Displacement and quantification without representation

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Abstract Perry and Recanati have argued that thought and speech can concern entities that they do not represent. This is possible because speakers and thinkers are pragmatically situated within their environs. I argue that thought and speech can go much farther than that. Consider a semi-nomadic tribe who tell the time only by sundials, and who say such things as, “Everywhere we go, we dine at 7”. Their speech and cognition can thus transcend the local environment, and concern remote entities without the aid of either representation, or the context of utterance, or that of assessment.