1. Introduction (Mihai Hîncu and Dan Zeman) -- Part I: Insights from the Debate about Perspectival Expressions. 2. Taste Predicates and Retraction Data: An Improved Framework (Jeremy Wyatt and Joseph Ulatowski) -- 3. Falsity and Retraction: New Experimental Data on Epistemic Modals (Teresa Marques) -- 4. Relativism and Retraction: The Case Is Not Yet Lost (Dan Zeman) -- 5. Relevance in Epistemic Modal Disagreement (Jesse Fitts) -- Part II: Insights from Speech Act Theory and Conversational Dynamics. 6. “Actually, Scratch That”: A Tour into the Illocutionary Fabric of Retraction (Laura Caponetto) -- 7. Nevermind: On Retraction as a Speech Act (Lwenn Bussière-Caraes, Luca Incurvati, Giorgio Sbardolini, and Julian Schlöder) -- 8. Assertion and Retraction (Andy Egan) -- 9. The Ethics of Retraction (Quill Kukla) -- 10. Retraction and Verbal Disputes (Pedro Abreu and Marcin Lewiński).

This book offers the first sustained investigation of the phenomenon of retraction - the “taking back” of the conventional or deontic effects of a previous speech act - bringing together issues and solutions from the semantics of perspectival expressions and from the framework of Speech Act theory. It addresses questions that have been at the center of lively debates in philosophy of language and linguistics, but also draws out some of the ramifications these questions have for certain debates in the logic of discourse, philosophy of mind or experimental philosophy. Many times, what we say on a certain occasion proves to be wrong. When we realize this, we sometimes react by retracting what was previously said – formally or informally, explicitly or not. The essays in this volume tackle issues such as what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for successfully performing a retraction, whether there is a solid empirical basis for retraction, whether the phenomenon can be used in favor or against certain semantics views, whether there is a type of retraction that is merely verbal, or what are the ethical implications of retraction. The volume brings together and puts in dialogue renowned researchers on these topics, serving both as a fixture for specialists and as an introduction into the topic of retraction.