Thing Talk Moonlighting

Abstract

It is controversial whether the truth conditions of attitude sentences are opaque. It is not, or shouldn't be controversial, however, that conditions of apt or unexceptionable usage are opaque. A framework for expressing such uncontroversial claims of opacity is developed, and within this framework it is argued that opacity resides at a “locutionary” level — that it is a matter of expressed content (which might not be truth-conditional). The same claim is made for a related pattern in attitude talk which is labeled the “moonlighting” use of thing-talk.