Higher Seminar in Theoretical Philosophy: Patrizio Lo Presti (Copenhagen) "The indexical 'we' and the specified range constraint: a deontic geometry of 'us'"

In contrast to the first-person singular 'I,' uses of which do not leave the question open as to who is talked about, uses of the first-person plural 'We' often does. With uses of 'I' it is always only one, and one determinate, individual who is referred to. But with 'We' it is always at least two, and who they are is often indeterminate. If I say “I want bread” your question “Who do you mean?” is untoward. If I say “We want bread” the same question is often warranted. The problem with determining the referent of 'We' has been called 'the specified range constraint on saying “We.”' 

Hans Bernhard Schmid (2023) argues that it is not necessary to meet the specified range constraint for a speaker to nevertheless be justified in saying 'We.' That is, there are circumstances in which one need not know or be able to specify, distributively, whom else, beyond oneself, one is talking about. Schmid considers the example of the women of Paris who, during the early stages of the French revolution, marched with a demand for bread. On premises I will not discuss Schmid finds that we should take a circular answer, e.g., “We who want bread,” to be a satisfactory response to the question “Who do you mean?”

While agreeing with Schmid’s conclusion that speakers often need not know who they mean to nevertheless with propriety say 'We,' I venture a positive proposal how to determine the referent of 'We.' The following three steps constitute the proposal. 

First I introduce normative inferential role semantics to the contents of sayings and practical significances of non-verbal doings quite generally (the Frege field). Secondly, I show how knowing what one is saying and doing is a practical know-how to navigate a field of material inferential proprieties (the Ryle-Sellars Frege field-navigation model). I here make Ryle’s critique of the intellectualist legend (1949) and Sellars’s attack on the formalist dogma that all materially valid inferences are enthymematic (1953) speak with one voice. Third, I take intersubjective tracking of the contents of sayings and practical significances of doings (Brandom 1994) to together with the Frege field and Ryle-Sellars navigator model make who someone saying 'We' is implicitly or explicitly referring to determinate (the Scorekeeping approach).

I conclude that (a) while someone saying 'We' need not always know who they mean, who they mean is determinate, and (b) even in case the speaker is not be able to say it, they often know who they mean when they say 'We.' To close, consequences for how to understand first-person plural self-authorisation, determination, transformation, and termination are