José Luis Bermúdez
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- February 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198796213
- eISBN:
- 9780191837319
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198796213.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
The Symmetry Constraint calls for the possibility of token-equivalence in sense between a token of “I” and, for example, a token of “you.” But understanding how to use the first person pronoun “I” is ...
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The Symmetry Constraint calls for the possibility of token-equivalence in sense between a token of “I” and, for example, a token of “you.” But understanding how to use the first person pronoun “I” is different from understanding how to use the second person pronoun “you.” So one corollary of the Symmetry Constraint is that we need to distinguish: (a) The token-sense of “I”: What a speaker/hearer understands when they utter or hear a token utterance involving “I”; and (b) The type-sense of “I”: What a speaker/hearer can properly be said to understand by the expression “I.” This chapter shows how this distinction cannot be mapped onto standard distinctions made in discussions of “I” and other indexicals. In particular, none of the proposed accounts does what a satisfactory account of token-sense must do, namely, respect both Frege’s criterion for sameness/difference of sense (particularly with respect to coreferential proper names) and the Symmetry Constraint.Less
The Symmetry Constraint calls for the possibility of token-equivalence in sense between a token of “I” and, for example, a token of “you.” But understanding how to use the first person pronoun “I” is different from understanding how to use the second person pronoun “you.” So one corollary of the Symmetry Constraint is that we need to distinguish: (a) The token-sense of “I”: What a speaker/hearer understands when they utter or hear a token utterance involving “I”; and (b) The type-sense of “I”: What a speaker/hearer can properly be said to understand by the expression “I.” This chapter shows how this distinction cannot be mapped onto standard distinctions made in discussions of “I” and other indexicals. In particular, none of the proposed accounts does what a satisfactory account of token-sense must do, namely, respect both Frege’s criterion for sameness/difference of sense (particularly with respect to coreferential proper names) and the Symmetry Constraint.
