180123 SE The De Se in Language and Thought (2020W)

COVID-19 pandemic: the aim is to hold this seminar with physical presence. The teaching room is large enough to hold the maximum number of participants with safety distance. However, we also aim to make available online participation if there are participants who do not want to be physically present for health reasons (via Collaborate). There will be a Collaborate link on the Moodle page for this seminar. (If Covid-19 restrictions make meetings with physical presence impossible during the semester, the seminar will move online and meetings will then take place in Collaborate only).
For many decades, it was taken for granted that Hector-Neri Castañeda, John Perry and David Lewis had shown that standard accounts of propositional contents have a problem in modelling the content of certain mental states, states that are called “De Se states”. For example the belief that Gustav Lauben could sincerely express by saying: “I have been wounded.”, seems to differ from another belief that Lauben might have, which he could sincerely express by saying “Gustav Lauben has been wounded.”. Perry and Lewis were taken to have shown that standard accounts of propositional content could not capture this difference as a difference in content. Perry then went on to capture the difference not as a difference in content, but as a difference in the way the same content was believed. Lewis went on to introduce a more general notion of propositional content that allowed him to capture the difference as a difference in content. In recent years, however, this orthodoxy has been questioned by several philosophers, for example by Ruth Millikan, Cara Spencer, Jason Stanley, Herman Cappelen & Josh Dever and Ofra Magidor. The new De Se-sceptics tend to claim that the challenge posed by De Se mental states is not a new or separate problem over and above the well-known problem posed by Frege-puzzles.
The aim of this seminar is to study and discuss the most important classic papers that state the so-called “problem of the De Se”, and then to move on to studying key contributions to the recent debate. This will provide an insight in one of the currently most discussed questions in the philosophy of language and mind.
Method: we will discuss one text in each of the first 9 sessions. Participants are to upload a short summary of the relevant text before each session (exception: first session), i.e. main theses and arguments for them, together with questions for discussion, if any. In each session one (or more) participant will chair the discussion and ensure that we distribute our attention in a suitable way across the various aspects of the text in question. Towards the end of the semester we will spend 2 sessions discussing participants’ previously uploaded recorded presentations on one of the (ca. 8 –10) official essay topics. The recorded presentations should be 8 min long and can be prepared in a format of the participant's choice (e.g. slideshow with voice, recorded Zoom presentation…).
The essays should then be elaborated on the basis of the presentation and the feedback received in the discussion.
Programme:
12. 10. 2020: Introduction and discussion of Frege (1918) “Der Gedanke. Eine logische Untersuchung”
19. 10. 2020: John Perry (1979) “The problem of the essential indexical”.
9. 11. 2020: David Lewis (1979). “Attitudes de dicto and de se”.
16. 11. 2020: Millikan, Ruth Garrett (1990). “The myth of the essential indexical”. Noûs 24, pp. 723–34.
23. 11. 2020: Jason Stanley (2011) Know How, Ch. 3.
30. 11. 2020: Herman Cappelen & Josh Dever (2013), ch. 3.
7. 12. 2020: Ofra Magidor (2015). “The Myth of the De Se”.
14. 12. 2020: Stephan Torre (2018) “In Defense of De Se Content”.
11. 1. 2021: [Preliminarily: Daniel Morgan (2020) “Accidentally About Me”.]
18. 1. 2021: Discussions of short presentations
25. 1. 2021: Discussions of short presentations

14. 2. 2021: Deadline for essay.