55-01.211.306 The First-Person Perspective in Language and Thought (T)

Instructors: Dr. Lukas Skiba

Event type: Introductory seminar

Displayed in timetable as:

Hours per week: 2

Credits: 3,0

Language of instruction: English

Min. | Max. participants: 1 | 28

Allocation scheme: Phil_Standard_WS1415

Comments/contents:
The first-person pronoun "I" is a short word with a long history of philosophical discussion. Many philosophers take it – and the first-person perspective associated with it – to play a fundamentally important role in language and cognition. For example, the first-person perspective is often taken to play a special role in action explanation: we cannot properly explain why subjects act the way they do without ascribing to them certain "I"-thoughts by means of which they locate themselves in their environment. What is more, thoughts involving the first-person perspective are sometimes said to be in principle incommunicable, graspable by one person and one person alone.

The main aims of this course are:

1. to introduce some of the main contemporary debates in the philosophy of language and mind surrounding the first-person perspective
   
2. to gain a better understanding of the historical background (to be found primarily in the history of analytic philosophy) against which the contemporary debates take place
   

Literature:
No prior reading is required. The reading list for the seminar will likely include the following:

• Frege, Gottlob (1918): "Der Gedanke". Translated into English as "The Thought" in Mind 65: 289-311.
  
• Perry, John (1977): “Frege on Demonstratives” In Philosophical Review 86: 474-497.
  
• Perry, John (1979): “The Essential Indexical”. In Noûs 13 (1):3-21.
  
• Evans, Gareth (1981): “Understanding Demonstratives”. In Herman Parret (ed.) Meaning and Understanding. Clarendon Press. pp. 280--304.
  
• Selected Chapters from Capellen, Hermann & Dever, Josh (2013): The Inessential Indexical. Oxford University Press.
  
• Magidor, Ofra (2015): “The Myth of the De Se”. Philosophical Perspectives 29:249-283.
  
• Stojanovic, Isidora (2016): “Speaking about Oneself” In Manuel García-Carpintero and Stephan Torre (eds.) About Oneself. Oxford University Press.
  
• Ninan, Dilip “What is the Problem of De Se Attitudes?” In Manuel García-Carpintero and Stephan Torre (eds.) About Oneself. Oxford University Press.
  
• Selected Chapters from Bermudez, Jose Luis (2017): Understanding “I”. Oxford University Press.