The Inessential Indexical: On the Philosophical Insignificance of Perspective and the First Person

209 Pages·2014·0.81 MB·English

by  Herman Cappelen, Josh Dever

T he Inessential Indexical
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c ontext and content
S eries editor: François Recanati, Institut Nicod

Other titles in the series:

The Mirror of the World
S ubjects, Consciousness, and Self-Consciousness
C hristopher Peacocke

Assessment Sensitivity
R elative Truth and its Applications
J ohn MacFarlane

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T he Inessential
Indexical
O n the Philosophical Insignif cance
of Perspective and the First Person
H erman C appelen
and J osh  D ever
1
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1
G reat Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
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© Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever 2013
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F irst Edition published in 2013
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H C: For Nora
J D: For Brigid, Maeve, and Sophia
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A cknowledgments
P hilosophizing is best done in the company of others. We have been
extraordinarily lucky in having a very large number of generous and
insightful philosophical companions to help us think about the issues
in this book. We are particularly grateful to three people. Andy Egan
is as close to a co-author of this book as one can be without having
written any of it and while disagreeing with most of it. He gave us
detailed comments on every page of the book, many of which trig-
gered radical changes along the way. Conversations with (and the work
of ) Dilip Ninan motivated our decision to write this book and helped
us understand these extraordinarily dif cult issues. Seth Yalcin gave
constructive detailed comments on the entire manuscript and crucial
critical feedback on and of over the last three years.
W e are grateful for conversations with and feedback from: Pranav
Anand, Derek Ball, Berit Brogaard, Ray Buchanan, David Chalmers,
Cian Dorr, Olav Gjelsvik, Michael Glanzberg, Jeremy Goodman,
Patrick Greenough, John Hawthorne, Torf nn Huvenes, Hans Kamp,
Peter Ludlow, John MacFarlane, Ofra Magidor, Ruth Millikan, Daniel
Morgan, Michael Murez, Anders Nes, John Perry, Simon Prosser,
François Recanati, Susanna Schellenberg, Anders Schoubye, Jason
Schukraft, John Searle, Susanna Siegel, David Sosa, Robert Stalnaker,
Jason Stanley, Rachel Sterken, Andreas Stokke, Margot Strohminger,
Sergio Tenenbaum, Mike Titelbaum, Michael Tye, Brian Weatherson,
Timothy Williamson, and Juhani Yli-Vakkuri. Ephraim Glick provided
insightful comments on the entire manuscript that helped us avoid
mistakes and obscurities on several important points.
A n early version of this material was presented at a conference
organized by CSMN at the University of Oslo in June 2010. It was
also presented as a series of lectures at Universidade Federal do Rio
de Janeiro in March 2011, and then as a series of lectures at the
Institut Jean Nicod in Paris in April 2011. Parts of this material were
presented as talks in many locations around the world including
Oxford, the University of Texas at Austin, the Arché Centre at the
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viii Acknowledgments
University of St Andrews, and UC Berkeley. We are grateful to audi-
ences for feedback on all these occasions.
O ur research assistants, Margot Strohminger and Jason Schukraft,
corrected an almost inf nite number of typographical, editorial, and
substantive mistakes in early versions of the manuscript.
O ur editor, Peter Momtchilof , generously provided encouragement,
support, and advice during the three years we worked on this book.
F inally, we should highlight that most of our work on this book was
made possible by two fantastic philosophical research centres, CSMN
at the University of Oslo and Arché at the University of St Andrews.
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C ontents
1 . I ntroductory Overview: The Role of Indexicality,
Perspective, and the D e Se in Philosophy 1
2 . P reliminaries: Language-Mind, Super Indexicals,
and Opacity 21
3 . I ndexicality, the D e Se, and Agency 30
4 . I ndexicality, Opacity, and Fregeanism 58
5 . L ewis on the D e Se, Self-Ascription, and Centered Worlds 86
6 . F unctionalism to the Rescue? 109
7 . I ndexicality and Immunity to Error 1 27
8 . A Brief Note on Perceptual Content and the De Se 140
9 . T he D e Se and the Semantics of PRO Constructions 151
1 0. T he View From Everywhere 173
B ibliography 1 83
I ndex 1 91
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