Whilst it may seem strange to ask to whom "I" refers, we show that there are occasions when it is not always obvious. In demonstrating this we challenge Kaplan's assumption that the utterer, agent and referent of "I" are always the same person. We begin by presenting what we regard to be the received view about indexical reference popularized by David Kaplan in his influential 1972 "Demonstratives" before going on, in section 2, to discuss Sidelle's answering machine paradox which may (...) be thought to threaten this view, and his deferred utterance method of resolving this puzzle. In section 3 we introduce a novel version of the answering machine paradox which suggests that, in certain cases, Kaplan's identification of utterer, agent and referent of "I" breaks down. In the fourth section we go on to consider a recent revision of Kaplan's picture by Predelli which appeals to the intentions of the utterer, before arguing that this picture is committed to unacceptable consequences and, therefore, should be avoided if possible. Finally, in section 5, we present a new revision of Kaplan's account which retains much of the spirit of his original proposal whilst offering a intuitively acceptable way to explain all of the apparently problematic data. In doing so, we also show how this picture is able to explain the scenario which motivated Predelli's account without appealing to speaker intentions. (shrink)

Eros Corazza presents a fascinating investigation of the role that indexicals play in our thought. Indexicality is crucial to the understanding of such puzzling issues as the nature of the self, the nature of perception, social interaction, psychological pathologies, and psychological development. Corazza draws on work from philosophy, linguistics, and psychology to illuminate this key aspect of the relation between mind and world. By highlighting how indexical thoughts are irreducible and intrinsically perspectival, Corazza shows how we can depict someone else's (...) indexical thought from a third-person perspective. The phenomenon of quasi-indexicality is introduced here: to represent Jane saying, "I am prosperous", we use what Castañeda termed a quasi-indicator in a report of the form "Jane said that she is prosperous". Corazza argues that quasi-indicators play such an important role in our linguistic, social, and psychological life that they have a cognitive primacy over other mechanisms of reference. Quasi-indexicality also emerges as a key notion when we come to consider our ability to understand other minds. Corazza argues that indexicality and quasi-indexicality are two sides of the same coin, best understood within the framework of direct reference. (shrink)

It is argued that, in order to account for examples where the indexicals `now' and `here' do not refer to the time and location of the utterance, we do not have to assume (pace Quentin Smith) that they have different characters (reference-fixing rules), governed by a single metarule or metacharacter. The traditional, the fixed character view is defended: `now' and `here' always refer to the time and location of the utterance. It is shown that when their referent does not correspond (...) to the time and/or location of the utterance, `now' and `here' work in an anaphoric way, inheriting their reference from another noun phrase. The latter may be explicit or implicit in the discourse. It is also shown that `now' and `here' can inherit their reference from a presupposed or tacit reference. In that case, they are coreferential with what will be labeled a `tacit initiator'. This anaphoric interpretation has the merit of fitting within the Kaplanian distinction between pure indexicals (`now', `here', `today', etc.) and demonstratives (`this', `that', `she', etc.). (shrink)

In a recent book, Jeffrey King (King 2001) argues that complexdemonstratives, i.e., noun phrases of the form `this/that F, are not singular terms. As such,they are not devices of direct reference contributing the referent to the proposition expressed.In this essay I challenge King's position and show how a direct reference view can handle the datahe proposes in favor of the quantificational account. I argue that when a complex demonstrativecannot be interpreted as a singular term, it is best understood as a (...) case of deferredreference – in which case it should be viewed as an anaphora inheriting its value from a quantifiedterm – or as an emphatic description. (shrink)

After discussing some difficulties that contextualism and minimalism face, this paper presents a new account of the linguistic exploitation of context, situationalism. Unlike the former accounts, situationalism captures the idea that the main intuitions underlying the debate concern not the identity of propositions expressed but rather how truth-values are situation-dependent. The truth-value of an utterance depends on the situation in which the proposition expressed is evaluated. Hence, like in minimalism, the proposition expressed can be truth-evaluable without being enriched or expanded. (...) Along with contextualism, it is argued that an utterance’s truth-value is context dependent. But, unlike contextualism and minimalism, situationalism embraces a form of relativism in so far as it maintains that semantic content must be evaluated vis-à-vis a given situation and, therefore, that a proposition cannot be said to be true/false eternally. (shrink)

