The Inessential Indexical: On the Philosophical Insignificance of Perspective and the First Person PDF
Preview The Inessential Indexical: On the Philosophical Insignificance of Perspective and the First Person
T he Inessential Indexical Cappelen080313OUK.indd i 10/15/2013 5:47:15 PM 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 Cappelen080313OUK.indd ii 10/15/2013 5:47:17 PM 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 Cappelen080313OUK.indd iii 10/15/2013 5:47:17 PM 1 G reat Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, U nited Kingdom O xford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. I t furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, a nd education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of O xford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever 2013 T he moral rights of the authors have been asserted F irst Edition published in 2013 I mpression: 1 A ll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the p rior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted b y law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics r ights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the a bove should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the a ddress above Y ou must not circulate this work in any other form a nd you must impose this same condition on any acquirer B ritish Library Cataloguing in Publication Data D ata available L ibrary of Congress Control Number: 2013941221 I SBN 978–0–19–968674–2 P rinted and bound in Great Britain by C PI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, cr0 4yy L inks to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and f or information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials c ontained in any third party website referenced in this work. Cappelen080313OUK.indd iv 10/15/2013 5:47:17 PM H C: For Nora J D: For Brigid, Maeve, and Sophia Cappelen080313OUK.indd v 10/15/2013 5:47:17 PM Cappelen080313OUK.indd vi 10/15/2013 5:47:17 PM 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 Cappelen080313OUK.indd vii 10/15/2013 5:47:17 PM 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. Cappelen080313OUK.indd viii 10/15/2013 5:47:17 PM 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 Cappelen080313OUK.indd ix 10/15/2013 5:47:17 PM
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