by `individual notion of I'. If I might carry the speculation forward yet
another small step, perhaps, despite Husserl's untoward commitment to the
doctrine that `I' is an indexical, and thus, a referring expression, one
might envision Husserl as labouring to articulate, within the most useful
logico-linguistic framework available to him, the insight that
self-reference, while linguistically expressible, is itself pre-linguistic.
And thus, perhaps, the pre-articulate self-understanding, the
`I-presentation' of which Husserl speaks, is best understood precisely as
the self itself revealed in self-referential sentence. [27] ' is not a
referring expression, we part company at precisely that corner at which his
view is most saliently akin to that of Husserl. Zemach takes his cue from
Strawson's discussion, in `On Referring', of the sign, posted at a
particularly ill-supported bridge, reading `Unsafe for Lorries'. For both
Strawson and Zemach it is the bridge itself, not some submerged linguistic
item referring to it, which is the subject of this apparently truncated
sentence. "The entity of which the referential part of the sentence is
predicated is present in the sentence, so to speak, `in person'. The
grammatical subject of this sentence is the bridge itself." [28] A sentence
of this sort, in which the subject is `displayed', not `referred to', is
not inappropriately termed by Zemach a `display sentence'. Self-referential
sentences are display sentences. `I' is either semantically pleonastic or
functions merely to mark the pre-linguistic presence of the self to itself.
The self is, then, a self-referential `mental term' [29] which, as it were,
displays itself to itself. [30] It is, more specifically, a `mental
description' which picks itself out. [31] Like `Unsafe for Lorries', `[I]
am thinking' displays its subject. The self (itself) is the very subject of
the sentence. [32] And Zemach records a remarkable virtue of this ploy:
"Display propositions cannot be erroneously believed, or disbelieved, due
to misidentification of the subject." [33]

It is striking to find among the lucid and penetrating insights of the
Neo-Vedantist, K. C. Bhattacharyya, commitments which run parallel to that
of Zemach. And it is important to note that Buddhist `anti-egology' grows
in, but grows, nonetheless, from, the rich humus of accumulated insights
represented by Bhattacharyya's remarks. For Bhattacharyya,

　　 The I is not unmeanable nor is it meant-meant even as unmeanable ...
　　 Meaning is the thinnest presentation of the object, as existing apart
　　 from introspection. I has no meaning in this sense: it has not even
　　 the meaning of being unmeant or unmeanable ... [34]

And we find here a distinctive resonance with the Husserlian notion of `an
unvarying, non-conceptual, inarticulate self-understanding': an
introspective `I-presentation'. Indeed, the word `I' does not refer to the
self, but rather expresses the self's qown reference to itself "The word",
Bhattacharyya tells us, "has a meaning function but not a meaning: it is
the expression of introspection or what may be called the I-function." [35]
And remarkably akin to Zemach's self-referential 'mental term' is
Bhattacharyya's understanding of the use of 'a word like I': ". . . which
is like a pointing gesture at once self-evidencing and self-evident. My
self-consciousness is not the understanding of the meaning of the word I:
the word only reveals it to another." [36] Indeed, "The word may be said at
once to symbolize and to be symbolized by my introspective self.... I, the
speaker, symbolize it by myself or in a sense ... incarnate myself in it."
[37]

One should expect, then, assuming the cogency of the Zemach/Bhattacharyya
rendering, that precisely the same considerations would apply in the case
of V-expressions. The replacement of a given V-expression by a description,
name, or indexical straightforwardly violates our fundamental epistemic
condition. Yet if '[me] suy-nghi, is, as the Zemachian-Bhattacharyyan
analysis would have it, a display sentence, it cannot be the self which is
displayed. For we would then have no way of distinguishing the two
propositions, 'I am thinking' and 'me suy-nghi.' Whatever might be
displayed in the Vietnamese sentence must be able to account for the fact
that 'me suy-nghi, presupposes, as a condition of assertability that, if
speaking candidly, the speaker believes herself to be the mother of the
interlocutor, while 'I am thinking' is not supported by this condition.
Does 'Me suy-nghi display, then, the fact (or state-of-affairs) represented
by this statement-condition? This, of course, will not do. It is not a
fact, but a concrete individual person, who is thinking. Perhaps a more
reasonable response to this quandary would be to suggest that what is
displayed is not the-self's-being-your-mother (the fact), but rather