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171The anti-individualist revolution in the philosophy of languageLinguistics and Philosophy 37 (2): 91-120. 2014.The canonical arguments against the description theory of names are usually taken to have established that the reference of a name as used on a given occasion is not semantically determined by the qualitative descriptions that the speaker may have in mind. The deepest moral of these arguments, on the received view, would be that the speaker’s narrow mental states play no semantic role in fixing reference. My central aim in this paper is to challenge this common understanding by highlighting that…Read more
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148The Metasyntactic Interpretation of Two-DimensionalismPhilosophical Studies 163 (3): 611-626. 2013.Robert Stalnaker contrasts two interpretations, semantic and metasemantic, of the two-dimensionalist framework. On the semantic interpretation, the primary intension or diagonal proposition associated with an utterance is a semantic value that the utterance has in virtue of the actual linguistic meaning of the corresponding sentence, and that primary intension is both what a competent speaker grasps and what determines different secondary intensions or horizontal propositions relative to differe…Read more
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113Singular truth-conditions without singular propositionsSynthese 195 (6): 2741-2760. 2018.In this paper I argue that propositionalism is what generates a tension between referentialism and harmony. Harmony can be preserved if we replace propositionalism by centred referentialism, according to which referential thoughts and utterances about an object have descriptive contents that must be evaluated relative to a world centred on that object at the relevant time. By disentangling truth-conditions and contents, this move allows us to dissolve the tension between referentialism and descr…Read more
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99Contextual AnalyticityAnalytic Philosophy 63 (4): 268-276. 2022.My double aim in this paper is to argue for the claims that, when they are formed in certain ways, some judgements expressed by “I am here now” are both (a) apriori (although not solely in virtue of their meaning), and (b) necessary (albeit trivially so). I will submit that such judgements are “analytic” in the same sense that some judgements are “immune to error through misidentification” when this notion is understood in a relativistic way: in both cases, no component of the content determines…Read more
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93Reference and Knowledge of ReferenceThe Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 5 3. 2009.This paper addresses two issues: (a) Does linguistic competence with respect to a given sentence S (or an utterance of S) whose meaning is that p strictly require knowledge that S means that p? (b) Of what kind is the entity which is the subject matter of the propositions embedded in the knowledge-that attributions constituting attributions of linguistic competence? These two issues are addressed in connection to some classical problems raised by names and direct reference theory. It will be arg…Read more
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56Externalism, transparency, and diagonal propositionsSynthese 200 (3): 1-23. 2022.Boghossian argued that externalism is incompatible with a transparency thesis according to which we can know a priori whether any two of our occurrent thoughts have the same or distinct content, and that this transparency thesis is integral to our commonsense conception of rationality, which requires the apriority of our logical abilities. Stalnaker offered a detailed compatibilist response to Boghossian. Boghossian criticized this response, and Stalnaker replied. But the outcome of that importa…Read more
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35Review of Geirsson, H. (2013), Philosophy of Language and Webs of Information (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2013.
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33Fixing internalism about perceptual contentPhilosophical Explorations 26 (3): 404-419. 2023.Suppose that Paul, while looking at a tree, sees that that thing over there is a red bird. Paul is having what we may call a ‘singular’ perceptual experience. How should we characterise the representational content of his perceptual experience? I will sketch an original answer to this question, building on the internalist accounts propounded by Searle (1983. Intentionality. Cambridge University Press. Ch. 2) and Recanati (2007. Perspectival Thought. Oxford University Press. Ch. 17). Pace Searle,…Read more
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23Naming and IndexicalityCambridge University Press. 2021.How do words stand for things? Taking ideas from philosophical semantics and pragmatics, this book offers a unique, detailed, and critical survey of central debates concerning linguistic reference in the twentieth century. It then uses the survey to identify and argue for a novel version of current 'two-dimensional' theories of meaning, which generalise the context-dependency of indexical expressions. The survey highlights the history of tensions between semantic and epistemic constraints on pla…Read more
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10Cognitive and Empirical Pragmatics : Issues and Perspectives (edited book)Belgian Journal of Linguistics 25. 2011.Over the last decade, research in semantics and pragmatics has started to increasingly incorporate new experimental methods from cognitive psychology. That this empirical stance on utterance interpretation has now reached maturity is revealed by two unmistakable symptoms: an increased reflection on the contextual methods used to elicit experimental data, and a continuous expansion of the linguistic phenomena and themes being investigated through these methods. The articles gathered in this volum…Read more
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4Perry on Reference and Reflexive ContentsLanguage and Linguistics Compass 4 (4). 2010.John Perry has devoted most of his recent work to the development of what he calls a reflexive– referential theory of utterance content. The theory has two main motivations. The primary purpose of the theory was to offer a new solution in the old controversy between referentialists and descriptivists. The second application of the theory, emphasized in the recent collaboration with Kepa Korta, is to yield a satisfactory compromise in the contemporary debate between minimalists and contextualists…Read more
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IntroductionIn Gregory Bochner, Philippe De Brabanter, MIkhail Kissine & Daniela Rossi (eds.), Cognitive and Empirical Pragmatics : Issues and Perspectives, Belgian Journal of Linguistics 25. 2011.
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Three-Dimensional SemanticsIn A. Riester and T. Solstad (ed.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 13, Vol. 5, Series SinSpeC. Working Papers of the SFB 732, University of Stuttgart., . pp. 67-82. 2009.
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College de FrancePost-doctoral Fellow
Paris, France
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |