Conference in English organized by Prof. François Recanati, Philosophy of Language and Mind Chair, with the support of the Fondation du Collège de France.
In judgment (on the mental level) or assertion (on the linguistic level), the subject gives assent to a certain thought content (the content of the judgment or assertion); but it is also possible to consider a thought content neutrally, without accepting or endorsing it. Hence the distinction between force and content, which has prevailed in contemporary philosophy of language since Frege. This distinction implies that predication, an operation internal to propositional content, is itself a neutral operation. Because they reject this consequence and conceive of predication as the attribution of a property to an object (an attribution that involves the subject and cannot therefore be neutral), some theorists attempt to challenge the force/content distinction. Others, on the contrary, are attempting to extend its field of application. The aim of this international colloquium was to take stock of these debates, and to enable a direct confrontation of points of view.
The symposium was originally scheduled to take place at the Collège de France in June 2020, but was postponed for a year due to the health crisis. Two of the originally scheduled speakers (Kathrin Glüer, from Stockholm, and Maria van der Schaar, from Leiden) cancelled their participation, and two other participants (Silver Bronzo, from Moscow, and Stephen Barker, from Nottingham) gave their papers by videoconference. For the rest, the colloquium took place as usual, from June 16 to 18, 2021, with the participation of Mitchell Green (Connecticut), Peter Hanks (Minnesota), Eric Mandelbaum (New York), Peter Pagin (Stockholm), François Recanati (Paris), Indrek Reiland (Edinburgh), and Michael Schmitz (Vienna).