expression result from pragmatic modulation but they are stored in memory, as the senses of an ambiguous expression are. The difference with straightforward ambiguity is that the modulation relations between the senses are transparent to the language users: the senses are felt as related – they form a fami…Read more
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26IV*—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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La Transparence et l'énonciation. Pour introduire a la pragmatiqueRevue de Métaphysique et de Morale 85 (4): 529-533. 1980.
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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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135Millikan’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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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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35Truth-conditional pragmatics: an overviewIn Paolo Bouquet, Luciano Serafini & Richmond H. Thomason (eds.), Perspectives on Contexts, Center For the Study of Language and Inf. pp. 171-188. 2008.
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142Mental Files: Replies to my CriticsDisputatio 5 (36): 207-242. 2013.My responses to seven critical reviews of my book *Mental Files* published in a special issue of the journal Disputatio, edited by F. Salis. The reviewers are: Keith Hall, David Papineau, Annalisa Coliva and Delia Belleri, Peter Pagin, Thea Goodsell, Krista Lawlor and Manuel Garcia-Carpintero.
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58Empty Singular Terms in the Mental-File FrameworkIn Manuel García-Carpintero & Genoveva Martí (eds.), Empty Representations: Reference and Non-Existence, Oxford University Press. pp. 162-185. 2014.Mental files, in Recanati's framework, function as 'singular terms in the language of thought' ; they serve to think about objects in the world (and to store information about them). But they have a derived, metarepresentational function : they serve to represent how other subjects think about objects in the world. To account for the metarepresentational use of files, Recanati introduces the notion of an 'indexed file', i.e. a vicarious file that stands, in the subject's mind, for another subjec…Read more
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70The 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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La pensée d'Austin et son originalité par rapport à la philosophie analytique antérieureIn Paul Amselek & Zenon Bankowski (eds.), Théorie des actes de langage, éthique et droit, Presses Universitaires De France - Puf. pp. 19-35. 1986.
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98Replies 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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105Déstabiliser 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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28Varieties of SimulationIn Jérôme Dokic & Joëlle Proust (eds.), Simulation and Knowledge of Action, John Benjamins. pp. 151-171. 2002.
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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, Rue D'ulm. pp. 19-34. 2005.Cet article propose un traitement de l'indexicalité mentale utilisant la notion de fichier.
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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