more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
People once took indexicality to be exclusively a property of language, ....but a series of examples seemed to establish that the thought expressed by uttering an indexical sentence is itself indexical (and is thus 'essential').
Gist of Idea
Indexicality is not just a feature of language; examples show it also occurs in thought
Source
François Recanati (Mental Files in Flux [2016], 6.1)
Book Ref
Recanati,François: 'Mental Files in Flux' [OUP 2016], p.97
A Reaction
Perry's example of not realising it is him leaking the sugar in a supermarket is the best known example. Was this a key moment for realising that philosophy of thought is (pace Dummett) more important than philosophy of language?
| 22242 | Mental files are concepts, which are either collections or (better) containers [Recanati] |
| 22243 | The Frege case of believing a thing is both F and not-F is explained by separate mental files [Recanati] |
| 22245 | A linguistic expression refers to what its associated mental file refers to [Recanati] |
| 22246 | A train of reasoning must be treated as all happening simultaneously [Recanati] |
| 22247 | Indexicality is not just a feature of language; examples show it also occurs in thought [Recanati] |
| 22248 | How can we communicate indexical thoughts to people not in the right context? [Recanati] |
| 22249 | The Naive view of communication is that hearers acquire exactly the thoughts of the speaker [Recanati] |
| 22250 | There are speakers' thoughts and hearers' thoughts, but no further thought attached to the utterance [Recanati] |