Kyle Dickey

UCSB Philosophy

Salmon – Belief De Re

De Re Attitudes

There are two views broadly construed that characterize the content of propositional attitudes in

different ways. These are the Russellian and Fregean views about the nature of propositions. Much ink

has been spilled in attempts to adequately capture a theory of propositional attitudes in accord with

each of these views of propositions. This paper will add to the spillage. In what follows a number of

considerations will be put forward; some more complete than others. To begin I will sketch each theory

as put forward by it's proponents. Then I will discuss each in turn, hopefully offering some insights as

to the best form of each theory. I will discuss some of the considerations of each view's proponents and

a problem or two with each iteration of the theory. In conclusion I will offer a discussion of the

relationship between the de re and de dicto, with an argument that we ought not attempt to reduce the

first to the second, but rather the other way around.

Frege and Russell

Frege and Russell disagreed about the nature of propositions.1 Each of them thought that

propositions were composed of a different sort of entity. Russell took on the rather naive view that the

constituents of propositions are objects and universals. The sentence “snow is white” expresses the

proposition <snow, whiteness> for Russell, where snow and the property of whiteness are literally

constituents of the proposition expressed. Russell also countenanced singular propositions (in addition

to and in contrast with general propositions) that include individuals as constituents. The sentence

“Socrates is wise” expresses the singular proposition <Socrates, Wisdom>, where Socrates is a

constituent of the proposition.

1 See http://www.logicmuseum.com/reference/fregerussell1904.htm for a transcription of the letters contents relating to the disagreement over this point.

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Frege on the other hand took all propositions to be composed of conceptual entities he called

senses.2 For Frege a sense is a conceptual representation, and all thoughts (Frege's word for

propositions) are meaningful because they are composed out of meaningful parts. Thus, for Frege,

“Socrates is wise” in default contexts expresses the thought composed of the sense of “Socrates” and

the sense of “is wise.” Senses are meant to determine their objects. Individual senses like the sense of

“Socrates” pick out the individual objects they are concepts of. So in this case, the sense of “Socrates”

is expressed by the term and determines the man Socrates.

Skirting many of the details, Frege is unclear on exactly what he thinks is the sense of a proper

name.3 He seems to suggest that names are synonymous (have the same sense as) with other singular

terms like definite descriptions that designate the same individual, but this topic is much debated. In

order to be as charitable as possible and give the Fregean theory its best fighting chance, I will suppose

that proper names express individual senses that are not the same as the sense of some co-referential

description. That is, I will not suppose that “Socrates” and “Plato's teacher” are synonyms, though the

senses they express do determine the same individual.

Frege and Russell not only disagreed about the nature of propositions, but also about what it

takes to understand a proposition. Frege thought that understanding a term was constituted by knowing

the meaning of the term, that is knowing the sense expressed by the term, and thus understanding a

sentence involves knowing the thought expressed by the sentence. For Frege, if one knows all of the

meanings of the terms in a particular sentence, then (given that one speaks the language and that the

sentence is an actual sentence of that language) one ought to be able to calculate the meaning of the

thought expressed. This he supposes is doable even without knowledge of what each sense determines.

The sense of a proper name is grasped by everyone who is sufficiently familiar with the

2 Frege, Gottlob, “On Sense and Reference,” reprinted in The Philosophy of Language, ed. A.P. Martinich and David Sosa, (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013), 35-47.

3 Frege, “On Sense and Reference,” 36 and 46.

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language or totality of designations to which it belongs; but this serves to illuminate only a

single aspect of the reference, supposing it to have one. Comprehensive knowledge of the

reference would require us to be able to say immediately whether any given sense belongs to it.

To such knowledge we never attain.4

Frege thought that we may lack knowledge of the referent of an expression while still having adequate

knowledge of what the expression means. To merely understand an expression, he thinks it is not

required that one know to what the expression refers.

Russell however takes a harder line on understanding. He claims “every proposition

which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.”5

Though his views shifted around a bit, I will take the paradigm Russellian view to be that one can only

understand (A) a singular proposition if one is acquainted with the individual object contained in the

proposition and (B) a general proposition by being acquainted with the relevant universals. Thus, to

truly know the proposition expressed by “Socrates is wise” one must be acquainted with Socrates.

There are many singular propositions that we thereby will not know in this direct way. Instead, these

propositions may only be known to us by description via general propositions. Many have rejected

Russell's strict doctrine of acquaintance where all anyone is ultimately acquainted with is their own

sense-data, but his views have been rather influential in the formulation of contemporary views about

de re attitudes.

The De Re

To have a de re attitude, as opposed to a de dicto attitude, is classically thought of as having

some sort of unmediated attitude toward or relation to an object. An initial way of thinking about the

distinction is that a de re attitude is directly of or about an object while a de dicto attitude is mediated

by the dictum, a proposition or some conceptual representation of the object. The distinction was

4 Frege, “On Sense and Reference,” 36.5 Russell, Bertrand, The Problems of Philosophy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912 reset 1946), 58.

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originally put forward in the case of modality. Take the modal operator “possibly.” This term can be

applied to a proposition as a whole or to an object. For example “it is possible that first child of the 22nd

century will be a boy” is a de dicto reading where the “possibly” operates on the whole dictum or

proposition. On the other hand “The first child of the 22nd century possibly will be a boy.” has the

possibility operator operating on the re or individual thing which in this case is the first child of the 22nd

century.

A Russell inspired view of de re attitudes takes their content to be singular propositions that

contain the individual as a constituent.6 The attitudes to which I am referring are the ones that Russell

called “propositional verbs” which relate an individual to a proposition.7 These propositional attitude

verbs are terms like “believe,” “desire,” “wish,” etc., and these terms are usually used in naturally

spoken English in the form of de dicto syntactic constructions. For example:

1. Ralph believes that Ortcutt is a spy.8

This is classically thought to relate Ralph to the proposition expressed by “Ortcutt is a spy” in the mode

of belief. When taken classically, the de dicto syntactic construction seems to be a good guide to

reading the semantics off the sentence.

The de re construction gets a little more complicated. There is a way to understand a

syntactically de dicto sentence as expressing a semantically de re proposition.

2. Ralph believes of Ortcutt that he is a spy.

The best way however to syntactically form a de re attitude sentence is via the following two sentence

constructions: either passively,

3. Ortcutt is believed by Ralph to be a spy

6 Bach, Kent. "Getting a Thing into a Thought." in New essays on singular thought ed. Robin Jeshion, (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010), 41-43.

7 Russell, Bertrand, “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” The Monist, (1918), 227.8 Quine, Willard, "Quantifiers and propositional attitudes." reprinted in The Philosophy of Language, ed. A.P. Martinich

and David Sosa, (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013), 176-182.

