Manuel García-Carpintero

Inspired by Castañeda (1966, 1968), Perry (1979) and Lewis (1979) showed a specific variety of singular thoughts, thoughts about oneself “as oneself”—_de se_ thoughts, Lewis called them—that raise special issues, and they advanced rival accounts. Their suggestive examples raise the problem of _de se_ thought—how to characterize it so as to give an accurate account of the data, tracing its relations to singular thoughts in general. The main tenets of the two contrasting accounts—Lewisian and Perrian—are rehearsed in the first section of this chapter, together with some weaknesses of Perry’s presentation of his view. In the second, a proposal is presented, a specific elaboration of the Perrian account which overcomes the weaknesses. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of reasons for preferring one or another account, in particular regarding the issue of the communication of _de se_ thoughts.

Most philosophers take for granted that natural languages and the words that are part of them are social entities constituted by conventions. This is in tension with a currently popular view among scientifically minded linguists and philosophers, including semanticists, influenced by the work of Noam Chomsky. Chomskyans distinguish E(xternal)-languages from I(nternal)-languages, and they take the latter to be the proper object of study in a naturalistic research project. On this view, languages are primarily cognitive entities of a non-social nature. We will review the debate from a perspective committed to an Austinian version of the social view. We’ll articulate the view and offer some abductive evidence that, in an explanatorily prior sense, languages are normatively constituted conventional artifacts put in place and backed by social rules.

When we infer _a is F_ from _a is F and G_, we “trade on identity” (Campbell 1987/8): the identity of the referents of the two tokens of ‘_a_’ is taken for granted. The two tokens are in the relation called (among other things) _coordination_. This is a pre-theoretical phenomenon that several philosophers characterized by epistemic intuitions we share. Assuming that they reveal a real, natural-kind-like relation in linguistic and mental cognition, this chapter offers an account by deploying a Fregean presuppositional analysis of singular reference that I have argued for in earlier work. The paper applies it to coordination and addresses concerns that some authors have expressed about accounts of coordination in terms of presuppositions.

When a subject has a phenomenally conscious experience (as of a bouncing red ball, for example), she is aware of the world as being presented in a certain way (a bouncy, reddish, roundish way in this case). Many philosophers, from Aristotle and Kant to Husserl and Sartre, have argued that in such conscious experiences, whatever the specific qualities the subject is aware of, she is also phenomenally aware of the fact that the experience is presented to _her_. This view is attracting a new surge of attention at the crossroads of phenomenology, analytic philosophy of mind and the philosophy of cognitive science, but also intense controversy. The book explores some of the questions running through the debate on this putative self-experience: _Does it exist?_, the _existence_ question; _What is it?_, the _essence_ question; _What is it for?_, the _function_ question; and _What else does it explain?_, the _explanation_ question. In this Introduction, we elaborate on the first two questions, and then move on to providing a brief presentation of the chapters to follow.

In recent papers, Schiffer advances an argument against supervaluationist accounts of vagueness, based on reports of vague contents. From a perspective more congenial to supervaluationism than Schiffer's, McGee and McLaughlin also pose a related problem about _de re_ ascriptions of propositional attitudes and indirect discourse. The difficulty is gestured at in this argument by Wright: ‘there are additional concerns about the ability of supervaluational proposals to track our intuitions concerning the extension of ‘true’ among statements involving vague vocabulary: ‘No one can knowledgeably identify a precise boundary between those who are tall and those who are not’ is plausibly a true claim which is not true under _any_ admissible way of making ‘tall’ precise. This chapter develops a defence of supervaluationism based on the point that the problematic occurrences of singular terms occur in indirect discourse, and supervaluationists may allow that they shift their referent there. Schiffer dismisses a proposal like this, mainly because it ‘undermines... a leading virtue of supervaluationism... its implication that vagueness is... not a feature of the world’. This chapter argues on the contrary that the reply does not undermine the fundamental contentions of the supervaluationist account.

