Attitudes De Se: Linguistics, Epistemology, Metaphysics

by Neil Feit (Editor), Alessandro Capone (Editor)

Overview

In English, we use the word "I" to express thoughts that we have about ourselves, and we use the reflexive pronouns "himself" and "herself" to attribute such thoughts to others. Philosophers and linguists call such thoughts, and the statements we use to express them, de se.  
 
De se thoughts and statements, although they appear often in our day-to-day lives, pose a series of challenging problems for both linguists and philosophers. This interdisciplinary volume examines the structure of de se thought, various issues concerning the semantics and pragmatics of our discourse about it, and also what it reveals about how humans think about themselves and the world around them.
 
Contributors are:
Darren Bradley
Alessandro Capone
Eros Corazza
Wayne A. Davis
Denis Delfitto
Michael Devitt
Igor Douven
Neil Feit
Gaetano Fiorin
James Higginbotham
Yan Huang
Kasia M. Jaszczolt
Michael Nelson
Pietro Perconti
John Perry
Michael G. Titelbaum

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781575866642
Publisher:	Center for the Study of Language and Inf
Publication date:	08/15/2013
Series:	Lecture Notes , #208
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Neil Feit is chair of the Department of Philosophy at SUNY Fredonia and the author of Belief about the Self: A Defense of the Property Theory of Content. Alessandro Capone teaches semantics at the University of Palermo. 

Table of Contents

Contributors

The Problem of De Se Attitudes

                Neil Feit and Alessandro Capone

I               Linguistics and Philosophy of Language

1              Indexicals and De Se Attitudes

                Wayne A. Davis

2              Speaking (and Some Thinking) of Oneself

                James Higginbotham

3              Contextualism and Minimalism on De Se Belief Ascription

                Kasia M. Laszczolt

4              Belief Reports and the Property Theory of Content

                Neil Feit

5              The Myth of Problematic De Se

                Michael Devitt

6              In Defense of Propositions: A Presuppositional Analysis of Indexicals and Shifted Pronouns

                Denis Delfitto and Gaetano Fiorin

7              De Se Attitude/Belief Ascription and Neo-Gricean Truth-Conditional Pragmatics: Logophoric Expressions in West African

                Languages and Long-Distance Reflexives in East, South, and Southeast Asian Languages

                Yan Huang

8              Empathy as a Psychological Guide to the De Se/De Re Distinction

                Eros Corazza

9              Consequences of the Pragmatics of ‘De Se’

                Alessandro Capone

II             Epistemology and Metaphysics

10           The Epistemology of De Se Beliefs

                Igor Douven

11           Dynamic Beliefs and the Passage of Time

                Darren Bradley

12           De Se Epistemology

                Michael G. Titelbaum

13           The Role of Motivational Force and Intention in First-Person Beliefs

                Pietro Perconti

14           Time and Person in Thought

                Michael Nelson

15           Self-Locating Belief

                John Perry

Index