Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit - François Recanati

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Transparency, Indexicality and Consciousness : Problems with Revelation

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

David Papineau, King's College, London

Various anti-physicalist arguments hinge on the idea that phenomenal concepts reveal the nature of their referents to us. I shall consider various models for this kind of phenomenal revelation and argue that none can bear the necessary argumentative weight.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Transparency, Indexicality and Consciousness : The Argument from Understanding for Dualism about Experiential Properties

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Martine Nida-Rümelin, Université de Fribourg

The argument from understanding defends a dualist view about experiential properties: their nature is non-physical. The premises of the argument are (a) phenomenal essentialism (that phenomenal concepts reveal the nature of certain experiential properties), (b) that physical concepts and certain phenomenal concepts are cognitively independent, (c) that two property concepts revealing the nature of the same property cannot be cognitively independent and that (d) a property having a nature which can be revealed by a phenomenal concept but by no physical concept cannot count as a physical property.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Transparency, Indexicality and Consciousness : Transparency Principles

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Paul Boghossian, New York University

I will look at the transparency principles that have been proposed, at the relations between them, and at the role that they play in arguments for and against various weighty philosophical positions.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Transparency, Indexicality and Consciousness : Introduction

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Cette conférence, organisée en partenariat avec l'université de Fribourg dans le cadre du projet ANR-FNS « Essential Indexicality and Thoughts about Experience » (ANR-22-CE93-0004), interrogera les relations entre trois grands thèmes de la philosophie contemporaine du langage et de l'esprit : le problème que l'indexicalité mentale pose dans une théorie de la pensée, le problème que la conscience phénoménale crée pour le matérialisme, et les différentes thèses de transparence sur la connaissance de soi et sur l'accès en première personne aux contenus mentaux.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : Now and Then: The Dynamics of Self-Locating Beliefs

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Matheus Valente, University of Barcelona (LOGOS) & University of Valencia

It's often said within epistemology circles that self-locating beliefs about now and then change in peculiar ways incompatible with traditional Bayesian update rules, and so, that these beliefs are epistemically exceptional. The point is clear enough when we consider subjects who lose track of time - e.g. Rip van Winkle (Kaplan 1989) - and even clearer when some funny business with their memories are added to the equation, as in the famous story of Sleeping Beauty (Elga 2000). But that's like killing a fly with a bulldozer, after all, the dynamics of self-locating beliefs seems exceptional even when attention is restricted to idealised agents that are assumed to never forget any information nor to lose track of time. Such is the case of Chronos, an omniscient god in a deterministic world who not only knows the complete history of her universe but is never uncertain about what time it is. Since Chronos is de dicto omniscient, her beliefs are always entirely concentrated on one possible world. Since she's self-locating omniscient, her self-locating beliefs are, at any given time, concentrated on a single temporal location. Though Chronos is never uncertain about anything, it appears that she must be constantly shifting her self-locating beliefs just to keep up with time: when the present time is n, she believes 'now is n', a moment later when it's n+1, she instead believes 'now is n+1' etc. To use Evans' (1982) metaphor, self-locating beliefs seem to require us to run to keep still. Call the peculiar type of dynamics that even omniscient gods must subject their self-locating beliefs to Shifting (Arntzenius 2003; Bradley (2011) calls it 'Belief Mutation'; Recanati (2016) calls it 'conversion').

To account for Shifting we need to explain why Chronos knows at n that she'll believe 'now is n+1' at n+1 but still refrains from presently believing it. In other words, we need to explain why self- locating beliefs violate van Frassen's (1984) Reflection Principle which holds that we ought to defer to our future selves as experts (under the assumption that their epistemic standing is at least as good as our current one). One way to do so favoured by the majority of epistemologist is to countenance tensed propositions whose truth-values change with time (Titelbaum 2013, p. 171-278). Another way is to hold that the passage of time changes what times/events subjects are acquainted with, which then changes which de re beliefs they can hold at each time. The first camp holds that self-locating beliefs are epistemically special because their truth is tensed. The second camp holds that they so are because their accessibility is tensed. Given how easily this argument seems to roll off the tongue, one wonders whether the last decade of debates with sceptics like Cappelen & Dever (2013) and Magidor (2015) would have taken a different shape if more focus had been given to self-locating beliefs involving instead of to de se beliefs involving 'I'.

But there's an issue. Some epistemologists hold that Shifting is a particularly type of sterile belief update: when the only change in a subject's belief across times is due to Shifting, it's never rational for that subject to revise her de dicto beliefs. As Titelbaum (2013, 233) remarks, it's intuitive that "finding oneself passing through the world in exactly the way one was certain one was going to shouldn't change one's opinions about what that world is like". This suggests a different view where Shifting is not taken to be a type of belief change but instead of belief retention, a view which Prosser (2005) calls 'the

Frege-Evans dynamic theory'. On that approach, Chronos never changes any of her beliefs, and the permutations of indexicals which arise in virtue of the passage of time - now 'now', then 'then' - are really just ways of expressing a single persisting dynamic belief. If the Frege-Evans dynamic theory is tenable, we'd lose one important reason to think that self-locating beliefs are epistemically exceptional. This is so because, as I'll argue, the only puzzling cases that they would still give rise to would be ones where subjects' epistemic states become deteriorated across time due to cognitive mishaps like failures of memory or of one's tracking/discriminatory capacities. Since nobody doubts that weird things happen when our cognitive powers deteriorate, the problem of cognitive dynamics turns out to pertain less about self-locating beliefs per se than about the unsurprising fact that cognitively deteriorated subjects are epistemically exceptional.

If the Frege-Evans dynamic view can be upheld would thus have significant implications. Whether this can be done ultimately depends on what we should say about the interplay between self- location and rational action. Consider a temporal variant of Perry's famous bear attack case: Chronos intends to whistle once at all odd times and twice at all even times. Since Chronos acts differently as time passes, it seems that we must conclude that doxastic states coordinated by nothing but Shifting really change. Can the Frege-Evans dynamic view accommodate the fact that a single persisting dynamic belief might lead to distinct actions at distinct times?

My main objective in this talk is to motivate an affirmative answer. My hypothesis is that rational "changes" due only to Shifting are just as questionably a real type of change as corresponding "changes" in self-locating beliefs, and so, that the Frege-Evans dynamic view can be applied to the realm of reasons, intentions, and decision theory, just as well as it can be applied to the realm of belief and confirmation. The outcome is that when a subject's epistemic state changes only by Shifting, both their beliefs and their reasons/intentions can be said to remain stable regardless of their distinct (respective) linguistic and practical manifestations. To cash this out, I first defuse a set of cases which have taken some to think that Shifting can by itself require a revision of de dicto beliefs (Arntzenius' (2003) Prisoner, Elga's (2000) Sleeping Beauty, Shaw's (2019) forgetful god Lethe, and Topey's (forthcoming) hypoxia-affected Aisha), and argue that Shifting isn't the culprit of these cases' peculiar features. Then, I'll draw a parallel between the Frege-Evans dynamic view and recent work in the philosophy of action which holds that the distinction between intentions for the future and intentions for the present is ill-motivated (McDowell 2011, Brozzo 2021). These two philosophical debates bear promising structural analogies that have only recently started to be acknowledged. I'll deploy this analogy to argue that (1) the Frege-Evans dynamic view allows us to demystify the cognitive dynamics of self-locating beliefs, and so, that the epistemic exceptionality of self-locating beliefs must reside elsewhere (if it resides anywhere at all) and (2) that this view's credentials can be defended by showing how it fits with an independently plausible picture of how rational agents act on the basis of intentions formed at times prior to the action's execution.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : An Occasion-Sensitive Account of the Indexical Dynamics

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Carlos Mario Márquez Sosa, Federal University of ABC/UFABC

Ludovic Soutif, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro

As is well-known, Travis and his followers have argued that the individuation of thoughts is an occasion-sensitive matter (Travis 2000, 2017; Dobler 2020; see also Putnam 2002). This means that the semantic and cognitive individuation of thought-contents varies across occasions of use, the number of thought-contents expressed being relative to what is deemed more rational to understand on such and such occasions (that is, ultimately, to the agent's plans and interests). The thesis is more radical than it seems, though. It is not just a thesis about the variable (semantic or cognitive) availability of thoughts at a time or over time. It claims, more importantly, that there is no principled reason to favor one way to count thought-contents over the other (as one and the same or as two different thought-contents), because what is deemed more rational to understand on one occasion of use need not be what is deemed more rational to understand on another occasion of use.

