Titles and Abstracts

Singular terms and joint cognitive focus
I’ll motivate the claim that a speaker using an ordinary singular term is proposing that the hearer join her in an information-marshalling activity directed at sustaining a relation of joint cognitive focus on an object of reference, and develop some applications.

Memory experience and memory demonstrative reference

"In theories of episodic memory, recollective experience should be the ultimate object of interest, the central aspect of remembering that is to be explained and understood" (Tulving 1983: 184).

When we are episodically remembering, do we undergo an experience of a kind partly constituted by the remembered event or object? Disjunctivists about memory experience of both relational (Campbell (2002); Debus (2008)) and representational (Barkasi & Rosen (2020); Martin (2019)) varieties argue: yes. They tend to cite two sorts of reason. First, that such experience is needed to explain our capacity to have memory demonstrative (singular) thoughts referring to past objects and events. Second, that a disjunctivist account of memory experience in some way does justice to the role that experience often plays in remembering. In this talk I cast doubt on these routes to supporting disjunctivism about memory experience, and I'll suggest a view on which there is no distinctive kind of experience constituted by successful remembering.

Are Mental Files Transparent?
Concepts are said to be "transparent" if a subject can discern solely through introspection whether or not they are deploying the same one. While there has been much discussion of threats to transparency stemming from semantic externalism, another threat to transparency has garnered less attention, viz. the identification of concepts with psychological vehicles, such as mental files. In this talk, I explain why identifying concepts with files threatens their transparency, provide empirical illustrations, and critically examine some attempts to dispel the threat. Instead of abandoning transparency altogether, I argue for a "modest" version of it, according to which transparency does not require introspective access, and the extent to which concepts/files are transparent is an open empirical issue.

Some Models of Intransitive Coordination
Coordination is rationally-relevant coreference: when representations of the same object are coordinated, this makes a difference to the rational relations—e.g. entailment, incompatibility—in which those representations stand. Traditionally, coordination has been understood as a kind of recurrence—either of a symbol or an element of content (i.e. a sense). I follow Fine (2007) in giving a more abstract characterization of coordination in terms of a representational requirement of coreference. I use this characterization to explore whether we can make sense of coordination as an intransitive relation (something that is inconsistent with the coordination-as-recurrence picture). I develop different possible intransitive accounts of coordination, noting their strengths, weaknesses, and potential applications.

Covert Meaning
Recently a number of theorists have pointed out various difficulties with a conception of speaker meaning—such as Grice’s influential account—according to which acts of meaning are essentially overt. I define a more general category of meaning, which has two subcategories: overt meaning and covert meaning. The subcategory of overt speaker meaning follows the spirit of Grice’s approach, entailing that the speaker is trying to help the audience identify her communicative intentions. The subcategory of covert speaker meaning, in contrast, involves deception; in such cases the speaker intends that her audience fail to recognize what she is up to. On my account, overtness comes in degrees, with purely overt acts of meaning and purely covert acts of meaning serving as the limiting cases. In making room for covert communication, my proposal overcomes problems faced by the traditional Gricean approach; however, it nonetheless reserves a special role for overt meaning, which is the metasemantic base.

All Descriptions are Referential
We explore a view according to which descriptions are universally treated as denoting variables, constrained in their assignments according to the descriptive material. So-called 'attributive' uses, which arguably involve more complex evidential components, can be accounted for by incorporating non-rigid elements into the assignment function.

How To Express Implicit Attitudes
I argue that what speakers mean or express is determined by their implicit or unconscious states, rather than explicit or conscious states. Further, on this basis, I show that the sincerity conditions for utterances are also fixed by implicit states. This is a surprising result which goes against common assumptions about speech acts and sincerity. Roughly, I argue that the result is implied by two plausible and independent theories of the metaphysics of speaker meaning and, further, that this is a robust basis on which to make an inference, with a fair degree of confidence, about the relationship between expression and implicit attitudes.

Shared Thought and Communication
On a Fregean view of communication, communication requires shared sense. On a Russellian view of communication, it requires only shared reference and fulfillment of what I will call transactional requirements. My first aim is to illustrate that the Fregean view is dialectically unstable, for reasons not usually discussed: the Fregean must explain some failures of communication in terms of difference of sense, and others in terms of failure to meet transactional requirements, without a satisfying explanation of the difference. The Russellian account is general and principled by contrast. However, even among those who shy away from a Fregean view of communication, hesitation to embrace a Russellian view is common, so my second aim is to ask whether this hesitation is justified. I do so by clarifying the relationship between Russelianism about communication and relationism about communication—a view which may seem to provide a third option. I’ll suggest a way to adjudicate between these two views, by clarifying a commitment shared by the Fregean and the relationist, but rejected by the Russellian. If this commitment is justified, then given the instability of the Fregean view, relationism is preferable. However, the upshot of the discussion may rather be that traditional dissatisfaction with a Russellian view of communication is undermotivated.