Working Papers

The Purpose of the Essential Indexical

Author: 
Catherine Legg
Abstract: 

This paper takes indexicality as a case-study for critical examination of the distinction between semantics and pragmatics as currently conceived in mainstream philosophy of language. Both a ‘pre-indexical’ and ‘post-indexical’ analytic formal semantics are examined and found wanting, and instead an argument is mounted for a ‘properly pragmatist pragmatics’, according to which we do not work out what signs mean in some abstract overall sense and then work out to what use they are being put; rather, we must understand to what use signs are being put in order to work out what they mean.

Citation: 
Legg, C. (2015). The Purpose of the Essential Indexical (Commens Working Papers no. 6). Retrieved from Commens: Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce, http://www.commens.org/papers/paper/legg-catherine-2015-purpose-essential-indexical.
Published: 
March 11, 2015