Force cancellation

Synthese 196 (4):1403-1424 (2019)
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Abstract

Peter Hanks and Scott Soames both defend pragmatic solutions to the problem of the unity of the proposition. According to them, what ties together Tim and baldness in the singular proposition expressed by ‘Tim is bald’ is an act of the speaker : the act of predicating baldness of Tim. But Soames construes that act as force neutral and noncommittal while, for Hanks, it is inherently assertive and committal. Hanks answers the Frege–Geach challenge by arguing that, in complex sentences, the force inherent in the content of an embedded sentence is cancelled. Indrek Reiland has recently objected to Hanks’s proposal that it faces a dilemma: either force cancellation dissolves the unity of the proposition secured by the cancelled act of assertion, or Hanks’s proposal reduces to Soames’s. In this paper, I respond to Reiland by offering an analysis of force cancellation which gets rid of the alleged dilemma. The proposal is based on a set of distinctions from speech act theory : between two senses of ’force’, two types of act, and two types of context. The role of simulation in force cancellation is emphasized, and connections drawn to broader issues such as the evolution of complex language.

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Francois Recanati
Institut Jean Nicod

Citations of this work

Predication and the Frege–Geach problem.Indrek Reiland - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (1):141-159.
Force, content and the varieties of unity.Michael Schmitz - 2022 - In Gabriele Mras & Michael Schmitz (eds.), Force, Content and the Unity of the Proposition. New York: Routledge. pp. 71-90.
Reference, Predication, Judgment and their Relations.Indrek Reiland - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
The redundancy of the act.John Collins - 2018 - Synthese 195 (8):3519-3545.
Pretense, Cancellation, and the Act Theory of Propositions.Manuel García-Carpintero - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

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How to do things with words.John Langshaw Austin - 1962 - Oxford [Eng.]: Clarendon Press. Edited by Marina Sbisá & J. O. Urmson.
Studies in the way of words.Herbert Paul Grice - 1989 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Literal Meaning.François Récanati - 2002 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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