The Inessential Indexical

Herman Cappelen is a professor of philosophy at the University of St Andrews, where he works at the Arché Philosophical Research Centre. He works in philosophy of language, philosophical methodology and related areas of epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. He is the author of many papers and four books: Insensitive Semantics (with Ernest Lepore; Blackwell, 2004), Language Turned on Itself (with Ernest Lepore; OUP, 2007), Relativism and Monadic Truth (with John Hawthorne; OUP, 2009), and Philosophy without Intuitions (OUP, 2012). ; Joshua Dever is Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He completed his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley, and his primary research interests include philosophy of language and philosophical logic.

• 1. Introductory Overview: The Role of Indexicality, Perspective and the De Se in Philosophy ; 2. Preliminaries: Language-Mind, Super Indexicals, and Opacity ; 3. Indexicality, the De Se, and Agency ; 4. Indexicality, Opacity, and Fregeanism ; 5. Lewis on the De Se, Self-Ascription, and Centered Worlds ; 6. Functionalism to the Rescue? ; 7. Indexicality and Immunity to Error ; 8. A Brief Note on Perceptual Content and the De Se ; 9. The De Se and the Semantics of PRO Constructions ; 10. The View From Everywhere

This crisp, lean, and tightly argued study deserves the attention of anyone interested in the topics of indexicality, perspective, and the first person . . . My prediction is that this fine book will significantly advance the debate about the place of perspective and indexicality in human thought and action.