Francois Recanati presents a ground-breaking study of the context-dependence of our language and thought. He argues that our linguistic and mental representations alike must be assigned two layers of content: the explicit content, which is relative and perspectival, and the complete content, which is absolute and involves contextual factors.

François Recanati is Director of Research, CNRS (Institut Jean-Nicod), and Arché Professorial Fellow, University of St Andrews.

• PART 1 : MODERATE RELATIVISM


• 1. The framework


• 1: The distribution of content


• 2: Radical vs Moderate Relativism


• 3: Two levels of content


• 4: Branch points for Moderate Relativism


• 2. The debate over temporalism (1) : Do we need temporal propositions?


• 5: Modal vs extensional treatments of tense


• 6: What is at stake?


• 7: Modal and temporal innocence


• 8: Temporal operators and temporal propositions in an extensional framework


• 3. The debate over temporalism (2) : Can we believe temporal propositions ?


• 9: An epistemic argument against temporalism


• 10: Rebutting Richard's argument


• 11: Relativistic disagreement


• 4. Relativization and indexicality


• 12: Index, context, and content


• 13: The two-stage picture : Lewis vs Kaplan and Stalnaker


• 14: Rescuing the two-stage picture


• 15: Content, character, and cognitive significance


• PART 2 : EXPERIENCE AND SUBJECTIVITY


• 5. Content and mode


• 16: Duality and the fallacy of misplaced information


• 17: The content of perceptual judgments


• 18: Episodic memory


• 6. Immunity to error through misidentification


• 19: Implicit self-reference


• 20: Weak and strong immunity


• 21: Quasi-perception and quasi-memory


• 22: Reflexive states


• 7. Relativization and reflexivity


• 23: The (alleged) reflexivity of de se thoughts


• 24: Reflexivity : internal or external ?


• 25: What is wrong with Reflexivism


• 8. The first person point of view


• 26: De se thoughts and subjectivity


• 27: Memory and the imagination


• 28: Imagination and the self


• 29: Imagination, empathy, and the quasi-de se


• PART 3 : EGOCENTRICITY AND BEYOND


• 9. Unarticulated constituents in the lekton ?


• 30: The context-dependence of the lekton : how far can we go ?


• 31: Unarticulatedness and the 'concerning' relation


• 32: Three (alleged) arguments for the Externality Principle


• 33: Invariance


• 10. Self-relative thoughts


• 34: The problem of the essential indexical


• 35: Perry against relativized propositions


• 36: Context-relativity


• 37: Basic and nonbasic de se thoughts


• 11. Shiftability


• 38: The Generalized Reflexive Constraint


• 39: Parametric invariance and m-shiftability


• 40: Free shiftability


• 41: The anaphoric mode : a Bühlerian perspective


• References