(1) Jenny is coming to visit me tonight. (2) I’m going to visit Jenny tonight. In these examples, it is where I am (my home, let us suppose) that is the center of the coming and going. This may suggest that the perspective point is always the perspective of the speaker, and that comings are always towards the speaker and that goings are away from the location of the speaker. But this isn’t necessarily so. For example, suppose that a colleague (...) from work calls me at home to find out why I’m late for a meeting. I could reply. (shrink)

John Perry has urged that a semantic theory for natural languages ought to be concerned with the issue of cognitive significance—of how true identity statements containing different (utterances of) indexicals and proper names can be informative, held to be unaccountable by the referentialist view. The informativeness that he has in mind—one that has puzzled Frege, Kaplan and Wettstein—concerns knowledge about the world. In trying to solve this puzzle on referentialist terms, he comes up with the notion of cognitive significance as (...) a special kind of a second-order content which should account for cognitive significance in the former sense. Focusing on his treatment of perceptual demonstratives, I argue that he fails to do so both on the level of second-order contents containing demonstrative utterances and on the level of second-order contents containing perceptual buffers as new notions associated with the perceptions and used to temporarily store ideas we gain from the perceptions, which he holds to be causally connected to each other. (shrink)

Indexicals are linguistic expressions whose reference shifts from context to context: some paradigm examples are ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘now’, ‘today’,‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘that’. Two speakers who utter a single sentence that contains an indexical may say different things. For instance, Fred and Wilma say different things when they utter the sentence ‘I am female’. Many philosophers (following David Kaplan 1989a) hold that indexicals have two sorts of meaning. The first sort of meaning is often called ‘character’ or ‘linguistic meaning’; the second (...) sort is often called ‘content’. Using this terminology, we can say that the word ‘I’ has a single character (or linguistic meaning), but has different contents in different contexts. (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 this paper I shall focus on Castaneda's notion of quasi-indicators and I shall defend the following theses: (i) Essential indexicals (‘I’, ‘here’ and ‘now’) are intrinsically perspectival mechanisms of reference and, as such, they are not reducible to any other mechanism reference...

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).

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)

We distinguish, among other things, between the agent of the context, the speaker of the agent's utterance, the mechanism the agent uses to produce her utterance, and the tokening of the sentence uttered. Armed with these distinctions, we tackle the the ‘answer-machine’, ‘post-it note’ and other allegedly problematic cases, arguing that they can be handled without departing significantly from Kaplan's semantical framework for indexicals. In particular, we argue that these cases don't require adopting Stefano Predelli's intentionalism.

Reichenbachian approaches to indexicality contend that indexicals are 'token-reflexives': semantic rules associated with any given indexical-type determine the truth-conditional import of properly produced tokens of that type relative to certain relational properties of those tokens. Such a view may be understood as sharing the main tenets of Kaplan's well-known theory regarding content, or truth-conditions, but differs from it regarding the bearers of truth-conditional import and truth-conditions. Kaplan has criticized these approaches on different counts, the most damaging of which is that (...) they make impossible a 'logic of demonstratives'. The reason for this is that the token-reflective approach entails that not two tokens of the same sentential type including indexicals are guaranteed to have the same truth-conditions. In this paper I rebut this and other criticisms of the Reichenbachian approach. Additionally, I point out that Kaplan's original theory of 'true demonstratives' is empirically inadequate, and claim that any modification capable of accurately handling the linguistic data would have similar problems to those attributed to the Reichenbachian approach. This is intended to show that the difficulties, no matter how real, are not caused by idiosyncrasies of the 'token-reflexive' view, but by deep facts about indexicality. (shrink)