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or actively,

4. Ralph believes Ortcutt to be a spy.

Basically, by removing “that” the syntactic de re sentence construction makes clear a different sort of

relation. Not one between Ralph and the proposition per se, but one between Ralph and Ortcutt

directly. Given a Russellian theory of singular propositions, constructions like 4 do highlight a relation

between Ralph and a proposition, but the proposition itself has Ortcutt as a singular constituent. For

those Russellian theorists that go in for singular propositions, constructions like 1 say the same thing as

constructions like 4 because there is no difference between the relation between Ralph and the singular

proposition <Ortcutt, Spy-hood> to be highlighted by the “that” clause in 1. A Fregean theory must

distinguish between these two cases because of Frege's doctrine of shift in relation to “that” clauses.

The Fregean De Re

A Fregean theory of the de re is usually considered to be much more difficult to render. There

are a number of reasons for this. First of all is the prima facie problem that if a de re attitude is to be

unmediated or direct how a Fregean theory, which is committed to all reference being mediated by

senses or concepts, can claim that attitudes are directly about objects. This problem is somewhat of a

non sequitur. It must assume a theory of propositions or aboutness in general that countenances singular

propositions where the objects these propositions are about are constituents of the propositions

themselves. Fregeans deny this outright and claim that all reference or aboutness is conceptually

mediated. For the Fregean, concepts or senses are always distinct from the referent determined. If the

critic wishes to claim that a Fregean theory cannot accommodate de re attitudes merely because the

Fregean will not take the objects which a proposition is about as constituents, the critic has merely

begged the question against the Fregean. If having a de re attitude toward an object always involves

having an attitude the content of which includes the object in question, the stubborn Fregean will

simply deny that there are de re attitudes. Yet, in general, Fregeans do attempt to offer a theory of de re

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attitudes, and so must be doing something other than analyzing attitudes which require the objects

which they are attitudes toward to be constituents of their contents.

A second issue with a Fregean account of de re attitudes has to do with Frege's doctrine of shift

He claims that “that” clauses shift the reference of sentences within their scope from the truth-value

they normally determine to the customary thought expressed by the sentence in its default mode.9 When

this occurs the “that” clause refers to a thought and not a truth value. Thus, for a sentence like 1, the

obvious way to read the semantics off of the sentence given the doctrine of shift is that “believes that”

relates Ralph to the Fregean thought composed of the sense of “Ortcutt” and the sense of “is a spy,” or

the thought that Ortcutt is a spy.

Quine

An issue with the Fregean theory taken up by a number of philosophers working in a Fregean

vein seems to be something along these lines: if belief is a relation between an individual and a

proposition, how can there also be de re beliefs that relate individual believers to other individuals and

some property believed to be had by them? Usually, this issue has been addressed by Fregeans

ultimately taking belief de re to be reducible to a special case of belief de dicto, and then generalizing

from such a theory to account for de re attitudes altogether.

An outlier among these Fregean philosophers is Quine, who on largely Fregean grounds seems

to have found himself in such a puzzled state in his theorizing that in his classic paper “Quantifiers and

Propositional Attitudes” he opted to take “belief” as lexically ambiguous between a notional and

relational sense.10 The issue Quine puzzled about (obviously, as the title states) had to do with the

interaction between quantifiers and propositional attitude verbs. In some slightly earlier work Quine

attempted to show that de re modality was illegitimate by showing that one could never quantify into

9 The default mode of a sentence is one where there are no reference shifting operators in play such as terms like “that,” quotation marks, or for Frege even terms like “exist.”

10 Quine, “Quantifiers and propositional attitudes,” 176-182.

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opaque (de re modal) contexts.11 Interestingly, Quine seems to have somewhat less of a problem with

de re or relational belief.12 Instead his issue is with quantifying into contexts that he takes to be opaque,

and one such opaque context for Quine is the case of “that” clauses. The issue can be formulated in a

puzzle about Ralph.

5. Ralph believes that the man in the brown hat is a spy.

6. Ralph believes that the man seen at the beach is not a spy.

Now we can take these two sentences along with sentence 1 (Ralph believes that Ortcutt is a spy) and

come up with a story about Ralph seeing the man Ortcutt once at the beach and once in a brown hat.

Classically the story goes that Ralph has a vague familiarity with Ortcutt as a pillar of the community

and recognizes the man he sees at the beach as said pillar. However, when seen slinking around in a

shady manner, Ralph does not recognize the man he sees in the brown hat as Ortcutt. The problem can

now be made clear. It seems like 5 and 6 entail sentences 7 and 8 respectively.

7. ∃x(Ralph believes that x is a spy)

8. x(Ralph believes that x is not a spy)∃

And as we know that Ortcutt is the man both of Ralph's beliefs are about, we can further conclude

9. x(Ralph believes that x is a spy & Ralph believes that x is not a spy)∃

which at least initially may strike one as charging Ralph with the rational failure of having inconsistent

beliefs.

With a little reflection, hopefully it is obvious in this situation why one really cannot charge

Ralph with a rational offense via 9. Surely someone can have conflicting beliefs and be unable to

recognize the conflict among their attitudes for reasons outside of their control. What we cannot

conclude from 7 and 8 according to Quine is not 9, but 10.

11 Quine, Willard, “Reference and Modality” in From a logical point of view: 9 logico-philosophical essays, (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1953), 139-159.

12 Until the end of his paper where he calls propositions and intensions creatures of darkness and tries to rid them by appealing to a special relation “believes-true” and quoted sentences.

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10. x(Ralph believes that x is a spy and x is not a spy)∃

Quine converts all talk of quantifying into propositional attitude idioms into attempts at quantifying

into names of intensions, which he thinks cannot be done (or at least highly suspect). And so really his

preferred rendering of 9 and 10 would be 11 and 12.

11. x(Ralph believes y(y is a spy) of x & Ralph believes z(z is not a spy) of x)∃

12. x(Ralph believes y(y is a spy & y is not a spy) of x)∃

This, he thinks, converts dyadic belief, where the relation of belief is between and individual and a

proposition, into an irreducibly triadic relation. Triadic or relational belief for Quine is a relation

between an individual and another individual plus the intension (or property) that the original

individual believes the other to satisfy. He suggests that we take “that” clauses to name intensions, and

when we wish to quantify into attitude contexts he thinks we ought to shift into the notation of

intentions in order to make clear the boundary between those things which can and cannot be quantified

into. We cannot, Quine thinks, quantify into intensions, otherwise 12 would be a legitimate

consequence of 7 & 8 (or really 11), but 12 does say something rationally offensive about Ralph.

Kaplan

Post Quine Fregeans have rejected Quine's appeal to lexical ambiguity. It does seem rather

questionable to believe that “belief” actually has two distinct and unrelated readings, one notional and

one relational. The word is not like “bank” or “odd.” The situation has to be more complicated than

mere lexical ambiguity. Obviously de re and de dicto belief are not the same thing, but there must at

least be some sort of logical relation between them. Enter David Kaplan. In his classic paper

“Quantifying In,” Kaplan takes Quine to have attempted to assimilate “intermediate occurrences” to

“accidental ones” and to have been forced to form a new primitive notion of belief (relational belief) in

order to accommodate quantifying into such contexts in a rather ad hoc manner.13 Kaplan takes an

13 Kaplan, David, “Quantifying In,” in The Philosophy of Language, ed. A.P. Martinich and David Sosa, (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013), 183-203.