In this paper I challenge the common wisdom (see Dummett and Davidson) that sentences are the minimal units with which one can perform a speech act or make a move in the language game. I thus sit with Perry and Stainton in arguing that subsentences can be used to perform full-fledged speech acts. In my discussion I assume the traditional framework which distinguishes between the proposition expressed and the thought or mental state (possibly a sentence in Mentalese) one comes to (...) grasp when using/understanding an utterance (or sentence-in-a-context) expressing a proposition. Unlike Stainton, I will argue that the proposition expressed by a subsentential assertion and its corresponding thought are not the end product of a pragmatic process of free enrichment. I shall defend the view that a thought may concern something without the thinker having to represent that very thing. This should help us to resist the view that with the utterance of a subsentence enrichment is mandatory. I will further argue that subsentences and their corresponding thoughts are situated. Because of that we can successfully interact and engage in joint ventures using subsentences and be guided by thoughts without having to enrich them. The fact that the actors’ unenriched thoughts are co-situated may suffice to explain the positive outcome of their joint project. Last but not least, I will also show how the picture I propose gains further support by taking on board Perry’s distinction between reflexive truth conditions and incremental truth conditions (or official content). Since competent speakers can grasp an utterance’s reflexive truth conditions without having to grasp its official content (roughly, the proposition expressed) they can successfully interact without their thoughts having to undergo a process of free enrichment. Moreover, if I’m right in arguing that an utterance’s reflexive truth conditions are the best tool to classify the semantic features of one’s mental state (or sentence in Mentalese), we can further explain mental causation and linguistic communication without appealing to free enrichment. (shrink)

It is argued that the pronouns `she' and `he' are disguised complexdemonstratives of the form `that female/male'. Three theories ofcomplex demonstratives are examined and shown to be committed to theview that `s/he' turns out to be an empty term when used to refer toa hermaphrodite. A fourth theory of complex demonstratives, one thatis hermaphrodite friendly, is proposed. It maintains that complexdemonstratives such as `that female/male' and the pronoun `s/he' can succeed in referring to someone independently of his or her gender.This (...) theory incorporates: (i) a multiple proposition view, i.e., theview that an utterance of a sentence containing a complex demonstrativeexpresses two (or more) propositions, namely the background proposition(s)and the official one; (ii) that the referent of a complex demonstrativeis a component of the official proposition expressed whether it satisfiesthe nominal part of the demonstrative expression or not; (iii) that thenominal part of a complex demonstrative only affect the background proposition(s) and (iv) that the utterance inherits its truth-value onlyfrom the official proposition. (shrink)

In this paper, we put forward a position we call “situationalism” (or “situated minimalism”), which is a middle-ground view between minimalism and contextualism in recent philosophy of language. We focus on the notion of free enrichment, which first arose within contextualism as underlying the claim that what is said is typically enriched relative to the logical form of the uttered sentence. However, minimalism also acknowledges some process of pragmatic intrusion in its claim that what is thought and communicated is typically (...) enriched relative to what is said. We show that situationalism dispenses with free enrichment both at the level of what is said (proposition expressed) and of what is thought (mental level). According to situationalism, an alleged underdetermined utterance can, pace minimalism, be true in one situation while false in another, and two people using the same alleged underdetermined sentence can be characterized, pace contextualism, as having said the same thing. (shrink)

It is argued that, contrary to appearances, description-names (e.g.: "The Roman Empire", "The Beatles", "The Holy Virgin",...) do conform to Millianism, i.e. the view that proper names are directly referential expressions, referring regardless of whether the relevant individual satisfies some associated description or not. However, description-names name and describe. Some arguments supporting this peculiarity and a logic to handle description-names are proposed. It will be shown that the best framework with which to accommodate description-names is a multiple-proposition theory, according to (...) which a given utterance may express several propositions. (shrink)

In formulating the puzzle about cognitive significance in ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’, Frege rejects the approach he suggested in the Begriffsschrift on the ground that if the utterance of a sentence of the form a = b is understood as ‘a’ and ‘b’ referring to the same object we lose the subject matter. In this note, we will show how Frege’s concerns can be understood and circumvented.

Indexical reference is personal, ephemeral, confrontational, and executive. Hence it is not reducible to nonindexical reference to what is not confronted. Conversely, nonindexical reference is not reducible to indexical reference. (Castañeda 1989, p. 70).

