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How I Really Say What You Think

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Abstract

The apparently obviously true doctrine of opacity has been thought to be inconsistent with two others, to which many philosophers of language are also attracted: the referentialist account of the semantics of proper names and indexicals, on the one hand, and the principle of semantic innocence, on the other. I discuss here one of the most popular strategies for resolving the apparent inconsistency, namely Mark Richard’s theory of belief ascriptions, and raise three problems for it. Finally, I propose an alternative theory of the semantics of belief-ascribing sentences that clearly avoids the three problems that trouble Richard’s theory, and advocate it as the best available strategy for resolving the apparent inconsistency between the doctrine of opacity, referentialism, and the principle of semantic innocence.

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Notes

  1. By the occurrence of a sentence I just mean a sentence taken in a context, with contexts being abstractions from and idealizations of actual and possible types of speech situations. In general, by the occurrence of an expression I mean “the combination of an expression and a context” or “an expression-in-a-context”.

  2. I am assuming that the semantic value of a sentence (i.e. its contribution to the truth condition of complex sentences containing it) in a certain context c is the Russellian proposition which is the truth condition it would have if it were uttered in isolation in c.

  3. Russell was also motivated by other puzzles, like the problem of negative existentials (see Russell 1985 [1918]).

  4. By ‘an object of belief’, Richard just means an entity capable of individuating belief states. According to a naive Russellian view about the individuation of belief, beliefs are individuated wholly by the Russellian propositions which are their truth conditions. When Richard says that RAMs seem like good candidates to be the objects of belief, he simply means that, contrary to what the naive Russellian view tells us, there is something in addition to the Russellian proposition that plays a role in individuating beliefs. This additional element is of course a mental representation.

  5. This paper will focus on belief-ascribing sentences containing that-clauses of the form ‘that n is G’, where ‘n’ is a proper name or an indexical. Sentences like ‘Patrick believes that the president of the United States was born in New York’ or ‘Ralph believes that some fishermen sabotaged the nets’ will therefore not be treated directly. This limited focus is in keeping with traditional discussions of belief ascriptions. However, I believe that the observations made here concerning belief-ascribing sentences containing that-clauses of the form ‘that n is G’ can be extended to other classes of belief-ascribing sentences.

  6. Richard also explores the possibility of treating ‘believes’ as a three-place predicate with an extra argument place for translation manuals (see Richard 1990). Although I will not have space to go into this matter, one reason for preferring the two-place development of the proposal, as opposed to the three-place development, is that the latter but not the former is clearly subject to logical form objections, such as the ones presented by Stephen Schiffer against the so-called hidden indexical theory (see Schiffer 1992, 1993, 1996, 2000).

  7. An eternal(ized) sentence is one whose truth condition and truth value do not vary from context to context.

  8. The following authors, among many others, argue for the existence of such context-sensitivity: Bach (1997), Crimmins (1992a, 1992b), Crimmins and Perry (1989), Dorr (2011, 2014), Jacob (1990), Lewis (1979), Oppy (1992), Recanati (1993), Schiffer (1979), Sosa (1970), and Soames (2005b).

  9. Remember that one of the motivations for Richard’s view is that belief-ascribing sentences like (4) can be used in such a way that they have different truth conditions in different contexts.


  10. This is not to say that cognitive attitude verbs like ‘believes’ cannot be sources of some kinds of context-sensitivity (e.g. the kind of context-sensitivity related to the believer’s level of confidence). This is just to say that, contrary to what Richard’s translational theory holds, cognitive attitude verbs like ‘believes’ are not the source of the kind of context-sensitivity we are interested in here (i.e. the kind of context-sensitivity exhibited by the Twain example).

  11. Acquaintance theorists holding this weak standard of acquaintance include Bach (1987), Brewer (1999), Burge (1977), Boer and Lycan (1986), Donnellan (1979), Evans (1982), Kaplan (1989b), Lewis (1979), Recanati (1993, 2010, 2012), Salmon (1988), and Soames (2003, 2005a), among others. Russell is also an acquaintance theorist, although he upholds a much stronger standard of acquaintance than these philosophers, maintaining that one can be acquainted only with one’s own sense data, universals, and possibly oneself (see Russell 1905, 1910).

  12. Referential expressions whose referent is stipulated to be fixed with a definite description include descriptive proper names, Kaplanian dthat expressions, and deferred demonstratives and pronouns.

  13. As far as I know, the only proponents of this view are Borg (2007), Crimmins (1992a), Harman (1977), and Kaplan (1989a).

  14. Indeed, introducing a referential expression by fixing its referent with an arbitrary definite description is a matter of what one chooses to do. If Alice had wished to refer to the object which is the student who scored the best results, she could and should have introduced a referential expression into the language by fixing its referent with the definite description ‘the student who scored the best results’. Alice simply had no wish to refer to that object, and consequently did not introduce any such descriptively introduced referential expression. As Kaplan himself notes in a much-overlooked passage:

    normally one would not introduce a proper name or a dthat-term to correspond to each definite description one uses. […] The introduction of a new proper name by means of a dubbing in terms of description and the active contemplation of characters involving dthat-terms—two mechanisms for providing direct reference to the denotation of an arbitrary definite description—constitute a form of cognitive restructuring; they broaden our range of thought. To take such a step is an action normally not performed at all, and rarely if ever done capriciously. The fact that we have the means—without special experience, knowledge or whatever—to refer directly to the myriad individuals we can describe does not imply that we will do so. (Kaplan 1989a, p. 560)

  15. For more examples of these sorts of intuitions, see e.g. Eaker 2002, 2009; Kaplan 1989a, p. 555; King 1999, pp. 156–157, 2001, pp. 2–9; and Stalnaker 2009, pp. 244–245.

  16. As we shall see when I stop baldly stating the indexical theory and begin defending it, the reference is to a class of RAMs rather than to some particular RAM, because we need not be in a position to refer to an actual RAM which is one of someone’s thoughts.

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Acknowledgements

The main ideas in this work have been presented at several scientific meetings: in a session of the Doc’in Nicod Seminar (Institut Jean Nicod, March 2018); in the 2nd Context, Cognition and Communication Conference (University of Warsow, June 2018), and in the IX Conference of the Spanish Society for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (UNED, November 2018). I am indebted to the respective audiences and to some other people who have read previous versions of this paper and have made very helpful comments and suggestions. Special thanks are due to Jérôme Dokic, John Horden, Manuel Pérez Otero, François Recanati, Jesús Vega, and Ignacio Vicario. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and corrections. Financial Support: Doctoral Grant “Contrato Predoctoral para Formación de Personal Investigador” (FPI-UAM), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Project “Culturas materiales, culturas epistémicas. Estándares, prácticas cognitivas y conocimiento” (FFI2013-45659-R), MINECO (Spanish Government). Project “Autonomía intelectual en entornos de dependencia epistémica” (FFI2017-87395-P), MINECO (Spanish Government).

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  1. Departamento de Lingüística General, Lenguas Modernas, Lógica y Filosofía de la Ciencia, Teoría de la Literaruta y Literatura Comparada, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Crta. Colmenar, km. 15, Cantoblanco, 28049, Madrid, Spain

    José Manuel Viejo

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Viejo, J.M. How I Really Say What You Think. Axiomathes 31, 251–277 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-019-09459-6

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