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alternative route and tries to lay out a theory that captures the logical connection between the de re and

de dicto by showing that the de re is really just a special case of the de dicto. Other Fregeans have

followed in Kaplan's footsteps, though the details of each theory tend to shift.

Kaplan gives this analysis of the de re:

13. ∃α[R(α, Ortcutt, Ralph) & Ralph B ˹α is a spy˺]14

which says that there is some expression, name, or concept α that is in relation R to Ortcutt and Ralph,

and Ralph believes de dicto (B) ˹α is a spy.˺ I will assume that the reader understands the corner quotes

around what Ralph believes and all that needs to be explained is the relation R. Kaplan states “I will

say α represents x to Ralph (symbolized: “R(α, x, Ralph)”) if and only if (i) α denotes x, (ii) α is a name

of x for Ralph, and (iii) α is (sufficiently) vivid.”15

Clause (i) is only meant to draw attention to the special relationship between α and whatever the

expression picks out. For example the term “nine” and the number nine are distinct entities, but there is

an important relationship between them.16 One denotes the other. Most of the action over Kaplan's

analysis pertains to clauses (ii) and (iii) however, so I will be focusing on those here. The notion of a

name of for Kaplan is elaborated on the model of a photograph. Pictures taken with a camera are

always pictures of whatever object of which the picture is taken. Yet, sometimes things don't go

according to plan and the picture turns out fuzzy, light saturated, and/or over exposed. Yet, even in

these cases, if the camera is pointed at say a black and blue dress when the picture is snapped, the

picture will always be of a black and blue dress no matter what the photo looks like (and no matter how

many people on the internet believe otherwise).17 The basic idea behind the notion of a name of is that

of something like a causal connection. A name of something for a person involves their being in causal

14 Kaplan, “Quantifying In,” 197.15 Kaplan, “Quantifying In,” 197.16 Kaplan, “Quantifying In,” 189.17 I am rather inclined to think that a completely washed out photo doesn't count as a photo of anything, but I can't think of

an analogous case of a “washed out” name of.

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contact with that thing. Obviously two identical names can be of different individuals just as two

identical pictures can be taken of different objects but made to look the same. What really matters in

both the case of the name and a picture is the causal connection.

To continually abuse the photograph analogy, imagine a photograph that has been copied a

number of times taking each successive copy as the basis for the next. The final copy of the

photograph, say after a dozen or so iterations, is still of the same thing as the original even if it has

ceased to closely resemble that thing. The causal chain of picture to thing pictured can be relatively

indirect, and similarly the relation between name and thing named may be indirect in this case while

the name still counts as a name of the thing in question.

One thing a name of requires is that there actually be something it is a name of. That is, this

rules out the name “Sherlock Holmes” as a name of the genius detective in the same way that we will

never have a picture of Holmes. We could not construct a picture of Holmes even by gleaning how he is

supposed to look from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. In such a case we would regard the

constructed image not as a picture of Sherlock Holmes but as a rendition of how the fictional character

might look. This also rules out having a name of objects or persons not yet in existence, which rules out

having a name of for the first child born in the 22nd century. Even if I were to declare “I hereby dub the

first child to be born in the twenty-second century 'Newman 1'” I would not thereby have in my

possession a name of that individual.18 This future case would be one Kaplan calls a “dubbing in

absentia,” and he claims to be unwilling to endorse any theory of proper names that permit such a

dubbing.

Vividness is another matter completely, and satisfying the sufficiency clause is somewhat

controversial. A vivid name for Kaplan is “intended to go to the purely internal aspect of individuation”

and involve some sort of “conglomeration of images, names, and partial descriptions” that one has or

18 Kaplan, “Quantifying In,” 195.

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employs when bringing the particular thing to mind.19 Kaplan takes vividness to plausibly be a matter

of relative special interest depending on whatever case is at hand, and thus the sufficiency clause will

likely be fulfilled relative to those interests. However, Kaplan does offer the cagey remark that “vivid

names 'represent' those persons who fill a major role in that inner story which consists of all those

sentences which Ralph believes.” This is the closest thing to a necessary condition he offers for

vividness suggesting that anything else he might add would not count as an absolute requirement.

If a name (or really a concept) meets these three requirements, Kaplan thinks that it can be

subjected to exportation. Exportation is the move from an attitude sentence like 1 to an existentially

quantified sentence like 7.

1. Ralph believes that Ortcutt is a spy.

7. ∃x(Ralph believes that x is a spy)

This move is restricted for Kaplan by the three conditions (i)-(iii) that must be met in order for a name

like “Ortcutt” to be an α that represents Ortcutt for Ralph.20 This constitutes Kaplan's Fregean theory of

the de re. Belief de re is reduced to a species of belief de dicto where the subject expression (the name

or definite description in the subject place of a simple subject-predicate sentence believed) in the belief

ascription meets a certain set of special conditions allowing for quantification in.

Latitudinarianism

Kaplan's view, and most any view that adds further restrictions on exportation aside from

existence, rules out latitudinarianism or unrestricted exportation. The classic case that seems like it

needs to be ruled out is the case of the shortest spy. Any self-respecting English language user ought to

believe that the shortest spy is a spy. Thus, we can safely assume 14.

14. Ralph believes that the shortest spy is a spy.

However, given no restrictions other than that there is a shortest spy (something I take it we can also

19 Kaplan, Quantifying In” 195.20 α is a variable that ranges over expressions.

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safely assume) and ignoring the earlier story about Ralph we can arrive back at 7.

7. ∃x(Ralph believes that x is a spy)

But 7 states that there is some particular person (restricting our domain to people) that Ralph believes is

a spy, and that is just not true. Ralph doesn't have any beliefs about any particular person being a spy,

only that the shortest spy, whoever he or she is, is a spy.

Another story may demonstrate the difference here. Say that my shirt is missing a button. There

may be a particular button that it is missing; the button that in one possible scenario fell off of my shirt.

Now imagine another scenario where my shirt was manufactured, and the button machine ran out of

buttons while working on my shirt. In this situation when I bought my shirt one button was missing. In

such a case there is no particular button that my shirt is missing, my shirt is instead missing a button in

general. We can make the difference between the two cases explicit between 15 and 16.

15. My shirt is missing ∃x(x is a button).

16. x(My shirt is missing x & x is a button). ∃

Given the first scenario 15 and 16 are true, but in the second only 15 is true.

Similarly it seems clear that in the shortest spy case 17 is true, but not 7.

