Abstrakt
The conference paper deals with the problem of reference in the contextualist notion of mental files proposed by François Récanati. He develops the conceptual foundations of the theory of mental files and focuses on the issues of singular reference and thought concerning the so-called modes of presentation.
Central to Récanati's notion of mental files is the concept of so-called "normal" speaker, that is fully functional with respect to classical problems in analytic philosophy of language, such as coreference of the names Cicero and Tully, or Hesperus, Phosphorus and Venus, that are the base for Récanati's theory. In my paper, I focus on the problematic nature of the concept of the "normal" speaker when confronted with less standard situations, which, however, occur abundantly.
These include the coreference of gender-neutral proper names and indexical expressions (Alex/he, she, they), the coreference of proper names and nicknames functional only in certain contexts (Clark Kent/Superman), or the reference employing definite descriptions when the identity of the object referred to is unclear. By confronting Récanati's notion of mental files with these less standard situations, I reconceptualize it in such a way that it is able to grasp a wider range of linguistic behaviour of the "normal" speaker.