Research

The notion of singular (or de re) thought has become central in philosophy of mind and language, yet there is still little consensus concerning the best way to think about the nature of singular thought. Coinciding with recognition of the ned for more clarity about the notion, there has been a surge of interest in the concept of a mental file as a way to understand what is distinctive about singular thought. What isn't always clear, however, is what mental files are meant to be, and why we should believe that thoughts that employ them are singular as opposed to descriptive. This volume brings together original chapters by leading scholars which aim to examine and evaluate the viability of the mental files framework for theorising about singular thought.

Contributors: Samuel Cumming, Imogen Dickie, Jeffrey C. King, Ruth Millikan, John Perry, Ángel Pinillos, François Recanati, Marga Reimer, Mark Sainsbury, Joulia Smortchkova, Jeff Speaks, Brent Strickland. 

NDPR Review (by Michele Palmira)

This paper’s most general aim is to illuminate the disagreement between singularists about thought (who claim there are non-descriptive thoughts about ordinary external objects), and descriptivists about thought (who claim all thought about ordinary external objects is descriptive). It does this by clarifying the common claim that singular thoughts have an anchoring role with respect to thought in general and by making two further claims: 1) some of the putative disagreements between singularists and descriptivists are illusory once properly understood, and 2) singularists can more productively argue for their view by separating it from some of the framework in which it is commonly packaged. Separating the singular/descriptive thought distinction from the structured content framework, and casting the singularist’s central claim as one about the structure or form of what I will call referentially anchored thoughts, allows us to move past a common kind of impasse.

Sainsbury has done as much as anyone to make space for empty referring expressions and empty referential thoughts within a theory of reference. He does this by proposing an overall theory of reference that rejects the common dichotomy between Millianism and descriptivism. Allowing that this is all for the good, I elaborate and interrogate the connection made within his account, between reference as a functional-modal notion and simple, name-like mental syntax or form. The upshot is not that this connection is illegitimate, but that more clarity is required about the category of simple, name-like syntax in thought.

On the traditional relationalist conception of singular thought, a thought has singular content when it is based on an ‘information relation’ to its object. Recent work rejects relationalism and suggests singular thoughts are distinguished from descriptive thoughts by their inferential role: only thoughts with singular content can be employed in ‘direct’ inferences, or inferences that ‘trade on identity’. Firstly this view is insufficiently clear, because it conflates two distinct ideas—one about a kind of inference, the other a kind of process that grounds inferences—under the title, ‘trading on identity’. Secondly, this leaves us without a notion that can be used as an alternative to relationalism about singular thought. The first notion is no more applicable to singular than to descriptive thought. The second may help us better understand singular thought, but does so, not by replacing the view that singular thoughts are information-based, but by helping us understand the nature of information-based thought.

We offer an interpretation of the mental files framework that eliminates the metaphor of files, information being contained in files, etc. The guiding question is whether, once we move beyond the metaphors, there is any theoretical role for files. We claim not. We replace the file-metaphor with two theses: the semantic thesis that there are irreducibly relational representational facts (viz. facts about the coordination of representations); and the metasemantic thesis that processes tied to information-relations ground those facts. In its canonical statement, the ‘file’-theory makes reference to a certain kind of relational representational feature, and a certain kind of mental activity. Mental files need not come into it. In short, we posit mental filing without mental files. Our interpretation avoids awkward problems that arise on the standard interpretation and clarifies the explanatory commitments of the theory.

Influential work on proper names, most centrally associated with Kripke (1980), has had a significant influence in the literature on singular (or ‘de re’) thought. The dominant position among contemporary singularists is that we can think singular thoughts about any object we can refer to by name and that, given the range of cases in which it is possible to refer using a name, name use in fact enables singular thought about the referent of the name. I call this the extended name-based thought thesis (extended-NBT). This chapter outlines the reasoning and presumptions of theorists who adopt extended NBT, and also outlines a set of reasons to resist it. The piece is distinctive in approaching the question of the relation between names and singular thought by focusing on the function of names and what this function entails (or doesn’t) about the kinds of thoughts (singular or descriptive) we have when we use names to communicate. In short, thinking about the function of names tells against the claim that name-use enables singular thought.

