Critical Notice: Bermudez, J.L; Valente, M; Verdejo, V. (eds.), Sharing Thoughts: Philosophical Perspectives on Intersubjectivity and Communication, Oxford University Press, 2025, 360 pp.

Bermudez, J.L; Valente, M; Verdejo, V.. (eds.), Sharing Thoughts: Philosophical Perspectives on Intersubjectivity and Communication , Oxford University Press, 2025, 360 pp.

Abstract

Sharing Thoughts, edited by Bermudez, Valente and Verdejo, is a collection of fourteen articles by leading experts in Philosophy of Language, Mind and Epistemology. In it, the editors organized papers of different approaches to phenomena such as same-thinking and same-saying, intersubjectivity and communication. These approaches sometimes align themselves with the tradition that refers to the Fregean theory of communication, or sometimes deliberately shies away from it. As it stands, the book is an unavoidable piece to anyone interested in the state of the art discussion in all these topics.

In this Critical Notice, I will mainly focus on the articles that are more closely tied to the Theory of Reference and Frege’s Puzzle. I will be worried about issues pertaining to the granularity of content, to coordination (representation of coreference), attitude individuation and communication. Given this goal, I have selected four out of the fourteen papers to discuss: (Prosser, this volume), (Recanati, t.v.), (Goodman, t.v.) and (Bermudez, t.v.). All of the papers in Sharing Thoughts represent state of the art research, but these four papers discussed here contain important insights and arguments that will take center stage in future research on the Theory of Reference.

Keywords:
Reference; Communication; Coordination; Propositional Attitudes

Introduction

Let us begin by reviewing some basics. One starting point for many of the themes found throughout the book is the so-called Fregean Theory of Communication. Frege (1892;1918), who classically held a two-tiered semantic framework based on the distinction between Sense and Reference, believed that successful communication consisted in the sharing of Thoughts. Thoughts are abstract and objectively apprehendable fine-grained propositions, constituted by the Senses (or modes of presentation (MOPs)) attached to the relevant expressions (plus the way they are combined). Thus, if S utters ‘a is F’, she expresses the Thought composed of the Senses attached to ‘a’ and ‘...is F’. The utterance will successfully communicate the Thought expressed iff this very Thought is apprehended by the hearer (see also (Evans, 1982:21-22)). There is a rather straight-forward expansion of this view of communication to phenomena such as agreement/disagreement, change of mind and samethinking.

This model seems in a way reinforced by a specific type of case famously proposed by Brian Loar (1976). Loar cases seem to show that mere transmission of coarse-grained propositions, such as Russellian Propositions, is insufficient for communication. The Fregean model, which bears on a fine-grained semantic framework, can account for this demand. However, Loar cases do not oblige the theorist to opt for a two-tiered semantic framework. As prefaced by Verdejo and Valente (this volume), another possible approach aiming at fineness of grain, without committing to a Fregean semantics, is relationism. This type of view, classically put forward by Fine (2007), bets on the coordination relation.

The coordination relation is often characterized¹ in light of what Campbell (1987) has called trading on identity (TI). One can trade on the identity of representations, broadly construed, when their coreference is somehow encoded. The encoding of coreference contrasts with its explicit representation (Gray, 2017; this volume). Since the constants in the following argument are coordinated (Fa, Ga |= Fa & Ga), one may rationally jump straight from premises to conclusions. Conversely, were the constants found in the premises different, we would need an additional premise explicitly stating the coreference of the tokens; only then we would be allowed to draw an inference such as the conjunction of the premises.

One of Fine’s innovations was to take coordination and to build it not as a function of the intrinsic semantic properties of the relevant token representation, but as a function of the whole system of representations in which they are a part of. An intrinsic semantic property is a property of representations that can be stated without referencing any relation to other representations. One example is precisely reference; another is sense. In allowing coordination to not be grounded in intrinsic properties we can achieve fineness of grain without committing to a two-tiered intrinsic semantic framework like Frege’s. This opens up the possibility of Relationists reaching similar results in comparison to Fregeans, while keeping a broadly referentialist semantics. Briefly, Loar cases point towards the idea that we need more than just transmission of referential content in order to get at successful communication. Fregeans and Relationists build two different theories that try to offer what is missing.