An obvious consequence of the thesis is that the way the problem of cognitive dynamics is usually put in the literature (see Kaplan 1989: 537-8) fails to capture the phenomenon in its full complexity, for its very formulation assumes that there is a principled way to individuate indexical thoughts (beliefs) over time either semantically (via a function from contexts to contents and from contents to extensions) or cognitively (via Kaplanian characters), or both. It also assumes (wrongly, in our view) that a solution to the problem of cognitive dynamics can be provided in general terms, regardless of what is deemed more rational to understand in the specific occasions appealed to in the standard formulation of the problem.

Our talk is an attempt not only to unearth unwarranted assumptions made in the literature regarding the problem of the cognitive dynamics of indexical thoughts, but also to sketch an occasion-sensitive local solution to the problem understood in its full complexity. In our view, indexical thoughts are individuated locally, given the subject's ability to relate (at least two) occasions of use with respect to her plans and interests. Such thoughts are the outcome of dynamic and situated abilities exercised through a series of occasions that are or aren't part of the subject's rational plan. Our account will be, accordingly, sketched along the following lines: the subject's sensibility to the relation between occasions of use can give rise to the individuation of a single indexical thought, when the occasions are understood (by her) as part of a single rational plan. Otherwise, when the occasions are not related in this way, it gives rise to the individuation of different thoughts.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : Cognitive Dynamics as Mental Vehicle Identity: A Parity Argument from Polysemy

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Michael Murez, Université de Nantes

According to Fregean theories, thinking the same thought requires thinking not only about the same referent, but also thinking about it in the same way, under the same concept. Fregean theories face 'Schiffer's Puzzle' (Schiffer, 2005; Buchanan, 2016), i.e., some thoughts have what Schiffer calls "the relativity feature": "[their] entertainment requires different people, or the same person at different times, to think of [the same referent] in different ways" (Schiffer, 2005: 138). Paradigmatic examples are provided by 'cognitive dynamics' (Kaplan, 1989): A thinker thinks of some day as "today", a day passes, and the same thinker, keeping track of time, now thinks of the same day as "yesterday". The thinker is disposed to reason diachronically according to a pattern known as 'trading on coreference' (Campbell, 1988), which is often taken to indicate redeployment of the same concept. Yet it is tempting to say that the concepts expressed by "today" and "yesterday" are different, since they play different cognitive roles. According to Schiffer (2005: 149), "[i]t's clear the Fregean theory can't accommodate the relativity feature", because contra (e.g.,) Frege (1956 [1918]) and Evans (1981), there is no plausible account of what the concept which remains the same cross-contextually, and is expressed by different indexicals, is supposed to be.

Against Schiffer and others, I defend a broadly Fregean position, which allows for diachronic identity between concepts, despite changes in (many aspects of) cognitive role and means of linguistic expression. I argue that such a position is independently motivated if, unlike traditional Fregeans, we identify concepts not with elements of content, but with 'robust' mental vehicles (Reference omitted for review). Concepts so construed are not individuated by the thinker's conception of their referent (the properties and relations they represent it as instantiating). My basic strategy for responding to Schiffer's puzzle is Fodorian in spirit (Fodor, 1990: 167): changes in a thinker's global inferential/behavioral dispositions across contexts trace back to aspects of their broader psychological state, which are not individuative of their concepts. They correspond to conceptional rather than conceptual change.

This reply to Schiffer's Puzzle faces at least three objections: i) it seems to require conceptual atomism, which is unpopular; ii) it takes at face value the possibility of diachronic trading on coreference, which is controversial (e.g., Recanati, 2021); iii) it conflicts with the plausible principle that concepts themselves change along with modes of reference determination.

In response, I will argue that i) my position is compatible with a plausible molecularist view of concepts; ii) diachronic trading on coreference based on enduring concepts, even granting it is unnecessary for assessments of rationality, is required for psychological explanation, and non-negotiable for vehicularists about concepts; iii) the empirical hypothesis that cognitive dynamics involves mere conceptional change is supported by a parity argument from cases which, I argue, analogously involve 'trading on coreference' despite change in modes of reference determination. The relevant cases, which to my knowledge have yet to be brought to bear on issues surrounding cognitive dynamics, involve regularly polysemous expressions, such as "bottle", which can mean a container or its contents. These expressions support cross-meaning anaphora, such as "Haddock gulped down the bottlei and tossed iti overboard" (Ortega-Andrés & Vicente, 2019; Quilty-Dunn, 2021). The overall shape of my argument is that there are strong benefits to analyzing such cases as involving the relativity feature and conceptual identity, and there are strong costs to rejecting a parallel treatment of prototypical cases of cognitive dynamics involving indexicals. Thus, we should adopt a unified treatment of all such cases in terms of concept/mental vehicle identity.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : Indexical Dynamics : Belief Retention and Cognitive Significance

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Vojislav Bozickovic, University of Belgrade

In relation to Frege's claim that one can express the same thought today by means of 'yesterday' that one expressed yesterday by means of 'today', Perry remarks:

But should the Thought be the same? The belief expressed by "The midterm elections be today" on Tuesday motivates responsible citizens to go to the polls. The belief expressed by "The midterm elections be yesterday" on Wednesday will not motivate responsible voters to go to the polls. It seems the cognitive significance of the beliefs are different (Perry, J., Revisiting the Essential Indexical, 2020, 51-52).

In contrast with this, Kaplan, who once held a similar view claims:

I may be tracking the passing days very carefully. I became acquainted with the day yesterday and expressed that way of being acquainted in my use of 'today'. Assuming no recognition or tracking failures and no memory failures, I should be able to continue to have the day in mind in the same way today, though of course I will refer to it as 'yesterday'. Here we see, …, that the cognitive significance of an utterance should not be identified with linguistic meaning… We need to leave linguistic meaning and turn to industrial-strength ways of having in mind to give a proper analysis of the notions in this area. (Kaplan, 'An idea of Donnellan', 2012, 138).

In following Kaplan in that we need to turn to industrial-strength ways of having in mind since, inter alia, it is not obvious what relation between the utterances of 'today' and 'yesterday' must obtain in order to ensure the internal continuity that constitutes retaining the original belief (Kaplan, Demonstratives 1989, 537, n. 64), I argue that ways of having in mind are best spelt out in terms of (neo-)Fregean persisting modes of presentation. True, this makes them short of being explanatory of the subject's behaviour as something they are supposed to do. But, neither are, or so I shall argue, the linguistic meanings of 'today' as 'yesterday' – as alternative contenders for being the bearers of cognitive significance – fit for this role, so much emphasized by Perry. As a result, the thought that is expressed stays the same through the change of context, "despite lower-level differences" (Evans, G., The Varieties of Reference, 196).

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : Indexical Dynamics and Composite Modes of Presentation

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Víctor M. Verdejo, Pompeu Fabra University

With roots in Frege's famous remarks (1956, 296), reflection on Rip van Winkle's fantastic story has played a key role in the philosophical study of indexical dynamics (Kaplan 1989, Perry 1997, Branquinho 2008, Ludlow 2019). Consider now the Reverse van Winkle case: Rip van Winkle falls asleep at time t and, while he feels like it's been a very long slumber, only a few seconds have actually passed when he wakes up at time t'. Suppose Rip van Winkle utters "Today is fine" both at t and t' but, while he fully accepts the associated thought at t, he hesitates at t'.

