Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit - François Recanati

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - The Social World: Foundational Issues - On the Mood for Fiction

Intervenant(s)

Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, université de Barcelone

Résumé

How should we think of the utterances that convey (literary) fictions? Searle (1974/5) (and before him MacDonald (1954), with better arguments) influentially argues that they are (non-deceptive) mere pretense – the simulation of acts like assertions or questions. They don't constitute sui generis, dedicated representational practices of a specific kind, fictionalizing, on a par with assertions or questions. This has been the standard view in analytic philosophy until the 1990s, casually endorsed already by Frege, and then by many others like Austin, Kripke and van Inwagen. Even though authors including Alward (2009), Predelli (2019, 2020), and Recanati (2021) still endorse the view, Walton (1990) and others provide in my view decisive objections (cf. in particular de Gaynesford 2009), mostly predicated on its lack of explanatory power for different aspects of fictionality that good theories should and can provide. Walton himself also rejects views of the kind MacDonald and Searle question, which take fictionalizing to be a sui generis speech act, but his arguments are uncompelling; Currie (1990) nicely articulated one such account inside a Gricean framework, showing its explanatory power. Recently other writers have argued that a more conventionalist, Austinian framework provides better accounts, including García-Carpintero (2013), Abell (2020) and Bergman & Franzén (2022). While following Currie I suggested classifying speech acts of fictionalizing as directives, the latter authors defend classifying them as declarations – like giving out players, naming ships or sentencing offenders. In my paper I'll question the declaration view, but I'll also explore another alternative to the directive account, by considering whether fictionalizings are a variety of constative act, along lines that Predelli (1997), Recanati (2000), and Reimer (2005) have theorized.

Manuel García-Carpintero a obtenu son doctorat à l'université de Barcelone, où il enseigne depuis. Il travaille dans le domaine de la philosophie du langage et de l'esprit, ainsi que sur des questions épistémologiques et métaphysiques connexes. Il termine actuellement un livre sous contrat avec Oxford University Press sur la nature des actes de langage en général et de l'assertion en particulier, intitulé Tell Me What You Know.

Ce colloque international se tient en prélude à la soutenance de thèse de Maryam Ebrahimi Dinani, assistante de recherche du Pr Recanati. Il réunit deux des membres du jury (Kathrin Koslicki, de l'Université de Neuchâtel, et Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, de l'Université de Barcelone) et deux invités (Indrek Reiland, de l'Université de Vienne, et Olivier Massin, de l'Université de Neuchâtel), sous la présidence de Kevin Mulligan, de l'Université de Genève.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - The Social World: Foundational Issues - Artifact Kinds, Functions, and Capacities

Intervenant(s)

Kathrin Koslicki, université de Neuchâtel

Résumé

In the case of some artifacts, the connection between the kind to which the artifact belongs, its function, and its capacities appears to be quite straightfoward. For example, a well-functioning can-opener belongs to the artifact-kind, can-opener, its function is to open cans, and being able to open cans is also among its capacities. This seemingly straightforward connection between artifact kinds, functions, and capacities, however, does not always obtain. A malfunctioning can-opener, for example, still belongs to the kind, can-opener, and can be said to have the function of opening cans, even though, in its current state, it seems to lack the corresponding capacity to open cans. In addition, while each artifact of course has many capacities, only some of these capacities are correlated with an artifact's function or its kind-membership. For example, the mere fact that an anvil can be used as a doorstop does not bring it about that the kind, anvil, is regarded as a subspecies of the kind, doorstop, or that anvils are taken to have the same function as doorstops. In this talk, I explore different ways of resolving such potential misalignments between artifact kinds, functions, and capacities.

Kathrin Koslicki

Kathrin Koslicki est professeure de philosophie théorique à l'Université de Neuchâtel. Pr Koslicki est originaire de Munich, en Allemagne, et a déménagé aux États-Unis pour obtenir son BA en philosophie à la SUNY Stony Brook en 1990 et son doctorat au MIT en 1995. Avant de retourner en Europe en 2020 pour rejoindre l'Institut de philosophie de l'Université de Neuchâtel, elle a occupé des postes de professeure dans de nombreuses régions des États-Unis et du Canada. Plus récemment, elle était titulaire de la chaire de recherche du Canada de niveau 1 en épistémologie et métaphysique à l'Université de l'Alberta.

Les intérêts de recherche de la Pr Koslicki en philosophie se situent principalement dans les domaines de la métaphysique, la philosophie du langage et la philosophie grecque ancienne, en particulier Aristote. Dans ses deux livres (The Structure of Objects, Oxford University Press, 2008 ; et Form, Matter, Substance, Oxford University Press, 2018), elle défend une analyse néo-aristotélicienne d'objets particuliers concrets en tant que composés de matière (hulē) et de forme (morphē).

