Thought-Contents: On the Ontology of Belief and the Semantics of Belief Attribution (Philosophical Studies Series (104))

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. One bears the belief-relation to a thought-content __T__ just in case one (is disposed as one who) inwardly affirms a certain sentence **S of one’s language of thought that satisfies what __T__ encodes, which in turn requires that **S ’s non-logical parts stand in appropriate semantical relations to items specified by __T__. Since these items may include other senses as well as ordinary objects, beliefs of arbitrary complexity are automatically accommodated. Within the framework of the formal ontology, a context-dependent compositional semantics is then provided for a fragment of regimented English capable of formulating ascriptions of belief—a semantics that treats substitutional opacity as a genuine semantic datum.**** Finally, the resulting picture of belief and its attribution is defended by showing how it solves standard puzzles, avoids objections to rival accounts, and satisfies certain adequacy conditions not fulfilled by traditional theories. Along the way, clarification and defense is offered for the ingredient conception of object-dependent senses, and it is shown how adoption of the language of thought hypothesis permits Bertrand Russell’s obscure doctrine of logical forms to be understood in a way that not only vindicates his Multiple Relation theory of __de re__ belief but also reveals the connection between these logical forms and thought-contents. 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

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.

One bears the belief-relation to a thought-content T just in case one (is disposed as one who) inwardly affirms a certain sentence S of one’s language of thought that satisfies what T encodes, which in turn requires that S’s non-logical parts stand in appropriate semantical relations to items specified by T. Since these items may include other senses as well as ordinary objects, beliefs of arbitrary complexity are automatically accommodated. Within the framework of the formal ontology, a context-dependent compositional semantics is then provided for a fragment of regimented English capable of formulating ascriptions of belief—a semantics that treats substitutional opacity as a genuine semantic datum.

Finally, the resulting picture of belief and its attribution is defended by showing how it solves standard puzzles, avoids objections to rival accounts, and satisfies certain adequacy conditions not fulfilled by traditional theories. Along the way, clarification and defense is offered for the ingredient conception of object-dependent senses, and it is shown how adoption of the language of thought hypothesis permits Bertrand Russell’s obscure doctrine of logical forms to be understood in a way that not only vindicates his Multiple Relation theory of de re belief but also reveals the connection between these logical forms and thought-contents.

According to our commonsense view of the matter, beliefs, desires, intentions and the like are special kinds of internal states the possession of which by a given cr- ture potentially explains its behavior and otherwise renders the creature intelligible to us. So-called folk psychology provides us with a rough-and-ready network of counterfactuals delimiting the role supposedly played by these internal states v- à-vis perceptual input, inference, and behavioral output in a normal member of our species. The exact empirical details of this network do not matter here, for we are not undertaking further re nement or systematization of the relevant counterfac- als. Instead, our topic is the ontological analysis of the internal states that occupy the nodes of this complex network and the bearing of that analysis on the truth conditions of the sentences we use to ascribe beliefs and related states. The relevant counterfactuals canonically describe particular belief-, desire-, and intention-states as states of believing, desiring, and intending that such-a- such. The use of in nitival clauses to describe desires and intentions is not really an exception, for desiring or intending to do A (or to be F) is just having a self-regarding desire or intention that oneself does A (or that oneself is F). By the lights of our commonsense psychology, then, to be in a particular belief-, desire-, or intention-state is to bear the corresponding attitudinal relation— believing, desiring, or intending—to a certain content.