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.