On Indexical Reference
نویسنده
چکیده
Thesis: Indexicals are not essential in the sense of being semantically irreducible; the arguments for the semantic irreducibility of indexicals only apply to referentially-opaque readings of indexicals in the scope of attitude verbs. Suppose, Sally, Peter and Max spend a nice evening in a pub, and Max suddenly utters: (1) Max: I’ve lost my wallet. That’s an unpleasant situation. Not only will poor Max have problems paying the bill, he has also uttered a sentence containing the so-called essential indexical «I». Indexicals in general and essential indexicals like «I» in particular have been troubling various logicians and philosophers of language. In this paper, I will defend the following thesis: Essential indexicals are no more, or no less essential than any other referential expression in natural languages. My main argument boils down to the following: When a ∗ Copyright c © 2003 by Erich Rast, minor revisions to this draft have been made on July 17, 2007.
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