The Reverse van Winkle case shows that, if we accept the 'Intuitive Criterion of Difference' (Evans 1982), a particular understanding of the relation between indexicality and thought is wrongheaded. According to this 'linguistic' view, indexicality is a property of linguistic terms only and these terms express thoughts relative to a particular context. If this view were correct, sameness of context of utterance, indexical expression and reference should guarantee sameness of thought. However, the target case shows that the same (day-based) indexical term – "today" – and the same relevant context to refer to the same day may involve conflicting rational attitudes, and hence different thoughts. The case can be raised even if one doesn't accept (contra Perry 1997: 35-38 or Ludlow 2019: 72-75) that the first "today"-thought at t is remembered at t'. One only requires that Rip, at t', doesn't change his mind with respect to the thought expressed at t (cf. Kaplan 1989: 537-538).

We should not however haste to embrace the view that indexicality is an essential aspect of thought. If this were so, it should be possible for thoughts to be indexically individuated. Yet sometimes, as the (Reverse) van Winkle case illustrates, thoughts expressed with (same or different) indexicals change with contexts and sometimes they don't. What should be done? To analyse the target case, I will invoke a "composite mode of presentation", i.e. "a mode of presentation that, although 'static', i.e. deployed at a given time in thinking of the object, rests on distinct simultaneous relations to the object, and on distinct ways of gaining information (distinct information channels) based on these relations" (Recanati, forthcoming; see also Dickie & Rattan 2010, Recanati 2016).

Thus, in the Reverse van Winkle scenario, at t', Rip takes recourse to two different modes of presentation (MOPs) of a particular day, one based on memory or awareness of it before falling asleep, and one based on his direct awareness of the day in question. While one would typically merge these MOPs into one composite MOP to think and reason, indexically, about a day, Rip van Winkle fails to do so because of his especial predicament. Rip van Winkle has different thoughts, based on different MOPs. But these MOPs would typically constitute one and the same composite MOP in normal circumstances.

More needs to be said, however, to fully characterize the cases in which composite MOPs based on different primitive MOPs of a referent are indeed available. My proposal is that this happens when the thinker is aware of the co-referentiality of primitive MOPs. Such awareness – which can be spelled out in a number of ways – may link very different indexical and demonstrative MOPs (perceptual, testimonial, memory-based...). However, composite MOPs need not be restricted to thought expressible with indexicals or demonstratives, and may carry over to any co-referential singular and general terms. This suggests a view in which the MOPs associated with indexicals are correctly attributed to the thought itself, but where such MOPs are not so different from conventional, non-indexical MOPs. Finally, while the awareness of co-reference signals the presence of a composite MOP, there is a sense in which composite MOPs may be acknowledged whether or not a thinker – such as Rip van Winkel – is aware of the co-referentiality of their constituent MOPs. This is also the sense in which different subjects unaware of one another may express the very same thought via different utterances of "Today is fine" on the same day.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : Indexicality's Minor Role in Thought

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

David Papineau, King's College, London

I shall appeal to teleological considerations to argue that there are no elements in thought that are simultaneously indexical and file-like. So-called perceptual demonstratives are particularly interesting in this respect.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : Can Thoughts Point?

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

David Zapero, University of Bonn

We frequently rely on the circumstances of our utterance when making recognisable to others what object our utterance is about. We rely, for instance, on spatial proximity to an object. A suitably close object can be referred to in a way that exploits that spatial relation: it can be referred to with the help of demonstratives. The purpose of such expressions is precisely to accomplish that feat: they allow the speaker to exploit the circumstances of her utterance when making recognisable to others what she is talking about. Our ways of expressing content thus draw – in such, and other, ways – on the circumstances in which that expressing occurs. But does that mean that what one thereby expresses also draws on, and has a similar connection to, those circumstances? Is it only we speakers who point to objects when making recognisable what we are talking about – or does what we make recognisable also point to an object?

Affirmative answers to this last question have been particularly popular in recent decades. And, yet, there are reasons to think that the answer had better not be affirmative. This will, at any rate, be my first contention. If truth is to be public, thoughts cannot be the kind of thing that has a location – and cannot therefore be the kind of thing that points. They can, that is, contain no 'essentially indexical' components. My second contention will be about one of the main reasons for appealing to such thought components. This appeal has widely been taken to be required to account for certain transitions between thought and action. Nothing short of such thought components can – it is widely held – account for the way in which recognition of particular situations bear on a subject's conduct. Nothing short of a certain 'I-thought' can, for instance, account for the realization that not just anyone, but I am spilling sugar – and nothing short of such a thought can thereby move me to inspect the sugar package in my trolley. But appeal to such kinds of thoughts is only required on a certain view of the individuation of thought. It is required on a view according to which the mere conceivability of a difference between thoughts is sufficient to (always) establish such a difference. This is, however, a mistake. Or so I shall argue.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : Content-Bearers and Indexicality

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Tadeusz Ciecierski, University of Warsaw

One potential conservative reaction to the concept of indexicality of content involves a theory that treats indexicality as a property inherent to content-bearers. While this view aligns intuitively with linguistic cases, as indexicality is commonly seen as a property of expressions, it requires further elucidation when applied to intentional (mental) states as content-bearers. In this paper, I aim to present a theory that elucidates the indexicality of attitudes and other mental states by examining the properties of the bearers or vehicles of content.

The theory I shall present departs from an account of indexicality rooted in Frege's philosophy, specifically a hybrid expression view (cf. Frege, 1956). Various versions of this view (cf. Künne, 1992; Künne, 2010; Textor, 2007, 2015; Kripke, 2008; Penco, 2013; Ciecierski, 2019) share the common feature of conceiving content-bearers as complex objects. These objects, in addition to narrowly conceived components (linguistic expressions in the case of utterances or mental representations/forms in the case of mental states), consist of contextual elements such as the speaker, time of utterance, or place of utterance. Recognizing the differences in these content-bearers allows for the expression of a single standard and non-indexical content through appropriately contextually coordinated bearers, while different non-indexical contents are expressible by uncoordinated bearers. One potential advantage of this theory is its uniform treatment of linguistic and mental indexicality.

However, the theory is not immune to objections (cf. Perry, 1977, 491; Kaplan, 1989, 538). A notable challenge arises in explaining the intuition that an individual who loses track of time, like Rip van Winkle, shares the same thought when considering that today is sunny (on a day d in 1789) and when thinking that yesterday was sunny (on a day d' in 1800). One response to this challenge (cf. Tichy, 1986, 40; Textor, 2011, 168) suggests that a person who loses track of time fails to accurately capture the content of the thought that yesterday was sunny (on a day d' in 1800). While successful in addressing the challenge, this response rejects the initial intuition entirely and contradicts the idea of the transparency of mental content.

To address this problem, I propose the internalistic version of the hybrid expression view of indexicality. While the standard hybrid expression view adopts an externalistic perspective, claiming that a hybrid expression (content-bearer) consists of a vehicle and an aspect of the relevant externally existing context of utterance (Externalistic Hybridity Claim), the internalistic version posits that a hybrid expression consists of a vehicle and an aspect of the relevant mental representation of a possible context of utterance (Internalistic Hybridity Claim). Accepting Internalistic Hybridity allows for a nuanced treatment of cases where individuals are "lost in time." For instance, Rip van Winkle, while entertaining the thought that yesterday was sunny, grasps the content of the hybrid representation consisting of a vehicle (the mental counterpart of "yesterday") and the representation of the time of utterance corresponding to d+1 1789. Consequently, he fails to grasp the content that it was sunny on d'-1 1800, but he apprehends a different yet related content. His mistake in content attribution is a result of a factual error—selecting the wrong context as actual. This analysis aligns with the intuitive transparency of mental content: Rip van Winkle grasps the appropriate content and maintains a disposition to differentiate between it and the content expressed had the time of utterance been located on a specific day in 1800.

