Folk psychology and literal meaning

Recanati (2004), Literal Meaning argues against what he calls “literalism” and for what he calls “contextualism”. He considers a wide spectrum of positions and arguments from relevance theory to hidden variables theory. In the end, however, he seems to hold that semantic and pragmatic theorizing must answer to broadly introspective or folk psychological constraints — they don’t exist in “heaven”. After surveying Recanati’s wide-ranging and provocative discussion of these issues, we wonder why parity of reasoning does not condemn syntax and phonology, as customarily practiced.