Those inclined to believe in the existence of propositions as traditionally conceived might seek to reduce them to some other type of entity. However, parsimonious propositionalists of this type are confronted with a choice of competing candidates – for example, sets of possible worlds, and various neo-Russellian and neo-Fregean constructions. It is argued that this choice is an arbitrary one, and that it closely resembles the type of problematic choice that, as Benacerraf pointed out, bedevils the attempt to reduce numbers (...) to sets – should the number 2 be identified with the set Ø or with the set Ø, Ø? An “argument from arbitrary identification” is formulated with the conclusion that propositions (and perhaps numbers) cannot be reduced away. Various responses to this argument are considered, but ultimately rejected. The paper concludes that the argument is sound: propositions, at least, are sui generis entities. (shrink)

This paper discusses two notational variance views with respect to indexical singular reference and content: the view that certain forms of Millianism are at bottom notational variants of a Fregean theory of reference, the Fregean Notational Variance Claim; and the view that certain forms of Fregeanism are at bottom notational variants of a direct reference theory, the Millian Notational Variance Claim. While the former claim rests on the supposition that a direct reference theory could be easily turned into a particular (...) version of a neo-Fregean one by showing that it is bound to acknowledge certain senselike entities, the latter claim is based upon the supposition that a neo-Fregean theory could be easily turned into a particular version of a Millian one by showing that De Re senses are theoretically superfluous and hence eliminable. The question how many accounts of singular reference and content are we confronted with here — Two different (and mutually antagonistic) theories? Or just two versions of what is in essence the same theory? — is surely of importance to anyone interested in the topic. And this question should be answered by means of a careful assessment of the soundness of each of the above claims. Before trying to adjudicate between the two accounts, one would naturally want to know whether or not there are indeed two substantially disparate accounts. Grosso modo, if the Fregean Claim were sound then we would have a single general conception of singular reference to deal with, viz. Fregeanism; likewise, if the Millian Claim were sound we would be facing a single general conception of singular reference, viz. Millianism. My view is that both the Fregean Notational Variance Claim and its Millian counterpart are wrong, though naturally on different grounds. I have argued elsewhere that the Fregean Notational Variance Claim - considered in its application to the semantics of propositional-attitude reports involving proper names — is unsound. I intend tosupplement in this paper such a result by trying to show that the Millian Claim - taken in its application to the semantics of indexical expressions — should also be rated as incorrect. I focus on a certain set of arguments for the Millian Claim, arguments which I take as adequately representing the general outlook of the Millian theorist with respect to neo-Fregeanism about indexicals and which involve issues about the cognitive significance of sentences containing indexical terms. (shrink)

This paper articulates a formal theory of belief incorporating three key theses: (1) belief is a dyadic relation between an agent and a property; (2) this property is not the belief's truth condition (i.e., the intuitively self-ascribed property which the agent must exemplify for the belief to be true) but is instead a certain abstract property (a "thought-content") which contains a way of thinking of that truth condition; (3) for an agent a to have a belief "about" such-and-such items it (...) is necessary that a possesses a language of thought, $M_{a}$ , and that a (is disposed as one who) inwardly affirms a sentence of $M_{a}$ in which there are terms that denote those objects. Employing an extended version of E. Zalta's system ILAO, the proffered theory locates thought-contents within a typed hierarchy of "senses" and their "modes of presentation", the provisional definitions of which (suppressing complications added later to accommodate the contents of beliefs about beliefs) are as follows. A mode of presentation of e is a ternary relation of the sort [λxyz z is a name in $M_{y}$ that denotes x, and $D_{e}yz$ ] in which $D_{e}$ is an e-determiner - a relation between agents and their mental expressions imposing a syntactico-semantic condition sufficient for such an expression to denote e therein. A sense of an entity e is an abstract property that "contains" a mode of presentation $R_{e}$ of e by dint of encoding its property-reduct [λx(∃y)(∃z) $R_{e}xyz$ ]. In particular, a thought-content is a sense T of an ordinary first-order property P containing a mode of presentation whose P-determiner $D_{P}$ is such that, for any y and z, $D_{P}yz$ entails that z is a λ-abstract [λv S] of $M_{y}$ in which S is a sentence whose non-logical parts stand in appropriate semantic relations to the constituents of T's (some of which may themselves be senses). Where $I_{a}$ is agent a's dedicated self-demonstrative and |T| is the mode of presentation contained in a thought-content T, the belief relation itself is then characterized as obtaining between a and T iff a( is disposed as one who) inwardly affirms the substitution instance $S(I_{a}/v)$ of a sentence S in $M_{a}$ such that |T|(P, a, [λv S]). The aforementioned "constituents" and "appropriate semantic relations" are formally characterized so as to permit a system of canonical descriptions for thought-contents of arbitrary complexity. These canonical descriptions are then employed to chart the nature and interrelations of belief de re, de dicto and de se and to identify the source of opacity in belief ascription. (shrink)

This paper develops — within an axiomatic theory of properties, relations, and propositions which accords them well-defined existence and identity conditions — a sententialist-functionalist account of belief as a symbolically mediated relation to a special kind of propositional entity, theproxy-encoding abstract proposition. It is then shown how, in terms of this account, the truth conditions of English belief reports may be captured in a formally precise and empirically adequate way that accords genuinely semantic status to familiar opacity data.