17. Ralph believes that x(x is a spy). ∃

7. x(Ralph believes that x is a spy)∃

Ralph, being a self respecting English speaker, does believe that the shortest spy is a spy and thereby

believes that there are spies, but we don't want to say of Ralph that he believes some particular person

is a spy. Such knowledge would be of interest to the FBI, but Ralph knows nothing that the FBI might

want him to tell them.

Many Fregeans have adopted restrictions like Kaplan's to avoid these issues, but some have not.

Those that have not are called Latitudinarians and accept all quantifying in or unrestricted exportation.

Not just those interested in offering a theory of the Fregean de re have opted for something like

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Kaplan's conditions. Even those that allow for singular propositions must avoid the shortest spy

problem. I will return to these options later, but first want to discuss what it takes to be a latitudinarian.

Ernest Sosa has put forward what is probably the best attempt at a latitudinarian view. In his classic

paper “Propositional Attitudes De Dicto and De Re” he contemplates imposing restrictions on certain

de dicto beliefs in order to avoid unrestricted exportation, but ultimately takes the simplest theory of

reducing the de re to the de dicto to only require Kaplan's restriction (i).21 Remember that (i) only

requires that the name, expression, or concept denote the individual, and this entails that any time

someone has a shortest spy belief this constitutes them having a belief about whoever is denoted by

“the shortest spy.” Sosa suggests that strictly speaking this is correct, but for pragmatic reasons saying

things like 7, that there is a person whom Ralph believes to be a spy, is pragmatically improper. His

idea is that 7 may not be assertable in shortest spy situations for the same sorts of familiar reasons

sentences that over or under inform are not assertable in certain contexts. For example, to answer the

question “have you had anything to drink tonight?” with “yeah, I have had one beer” when in fact the

questioned individual has had three beers is to misinform the questioner by asserting something strictly

speaking true but lacking in crucial information. In the shortest spy case, asserting 7 would be to

overstate Ralph's information state. According to Sosa strictly speaking it would be correct, but it

would implicate that Ralph knows who the shortest spy is, or that he has a particular individual in mind

as being the shortest spy. This extra information, Sosa believes, is a matter of mere pragmatics, to be

dealt with separately from the semantics of belief-quantifier interactions.

Sosa defends this view in another paper called “Fregean Reference Defended” where he puts

forward a simple argument for the minimal thesis that there is at least some sense of “about” such that

anytime someone has a de dicto attitude with a content that denotes a particular individual, that attitude

is about that individual.22 The argument is simple and only two premises long.

21 Sosa, Ernest. "Propositional Attitudes De Dicto and De Re." The Journal of Philosophy (1970): 883-896. 22 Sosa, Ernest. "Fregean Reference Defended." Philosophical Issues (1995): 91-99.

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I. If there is such a thing as the F, then the proposition that the F is G is about the F and attributes

being G to the F.

II. If one believes proposition P, and P is about x and attributes being G to x, then one's belief is

about x and attributes being G to x.

and he concludes “A subject S has at time t a thought (belief, intention, etc.) about x (of x) if S thinks

(believes, intends, etc.) de dicto a proposition that predicates some property ϕ with respect to some

individuating concept (or individuator) α of x for S at that time.” If this argument holds, it seems

correct to think that there is at least some natural sense of “about” and “of” that the Fregean theory

captures even under the seemingly implausible latitudinarian position on the shortest spy case.

Problems of Latitude

Latitudinarianism has a number of issues beyond the implausibility of countenancing 7 in a

shortest spy case. First, Donnellan style cases seem to cause problems for this view.23 Imagine one says

“the man in the corner drinking champagne is happy” attempting to refer to the smiling man in the

corner that is drinking water in a champagne glass. By pure happenstance, when this sentence is uttered

a hidden frowning man in the corner is drinking champagne. It seems that what one has in mind is the

first man. It seems that one's thoughts are about the man with the water and not about the hidden man.

A Fregean view that buys the argument above must conclude however that the believer in question has

a false belief about the hidden man rather than a true belief about the happy man.

A second issue due to Kripke that I will only introduce here takes latitudinarianism to be

implicitly committed to far too much.24 He introduces the rather strange singular term “the y that is

Philby if p, and is the Eiffel Tower if not p” and uses it to show that unrestricted exportation has the

sweeping consequence that all de re beliefs are about the Eiffel Tower. He suggests plausibly that each

23 Donnellan, Keith S. "Reference and definite descriptions." The philosophical review (1966): 281-304. 24 Kripke, Saul, “Unrestricted exportation and some morals for the philosophy of language,” in Philosophical Troubles:

Collected Papers Vol. 1, (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011), 322-350.

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of us has some false beliefs and asks us to let one be p. Then he gives 18 and suggests that 19 follows

given no further restrictions on exportation than that the Eiffel tower exists (latitudinarianism).

18. S believes that the y that is Philby if p, and is the Eiffel Tower if not p, is a spy.

19. S believes of the Eiffel Tower that it is a spy.

Obviously anything might be substituted in for Philby and the Eiffel Tower in this case, and so really

this shows that on latitudinarian grounds any belief de dicto may be converted into a de re belief about

anything given some false belief p. Thus, not only does S get to believe of the Eiffel Tower that it is a

spy, but also that it is a cow, that the President of the United States is a spy, and so on, and so on. Lucky

S gets to believe everything about everything de re. I am unsure how to address Kripke's strange

example, and that is why I only introduce it here. If it cannot be surmounted by some clever

latitudinarian, it must surely be damning.

Russellian De Re

Returning to the other possible options as given by Kaplan's theory of the Fregean de re, a

number of philosophers have denied that all three conditions taken together are needed to adequately

account for the de re, but go a different route than the latitudinarian. Some philosophers have

apparently denied condition (ii) which introduces the notion of a name of, but I will not discuss those

here. Instead I am interested in Keith Donnellan's and Nathan Salmon's denial of the vividness

requirement introduced by condition (iii), but first a caveat about the title of this section. In the

subsequent years after Kaplan's famous paper, Fregeanism has lost some steam. Russell inspired

theories of singular propositions have become much more popular in light of developments pertaining

to further work by Kaplan, Donnellan, Kripke, and Salmon. It is not clear whether Fregeanism holds a

dominant position among philosophers today, though it is still rather widespread. That being said,

contemporary work on the de re, while not worried as much about reducing the de re to the de dicto, is

still very influenced by Kaplan's views.

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Returning to the topic at hand, Donnellan has suggested dropping both (i) the denotation

requirement and (iii) the vividness requirement from the Quantifying In theory of the de re at the end of

his paper “The Contingent A Priori and Rigid Designators.”25 Salmon has suggested something similar

in a paper titled “Three Perspectives on Quantifying In.”26 He supposes that vividness ought to be

dumped, and that only some causal connection with an individual, as discussed in (ii) the name of

portion of Kaplan's theory, is necessary for de re belief about that individual. He suggests that vividness

confuses two notions that need to be kept distinct. One is believing of someone (or some F) that

he/she/it is so-and-so, and the other is having a belief as to whom so-and-so is (or what F so-and-so

is).27 The first notion does not entail the second.