After presenting the view, in the final sections of the paper, I will argue that Internalistic Hybridity is consistent with direct reference.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Ideology and Propaganda

Conférence - Robert May : The Semantics of Ideological Words

Robert May

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Linguistics, University of California, Davis

Résumé

In the second lecture, we turn to an application of the account of propaganda, ideological words that abstractly encapsulate core values of an ideology as their meaning. The focus will be on pejorative words – racist, sexist, homophobic, religious epithets, and so on. These words, we argue, are expressions of a type of defective ideology; they express a norm that people are morally unworthy just because they are black, female, gay, Jewish, etc, and thus tolerating oppression and discrimination. But such norms are unjustified: No one is morally unworthy solely on the basis of their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. The norms justifying racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism, and the like are irrevocably morally flawed; they fail to accurately represent the moral fabric of the world, and accordingly, pejorative words are a failed form of language: Given that they express these norms as their meanings, they will, by necessity, have no reference.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : Knowing How to Keep Track of Particulars

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Taku Uchiyama, Georg-August-University, Göttingen

We often do the same thing by doing different things, while we also do different things by doing the same thing. The former is the case when we think of a particular object (place, time, people, etc.) while we move on from one context to another. For example, to think of a particular day d as time passes, we need to think of d differently, i.e., as tomorrow, today, and yesterday. Despite those differences at a local level, the thought remains the same because it depends on the same ability to keep track of d over time (Evans 1981). How can such a cognitive capacity be best understood? On the functionalist's view, it can be understood as a disposition to interact with things in ways appropriate for changing contexts. However, such an externalist's approach fails to capture the content of thoughts at issue, which is supposed to be essentially indexical. In contrast, the internalist's view does respect the content. Still, it fails to account for its indexical nature because such an account either leads to an infinite regress or amounts to be circular. This paper aims to provide a hybrid view. The view is basically internalistic because it reflects the content of indexical thoughts. At the same time, it appeals to the functional and dispositional notion of ability. The resulting view adequately characterizes the ability that underlies the indexical content of thoughts.

For that aim, I first examine the externalist's approach to the ability and determine its limitations. Drawing on Perry (1986), I argue that the approach can only justify ascribing perspectival contents to the subject, not indexical ones. Second, I turn to the internalist's approach and illustrate its problem as a dilemma that intellectualists also face when they specify knowledge-how as propositional knowledge. The dilemma has the same source: the paradox of self-reference: the problem of accommodating a viewpoint into the picture observed from the very viewpoint. To overcome this problem, one needs some special representational means that represents itself without objectifying itself. So, I finally appeal to the notion of a hybrid proper name developed by Künne (1992) and Kripke (2008). According to them, indexicals constitute proper names together with contextual constituents that serve as self- referring designations. Given this idea, the ability to keep track of things amounts to the ability to apply them as a (part of) hybrid proper name. As such, it provides perspectival thoughts with indexical contents without causing the dilemma, hence the ability that can account for the indexical content of thoughts.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : Dynamic Content and the Prospects for a Three-level Account of Content

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Bernardo Marques, ENS de Paris

In recent decades, a compelling factor contributing to the popularity of referentialist accounts lies in their apparent ability to reconcile their main tenets with Frege's original insights about cognitive significance. To achieve this integration, numerous referential accounts have embraced a two-level understanding of content, exemplified by Perry's articulation of a division between 'reflexive' and 'referential' content. (Kaplan, 1978; Perry, 1977; Recanati, 1993)

The primary challenge faced by these accounts is commonly known as the 'cognitive dynamics' problem (Evans, 1981; Kaplan, 1989). At its core, this challenge involves the task of elucidating how an individual can maintain a propositional attitude amidst changes in spatial or temporal locations, all the while employing distinct indexical terms (Prosser, 2005). Two-dimensional approaches, as advocated by Kaplan, Recanati and Perry, appear to falter in the face of this challenge, as they contend that each indexical term possesses a distinct character, and this character, in turn, determines the psychological role of thoughts and is equated with the mode of presentation. (Prosser, 2019) This has convinced many theorists that a solution to the challenge of cognitive dynamics must individuate a singular mode of presentation in a way that does not dependent on a particular indexical term.

Throughout my paper, my goal is to address this difficulty through the distinction of three levels of content for any utterance. I posit the hypothesis that an additional level of content can resolve certain issues for which a two-level account seems insufficient. I support this claim with two categories of motivations — historical and explanatory. Historically, I draw attention to the notable resemblance between the two-level framework proposed by Perry, Kaplan, and Recanati and the three-level model pioneered by Peirce. Peirce's three-level account distinguishes an immediate, a dynamic, and a final interpretant (Atkin, 2008). This leads me to establish a parallel between Peirce's immediate and final interpretant and Perry's reflexive and referential content, respectively. Additionally, I also notice the absence in Perry's framework of an equivalent to Peirce's dynamic interpretant.

In this paper, I argue that Peirce's notion of dynamic interpretant offers a compelling starting point for addressing the problem of cognitive dynamics within a referentialist framework. Since two- dimensional accounts fall short in fixating a singular mode of presentation for different indexes amidst changes in spatial and temporal location that express the same propositional attitude, I propose that this explanatory gap can be filled by a dynamic content. I define 'dynamic content' as a type of content that captures the perspectival features of a subject, corresponding to a contextual instantiation at a personal level. Therefore, in a dynamical situation, even if the characters differ due to the use of different indexes, the modes of presentations are not necessarily different. This is because the dynamic content remains the same, suggesting that both the character and the dynamic content contribute to determine the psychological role of thought and the mode of presentation. In this sense, I argue that the dynamic content provides the required resources to address the challenge of cognitive dynamics.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : Indexicals: A Problem for Chalmers' Two-Dimensional Semantics

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Stefan Rinner, University of Duisburg-Essen

In the last twenty years, Chalmers has argued for a two-dimensional seman- tics, according to which every expression (of the sort that is a candidate to have an extension) is associated with a primary intension and a secondary intension. A primary intension is a function from scenarios (epistemically possible worlds) to extensions. A secondary intension is a function from (metaphysically) possible worlds to extensions. Starting from this, Chalmers maintains that a sentence S is metaphysically necessary iff the secondary intension of S is true at all worlds, and a sentence S is epistemically necessary iff the primary intension of S is true at all scenarios. I will call this 'Chalmers' Two-Dimensional Semantics'.

In this talk, I will present an argument against Chalmers' Two-Dimensional Semantics. First, I will argue with Chalmers that in connection with indexicals his two-dimensional semantics leads to the problem of how scenarios could best represent the information who I (the speaker) am, where I am, and what time it is now. I will call this 'the problem of indexicality'. For Chalmers, the natural solution to the problem of indexicality is to identify scenarios with centered worlds: ordered tuples of worlds, individuals, places, and times, with the individual, the place, and the time being the center of the world. According to such a solution, two arbitrary tokens of 'now' and 'here' (respectively) have the same primary intension, picking out the time/place marked at the center of any given scenario. Against this, I will object that there are a posteriori true, i.e. epistemically contingent, utterances of both 'Now = now' and 'Here = here'. I will call this 'the problem of a posteriori truths'. I will argue that as long as Chalmers' Two-Dimensional Semantics entails a compositionality principle for primary intensions the centered worlds account does not provide a solution to the problem of a posteriori truths. It will follow that an advocate of Chalmers' Two-Dimensional Semantics has to come up with an alternative candidate for scenarios which provides both a solution to the problem of indexicality and a solution to the problem of a posteriori truths. Since identifying scenarios with centered worlds seems to be the natural solution to the problem of indexicality, this will undermine Chalmers' Two-Dimensional Semantics. Concluding, I will discuss possible alternatives to a two-dimensional account of indexicals, starting from the theory of direct reference.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : Ephemeral Episodes, Durable Contents

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Maria de Ponte Azkarate, University of the Basque Country

Kepa Korta, University of the Basque Country

In this paper I discuss two approaches to certain context-sensitive cognitive episodes, focusing on temporal indexicals and tense. The first approach is David Kaplan's (1979, 1989). The second is the reflexive-referential approach used by Korta and Perry in Critical Pragmatics (2011). I argue for the second approach.

I take utterances and beliefs to be cognitive episodes: Things or events that occur in space and time, that have cognitive contents, and have causes and effects (Perry, 2019, 2020, de Ponte, Korta and Perry, 2023). I consider what seems to be an issue of detail. On Kaplan's approach, contexts are sets, quadruples of a speaker, time, location and world, and episodes (utterances) do not appear in the theory, but are modeled by pairs of expressions and contexts. An expression has a character (meaning); an expression-in-context has a content (proposition or component thereof.) On the reflexive-referential theory, episodes appear in the theory; they are what the theory is about. Speaker-of, time-of, and location-of are roles, that is, functions from an episode to the object that stands in the appropriate relation.

