This book provides a formal ontology of senses and the belief-relation that grounds the distinction between de dicto, de re, and de se beliefs as well as the opacity of belief reports. According to this ontology, the relata of the belief-relation are an agent and a special sort of object-dependent sense (a "thought-content"), the latter being an "abstract" property encoding various syntactic and semantic constraints on sentences of a language of thought.
Author(s): Steven E. Boër
Series: Philosophical Studies Series
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 387
CONTENTS......Page 7
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 11
INTRODUCTION......Page 13
PART I: PRELIMINARIES......Page 19
1.1. Some types of intentionality......Page 20
1.2. The substitutional approach and its problems......Page 26
1.3. Non-Actualism......Page 29
1.4. Intensionality and extensionality......Page 38
1.5. Hyper-intensionality......Page 44
1.6. Opacity and transparency......Page 49
1.7. De re / de dicto / de se......Page 51
2.1. Some general adequacy conditions......Page 56
2.2. Frege's theory of thoughts......Page 62
2.3. Russell's propositional and multiple-relation theories......Page 71
2.4. Chisholm's property-attribution theory......Page 82
PART II: ONTOLOGY......Page 96
3. LOGICAL FORMS AND MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS: THE LESSON OF RUSSELL'S MULTIPLE RELATION THEORY OF JUDGMENT......Page 97
3.1. Adequacy conditions on the reduction......Page 98
3.2. The formalities of MRTJ......Page 99
3.3. The theory [ ]......Page 108
3.4. The bridge principles and reduction of MRTJ to [ ][sup(+)]......Page 112
3.5. Vindication and the adequacy conditions......Page 120
3.6. Implications of the reduction of MRTJ for our wider project......Page 125
3.7. The shape of things to come......Page 127
4.1. Overview......Page 137
4.2. The underlying theory of abstract objects......Page 140
4.3. [ ]: The proto-theory......Page 143
5.1. Revisions to the proto-theory......Page 184
5.2. Application to higher-order belief......Page 194
5.3. Generalizing key definitions, principles, and theorems......Page 198
5.4. Doing without empty senses......Page 203
Appendix to Chapter 5: The formal theory [ ]......Page 205
PART III: SEMANTICS......Page 217
6. BELIEF REPORTS AND COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTICS......Page 218
6.1. The theory [ ] as a semantical metalanguage......Page 219
6.2. The target language L[sub(1)]......Page 226
6.3. [ ]: A [ ]-based sense-reference semantics for L[sub(0)] and L[sub(1)]......Page 229
6.4. Semantics for mentalese—or: speak for yourself!......Page 237
6.5. Prospects for naturalization......Page 242
7.1. De dicto / de re / de se......Page 247
7.2. Iterated belief reports......Page 254
7.3. A problem about reflexivity......Page 256
7.4. Saul Kripke's original puzzle......Page 258
7.5. Kripke's puzzle and iterated belief reports......Page 262
7.6. David Austin's 'Two Tubes' puzzle......Page 265
7.7. Pragmatics versus semantics......Page 267
7.8. Mark Richard's puzzle......Page 270
8.1. Specific objections to our semantical theory......Page 276
8.2. Generic objections to 'Fregean' semantics......Page 287
PART IV: REAR-GUARD ACTION......Page 305
9.1. The central theses......Page 306
9.2. Gareth Evans' first argument for (ODT-1)......Page 309
9.3. Critique and defense of Evans' first argument......Page 312
9.4. Evans' second argument for (ODT-1)......Page 317
9.5. Critique and defense of Evans' second argument......Page 318
9.6. The problem of negative existentials involving empty singular terms......Page 322
9.7. The problem of attitude-ascriptions with 'that'-clauses containing empty terms......Page 326
9.8. A problem about certain conditionals......Page 329
9.9. An argument for (ODT-2) yielding (ODT-1) as a corollary......Page 331
10.1. Kent Bach's theory of 'de re beliefs'......Page 338
10.2. Harold Noonan's theory of demonstrative thoughts......Page 348
10.3. The narrow content objection......Page 355
10.4. Object-dependence and the senses of general terms......Page 361
C......Page 366
F......Page 367
M......Page 368
R......Page 369
Z......Page 370
B......Page 371
C......Page 372
D......Page 373
G......Page 374
J......Page 375
M......Page 376
O......Page 377
Q......Page 378
S......Page 379
T......Page 380
W......Page 381
Z......Page 382
