Abstract

“The First Person” is the paper where G. E. M. Anscombe supports the thesis that “I” is not a referring word. Mainly I deal with her argument against the indexical view of “I” from the scenario of the “A” user, who refers to himself as the person who is under the special observation of the “A” user. On the one hand, I put forward that a use of “A” might have a guaranteed reference in a semantic sense: a referential use of “A” as a definite description guarantees the one reference to oneself. On the other hand, the indexical view is left untouched: the reference of “A” is not fixed by the self-reference rule, and thus “I” and “A” are not indistinguishable referring words. Also I explore the idea that unlike “A”, “I” has a guaranteed reference in an epistemic sense, being immune to error through misidentification