Guises of ‘I’

Chair: Nicholas Shea

Résumé

I propose that communication with the indexical pronoun ‘I’ requires coordination on a familiar discourse referent, just like communication with an anaphoric (or deictic) use of ‘she’. This proposal improves on a contrasting approach descended from Kaplan (1989) on which ‘I’ is interpreted by bridging anaphora to the event of speaking (which eliminates discretion from the interpretation by binding the pronoun to the speech event). I use the proposal to address a puzzle about communication with ‘I’ due to Andrea Onofri (2022).

Sam Cumming

Sam Cumming works on diverse topics in the philosophy of language and semantics, from attitude reports, noun phrases and the foundations of meaning to the semantics of edits in film. Along with Josh Armstrong and Gabe Greenberg, he runs the interdisciplinary workshop SLIME. His PhD was from Rutgers, and he is professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles.