Self-reference

Abstract: This article offers a DE SE THEORY of person indexicals, wherein first- and second-person indexical pronouns indicate REFERENCE DE SE (also called SELF-ASCRIPTION ). Long observed for first-person pronouns (Castaneda 1977, Kaplan 1977, Perry 1979, inter alia), self-ascription is extended here to second person as well. The person feature of a pronoun specifies the speech-act roles that must be played by the self-ascribers: the speakers (uttering a first-person pronoun), the addressees (interpreting a second-person pronoun), or both (for first-person inclusive). Other agents who are not among the designated self-ascribers for a given pronoun interpret the pronoun indirectly by inferring the self-ascriber's interpretation, a process requiring THEORY OF MIND , that is, the cognitive ability to impute mental states to others (Premack & Woodruff 1978). This de se theory is supported by convergent evidence from multiple domains: (i) It explains a typological universal: first- and second-person plurals always allow associative semantics ('speaker(s) plus others', 'addressee(s) plus others') rather than requiring regular plural semantics ('speakers only', 'addressees only') (Greenberg 1988, Noyer 1992, Cysouw 2003, Bobaljik 2008). (ii) It belongs to a family of approaches that solve the problem of the essential indexical (Perry 1979). (iii) It correctly predicts observed patterns of indexical pronoun production and comprehension by two populations lacking a fully developed theory of mind: typically developing children in the stage before theory of mind has developed, and children with autism. (iv) It correctly predicts the interpretation of second-person pronouns in utterances with multiple addressees.

Abstract: Two accounts of immunity to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun are in currency. I argue that only one of these captures that class of self-ascriptions that are central to self-consciousness.

Abstract: Reflection on the self's way of being “in” consciousness yields two arguments for a theory of self-reference not based inany wayat all on self-cognition. First, I show that one theory of self-reference predicts an experience of the self because the theory inadequately analyzes the semantical facts about indexicality. I construct a dilemma for this cognitivism, which it cannot get out of, for it requires evensolitary self-reference to be based on some original self-knowledge, which is not available. I describe my “kinetic model” of unspoken self-reference, and I show how it fits the facts of four forms of consciousness, all of which presuppose self-reference, rather than yield it. Second, aspeaker uses the first person pronoun in sentences because she is aware of the unmediated role in agency of the beliefs she would express, and not because she is aware of herself in their content. The cognitive model, in contrast, succumbs to a vicious regress and is exposed as an obstacle to an understanding of consciousness.

Abstract: The pronoun I indexes the speaker or writer in place and time but also situates him or her in the moral order as the person responsible for what is uttered (Muhlhausler and Harre 1990). Consequently, this paper asks (1) what gentlemen of the Early and Late Modern England could say about themselves in the first person and (2) whether there were any register or diachronic differences in typical self-reference. This study relies on integrationist social theory and employs a set of quantitative and qualitative methods in the analysis of recurrent word clusters extracted from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence and its Extension. The results point to increasing self-reference and the prominence of mental verb clusters that often serve interpersonal functions.