This distinction can be made clear with a short narrative. Imagine you witness a robbery and get

a clear look at the thief. Later when called into the police station to identify the thief in a line up, you

are easily able to pick out the man, and yet when the officer asks you “do you know who that man is?”

clearly the correct answer is “no.” Of course, one could answer such a question with “he is the thief,”

but that would merely be reiterating one's belief about the man that he is the thief and not an identifying

belief as to who the thief is. It seems clear that one has de re beliefs (and even knowledge) about the

thief in this case without knowing who the thief is, and these beliefs seem only to depend on one's

perceptual contact with the man.

This view is rather plausible, but is not without its own strange consequences. If all that is

required for a de re belief is some causal connection, it may be unclear just how strong this causal

connection needs to be. Obviously cases of de re belief involve causal connections to objects we have

perceptual contact with, but what about things we are unable to perceive? A Sherlock Holmes case may

25 Donnellan, Keith S. "The Contingent A Priori and Rigid Designators." Midwest Studies in Philosophy 2, no. 1 (1977): 12-27.

26 Salmon, Nathan, “Three Perspectives on Quantifying In,” in New essays on singular thought ed. Robin Jeshion, (Oxford:Oxford University Press 2010), 64-76.

27 Salmon, “Three Perspectives on Quantifying In,” 74-75.

16

elaborate this idea further. Imagine Holmes arrives at the scene of a crime. The victim lies on the floor

near a bookshelf with a knife through his heart. By examining the victim and surroundings, Holmes

may be able to determine many facts about the murderer. For example the shoe size, whether left or

right handed, experience with committing dastardly crimes, a smoker or drug user, etc. All of these

Holmes may plausibly come to know before determining the identity of the murderer. “Among the

things that Holmes knows in advance about the murderer is that he is the murderer. To this extent, there

is indeed someone whom Holmes believes to be the murderer. There is even someone whom Holmes

knows to be the murderer – although Holmes has so far, even if only briefly, no judgment concerning

who it is.”28 This passage from Salmon suggests that he takes Holmes to have a de re belief about the

murderer in this story merely from being in contact with the victim. Holmes obviously believes that the

murderer is the murderer, and given his causal connection to the murderer via the victim, Salmon takes

it that Holmes believes of the murderer that he is the murderer.

We may generalize on this causal connection and apply it to other cases. Take the case of

Neptune. Le Verrier, a famous French mathematician and astronomer, predicted the existence and

location of the planet Neptune from some calculations he performed in attempting to explain the

observed perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. Now obviously Le Verrier couldn't have come to know

that Neptune caused these perturbations merely from observing them. This is evidenced by his failing

to explain the perturbations of Mercury by postulating the existence of Vulcan. But could Le Verrier

have come upon a de re belief about Neptune merely by observing the perturbations of Uranus?

Salmon must say that he does. Le Verrier came to believe of the Uranus perturber (which is Neptune)

that it perturbs Uranus's orbit.

Maybe these consequences don't seem to be that outlandish, but that is only because the causal

connection has not been made tenuous enough. Causal connections can be rather devious things, and if

28 Salmon, “Three Perspectives on Quantifying In” 75.

17

all that is needed is a weak causal connection to something (such as a connection to some effect it has

produced) in order to have a de re thought about that thing, then it seems we have de re attitudes a

plenty. For example, take any book on your shelf, you have a de re belief of its author(s) (at least of a

dispositional form) that he/she/they wrote the book. I have de re attitudes toward the manufacturer of

my computer, and we all have de re beliefs about the big bang. Each of these de re beliefs has been

made possible merely by our being in the right sort of causal connection with things like authors,

manufacturers, and the big bang via our immediate relation to books, computers, and space-time.

A special case of de re belief under this minimal causal connection view has to do with proper

names. Given that proper names are a paradigm case of something that only gets passed around via a

chain of linguistic interactions beginning with a dubbing (a kind of causal connection), it would seem

that any time one versed in our linguistic practice surrounding proper names came into contact with a

name, that person would come to have a de re belief about the named thing. This may or may not strike

one as plausible, and my guess is that issues surrounding this kind of consideration will either sink or

solidify this view as regarding its veracity. We all often come into contact with names for individuals

that we never have nor will interact with or perceive. I have beliefs about Socrates, Gandhi, Obama,

and Madonna, but do I have de re beliefs about any of them?

It is at least a possibility that I do have de re beliefs about these individuals, and this seems like

it may hold even in a case where a brand new name is introduced. Suppose I say to you “Dan really

likes Frege's theory of sense and reference” without any further indication as to Dan's identity. Are you

in a place to believe de re anything about Dan? At least you can believe that his name is “Dan” and

maybe that is enough. Merely by my saying “Dan really likes Frege's theory of sense and reference”

(and I assure you there is someone I am referring to when I use the name “Dan”) you are thereby able

to form a de re judgment about Dan that he is called “Dan,” and thereby come to believe of Dan that he

is called “Dan.” We might call this the “easy de re.”

18

Problems for the Easy De Re

Interestingly, the biggest opponent to what I am calling the easy de re is none other than the

person that most likely can be credited as inspiring the view, Bertrand Russell. Kent Bach has pointed

out that, in a familiar discussion of Bismark, Russell claims that we often try to assert things (and I take

the same goes for belief in this case), that we can't really assert (or believe).29

[W]hen we make a statement about something known only by description, we often intend to

make our statement, not in the form involving the description, but about the actual thing

described. That is, when we say anything about Bismarck, we should like, if we could, to make

the judgment which Bismarck alone can make, namely, the judgment of which he himself is a

constituent. In this we are necessarily defeated. 30

Now, of course, we needn't buy Russell's rather strict notion of acquaintance where only Bismark has

acquaintance with Bismark, and everyone else knows him merely by description. But I take it that it is

rather absurd to liberalize Russell's notion of acquaintance to the point of claiming that merely being in

contact with the man's name puts someone into acquaintance with him. I never have and never will be

acquainted with Bismark, though I know his name and it does seem plausible to suggest that most of

the individuals alive today in the western world (if not all of it) have been directly affected by the man's

actions and decisions as a Prussian statesman.

The issue raised by what Bach calls the Bismark distinction is that while the propositions we are

usually interested in, for example that Bismark used balance of power diplomacy to preserve German

hegemony in late nineteenth century Europe, are singular propositions.31 Yet we are not usually in a

position to entertain these singular propositions, but only to know them by description. In a case of

coming into contact merely with someone's name and coming to believe that Dan is named “Dan”

29 Bach, “Getting a thing into a thought,” 43.Bach, Kent. "Consulting The Reference Book." Mind & Language 29, no. 4 (2014): 457-458

30 Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, 56–57.31 Bach, “Consulting The Reference Book,” 458.