Having introduced some key ideas, let us begin our main discussion.

1. Prosser on Egocentricity and Shareability

Prosser (this volume) addresses a challenge raised in the context of the so-called Relational View of Thought Individuation. Prosser argues that different individuals (or time-slices of the same individual) share the same thought when there is a coordination relation between the instances of attitudes. He argues that the relation may hold even when the thoughts of the relevant individuals would be expressed by different indexicals/demonstratives (such as ‘here’ and ‘there’). This means that the individuals here have the same thought. Prosser then proceeds to weigh the impact of this conclusion on a familiar theme that runs through much of the literature on the essential indexical (Perry, 1979): thoughts are supposed to rationalize action. If different agents have the same thought, it is expected that they should have the same behavioural dispositions. Still, there may be contexts in which subjects have the same coordinated thought, but differ in their dispositions, such as those in which their attitudes would be expressible by different indexicals. In these contexts, Prosser says, the agents have cooperated to make their attitudes coordinated, even if their general dispositions somehow differ.

His solution is, briefly, as follows. Prosser posits the idea that Thoughts, individuated via coordination, may be entertained egocentrically or non-egocentrically by different agents. One and the same Thought may be entertained differently by different individuals, which would explain the difference in behavioural disposition. I take this type of solution, to posit one extra representational layer, to be needed if the theorist would like to hold that Thoughts are the theoretical entities that explain both behaviour and communication/samethinking (a desideratum of the fregean tradition). We will see this point more clearly below, when discussing Recanati’s paper, but the basic idea is that coordination can run at a more coarse-grained level than the different perspectives of different agents. These “perspectives”, differences in spatial or temporal position, or other egocentric parameters, seem key in accounting for behaviour. What Prosser shows is that, if coordination individuates Thoughts despite differences in perspective, then we need to accommodate those lower-level differences in connection to this shared Thought.

But this same conclusion can be used to put pressure against the view. Why exactly should we accept this coordination-based individuation of Thoughts in communication? As Prosser notices, there can be coordination between the agents’ attitudes even if they differ in “perspective” because they may cooperate to make such attitudes coordinated. Prosser’s solution is needed if sameness of Thought takes center stage in action and communication. But I don’t see why we couldn't abandon this view and allow for communication to be achieved even if we are not literally sharing attitudes; can’t this cooperative effort to demarcate the reference of the different perspectival thoughts (particular attitudes) be sufficient for communication? In this sketch of a view, just because there is coordination between attitudes, it does not follow that they are related to the same Thought. We can still hold the idea that there is a close connection between communication and coordination, but we read this connection not in terms of sameness of Thought, but of demarcation of coreferentiality.

Of course, this would lead us to question traditional approaches to the grounding of coordination, such as cosensicality. There could be coordination when the “sense” associated with each attitude is different, if this “sense” amounts to the fine-grained and egocentric perspectives. Still, this is not an absurd claim; especially in this context where the only reason we might have for claiming that different egocentric perspectives have the same sense is due to the cooperation among agents to encode the coreference of their attitudes. In the absence of cooperation, we would never claim that HERE and THERE attitudes had the same sense. In short, we have: (i) one might take Thoughts as key to explain both communication and behavior at the same time. If coordination is needed for communication, as one might read the lesson from Loar cases, then it seems that coordination entails Thought-sameness. This pushes us into positing a further representational layer, the possibility to entertain differently one and the same Thought, to account for cases tied to the essential indexical. Or we might have (ii), where thought-sharing is not taken as central to communication, but only coordination is. We allow different attitudes with different “contents” or “perspectives” to be coordinated via a different mechanism, such as the one suggested by Prosser (not cosensicality, but cooperation)², while explaining behavioural dispositions traditionally, via a difference in attitude. If we take Thought-sharing away from the spotlight in communication, we can make do without positing the possibility of entertaining the same Thoughts differently. This is a route that could be pursued by those that dislike the idea of further positing a difference in the entertaining of Thoughts. It is made explicit by the accuracy and precision of Prosser’s argumentation.

