Abstract

In this dissertation I investigate the nature of first-person thoughts, i.e., thoughts typically expressed in English with sentences containing 'I'. ;Led by McTaggart and Castaneda, many philosophers have advanced various arguments and putative counter-examples designed to show that no theory of first-person thoughts can be correct which holds that the reference of a first-person thought to its subject is mediated by descriptive content of that thought. I thoroughly review classical and contemporary theories of first-person thoughts, from Russell through the present, carefully noting the data, arguments, and putative counter-examples that an adequate theory must accommodate. ;Taking a position contrary to that of McTaggart, Castaneda, et al., I describe a class of descriptional theories of first-person thoughts able to meet all of the principal anti-descriptionalist arguments and putative counter-examples, and to explain many of the peculiar properties of first-person thoughts. Those theories impute to a first-person thought a complex descriptive content derived from its subject's introspection of his or her own nonfirst-person mental states; certain causal relationships with its subject's actions; and a structure that includes an aspect under which the content is thought, obscuring part of that content from the introspective awareness of its subject