Abstract
The last chapter paved the way for a minimal thesis concerning the reference of ‘I’ that seizes upon the token-reflexive character of ‘I’:
The Minimal Thesis (MT): ‘I’ refers to the producer of its token
MT states a linguistic rule that pertains to ‘I’ as a type, a rule that expresses the linguistic meaning of ‘I’.
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Reference
By linguistic meaning I intend rules for reference like: ‘Steven’ refers to Steven, ‘Pat’s father’ refers to Pat’s father, ‘here’ refers to the place of its utterance, and so on. These rules do not give the information value or cognitive content of terms. They constitute a simple pairing of referring expressions, or singular terms, with objects. In other words, they are functions from referring expressions to objects or sets of objects in appropriate domains—they map the expressions on to objects.
Direct Reference Blackwell: Oxford (1993) p. 15.
H. Reichenbach op. cit
I will abandon the expression ‘producer’ for the more natural sounding ‘speaker’. The reader is supposed to take ‘speaker’ in a rather broad sense, referring not only to speakers, but also to writers, thinkers, et cetera, of ‘I’. ‘Producer’ covers a wider range of situations than ‘speaker’.
N. Salmon, Frege’s Puzzle MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass. (1986) p. 64 f.
Ibid p. 65 f.
The handy term “object-invoking” is used by G. McCulloch for any expression that invokes an object to be the referent of the expression, e.g, Bryan Ferry, that very man, is invoked by ‘Bryan Ferry’. The Game of the Name Oxford UP: Oxford (1989) p. 22.
Compare with what David Kaplan writes in “Demonstratives” in Themes from Kaplan (eds. J. Almog/J. Perry/H. Wettstein) Oxford UP: Oxford (1989): p. 52o 1.
The expression singular proposition is henceforth used only for propositions with individuals and not concepts as constituents.
The theory of direct reference originated with John Stuart Mill, who declared that proper names lack signification, and that the referent of a proper name is not determined by meaning. Cf: A System of Logic 8th ed. Longmans, Green, and Co: London (1906): Sections 1 and 5, ch. 2, Book I. Mill distinguished between connotative and non-connotative words. Proper names belong to the latter sort, since they lack meaning. Mill wrote: “Proper names are attached to the objects themselves, and are not dependent on the continuance of any attribute of the object” (p. 20), and further: “(A) proper name is but an unmeaning mark which we connect in our minds with the idea of the object [the idea is had by acquaintance-1.B.], in order that whenever the mark meets our eyes or occurs to our thoughts, we may think of that individual object.” (p. 22) Millwould thus correspond to the constituent in the singular proposition.
“Demonstratives” p. 494 f.
D. Kaplan, “Afterthoughts” in Themes from Kaplan p. 568 f.
J. Almog actually has put forward a theory of reference for proper names along Kaplan’s lines. He believes that proper names have a stable content (they are rigid designators) but an unstable character. Almog remarks that “we do have the familiar phenomenon: an a priori character which expresses a contingent proposition, ‘Aristotle’ refers to Aristotle”. “Dthis and Dthat: Indexicality Goes Beyond That” Philosophical Studies 39 ( 1 9 81 ) pp. 347–381: p. 368.
But note that, according to Kaplan, directly referential terms are not, in fact, constant functions of possible worlds, but the directly referential term is independent of any circumstance of evaluation. However, these terms (as well as obstinately rigid designators) are represented by a constant function (with a fixed content) from circumstance of evaluation to extension. Kaplan holds that the notation and semantic rules of possible world semantics obscures this point; there are limits to what can be represented by possible world semantics. On Kaplan’s view, the individual is first determined by the directly referring expression, and then the individual determines the component in the singular proposition. This means that it is the referent that determines the propositional content and not the propositional content and the circumstance that determine the referent. The referent is fixed before the proposition is evaluated. Cf: “Demonstratives” p. 484, pp. 496 f.; “Afterthoughts” pp. 568 f., p. 579.
Ibid p. 508 f.
In more formal terms: a term T is a rigid designator if T is represented by a free variable or an individual constant to which a value is assigned by a function from Tto an object in a possible world. The assignment is not world-dependent but fixed. The function is partial if it assigns to any possible world W the object of T in W, but is undefined for those worlds in which the object does not exist. A free variable does not fall within the scope of a quantifier and is assigned a value once and for all. An individual constant refers to a particular entity in all situations in which that entity occurs.
Reference and Essence Blackwell: Oxford (1982): p. 33 f
“Afterthoughts” p. 610 ff.
Of course, Russell would introduce his theory of definite descriptions for that purpose, but let us ignore that at this stage of the argument.
Sometimes the idea of a causal chain is invoked in this context: a causal chain holds between the first use of a name and all its consequent uses, and unless the chain is broken (how could it be?), it guarantees that all uses will refer to the same object. This idea has not to my knowledge been worked out in detail, and its status wavers between empty metaphor and fruitful hypothesis. It should be noted that a causal chain is diachronic and not synchronic. For that reason it cannot be used to keep track of the referent across possible worlds at one moment in time. It is important to distinguish between reference over possible worlds and reference over time in one single world. ‘‘See also the discussion of the relation between direct reference, rigid designation, and essentialism in C. J. Bolton, “Proper Names, Taxonomic Names, and Necessity” The Philosophical Quarterly Vol 46 No. 183 (April 1996) pp. 145–157. Bolton reaches the same conclusion as I do, but by a somewhat different line of argument.
“How to Russell a Frege-Church” Journal of Philosophy Vol. LXXII No. 19 (November 1975) pp. 716–729: pp. 722 f.
‘ Reference and Essence p. 82.