19

something similar might be happening. In a case where an introduction is made, I point and say “this is

Dan,” it seems like the singular proposition about Dan may be entertained. However in just coming into

contact with the name itself it seems that no one having never met Dan can entertain anything but some

sort of descriptive proposition like that the person called “Dan” is named “Dan.”

This Russellian inspired point may be incorrect however. It might be that merely coming into

contact with a name, as long as the causal connection is intact, is enough to put one in a position to

entertain and believe a singular proposition. I mean, at the least it seems that being at the end of a long

and tenuous causal chain puts an individual into some sort of relation different from the relation one is

in when one knows some merely descriptive information about someone. There is something different

between knowing the shortest spy is a spy and knowing Suzy is the shortest spy (without a clue as to

who Suzy might be). Maybe the causal history of a name is all that is needed to be in a position to have

a de re attitude. The exact details are unclear, but this feels to me like an opportunity to make a

distinction between strengths of de re belief. Thus, insofar as it is possible to have an easy de re belief,

it must also be that there are hard de re beliefs that one has only when in direct perceptual contact

(acquaintance) with a thing.

One case that may be a problem for this theory of the de re as a general account of the

phenomena was introduced by Sosa and has to do specifically with the attitude of wanting.32 Imagine a

military unit of troops and the commanding officer receives orders directly from the General in charge

saying “we want the shortest man to be the first through the enemy's gate.” It seems that the officer

upon returning to his troops may legitimately assert “Shorty, he wants you to go first” to Shorty, who

happens to be the shortest man in the unit. This attitude of wanting seems to be exportable without

restriction, and if so we can move from 20 and the fact that there is a shortest core man to 21 without

having to meet the restriction of even a tenuous causal connection.

32 Sosa, “Propositional attitudes de dicto and de re,” 890.

20

20. The General wants that the shortest man go first.

21. x (The General wants that x go first).∃

If it is correct that attitude ascriptions of wanting are unrestrictedly exportable, then the causal

connection account of the de re will not be a fully general account. Two options present themselves at

this point. Either we may accept this finding and continue attempting to lay out the conditions for all de

re attitudes where some will and others will not be latitudinarian, or we can explain away why

“wanting that” seems to be latitudinarian.

Both of these are real options. In relation to the first, Kripke has suggested that even if

unrestricted exportation holds as valid for “wanting that” ascriptions, it will not so obviously follow

that someone wanting that he be relieved from slooplessness actually wants some particular sloop.33

Thus, even if the ascription can be exported as in the move from 20 to 21, it is not clear that we can

properly say of the General that he has a particular-man-go-first desire rather than a general one. Yet, if

unrestricted exportation holds, it seems that he must, and it will turn out that having general desires is

sufficient for ascribing a particular de re wanting to the General.34

In tandem with this point, it seems that there are some attitudes like “wishing that” where the

old adage goes “be careful what you wish for.” On these attitudes latitudinarian exportation may be

legitimate as is often portrayed by cautionary tales. For example, Oedipus wished that he not kill his

father and marry his mother. Thus 22 is correct, and I am inclined to endorse the unrestricted move to

23.

22. Oedipus wished that he not kill his father.

23. x (Oedipus wished that he not kill x). ∃

33 Kripke, “Unrestricted Exportation,” 325. 34 Generals generally have General desires because they are Generals, but General desires can be either particular or

general. Generally, lower-case “general” is to be regarded as the opposite of “particular” while “General” is meant to denote the office of military service. I do not use the phrase “General desires” in this paper (except in this footnote) to denote a kind of desire. Hopefully that clears things up generally.

21

23 seems true even if we disregard the particular wish that Oedipus has in the story that he not kill the

particular man he believes to be his father. It seems that certain kinds of propositional attitudes may be

less within our control or guided by causal connections then we think. Merely by having general

attitudes we may place ourselves in de re relations with out our being able to recognize that we are

doing so.

Against the thought that “wants that” is latitudinarian are considerations related to “asserted

that.” Nathan Salmon has suggested that unrestricted exportation holds for “asserted that” even in

shortest spy cases. Suppose Nathan proclaims “the shortest spy is a spy” so that 24 is correct.

24. Nathan asserted that the shortest spy is a spy.

Now it seems that 25 does follow.

25. x(Nathan asserted that x is a spy).∃

This instance of exportation is unproblematic for a general theory of de re attitudes as assertion doesn't

seem to count as a propositional attitude verb. The term does obviously relate an individual to a

proposition, but it does not clearly express a standing attitude toward a proposition as “believes that”,

“desires that,” and even “thinks that” seem to. Asserting is something one does with propositions, not

an attitude taken toward them; though surely some attitudes are prerequisites before one may

legitimately assert a proposition such as believing that the proposition is true.

Now, to handle “wants that” in the case above, it is natural in conversations among English

speakers to say both of these following sentences as a response to the General's order.

26. “Shorty, he wants you to go first.”

27. “Shorty, he said that he wants you to go first.”

Because 27 feels so natural as a response, one on par with 26, my suggestion is that we take 26 as

actually having the semantic content of 27. If this is a possible reading of 26, then it is really an

“asserted that” ascription rather than a “wants that” ascription.

22

More evidence for this view can be garnered with a change in the case. Suppose that there is no

General's order, but instead that it is common knowledge among the military unit that the General has a

standing desire that the shortest man to go first in all dangerous endeavors. In such a case, the

commanding officer's utterance of 26 would seem to be at least somewhat more out of place than it did

in the earlier example. In the case of a standing desire of a general sort, it seems rather improper to

ascribe to someone a particular desire when action is imminent. It is incorrect to think that the General

in this altered case wants Shorty to go first, but instead that he has a general principle or rule by which

to determine how certain practical situations may be confronted, which in this case determines Shorty

as the man that ought to go first.

Further puzzlement may be engendered about this account of the easy de re by means of another

example. While not decisively problematic for the view, it is rather unclear how the view ought to come

down on the following case. Harken back to the Holmes case above, but change a few of the details.

First, suppose that there is no murderer, but merely an accidental killer. The knife was positioned on the

bookshelf against the wall and someone nudged the shelf with just enough force to send the knife

falling through the air and right into the heart of the victim (who was laying on the ground for reasons

unknown). Now suppose Holmes, having surveyed the grisly scene returns to Baker Street to inform

Watson. Remember now, Holmes is in a de re belief state about the killer in this case (though he thinks

of him as the murderer) because he is in the right kind of causal connection to the man having observed

his accidental handiwork. Upon informing Watson of the details of the case and his puzzlement

regarding the lack of clues, the question is this, is Watson in a position now to have a de re belief about

the accidental killer?

As far as I can tell, this case should not have a different answer than any of the previous ones.

Insofar as Watson is now in connection with the killer via a causal chain, it seems that he at least is in

the right relation to the man so that we might ascribe to Watson a de re belief about the man. This case

23

truly does flout needing any sort of acquaintance in order to have a de re attitude. Holmes may have

merely described the scene to Watson, and may have even incorrectly used “the murderer” when

describing the clues he was able to glean about the perpetrator of the accidental death. This seems like a

paradigm case of knowledge by description, and only offers a tenuous causal connection to the

accidental killer, yet the connection stands and so the account will still suggest that Watson has a de re

belief about the man as specified in 28.

