According to the dominant position among philosophers of language today, we can legitimately ascribe determinate contents to natural language sentences, independently of what the speaker actually means. This view contrasts with that held by ordinary language philosophers fifty years ago: according to them, speech acts, not sentences, are the primary bearers of content. François Recanati argues for the relevance of this controversy to the current debate about semantics and pragmatics. Is 'what is said' determined by linguistic conventions, or is (...) it an aspect of 'speaker's meaning'? Do we need pragmatics to fix truth-conditions? What is 'literal meaning'? To what extent is semantic composition a creative process? How pervasive is context-sensitivity? Recanati provides an original and insightful defence of 'contextualism', and offers an informed survey of the spectrum of positions held by linguists and philosophers working at the semantics/pragmatics interface. (shrink)
Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) was one of the most important French philosophers of the Twentieth Century. His impact has been felt across many disciplines: sociology; cultural studies; art theory and politics. This volume presents a diverse selection of interviews, conversations and debates which relate to the five decades of his working life, both as a political militant, experimental philosopher and teacher. Including hard-to-find interviews and previously untranslated material, this is the first time that interviews with Lyotard have been presented as (...) a collection. Key concepts from Lyotard's thought – the differend, the postmodern, the immaterial – are debated and discussed across different time periods, prompted by specific contexts and provocations. In addition there are debates with other thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, which may be less familiar to an Anglophone audience. These debates and interviews help to contextualise Lyotard, highlighting the importance of Marx, Freud, Kant and Wittgenstein, in addition to the Jewish thought which accompanies the questions of silence, justice and presence that pervades Lyotard's thinking. (shrink)
Thérèse d'Avila a marqué de sa doctrine et de son ardeur l'Église des trois derniers siècles, au point qu'elle est devenue le modèle par excellence de la religieuse cloîtrée tout à la fois contemplative et fondatrice, écrivaine de premier rang, épistolière infatigable et maîtresse spirituelle. Suivant de près le livre de Marcelle Auclair, qui fit date dans le domaine des études thérèsiennes (La Vie de sainte Thérèse d'Avila, la dame errante de Dieu, Le Club du meilleur livre, 19..
Our thought and talk are situated. They do not take place in a vacuum but always in a context, and they always concern an external situation relative to which they are to be evaluated. Since that is so, François Recanati argues, our linguistic and mental representations alike must be assigned two layers of content: the explicit content, or lekton, is relative and perspectival, while the complete content, which is absolute, involves contextual factors in addition to what is explicitly represented. (...) Far from reducing to the context-independent meaning of the sentence-type or, in the psychological realm, to the 'narrow' content of mental representations, the lekton is a level intermediate between context-invariant meaning and full propositional content. Recognition of that intermediate level is the key to a proper understanding of context-dependence in language and thought. Going beyond the usual discussions of indexicality and unarticulated constituents in the philosophy of language, Recanati turns to the philosophy of mind for decisive arguments in favour of his approach. He shows, first, that the lekton is the notion of content we need if we are to properly understand the relations between perception, memory, and the imagination, and second, that the psychological 'mode' is what determines the situation the lekton is relative to. In this framework he provides a detailed account of de se thought and the first person point of view. In the last part of the book, Recanati discusses the special freedom we have, in discourse and thought, to shift the situation of evaluation. He traces that freedom to a special mode - the anaphoric mode - which enables us to go beyond the egocentric stage of pre-human thought. (shrink)
Conversational implicatures do not normally fall within the scope of operators because they arise at the speech act level, not at the level of sub-locutionary constituents. Yet in some cases they do, or so it seems. My aim in this paper is to compare different approaches to the problem raised by what I call 'embedded implicatures': seeming implicatures that arise locally, at a sub-locutionary level, without resulting from an inference in the narrow sense.