2. Recanati on Sameness of MOP

Recanati (2025) takes his discussion closer to the Criterion of Difference for Senses, in its different formulations; all variations of the idea that when some rational subject (possibly) takes conflicting attitudes towards the same referential content, then said content is presented differently in connection to each attitude. Recanati begins his argument by noticing, following Dickie and Rattan (2010), that standard formulations of the Criterion, such as Evans’ (1982) fails to account for mode of presentation identity in diachronic and interpersonal cases. The Criterion takes the perspective of a single subject at some given time, which seems to be problematic, given that diachronic and interpersonal MOP identity is central to the role of grounding coordination in a variety of cases (thus achieving communication, agreement/disagreement, change of mind, etc.). It seems necessary, given the Criterion, that the subject must synchronically entertain different thoughts whilst holding conflicting attitudes in relation to them. In many cases, such as cognitive dynamics and communication, this is impossible.

Recanati claims that such difficulties call for a new Criterion. His initial bet is on Campbell’s TI. The idea is that if one can trade on the identity of two singular terms, then they share the same sense. This Criterion would initially apply to diachronic and interpersonal cases. Much in the spirit of Prosser's discussion, Recanati notices how we might get counter-intuitive results regarding MOP individuation by this TI-Criterion. The resulting idea is that the Criterion of difference might diagnose different MOPs where the TI-Criterion might diagnose one and the same (recall Prosser’s discussion, where we saw that attitudes might be coordinated despite differences in perspective). The Criteria might also operate in parallel: we might have a more fine-grained, lower-level difference in MOP by the Intuitive Criterion (difference in perspective), while holding a more coarse-grained MOP identity by the TI-Criterion. Even if Recanati is not concerned here with rationalizing explanations of behaviour, this difference in MOPs has strong similarities to Prosser’s idea of a difference in egocentric entertaining of Thoughts. This further shows the pull towards positing or allowing for a more fine-grained representational level when we bring together topics such as communication, behaviour and diachronic same-thinking.

Even if there might be a difference in granularity when comparing the workings of both Criteria side by side, the TI-Criterion is still read by Recanati as applying only synchronically. Recanati’s idea is that we trade on the identity of instances of singular representations in an argument. When this happens, the premises are presented synchronically to the reasoner. Recanati uses this fact to argue that, in what apparently were coordinated but diachronic instances of singular terms, we have instead synchronic deployments of the same mode of presentation. This MOP is taken to be composite instead of dynamic; a composite MOP is a “static” MOP, instantiated synchronically, that is sensible to different types of informational channels (with Recanati’s mental file view in mind, think of different ER-relations). This is relevant because the premises in the argument may be based on memory, on perception or on testimony. The idea is that one and the same MOP can be deployed in this synchronous inference, if this MOP is sensible to the different channels available in such and such context. Interpersonally, the same would hold: when two agents coordinate on utterances of ‘That is F’ and ‘That is G’, each said by one of the subjects, they can deploy composite MOPs sensitive to the perception of the object and the testimony of the other speaker.

In his view, it seems to follow that coordination is then a synchronic and intrapersonal phenomenon. Even the TI-Criteria, which abstracts away from more fine-grained perspectives, is only applicable for some specific person at some time, given that this is typically the type of circumstance where one will perform an inference that trades on the coreference of singular representations. So coordination, the encoding of coreference, is not something that occurs between subjects or between time-slices of the same subject. Recanati recognizes that the notion of sameness of MOP/Thought that emerges from this argument is too narrow given the diachronic and interpersonal reach of cognitive dynamics or communication. So he expands the original Intuitive Criterion and includes in such expansion a clause that would encompass diachronicity and interpersonality; for example, if it is possible for S to believe at t¹ that a is F, but believe at t² that b is not F and S has not changed her mind, then a and b are different MOPs. The same strategy works in communication if we switch change of mind to disagreement.

