Abstract
You and I reach for a dollar bill on the floor, each saying “I saw it first.” The content of what we say is identically the same. How then is your claim referred to you and mine to me?
We argue that the reference of self-ascriptions is effected by the occasion of the occurrence of the first-person indexical rather than by the content of the thought or assertion which then occurs. That this is true has further implications for exotic, self-fulfilling self-ascriptions, like the CartesianCogito; for views like those of Geach and Anscombe, who hold that ‘I’ is not a singular referring expression at all; and for views which hold that the first-person indexical is a singular referring expression with a very special, “systematically ambiguous” content.
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The discussion which follows is indebted to a continuing crosscurrent of ideas of others, some contemporaries and some deceased. It is difficult with a subject as central, as fully discussed, and as enduring as this one to isolate these influences. It is difficult to locate the original source of notions one has borrowed. Worse, there is always one's misstatement or misapplication of what ultimately is due to others. I can only issue a general apology for such sins of omission and commission which occur here. On the other hand, I would not suggest that the errors of this discussion have their source in anyone but their author.
Despite all this, the need remains to acknowledge explicitly some very pervasive influences reflected no doubt in skewed or twisted adaptations below. A debt is owed to Hector-Neri Castañeda's writings on indexicals, beginning with his seminal paper, ‘“He*”: A study in the logic of self-consciousness’,Ratio 8 (1966), 439–456, and to the views of Everett W. Hall on perception and intentionality.
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Clark, R. Self knowledge and self consciousness: Thoughts about oneself. Topoi 7, 47–55 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00776208
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00776208