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Monsters and the Theoretical Role of Context
Author(s) -
Rabern Brian,
Ball Derek
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/phpr.12449
Subject(s) - citation , context (archaeology) , art history , library science , art , computer science , history , archaeology
In his seminal work on context-sensitivity, Kaplan (1989) famously claimed that monsters—operators that (in Kaplan’s framework) shift the context, and so “control the character of indexicals within [their] scope”—do not exist in English and “could not be added to it” (1989: 510). Kaplan pointed out that indexicals (like the English words “I” and “you”) seem to be interpreted in the same way no matter how they are embedded, so that (for example) if David utters a sentence like (1), “I” picks out David (rather than Otto):