About Oneself

This volume addresses foundational issues concerning the nature of first-personal or <em>de se</em> thought and how such thoughts are communicated. One of the questions addressed is whether there is anything distinctive about first-person thought or whether it can be subsumed under broader phenomena.<br>Many have held that first-person thought motivates a revision of traditional accounts of content or motivates positing special ways of accessing such contents. Gottlob Frege famously held that first-person thoughts involve a subject being 'presented to himself in a particular and primitive way in<br>which he is presented to no-one else.' However as Frege also noted this raises many puzzling questions when we consider how we are able to communicate such thoughts. Is there indeed something special about first-person thought such that it requires a primitive mode of presentation that cannot be<br>grasped by others? If there really is something special about first-person thought what happens when I communicate this thought to you? Do you come to believe the very thing that I believe? Or is my first-person belief only entertained by me? If it is only entertained by me how does it relate to<br>what you come to believe? It is these questions that the volume addresses and seeks to answer.<br>