F. Recanati (IJN), Mental Files in Flux. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Abstract:
François Recanati has pioneered the 'mental file' framework for thinking about concepts and how we refer to the world in thought and language.

Mental files are based on 'epistemically rewarding' relations to objects in the environment. Standing in such relations to objects puts the subject in a position to gain information regarding them. The information thus gained goes into the file based on the relevant relation. Files do not merely store information about objects, however, they refer to them and serve as singular terms in the language of thought, with a relational (nondescriptivist) semantics. In this framework, the reference of linguistic expressions is inherited from that of the files we associate with them. Crucially, files also play the role of 'modes of presentation'. They are used to account for cognitive significance phenomena illustrated by so-called 'Frege cases'.

In this new volume, Recanati considers what happens to mental files in a dynamic setting. Mental files are construed as both continuants (dynamic files) and as time-slices thereof (static files). Dynamic files are needed to account for confusion, recognition and tracking. Mental Files in Flux considers what happens to the relation of coreference de jure, central to the functional characterization of files, when one adopts a dynamic perspective. Only a weak form of coreference de jure is said to hold between stages of the same dynamic file. The second part of the book argues that communication involves interpersonal dynamic files. Special attention is paid to the communication of indexical thoughts (de se contents) and communication using proper names.

François Recanati (IJN), (Sept.2016), Local pragmatics: reply to Mandy Simons, Inquiry

Abstract :
Abstract :
In response to Mandy Simons' defense of a classical Gricean approach to pragmatic enrichment in terms of conversational implicature, I emphasize the following contrast. Conversational implicatures are *generated* by a global inference which uses as a premise the fact that the speaker has said that p, but only the *triggering* inference is global in cases of pragmatic enrichment. What generates the correct interpretation is a process of reconstrual, which locally maps the literal meaning of a constituent to a modulated meaning and composes that meaning with that of the other constituents. That process is constrained by Gricean considerations (in the broad sense) but that is true of all pragmatic aspects of interpretation, whether pre-propositional or post-propositional. Just as indexical resolution, though pragmatic and constrained by Gricean considerations, does not fit the two-stage model through which Grice accounts for conversational implicatures, so pragmatic modulation can’t be accounted for in terms of that model despite the fact that, like conversational implicatures and in contrast to indexical resolution, modulation is a pragmatic process which is pragmatically rather than semantically triggered.

François Recanati (IJN), (Sept.2016), Force Cancellation, Synthese

Abstract:
Peter Hanks and Scott Soames both defend pragmatic solutions to the problem of the unity of the proposition. According to them, what ties together Tim and baldness in the singular proposition expressed by ‘Tim is bald’ is an act of the speaker (or thinker) : the act of predicating baldness of Tim. But Soames construes that act as force neutral and noncommittal while, for Hanks, it is inherently assertive and committal. Hanks answers the Frege–Geach challenge by arguing that, in complex sentences, the force inherent in the content of an embedded sentence is cancelled. Indrek Reiland has recently objected to Hanks’s proposal that it faces a dilemma: either force cancellation dissolves the unity of the proposition secured by the can- celled act of assertion (and Hanks’s proposal does not work), or Hanks’s proposal reduces to Soames’s. In this paper, I respond to Reiland by offering an analysis of force cancellation which gets rid of the alleged dilemma. The proposal is based on a set of distinctions from speech act theory : between two senses of ’force’, two types of act, and two types of context. The role of simulation in force cancellation is emphasized, and connections drawn to broader issues such as the evolution of complex language.

Philippe Schlenker, Emmanuel Chemla, Klaus Zuberbühler (2016), What Do Monkey Calls Mean?, Trends in cognitive science

Abstract:
A field of primate linguistics is gradually emerging. It combines general questions and tools from theoretical linguistics with rich data gathered in experimental primatology. Analyses of several monkey systems have uncovered very simple morphological and syntactic rules and have led to the development of a primate semantics that asks new questions about the division of semantic labor between the literal meaning of monkey calls, additional mechanisms of pragmatic enrichment, and the environmental context. We show that comparative studies across species may validate this program and may in some cases help in reconstructing the evolution of monkey communication over millions of years.

AGENDA

S'abonner

Se désabonner