ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses mostly on de se attitudes in what follows, mutatis mutandis, to the temporal case. It discusses three proposals for what the special connection between action and de se attitudes is. The chapter discusses the claim that de se attitudes are, in a sense to be made precise, essential to the explanation of action. It discusses one of Perry’s classic examples, along with his claim that such examples pose a problem for the doctrine of propositions, a traditional way of thinking about attitudes and their contents. The doctrine of propositions runs into trouble in connection with cases in which two agents can, in a certain sense, be said to “have all the same attitudes”, but in which they are rationally motivated to perform different actions. The chapter closes with a brief discussion of how two prominent theories accommodate the feature of de se attitudes that gives rise to this problem.