In combining a pluri‐propositionalist framework concerning alleged conventional implicatures, and a pluri‐propositionalist framework distinguishing various levels of content associated with a single utterance, I defend a Grice‐inspired model of communication. In so doing, I rely on the distinction between what is said, i.e. what is semantically encoded, and what is pragmatically implicated. I show how the notion of same‐saying plays a central role in dealing with problems pertaining to communication insofar as it permits us to posit a stability of content (...) among interlocutors. I also show how people can be classified as same‐sayers in different ways, viz. if they express the same proposition/content or if they utter the same sentence. If A utters ‘I'm happy’ and B replies: ‘C said that too’, what B said can mean either that C said that A is happy—thus C and A expressed the same proposition—or that C utters the same words—they both utter ‘I'm happy’ and in so doing express different propositions, i.e. that A is happy and that C is happy respectively. (shrink)

In this paper we present some benefits of semantic minimalism. In particular, we stress how minimalism allows us to avoid cognitive overloading, in that it does not posit hidden indexicals or variables at the LF or representational level and it does not posit the operation of free enrichment processes when we produce or hear a sentence. We nonetheless argue that a fully adequate semantic minimalism should embrace a form of relativism—that is, the view that semantic content must be evaluated, pace (...) Cappelen and Lepore, vis-à-vis a given situation, the latter being a fragment of a possible world or a partial world. In so doing we shall show how Cappelen and Lepore damage the insight of semantic minimalism insofar as they insist that the semantic content should be evaluated with respect to a whole possible world. This move fails to capture the powerful contextualist intuition that it does not make much sense to evaluate the content of, say, Naomi is rich, or Jon is tall, with respect to, for instance, the actual world. (shrink)

We defend the view that an indexical uttered by an actor works on the model of deferred reference. If it defers to a character which does not exist, it is an empty term, just as ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Ophelia’ are. The utterance in which it appears does not express a proposition and thus lacks a truth value. We advocate an ontologically parsimonious, anti-realist, position. We show how the notion of truth in our use and understanding of indexicals (and fictional names) as (...) they appear within a fiction is not a central issue. We claim that our use and understanding of indexicals (and names) rests on the fact that their cognitive contribution is not exhausted by their semantic contribution. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted, after Frege, that identity statements like “Tully is Cicero” differ from statements like “Tully is Tully”. For the former, unlike the latter, are informative. One way to deal with the information problem is to postulate that the terms ‘Tully’ and ‘Cicero’ come equipped with different informative values. Another approach is to claim that statements like these are of the subject/predicate form. As such, they should be analyzed along the way we treat “Tully walks”. Since proper names (...) can appear in predicative position we could go as far as to dismiss the sign of identity altogether, some told us. I will try to discuss the advantages and/or disadvantages of this approach and investigate whether Frege’s view that the ‘is’ of identity must be distinguished from the ‘is’ of predication can be reconciled with the fact that names can appear in predicative position. (shrink)

Atlas argues that semantic minimalism fails because it cannot deal with semantic non-specificity. I argue that thereis a plausible version of minimalism-viz., situated minimalism-which doesn't succumb to the non-specificity charge insofar as non-specificity can be dealt with at a postsemantic level. Thus, pragmatics plays no rolewhen it comes to determining the proposition expressed. Instead, pragmatic and other extra-semantic considerations enter the scene in characterizing the situation vis-à-vis which the proposition is evaluated. For this reason a plausible form of minimalism must (...) embrace a form of truth-relativism: a proposition is not universally true/false, but true/false only relative to a situation. I show how the position defended is not only more cognitively plausible than either minimalism as proposed by Cappelen & Lepore or the positions appealing to pragmaticintrusion into the proposition expressed, but is also in accordance with ordinary people's intuitions. (shrink)

SummaryAgainst an externalist view popularized, among others, by Evans and McDowell I shall show fiat object‐dependent thoughts are psychologically spurious. This version of externalism is contrasted with the picture that thoughts are object‐independent. It is argued that object‐independent thoughts are perspectival and context‐sensitive and that these perspectival thoughts, unlike object‐dependent thoughts: deal with delusion in an intuitive and elegant way; support psychological generalizations in a straightforward way; do not need to be fully articulated and, as such, fit with an economical (...) rule governing our thinking activity. To state my point I shall mainly concentrate on perceptual thoughts and emphasize how they are contextually related to the external world. (shrink)

