THE INDEXICAL 'I' SYNTHESE LIBRARY STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PIDLOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Managing Editor: JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University Editors: DIRK V AN DALEN, University 0/ Utrecht, The Netherlands DONALD DAVIDSON, University o/California, Berkeley THEO A.F. KUIPERS, University o/Groningen, The Netherlands PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University, California JAN WOLEN-SKI, Jagiellonian University, KrakOw, Poland VOLUME 265 INGAR BRINCK Department of Philosophy, Lund University, Lund, Sweden THE INDEXICAL 'I' The First Person in Thought and Language SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-90-481-4908-7 ISBN 978-94-015-8871-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-8871-3 Printed on acid-free paper AlI Rights Reserved © 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Origina1ly published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. Qu'est-ce que Ie moi? Un homme qui se met a Ia fenetre pour voir Ies passants; si je passe par la, puis-je dire qu'il s'est mis Ia pour me voir? Non; car il ne pense pas a moi en particulier; mais celui qui aime quelqu'un a cause de sa beaute, l'aime-t-iI? Non; car Ia petite verole, qui tuera Ia beaute sans tuer Ia personne, fera qu'il ne I'aimera plus. Et si on m'aime pour mon jugement, pour rna memoire, m'aime-t-on? moi?Non, car je puis perdre ces qualites sans me perdre moi-meme. Oil est donc ce moi, s'il n'est ni dans Ie corps, ni dans l'ame? et comment aimer Ie corps ou I'ame, sinon pour ces qualites, qui ne seront point ce qui fait Ie moi, puisqu'elles sont perissables? car aimerait-on Ia substance de I'ame d'une personne, abstraitement, et quelques qualites qui y fussent? Cela ne se peut, et serait injuste. On n'aime donc jamais personne, mais seulement des qualites. Blaise Pascal Pensees PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I. INTRODUCTION I. I The topic 1.2 'I' TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.3 Why 'I' cannot be replaced by another indexical 1.4 The content 2. 'I' DOES NOT REFER 2. I The non-referential thesis 2.2 Wittgenstein on 'I' 2.3 Anscombe's argument 2.4 Immunity to error through misidentification 2.5 The basis of the immunity 3. 'I' REFERS DIRECTLY 3. I The minimal thesis 3.2 Direct reference 3.3 The semantic theory of direct reference 3-4 Direct reference and rigid designation 3.5 Rigid designation and essentialism 3.6 Objections to the semantic theory of direct reference 3.7 Perry on belief and meaning 3.8 Direct reference, presemantics, and pragmatics 3.9 Attitudes de se 3.10 Acquaintance and direct reference 4. 'I' REFERS INDIRECTLY 4. I Indirect reference and definite descriptions 4.2 Frege on 'I' 4.3 Does the individual concept conflict with publicness? 4.4 Making sense of Frege: concepts and causes 4.5 Making sense of Frege: the individual concept ix Xl 4 6 8 I I II 13 22 32 38 45 45 47 50 52 59 68 75 79 84 86 90 90 96 102 109 115 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS 5. INDEXICALITY AND NON-CONCEPTUAL CONTENT 122 5. I The basis of de re senses: non-conceptual content 5.2 Identification-free knowledge and its foundation 5.3 Non-conceptual content and IEM 5-4 Can content be non-conceptual? 5.5 The cognitive role of de re senses 6. CONTEXT-INDEPENDENCE 6. I Speakers and persons 6.2 Transcending the context 6.3 Identity over time 6-4 A view from nowhere? 6.5 Understanding'!': conclusion REFERENCES INDEX 122 12 7 132 136 140 147 147 15 1 155 163 171 175 179 PREFACE The subject of this book is the first person in thought and language. The main question concerns what we mean when we say 'J'. Related to it are questions about what kinds of self-consciousness and self-knowledge are needed in order for us to have the capacity to talk about ourselves. The emphasis is on theories of meaning and reference for 'J', but a fair amount of space is devoted to 'I' -thoughts and the role of the concept of the self in cognition. The purpose is to give a picture of how we think and talk about ourselves in a wide range of circumstances. The topic has been discussed in numerous articles during the last decades, but rarely in the form of a monograph. I felt the need for a book of this kind while working on my dissertation. The manuscript is the result of many years of reflection on the self and indexicals. Some of the theories that I advance