The paper goes on to analyze the modality in the formulation of the extended criteria. But I want to draw attention to what the new criteria might be assuming. If we take coordination as a pre-theoretical phenomenon, that might be realized by different mechanisms (MOP identity, semantical requirements, etc) it seems natural to hold that we can hold conflicting attitudes diachronically without changing our minds, or hold conflicting attitudes interpersonally without disagreeing, when such attitudes are indeed uncoordinated. Their coreference is not encoded or given implicitly; disagreement and change of mind would come when the identity between uncoordinated components were explicitly represented. Now, given the general “fregean” strategy in the paper, to take coordination as MOP identity (the TI Criterion, for instance), it is awkward to try to distinguish MOPs diachronically and interpersonally by adding a clause to the Intuitive Criterion that mentions change of mind and disagreement. These are, prima facie and following the paper's dialectic, closely tied to the encoding of coreference which, in turn, depends on MOP identity - precisely the identity that these expanded criteria are meant to establish. It seems the expanded criterion assumes diachronic and interpersonal forms of rational engagement (i.e. coordination) to distinguish MOPs, who should, in turn, ground those very forms of rational engagement.

There is a connection (that might be challenged) between different forms of rational engagement, the encoding or explicit representation of coreference and the possibility of disagreement and change of mind. If the general fregean strategy is to unite those strands through MOP identity (we are rationally engaged in disagreement when we encode the coreference of the components of our attitudes through MOP identity), then we need a way to formulate a diachronic and/or interpersonal criterion of difference for sense which does not assumes those varieties of engagement beforehand.

In light of this discussion, it would also be interesting to understand what would be made out of coordination: Recanati claims that the TI Criterion is synchronous and intrapersonal, manifested in inferences that trade on the identity of singular representations, but there is interpersonal and diachronic rational engagements. Perhaps it would be best to abandon this narrow focus on inference when working with the TI Criterion. Coordination can be manifested not only in what inferences subjects actually work through, but also in what inferences they can draw (whether or not they will)³. Besides, consider the acquisition of some deferential belief that b is F. Recanati agrees that when a speaker utters ‘b is F’ and some hearer forms the corresponding belief, they can trade on the identity of ‘b’. Here, there is no inference, no argument, only the coordination between singular components of some utterance and its corresponding belief. Coordination (and thus the TI Criterion) can be manifested even in the absence of inference. If this is the case, something like the TI criterion might be read diachronically and interpersonally, which circumvents the need to expand the original criterion. Whether or not I’m right, Recanati’s paper is a highlight of the book as it pushes forward many key themes in the theory of reference.

3. Goodman on Content and Communication

Goodman (this volume) usefully distinguishes between three types of views regarding the connection between thought sharing and communication: The Fregean, Relationist and Russellian views. All views agree that sameness of referential content is a necessary condition for communication. However, both Fregeans and Relationists have a common feature: a focus on proposing some device to give their view some fineness of grain in order to give out sufficiency conditions for communication. Fregeans adopt a two-layered intrinsic semantics and Relationists accept a relational construal of coordination. In both views, sameness of sense or the presence of coordination would typically lead to communication. Russellians, on the other hand, dismiss such strategies. The idea is to appeal to some form of “transactional requirement”, as Goodman puts it. These can be built in different manners. As she stresses, some Russellians might focus on the types or kinds of processes that need to take place to establish successful communication (such as a process that reliably generates coreferential thoughts) or on the types of context that allow for non-lucky communication. Transactional requirements might not encode the coreference of the relevant attitudes.

Goodman provides us with a new and compelling argument against the Fregean view on communication. It adapts some ideas from Fine (2007) and Pinillos (2011), specifically about problems with the transitivity of MOP identity, and connects it with an interpersonal variant of a Paderewski-style case. The idea is to build a case where, via transitivity, two subjects associate the same sense to ‘Paderewski’, but this, in turn, does not entail that communication is possible or would be successful between them. In the situation envisioned by Goodman, the fact that the agents’ thoughts are coreferential is due merely to luck. The cosensicality of the agents’ thoughts do not guarantee communication. The argument concludes, with Loar cases in mind, that all positions on the debate must acknowledge transactional requirements of some sort. The Fregean would have a more expensive position: Loar cases are explained by difference in sense, while the interpersonal Paderewski case is explained by a transactional deficiency. Russellians, on the other hand, can make do only with referential content and transactional requirements.