This paper is about the relevance of attitude ascriptions to debates about singular thought. It examines a methodology (common to early acquaintance theorists (Kaplan 1968) and recent critics of acquaintance (Hawthorne and Manley 2012), which assumes that the behavior of attitude ascriptions can be used to draw conclusions about singular thought. Although many theorists do (e.g. (Recanati 2012)) reject this methodology, the literature lacks a detailed examination of its implications and the challenges faced by proponents and critics. I isolate an assumption of the methodology, which I call the tracking assumption: that an attitude-ascription which states that s F’s that P is true iff s has an attitude, of F-ing, which is an entertaining of the content P (in a sense stipulated). I argue that the tracking assumption must be rejected, not because it has deflationary consequences, but because it leads to unstable commitments. I also show that there are independent reasons to reject it, because ordinary attitude ascriptions underdetermine even the truth-conditions of the mental-states they ascribe. However, I argue, this does not involve rejecting the claim that attitude-ascriptions express relations between agents and contents. Instead, they state different relations, depending on contextual factors other than the nature of the mental states ascribed.

A thesis I call the name-based singular thought thesis (NBT thesis) is part of the orthodoxy in contemporary philosophy of mind and language. It holds that taking part in communication involving a proper name puts one in a position to entertain singular thoughts about the name’s referent. I argue, first, that proponents of the NBT thesis have failed to explain the phenomenon of name-based singular thoughts, leaving it mysterious how name-use enables singular thoughts. Second, by outlining the reasoning that makes the NBT thesis seem compelling and showing how it can be resisted, I argue that giving up the NBT thesis is not (as is usually assumed) a cost, but rather a benefit. I do this by sketching an expanded conception of understanding for communication involving names, which sheds light on the nature of communication involving names and the structure of name-using practices.

It has become popular to identify the phenomenon of thinking a singular (or de re) thought with that of thinking with a mental file. Proponents of the mental files conception of singular thought (the MFC) claim that one thinks a singular thought about an object o iff one employs a mental file to think about o. I argue that this is false by arguing that there are what I call descriptive mental files, so some file-based thought is not singular thought. Descriptive mental files are mental files for which descriptive information plays four roles: it determines which object the file is about, if any, it sets limits on possible mistakes that fall within the scope of successful reference for the file, it acts as a ‘gatekeeper’ for the file, and it determines persistence conditions for the file. Contrary to popular assumption, a description playing these roles is consistent with the file-theoretic framework. Recognising this allows us to distinguish the notion of singular thought from that of file-thinking and better understand the nature and role of both.

This paper has a narrow and a broader target. The narrow target is a particular version of what I call the mental-files conception of singular thought (MFC), proposed by Robin Jeshion, and known as cognitivism. The broader target is MFC in general. I give an argument against Jeshion’s view, which gives us preliminary reason to reject the MFC more broadly. I argue thatJeshion’s theory of singular thought should be rejected because the central connection she makes between significance and singularity does not hold. However, my argument grants Jeshion’s claim that there is a connection between significance and file-thinking (for some kinds of files). The upshot is not only that we have reason to reject Jeshion’s significance constraint on singular thought, but that we have reason to question the connection made by MFC proponents between file-thinking and singularity.

The sortalist holds that singling out a particular object in thought requires one to correctly categorise it under a sortal concept. Against this, it has been argued that we can single out particular objects in thought without so categorising them. I reject the sortalist’s position while trying to bring out something important about her argument: it contains insights that shed light on the character of the ability that she denies that we have (to think about particular objects without thinking of them as objects of particular kinds). The sortalist is committed both to a metaphysical view about identity (metaphysical sortalism) and an analogous view about thought (thought sortalism). If we set aside the metaphysical considerations that often figure in discussions of sortalism, what remains of the sortalist’s case are two arguments about the structure of thought. Although these arguments do not support the sortalist’s conclusions, they contain insights we should not ignore. In recognising these insights, we come to better understand our ability to think about particular objects without categorising them as members of particular kinds. Thereby, the sortalist teaches us something about how we are able to achieve conceptualisation without categorisation.