François Recanati presents his theory of mental files, a new way of understanding reference in language and thought. Linguistic expressions inherit their reference from the files that we associate with them, which are classified according to their function, which is to store information derived through certain types of relation to objects.

• Preface


• Part I. Singular Thought and Acquaintance : Rejecting Descriptivism


• 1: Singularism vs Descriptivism


• 2: Can Descriptivism Account for Singularity?


• Part II. Introducing Files


• 3: Non-Descriptive Modes of Presentation as Mental Files


• 4: Mental Files and Identity


• Part III. The Indexical Model


• 5: Mental Indexicals


• 6: Stable Files


• 7: The Dynamics of Files


• Part IV. Mental Files and Coreference


• 8: The Circularity Objection [followed by Appendix]


• 9: Coreference De Jure: The Transitivity Objection


• Part V. Epistemic Transparency


• 10: Slow Switching


• 11: Transparency and its Limits


• Part VI. Beyond Acquaintance


• 12: Descriptive Names


• 13: Singular Thought without Acquaintance


• Part VII : Vicarious Files


• 14: Mental Files in Attitude Ascription


• 15: Indexed Files at Work


• Part VIII. The Communication of Singular Thoughts


• 16: Frege and the Sense of 'I'


• 17: Reference Through Mental Files: Indexicals and Definite Descriptions


• Part IX. Conclusion


• 18: The Mental File Framework and Its Competitors


• References


• Index

François Recanati is the Director of Institut Jean-Nicod in Paris. He is the author of Perspectival Thought (OUP, 2007), Truth-Conditional Pragmatics (OUP, 2010), and many other publications in the philosophy of language and mind.