La classification de Vendler revue et corrigée

17 pages, initialement paru comme rapport n°9718 du CREA, Polytechnique, Paris, en Oct 97International audienceDans cet article, nous commentons la classification des verbes de Vendler, l'amendons quelque peu, et tentons d'établir sa légitimité en isolant les principes qui la fondent

La conjecture de Ducrot, vingt ans après

Réponse aux objections soulevées par Oswald Ducrot à l'encontre de mon approche "gricéenne" de la performativité

Indexicality, context, and pretense: a speech-act theoretic account

In this paper, I argue that the notion of ‘context' that has to be used in the study of indexicals is far from univocal. A first distinction has to be made between the real context of speech and the context in which the speech act is supposed to take place — only the latter notion being relevant when it comes to determining the semantic values of indexicals. Second, we need to draw a distinction between the context of the locutionary act and the context of the illocutionary act : contrary to a standard assumption of speech act theory, they can diverge, and their possible divergence explains a number of puzzling phenomena involving indexicals

Cognitive Dynamics: A New Look at an Old Problem

To appear in K. Korta and M. Ponte (eds.) Reference and Representation in Language and Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.In this paper in defense of the mental-file approach to singular thought, I argue that we need to distinguish static, fine-grained files based on specific acquaintance relations, and the dynamic, coarser-grained files resulting from operations on them : conversion, fusion, fission etc

Immunity to Error Through Misidentification : What It Is and Where It Comes From

I argue that immunity to error through misidentification primarily characterizes thoughts that are 'implicitly' de se, as opposed to thoughts that involve an explicit self-identification. Thoughts that are implicitly de se involve no reference to the self at the level of content: what makes them de se is simply the fact that the content of the thought is evaluated with respect to the thinking subject. Or, to put it in familiar terms : the content of the thought is a property which the thinking subject self-ascribes (as in the Loar/Lewis/Chisholm analysis). After answering an objection (to the effect that immunity can affect explicit de se thoughts), I extend the analysis to demonstrative thoughts, which also exhibit the property of immunity to error through misidentification

Singular Thought: In Defence of Acquaintance

This paper is about the Descriptivism/Singularism debate, which has loomed large in 20-century philosophy of language and mind. My aim is to defend Singularism by showing, first, that it is a better and more promising view than even the most sophisticated versions of Descriptivism, and second, that the recent objections to Singularism (based on a dismissal of the acquaintance constraint on singular thought) miss their target

Loana dans le métro. Remarques sur l'indexicalité mentale.

Cet article propose un traitement de l'indexicalité mentale utilisant la notion de fichier.Il paraîtra dans les actes de la journée sur l'Indexicalité organisée à l'ENS au printemps 2000

Reply to Frapolli

Response to Frapolli's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop (13th Inter-University Workshop on Philosophy and Cognitive Science, 2003