Perspectival Thought: A Plea for (Moderate) RelativismClarendon Press, 27/09/2007 - 320 من الصفحات 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. |
المحتوى
1 | |
ContextDependence in Thought | 9 |
CircumstanceRelativity and the ModeContent Distinction | 17 |
A Brief Summary of the Book | 24 |
MODERATE RELATIVISM | 29 |
EXPERIENCE AND SUBJECTIVITY | 121 |
EGOCENTRICITY AND BEYOND | 211 |
References | 291 |
301 | |
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عبارات ومصطلحات مألوفة
analysis anaphoric mode argue argument articulated ascribed Austinian proposition Barwise belief blindsighted Brigitte Bardot circumstance of evaluation classical proposition cognitive complete content concerns construed context of utterance context-dependence context-relative determined distinction episodic memory error through misidentification essential indexical evaluated with respect example explicit content expresses Externality Principle fact free shiftability Frege Heimson Higginbotham Hume illocutionary act illocutionary force imagination immunity to error implicit implicit de se indexical sentence involving judgement Kaplan language legs are crossed lekton Lewis linguistic Lois Lane meaning modal modal logic mode of presentation Moderate Relativism Murdock object operators Oxford perception perceptual experience Perry Perry's person place of utterance possible worlds propositional content propositional function quantifying raining Recanati reference Reflexive Constraint relation relativist relativized propositions relevant se thoughts Searle self-ascribe the property sense shifted situation of evaluation speaker speech act talk temporal proposition tense-logical tensed sentences thought truth-value unarticulated constituent visual experience