Essential Indexicality

Informations projet

ESSINDEX

N° de convention de subvention: 799162

DOI

10.3030/799162

Projet clôturé

Date de signature de la CE 4 Avril 2018

Date de début 1 Septembre 2019

Date de fin 31 Août 2021

Financé au titre de

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Coût total

€ 173 076,00

Contribution de l’UE

€ 173 076,00

Coordonné par

ECOLE NORMALE SUPERIEURE
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ESSINDEX (Essential Indexicality)

Période du rapport: 2019-09-01 au 2021-08-31

Résumé du contexte et des objectifs généraux du projet

The problem addressed in ESSINDEX is the “problem of the essential indexical” in the contemporary philosophy of language and mind. Indexicals are words like ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘now’, ‘that’, etc. whose referent (what they designate) varies according to the context of their use. Pioneers of modern semantics regarded indexicality as a dispensable feature of the words whereby we express thoughts – and even as a defect of natural languages, which, like other forms of context-dependency (such as ambiguity or vagueness), ought to be eliminated from the ideal, logical languages better suited to the purposes of knowledge and science. However, around 1970, philosophers noticed that some thoughts cannot be expressed without the help of indexicals. This is the so-called “problem of the essential indexical,” which suggests that indexicality, far from being a dispensable feature of the words whereby we express our thoughts (linguistic indexicality), is much more fundamentally an essential feature of certain thoughts, which represent the world from an irreducibly first-person, egocentric perspective (mental indexicality). Because of their subjective, 'perspectival' nature, such indexical thoughts pose deep challenges to what are common and otherwise plausible objectivist, 'propositionalist' doctrines about the semantics of mental states like beliefs.

Like for other fundamental philosophical themes, developing an understanding of mental indexicality is of general importance for society. The phenomenon questions mysterious features of what is most distinctive about human life and experience: the human mind. Mental indexicality is now widely regarded as a nexus between classical issues in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, semantics, pragmatics, epistemology, and philosophy of science, having to do with subjectivity and the first person in the realms of language, thought, knowledge, perception, and consciousness.

But while the phenomenon of essential indexicality is connected to old themes in philosophy, intense debates are currently raging about its extent, its varieties, and its semantics. The project ESSINDEX contributes to these ongoing debates by developing an original account of what is distinctive about indexical thoughts. In particular, it explores a new general hypothesis, according to which the reason why the problem of the essential indexical has sounded so intractable thus far is that two different problems were conflated from the start. Once the two problems are properly distinguished, surprising and groundbreaking solutions become accessible for each problem.

The main conclusions of ESSINDEX are (1) that the general hypothesis of an overlooked distinction between two different problems stands up to scrutiny, and (2) that one of the possible accounts of the two problems envisaged in the project is particularly successful and has general consequences for philosophy and linguistics.

Travail effectué depuis le début du projet jusqu’à la fin de la période considérée dans le rapport et principaux résultats atteints jusqu’à présent

The project ESSINDEX has contributed to the ongoing debates about the problem of the essential indexical by developing an original account of what is distinctive about indexical thoughts.

Its starting point was an entirely new hypothesis, according to which the reason why the problem has sounded so intractable is that two different problems were conflated in all the relevant literature: (P1) the one threatening the propositional doctrines, which opposes nonindexical and indexical (de se and non-egocentric, demonstrative, de re) thoughts, and (P2) a different problem, internal to the class of indexical thoughts, opposing de se and other de re thoughts. Given this ‘two-problem claim’, new solutions become accessible for each problem, which have interesting and general consequences in philosophy and linguistics. The project has explored and developed a solution S1 to the first problem P1 (Research Goal 1), it has explored two possible solutions (S2 and S2’) to the second problem P2 (Research Goal 2) compatible with S1, and it has applied the resulting theory to further issues and areas in philosophy and linguistics (Research Goal 3). The results of the project include substantive theoretical progress for all three Research Goals.

The results of the project ESSINDEX include the following publications:

- Bochner, G. (2020) “A Puzzle about Assertion,” in S. Biggs & H. Geirsson (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook on Linguistic Reference. New York: Taylor & Francis, 268-280.
- Bochner, G. (forthcoming) “Contextual Analyticity,” Analytic Philosophy.
- Bochner, G. (forthcoming) Naming and Indexicality. Cambridge University Press.

Progrès au-delà de l’état des connaissances et impact potentiel prévu (y compris l’impact socio-économique et les conséquences sociétales plus larges du projet jusqu’à présent)

(1) Regarding the Research Goal 1, a novel account (‘Pragmatic Internalism’) was fleshed out. (i) On the pragmatic side (subgoal 1.1) this provided new insights on the nature of speech acts like assertion, the role of intentions in guiding demonstrative reference, the special problems that de re assertions pose for propositionalist accounts, the reflexive constraint, the content-circumstance distinction, contextualism, compositionality, token-reflexive accounts of indexicals, speaker meaning, arguments for and against Kaplan’s standard semantics for indexicals, and the semantic/pragmatic theories of meaning generalising indexicality (‘two-dimensionalism’). (ii) On the internalist side, the project has cast new light on ‘unarticulated constituents’, epistemic transparency issues, virtues and shortcomings of all versions of two-dimensionalism, empty reference and fiction, and causal-acquaintance relations fixing reference.

(2) Regarding the Research Goal 2, the project has explored two possible solutions, semantic and phenomenal, to the second problem P2 (Research Goal 2) compatible with S1. (i) It has examined how the semantic solution S2 fares with semantical and epistemological features of egocentric indexicals (subgoal 2.1). It was shown that S2 is compatible with an (original) account of logical truths in indexical languages, and that (given its local reflexive constraint) S2 also sits well with the widespread claim that only de se attitudes are immune to error through misidentification. (ii) The phenomenal solution S2’ was then explored. It was concluded that empirical cases in which the sense of self is altered do not by themselves undermine S2’, that such a phenomenal account is circular on representationalist theories of self-consciousness, and that S2 fails in any case, for as established in the pragmatic-internalist account developed in the first part of the project, the cognitive import of a concept is not always explainable by the reference-fixing mechanism. The output was a choice in favour of the semantic solution S2.

(3) Regarding the Research Goal 3, the resulting theory involving Pragmatic Internalism in response to P1 and the semantic solution S2 in response to P2 was applied to further issues and areas. (i) In language, it yields a new solution to famous Frege’s puzzle, as part of a radically pragmatic account which also solves problems in Stalnaker’s theory of assertion and presupposition. (ii) In thought, it yielded a new way of understanding cognitive significance in a ‘mental file’ view (subgoal 3.2) appealing to the pragmatics of centred world presuppositions (cf. sub-goal 3.1) rather than to the syntax of mental files. (iii) In perception, it was invoked to solve problems resembling the problem of the essential indexical, arising for egocentric accounts of perceptual content (subgoal 3.3).

Gregory Bochner