Synopses & Reviews
Perspectival Thought considers the nature of content, and defends the idea that truth is relative to context. In the first part, Francois Recanati defends a version of moderate relativism: i.e. the view that a Kaplanian content (the lekton) is a relativized proposition. In order for a
relativized proposition to be true or false, it must be evaluated vis-a-vis a circumstance of evaluation (e.g. a possible world, time, or location). For example, in order for the proposition exppessed by "It's 3 pm" to be true or false, it needs to be evaluated relative to a time-zone. Thus,
Recanati argues, the lekton corresponds to a function operating on circumstances of evaluation whose value is either the true or the false. The complete content of an utterance is an Austinian proposition: i.e. a proposition constituted by the lekton and the relevant contextually furnished
situation.
Part II distinguishes the content of perception, memory, and imagination. Since the (narrow) content of perception is temporally neutral, Recanati argues, the very same (narrow) content can also appear in memory. Memory and perception are reflexive states insofar as the perceiver/rememberer stands
in some actual world relation to what is represented by the memory/perception. By contrast, in imagination, no actual-world relation is imposed by the act of imagining. As such, imagination comes close to quasi-memory and quasi-perception. Recanati coins the terms "quasi-de se" to capture the kind
of thought entertained by one who imagines oneself being someone else, because although imagination is first-personal, the imaginer's self is not involved.
Finally, in Part III, Recanati defends a three-level picture of content: (i) the meaning of the of the sentence type (in the mental realm, this is the narrow psychological content); (ii) the context dependent lekton (Kaplanian content); and (iii) the Austinian proposition which includes a situation
of evaluation in addition to the lekton. He also examines the notion of unarticulated constituents and the expression of subjective thoughts.
Review
"...as always, Recanati has presented a work full of insights, important theoretical distinctions, and careful and detailed arguments, with a myriad of inspiring examples.... That's why Perspectival Thought is a must for anyone with interest in current and future debates in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind."--Kepa Korta, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Synopsis
Our thought and talk are situated. They do not take place in a vacuum but always in a context, and they always concern an external situation relative to which they are to be evaluated. Since that is so, François Recanati argues, our linguistic and mental representations alike must be assigned two layers of content: the explicit content, or
lekton, is relative and perspectival, while the complete content, which is absolute, involves contextual factors in addition to what is explicitly represented. Far from reducing to the context-independent meaning of the sentence-type or, in the psychological realm, to the "narrow" content of mental representations, the
lekton is a level intermediate between context-invariant meaning and full propositional content. Recognition of that intermediate level is the key to a proper understanding of context-dependence in language and thought.
Going beyond the usual discussions of indexicality and unarticulated constituents in the philosophy of language, Recanati turns to the philosophy of mind for decisive arguments in favour of his approach. He shows, first, that the lekton is the notion of content we need if we are to properly understand the relations between perception, memory, and the imagination, and second, that the psychological 'mode' is what determines the situation the lekton is relative to. In this framework he provides a detailed account of de se thought and the first person point of view. In the last part of the book, Recanati discusses the special freedom we have, in discourse and thought, to shift the situation of evaluation. He traces that freedom to a special mode--the anaphoric mode--which enables us to go beyond the egocentric stage of pre-human thought.