Impure "de se" thoughts and pragmatics (and how this is relevant to pragmatics and iem)

pp. 287-306

in: Alessandro Capone, The pragmatics of indirect reports, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

I shall start this chapter with a few generic considerations on the pragmatics of "de se" thoughts and I shall then move on to the distinction between pure and impure "de se" thoughts, that clearly involves some pragmatic discriminatory ability. Since impure "de se" thoughts need not be immune to error through misidentification (IEM), it must be clear that Immunity to Error through Misidentification (IEM) is not a semantic characteristic of psychological predicates but is available only after intervention of pragmatic considerations. Anyway, the issue of IEM is to be considered as merely tangential to the issue of "de se" and, thus, I shall only reserve a final section for the definitive demonstration that IEM applies to certain psychological predicates only in the background of contextual considerations. IEM, in other words, is only pragmatic in nature. Although this is an important conclusion, it is deduced merely as a consequence of the analysis of "de se" thoughts. The de-tour we are making is considerable, but not improper and without consequences.