Thinking with language

Verbal thinking is a specific form of thinking, based on a mechanism of "deference" and parasitic in relation to language. Acknowledging the existence of such thought means recognizing that language not only serves to express thoughts formed independently of it, but also plays a more fundamental role in thought: that we think with language.

Biography

Director of Research at the CNRS and Director of Studies at EHESS, François Recanati has taught at numerous universities abroad (including Berkeley, Harvard, Geneva and St Andrews). He currently teaches at the Universities of Lugano and Miami. Author of a dozen books and numerous articles on the philosophy of language and mind, he has been awarded an ERC senior fellowship, an honorary doctorate from Stockholm University and the CNRS silver medal. He is a foreign member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Latest book: Mental Files in Flux (Oxford University Press, 2016).