Among the entities that can be mentally or linguistically represented are mental and linguistic representations themselves. That is, we can think and talk about speech and thought. This phenomenon is known as metarepresentation. An example is "Authors believe that people read books." -/- In this book François Recanati discusses the structure of metarepresentation from a variety of perspectives. According to him, metarepresentations have a dual structure: their content includes the content of the object-representation (people reading books) as well as (...) the "meta" part (the authors' belief). Rejecting the view that the object representation is mentioned rather than used, Recanati claims that since metarepresentations carry the content of the object representation, they must be about whatever the object representation is about. Metarepresentations are fundamentally transparent because they work by simulating the representation they are about. -/- Topics covered in this wide-ranging work include the analysis of belief reports and talk about fiction, world shifting, opacity and substitutivity, quotation, the relation between direct and indirect discourse, context shifting, semantic pretense, and deference in language and thought. (shrink)
Many people believe that human interests matter much more than the like interests of non-human animals, and this “speciesist belief” plays a crucial role in the philosophical debate over the moral status of animals. In this paper, I develop a debunking argument against it. My contention is that this belief is unjustified because it is largely due to an off-track process: our attempt to reduce the cognitive dissonance generated by the “meat paradox”. Most meat-eaters believe that it is wrong to (...) harm animals unnecessarily, yet they routinely and deliberately behave in ways that cause great unnecessary suffering to animals. As recent research suggests, this practical inconsistency puts them in an unpleasant state of dissonance, which they try to escape by resolving the paradox. And they do so in part by adopting the speciesist belief—if animal suffering matters much less than human suffering, then harming animals cannot be so wrong after all. Since this belief-forming process does not track moral truth, I conclude that we are not justified in believing that human interests matter more than the similar interests of non-humans. (shrink)
This volume puts forward a distinct new theory of direct reference, blending insights from both the Fregean and the Russellian traditions, and fitting the general theory of language understanding used by those working on the pragmatics of natural language.
This book argues against the traditional understanding of the semantics/pragmatics divide and puts forward a radical alternative. Through half a dozen case studies, it shows that what an utterance says cannot be neatly separated from what the speaker means. In particular, the speaker's meaning endows words with senses that are tailored to the situation of utterance and depart from the conventional meanings carried by the words in isolation. This phenomenon of ‘pragmatic modulation’ must be taken into account in theorizing about (...) semantic content, for it interacts with the grammar-driven process of semantic composition. Because of that interaction, the book argues, the content of a sentence always depends upon the context in which it is used. This claim defines Contextualism, a view which has attracted considerable attention in recent years, and of which the author of this book is one of the main proponents. (shrink)
In a recent paper, Eric Schwitzgebel argues that if materialism about consciousness is true, then the United States is likely to have its own stream of phenomenal consciousness, distinct from the streams of conscious experience of the people who compose it. Indeed, most plausible forms of materialism have to grant that a certain degree of functional and behavioral complexity constitutes a sufficient condition for the ascription of phenomenal consciousness – and Schwitzgebel makes a case to show that the United States (...) as a whole fulfills this condition. One way to avoid this counter-intuitive consequence of materialism about consciousness is to adopt what Schwitzgebel calls an “anti-nesting principle”: a principle that states that there can be no nested forms of phenomenal consciousness and that therefore a conscious whole cannot have parts that are themselves conscious. However, Schwitzgebel then proceeds in his paper to draw up various objections, notably based on thought experiments, in order to dismiss these kinds of “anti-nesting” principles. My aim in this paper is to present a version of a sophisticated anti-nesting principle that avoids Schwitzgebel’s objections. This principle is reasonable, intuitive, and as non-arbitrary as possible. Moreover, it can resist the objections mounted by Schwitzgebel against simple anti-nesting principles. This principle helps materialists avoid the implication that the United States has its own stream of consciousness, while granting consciousness to some entities which, in many cases, are intuitive instantiators of phenomenal consciousness. This principle therefore constitutes a way out for a materialist who wants to deny that the United States is conscious. (shrink)
The paper clarifies what is at stake in the theory/antitheory debate in ethics and articulates the distinctive core of the method of reflective equilibrium which distinguishes it from a generic coherence constraint. I call this distinctive core 'maieutic reflection'. The paper then argues that if she accepts constructivist views in metaethics, a proponent of the method of reflective equilibrium will be committed to the existence of a moral theory.
