Indexicality, binding, anaphora and a priori truth

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Indexicals are linguistic expressions whose meaning remains stable while their reference shifts from utterance to utterance. Paradigmatic cases in English are ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’. Recently, a number of authors have argued that various constructions in our language harbour hidden indexicals. We say ‘hidden’ because these indexicals are unpronounced, even though they are alleged to be real linguistic components. Constructions taken by some authors to be associated, or to ‘cohabit’, with hidden indexicals include: definite descriptions and quantifiers more generally (hidden indexical refers to a domain – Davies (1981), Westerstahl (1985), Higginbotham (1988), Stanley and Williamson (1995)), propositional attitude verbs (hidden indexical refers to a mode of presentation – Richard (1990)), comparative adjectives (hidden indexical refers to comparison classes – Partee (1989), Kamp (1975), Ludlow (1989)). An interesting recent addition is the view that all nouns are associated with a hidden indexical referring to a domain restriction (Stanley and Szabo (2000), Stanley (2002)).1 We are sceptical of such posits, first, because evidence typically proffered to support their existence is better accounted for, we believe, in other ways;2 and secondly, because each alleged case familiar to us is flawed, or so we will argue. We begin by concentrating on a recent, influential argument for hidden indexicals – the so-called Argument from Binding. We present a reductio of it. We then present two requirements any indexical – hidden or otherwise – should satisfy, illustrating how various alleged ANALYSIS 62.4 OCTOBER 2002