  An advocate of this purely qualitative descriptivist theory of indexicals could analyze the example of the messy shopper, in outline, as follows. When John first spots the messy shopper at \(t_0\), and utters ‘He is making a mess’, he begins to believe the descriptive proposition that the man who is \(F\) is making a mess, where \(F\) is a purely qualitative property. Later, at \(t_1\), when John utters ‘I am making a mess’, he begins to believe that the man who is \(G\) is making a mess, where \(G\) is a purely qualitative property different from \(F\). Therefore, John begins to believe a proposition that he did not previously believe, contrary to what direct-reference theories entail. Consider also the slightly modified case in which John utters both ‘He is making a mess’ and ‘I am not making a mess’ when he first looks in the mirror at \(t_0\). On a descriptivist analysis, John at that moment believes both the proposition that the man who is \(F\) is making a mess and the proposition that the man who is \(G\) is not making a mess. The second proposition is not the negation of the first, so John is perfectly rational to believe both. Thus the purely qualitative descriptivist theory seems to avoid the above problems for direct reference theories.