In a recent paper (Linguistics and Philosophy 23, 4, June 2000), Jason Stanley argues that there are no `unarticulated constituents', contrary to what advocates of Truth-conditional pragmatics (TCP) have claimed. All truth-conditional effects of context can be traced to logical form, he says. In this paper I maintain that there are unarticulated constituents, and I defend TCP. Stanley's argument exploits the fact that the alleged unarticulated constituents can be `bound', that is, they can be made to vary with the values (...) introduced by operators in the sentence. I show that Stanley's argument rests on a fallacy, and I provide alternative analyses of the data. (shrink)
The last few years have seen dramatic progress in the development of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). These developments have been met by ethical concerns. HIV interventions are often thought to be ethically difficult. In a context which includes disagreements over human rights, controversies over testing policies, and questions about sexual morality and individual responsibility, PrEP has been seen as an ethically complex intervention. We argue that this is mistaken, and that in fact, PrEP does not raise new ethical concerns. Some (...) of the questions posed by PrEP are not specific to HIV prophylaxis, but simply standard public health considerations about resource allocation and striking a balance between individual benefit and public good. We consider sexual disinhibition in the context of private prescriptions, and conclude that only unjustified AIDS-exceptionalism or inappropriate moralism about sex supports thinking that PrEP raises new ethical problems. This negative conclusion is significant in a context where supposed ethical concerns about PrEP have been raised, and in the context of HIV exceptionalism. (shrink)
What relevance does Foucault have, more than a decade after his death? Foucault was a sort of philosophical journalist - continually concerned with what is happening in the present. And it is here that we find one of the guiding threads of Foucault's ethics: we must be constantly vigilant in ensuring that the present does not become a mere repetition of the past. Philosophy must produce events that can act to disrupt this repetition. This is the task of judgment, confronted (...) by the question of power. We can recognize four points on which Foucault has continuing relevance. First, Foucault diagnosed the end of revolution, the consequences of which we are now living. Further, Foucault's work on truth-telling and norms and measures, the heart of the question of justice, is still significant. Foucault's work on medicine, and in particular ancient Greek medicine, will also play a critical role if we are to successfully navigate the myriad problems posed by a new form of medicine, genetic medicine - a medicine of predispositions rather than therapy, similar to the medicine practiced by the Greeks. Fourth and finally, Foucault has a continuing relevance for problems of decision-making, responsibility and care. We can think about responsibility, for Foucault, through the question of care - and thus will avoid reducing responsibility to a merely juridical notion. Key Words: care • Foucault • medicine • norms • present • repetition • responsibility • revolution. (shrink)
This article introduces an integrative framework of corporate social responsibility (CSR) design and implementation. A review of CSR literature -in particular with regard to design and implementation models -provides the background to develop a multiple case study. The resulting integrative framework, based on this multiple case study and Lewin's change model, highlights four stages that span nine steps of the CSR design and implementation process. Finally, the study identifies critical success factors for the CSR process.
Francois Recanati presents the basic features of the *indexical model* of mental files, and defends it against several interrelated objections. According to this model, mental files refer to objects in a way that is analogous to that of indexicals in language: a file refers to an object in virtue of a contextual relation between them. For instance, perception and attention provide the basis for demonstrative files. Several objections, some of them from David Papineau, concern the possibility of files to preserve (...) and add information about objects across contexts. How is it possible to think about the same object when the subject no longer is in the original context? How is it possible to think of a perceived object as already known? Can this be done without an explicit identity judgment? Recanati answers these questions by invoking mental files of non-basic kinds and by describing the cognitive dynamics in which they take part. (shrink)
This article forms part of a study which was inspired by the ever-growing need for significance expressed both by my life coaching and pastoral therapy clients as well as the need for existential meaning reported both in the lay press and academic literature. The study reflected on a life that matters with a group of co-researchers in a participatory action research relationship. The study has been positioned within pastoral theology and invited the theological discourse into a reflection of existential meaning. (...) Adopting a critical relational constructionist epistemology, the research was positioned within a postmodern paradigm. The implications for meaning and research were explored and described. This article tells the story of how spirituality was positioned in the narratives of meaning by my fellow researchers. (shrink)
Jean-Francois Lyotard is often considered to be the father of postmodernism. Here leading experts in the field of cultural and philosophical studies, including Barry Smart, John O' Neill and Victor J. Seidler, tackle many of the questions still being asked about this controversial figure.
The issues addressed in philosophical papers on quotation generally concern only a particular type of quotation, which I call ‘closed quotation’. The other main type, ‘open quotation’, is ignored, and this neglect leads to bad theorizing. Not only is a general theory of quotation out of reach: the specific phenomenon of closed quotation itself cannot be properly understood if it is not appropriately situated within the kind to which it belongs. Once the distinction between open and closed quotation has been (...) drawn and properly appreciated, it is tempting to consider that only closed quotation is relevant to semantics. Open quotation is more a matter of pragmatics: it is a matter of what people do with words, rather than a matter of content and truth-conditions. In this way one can provide the beginning of a justification for the neglect of open quotation in current semantic theorizing. There is some truth in this view, yet the phenomenon of ‘mixed quotation’, investigated at length in this paper, is interesting precisely because it shows that things are not so simple. Important issues concerning the interface between semantics and pragmatics will thus be raised. (shrink)
