Singular thought and a normative conception of acquaintance
Soutif, Ludovic
Singular thought and a normative conception of acquaintance - 2019.
54
In this paper, I discuss the view tentatively put forward by François Recanati in Mental Files to make two potentially contradictory claims compatible: the claim to the effect that acquaintance is a necessary condition of singular thought and the claim that we do entertain acquaintanceless singular thoughts (i.e., thoughts directed at particulars as particulars). Key to this proposal is a normative construal of the acquaintance constraint. I show that the proposal as it stands is wanting, first, because the norm the users of descriptive names are subject to has no (determinate) conditions of satisfaction in that framework; second, because the kind of mental simulation involved in exploiting the norm in this type of case is misdescribed as a “local lapse into fiction”; and third, because it leaves the issue pertaining to the conditions of satisfaction of the acquaintance norm in time unaddressed.
Singular thought and a normative conception of acquaintance - 2019.
54
In this paper, I discuss the view tentatively put forward by François Recanati in Mental Files to make two potentially contradictory claims compatible: the claim to the effect that acquaintance is a necessary condition of singular thought and the claim that we do entertain acquaintanceless singular thoughts (i.e., thoughts directed at particulars as particulars). Key to this proposal is a normative construal of the acquaintance constraint. I show that the proposal as it stands is wanting, first, because the norm the users of descriptive names are subject to has no (determinate) conditions of satisfaction in that framework; second, because the kind of mental simulation involved in exploiting the norm in this type of case is misdescribed as a “local lapse into fiction”; and third, because it leaves the issue pertaining to the conditions of satisfaction of the acquaintance norm in time unaddressed.
Réseaux sociaux