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.