Frege on 'I', 'now', 'today' and some other linguistic devices

In this paper, I argue against an influential view of Frege's writings on i ndexical and other context-sensitive expressions, and in favour of an alter native. The centrepiece of the influential view, due to (among others) Evan s and McDowell, is that according to Frege, context-sensitive word-meaning plus context combine to express senses which are essentially first person, essentially present tense and so on, depending on the context-sensitive exp ression in question. Frege's treatment of indexicals thus fits smoothly wit h his Intuitive Criterion of difference of sense. On my view, by contrast, Frege stuck by the view which he held in his unpublished 1897 'Logic', name ly that the senses expressed by the combination of context-sensitive word-m eaning and context could just as well be expressed by means of non-context- sensitive expressions: being first person, present tense and so on are prop erties, in Frege's view, only of language, not of thought. Given the irredu cibility of indexicals - a phenomenon noticed by Castaneda, Perry and other s - Frege's treatment of indexicals thus turns out to be inconsistent with the Intuitive Criterion. I argue that Frege was not aware of the inconsiste ncy because he was not aware of the irreducibility of indexicals. This over sight was possible because the source of Frege's interest in indexicals, as in other context-sensitive expressions, differed from that of contemporary theorists. Whereas contemporary theorists are most often interested in ind exicals (and in Frege's treatment of them) because they are interested in t he indexical versions of Frege's Puzzle and their relation to psychological explanation, Frege himself was interested in them because they pose a prim a facie threat to his general conception of thoughts. The only indexical ex pression Frege's view of which the above account does not cover is 'I' inso far as it is associated with 'special and primitive' senses, but Frege did not introduce such senses with a view to explaining the irreducibility of ' I'; his real reason for introducing them remains obscure.