De Se Attitudes and Computation

Neil Hamilton Fairley

doi:10.1111/theo.12241

Abstract

AbstractThere has been debate between those who maintain that indexical expressions are not essential and those who maintain that such indexicals cannot be dispensed with without an important loss of content. This version of the essentialist view holds that thoughts must also have indexical elements. Indexical thoughts appear to be in tension with the computational theory of mind (CTM). In this case we have the following inconsistent triad: (i) De se thoughts are essential. (ii) De se thoughts are indexical, they have a (Kaplanian) character. (iii) Computations can only take the syntactic type into account, they cannot take tokens into account. If (iii) is correct, then it seems we cannot make sense of a thought which uses a character such that its referent could vary from tokening to tokening. I argue that (iii) need not cause a problem, while maintaining the CTM. I claim that computations need not be sensitive to the features of a tokened symbol in the way that character demands. This job may be performed by a non‐modular part of the mind. Resolving the triad in this way provides a reason to accept that indexicals in thought are possible.

Highlights

ESSENTIAL INDEXICALITY IN natural language is the “dominant” position in the literature (Cappelen and Dever, 2013, p. 2)
Essential indexicality is the claim that certain indexical attitudes cannot be replaced by non-indexical attitudes without losing an important feature of that attitude (Recanati, 2012, p. 33)
This view is often defended on the basis that de se attitudes pose a unique problem for theories of propositions

Summary

Introduction

ESSENTIAL INDEXICALITY IN natural language is the “dominant” position in the literature (Cappelen and Dever, 2013, p. 2). I will focus on de se essentialism as including an indexical element, and will use the term to reflect this, because this view seems promising for the essential indexicalist and has come under pressure in recent debates (see Ninan, 2015; Cappelen and Dever, 2013; Lewis, 1979; Perry, 1979; Millikan, 1990; Bermudez, 2017) This is a view that has been targeted by de se sceptics who deny that there is anything essential about de se attitudes. I will argue that we should not expect computation alone to determine the reference of our thoughts It follows that there need not be a tension between de se essentialism and the CTM. I will conclude that this gives us reason to accept that context sensitivity is possible at the level of thought

Inconsistent Triad

Argument 1 for Incompatibility

Conclusion

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