Donnellan and Predelli have both responded to accusations that in virtue of involving intentions in their accounts of reference they are committed to ‘Humpty Dumpty’ theories of reference. I examine their responses and argue that they do not succeed in escaping this accusation. Corazza et al. (2002) propose an alternative to Predelli’s account involving linguistic conventions instead of intentions. I argue that Predelli’s responses to Corazza et al. are unsatisfactory and that the intentional theorist is obliged either to accept the (...) Humpty Dumpty conclusion or to adopt the conventional picture, thus relegating intentions to a less significant role in their reference theory. (shrink)

Abstract:  A current debate in semantics and pragmatics is whether all contextual effects on truth-conditional content can be traced to logical form, or 'unarticulated constituents' can be supplied by the pragmatic process of free enrichment. In this paper, I defend the latter position. The main objection to this view is that free enrichment appears to overgenerate, not predicting where context cannot affect truth conditions, so that a systematic account is unlikely (Stanley, 2002a). I first examine the semantic alternative proposed by Stanley (...) and others, which assumes extensive hidden structure acting as a linguistic trigger for pragmatic processes, so that all truth-conditional effects of context turn out to be instances of saturation. I show that there are cases of optional pragmatic contributions to the proposition expressed that cannot plausibly be accounted for in this way, and that advocates of this approach will therefore also have to appeal to free enrichment. The final section starts to address the question of how free enrichment is constrained: I argue that it involves only local development or adjustment of parts of logical form, any global developments being excluded by the requirement for the proposition expressed to provide an inferential warrant for the intended implications of the utterance. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against an influential view of Frege''s writings on indexical and other context-sensitive expressions, and in favour of an alternative. The centrepiece of the influential view, due to (among others) Evans and McDowell, is that according to Frege, context-sensitiveword-meaning plus context combine to express senses which are essentially first person, essentially present tense and so on, depending on the context-sensitive expression in question. Frege''s treatment of indexicals thus fits smoothly with his Intuitive Criterion of difference of (...) sense. On my view, by contrast, Frege stuck by the view which he held in his unpublished 1897 Logic, namely that the senses expressed by the combination of context-sensitive word-meaning and context could just as well be expressed by means of non-context-sensitive expressions: being first person, present tense and so on are properties, in Frege''s view, only of language, not of thought. Given the irreducibility of indexicals – a phenomenon noticed by Castañeda, Perry and others – Frege''s treatment of indexicals thus turns out to be inconsistent with the Intuitive Criterion. I argue that Frege was not aware of the inconsistency because he was not aware of the irreducibility of indexicals. This oversight was possible because the source of Frege''s interest in indexicals, as inother context-sensitive expressions, differed from that of contemporary theorists. Whereas contemporary theorists are most often interested in indexicals (and in Frege''s treatment of them) because they are interested in the indexical versions of Frege''s Puzzle and their relation to psychological explanation, Frege himself was interested in them because they pose a prima facie threat to his general conception of thoughts. The only indexical expression Frege''s view of which the above account does not cover is I insofar as it is associated with special and primitive senses, but Frege did not introduce such senses with a view to explaining theirreducibility of I his real reason for introducing them remains obscure. (shrink)