On Relationism, Goodman addresses the (difficult) question of whether or not we should posit interpersonal coordination relations to explain communication, instead of adopting a Russellian view. To get at an answer, Goodman compares the role played by coordination in the intrapersonal case and assesses whether that same role must be fulfilled in the interpersonal cases. That is, following Campbell’s argument, coordination stops a regress. We need to be able to implicitly encode the coreference of tokens in the valid argument (Fa, Ga |= Fa & Ga), otherwise we would fall into a regress. Is there a risk for a similar regress in interpersonal cases? Goodman doesn’t think that it is obvious that there is a regress-stopping role to interpersonal coordination. Take one instance where one premise of the form Fb was acquired by the reasoner through testimony, from some speaker. Say that the reasoner believes that Ga and that a=b. Goodman claims that, given intrapersonal coordination between the attitudes’ components (Ga , a=b ), the reasoner may rationally infer that something is both F and G, without the risk of a regress. The belief that a=b explicitly represents the coreference of the former beliefs (Ga, Fb, a=b), thus allowing the inference. There need not be a coordination relation between the belief that a=b and the original speaker’s belief that Fb.

Goodman’s strategy works as a clever solution to a difficult problem. It allows her to answer the highly abstract question of whether there are interpersonal coordination relations. However, I’d like to put pressure on her conclusion. Perhaps Goodman, much like Recanati, focuses too narrowly on the role coordination plays in inference. I contend that we might draw a stronger conclusion from Campbell’s argument, tying the encoding of coreference closer to rational engagements in general. When the speaker utters that b is F and the hearer forms a related belief, it is hard to see (with Campbell in mind) how a Russellian might construe this transaction with requirements that do not bear on the encoding of coreference⁴. The benefits of seeing communication as a coordinated exchange is that it implicitly gives the relevant agents the coreference of their attitudes. Coordinated content is a marker for the fact that, in successful communication, the speakers may (fallibly) “know” that they are talking about the same thing. The clear move for the Russellian here is to build a case of successful communication in the absence of coordination, thus limiting this interpretation of Campbell’s argument. Deferential beliefs that are the result of successful communication do not fall into this category, as coreference seems encoded.

However, I’d need much more space to fully develop those ideas. So what I will do here instead is to try and create the need for coordination in the example provided by Goodman, given the worry of a regress. I still hold that this argument reinforces the idea that Campbell is getting at something deeper, but I won’t make this connection here. So we might tentatively build a regress in this case as well. Following an idea by García-Carpintero (this volume) (or the idea of mutual entailment in communication in (Gray, this volume)), let us take the inference (Fb |= Fb) as trading on the identity of b. With this particular instance of coordination in mind, take the relation between the speaker's utterance of ‘b is F’ and the reasoner’s acquired belief that b is F. The idea is that a successful case of communication, where speaker utters ‘b is F’ and hearer forms a relevant coordinated belief, can be modeled as the inference (Fb |= Fb). If the reasoner/hearer couldn't trade on the identity of the speaker’s utterance and of the acquired belief (however we might build the relation between uses of singular terms and acquisition of singular concepts), then the reasoner must explicitly represent the identity of ‘b’ and ‘b’. This seems to launch us into the same regress, as we’d need an auxiliary premise explicitly representing the identity of the constants in the auxiliary premise, and so on.

Thus there might be some role for interpersonal coordination in stopping a regress, a role that apparently can’t be played by transactional requirements. I don’t think this is the strongest argument linking rational transactions and coordination, but it will do to show the connection between the two, given Goodman’s strategy. Of course, that there might be a regress is not a decisive fact in favor of either a Fregean or Relationist construal of coordination; but given Goodman’s new argument against the Fregean view on communication, Relationists may fare better in the end of this particular dialectic.

4. Bermudez on Attitudinal Equivalence and Ultra-Intensionality

In Bermudez’ (this volume) piece, the question that takes center-stage is what is thought identity or equivalence, but from an intrapersonal and synchronic point of view. He begins his argument by introducing the notion of a de facto doxastic equivalence between thoughts (whereas Recanati, for example, was worried about de jure thought sameness). With Frege in mind, even if S knows that a=b, we would not infer that the Thoughts expressed by Fa and Fb were the same. Still, if S comes to know the identity, then she is rationally required to believe in both thoughts - they are de facto doxastic equivalent (de facto since there is the explicit representation of correferentiality). This equivalence seems to hold across the category of belief. Bermudez asks then if we would have a type of equivalence that would hold across different types of attitudes; he argues that this is not the case, there is no general attitudinal de facto equivalence. His choice of attitude to exemplify this is preference.

