Self-Consciousness and Its Linguistic Expression

Abstract

The Introduction raised the question of whether use of “I” is essential to self-consciousness, citing various historical personages who self-consciously self-referred using their own name: Julius Caesar, Henry James, Charles de Gaulle, and Andy Hamilton, among others. Could there be a community of name-users whose linguistic convention generalises this rather egoistic use, in which each speaker uses only their own name to self-refer? Is there any reason other than convenience why the self-referring use of non-indexicals, such as proper names and definite descriptions, could not generally replace “I”? What is the connection between “I” and self-consciousness? These and related questions form the topic of Chapter 1.