‘I’

Abstract

It has traditionally been maintained that every token of 'I' refers to its utterer. However, certain uses of indexicals conflict with this claim, and its counterparts with respect to 'here' and 'now', suggesting that the traditional account of indexical reference should be abandoned. In this paper, I examine some proposed alternatives and the difficulties they face, before offering a new account of indexical reference. I endorse Kaplan's view that the reference of an indexical is determined on any occasion it is used by applying its character to a particular context, arguing that the problem cases show that this is not always the context of utterance. The task facing the semantic theorist is thus to explain what fixes the referencedetermining context. I consider and reject both Predelli's suggestion that the reference-determining context is the one intended by the utterer, and Corazza et al.'s proposal that the relevant context is fixed by conventions delivered by the utterance setting. The discussion of these two accounts reveals that an adequate theory of indexical reference should allow the speaker to use indexicals in novel ways, whilst holding that what a speaker can refer to with an indexical utterance is constrained by what an audience can understand. I develop an account based around these two requirements.

Meaning shift and the purity of ‘I’

“…Another strategy is we can call "context shift" the context relevant for the interpretation is different from the context U of utterance, that is, from the context of material production of the utterance. (For a variety of solutions along these lines see Bianchi, 2001;Corazza, Fish and Gorvett (2001);Romdenh-Romluc, 2006;Dodd and Sweeney, 2009). In any case the essence of the character of 'I' is preserved, since the changes are peripheral, or in any case pre-semantic (see Predelli, 2005).…”

Who’s Your Ideal Listener?

“…King (2014), to mention a paradigmatic example, argues that a token demonstrative like 'this' or 'that' will refer to some object x only if (i) the speaker intends to refer to x with her use of the relevant demonstrative, and (ii) a suitably-idealized listener would be in a position to recognize that x was the intended referent.⁵ Interestingly, similar appeals to idealized listeners have surfaced elsewhere in the literature on metasemantics, in work on the reference of indexicals like 'I' and 'now'. In order to resolve a number of hard cases that arise when such terms are recorded, Romdenh-Romluc (2002, 2006 proposes that indexical tokens refer to whatever a suitably-idealized listener would take them to refer to. So when 'I' is played back on my answering machine, we say that it refers to me, since that is who a suitably-idealized listener will take the term to refer to once she recognizes my voice and finds that it matches the person she intended to call.⁶ Our primary aim here will be to argue that the reactions of a suitably-idealized listener cannot be used to fix the referent of a singular term, nor can they plausibly serve as part of a larger theory by providing a necessary condition for reference.…”

First-person thought and the use of ‘I’

“…Romdenh-Romluc (2006) raises difficulties forCorazza et al's proposal. 5 For objections to Predelli's account seeCorazza et al (2002),Romdenh-Romluc (2002), andRomdenh- Romluc (2006).…”

“…5 For objections to Predelli's account seeCorazza et al (2002),Romdenh-Romluc (2002), andRomdenh- Romluc (2006). He responds to some of these worries inPredelli (2002).…”