http://citydataexplosion.de/#_=_central.station.roterhafen
#1 - Quote - Sandringhella:'Kiss v.Spiderwoman-Medellin%Strategy v.Snail-Colombia.partoux.'
"...of obvious principles can be". - David Kaplan
Yes.
But more so if you understand them.
Could anybody help explain his two principles:
1. The referent of a pure indexical depends on the content, and the referent of a demonstrative depends on the associated demonstraiotion.
2. Indexicals, pure and demonstrative, are directly referential.
Knowing the context of use of an indexical determines its referent - that's easy enought to grasp. "I am typing" refers to me, the typist, because the context encompasses the fact that its through my will that my fingers move across the keyboard in so-and-such a manner.
but, "the descriptive meaning of a pure indexical" derives no referent "with respect to a circumstance of evalutation" I find hard. Really I'm not all that sure of what "circumstance of evalutation" means.
cents.
The "circumstance of evaluation" seems to mean the frame of reference from which we determine the meaning of a pure indexical. What the quoted statement says in effect is that the description of a context must have a "limit," and that that limit is reached when we reach the frame of reference which reveals all relevant information. Anything from which a pure indexical derives its referent is part of the context, and cannot vary with how one instills meaning in that indexical.
Take the indexical "you," for example. Even though the referent of that indexical might vary with the person being spoken to, the quoted statement says that the person being spoken to is not part of the most general "circumstance of evaluation (of the meaning of the indexical)." Even if the evaluator is the one being spoken to, in effect the evaluator can dissociate himself from the subject of the indexical in order to determine its meaning and referent (himself). The idea is (I think) that a limit must be set on the "relativization" or "relativity" of an indexical.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/indexicals/