I argue that this difference is more significant that it might seem. The reflexive-referential theory inherits a key insight of Kaplan's theory, and of John Perry's earlier view: the distinction between different ways in which information can be discovered, believed and asserted. But the inclusion of episodes has several advantages. First, it has advantages for understanding the relation between the content of cognitive episodes, their causal roles and their cognitive significance. Second, it accounts for —and makes use of— the fact that episodes have many other properties in addition to having speakers, locations, and times, that can be relevant to understanding their cognitive significance.

Reflexive-referential theory has its roots on Frege (and Russell), but it supposes a clear departure from his views (its starting point is Perry's (1979) rejection of the doctrine of propositions, defended by Frege and Russell). I believe, however, that it is actually more amiable to Frege's program than the interpretation given by the so-called neo-Fregeans (most notably, Evans, 1981). In particular, I argue that the issue of cognitive dynamics can be dealt with in the reflexive- referential account.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Indexical Dynamics : Dynamic Modes of presentations

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

In a famous passage Frege wrote:

"If someone wants to say today what he expressed yesterday using the word 'today', he will replace this word with 'yesterday'. Although the thought is the same, the verbal expression must be different in order that the change of sense which would otherwise be effected by the differing times of utterance may be cancelled out."

What Frege says here is compatible with two possible views. On one view, indexicality is not an intrinsic property of certain thoughts, but a property of certain linguistic expressions or, rather, of the relation between these expressions and the thoughts they (contribute to) express: indexical sentences express thoughts only with respect to context, and different indexical expressions have to be used to express the same thought in different contexts. On another view, indexicality is 'essential' (Perry): it is a property of thoughts themselves and not merely of their linguistic expression. According to this view there are indexical thoughts, corresponding to the indexical sentences that express them. Still, it is possible to hold, with Frege, that 'the thought is the same' when you think of a certain day as 'today' and when, the following day, you think of it as 'yesterday'. Although indexical, the thought that is expressed is 'dynamic' and stays the same through the change of context, despite lower-level differences (Evans).

The second view is attractive but it raises the issue of 'cognitive dynamics' (Kaplan): when does an indexical thought become another thought because of a contextual change, and when does it stay the same despite the change? This workshop is devoted to that issue, and to the more general issue of the nature of indexical thought.

I propose a couple of revisions to the standard criterion of difference for modes of presentation attributed to Frege. First, we need to broaden the scope of the criterion so that not merely the thoughts of a given subject at a given time may or may not involve the same way of thinking of some object, but also the thoughts of a subject at different times. Second, we need to 'relativize' the criterion of difference to particular subjects in particular situations. Thanks to these revisions, we can make sense of Evans' notion of a dynamic mode of presentation that persists through time despite lower-level changes. I show how this idea can be cashed out in the mental file framework.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Ideology and Propaganda

Conférence - Robert May : The Meta-Semantics of Ideological Words

Robert May

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Linguistics, University of California, Davis

Résumé

The first lecture will develop the notion of ideologies as folk scientific theories, the institutionalization of those ideologies, and how propaganda supports the principles and values of ideologies so construed through aesthetic and linguistic expression. The central thesis we will explore is that propaganda derives its power of persuasion by expressing ideological content, which may be semantically asserted or pragmatically implied. Propaganda as ideological language may be used approvingly to signal virtue, or pejoratively, to signal vice; which it is will depend upon the normative value of the ideological principle that is expressed. This language will be particularly evocative when those values pertain to moral worth, to those who have it, and to those who do not, as per the ideology.

Robert May is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of California, Davis.

Prof. May received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977. He has held faculty positions at Barnard College, Columbia University, and at the University of California, Irvine, and has held visiting positions at Sophia University, University of Venice, Columbia University, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and Institut Jean-Nicod, École Normale Superieure.

In 2018 and 2019, Prof. May served as Chair of the University of California Academic Senate, and he is currently affiliated with the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Prof. May is an editor of The Journal of Philosophy.

Prof. May is well-known for his contributions to theoretical linguistics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of logic. His publications include the books Logical Form: Its Structure and Derivation, Indices and Identity, and De Lingua Belief (the latter two in collaboration with Robert Fiengo), along with many influential articles. His current research is devoted primarily to studies of Frege, and to the meaning of pejorative words.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Séminaire - Anouch Bourmayan : L'affect dans la langue : une dimension sous-évaluée ?

Anouch Bourmayan

Sorbonne Université

Résumé

Largement négligé dans le courant du XXe siècle, l'affect est progressivement réhabilité vers la fin du siècle par certains travaux en psychologie : Zajonc (1980, 2000) défend notamment l'idée que l'affect peut intervenir dans le traitement des stimuli à un niveau très précoce, qualifié de « précognitif ». En linguistique, le paradigme vériconditionnaliste s'inscrivant dans la tradition frégéenne associe le sens d'une phrase à ses conditions de vérité – un modèle dans lequel la connotation affective n'a pas sa place. Certes, depuis quelques années, les travaux se sont multipliés sur des termes ou expressions permettant aux locutrices et locuteurs de véhiculer leurs sentiments, tels les interjections, les expressifs, les insultes... Mais la dimension affective ne concerne-t-elle vraiment qu'une partie réduite du lexique ? N'est-elle pas au contraire pertinente pour la majorité des mots ? De fait, certains travaux récents en psychologie et neurosciences suggèrent qu'en langue, l'affect pourrait être cognitivement premier par rapport à l'information purement référentielle. Dès lors, quel est le statut linguistique et communicationnel de la connotation affective ? S'il convient de distinguer la connotation affective encodée linguistiquement et la connotation affective encodée culturellement, nous verrons que chacune emprunte des traits aux contenus présupposés ainsi qu'aux implicatures conventionnelles, sans qu'aucune ne se rapporte cependant entièrement à ces deux catégories. La connotation affective doit bel et bien être considérée comme un niveau de contenu spécifique, avec ses caractéristiques propres.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

06 - La structure des contenus mentaux : Force et contenu

Résumé

La thèse selon laquelle le contenu du jugement est constitué par l'acte mental consistant à attribuer à quelque chose (le sujet) une propriété (le prédicat) se heurte à deux objections. La première est l'existence putative de contenus de jugement simples (à un terme) ; la deuxième est la distinction force/contenu qui empêche de faire de l'acte d'affirmation un élément constitutif du contenu. On montre que, sur ces questions, il y a en fait quatre positions possibles, selon qu'on admet ou non l'existence de contenus de jugement simples, et selon qu'on admet ou non que les contenus de pensée sont intrinsèquement assertoriques. Ces positions sont associées respectivement à Aristote, à Brentano, à Frege et à Spinoza.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Séminaire - Louis Rouillé : Quand la fiction déraille : le cas des métafictions littéraires

Louis Rouillé

FNRS/Université de Liège

Résumé

Les « métafictions » trahissent leur propre fictionnalité en un certain sens qu'il s'agit d'expliquer. Le terme est souvent associé aux fictions dites « postmodernes », mais le phénomène existe depuis qu'il y a des fictions et il est conceptuellement indépendant de tout courant littéraire. On peut les définir abstraitement comme des fictions « narcissiques » (Hutcheon 1980 « Narcissistic Narrative: the Metaphysical Paradox »), ou « réflexives » (Friend 2007 « Fictional Characters »). Cette trahison réflexive (ou « transgression » pour réutiliser un terme cher à Genette et ses lecteurs/lectrices) montre qu'une métafiction est une fiction dont le but recherché est de dysfonctionner. Les métafictions font dérailler la structure fictionnelle normale, qu'elles présupposent donc. Ce faisant, elles attirent l'attention des lecteurs/lectrices sur l'édifice fictionnel, le rendant instable, déclenchant un effet esthétique très caractéristique. Ainsi, une figure métafictionnelle paradigmatique consiste à mettre en scène la rencontre entre un personnage et son auteur/autrice (cf., par exemple, « Niebla » 1915 de Miguel de Unamuno ; « A Breakfast of Champions » 1973 de Kurt Vonnegut ; « The People of Paper » 2005 de Salvador Plascencia). Ce genre de « métalepse ontologique » (Nelles 1997 « Frameworks. Narrative Levels and Embedded Narratives »), dont l'intérêt littéraire et philosophique n'est plus à démontrer, constituera un cas d'étude.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

