Essential Indexicality

At the intersection of philosophy (of mind and language) and linguistics (semantics and pragmatics), this project deals with the so-called “problem of the essential indexical” (PEI). Indexicals are words like ‘I’, ‘now’, ‘here’, or ‘this’, whose referent varies according to the context of their use. Around 1970, it was noticed that some thoughts cannot be communicated without the help of indexicals. It appeared that such “self-locating” thoughts (about who and where one is in the world) represent the world essentially from a situated perspective in the world. Since then, many theories have sought to explain in what sense exactly, and why, indexicality would be essential; but no consensus was ever reached. Lately, new sceptics have argued that essential indexicality was a myth. Their ingenious arguments have generated a heated debate about the nature and scope of the PEI, which must be entirely re-assessed. The aim of this project is to explore a novel approach to the PEI, and to indexicality generally. This reverses some insights due to the sceptics to argue for a radical conclusion: the phenomenon of essential indexicality was real but much more general than had originally been supposed.