Fictional discourse is, primarily, discourse used to produce literary fictions; there is also the “metafictional” discourse used to talk about fictions, to report their contents or other features. On a traditional view classically articulated by Searle, primary fictional discourse doesn’t have a specific semantics; sentences there just have the semantics they would in their standard uses. Fiction-makers convey their fictions by pretending to use them in their standard ways without doing so, and without what they do giving them a specific, dedicated representational point with a semantics of its own. This view is less popular nowadays than it used to be. A question the now more popular alternative view raises is, what is the contribution of intuitively empty names to such a dedicated semantics? Many supporters of the traditional mere pretense view, including Searle, argued that, in the metafictional uses to which they granted a semantics, apparently empty names are not in fact empty, but refer to some more or less exotic entity. Some of those who grant a dedicated semantics to primary fictional discourse, like Salmon and others, extend this realist view to it. The paper aims to uphold considerations already given by irrealists against these proposals, by highlighting its counterintuitive features and explaining why they are bad in this theoretical setting.

In two recent papers, Schiffer (1998, 196–8; 2000, 246–8) advances an argument against supervaluationist accounts of vagueness, based on reports of vague contents. Suppose that Al tells Bob ‘Ben was there’, pointing to a certain place, and later Bob says, ‘Al said that Ben was there’, pointing in the same direction. According to supervaluationist semantics, Schiffer contends, both Al’s and Bob’s utterances of ‘there’ indeterminately refer to myriad precise regions of space; Al’s utterance is true just in case Ben was in any of those precisely bounded regions of space, and Bob’s is true just in case Al said of each of them that it is where Ben was. However, while the supervaluationist truth-conditions for Al’s utterance might be satisfied, those for Bob’s cannot; for Al didn’t say, of any of those precisely delimited regions of space, that it is where Ben was. In an earlier version of the material that I will present here I replied to Schiffer’s argument that supervaluationism has an independently well-motivated defense. The response is essentially based on the point that theoccurrence of ‘there’ in Bob’s utterance (and of ‘tall’ in Wright’s argument) occurs. in indirect discourse, and supervaluationists may allow that it shifts its referent there. Schiffer’s (2000b) reply to this response shows that it was not made sufficiently clear. In this chapter I will try to improve on that score. In his more recent reply, Schiffer (2000b, 325) dismisses a proposal like the one I will make, mainly because it ‘undermines . . . a leading virtue of supervaluationism . . . its implication that vagueness is . . . not a feature of the world.’ I argue that my reply does not undermine the fundamental contentions of the supervaluationist account.

Dennett (1988) provides a much discussed argument for the nonexistence of qualia, as conceived by philosophers like Block, Chalmers, Loar and Searle. My goal in this paper is to vindicate Dennett's argument, construed in a certain way. The argument supports the claim that qualia are constitutively representational. Against Block and Chalmers, the argument rejects the detachment of phenomenal from information‐processing consciousness; and against Loar and Searle, it defends the claim that qualia are constitu‐tively representational in an externalist understanding of this. The core of the argument is contained in section 3. In the first part, I contrast a minimal conception of qualia, relative to which their existence is not under dispute, with the sort of view to which I will object. In the second part I set the stage by presenting the facts about (minimal) qualia on which a Dennett‐like argument can be based.

Recent proposals in three fields of philosophy of language that are making significant contributions are presented: the phenomenon of vagueness; the distinction between semantics and pragmatics; and the use of “two-dimensional” semantics to address problems generated by “direct reference” theses. A few years ago, there was a perception that the philosophy of language was losing, in favor of the philosophy of mind, the central place it occupied in the analytic tradition—a loss that, according to Dummett, would amount to the abandonment of that tradition's distinctive feature. Taking the proposals presented as an illustrative model, it is suggested that such a perception has proven to be a passing fad and an explanatory hypothesis is put forward. Some years ago there was a perception concerning the loss of the philosophy of language, in favor of the philosophy of mind, of its central place in the analytic tradition - a loss which, according to Dummett, would amount to the loss of its most distinctive trait. With the discussed proposals as illustrative model, it is suggested that that perception was the product of a fleeting fashion, and an explanatory hypothesis is ventured.

