Indexical shift

doi:10.1515/ip-2025-5002

Indexical shift

2025-11-25

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Wayne A. Davis *

DOI：10.1515/ip-2025-5002

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Indexical shift is said to occur when allegedly pure indexicals have referents other than those Kaplan codified. I argue first that indexical shift is even more widespread than has so far been recognized, occurring even in English propositional attitude and speech act reports, and that I, here, and how like he and that can be used anaphorically and demonstratively as well as deictically. I then argue that the leading theories developed to account for indexical shift are unsuccessful, focusing on bicontextualism, Schlenker's context-quantifier theory, Deal's context-shifting operator theory, and Eckardt's event-based theory. They claim that the simplicity of Kaplan's rules can be preserved by applying them to contexts other than the context of use. I show that only the context of use determines the referents of shifted indexicals, and point out the contextual features they depend on. I show finally that none of these theories can account for the de se character of shifted indexicals. To account for that, propositional attitudes must be construed as relations to structured thoughts with distinctive components expressed by indexicals.

Keywords:

indexical shift

bicontextualism

de se attitudes

propositions

character functions

quote clauses

Indexical shift

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