[Ciclo de Conferências] Perceptual Content and Singular Thought

Title: Do Theories of Singular Thought Rest on a Mistake?

Abstract: During the past four decades, there has been great interest in how we accomplish the feat of entertaining singular thoughts. Many a proposal has been put forth seeking to capture the general conditions under which a thinker can be credited with having grasped such thought. What has been debated much less is the possibility of providing such proposals. There can only be such theory proposals if there are general, non-trivial requirements on the grasping of singular thought. The supposition that there are such requirements is however rarely thematized. And a supposition that is not thematized cannot be vindicated. In fact, once one tries to substantiate it, disappointment ensues. We have no reason to expect that there are any such requirements. So, we also have no reason to expect that there can be the aforementioned sort of theory.