05 - La structure des contenus mentaux : La distinction mode/contenu

Résumé

Selon la théorie des situations, tout jugement porte sur une situation qu'il « concerne » et relativement à laquelle on peut l'évaluer comme vrai ou faux. Cette situation joue le rôle de thème externe. L'extériorité du thème situationnel par rapport au contenu peut être précisée à l'aide de la distinction mode/contenu. Dans le cas de l'expérience sensible (perception, souvenir épisodique), c'est le mode qui détermine la situation relativement à laquelle le contenu doit être évalué. On montre que, au-delà de l'expérience sensible, la distinction mode/contenu s'applique aussi à la pensée.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Transparency, Indexicality and Consciousness : Externalism, Transparency, and the (In)transitivity of Coordination

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Aidan Gray, University of Illinois, Chicago

Following recent usage, I use 'coordination' to refer to the relation that Fregeans have conceived of as sameness of sense. To a first approximation, representations are coordinated when the fact they are about the same object is transparent to their subject. Coordination is the relation that must hold between representations for it to be rational to 'trade on the identity' of their referents.

In this talk, I examine the interaction between two questions:

- Is coordination transitive?

- What features of attitude states are shared between qualitative duplicates?

My focus is Boghossian's discussion of slow-switching. The crux of Boghossian's argument is that content externalism entails that we cannot attribute coordination in certain confusion cases in which a subject is intuitively rational in trading on identity. I show that this conclusion is only forced on us if coordination is transitive. If coordination is intransitive, we can describe confused subjects in a way that respects the reference of their thoughts and the rationality of their inferences.

The challenge for developing a view of this kind is to characterize the rational upshot of intransitive coordination. I develop a logical system that models this. It follows from this account that when coordination is (de facto) transitive, rational relations are classical. But when coordination is intransitive, rational relations break down in a particular way: individually valid rational transitions do not always sum to globally valid transitions.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Séminaire - Marie Guillot : La « foutaise » dans le débat public à la lumière de Frankfurt et d'Austin

Marie Guillot

Université Paris Nanterre

Résumé

La « foutaise », discutée en philosophie depuis le célèbre essai de Harry Frankfurt, « On Bullshit » (1986), est une façon particulière de saboter l'intégrité du discours qui prolifère dans certains contextes contemporains de parole politique. Pourquoi, dans ces contextes, est-il si difficile de mener des débats productifs ? L'analyse classique de Frankfurt n'offre que des ressources limitées pour le comprendre. Elle ignore les exemples de foutaise qui ne concernent pas des assertions mais d'autres actes de langage, ainsi que les cas où la foutaise, loin de se cacher, est manifeste, voire ostentatoire. Je défends une conception étendue et non assertorique de la foutaise qui permet de caractériser plus précisément ses différentes formes, et le dommage spécifique qu'elle inflige à l'exercice du débat public.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

04 - La structure des contenus mentaux : La structure informationnelle

Résumé

La structure informationnelle d'un énoncé, c'est la façon dont se distribuent, dans un énoncé, l'information déjà disponible rappelée ou présupposée par l'énoncé (le « thème »), et l'information nouvelle dont l'énoncé est porteur (le « propos »). On peut réinterpréter dans ce cadre théorique les idées de Brentano-Marty et de Strawson sur la structure du jugement. Un énoncé thétique est alors un énoncé dont le thème est externe au contenu du jugement et ne correspond pas à son sujet, ni à un autre élément de son contenu.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Séminaire - Filipe Drapeau Vieira Contim : Y a-t-il un tigre-étalon ?

Filipe Drapeau Vieira Contim

Université de Rennes 1, CAPHI EA 7463

Résumé

Les termes d'espèce naturelle (« Tigre », « Hêtre », « Or », etc.) font débat : s'agit-il de termes descriptifs qui exprimeraient des caractéristiques des objets tombant dans leur extension, ou fonctionnent-ils plutôt comme des noms qui désigneraient directement leur espèce, sans l'intermédiaire d'une description ? Selon la Théorie Causale de la Référence (TCR), un terme comme « Tigre » nomme directement l'espèce du Tigre grâce à l'ostension d'un échantillon de tigres individuels qui constitue l'étalon de référence pour les usages ultérieurs du terme. Je me propose ici de confronter la TCR à la pratique des noms de taxons telle qu'elle est réglée par le Code International de Nomenclature Zoologique. Je tâcherai de montrer qu'en dépit de contre-exemples avancés récemment, les prédictions de la TCR sont vérifiées par les noms scientifiques d'espèces et de sous-espèces.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

03 - La structure des contenus mentaux : Jugements thétiques et jugements catégoriques

Résumé

Brentano invoque les jugements à un seul terme (« il y a de la neige », « il pleut »), pour réfuter la conception aristotélicienne selon laquelle tout jugement a la structure sujet/prédicat. Les jugements à un seul terme affirment (ou nient) la réalité de quelque chose ; ce sont des jugements « thétiques ». Mais les jugements possédant la structure sujet/prédicat peuvent eux-mêmes se réduire à des jugements thétiques, affirmant ou niant la réalité d'un état de choses complexes. Dans un deuxième temps, Brentano, avec son disciple Marty, montre que les jugements thétiques en ce sens généralisé n'épuisent pas la gamme des jugements possibles. Il y a aussi des jugements « catégoriques » qui ont une structure double : ils présupposent l'existence de quelque chose dont ils affirment (ou nient) quelque chose. À nouveau on note une convergence sur ces points entre Brentano et Strawson.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Séminaire - Joëlle Proust : Existe-t-il une sémantique propre à la perception des affordances cognitives ? La piste du placement de traits

Joëlle Proust

CNRS

Résumé

Quand ils sont expérimentalement confrontés à des tâches de discrimination ou de remémoration, les primates non humains et les enfants pré-langagiers s'avèrent capables, avant de répondre, d'évaluer s'ils ont des chances de donner une réponse correcte. Ils peuvent aussi moduler leur décision en fonction des gains pragmatiques attendus. Dans tous ces cas, pourtant, les évaluations sont effectuées en l'absence de toute théorie du fonctionnement mental. Comment se représentent-ils les affordances cognitives et pragmatiques pertinentes pour leur décision ? Une piste de réponse est donnée par la sémantique préconceptuelle par « placement de traits dans l'espace » de Peter Strawson, (1959). Nous proposerons de la compléter par un indicateur d'intensité et un pointeur d'action, et de la généraliser au cas des traits non spatiaux que sont les sentiments métacognitifs.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

02 - La structure des contenus mentaux : Le jugement

Résumé

Dans la tradition aristotélicienne, le contenu d'un jugement fait intervenir deux termes : ce dont on parle (le sujet) et ce qu'on en dit (le prédicat). L'acte consistant à attribuer le prédicat au sujet est ce qui garantit l'unité du contenu. Cette conception soulève deux objections, sur lesquelles on reviendra dans la dernière séance : l'une à trait à la distinction de la force et du contenu ; l'autre a trait à l'existence de jugements « à un seul terme », sur lesquels Brentano, puis Strawson, ont mis l'accent.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Séminaire - Michele Palmira : La première personne mentale : perspectives épistémologiques

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

01 - La structure des contenus mentaux : Contenus de pensée

Résumé

Une pensée, au sens de Descartes et des Cartésiens, c'est un contenu de conscience, quel qu'il soit. Certains contenus de conscience sont « représentatifs » et possèdent un objet auxquels ils se rapportent. Parmi ceux-ci, on distingue ceux dont le contenu représentatif est simple et ceux dont le contenu représentatif est complexe (articulé). Parmi ces derniers, les jugements se distinguent par le fait de pouvoir être évalués comme vrais ou faux. Une pensée, au sens de Frege, est un contenu de jugement.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - The Social World: Foundational Issues - The Pure Commodity Theory of Money

Intervenant(s)

Olivier Massin, université de Neuchâtel

Résumé

"The paper defends the view that money is any continuant used as a medium of exchange, a view dubbed the pure commodity theory of money. By contrast to the standard commodity theory, which equates money with a material commodity which spontaneously ends up being used as a means of exchange, the pure commodity theory does not place any requirement on the origin or materiality of money. I then compare the pure commodity theory with four main rivals. On the credit theory, money is a kind of debt or claim; on the abstract theory, money is a position on a ratio scale. On the property theory, money is some property of an agent, namely the agent's purchasing power. On the institutional theory, money is a system of rules.

