Skip to main content

Indexical Words and Possible Worlds

SomaliaLinguists sometimes use the term "indexical" for a type of word or sign.

If I understand the point, a word is "indexical" if it presupposes some aspect of the situation in which it is employed.

"Here" is indexical. So, for that matter, is "there." Each presupposes that the speaker is located at a particular place, and that the listener has some idea what that place is.  You ask a friend over the phone, "Do you know where my folder is?" Your friend replies, "Yes, you left it over here." In that case, the speech situation includes the fact that both he and I know that I was at his place the previous night, and I presume (he knows that I will presume) that he is speaking to me now from that home. So, because I understand the indexical use of the term, I know where my folder is.

Likewise "now" is indexical. If I record the phrase "I am having trouble breathing now" and someone plays back that recording the next day, the statement may or may not be true the next day. I might be dead. Or my respiratory distress might be safely in my past, and I might be breathing fine. That doesn't matter. the word "now" is indexical, and it only informs the listener to the extent the listener has some idea when the recording was made.

All of that is critical background for the wonderful metaphysical and contemporary-science question, "Is the word 'actual' indexical?"

From one point of view, "actual" resembles "now" and "here." It is a statement about where/when I (the speaker) am. Perhaps 10 years ago I was nearly in an accident that could have taken my arm off. One possible world is that world in which that accident did happen, and I by this time would be getting quite proficient at the use of my prosthetic arm. But that isn't the "actual" world. I have two arms here. I have two arms now. I have two arms in actuality.

The question, "why is this world the actual one," is (on this line of thought) incoherent. The word "this" in such a context and the word "actual" are both indexical, and are synonyms. So the question resembles, "why is this century the present century?"

Here's a link for those who might want to examine this thought further.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...
24 comments
Read more

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...
10 comments
Read more

The Growing Block Theory of Time

My own disposition, in regard to the philosophy of time, is toward the "growing block" theory. This is the view that past events remain realities, that present-moment events are also realities, but that future events are not yet real. The image is of the universe as a block with an edge on (say) the right-hand side. The block is expanding because that edge is moving ever further right, and that edge is what we call the present, or, simply, "now." Everything to the left of that edge is both static (the past is complete) and, still and forever, real. Think of the phrase "the moving finger writes." The chief alternatives to the growing-block theory are "presentism" (only the now-edge itself is real) and "eternalism" (past, present, and future are all real." I believe that time is a growing block because (1) that's what it feels like, (2) we should stick with the introspective phenomenon unless we have good reason to abandon ...
8 comments
Read more