Salmon has pointed out that only identity statements containing obstinately rigid designators are necessary. Those containing persistently rigid designators are not true in worlds in which the referent fails to exist, that is, they are not true in every possible world. Ibid p. 79.
The term ‘dthat’ as it was introduced by Kaplan is ambiguous. The interpretation which is intended in the text above (as in. section 3.4) treats ‘dthat’ as a rigidifier. Another interpretation takes ‘dthat’ as a directly referential demonstrative, which directs attention to what is said, but is not part of the content. CT “Afterthoughts” p. 578 ff.
Reference and Essence p. 182 f.
“Anti-Essentialism” Midwest Studies in Philosophy (eds. P. French/T. Uehling/H. Wettstein) Vol. IV (1979) pp. 343-355: p. 351.
My remarks have a great deal in common with H.-N. Castaheda’s position on these matters. Castafieda has criticised Kaplan’s theory for being incapable of accounting for indexical thought content. See e.g. “Direct Reference, the Semantics of Thinking, and Guise Theory” in Themesfrom Kaplan p. 116 f. and “Indexicality: The Transparent Subjective Mechanism for Encountering a World” Nods 24 (199o): p. 738 ff. Castasieda maintains that Kaplan’s theory of ‘I’ gives the hearer’s meaning (character plus content) but not the speaker’s meaning. Castafteda’s notion of speaker’s meaning appears to consist in a state of self-awareness, a recognition of oneself as a subject, and not an object, that cannot be accomodated by Kaplan’s theory. I have much sympathy for this position of Castafieda’s. See also his “Appendix” in Themes from Kaplan. iss The Varieties of Reference p. 65.
T. Burge characterises the de re/de dicto distinction in another manner than I do in his paper “Belief De Re” Journal of Philosophy 74 (1977) PP. 338-362. He points out that “there are sentences where substitutivity fails at the surface level, but which are nevertheless de re” (p. 341). The problem is that in a report like ‘Alfred believes that the man in the corner is a spy’ we may use the term ‘the man in the corner’ both to render Alfred’s conception of the man and to pick out the object Alfred is related to de re Burge therefore suggests that the distinction should be put in terms of logical form. He holds that belief de dicto “applies to what is expressed by a closed sentence”, while belief de re “applies in part to what is expressed by an open sentence and in part to a res” (p. 343). This means that on an epistemic level, we can distinguish between de dicto beliefs that are fully conceptualised and de re ones that rely on contextual relations between the subject and the object that the belief is about (p. 345 f.). I have no quarrel with Burge’s characterisation, although I keep to the substitutivity criterion, since it might be less controversial.
The construction ‘he himself’ in sentence (19) signals the presence of the so-called indirect, or emphatic, reflexive. The term refers to the irreducible character of first-person thoughts that prevents them from being replaced by expressions in the third person. H-N. Castafieda was first to draw attention to this phenomenon. See e.g his “‘He’: On the Logic of Self-Consciousness” Ratio 8:2 (1966) pp. 130–157. The emphatic reflexive and Castafeda’s findings are brought up in chapter 4.
A Problem about Continued Belief” p. 73 in The Problem of the Essential Indexical and Other Essays Oxford UP: Oxford (1993). All the articles by Perry referred to below are included in this volume of essays.
Ibid p. 73.
“The Problem of the Essential Indexical” p. 42.
“Perception, Action, and the Structure of Believing” p. 128.
Ibid p. 127; “A Problem of Continued Belief’ p. 75.
“Perception, Action, and the Structure of Believing” p. 126. In “The Problem of the Essential Indexical” Perry writes that “there is not an identity, or even an isomorpic correspondence, but only a systematic relationship between the belief states one is in and what one thereby believes. The opposite assumption, that belief states should be classified by propositions believed, seems to be built right into traditional philosophies of belief’ (p. 48).
“Thought without Representation” p. 211 f.
Perry writes: “Note that if we took ‘It’ to be someting like an indexical that stood for the location of the speaker, we would expect ‘It is raining here’ to be redundant and ‘It is raining in Cincinnati but not here’ to be inconsistent.” Ibid p. 206 footnote t.
Circumstantial Attitudes and Benevolent Cognition” p. 198. 17’ “Thought without Representation” p. 218.
Perception, Action, and the Structure of Believing” p. 148. “ Ibid p. 148 f.
Ibid p. 149.
R. G. Millikan, “White Queen Psychology; or, The Last Myth of the Given” in White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice MIT: Cambridge, Mass. (1993): p. 332 f.
Ibid p. 325. “‘Ibid p. 333.
Ibid p. 335. 19 Ibid p. 359.
Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake?” Journal of Philosophy Vol. LXXXIII No.4 (1986) pp. 185–209.
Note that the talk about individual or subjective representations does not by itself imply that these representations are private. Privacy is the opposite of publicness: private content is not accessible to other language users. Individual content, on the other hand, is accessible, but it does not necessarily coincide with the content of others.
The First Person University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis (1981).
Attitudes de dicto and de se”
The First Person pp. 42 f.
Ibid p. 28.
See p. 539 in Lewis, op. cit and pp. 29–32 in Chisholm op.cit Chisholm’s and Lewis’ theories differ at several points, but the basic idea is similar, as Chisholm himself has noticed (p. 32).
Ibid p. 3 L
Ibid p. 28.
The sensory-deprived amnesiac was to my knowledge first used in this kind of a setting by Anscombe in her “The First Person”. It has been pointed out that the example only makes sense if the subject has not always been in the present predicament. That comment rests upon the assumption that a sensory-deprived amnesiac could never learn to use ‘I’. As the discussion in chapter 2 has shown, I am inclined to think that there is a grain of truth in this.
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Brinck, I. (1997). ‘I’ Refers Directly. In: The Indexical ‘I’. Synthese Library, vol 265. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8871-3_3
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