De Se Attitudes: Indexicality, Communication, Phenomenology

Abstract

For some, de se attitudes, singular thoughts about oneself “as oneself”, pose a significant philosophical problem. For others, they are an illusion, easily explained away along the same lines that traditional propositional attitudes are accounted for. This essay lifts off from the assumption that the de se effect is real and in need of an explanation other than the one given for traditional propositional attitudes. I begin by giving an overview of the discussion around de se attitudes, from John Perry’s seminal paper on the topic, which initiated much of the actual discussion, to the more recent and sophisticated views that have developed since. Next, I plan to provide a short critical assessment of Recanati’s (2016) mental file framework, García-Carpintero’s (2016, 2017) tokenreflexive indexical model, and Guillot’s (2016) phenomenal model for the de se. I divide the discussion into two separate axis, one concerning the communication of de se attitudes, and another regarding their phenomenology. Ultimately, I want to argue that, while the mental file and indexical models might be well suited to account for the linguistic aspect of de se attitudes and their communication, an appeal to the phenomenology of thought, in particular de se thought, is crucial if we want to understand the nature of such attitudes.