Rudolf Lingens (original) (raw)

Rudolph Lingens is a fictional character often used by contemporary analytic philosophers as a placeholder name in a hypothetical scenario which illustrates some feature of the indexicality of natural language. He was created by the logician Gottlob Frege in the course of one of the earliest systematic discussions of indexicals. A number of philosophers picking up on Frege's discussion of indexicals, notably John Perry, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker, have adopted Lingens to make their own points about indexicals.