The word "I" is a linguistic pointer with no actual referent
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REFUTED
the evidence says no
refutedsupported
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Reference literature on indexicals establishes that the word 'I' functions as an indexical or pure indexical with a referent or content that is fixed by the context of use, directly refuting the claim that it has no actual referent.
Indexicals (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
# Indexicals
First published Fri Sep 14, 2001; substantive revision Fri Jan 16, 2015
An indexical is, roughly speaking, a linguistic expression whose reference can shift from context to context. For example, the indexical ‘you’ may refer to one person in one context and to another person in another context. Other paradigmatic examples of indexicals are ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘today’, ‘yesterday’, ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘that’. Two speakers who utter a single sentence that contains an indexical may say different things. For instance, when both John and Mary utter ‘I am hungry’, Mary says that she is hungry, whereas John says that he is hungry. Many philosophers hold that indexicals have two sorts of meaning. The first sort of meaning is often called ‘linguistic meaning’ or ‘character’ (the latter term is due to David Kaplan, 1989a). The second sort of meaning is often called ‘content’. Using this terminology, we can say that every indexical has a single unvarying character, but may vary in content from context to context.
Philosophers have several reasons for being interested in indexicals. First, some wish to
Demonstratives and Indexicals | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
# Demonstratives and Indexicals
In the philosophy of language, an indexical is any expression whose content varies from one context of use to another. The standard list of indexicals includes pronouns such as “I”, “you”, “he”, “she”, “it”, “this”, “that”, plus adverbs such as “now”, “then”, “today”, “yesterday”, “here”, and “actually”. Other candidates include the tenses of verbs, adjectives such as “local”, and a range of expressions such as “yea” or “so” as used in constructions such as “yea big” (said, for example, while holding one’s hands two feet apart). Certain indexicals, often called “pure indexicals”, have their content fixed automatically in a context of use in virtue of their meaning. “I”, “today”, and “actually” are common examples of pure indexicals. Other indexicals, often called “true demonstratives,” require some kind of additional supplementation in a context in order to successfully refer in the context. The demonstrative pronouns “this” and “that” are clear examples of true demonstratives, because they require something of the speaker—some kind of gesture, or some kind of special intention—in
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