have developed as a result of my teaching an undergraduate course in the philosophy of language the last couple of years. In the book, several different issues are brought together in order to give a coherent theory of 'J', pertaining both to the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. Among these, the reader will find the immunity to error through misidentification that is exhibited by 'I' in some of its uses, the relation between direct reference, rigid designation, and essentialism, the role that non-conceptual content plays to cognition, and the nature of the unity of consciousness and personal identity. The idea has been rather to give a wide/broad picture of 'I' and 'I'-thoughts than to treat exhaustively every particular issue that is raised. The main thesis is that 'I' refers indirectly through a de re sense to the speaker as presented in the context of utterance. 'I' also expresses a stable individual concept. How the information expressed by the de re sense is gained is explained by a theory of non-conceptual content. Further, it is argued that the concept of a speaker is intertwined with the concept of a person. Persons are such that they can self-ascribe and be ascribed both mental and bodily predicates and that they can think about themselves from both a first-person and a third-person perspective. The book is intended for philosophers in general, especially those interested in matters having to do with the concept of the self or the concept of a person and those with a general interest in the philosophy of language. The text is also accessible to graduate students and advanced undergraduates. ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During my work on this manuscript I have received a great deal of help, of different kinds and from many quarters. I will take the opportunity to express my gratitude to all those without whom this book would not have been possible. First, I would like to thank the participants in the seminar in theoretical philosophy at the Department of Philosophy in Lund, lead by Bengt Hansson, for acute and unexpected comments on the subject. Especially Anna-Sofia Maurin, Johannes Persson, and Fredrik Stjernberg have devoted a lot of time to the manuscript in its various versions. Linus Brostrom struggled through an early version of it. Parts of the manuscript have been presented to audiences at conferences and seminars in other places than Lund, among them Columbia University, Gothenburg University, and Linkoping University, as well as the Conference for Swedish Philosophy in Umea, the loth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science in Florence, and the Second European Congress for Analytic Philosophy in Leeds. All comments have been most welcome. lowe much to the astute minds of Peter Gardenfors and Sten Lindstrom. My advisor Nils-Eric Sahlin has given me invaluable support in many respects over the years. These people have all, in their own ways, been sources of inspiration for my work. I have benefited from a great number of travel grants from, among others, Crafoordska stiftelsen, Gyllenstiernska Krapperupstiftelsen, and Wallenbergs stiftelse. Several trips have gone to the Centre de Recherche en Epistemologie Appliquee (CREA) in Paris, where I have enjoyed the hospitable and witty atmosphere. I have especially profited from discussions with Frañois Recanati. Knut och Alice Wallenbergs stiftelse made it possible for me to spend a very rewarding year at Columbia University in New York under the supervision of Akeel Bilgrami. I am also grateful for financial support from Erik och Gurli Hultengrens fond for filosofi, Erik Philip Sorensens stiftelse, and Hjalmar Gullbergs och Greta Thotts stipendiefond. Special thanks to Jan Hartman. In spite of that your ardent efforts to tum me into an analytic philosopher have not been completely successful, I hope you are not too disappointed in the result. Thank you for being there. Thanks also for the encouragement and support from all my friends and the people at my department, who have come and gone during the period xi xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS that I have been working with the manuscript. I mention no one so that no one will feel left out. Finally, I dedicate this book to my mother, Gunvor Brinck-Lindroth, who, being a scholar herself, has stood by me through thick and thin, and without whom this book would not have seen the light.