De Se Assertion

Abstract

<p> <italic>De se</italic> attitudes, that is, attitudes that we have about ourselves in a first-personal way, have long been recognized as interestingly different from other attitudes. However, speech acts and, in particular, assertions that we make <italic>about ourselves</italic> have barely begun to draw philosophers’ attention. This chapter discusses some recent proposals that aim to bridge the gap between the significance of the <italic>de se</italic> phenomena in thought and the way that we express those attitudes in language. Section 1 provides some background on the <italic>de se</italic> and the essential indexical. Section 2 surveys proposals that make use of <italic>centered contents</italic> in modeling assertion and communication. Section 3 discusses the main motivations for the idea that centered contents are not only the contents of <italic>de se</italic> attitudes but also of the corresponding assertions.</p>