I argue that the credit theory and the abstract theory are in fact versions of the pure commodity theory, for claims and positions on ratio scale, properly understood, are continuants used as media of exchange. I argue that the property and the institutional theories are better construed not as theories about money, but as a theory about closely connected phenomena. The property theory is a theory about the purchasing power conferred by money. The institutional theory is a theory about what explains the existence and maintenance of money. One central strand is that there exists animportant category of exchangeable goods, intangible goods, the neglect of which leads to dismiss the commodity theory on poor grounds."

Olivier Massin est agrégé de philosophie et professeur à l'université de Neuchâtel. Ses recherches s'inscrivent dans le cadre de la métaphysique descriptive. Il s'intéresse à l'école brentanienne de philosophie et à des questions telles que : Qu'est-ce qu'une force ? Qu'un mélange ? Qu'un échange économique ? Que la propriété ? Qu'une montagne ? Que le toucher ? Qu'un désir ? Qu'une valeur ? Que le plaisir ? Que le continu ? Que l'optimisme ? Que la richesse ? Qu'un effort ? Que la solidité ? Que l'optimisme ? Que l'argent ? Qu'une fondue ?

Ce colloque international se tient en prélude à la soutenance de thèse de Maryam Ebrahimi Dinani, assistante de recherche du Pr Recanati. Il réunit deux des membres du jury (Kathrin Koslicki, de l'Université de Neuchâtel, et Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, de l'Université de Barcelone) et deux invités (Indrek Reiland, de l'Université de Vienne, et Olivier Massin, de l'Université de Neuchâtel), sous la présidence de Kevin Mulligan, de l'Université de Genève.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - The Social World: Foundational Issues - On the Mood for Fiction

Intervenant(s)

Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, université de Barcelone

Résumé

How should we think of the utterances that convey (literary) fictions? Searle (1974/5) (and before him MacDonald (1954), with better arguments) influentially argues that they are (non-deceptive) mere pretense – the simulation of acts like assertions or questions. They don't constitute sui generis, dedicated representational practices of a specific kind, fictionalizing, on a par with assertions or questions. This has been the standard view in analytic philosophy until the 1990s, casually endorsed already by Frege, and then by many others like Austin, Kripke and van Inwagen. Even though authors including Alward (2009), Predelli (2019, 2020), and Recanati (2021) still endorse the view, Walton (1990) and others provide in my view decisive objections (cf. in particular de Gaynesford 2009), mostly predicated on its lack of explanatory power for different aspects of fictionality that good theories should and can provide. Walton himself also rejects views of the kind MacDonald and Searle question, which take fictionalizing to be a sui generis speech act, but his arguments are uncompelling; Currie (1990) nicely articulated one such account inside a Gricean framework, showing its explanatory power. Recently other writers have argued that a more conventionalist, Austinian framework provides better accounts, including García-Carpintero (2013), Abell (2020) and Bergman & Franzén (2022). While following Currie I suggested classifying speech acts of fictionalizing as directives, the latter authors defend classifying them as declarations – like giving out players, naming ships or sentencing offenders. In my paper I'll question the declaration view, but I'll also explore another alternative to the directive account, by considering whether fictionalizings are a variety of constative act, along lines that Predelli (1997), Recanati (2000), and Reimer (2005) have theorized.

Manuel García-Carpintero a obtenu son doctorat à l'université de Barcelone, où il enseigne depuis. Il travaille dans le domaine de la philosophie du langage et de l'esprit, ainsi que sur des questions épistémologiques et métaphysiques connexes. Il termine actuellement un livre sous contrat avec Oxford University Press sur la nature des actes de langage en général et de l'assertion en particulier, intitulé Tell Me What You Know.

Ce colloque international se tient en prélude à la soutenance de thèse de Maryam Ebrahimi Dinani, assistante de recherche du Pr Recanati. Il réunit deux des membres du jury (Kathrin Koslicki, de l'Université de Neuchâtel, et Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, de l'Université de Barcelone) et deux invités (Indrek Reiland, de l'Université de Vienne, et Olivier Massin, de l'Université de Neuchâtel), sous la présidence de Kevin Mulligan, de l'Université de Genève.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Transparency, Indexicality and Consciousness : Transparency and Solipsism

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Giovanni Merlo, Université de Genève

According to Phenomenal Transparency, experiencing a phenomenal property puts one is in a position to acquire knowledge of its essence. In this paper, I will argue that Phenomenal Transparency risks forcing upon us a species of solipsism according to which one is, necessarily, the sole bearer of phenomenal properties. If Phenomenal Transparency holds, having a painful experience puts one in a position to know that pain is THIS (where 'THIS' is a phenomenal concept that captures the essence of pain). The solipsist who endorses Phenomenal Transparency claims to be entitled to a reading of 'THIS' whereby THIS does not occur unless one is pain oneself. By their lights, then, it turns out to belong to the essence of pain that pain never occurs in others. After examining some unsuccessful attempts to delegitimize the solipsist's reading of 'THIS', I will suggest that – unless we are willing to deny Phenomenal Transparency altogether – we may want to come to terms with the solipsist's conclusion in the framework of a more general rethinking of the metaphysics of the phenomenal.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - The Social World: Foundational Issues - Artifact Kinds, Functions, and Capacities

Intervenant(s)

Kathrin Koslicki, université de Neuchâtel

Résumé

In the case of some artifacts, the connection between the kind to which the artifact belongs, its function, and its capacities appears to be quite straightfoward. For example, a well-functioning can-opener belongs to the artifact-kind, can-opener, its function is to open cans, and being able to open cans is also among its capacities. This seemingly straightforward connection between artifact kinds, functions, and capacities, however, does not always obtain. A malfunctioning can-opener, for example, still belongs to the kind, can-opener, and can be said to have the function of opening cans, even though, in its current state, it seems to lack the corresponding capacity to open cans. In addition, while each artifact of course has many capacities, only some of these capacities are correlated with an artifact's function or its kind-membership. For example, the mere fact that an anvil can be used as a doorstop does not bring it about that the kind, anvil, is regarded as a subspecies of the kind, doorstop, or that anvils are taken to have the same function as doorstops. In this talk, I explore different ways of resolving such potential misalignments between artifact kinds, functions, and capacities.

Kathrin Koslicki

Kathrin Koslicki est professeure de philosophie théorique à l'Université de Neuchâtel. Pr Koslicki est originaire de Munich, en Allemagne, et a déménagé aux États-Unis pour obtenir son BA en philosophie à la SUNY Stony Brook en 1990 et son doctorat au MIT en 1995. Avant de retourner en Europe en 2020 pour rejoindre l'Institut de philosophie de l'Université de Neuchâtel, elle a occupé des postes de professeure dans de nombreuses régions des États-Unis et du Canada. Plus récemment, elle était titulaire de la chaire de recherche du Canada de niveau 1 en épistémologie et métaphysique à l'Université de l'Alberta.

Les intérêts de recherche de la Pr Koslicki en philosophie se situent principalement dans les domaines de la métaphysique, la philosophie du langage et la philosophie grecque ancienne, en particulier Aristote. Dans ses deux livres (The Structure of Objects, Oxford University Press, 2008 ; et Form, Matter, Substance, Oxford University Press, 2018), elle défend une analyse néo-aristotélicienne d'objets particuliers concrets en tant que composés de matière (hulē) et de forme (morphē).

