This book provides a formal ontology of senses and the belief-relation that grounds the distinction between de dicto, de re, and de se beliefs as well as the opacity of belief reports. According to this ontology, the relata of the belief-relation are an agent and a special sort of object-dependent sense (a "thought-content"), the latter being an "abstract" property encoding various syntactic and semantic constraints on sentences of a language of thought.

This book provides a formal ontology of senses and the belief-relation that grounds the distinction between de dicto, de re, and de se beliefs as well as the opacity of belief reports. According to this ontology, the relata of the belief-relation are an agent and a special sort of object-dependent sense (a "thought-content"), the latter being an "abstract" property encoding various syntactic and semantic constraints on sentences of a language of thought.

One bears the belief-relation to a thought-content T just in case one (is disposed as one who) inwardly affirms a certain sentence S of one’s language of thought that satisfies what T encodes, which in turn requires that S’s non-logical parts stand in appropriate semantical relations to items specified by T. Since these items may include other senses as well as ordinary objects, beliefs of arbitrary complexity are automatically accommodated. Within the framework of the formal ontology, a context-dependent compositional semantics is then provided for a fragment of regimented English capable of formulating ascriptions of belief--a semantics that treats substitutional opacity as a genuine semantic datum.

Finally, the resulting picture of belief and its attribution is defended by showing how it solves standard puzzles, avoids objections to rival accounts, and satisfies certain adequacy conditions not fulfilled by traditional theories. Along the way, clarification and defense is offered for the ingredient conception of object-dependent senses, and it is shown how adoption of the language of thought hypothesis permits Bertrand Russell’s obscure doctrine of logical forms to be understood in a way that not only vindicates his Multiple Relation theory of de re belief but also reveals the connection between these logical forms and thought-contents.

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART Ⅰ: PRELIMINARIES

1.TERMS OF THE ART

 1.1. Some types of intentionality

 1.2. The substitutional approach and its problems

 1.3. Non-Actualism

1.3.1. The being-existence distinction: a proposal

1.3.2. The non-Actualist approach to existence-independence and concept-dependence

 1.4. Intensionality and extensionality

 1.5. Hyper-Intensionality

 1.6. Opacity and transparency

 1.7. De re / de dicto / de se

2.ADEQUACY CONDITIONS AND FAILED THEORIES

 2.1. Some general adequacy conditions

 2.2. Frege's theory of thoughts

 2.3. Russell's propositional and multiple-relation theories

 2.4. Chisholm's property-attribution theory

PART Ⅱ: ONTOLOGY

3.LOGICAL FORMS AND MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS: THE LESSON OF RUSSELL'S MULTIPLE RELATION THEORY OF JUDGMENT

 3.1. Adequacy conditions on the reduction

 3.2. The formalities of MRTJ

3.2.1. The base language and underlying logic

3.2.2. Some primitive vocabulary and axioms of MRTJ

3.2.3. Truth in MRTJ

 3.3. The theory

 3.4. The bridge principles and reduction of MRTJ to ■+

 3.5. Vindication and the adequacy conditions

 3.6. Implications of the reduction of MRTJ for our wider project

 3.7. The shape of things to come

4.THOUGHT-CONTENTS, SENSES, AND THE BELIEF RELATION: THE PROTO-THEORY

 4.1. Overview

 4.2. The underlying theory of abstract objects

4.2.1. Zalta's System ILAO

4.2.2. Departures from ILAO

 4.3. ■: The proto-theory

4.3.1. Senses as A-objects; thought-contents as senses

4.3.2. Valuation relations and canonical λ-profiles

4.3.3. Thought-contents with specified objects as constituents

4.3.4. Interpreting canonical names of atomic thought-contents

4.3.5. Mentalese denotation; the constituents and canonical objects of n-ary atomic thought-contents

4.3.6. Entertaining and believing thought-contents

4.3.7. Application to belief de re

4.3.8. Senses as constituents of thought-contents: translucent and opaque senses

4.3.9. Belief de dicto, belief de se, and substitutional opacity

4.3.10. Transparent senses and Soames's problem

5.THOUGHT-CONTENTS, SENSES, AND THE BELIEF RELATION: THE FULL THEORY

 5.1. Revisions to the proto-theory

 5.2. Application to higher-order belief

 5.3. Generalizing key definitions, principles, and theorems

 5.4. Doing without empty senses

 Appendix to Chapter 5: The formal theory ■

A.1. Metalinguistic conventions

A.2. Special vocabulary of ■

A.3. Formation rules for special terms of ■

A.4. Definitions in ■

A.5. Axioms of ■

PART Ⅲ: SEMANTICS

6.BELIEF REPORTS AND COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTICS

 6.1. The theory ■ as a semantical metalanguage

 6.2. The target language L1

 6.3. ■: A ■-based sense-reference semantics for L0 and L1

 6.4. Semantics for mentalese--or: speak for yourself!

 6.5. Prospects for naturalization

7.MEETING THE SEMANTICAL ADEQUACY CONDITIONS

 7.1. De dicto / de re / de se

 7.2. Iterated belief reports

 7.3. A problem about reflexivity

 7.4. Saul Kripke's original puzzle

 7.5. Kripke's puzzle and iterated belief reports

 7.6. David Austin's 'Two Tubes' puzzle

 7.7. Pragmatics versus semantics

 7.8. Mark Richard's puzzle

8.OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES

 8.1. Specific objections to our semantical theory

8.1.1. Belief reports and valid arguments

8.1.2. The problem of translating our semantical metalanguage

8.1.3. Twin Earth semantics

 8.2. Generic objections to 'Fregean' semantics

8.2.1. Stephen Schiffer's critique

8.2.2. The problem of negative existential generalization

8.2.3. Saying, meaning, and believing

PART IV: REAR-GUARD ACTION

9.THE CASE FOR OBJECT-DEPENDENT THOUGHTS

 9.1. The central theses

 9.2. Gareth Evans' first argument for (ODT-1)

 9.3. Critique and defense of Evans' first argument

 9.4. Evans' second argument for (ODT-1)

 9.5. Critique and defense of Evans' second argument

 9.6. The problem of negative existentials involving empty singular terms

 9.7. The problem of attitude-ascriptions with 'that'-clauses containing empty terms

 9.8. A problem about certain conditionals

 9.9. An argument for (ODT-2) yielding (ODT-1) as a corollary

10. A CRITIQUE OF RIVAL ACCOUNTS OF SINGULAR THOUGHTS

 10.1. Kent Bach's theory of 'de re beliefs'

 10.2. Harold Noonan's theory of demonstrative thoughts

 10.3. The narrow content objection

 10.4. Object-dependence and the senses of general terms

REFERENCES

INDEX