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Moore's Paradox and Essential Indexicality Moore’s Paradox and Essential Indexicality Woomin Park (Seoul National University) Draft (10-6-2019) 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to argue that Moore’s paradox stands for Essential Indexicality because it occurs only when self-reference appears, and thus, for the case of Moore’s paradox, to contend that it is not possible to construct a case of the Frege counterpart that Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever assert as a counterexample to John Perry’s Essential Indexical. In their recent book, The Inessential Indexical: On the Philosophical Insignificance of Perspective and the First Person (Cappelen and Dever 2013), Cappelen and Dever show that there is opacity in the indexical in the case of behavior explanation, but exactly the same kind of opacity between the co- referring expressions also holds in the third person case. They argue that the opacity in the case of indexical does not necessarily hold the special status of the indexicality (or first-person) because of the more general latter opacity. According to them, Perry’s Essential Indexical, contrary to its name, does not address the nature of indexical but suggests that there is a failure of truth-preserving substitution between the indexical and their co-referring expressions in attitude-context. Because, in those cases, the difference between one sentence and the other is, after all, a difference in the cases of Frege’s puzzle. In the case where the Essential Indexical is considered to have emerged, they claim that it is possible to present a counterpart (Frege Counterpart) that is the same in all respects except that it occurs between two co-referring expressions, not between the indexical and its co-referring expressions. Cappelen and Dever write that they provide (and can provide) the Frege Counterpart to all possible Perry-style cases that Essential Indexicals are present, but I think there is a case they haven't dealt with yet. This is the case of Moore's Paradox, which many philosophers thought is the example of the first- person personality (e.g., Moran 1997). Moore’s paradox is widely regarded as a typical example of the peculiarity of the first-person, but curiously, they did not address Moore’s paradox in their discussions that deny the philosophical significance of the first-person view. Against their thesis, I will contend that the indexical (or first-person) still seems to have a special status, based on Moore’s Paradox. When self-reporting on belief attribution, it sounds strange to say “p” and then say, “I don’t believe p.” This paradoxical situation only occurs when one uses a sentence with the first-person indexical that reports his attribution of belief in p. With my analysis of Moore’s paradox presented in this paper, we will see Moore’s paradox only happens with self-reference and then the inability to remove the indexical or first-person perspectives. If Moore’s paradox does not occur without self-reference, the case of Moore’s paradox is a failure of substitution that occurs only when Moore’s Paradox and Essential Indexicality 1 the indexical is involved even if it is a failure of truth-preserving substitutions between co-referring expressions. I will argue, in the case of Moore’s paradoxical absurdity, there is no Frege Counterpart, such as a failure to replace between co-referring expressions where the same absurdity is a problem. In the end, I will conclude this suggests the peculiarity and irremovability of the first-person view. 2. Preliminaries: Perry’s Messy Shopper & the Problem of Essential Indexical Many philosophers believe that John Perry’s monumental article “The Problem of the Essential Indexical” (Perry 1979/2000) showed this: it convincingly argues that some beliefs, such as self- locating belief, that use indexical to refer themselves, have some conceptual element that is not explained only by its propositional content. Let us consider two men along Perry who have almost similar belief systems. The situation is this: They believed that “one of us is making a mess” and “anyone who makes a mess should stop making the mess.” In fact, one of them, John Perry, bought perforated sugar sacks, so he unwittingly puts it in a shopping cart and wanders around. Based on their observations, they believed that the shopper with holey sugar bags is making a mess. No one stopped at those beliefs alone. Looking around, they found out that “John Perry is making a mess.” Then one person stopped the cart. If the situation is the above, their belief systems would eventually be the same. However, what do you find out that if one person stopped making a mess, why would it be? Perhaps, the person who stopped would have stopped because he thought he was John Perry. Without it, he would not have reached the point where the messer had to stop and would still be making messes. Observations like this seem to make it difficult to regard belief-attribution as merely a simple binary relation between propositions and epistemic subjects, regardless of relations to any referential element. Consider two cases of a simple binary relation between propositions and subjects, de re relation and de dicto relation. In the case with de re relation between propositions and subjects, there is no distinction between the relation of the subject with “the shopper with holey sugar bags making a mess” and the relation of the subject with “John Perry is making a mess.” If so, how can we explain the case why the mess- stopping event occurred when he had the latter belief? At first, Perry did not consider “The shopper with holey sugar bags making a mess” as the proposition about himself. After believing that “John Perry is making a mess,” he regards “John Perry is making a mess” as the proposition about himself, and then he could conclude that "John Perry should stop." Moore’s Paradox and Essential Indexicality 2 Since John Perry stopped when he came to the latter belief, one could expect to explain this situation if the subject is related to the proposition in de dicto fashion where these beliefs can be distinguished naturally. However, if we are dealing with the case de dicto here, Perry believes in both beliefs at the same time but does not have the belief that I am making a mess. So, if Perry does not believe in “I’m a shopper with perforated sugar bags” or “I’m John Perry,” he cannot draw conclusions like “I should stop” from the first two beliefs. After all, de dicto relation is not a solution to this situation and must be appealed to the indexicality. In both approaches, we do not seem to be able to explain this situation without appealing to something like “what I regard as a proposition about myself” or “what I regard as content about myself.” In the end, the idea that this belief is de dicto or de re relation to the proposition does not seem to explain sufficiently the messy shopper case because it does not reflect the difference between the case with and without the indexicality. In addition, if John Perry says, “I made a mess,” he expresses that he believes in a Russellian proposition <John Perry, making a mess>. But the other believes that same Russellian proposition, expressed by the belief report “John Perry has made a mess.” Naturally, those who believe in the same proposition and make claims about it, but who are not John Perry, will hold it is false that “I make a mess.” The proposition corresponding to this man’s claim “I make a mess” is not about John Perry, but about himself and is therefore false. If so, the sentence “I make a mess” does not seem to identify some particular proposition. This shows that the belief report, such as “I believe I make a mess,” does not have enough information that it is a belief-report on some particular proposition. Obviously, the propositional content of the beliefs shared by the two men in our example seems to be the same, but there seems to be a difference in the way in which the subject is related to propositional content. According to Perry, one breakthrough in solving this problem is to provide an explanation for it. In other words, it explains that any belief in the same proposition can be in a different state of belief if it is believed in a different way. Anyone can believe the proposition, <John Perry, making a mess> but only John Perry can have a state of belief that states, “I made a mess.” When we have this type of belief in ourselves, we say that we have an indexical or de se belief. Because of that, he would have stopped making a mess. According to de re relation approach or the Russell propositional approach so far, we have the same belief in both cases when the indexical is replaced by a co-referring expression, just as when indexical has included in belief. However, when we have belief using the indexical, we have belief by means of some particular way, that is, an indexical way. If such indexicals are indispensable to describe some propositional attitude we have correctly, then the indexical used in that case can be called an Essential Indexical, and the phenomenon that emerges is called an Essential Indexicality. Moore’s Paradox and Essential Indexicality 3 3. Cappelen and Dever: No Essential Indexical or Indexicality Perry, discussed in Section 2, contended that in the Self-Locating Belief, belief acquired by using Indexicals that directs believer himself, there is a conceptual element that is not explained solely by its propositional content.
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