Indexicals: A Problem for Chalmers' Two-Dimensional Semantics

• Stefan Rinner ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Duisburg-Essen

     University of Duisburg-Essen

     Kreisfreie Stadt Essen, Alemania

     
• Localización: Crítica: revista hispanoamericana de filosofía, ISSN 0011-1503, Vol. 57, Nº. 171, 2025, págs. 119-132
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.22201/iifs.18704905e.2025.1753
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • español

    Como el propio Chalmers señala, su semántica bidimensional conduce alproblema de cómo los escenarios —es decir, los mundos epistémicamente posibles—pueden representar de la mejor manera la información acercade quién soy, dóndeestoy y qué hora es ahora. Para Chalmers,la solución natural a este problema dela indexicalidad consiste en identificar los escenarios con mundoscentrados: tuplasordenadas de mundos (posibles), individuos, tiempos y lugares. Según esta solución,dos casos arbitrarios de “ahora” y “aquí” (respectivamente) tienen la misma inten-sión primaria (o epistémica), al designar el tiempo o el lugar marcados en el centrode cualquier escenario dado. Frente a esto, objetaré que hay enunciados de “Ahora= ahora” y “Aquí = aquí” que son verdaderosa posteriori, es decir, epistémicamen-te contingentes. Dado que identificar los escenarios con mundos centrados pareceser la solución natural al problema de la indexicalidad, esto socavará la semánticabidimensional de Chalmers.

  • English

    As Chalmers himself notes, his two-dimensional semantics leads to the problem of how scenarios, i.e. epistemically possible worlds, can best represent the information who I am, where I am, and what time it is now. For Chalmers, the natural solution to this problem of indexicality is to identify scenarios with centered worlds: ordered tuples of (possible) worlds, individuals, times, and places. According to such a solution, two arbitrary tokens of ‘now’ and ‘here’ (respectively) have the same primary (or epistemic) intension, picking out the time/place marked at the center of any given scenario. Against this, I will object that there are a posteriori true, i.e. epistemically contingent, utterances of both ‘Now = now’ and ‘Here = here’. Since identifying scenarios with centered worlds seems to be the natural solution to the problem of indexicality, this will undermine Chalmers’ two-dimensional semantics.

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