28. x(Watson believes that x killed the victim with a knife).∃

A Fregean Elaboration

While the Russellian inspired theory of the easy de re may adequately account for the de re as a

general phenomenon, it is unclear that an augmented Fregean view won't also be largely adequate. The

augmentation that I have in mind adds a wrinkle to the Fregean theory in order to help better account

for legitimate and illegitimate de re attitude ascriptions to individuals. Frege believed that

understanding a term involved merely knowing the meaning of the term, and he thought that one could

know the meaning of a term without having a clue as to its reference. Surely, however, there is a

difference in mere understanding and complete understanding of a concept or sense. Proper names are a

good example for making this case. Suppose that Frege would have been alright with the notion of an

individual sense. These senses would act as the concepts of individuals, expressed by proper names,

and distinct from the senses of any definite descriptions. Now return to my earlier example about Dan.

Suppose I tell you “Dan really likes Frege's theory of sense and reference” and you have no idea as to

who I am talking about. Insofar as you are a fully competent English speaker and have picked up on the

name “Dan” as a name, it seems that you understand the term and know its “meaning” in some initial

sense. You know how the term is used and that it stands for someone in particular, and yet, you have

little information regarding the name's referent. In this case it would seem legitimate to say that you

have a mere understanding of the name, but lack complete understanding. To push the Fregean

24

metaphor, you have grasped the sense of the name, but you have only caught it by a finger. You have

not yet examined the concept, seen it from all sides as it were. Complete understanding, I would like to

suggest has to do more with knowing about the relation that the concept stands in to the thing or things

it determines.

Everyone can recognize situations they are in themselves that bear on the difference between

mere and complete understanding. Take any sufficiently obscure scientific concept that one only has

minimal interaction with. For me the notion of a covalent bond will do nicely. I know that covalent

bonds are stronger than other kinds of chemical bonds and that this has something to do with atoms

sharing multiple electrons, but that is about the extent of my understanding of the concept. I am in a

position to understand the meaning of the term were I to over hear a heated discussion between fellow

graduate students over the virtues and vices of certain materials chemical structure over others. And

yet, I have little understanding about how the concept fits in with all the other concepts in chemistry

relevantly related to it. I don't really know the kind of thing a covalent bond is, and I could not

recognize one on the street (or through a microscope). I could not pick one out in a police line up.

The wrinkle to add to a Fregean theory of the de re then is that de re attitudes involve at least

some recognition, some understanding, some knowledge pertaining to the relation between a sense and

what it determines. This wrinkle does not require complete understanding of a concept or sense, but

only some minimal knowledge of how the extension of a term is determined by the concept expressed

by that term. Currently, I am not certain this wrinkle can be elaborated into a full theory, but the case of

proper names makes me hopeful. It seems that in the case of Dan, it is possible from my merely using

the name in conversation with someone that the addressee is able to come to have de re beliefs about

Dan. Even if he or she has never met Dan and my utterance is the first they are hearing about him.

How is this possible? The (implicit) understanding that a hearer has of how the senses of proper

names determine individuals. A proper name, if it has a sense distinct from one that describes the

25

individual as being some way, is rather intimately tied to the thing it determines, and thus if a Fregean

theory of proper names can be defended at all, the sense of a name must be rather well tied to the

individual it determines. So well tied, it would seem, that by merely grasping the sense, that is, merely

understanding the meaning of my utterance “Dan really likes Frege's theory of sense and reference”

one is able to have thoughts and beliefs about Dan.

Something similar may be going on in the tenuous causal connection cases mentioned above.

The singular terms one can form when in contact with objects like “the manufacturer of my computer”

or “the author of that book” seem in some way to express concepts that are in our linguistic practice

used to place us into relational contexts where we can talk about those individuals. These concepts are

familiar to me (unlike my covalent bond concept) and I am able to recognize at least in part how these

concepts pick out or determine the individual I am attempting to think directly about. Of course, on a

Fregean view all thought is mediated via concepts, but this need not discourage talk of directness in

thinking about things. If all thinking is mediated, then there is no sense in which thinking about the

manufacturer of my computer is thinking in a way that is less directly about him, her, them or it.

Can this wrinkle help with the shortest spy cases and avoid latitudinarianism? Possibly, but this

may require a larger story to be told that cannot be fully given here. A few options present themselves.

Taking a page out of Russell's book, maybe when presented with a shortest spy case we are confronted

with a proposition that we would normally be able to elaborate into a de re belief about an individual,

but lack some of the requisite knowledge about the relation between the concept and what it determines

in order to accomplish this goal. If asked “Do you believe that the shortest spy is a spy?”, the grasping

of the concepts behind each term seems adequate for determining the truth of the proposition, but it

does not allot the hearer any information about the relation between the concept itself and the

individual which it determines. Phrases like “the shortest spy” guarantee a particular individual is

picked out by the interaction between the concepts of “short” and “spy,” but offer no guidance to the

26

concept user in determining what the phrase determines. At least in the case of something like “the

manufacturer of my computer” I can attempt to trace the causal history of my machine back to the

individual if I were so inclined. But in the shortest spy case I have a similar problem as I had with the

concept of a covalent bond. I couldn't pick out the shortest spy if I were to see him or her on the street

or in a police line up, but maybe a trained CIA operative could.

Starting with the De Re

Some final remarks and one final idea may now be put forward. First I would like to register my

puzzlement with the whole project of attempting to reduce de re attitudes to de dicto ones. For

anthropological reasons the project seems rather silly. For the most part, we tend to be willing to

attribute beliefs and other attitudes like desires to higher animals and babies. I take these attributions to

be legitimate and not inappropriate extensions of these concepts (if extensions at all). It also seems that

if anything, we should be attributing de re beliefs to babies and animals about the things in their

environment. On a connected note, if animals do have de re beliefs, it would seem on an evolutionary

picture of history we would want to attribute de re beliefs to our pre-linguistic ancestors as well. It

might seem then that the de re ought to be taken as the explanatorily more interesting or basic form of

belief from which the de dicto ought to be elaborated.

Clearly the introduction of language into human society was a major turning point in the history

of humankind. By starting to use words and concepts in the combinatorial way that we do an explosion

of new ways of thinking about things become available. This aspect of the productivity of language I

would suggest is where we ought to look for the emergence of de dicto attitudes and probably the easy

de re. Purely de dicto thought, such as believing that the shortest spy is a spy, seems only available to

concept users of a certain kind. And similarly, only concept users able to fix certain practices (over time

of course) such that certain concepts always determine an individual are able to have beliefs about

those individuals merely by means of familiarity with those concepts and their use.