Gómez-Torrente’s papers have made important contributions to vindicate Tarski’s model-theoretic account of the logical properties in the face of Etchemendy’s criticisms. However, at some points his vindication depends on interpreting the Tarskian account as purportedly modally deflationary, i.e., as not intended to capture the intuitive modal element in the logical properties, that logical consequence is (epistemic or alethic) necessary truth-preservation. Here it is argued that the views expressed in Tarski’s seminal work do not support this modally deflationary interpretation, even if Tarski himself was sceptical about modalities.

Wittgenstein distinguished between two uses of “I”, one “as object” and the other “as subject”, a distinction that Shoemaker elucidated in terms of a notion of immunity to error through misidentification (“IEM”); first-personal claims are IEM in the use “as subject”, but not in the other use. Shoemaker argued that memory judgments based on “personal”, episodic memory are not strictly speaking IEM; Gareth Evans disputed this. Similar issues have been debated regarding self-ascriptions of conscious thoughts based on first-personal awareness, in the light of claims of “thought insertion” in schizophrenic patients. The paper aims to defend a Shoemaker-like line by critically engaging with some compelling recent contributions. Methodologically, the paper argues that to properly address these issues the all-inclusive term “thought” should be avoided, and specific types of thoughts countenanced.

Wittgenstein distinguished between two uses of ‘I’, one “as object” and the other “as subject”, a distinction that Shoemaker elucidated in terms of a notion of _immunity to error through misidentification_ (‘IEM’); in their use “as subject”, first-personal claims are IEM, but not in their use “as object”. Shoemaker argued that memory judgments based on “personal”, _episodic_ memory are only de facto IEM, not strictly speaking IEM, while Gareth Evans disputed it. In the past two decades research on memory has produced very significant results, which have changed the philosophical landscape. As part of it, several new arguments have been made for and against the IEM of personal memories. The paper aims to defend the Shoemaker line by critically engaging with some compelling recent contributions.

De re or singular thoughts are, intuitively, those essentially or constitutively about a particular object or objects; any thought about different objects would be a different thought. How should a philosophical articulation or thematization of their nature look like? In spite of extended discussion of the issue since it was brought to the attention of the philosophical community in the late fifties by Quine (1956), we are far from having a plausible response. This is glaringly revealed by the contrasting recent takes on the issue by writers such as Soames (2005) – who adopts the view by Donnellan (1979) to be outlined presently – and Jeshion (2001), otherwise sharing a similar direct-reference approach to the prototypical expression of those contents. Discussing the matter in connection with the status of the Kripkean category of the contingent a priori in the just mentioned article, Donnellan (1979) argued that what can be properly classified as knowable a priori about utterances like those involving ‘one meter’ or ‘Neptune’ famously proposed by Kripke (1980) cannot be the very same singular content that is contingent; he distinguished to that end between knowing a true proposition expressed by an utterance, and knowing that an utterance expresses a true proposition. (Thus, for instance, if, while listening to an utterance in a language that I do not know, I am told by a reliable person who knows the language and whom I trust that the utterance is true, I come thereby to know that the sentence expresses a truth, without knowing the truth that it expresses.) Evans (1979) replied that, for a very specific sort of cases involving “descriptive names”, a related proto-two-dimensionalist account should be preferred, on which it is not the singular contingent content, but rather a general descriptive one which is knowable a priori. In a series of papers, Robin Jeshion (2000, 2001) has recently attacked Donnellan's proposal, arguing in favour of the most straightforward interpretation of Kripke's claim: in the relevant cases, the very same singular content can be both contingent and knowable a priori. In this paper, I will appeal to a generalized version of two-dimensional semantics to advance an account of the Kripkean cases along the lines of Evans's, and I will argue that Jeshion's compelling arguments against Donnellan's view do not apply to this version.

The paper discusses four main views on the relation between language and reasons. Two of them contend that there is no significant relation, on different bases; a third contends that linguistic features can only be clarified by relating them to motivating reasons, and the fourth makes a similar claim but with respect to normative reasons instead. These approaches assume contrasting views on the nature of language. The first is a Platonist view on which the languages are abstract entities whose properties are independent of the psychology of rational beings. The second, promoted by Chomsky’s very successful research programs, sees languages as a feature of the nonconscious deep psychology of human beings, a genetically determined subpersonal part of the mind/brain. The third has two different guises: the Davidsonian interpretationist perspective, and Gricean proposals. The fourth holds that languages constitute speech-act potentials, on the assumption that speech-acts provide speakers with normative reasons.

