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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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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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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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178Can we believe what we do not understand?Mind and Language 12 (1): 84-100. 1997.In a series of papers, Sperber provides the following analysis of the phenomenon of ill-understood belief (or 'quasi-belief', as I call it): (i) the quasi-believer has a validating meta-belief, to the effect that a certain representation is true; yet (ii) that representation does not give rise to a plain belief, because it is 'semi-propositional'. In this paper I discuss several aspects of this treatment. In particular, I deny that the representation accepted by the quasi-believer is semanticall…Read more
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6Response to Frapolli's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
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The Paradox of the First PersonIn Daniel Andler, Parthasarati Banerjee, Mahasweta Chaudhury & Oliver Guillaume (eds.), Facets of Rationality, Sage. pp. 300-311. 1995.
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6Modes of presentation: perceptual vs deferentialIn Albert Newen, Ulrich Nortmann & Rainer Stuehlmann-Laeisz (eds.), Building on Frege: New Essays on Sense, Content, and Concept, Csli Stanford. pp. 197-208. 2001.Through perception we gain information about the world. We also gain information about the world through communication with others. There are concepts — indexical concepts, such as the concept of the present time ('now') or of the present place ('here') or the concept of oneself — which have a special link to perception. Are there concepts which are tied to communication in the same way in which indexical concepts are tied to perception? After discussing, and criticizing, a deflationary approach…Read more
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35Content, mode, and self-referenceIn Savas L. Tsohatzidis (ed.), John Searle's Philosophy of Language: Force, Meaning and Mind, Cambridge University Press. pp. 49-63. 2007.In this paper I argue that the self-referential component which Searle rightly detects in the truth-conditions of perceptual judgments comes from the perceptual ‘mode' and is not an aspect of the ‘content' of the judgment, contrary to Searle's claim.
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10Response to Brabanter's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
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34Indexicality, Context, and PretenseIn Noel Burton-Roberts (ed.), Pragmatics, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 213-229. 2007.In this paper, I argue that the notion of ‘context' that has to be used in the study of indexicals is far from univocal. A first distinction has to be made between the real context of speech and the context in which the speech act is supposed to take place — only the latter notion being relevant when it comes to determining the semantic values of indexicals. Second, we need to draw a distinction between the context of the locutionary act and the context of the illocutionary act: contrary to a st…Read more
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The Iconicity of MetarepresentationsIn Dan Sperber (ed.), Meta-Representations: a Multidisciplinary Perspective, Oxford University Press. pp. 311-360. 2000.
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2Context and Content: From Language to ThoughtContemporary Foreign Languages Studies 1-14. 2011.In this paper I present an overview of my research in the philosophy of language in mind over more than thirty years, from my early work on speech act theory to my current work on mental files. The unifying theme is context-dependence,both in language and thought. I distinguish several varieties of context-dependence and, along the way, provide tentative accounts of various phenomena: performative utterances, indexicals, modulation (metonymy and loose talk, free enrichment), de se thought, the c…Read more
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28Some 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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30Pragmatic ParadoxesGraduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 17 (1-2): 289-298. 1994.As several philosophers have noticed, the meaning of an utterance is twofold: besides what it says, there is what it shows—or rather what the uttering of the utterance shows. In certain cases, a contradiction may arise between what is said and what is is shown. Contradictions of this type, called ‘pragmatic contradictions’, must be carefully distinguished from ordinary contradictions, i.e., from contradictions internal to what is said.
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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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200Domains of discourseLinguistics and Philosophy 19 (5). 1996.In the first part of this paper I present a defence of the Austinian semantic approach to incomplete quantifiers and similar phenomena (section 2-4). It is part of my defence of Austinian semantics that it incorporates a cognitive dimension (section 4). This cognitive dimension makes it possible to connect Austinian semantics to various cognitive theories of discourse interpretation. In the second part of the paper (sections 5-7), I establish connections between Austinian semantics and four part…Read more
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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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La logique des noms propresRevue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 172 (3): 542-545. 1982.
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60Précis de Literal MeaningPhilosophiques 33 (1): 231-236. 2006.Résumé de mon livre Literal Meaning (Cambridge University Press, 2004), à paraître dans la rubrique DISPUTATIO la revue canadienne Philosophiques, suivi de comptes rendus critiques par Steven Davis, Brendan Gillon, et Michel Seymour et de mes réponses.
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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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5The received view about meteorological predicates like ‘rain' is that they carry an argument slot for a location which can be filled explicitly or implicitly. The view assumes that ‘rain', in the absence of an explicit location, demands that the context provide a specific location. In an earlier article, I have provided a counter-example to that claim, viz. a context in which ‘it is raining' receives a location-indefinite interpretation. On the basis of that example, I have argued that when ther…Read more
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466What is saidSynthese 128 (1-2): 75--91. 2001.A critique of the purely semantic, minimalist notion of 'what is said'.