According to Hector-Neri Castañeda, indexical reference is our most basic means of identifying the objects and events we experience and think about. Its tokens reveal our own part in the process by denoting what are "referred to as items present in experience" (Castañeda 1981, 285-6). If you hear me say, "Take that box over there and set it next to this box here," you learn something about my orientation towards the referents in a way that is not conveyed by, "Take (...) the red box and set it next to the blue box." My indexical tokens express what they do not only because they issue from a unique spatio-temporal perspective that I happen to occupy, but also because they reflect my encounter with referents that are differently situated in that perspective. From your perspective, my here might be your there, my you your she, and within my own, a this differs from a that and one this diverges from another. Encounter and orientation within a perspective are the essential ingredients in indexical identification without which particular 'this's, 'that's, 'then's, 'here's, and 'beyond's would be denuded of individuating powess.1 There are several consequences of this description. First, indexical reference is ephemeral because perspective is constantly changing, rendering the indexical status of an entity relative to a given perspective temporary: 1 A this quickly turns into a that, and soon enough it is lost to experience and is not even a remote that; a you goes away and is replaced by another . . . Nothing is really an enduring you -- except God perhaps for the abiding mystic. (Castañeda 1989a, 69) Second, indexical reference is irreducible since non-indexical mechanisms of reference fail to express the subject's involvement or encounter with the referents that indexicals convey. Nor can the various indexicals be reduced to each other.2 Third, because each perspective is unique, indexical reference is essentially subjective.. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that the references of indexical expressions are fixed partly by their relations to contextual parameters such as the author, time, and place of the utterance. Because of this, indexicals are sometimes described as token-reflexive or utterance-reflexive in their semantics. But when we inquire into how indexicals help us to identify items within experience, we find that while utterance-reflexivity is essential to an interpretation of indexical tokens, it is not a factor in a speaker's identificatory use of (...) indexicals. Tokens cannot be interpreted unless they are first produced, and obviously the speaker who produces them does not depend upon utterance parameters in order to identify their referents in the way that hearers do. Consequently, the standard reflexive accounts of indexicals are of little use in explaining the speaker's identificatory use of indexicals, and must be either replaced or complemented by a further theory of the role of indexicals in thought. This paper provides an account of indexical identification that is attentive to a speaker's as well as a hearer's identification and reveals how indexicals are inextricably perspectival. (shrink)

In this paper, I advance a new view of the semantics of indexicals, using a paper by Quentin Smith as my starting point. I make use of Smith’s examples, refined and expanded upon by myself to argue, as Smith does, that the standard view, that indexicals refer to some prominent features of the context according to an invariant rule called the character, does not agree with a wide range of phenomena. I depart from Smith, however, in denying that we need (...) more complex rules, which he does not give, called metacharacters to account for all the deviations, and instead argue for a view of indexicals as just being special cases of demonstratives. I show how demonstratives can be substituted for indexicals to support this view, and I adduce recent work in the semantics of demonstratives to explain how it can work. (shrink)

Indexicals are linguistic expressions whose meaning remain stable while their reference shifts from utterance to utterance. Paradigmatic cases in English are ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’. Recently, a number of authors have argued that various constructions in our language harbor hidden indexicals. We say ’hidden’ because these indexicals are unpronounced, even though they are alleged to be real linguistic components. Constructions taken by some authors to be associated, or to ‘co-habit’, with hidden indexicals include: definite descriptions and quantifiers more generally (hidden (...) indexical refers to a domain – Davies (1981), Westerstahl (1985), Soames (1986), Higginbotham (1988), Stanley and Williamson (1995)), propositional attitude verbs (hidden indexical refers to a mode of presentation – Richard (1990)), comparative adjectives (hidden indexical refers to comparison classes – Partee (1989), Kamp (1975), Ludlow (1989)). An interesting recent addition is the view that all nouns are associated with a hidden indexical referring to a domain restriction (Stanley and Szabo (2000), Stanley (2002)). (shrink)

Mixed quotation exhibits characteristics of both mention and use. Some even go so far as to claim it can be described wholly in terms of the pragmatics of language use. Thus, it may be argued that the observed shifting of indexicals under all quotation shows that a monstrous operator is involved. I will argue the opposite: a proper semantic account of quotation can be used to exorcize Schlenker's monsters from semantic theory.

