Home – Home – Jornals – Philosophy of Sciences 2025 number 3

The article critically examines the prevalent idea in analytical philosophy that the first-person singular pronoun “I” uniquely expresses the first-person perspective because of a direct correlation between an individual’s self-awareness and her ability to refer to herself with this pronoun. First, I outline the general idea of the problem concerning the linguistic expression of the first-person perspective. My focus is primarily on the problem of the cognitive significance of indexicals as well as the problem of ambiguity between de se and de re readings of the sentences involving indirect speech about an individual’s propositional attitudes. Many advocates of the criticized idea implicitly subscribe to the so-called “awareness condition”, while their explanation of how an individual acquires such awareness has a strong Cartesian flavor. Second, I argue that natural languages do allow impersonal use of the personal pronoun “I” and have multiple ways to express the first-person perspective. Both these facts challenge the idea of the unique role the pronoun “I” has in language systems. I propose to explain the lack of a single way to express the first-person perspective by referring to the context-dependent nature of language. To put it differently, the ways of expressing the first-person perspective depend on the context of use in communicative situations.