Control, Attitudes de se and Immunity to Error Through Misidentification

Abstract

In his work on attitudes de se, James Higginbotham has observed that the silent subject of the infinitival complements of verbs such as remember and imagine is (i) unambiguously de se and (ii) immune to error through misidentification relatively to the subject of the matrix clause. In this article, we review and criticize Higginbotham’s reflexive analysis of these infinitival complements. We also show that the type of criticism we raise against Higginbotham’s account applies likewise to analyses based on the use of acquaintance relations and centered possible worlds. Finally, following recent ideas in cognitive science, we propose an amendment to Higginbotham’s account based on the idea that the thematic-role “Experiencer” corresponds to a function mapping events into “minimal selves”, in the sense of Shaun Gallagher.