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Many philosophers have suggested that belief predicates are ambiguous between a de dicto and a de re reading. However, the impression of ambiguity is a function of the narrow ranges of examples that philosophers focus on. When we consider our ascriptional practices as a whole, the suggestion that belief predicates are ambiguous is neither plausible nor needed to explain the de dicto/de re distinction. This paper will argue that understanding paradigmatic de dicto and de re ascriptions in terms of disavowals from a more basic sort of ascription is preferable to positing an ambiguity in which each of the two sorts of ascription are conceptually primitive.

In the preface to Logical Properties, McGinn writes: “The general theme of the book is a kind of realist anti-naturalism about logical properties. My tendency is to take logical notions at face value, rather than trying to reduce them to something else.” (p. vi) The five notions discussed in the book, each with its own chapter, are identity, existence, predication, necessity, and truth. McGinn’s anti-reductionism seems to me right for identity, existence, and predication. The case of truth, I think, is more complicated than McGinn allows because there are different notions of truth depending on what the truthmakers are taken to be, and how they are individuated; I won’t be discussing truth here. The case of necessity is where I have my sharpest disagreement with McGinn. I do not believe that necessity de re, which for McGinn is the central case, should be classified as logical at all: it is far too parochial and context-dependent for that. Necessity de dicto, on my view, may properly be classified as logical, but contra McGinn it is reducible to more fundamental logical notions.

Abstract   It would be puzzling if the morally best agents were not so good after all. Yet one prominent account of the morally best agents ascribes to them the exact motivational defect that has famously been called a “fetish.” The supposed defect is a desire to do the right thing, where this is read de dicto . If the morally best agents really are driven by this de dicto desire, and if this de dicto desire is really a fetish, then the morally best agents are moral fetishists. This is puzzling. I resolve the puzzle by showing that on a proper understanding of the interaction between de dicto and de re moral motivation, it is not only not fetishistic, but quite possibly desirable, to be motivated by a de dicto desire to do the right thing. My argument relies partly on an appeal to a non-buck-passing account of moral rightness, according to which rightness is itself an additional reason-giving property over and above the right-making properties of an action. If this account of moral rightness is correct, then we would expect the morally best agents to exhibit de dicto moral motivation. However, since their de dicto desire acts in concert with de re desires, there is no reason to consider it a fetish. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9825-z Authors Vanessa Carbonell, Philosophy Department, University of Cincinnati, P.O. Box 210374, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0374, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.

Abstract Stephen P. Stich rejects the de dicto?de re belief state and ascription distinction. He proposes an analysis by which belief sentences imply univocal doxastic predicates expressing functionally similar states of belief subjects and counterfactual third person belief ascribers, concluding that the apparent opacity of de dicto belief sentences is better explained by the unsystematic contextually?sensitive similarity vaguenesses of belief ascriptions. But Stick's reduction appeals to contexts of background beliefs which themselves unavoidably exhibit ramified de dicto?de re ambiguity. The distinction is presupposed rather than eliminated by Stick's method, which effectively blocks the extensional reduction of belief state opacity.

Physicalists are committed to the determination without remainder of the psychological by the physical, but are they committed to this determination being a priori? This paper distinguishes this question understood de dicto from this question understood de re, argues that understood de re the answer is yes in a way that leaves open the answer to the question understood de dicto.

Eaker argues that there is no genuine ambiguity to be found between de re and de dicto readings or interpretations of belief sentences. She considers two ways characterizing the distinction: 1. Psychological characterization (a) De re belief sentences attribute de re belief to subjects (b) De dicto belief sentences attribute de dicto belief to subjects 2. Truth-conditional characterization (a) The preservation of subjects’ “ways of thinking” of objects is not required for the truth of de re belief sentences (b) The preservation of subjects’ “ways of thinking” of objects is required for the truth of de dicto belief sentences And she suggests either way, the distinction is usually taken to be encoded in linguistic theory by means of the notion of scope: 3. Scope encoding (a) In de re belief sentences, expressions referring to objects of belief have wide scope (b) In de dicto belief sentences, expressions referring to objects of belief have narrow scope Eaker criticizes both characterizations of the ambiguity, as well as the claim that it can be understood as a scope ambiguity. First, Eaker’s presents the following argument against the psychological characterization: (i) even if the distinction between de re and de dicto belief can be drawn, this distinction does not map on to the putative distinction between de re and de dicto belief sentences: de re belief sentences can be used to report de dicto beliefs, e.g.

In The Moral Problem Michael Smith presents what he claims is a decisive argument against moral externalism. Smith's claims that (i) moral externalists are committed to explain the connection between moral beliefs and moral motivation in terms of de dicto desires, and (ii) de dicto desires to perform moral acts amounts to moral fetishism. The argument is spelled out and the difference between desires de dicto and desires de re explained. The tenability of the fetishist argument (as it has been named) is then questioned by focusing on the second clause; contrary to what Smith seems to think, it seems a plausible description of a good moral person that she is often motivated by both kinds of desires and, moreover, there are ways of being motivated to perform moral acts solely by de dicto desires that would not amount to moral fetishism. Lastly, two cases are suggested where being motivated by de dicto desires to perform moral acts would be reasonable as well as morally preferable. Internalists then, should also provide room for de dicto desires in moral motivation.The upshot is that the fetishist argument is unconvincing, though no attempt is made to defend moral externalism in general.

pt. 1. De dicto: Necessary and contingent truths, by G. W. Leibniz. New essays concerning human understanding, by G. W. Leibniz. Introduction to the critique of pure reason, by Immanuel Kant. On the nature of mathematical truth, C. G. Hempel. Two dogmas of empiricism, by W. V. O. Quine. In defense of a dogma, by H. P. Grace and P. F. Strawson. The a priori and the analytic, by A. Quinton. The truths of reason, by R. Chisholm.--pt. 2. De re: Reference and modality, by W. V. O. Quine. De re et de dicto, by A. Plantinga. World and essence, by A. Plantinga.--Bibliography (p. 200-202).

This article investigates the prospect of giving de dicto- and de re-necessity a uniform treatment. The historical starting point is a puzzle raised by Aristotle's claim, advanced in one of the modal chapters of his Prior Analytics, that universally privative apodeictic premises simply convert. As regards the Prior and the Posterior Analytics, the data suggest a representation of propositions of the type in question by doubly modally qualified formulae of modal predicate logic that display a necessity operator in two distinct positions. Can the N-operator occurring in these positions be given a unified semantical treatment (which would justify dispensing with a notational differentiation)? A positive answer, based on a suitably shaped truth condition for N-formulae, is given, and is supported in the final section with an alternative proof theoretically based conception of a property's essential belonging to an individual.