Ce colloque international se tient en prélude à la soutenance de thèse de Maryam Ebrahimi Dinani, assistante de recherche du Pr Recanati. Il réunit deux des membres du jury (Kathrin Koslicki, de l'Université de Neuchâtel, et Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, de l'Université de Barcelone) et deux invités (Indrek Reiland, de l'Université de Vienne, et Olivier Massin, de l'Université de Neuchâtel), sous la présidence de Kevin Mulligan, de l'Université de Genève.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - The Social World: Foundational Issues - What Is It to Accept a Rule?

Intervenant(s)

Indrek Reiland, université de Vienne

Résumé

Regulative rules like social and legal rules and constitutive rules of games and language are in force contingently, and due to human activity. On standard views like Reinach's or Hart's, for rules to be in force is either for a legislative authority to have enacted them or for people to accept them. But what kind of attitude is acceptance of a rule? In this talk I will start working towards an answer to this question by discussing constraints on possible answers and the merits and shortcomings of available views.

Indrek Reiland est titulaire d'une bourse postdoctorale Lise Meitner, à l'université de Vienne. Il a reçu son doctorat de l'université de Californie du Sud. Il est spécialisé dans le domaine de la philosophie du langage et de l'esprit et travaille sur la nature des règles sociales et le rôle qu'elles jouent dans la constitution des langues publiques. Ses travaux ont été publiés, entre autres, dans Analysis, Erkenntnis, Mind & Language, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research et Synthese.

Ce colloque international se tient en prélude à la soutenance de thèse de Maryam Ebrahimi Dinani, assistante de recherche du Pr Recanati. Il réunit deux des membres du jury (Kathrin Koslicki, de l'Université de Neuchâtel, et Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, de l'Université de Barcelone) et deux invités (Indrek Reiland, de l'Université de Vienne, et Olivier Massin, de l'Université de Neuchâtel), sous la présidence de Kevin Mulligan, de l'Université de Genève.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Intervenant

Ernesto Perini-Santos, Université Fédérale du Minas Gerais, Brésil

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Conférencier invité - Hans Kamp : MSDRT and the Semantics of Fiction. More Philosophical Puzzles about Fictional and Other Empty and Non-empty Names

Professor of Formal Logics and Philosophy of Language, Institute for Natural Language Processing (IMS), University of Stuttgart

Much that we want to say to others, or express for the clarification of our own minds, is better said in several sentences than in a single one. There is too much we want to say that can be comfortably expressed in a single sentence; such a sentence would be far too long to be readily understood and often also too long even for us to produce without losing track of its grammar. Our languages are well-equipped for such multi-sentence communications of complex thoughts, with rules for how what is contributed by the next sentence must be integrated into the content obtained from the preceding sentences. Here is one illustration:

(1) Fred has bought his daughter a donkey. She doesn't like it much.

The two sentences of (1) are related in more ways than one. Among these are the connections established by the pronouns she and it with their antecedents his daughter and a donkey. Because of these connections, the two sentences together express the single proposition that there is a donkey that Fred has bought for his daughter and that his daughter doesn't much like. One important task for the linguist is to understand how sentence-connecting devices like pronouns work. The framework of DRT ("Discourse Representation Theory", Kamp (1981,a,b)) was set up to study such devices.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Intervenant

Frédérique de Vignemont, Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS-ENS-EHESS

Prévoir son futur

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Conférencier invité - Hans Kamp : MSDRT as the Foundation of a General Communication-Theoretic Approach to Natural Language Semantics. An Account of the Use and Meaning of Referring and Non-referring Proper Names and Other Noun Phrases

Professor of Formal Logics and Philosophy of Language, Institute for Natural Language Processing (IMS), University of Stuttgart

Much that we want to say to others, or express for the clarification of our own minds, is better said in several sentences than in a single one. There is too much we want to say that can be comfortably expressed in a single sentence; such a sentence would be far too long to be readily understood and often also too long even for us to produce without losing track of its grammar. Our languages are well-equipped for such multi-sentence communications of complex thoughts, with rules for how what is contributed by the next sentence must be integrated into the content obtained from the preceding sentences. Here is one illustration:

(1) Fred has bought his daughter a donkey. She doesn't like it much.

The two sentences of (1) are related in more ways than one. Among these are the connections established by the pronouns she and it with their antecedents his daughter and a donkey. Because of these connections, the two sentences together express the single proposition that there is a donkey that Fred has bought for his daughter and that his daughter doesn't much like. One important task for the linguist is to understand how sentence-connecting devices like pronouns work. The framework of DRT ("Discourse Representation Theory", Kamp (1981,a,b)) was set up to study such devices.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Intervenant

Jocelyn Benoist, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

La fiction au-delà de la mimésis

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Transparency, Indexicality and Consciousness : A Conceivability Argument for Atheism

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Philip Goff, Durham University

If God exists necessarily and is essentially conscious, then there is a conscious being in every possible world. However, it is conceivable that nothing is conscious, which perhaps gives us reason to think that it's possible that nothing is conscious and hence that there are no necessarily existent essentially conscious beings. On the other hand, God's existence seems conceivable, which perhaps gives us reason to think that God is possible, which seems to entail that God exist in all possible worlds (given that God by definition does not exist contingently). I will argue that reflection on these arguments has important lessons for modal rationalism – the view that conceivability and possibility are linked in interesting ways – in particular the form of modal rationalism which links conceivability to possibility via transparent concepts. Ultimately, I will argue there could be a necessary being, but that if there is one, then its nature is beyond human understanding, because everything we can conceive of is possibly non-existent.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Conférencier invité - Hans Kamp : MSDRT: a Semantics for Attributions of Multiple Attitudes with Referential Dependencies: Format, Logical Form Construction, Model Theory

Professor of Formal Logics and Philosophy of Language, Institute for Natural Language Processing (IMS), University of Stuttgart

Much that we want to say to others, or express for the clarification of our own minds, is better said in several sentences than in a single one. There is too much we want to say that can be comfortably expressed in a single sentence; such a sentence would be far too long to be readily understood and often also too long even for us to produce without losing track of its grammar. Our languages are well-equipped for such multi-sentence communications of complex thoughts, with rules for how what is contributed by the next sentence must be integrated into the content obtained from the preceding sentences. Here is one illustration:

(1) Fred has bought his daughter a donkey. She doesn't like it much.

The two sentences of (1) are related in more ways than one. Among these are the connections established by the pronouns she and it with their antecedents his daughter and a donkey. Because of these connections, the two sentences together express the single proposition that there is a donkey that Fred has bought for his daughter and that his daughter doesn't much like. One important task for the linguist is to understand how sentence-connecting devices like pronouns work. The framework of DRT ("Discourse Representation Theory", Kamp (1981,a,b)) was set up to study such devices.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Intervenant

Jean-Baptiste Rauzy, Sorbonne Université

Proposition, croyance et assertion. Le débat Leibniz-Spinoza et les avantages de la position leibnizienne

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Conférencier invité - Hans Kamp : Referential Dependence in Language and Mind

Professor of Formal Logics and Philosophy of Language, Institute for Natural Language Processing (IMS), University of Stuttgart

Much that we want to say to others, or express for the clarification of our own minds, is better said in several sentences than in a single one. There is too much we want to say that can be comfortably expressed in a single sentence; such a sentence would be far too long to be readily understood and often also too long even for us to produce without losing track of its grammar. Our languages are well-equipped for such multi-sentence communications of complex thoughts, with rules for how what is contributed by the next sentence must be integrated into the content obtained from the preceding sentences. Here is one illustration:

(1) Fred has bought his daughter a donkey. She doesn't like it much.

The two sentences of (1) are related in more ways than one. Among these are the connections established by the pronouns she and it with their antecedents his daughter and a donkey. Because of these connections, the two sentences together express the single proposition that there is a donkey that Fred has bought for his daughter and that his daughter doesn't much like. One important task for the linguist is to understand how sentence-connecting devices like pronouns work. The framework of DRT ("Discourse Representation Theory", Kamp (1981,a,b)) was set up to study such devices.