The contexts which Bermudez needs for his argument are those in which some subject believes that a=b, but prefers Fa over Fb. These are called quasi-cyclical preferences. He also dubs the contexts created by the attitudinal operator ‘prefers’ ultra-intensional, as it showcases failure in substitutivity of known corefering expressions. Interestingly, we can see the same type of pattern that is familiar from Frege’s Puzzle, but now in a more fine grained context: from (Bs Fa) and (a=b) we can’t infer (Bs Fb); from (Ps Fa) and (Bs a=b), we cannot infer (Ps Fb)⁵ - belief would be less fine-grained than preference. Also familiar from the structure above is Frege’s original argument for positing senses. Some subject might have contradictory beliefs while still being rational because there are different MOPs tied to each belief. This points towards the need to posit yet another, even finer, representational layer that explains, in the same way that MOPs explain the possibility of such contradiction, quasi-cyclical preferences. These are frames.

Frames and framing effects are known from the literature on behavioural economics and decision theory. Briefly, recall experiments that set-up choices such as: out of 600 people, would you prefer to save 200 or let 400 die? The idea here is that even if S knows that a=b, she might prefer Fa over Fb because they are framed differently. Bermudez notices how usual experimental settings in the framing effect bibliography do not test for quasi-cyclical preferences, that is, the test subjects usually are not explicitly presented to either the informative identity or both frames at the same time. Thus, he turns to literature in order to present his examples of quasi-cyclical preferences. If we had some empirical work on sustained framing effects after the discovery of the relevant informative identities, we would have stronger reasons to defend the falsity of the general de facto equivalence principle for attitudes.

Bermudez concludes with two discussions: the first concerns the rationality of quasi-cyclical preferences. He argues that some subject is rational in holding conflicting preferences when there is a reason to uphold different frames on the same situation; usually contexts of difficult and multi-faceted decisions. The rationality of quasi-cyclical preferences lies in the fact that, given who the agent is, her values and identity, one might need to choose one frame over the other in order to act, even if they are known to be equivalent - a conclusion that connects to some discussions on motivated reasoning. The second conclusion analyzes the consequences of the argument to attitudinal equivalence. If preference really is ultra-intensional, there is no general attitudinal equivalence principle; however, it would be interesting to know how different attitudes would interact. We might need to operate on an attitude-to-attitude basis in order to pinpoint the de facto equivalences that hold.

From his discussion, it might not even be useful, to the purposes of illustrating the phenomenon, to think of granularity here as a line that goes from more coarse-grained (extensional contexts) to increasing levels of fineness - intensional, hyper-intensional, ultra-intensional, etc. One of the virtues of Bermudez’ paper is that it draws attention to how specific attitudes, besides belief, might work - allowing us to pose the question of the principles of de facto equivalence between non-doxastic attitudes. In the ecology of attitudes humans have, we may find that they interact differently among each other. Suppose, only as an example, that there is de facto equivalence between belief and hope and that there is no equivalence between belief and preference. But, for independent or even empirical reasons, we notice that there is an equivalence between hope and preference. The situation would be this: if (Bs a=b), then if (Hs Fa) then (Hs Fb); but if (Hs a=b), then if (Ps Fa) then (Ps Fb). Of course, this is a silly example. It construes hope as an attitude that may impose representational constraints on frames, which goes against Bermudez’ claim that ties the rationality of conflicting frames with complex decision making (letting hopes interfere with preferences would be irrational). All of this to say that the level of granularity that operates within the realm of propositional attitudes is better not pictured as a straight line. Generally, de facto attitudinal equivalence is not transitive nor symmetric (as hopes clearly are not de facto equivalent to beliefs).

5. Conclusion

In this Critical Notice, I’ve discussed in detail four out of the fourteen articles to be found in Sharing Thoughts. As I’ve mentioned in the start, one can find much more about the relevant topics discussed above in the remaining articles. This CN was meant both to highlight specific arguments and to stir up some discussion related to them. Readers not particularly interested in these perspectives on samethinking should consult the book. There, related phenomena are treated from the perspectives of Epistemology, Externalism and Internalism, Game Theory and even the Philosophy of Music. But given the specific works we’ve discussed, I hope it became clear how the book stands as a highly significant contribution to the study of communication, samethinking and reference.

