Indexicalism is the idea that the world is ultimately best described in terms of indexical expressions like ‘here’, ‘you’, ‘now’, ‘outside’, ‘same’ or ‘other’. Substantive descriptions like ‘water’, ‘trees’, ‘the planet Venus’, ‘the year 2021’ or ‘the German population’ are appropriate to think things through only to the extent that they harbor implicit indexicality – this is to say, they abbreviate indexical expressions, like ‘that drinkable stuff that fills that lake and that bottle’, ‘those green things on the surface of this planet’, ‘the morning star and the evening star’, ‘this year’ or ‘those who live between this and that borders’.

Indexicalism is the idea that the world is ultimately best described in terms of indexical expressions like ‘here’, ‘you’, ‘now’, ‘outside’, ‘same’ or ‘other’. Substantive descriptions like ‘water’, ‘trees’, ‘the planet Venus’, ‘the year 2021’ or ‘the German population’ are appropriate to think things through only to the extent that they harbor implicit indexicality – this is to say, they abbreviate indexical expressions, like ‘that drinkable stuff that fills that lake and that bottle’, ‘those green things on the surface of this planet’, ‘the morning star and the evening star’, ‘this year’ or ‘those who live between this and that borders’.