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    Descriptive Indexicals, Propositional Attitudes and the Double Role of Context

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    This paper offers an account of some uses of indexicals in the context of propositional attitude ascriptions, i. e. reports that concern the cognitive relations people bring to bear on propositions. While the contribution of indexicals to the truth conditions of an utterance is usually singular, their interpretation is general in the case of so called descriptive uses. I will propose an interpretation of the descriptive uses of indexicals via a mechanism of descriptive anaphora and apply this mechanism to the case of attitude ascriptions. I will emphasize the role of context both in the suppression of the default referential reading of the indexical, as well as in the reconstruction of the relevant interpretation of the whole utterance
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