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.
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.
- The Problem of De Se Attitudes
Neil Feit and Alessandro Capone
- I Linguistics and Philosophy of Language
- Indexicals and De Se Attitudes
Wayne A. Davis
- Speaking (and Some Thinking) of Oneself
James Higginbotham
- Contextualism and Minimalism on De Se Belief Ascription
Kasia M. Jaszczolt
- Belief Reports and the Property Theory of Content
Neil Feit
- The Myth of the Problematic De Se
Michael Devitt
- In Defense of Propositions: A Presuppositional Analysis of Indexicals and Shifted Pronouns
Denis Delfitto and Gaetano Fiorin
- 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
- Empathy as a Psychological Guide to the De Se/De Re Distinction
Eros Corazza
- Consequences of the Pragmatics of ‘De Se’
Alessandro Capone
- II Epistemology and Metaphysics
- The Epistemology of De Se Beliefs
Igor Douven
- Dynamic Beliefs and the Passage of Time
Darren Bradley
- De Se Epistemology
Michael G. Titelbaum
- The Role of Motivational Force and Intention in First-Person Beliefs
Pietro Perconti
- Time and Person in Thought
Michael Nelson
- Self-Locating Belief
John Perry
September 2013