The paper focuses on the modal argument that accounts of assertion in terms of constitutive norms are incompatible with conventionalism about assertion. The argument appeals to an alleged modal asymmetry: constitutive rules are essential to the acts they characterize, and therefore the obligations they impose necessarily apply to every instance; conventions are arbitrary, and thus can only contingently regulate the practices they establish. The paper argues that this line of reasoning fails to establish any modal asymmetry, by invoking the distinction between the non-discriminating existence across possible worlds of types (practices, institutions) defined by constitutive rules, and the discriminating existence of those among them that are actually in force. The necessity of practices defined by constitutive rules that the argument relies on concerns the former, while conventionalist claims concern the latter. The paper concludes suggesting considerations that are relevant to deciding whether assertion is in fact conventional.

Jeff King, Scott Soames, and Peter Hanks have advanced substantive theories of propositions, to deal with several issues they have raised in connection with a concern with a long pedigree in philosophy, the problem of the unity of propositions. The qualification ‘substantive’ is meant to contrast with ‘minimal’ or ‘deflationary’ – roughly, views that reject that propositions have a hidden nature, worth investigating. Substantive views, I’ll argue, create spurious problems by characterizing propositions in ways that make them unfit to perform their theoretical jobs. I will present in this light some critical points against recent substantivist proposals.

We intuitively make a distinction between _lying_ and _misleading_. On the explanation of this phenomenon favored here—the _adverbial_ account—the distinction tracks whether the content and its truth-committing force are literally conveyed. On an alternative _commitment_ account, the difference between lying and misleading is predicated instead on the strength of assertoric commitment. One lies when one presents with full assertoric commitment what one believes to be false; one merely misleads when one presents it without full assertoric commitment, by merely hinting or otherwise implying it. Now, as predicted by the well-supported assumption that we can also assert with pictures, the lying/misleading distinction appears to intuitively show up there too. Here I’ll explain how the debate confronting the two accounts plays out both in general and in that case, aiming to provide support for the adverbial account.

The paper surveys recent appraisals of David Lewis’s seminal paper on truth in fiction. It examines variations on standard criticisms of Lewis’s account, aiming to show that, if developed as Lewis suggests in his 1983 Postscript A, his proposals on the topic are—as Hanley puts it—‘as good as it gets’. Thus elaborated, Lewis’s account can resist the objections, and it offers a better picture of fictional discourse than recent resurrections of other classic works of the 1970s by Kripke, van Inwagen and Searle. The turn that Lewis suggests and the paper recommends draws on the remaining outstanding contribution from that time: Walton’s.

The paper reviews proposals by Abell, Predelli, and others on the semantics of fiction, focusing on the discourse through which fictions are created. Predelli develops the radical fictionalism of former writers like Kripke and van Inwagen, on which that discourse is contentless and does not express propositions. This paper offers reasons to doubt these claims. It then explores realist proposals like Abell’s in which singular terms in fictions refer to fictional characters, understood as socially created representational artifacts, and irrealist alternatives in which the discourse is fully meaningful even though those terms fail to refer.

John Searle argues that fictions are constituted by mere pretense—by the simulation of representational activities like assertions, without any further representational aim. They are not the result of sui generis, dedicated speech acts of a specific kind, on a par with assertion. The view had earlier many defenders, and still has some. Stefano Predelli enlists considerations derived from Searle in support of his radical fictionalism. This is the view that a sentence of fictional discourse including a prima facie empty fictional name like “Emma Woodhouse” in fact “is not a sentence, and it encodes no proposition whatsoever.” His argument is broadly abductive; he claims that this view affords compelling explanations of features of fictions he finds well-established, among them that fictions without explicit narrators nonetheless have covert ones. Here I take up his arguments, in defense of the dedicated speech act view. I thus address pressing issues about the status of fictional names and the nature and ubiquity of narrators in fictions.