It is a characteristically Fregean thesis that the sense expressed by an expression is the linguistic meaning of that expression. Sense can play this role for Frege since it meets fundamental desiderata for meaning, that it be universal and invariantly expressed and objectively the same for everyone who knows the language. It has been argued,1 however, that, as a general thesis about natural languages, the identi cation of sense and meaning cannot be sustained since it is in con ict with (...) another characteristically Fregean thesis, that sense uniquely determines reference. The argument is quite simple and can be outlined as follows. Assume the two theses we have just stated. (shrink)

In this article I will develop the first steps of a wholly general theory of how indexical and reflexive pronouns function in propositional attitude ascriptions. This will involve a theory of ascriptions of de se beliefs and de se utterances, which can probably be also generalized so as to apply to ascriptions of other attitudes. It will also involve a theory about the ascriptions of beliefs or other attitudes a person has at a time about what happens then (attitudes de (...) praesente, as they are sometimes called) and the beliefs of a person concerning the one whom he is addressing (which I might call beliefs de recipiente) etc.. The most distinctive aspect of the theory will be that I will argue that many phenomena associated with such ascriptions that are nowadays most often viewed as pragmatic are semantic. I will use a system of symbolic logic to formalize such ascriptions. I will start from David Kaplan’s Logic of Demonstratives and generalize it into a logic I call Doxastic Logic of Demonstratives, DLD. Crucial to the semantics of the logic will be an exact definition of the adjustments of a character from one context to another. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider whether tenses, temporal indexicals, and other indexicals are contextually dependent on the context of assessment (or a-contextual), rather than, as is usually thought, contextually dependent on the context of utterance (u-contextual). I begin by contrasting two possible linguistic norms, governing our use of context sensitive expressions, especially tenses and temporal indexicals (sections sect:myth and sect:convention-a), and argue that one of these norms would make those expressions u-contextual, while the other would make them a-contextual (section sect:character). (...) I then ask which of these two norms are followed by English speakers (section sect:you). Finally, I argue that the existence of a-contextuality does not in any sense entail “relativism” about truth (section sect:relativism). (shrink)

Indexicals are unique among expressions in that they depend for their literal content upon extra-semantic features of the contexts in which they are uttered. Taking this peculiarity of indexicals into account yields solutions to variants of Frege's Puzzle involving objects of attitude-bearing of an indexical nature. If names are indexicals, then the classical versions of Frege's Puzzle can be solved in the same way. Taking names to be indexicals also yields solutions to tougher, more recently-discovered puzzles such as Kripke's well-known (...) case involving Paderewski. We argue that names are in fact rigidly designating indexicals. We also argue that fully developed, the direct reference theory's best strategy for solving the puzzles amounts to the adoption of the indexical theory of names – a move that we argue should be thought of as a natural development of the direct reference theory, and not as antagonistic to it. (shrink)

In this essay I examine how we use indexicals. The key function of indexicals, I claim, is to help the audience --- that is the hearers or readers of the utterance with whom the speaker intends to be communicating---to find supplementary channels of information about the object to which the indexical refers. To keep the discussion manageable, I will oversimplify the epistemology of conversation. I ignore the fact that people sometimes lie and sometimes make mistakes. I talk freely about what (...) one learns and the information one gets from an utterance. (shrink)

Now suppose that Joey responds by uttering the exact same words back to Natasha: “I am right and you are wrong”. He has said the same words, with the same meaning, but he has not said the same thing. Joey’s utterance of “I” designates Joey and his utterance of “you” designates Natasha. The truthconditions of his statement are that Joey is right and Natasha is wrong. Joey has directly disagreed with Natasha.

When you use the word “I” it designates you; when I use the same word, it designates me. If you use “you” talking to me, it designates me; when I use it talking to you, it designates you. “I” and “you” are indexicals. The designation of an indexical shifts from speaker to speaker, time to time, place to place. Different utterances of the same indexical designate different things, because what is designated depends not only on the meaning associated with the (...) expression, but also on facts about the utterance. An utterance of “I” designates the person who utters it; an utterance of “you” designates the person to whom it is addressed, an utterance of “here” designates the place at which the utterance is made, and so forth. Because indexicals shift their designation in this way, sentences containing indexicals can be used to say different things on different occasions. Suppose you say to me, “You are wrong and I am right about reference,” and I reply with the same sentence. We have used the same sentence, with the same meaning, but said quite different and incompatible things. (shrink)

