Fred Adams and collaborators advocate a view on which empty-name sentences semantically encode incomplete propositions, but can be used to conversationally implicate descriptive propositions. This account has come under criticism recently from Marga Reimer and Anthony Everett. Reimer correctly observes that their account does not pass a natural test for conversational implicatures, namely, that an explanation of our intuitions in terms of implicature should be such that we upon hearing it recognize it to be roughly correct. Everett argues that the implicature view provides an explanation of only some of our intuitions, and is in fact incompatible with others, especially those concerning the modal profile of sentences containing empty names. I offer a pragmatist treatment of empty names based upon the recognition that the Gricean distinction between what is said and what is implicated is not exhaustive, and argue that such a solution avoids both Everett's and Reimer's criticisms.Fred Adams et ses collaborateurs mettent de l'avant la théorie selon laquelle les phrases comportant des noms propres vides codent sémantiquement les propositions incomplètes mais peuvent être utilisées pour impliquer des propositions descriptives dans le contexte d'une conversation. Marga Reimer et Anthony Everett ont récemment critiqué cette théorie. Reimer note judicieusement que leur théorie ne parvient pas à réussir un test naturel pour les implications conversationnelles, à savoir qu'une explication de nos intuitions concernant l'implication doit être telle que lorsque nous l'entendons elle nous apparaît comme étant correcte dans ses grandes lignes. Everett soutient que la théorie de l'implication ne parvient à expliquer qu'un certain nombre de nos intuitions et est en fait incompatible avec d'autres, notamment celles qui concernent la dimension modale des phrases contenant des noms propres vides. Je met ici de l'avant un traitement pragmatiste des noms propres vides en me basant sur l'idée selon laquelle la distinction Gricéenne entre ce qui est dit et ce qui est impliqué n'est pas exhaustive, et je soutiens que cette solution évite les critiques d'Everett et de Reimer.

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If a sex robot is a robot is a robot with whom (or which) we can have sex, then we need to know what it is to have sex with a robot. In order to know this, we need to know what it is to have sex, and what a robot is. This chapter examines the first question, what is it to have sex. It argues that having sex can be understood as a an epitome of being sexual together in much the same way having a conversation can be understood as an epitome of what Paul Grice calls a “talk exchange”. The answer to this question sheds some light on the second by telling us some of the criteria a robot would have to meet before we could plausibly have sex with it. The chapter concludes that as long as the sex robots in question do not exercise real agency, then sexual relationships between human beings will continue to offer something that sexual activity involving the sex robots does not.

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