27

Reversing the Explanation

The final idea I wish to put forward reverses the order of explanation classically appealed to

between the de dicto and the de re. It begins with an idea of Quine's in “Quantifiers and Propositional

Attitudes” but moves in a very un-Quinean direction. At the end of his classic paper, Quine suggests a

way of avoiding having to appeal to intensions, propositions and other “creatures of darkness.”35 He

suggests that we use a new relation he calls “believes-true” and that we name sentences via quotation

marks in order to get around having to name intensions. Now, I have no qualms with Quinean creatures

of darkness, and reject the need to avoid appealing to such entities, but Quine's notion of believing-true

is of some interest. His basic idea is to reformulate irreducibly triadic de re constructions into dyadic

constructions where the relata are the individual and a sentence related to the individual by the

believes-true relation.

This idea is actually rather problematic, but I will not delve into why here. Instead I wish only

to draw attention to the believes-true relation that Quine puts forward. Obviously it is not a simple

relation or attitude. It connects the notion of belief with the notion of truth, and these two notions do

not always go together. The best way to bring this out is by appealing to de re constructions like 4.

4. Ralph believes Ortcutt to be a spy.

This sentence draws out what seems to be a notion of belief that relates Ralph to both Ortcutt and the

property of being a spy, but does not appeal to anything like truth as relating Ortcutt and spy-hood.

Instead it seems to suggest something more like a notion of satisfaction (or maybe the more

metaphysically loaded notion of instantiation) holding between them. We might even reformulate 4 into

29 or 30.

29. Ralph believes of Ortcutt that he satisfies spy-hood.

30. Ralph believes Ortcutt to satisfy spy-hood.

35 Quine, “Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes,” 178.

28

While the notion of satisfaction is closely related to that of truth, they are not the same notion. Being

true is a property of propositions. Satisfaction is a relation that holds between things and properties or

terms and predicates.

The next move to make here is to point out that “that” clauses in de dicto belief sentences

usually allow for the addition and deletion of “the proposition that” without adding or losing meaning.

For example 1 can be converted into 31 without any change in meaning.

1. Ralph believes that Ortcutt is a spy.

31. Ralph believes the proposition that Ortcutt is a spy.

This suggests that the proposition being believed in a de dicto construction is actually being designated

(or at least denoted) by the “that” clause as in 1 or the singular term with an embedded “that” clause as

in 31. But if the “believes” as in 4, 29, and 30 is triadic, and the “believes” in 1 and 31 is dyadic how

are we to move forward except by following Quine and positing a lexical ambiguity?

This is where believes-true provides some insight. As I have already mentioned that I reject

attempts to reduce the de re to the de dicto, the other way around seems worth a shot. But in the case of

1 and 31, there isn't any syntactic item flagging a plausible candidate for the third thing needed to turn

the sentences into triadic belief relation sentences. What to do? How about appealing to one of the most

deletable phrases in the English language? That is, the phrase “is true.” In regular de dicto

constructions, I suggest, there is actually a syntactically deleted argument place for truth, but that in the

semantics of these sentences truth plays a crucial role.

On the deletability of the truth predicate I will say only that it is well known to be rather

redundant in speech. The sentences “grass is green” and “it is true that grass is green” are close enough

in meaning for most government work. And while I do not wish to buy into a redundancy or even

deflationary theory of truth, at least I can allude (without actually appealing) to some of the findings of

such theories.

29

Why should anyone hold to this kind of theory reducing the de dicto to a special kind of de re

construction? Well, at least it doesn't appeal to an ambiguous notion of “belief,” and on top of that there

are a few further considerations leaning in this direction. Suppose de dicto beliefs are a special kind of

de re belief that relates an individual to a proposition of which the individual wishes to predicate truth.

Thus in the case of pure de dicto belief like the shortest spy case we may say things like “Ralph

believes that the shortest spy is a spy” and translate this belief into the de re readings we get in 32-36.

32. Ralph believes that the shortest spy is a spy is true.

33. Ralph believes true that the shortest spy is a spy.

34. Ralph believes of the proposition that the shortest spy is a spy that it is true.

35. The proposition that the shortest spy is a spy is believed true by Ralph.

36. Ralph believes the proposition that the shortest spy is a spy to be true.

These constructions may seem strange, but constructions like them needed in order to handle

cases in which we attempt to ascribe a belief to someone in which they predicate some property of a

proposition. Take 37 for example.

37. Frege believed that Hesperus is Hesperus is uninformative.

Or maybe the better passive construction 38.

38. That Hesperus is Hesperus was believed uninformative by Frege.

37 and 38 I take to be clear cases of de re beliefs about propositions, and insofar as 32-36 are legitimate

de re constructions, it seems that all de dicto belief may be convertible into the de re. The natural idea

is that de dicto constructions are always to be analyzed as de re attitudes toward propositions where

truth is the relevant property being attributed. When no other property (such as informativeness in 37

and 38) is salient or obviously the property being predicated of the proposition in question, we may

always take de dicto belief ascription to implicitly take the individual to believe of the proposition that

it is true.

30

A full elaboration and defense of this view is needed and will not be offered here. Instead the

very possibility of this direction of explanation is all that is necessary for my purposes. One final

argument may now be put forward. There are three possibilities regarding the de re and the de dicto.

The de re may be reducible to the de dicto, the de dicto may be reducible to the de re, or they may both

be sui generis and irreducible into one another. I take myself to have shown as a possibility that a

theory may be offered explaining how the de dicto reduces to the de re. Philosophers such as Kaplan

have attempted the other way around in much more detail. However, given the anthropological

considerations I suggested above, if it is correct that de re attitudes came first, that they are had by both

animals and babies as well as our pre-linguistic ancestors, then it would seem more plausible to take the

de dicto as a special form of de re attitude. This consideration does not rule out the possibility that both

are sui generis attitudes, and I will not attempt an argument here ruling out the irreducibility of either.

More work needs to be done in this area explaining the relation between these to kinds of attitude and

attitude ascription. All I wish to suggest is that a more fruitful direction of explanation looks to be in

reducing the de dicto into the de re and attempting to explain how de dicto attitudes emerged on an

evolutionary story of human thought.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I am still rather uncertain of the exact relationship between the de re and the de

dicto. But hopefully this discussion has shed some new light on the issue. Marking out the differences

between Russellian and Fregean theories about propositions is in some ways relevant to getting clear

on just what is involved in explaining the difference between the two kinds of attitude. Yet, it does not

seems that either theory of propositions dominates the other when it comes to adequately accounting

for the attitudes. The phenomena of the easy de re itself also needs to be better worked out, but the idea

that a causal connection may be all that is relevant to having a de re belief is rather interesting and

plausible (given that it seems to get all of the cases I can think of correct). Finally, there seem to be

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anthropological considerations relevant to whether de re or de dicto attitudes came first onto the

historical scene. Given these considerations it seems that attempting to reverse the classic order of

explanation, reducing the de dicto to the de re instead of the de re to the de dicto, may be a fruitful path

forward.

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