6. Acknowledgments

I'd like to thank Sharing Thought's editors, Valente, Bermudez and Verdejo, for their feedback on the material. Special acknowledgements are due to Matheus Valente, David Papineau, Iago Batistela and João Ramos for their feedback on an earlier draft.

Research Data Availability

All research data are available within the main text of the article.

References

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• 1
  As Verdejo and Valente (this volume:7-8) note, there are many approaches available in the literature when characterizing coordination, from syntactic, semantic, epistemic perspectives, etc. To keep things brief, I have directly mentioned one approach at it, Campbell’s trade on identity, and read it in terms of the distinction between explicit representation of coreference and the implicit encoding of coreference.
• 2
  The idea that communication might depend on some form of cooperative mechanism is often underexplored in this tradition that dates back to the Fregean view. One author that might help us here is Perini-Santos (2006). He recognizes that when aiming to share a Thought composed by a perceptual (or egocentric) MOP, we need to put less focus on the perspectival aspect of this perceptual or egocentric thought, and focus more on the idea that the communication of perspectival thoughts aim at fixating a common focus of attention between the speakers through their joint communicative practice. Perini-Santos does not frame it in those terms, but what secures communication in perspectival exchanges is not the sharing of some Thought, but the joint effort of the interlocutors to coordinate their perspectives (which may differ in suitable ways to accommodate relevant differences in behavioural dispositions).
• 3
  To illustrate this point, let us frame a very general example using file-talk. Say I have a CHOMSKY file that holds that information ‘...is a linguist’ and ‘... is american’. One way of building coordination in a file framework is to construe it as some form of cofiling (Recanati, 2021): when information is stored under the same file, the corresponding attitudes are coordinated. Nowhere in this general characterization we needed the idea of an argument or of some inference. Coordination is given in light of the architecture of the mental representation in question and what is stored. The fact that my (CHOMSKY is a linguist) belief and that my (CHOMSKY is american) belief are coordinated does not mean that they must be synchronically presented to me as premises in an argument. All of this is compatible with the fact that, given such coordination, I may be able to draw out relevant inferences (conjunction, existential generalization, etc). Given this construal, it is difficult to see why we need to read the TI Criterion as synchronous; inferences are synchronic, but coordination need not be.
• 4
  Perhaps what is at stake also concerns the grounding of coordination. To say that coordination amounts to semantic and/or relational requirements on coreference is not yet to say what grounds those requirements. Maybe language, as Fine (2007) roughly posits, is tied to different primitive semantic requirements for coreference that can be built as propositions. In this view, it might be the case that coordinated propositions (sequences of propositional contents positively coordinated) are grounding coordination. But this view hardly generalizes to other singular terms besides names (Gray, 2022). What about Prosser’s example? There might be coordination despite the absence of semantic requirements for coreference to different indexicals; his suggestion is that this is due to cooperation between agents. Is cooperation a transactional requirement? By Goodman’s characterization of Russelianism, if cooperation is responsible for the encoding of coreference of the relevant attitudes (despite intrinsic representational differences in perspectives), then cooperation grounds interpersonal coordination relations; thus, it is not a transactional requirement. This further shows the need, in order to strengthen Russellianism, for cases where there is no encoding of coreference, despite successful communication. In this sense we would know that transactional requirements are orthogonal to the encoding of coreference. In the absence of such examples, the Relationist could claim that the relational (i.e. non-intrinsic) encoding of coreference may be the result of different mechanisms active in different forms of rational engagement.
• 5
  Taking preferences (Ps …) as monadic is a simplification for the purpose of this review. We prefer P over Q. We might read the structure above, in light of the arity of ‘prefers’, in terms of the idea that just because (Bs a=b) it does not follow that S is neutral in relation to her preferences regarding Fa and Fb.
• Funding:
  No funding agency.
• Article info
  CDD: 121

Edited by

• Editor-in-Chief
  MARCO RUFFINO ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5619-0016

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  27 July 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  07 May 2026
• Accepted
  09 June 2026