This essay presents an argument against the token-reflexive approach to the semantics for indexical languages. After some preliminary remarks in section one, sections two and three explain why some traditional arguments against token-reflexivity are ultimately ineffective. Section four puts forth a more persuasive argument, to the effect that token-reflexive views overgenerate with respect to results of analyticity. However, as section five explains, defenders of the alternative, type-oriented view have all too often wasted the advantage offered by their approach: the unmotivated, (...) independent restriction of semantic evaluation to so-called ‘proper’ indexes is responsible for undesirable conclusions, similar to those to which token- reflexive theorists are committed. (shrink)

Stefano Predelli comes to the defense of the traditional "formal" approach to natural-language semantics, arguing that it has been misrepresented not only by its critics, but also by its foremost defenders. In Contexts he offers a fundamental reappraisal, with particular attention to the treatment of indexicality and other forms of contextual dependence which have been the focus of much recent controversy. In the process, he presents original approaches to a number of important semantic issues, including the relationship between validity and (...) indexicality, the limits of token-reflexive systems, the significance of contextualist arguments, and the interpretation of attitude reports. Contexts will make invigorating reading for all philosophers of language and many linguists. (shrink)

Frege held that indexical thoughts could be retained through changes of context that required a change of indexical term. I argue that Frege was partially right in that a singular mode of presentation can be retained through changes of indexical. There must, however, be a further mode of presentation that changes when the indexical term changes. This suggests that indexicals should be regarded as complex demonstratives; a change of indexical term is like a change between 'that φ' and 'that ψ', (...) where 'φ' and 'ψ' pick out relational properties that may nonetheless be conceived of by the thinker as intrinsic. (shrink)

The approach adopted in the paper is based on the theory known as Montague grammar. Accepting, in general, that theory — especially in its modified version, which is due to Thomason and Kaplan — the author points out certain inadequacy in its treatment of the meaning of some indexical expressions and suggests some modification of its theoretical framework in order to avoid that shortcoming. It is claimed that to do justice to the meaning of so-called indefinite indexicals (such as we, (...) you, now) two kinds of dependence of their semantic values upon the context of use must be taken into account — a semantic (or lexical) and a pragmatic (or extralexical) one. (shrink)

you use it. These two assumptions, which I believe to be false, are based on a more fundamental assumption, that the rule governing the reference of an indexical remains constant from use to use. Contemporary theories hold that the reference of an indexical varies from use to (relevantly different) use, but that the reference-fixing rule of use is You can search..

Some time ago, John Perry argued that the content of an indexical belief, that is, a belief expressible with a sentence containing an indexical or demonstrative, cannot be a proposition. I consider several of his arguments for this view, and show that they can be extended to show that belief expressible with other non-indexical expressions such as natural kind terms and proper names presents the very same problem for the traditional picture. I then suggest that if indexical belief has any (...) special status, this is not because it has a special kind of content, but rather because action is impossible if agents do not have indexical belief. (shrink)

Spinoza distinguishes between three grades of knowledge, (i) sense perception and hearsay; (ii) abstract scientific knowledge; (iii) intuitive reason. It is implied that our intellectual ideal should be to pass from the first to the second, and then from the second to the third. It is problematic, however, how such supersession of the first kind of knowledge is an intelligible ideal. For, on the face of it, it is this alone which can direct our attention on to those particulars (single (...) individuals) a better understanding of which is the main value of the second and third types of knowledge. But perhaps the third (if not, the second) kind of knowledge targets particulars from its own resources. However, it is doubtful that this is quite Spinoza's position. So there is something of a problem as to how he conceives the clearest knowledge of particulars which it makes sense to strive for. There is even a related problem as to how God can possess such knowledge, at least of particulars qua extended. An attempt is made to find a Spinozistic answer to these problems including a Spinozistic account of indexicals such as 'this'. (shrink)