Max De Gaynesford

‘Independence’, or the claim that one can use I to express thoughts without having to identify what is being referred to, is a myth. It depends on a two-step argument from explanation: that it would make no sense to ask certain questions, and that we must appeal to ‘independence’ to explain this phenomenon. But other explanations are available, such as a pragmatic account. Alternatives are preferable since ‘independence’ not only threatens the referential character of I, its use to express thoughts about particular objects, and its communicative role, but also undermines a plausible account of the links between I-use and empirical identity criteria.

The referential function of any singular term is to provide a positive answer to the question: ‘which individual is being spoken of?’, that is, to achieve determinacy of reference. What enables a singular term to carry out this function is the ‘determinant’ of the term. Demonstration is not the determinant of deictic terms because they can fulfil their referential function by appeal to utterance-relative uniqueness, or by leading candidacy given the surrounding discourse or perceptual environment.

The inferential role of I is irreducibly deictic. The inferential roles of singular terms are distinguished by appeal to the different mechanisms required to guarantee co-reference in a knowledge-advancing way. Co-typicality is insufficient for variant terms. Anaphoric structures are insufficient for I and other terms used deictically; they depend on identity-judgements and keeping track. The inferential role of I and other deictic terms is irreducibly deictic: it is by singling out individuals made salient in the extra-sentential environment that their uses contribute systematically to what entails what.

One claim about I, regularly made and almost universally endorsed, is that uses of the term are logically guaranteed to refer successfully (if they refer at all). The claim is only rarely formulated perspicuously or argued for. Such obscurity helps disguise the fact that those who profess to advance the claim actually turn out to support not a logical guarantee at all but merely high security through fortunate coincidence. This is not surprising. For we have no good reason to accept the claim – granted, any use of I is apt to refer successfully; but that can be explained by pragmatic features of its use. And we have some reason to reject the claim – it is notoriously difficult to see how genuine reference and guaranteed success do not exclude each other when considered as properties of the logic of any term.

The historical development towards the current standard account of I as a ‘pure indexical’ has two main features. First, the gradual acquisition of a logical apparatus which can distinguish genuine from non-singular referring expressions, and categorize the latter into names, descriptive terms, indexicals, and so on. Second, the development and acceptance of three supposed doctrines: that a simple rule is sufficient to give the meaning of I ; that one can use I to express thoughts without having to identify what is being referred to ; and that as a matter of the meaning of I, any use of the term is logically guaranteed against failure to refer.

I satisfies its expressive use in the deictic mode. It is the expressive use of any singular term to express thoughts. This requires that the speaker know the positive answer to the question: ‘which individual is being spoken of?’, that is, the term must achieve discriminability of reference for the speaker. Deictic terms require salience if they are to achieve discriminability of reference for the speaker, i.e., it is as the individual made salient that one must identify the referent of a use of a deictic term. It is as the individual made salient that one must identify the referent of a use of I.

I has the logical character, inferential role, referential function, expressive use, and communicative role of a deictic term. Uses of I share the referential security and identificatory ease of certain uses of other deictic terms. I has a distinct character within the group due to kind salience, expressive demonstration, communicative demonstration, and certain other features. These findings show that the whole standard account of indexicals and demonstratives, due to Kaplan, rests on two false principles and must be replaced. More positively, these findings offer new ways to explore first-personal thinking and self-knowledge, together with broader questions dependent on them such as practical reasoning, belief-acquisition, and belief-ascription.

I fulfils its communicative role in the deictic mode. It is the communicative role of any singular term to communicate thoughts. This requires that the audience know the positive answer to the question: ‘which individual is being spoken of?’, that is, the term must achieve discriminability of reference for the audience. Deictic terms require salience if they are to achieve discriminability of reference for the audience, i.e., it is as the individual made salient that one must identify the referent of a use of a deictic term. It is as the individual made salient that one must identify the referent of a use of I.

Ordinarily, what we experience does not jump from one place or time to another—we have to pass through all the intermediate times and places. But in films, what we experience can jump in both dimensions, both separately and together. This phenomenon has been memorably described in film criticism by Rudolph Arnheim and it has been deployed philosophically by Suzanne Langer and Colin McGinn. But discussion of space-time discontinuity remains hampered by the lack of attunement between film critical and philosophical investigations. Without philosophy, the valuable insights of film criticism lack rigour and have been blunted by conceptual imprecision and confusion; without film criticism, the provocative claims of philosophy lack support, floating free of the evidence that a suitably sharp awareness of the details of particular films alone provides. This paper brings philosophy and film criticism to bear on each other so that we stand to make headway on the issue of film and space-time discontinuity.

This paper argues that Henry James’ treatment of balancing in The Golden Bowl—to which Putnam insightfully draws attention—calls for the attunement of philosophy and literary criticism. The process may undermine Putnam’s own reading of the novel, but it also finds new reasons to endorse what his reading was meant to deliver: the confidence that philosophy and thoughtful appreciation of literature have much to contribute to each other, and the conviction that morality can incorporate (Kantian) seriousness about rules alongside (Aristotelian) sensitivity to character and situation.

Claudia Bianchi defends what she calls ‘MacKinnon's claim’: that ‘works of pornography can be understood as illocutionary acts of subordinating women, or illocutionary acts of silencing women’ in response to Saul, and by appeal to the formulations of Langton, Hornsby and Hornsby and Langton. I think Bianchi has two different claims in mind, and that it is important to distinguish the two, since the argument offered for either claim frustrates the aim sought by the other.Bianchi expresses the first claim when she says ‘pornography is the subordination of women’, and that it subordinates ‘by conditioning people to regard women as willing sexual objects’. Call this Subordination. She expresses the second claim when she says pornography ‘silences women’, and that it does so …

If philosophy and poetry are to illuminate each other, we should first understand their tendencies to mutual antipathy. Examining mutual misapprehension is part of this task. J. L. Austin's remarks on poetry offer one such point of entry: they are often cited by poets and critics as an example of philosophy's blindness to poetry. These remarks are complex and their purpose obscure—more so than those who take exception to them usually allow or admit. But it is reasonable to think that, for all his levity at their expense, what Austin offers poets is exemption from forms of commitment. Since such exemption is precisely what poets and critics have sought, this diagnosis is eirenic. This exemption has a price, but it may be affordable.

Philosophy has tended to regard poetry primarily in terms of truth and falsity, assuming that its business is to state or describe states of affairs. Speech act theory transforms philosophical debate by regarding poetry in terms of action, showing that its business is primarily to do things. The proposal can sharpen our understanding of types of poetry; examples of the ‘Chaucer-Type’ and its variants demonstrate this. Objections to the proposal can be divided into those that relate to the agent of actions associated with a poem, those that relate to the actions themselves, and those that relate to the things done. These objections can be answered. A significant consequence of the proposal is that it gives prominence to issues of responsibility and commitment. This prominence brings philosophical debate usefully into line with contemporary poetry, whose concern with such issues is manifest in characteristic forms of anxiety.

Consensus identifies an underlying continuity to Wittgenstein's treatment of the self and 'I', despite certain obvious surface variations and revisions. Almost all Wittgenstein's arguments and observations concerning 'I' and the self in the Tractatus are arranged as attempts to explicate. The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world, not a part of it. The picture that forms around the consensus view is certainly enlightening about Wittgenstein on 'I' and the self, but this is so because rather than in spite of the difficulties we face in making it match. Contrary to the consensus view, there is little or no 'denigrating' of the first person in his thought, whether of the reductionist or eliminativist kind, and where it may be manifest limited uses only, and by contrast with the general case.