Transparent Coreference

François Recanati (1, 2)

1 IJN - Institut Jean-Nicod
2 Collège de France - Chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Because reference is not transparent, coreference is not transparent either: it is possible for the subject to refer to the same individual twice (as in Frege cases) without knowing that the two acts of reference target the same individual. That happens whenever the subject associates two distinct yet coreferential files with two token singular terms. The subject may not know that the two files corefer, so her ascribing contradictory properties to the same object (the referent of the two files) does not threaten her rationality. But if the subject deploys the same file twice, in association with both of the singular terms, she is bound to know that she is referring to the same entity twice (assuming she succeeds in referring).

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société; Philosophie

François Recanati. Transparent Coreference. Topoi, 2021, ⟨10.1007/s11245-019-09674-1⟩. ⟨hal-02932350⟩