Ce colloque international se tient en prélude à la soutenance de thèse de Maryam Ebrahimi Dinani, assistante de recherche du Pr Recanati. Il réunit deux des membres du jury (Kathrin Koslicki, de l'Université de Neuchâtel, et Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, de l'Université de Barcelone) et deux invités (Indrek Reiland, de l'Université de Vienne, et Olivier Massin, de l'Université de Neuchâtel), sous la présidence de Kevin Mulligan, de l'Université de Genève.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - The Social World: Foundational Issues - What Is It to Accept a Rule?

Intervenant(s)

Indrek Reiland, université de Vienne

Résumé

Regulative rules like social and legal rules and constitutive rules of games and language are in force contingently, and due to human activity. On standard views like Reinach's or Hart's, for rules to be in force is either for a legislative authority to have enacted them or for people to accept them. But what kind of attitude is acceptance of a rule? In this talk I will start working towards an answer to this question by discussing constraints on possible answers and the merits and shortcomings of available views.

Indrek Reiland est titulaire d'une bourse postdoctorale Lise Meitner, à l'université de Vienne. Il a reçu son doctorat de l'université de Californie du Sud. Il est spécialisé dans le domaine de la philosophie du langage et de l'esprit et travaille sur la nature des règles sociales et le rôle qu'elles jouent dans la constitution des langues publiques. Ses travaux ont été publiés, entre autres, dans Analysis, Erkenntnis, Mind & Language, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research et Synthese.

Ce colloque international se tient en prélude à la soutenance de thèse de Maryam Ebrahimi Dinani, assistante de recherche du Pr Recanati. Il réunit deux des membres du jury (Kathrin Koslicki, de l'Université de Neuchâtel, et Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, de l'Université de Barcelone) et deux invités (Indrek Reiland, de l'Université de Vienne, et Olivier Massin, de l'Université de Neuchâtel), sous la présidence de Kevin Mulligan, de l'Université de Genève.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Intervenant

Ernesto Perini-Santos, Université Fédérale du Minas Gerais, Brésil

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Conférencier invité - Hans Kamp : MSDRT and the Semantics of Fiction. More Philosophical Puzzles about Fictional and Other Empty and Non-empty Names

Professor of Formal Logics and Philosophy of Language, Institute for Natural Language Processing (IMS), University of Stuttgart

Much that we want to say to others, or express for the clarification of our own minds, is better said in several sentences than in a single one. There is too much we want to say that can be comfortably expressed in a single sentence; such a sentence would be far too long to be readily understood and often also too long even for us to produce without losing track of its grammar. Our languages are well-equipped for such multi-sentence communications of complex thoughts, with rules for how what is contributed by the next sentence must be integrated into the content obtained from the preceding sentences. Here is one illustration:

(1) Fred has bought his daughter a donkey. She doesn't like it much.

The two sentences of (1) are related in more ways than one. Among these are the connections established by the pronouns she and it with their antecedents his daughter and a donkey. Because of these connections, the two sentences together express the single proposition that there is a donkey that Fred has bought for his daughter and that his daughter doesn't much like. One important task for the linguist is to understand how sentence-connecting devices like pronouns work. The framework of DRT ("Discourse Representation Theory", Kamp (1981,a,b)) was set up to study such devices.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Intervenant

Frédérique de Vignemont, Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS-ENS-EHESS

Prévoir son futur

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Conférencier invité - Hans Kamp : MSDRT as the Foundation of a General Communication-Theoretic Approach to Natural Language Semantics. An Account of the Use and Meaning of Referring and Non-referring Proper Names and Other Noun Phrases

Professor of Formal Logics and Philosophy of Language, Institute for Natural Language Processing (IMS), University of Stuttgart

Much that we want to say to others, or express for the clarification of our own minds, is better said in several sentences than in a single one. There is too much we want to say that can be comfortably expressed in a single sentence; such a sentence would be far too long to be readily understood and often also too long even for us to produce without losing track of its grammar. Our languages are well-equipped for such multi-sentence communications of complex thoughts, with rules for how what is contributed by the next sentence must be integrated into the content obtained from the preceding sentences. Here is one illustration:

(1) Fred has bought his daughter a donkey. She doesn't like it much.

The two sentences of (1) are related in more ways than one. Among these are the connections established by the pronouns she and it with their antecedents his daughter and a donkey. Because of these connections, the two sentences together express the single proposition that there is a donkey that Fred has bought for his daughter and that his daughter doesn't much like. One important task for the linguist is to understand how sentence-connecting devices like pronouns work. The framework of DRT ("Discourse Representation Theory", Kamp (1981,a,b)) was set up to study such devices.

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

La première personne

Intervenant

Jocelyn Benoist, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

La fiction au-delà de la mimésis