An account of the evaluation of fictional discourse in terms of counterfactuals is sketched which accommodates the insights of D. Lewis and G. Evans but is not committed to the existence of possibilia on the one hand and to taking counterfactuals as barely true on the other hand. By adopting a two-step theory of evaluation which does not evaluate expressions (sentences) across possible worlds modal realism is avoided. And the use of a modified incorporation principle saying that every singular reference (...) made in the scope of a pretence is anaphoric and linked to a quantifier outside the scope allows to incorporate actual individuals within a game of make-believe. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: L'objectif de cet article est essentiellement négatif. Suivant en cela Dummett, j'introduis deux manières attrayantes d'interpréter le Sinn original de Frege, que j'appelle respectivement la doctrine du sens privé et la doctrine du sens public. Je montre que ces conceptions ne peuvent être utilisées dans le traitement frégéen de l'oratio obliqua. Il faut donc abandonner soit l'interprétation du Sinn par Dummett, soit le traitement frégéen de l'oratio obliqua.

Descartes, one of the central figure of the rationalist school, brought to the philosophical forum questions such as “What am I?”, “Does one’s mind differ from one’s body?” and if so, “How does the mind interact with the body?”. The Cartesians observed that some phenomena of nature (e.g. the mastery of language) do not fall within the mechanical philosophy of their time: they thus posited a new entity, the res cogitans (the mind) to account for these phenomena. In rejecting the (...) mechanical philosophy, nowadays rationalists are in a position to deal with Descartes’ traditional questions in a new way. In this Chomsky’s foundational works on language (and the cognitive revolution he initiated) play a central role and welcome new solutions and dissolutions to some traditional philosophical puzzles. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: L'objectif de cet article est essentiellement négatif. Suivant en cela Dummett, j'introduis deux manières attrayantes d'interpréter le Sinn original de Frege, que j'appelle respectivement la doctrine du sens privé et la doctrine du sens public. Je montre que ces conceptions ne peuvent être utilisées dans le traitement frégéen de l'oratio obliqua. Il faut donc abandonner soit l'interprétation du Sinn par Dummett, soit le traitement frégéen de l'oratio obliqua.

In a recent book, Jeffrey King argues that complex demonstratives, i.e., noun phrases of the form 'this/that _F<D>', are not singular terms. As such, they are not devices of direct reference contributing the referent to the proposition expressed. In this essay I challenge King's position and show how a direct reference view can handle the data he proposes in favor of the quantificational account. I argue that when a complex demonstrative cannot be interpreted as a singular term, it is best (...) understood as a case of deferred reference--in which case it should be viewed as an anaphora inheriting its value from a quantified term--or as an emphatic description. (edited). (shrink)

SummaryAgainst an externalist view popularized, among others, by Evans and McDowell I shall show fiat object‐dependent thoughts are psychologically spurious. This version of externalism is contrasted with the picture that thoughts are object‐independent. It is argued that object‐independent thoughts are perspectival and context‐sensitive and that these perspectival thoughts, unlike object‐dependent thoughts: deal with delusion in an intuitive and elegant way; support psychological generalizations in a straightforward way; do not need to be fully articulated and, as such, fit with an economical (...) rule governing our thinking activity. To state my point I shall mainly concentrate on perceptual thoughts and emphasize how they are contextually related to the external world. (shrink)

The following thesis will be discussed and defended: An attitude ascription is an empathetic exercise resting on our, more general, imaginative faculty. Sentences of natural language are the best medium we have to classify someone’s mental life.The sentence used to classify one’s mental state is the one the reporter would use to express the attributee’s mental state if the reporter were in the attributee’s situation. A report of the form “A believes/desires/wishes/… that p” captures the attributee’s mental life inasmuch as (...) it conveys the sentence the reporter would use to express her mental state if the latter were in A’s situation. (shrink)

An account of the evaluation of fictional discourse in terms of counterfactuals is sketched which accommodates the insights of D. Lewis and G. Evans but is not committed to the existence of possibilia on the one hand and to taking counterfactuals as barely true on the other hand. By adopting a two-step theory of evaluation which does not evaluate expressions across possible worlds modal realism is avoided. And the use of a modified incorporation principle saying that every singular reference made (...) in the scope of a pretence is anaphoric and linked to a quantifier outside the scope allows to incorporate actual individuals within a game of make-believe. (shrink)