Joseph Almog

What Am I? is so-called because of its focus on Descartes’ primal question in the mind-body realm and his primal answer, viz. “a man”. The question and answer are primal in both senses of the adjective: they come first, early in meditation II, when the topic is broached for the first time; and, in my view of Descartes, they are also the most fundamental question and answer. There are other questions—many many other questions—Descartes raises about the mind-body problem. Some came to substitute for the primal question, e.g., What is Mind? What is Body? How are mind and body connected? What is the union of mind and body like? I have elected the primal question and answer partly because I understand them better and partly because I see this as Descartes’ ur-concern. Ultimately, he was after an account of what each of us is.

This chapter presents an introduction to David Kaplan. Topics covered include the influence of Church, Carnap, and Montague, from whom Kaplan got the eye for elegant formal codifications; Kaplan's admiration and adoption of the work of the German logician Gottlob Frege as the ground philosophical framework; his most influential work, _Demonstratives_, which presented his pioneering account of “direct reference” and what is essentially a two‐stage theory of meaning; and his separation of semantics and modal metaphysics.