In this paper, I propose a new way to distinguish between indexicals, like “I” and “today”, and demonstratives, like “she” and “this”. The main test case is the second person singular pronoun “you”. The tradition would generally count it as a demonstrative, because the speaker’s intentions play a role in providing it with a semantic value. I present cross-linguistic data and explanations offered of the data in typology and semantics to show that “you” belongs on the indexical side, and argue (...) that they can be generalized to a novel criterion for distinguishing between indexicals and demonstratives. The central theoretical claim is that the semantic values of indexicals are objects which play certain utterance-related roles, which are fixed independently of the words being used in the utterance. For instance, the speaker plays the speaker role whether or not she uses the word “I”, and the addressee plays that role whether or not the speaker uses the word “you”. Demonstratives, on the other hand, pick out objects that play no such role, and are instead helped by the speaker’s word-specific intentions. (shrink)

A number of authors have argued that the fact that certain indexicals depend for their reference-determination on the speaker’s referential intentions demonstrates the inadequacy of associating such expressions with functions from contexts to referents (characters). By distinguishing between different uses to which the notion of context is put in these argument, I show that this line of argument fails. In the course of doing so, I develop a way of incorporating the role played by intentions into a character-based semantics for (...) indexicals and I argue that the framework I prefer is superior to an alternative which has been proposed by others. (shrink)

Em uma palestra proferida em 2007, John Perry parte do conto “Borges e eu”, de autoria de Jorge Luis Borges, para tratar de um tema ligado à filosofia da linguagem e à filosofia da ação, unindo teses semânticas sobre termos lingüísticos a teses epistêmicas e metafísicas sobre o autoconhecimento e a natureza da identidade pessoal. Perry propõe duas interpretações rivais para o conto de Borges, optando pela segunda delas. Este artigo investiga algumas conseqüências para nossa compreensão do conceito de ação (...) se nenhuma das duas interpretações propostas por Perry for aceitável. (shrink)