•  875
    The Mental Files Theory of Singular Thought: A Psychological Perspective
    In Rachel Goodman, James Genone & Nick Kroll (eds.), Singular Thought and Mental Files, Oxford University Press. pp. 107-142. 2020.
    We argue that the most ambitious version of the mental files theory of singular thought, according to which mental files are a wide-ranging psychological natural kind underlying all and only singular thinking, is unsupported by the available psychological data. Nevertheless, critical examination of the theory from a psychological perspective opens up promising avenues for research, especially concerning the relationship between our perceptual capacity to individuate and track basic individuals, …Read more
  •  588
    Hearing meanings: the revenge of context
    Synthese 198 (6): 5229-5252. 2019.
    According to the perceptual view of language comprehension, listeners typically recover high-level linguistic properties such as utterance meaning without inferential work. The perceptual view is subject to the Objection from Context: since utterance meaning is massively context-sensitive, and context-sensitivity requires cognitive inference, the perceptual view is false. In recent work, Berit Brogaard provides a challenging reply to this objection. She argues that in language comprehension cont…Read more
  •  375
    Representational Kinds
    In Joulia Smortchkova, Krzysztof Dołrega & Tobias Schlicht (eds.), What Are Mental Representations?, Oxford University Press. 2020.
    Many debates in philosophy focus on whether folk or scientific psychological notions pick out cognitive natural kinds. Examples include memory, emotions and concepts. A potentially interesting type of kind is: kinds of mental representations (as opposed, for example, to kinds of psychological faculties). In this chapter we outline a proposal for a theory of representational kinds in cognitive science. We argue that the explanatory role of representational kinds in scientific theories, in conjunc…Read more
  •  152
    Mental Files: an Introduction
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (2): 265-281. 2016.
  •  131
    Singular Thought: Object‐Files, Person‐Files, and the Sortal PERSON
    Topics in Cognitive Science 6 (4): 632-646. 2014.
    In philosophy, “singular thought” refers to our capacity to represent entities as individuals, rather than as possessors of properties. Philosophers who defend singularism argue that perception allows us to mentally latch onto objects and persons directly, without conceptualizing them as being of a certain sort. Singularists assume that singular thought forms a unified psychological kind, regardless of the nature of the individuals represented. Empirical findings on the special psychological rol…Read more
  •  44
    Le fressellianisme face au dilemme de l’accointance
    Les Etudes Philosophiques 130 (3): 421-440. 2019.
    Selon le russellianisme, nous avons des pensées singulières faisant directement référence aux objets, fondées sur des relations d’accointance (1 re partie). Selon le frégéanisme, toute pensée est médiatisée par un concept (2 e partie). Le fressellianisme anti-descriptiviste cherche à réconcilier ces thèses apparemment opposées, et à éviter les objections auxquelles chacune s’expose, en postulant des concepts singuliers, individués par des relations d’accointance (3 e partie). Mais le fressellian…Read more
  •  41
    Modes of presentation (MOPs) are often said to have to be transparent, usually in the sense that thinkers can know solely via introspection whether or not they are deploying the same one. While there has been much discussion of threats to transparency stemming from externalism, another threat to transparency has gar- nered less attention. This novel threat arises if MOPs are robust, as I argue they should be according to internalist views of MOPs which identify them with represen- tational vehic…Read more
  •  10
    Belief Fragments and Mental Files
    In Cristina Borgoni, Dirk Kindermann & Andrea Onofri (eds.), The Fragmented Mind, Oxford University Press. pp. 251-278. 2021.
    Belief fragments and mental files are based on the same idea: that information in people’s minds is compartmentalized rather than lumped all together. Philosophers mostly use the two notions differently, though the exact relationship between fragments and files has yet to be examined in detail. This chapter has three main goals. The first is to argue that fragments and files, properly understood, play distinct yet complementary explanatory roles; the second is to defend a model of belief that in…Read more