With a few solutions to the problem of contents without constituents on the table, we need to find some criteria for deciding between them. In this section I will discuss four issues a solution should deal with:
The theoretical role of propositions for expressing generalizations about communication and thought.
Truth intuitions about attitude ascriptions: we want an account of attitude ascriptions which either makes the ascriptions true which we think are true, or explains why we get them wrong. A theory of attitude ascriptions is best if it links up nicely with a
theory intentional37 transitive verbs, such as ‘admires’,
‘worships’ and ‘seeks’.
The ontological commitments of our chosen solution should not be too implausible.
3.11 The role of propositions
In §2.11, I said this:
One way of thinking about communication is that I believe something, express my belief with an assertion, and then you end up believing what I believe. This kind of communication aims to get the hearer to resemble the speaker in some way, and this resemblance can be described as us having beliefs with the same contents. We can also say that assertions have the same
37 There is a tendency in the literature [e.g. Richard 2001, Forbes 2013] to call
these ‘intensional transitives’, with an S. This is misleading. It prejudges the question of whether they are extensional, and suggests they are not hyperintensional. The question is how to deal with verbs expressing intentional attitudes, and if we want to phrase the question in terminology neutral between different answers, we should call them intentional transitives, with a T.
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contents as the beliefs they are used to transmit. I will argue that no level of content which can play this role in understanding communication can also explain the rational relations between belief tokens.
In chapter two I was looking at the role of propositions in explaining rational relations between belief tokens, but now we can focus on the other role, in expressing generalizations about thinkers and communication between them. The basic picture is that thought contents express important resemblances between thinkers, including how they relate in similar ways to the world. Utterances have contents transmitting these resemblances. There are two important things to note about this picture as applied to the problems of the present chapter. First, we need to make sure we individuate the contents in a way that captures the important generalizations. If two children’s beliefs that Santa is coming are importantly similar to each other and different from a third child’s belief that the Tooth Fairy is coming, then it would be good to say that the first two children’s beliefs had the same content and the third’s had a different one. This issue is about generalizations about thought. The second issue is about the link between thought and communication. When an utterance expresses a belief token, in much the same way as saying ‘ouch’ expresses a pain token, the content of the utterance and the content of the belief should be the same. This gives sense to the idea that people verbally express their thoughts, rather than saying one thing because they think something else altogether. This issue will also become important in §4.432, when we look at intentional attitudes involving fictional names.
3.12 Truth intuitions about attitude ascriptions
We make attitude ascriptions, and have intuitions about their truth values. Some of these intuitions are firmer than others, but insofar as we have truth intuitions about attitude ascriptions, a theory is better if it predicts that these intuitions are right. Where it predicts that they are
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wrong, it would be good to have an explanation for this. Here are some examples of intuitions about attitude ascriptions we might want to uphold:
Disquotation: If a normal English speaker, on reflection, sincerely assents to ‘p’, then they believe that p. [From Kripke 1979: 439] Biconditional disquotation: A normal English speaker who is not
reticent will be disposed to sincere reflective assent to ‘p’ iff they believe that p. [Also from Kripke 1979: 439]
Non-substitutivity: A person can believe that n is F and not believe that m is F, even if (in fact, unbeknownst to them,) n is m. [From Frege 1952]
Positive quantifying in: If n is a G and a person believes that n is F, then there is a G that they believe is F. [From Sider 1995: §8] Negative quantifying in: If n is a G and a person does not believe
that n is F, then there is a G that they do not believe is F. [Also from Sider 1995: §8]
All these principles give rise to puzzle cases, and some solutions to the cases might give some of them up, or at least restrict them. However, it would be good if our theory of attitude ascriptions containing empty and/or fictional names did not create any new problems with respect to our truth intuitions about attitude ascriptions.
3.13 Intentional transitives
There is a temptation to think that once you’ve got a theory of attitude ascriptions that links up nicely with a theory of the embedded sentences appearing as assertions, you’re done. But you’re not really done, because of intentional transitives. We don’t just express intentional attitudes using sentences of the form ‘x [attitude]s that φ’; we also express them with sentences of the form ‘x [attitude]s y’. Some examples:
110 Jack admires Jill.
Jill worships Zeus. Everyone loves a sailor.
You could just take these as a separate problem, claiming that nothing about attitude ascriptions directly commits you to anything about intentional transitives. Alternatively, you could say, drawing on Larson et al [1997], that intentional transitives can be paraphrased as propositional attitude ascriptions like ‘Jack thinks Jill is admirable’, and then say that the semantics for attitude ascriptions will therefore suffice. This strategy is a bit of a promissory note and its use of paraphrase is slightly unsatisfactory in the way uses of paraphrase tend to be, even if extensionally adequate paraphrases could be given.
If we don’t take a theory of attitude ascriptions to be an automatic theory of intentional transitives, it is dangerous to try treating the problems separately. That is because there are connections between our propositional and objectual attitudes. If Jack admires Jill, that is a reason to think Jack thinks various things about Jill. Substitutivity issues arise for intentional transitives as well as propositional attitudes: Lois fancies Superman but not Clark, and believes Superman is brave and Clark isn’t. Moreover, it makes sense that she fancies the one she thinks is brave and doesn’t fancy the one she thinks isn’t. Existential commitment issues arise as well: you can worship Zeus even if Zeus doesn’t exist, although pace Parsons [1980: 217] you probably can’t rationally worship him if you know he doesn’t exist. Lastly, intentional transitives raise issues about the validity of arguments involving quantification, just as propositional attitude ascriptions do. For some examples of valid or at least nearly valid argument forms involving intentional transitives, see Richard [2001: 106-7].
Part of the issue is that similar problems arise for both sorts of attitude ascriptions, so we would be missing a trick if we didn’t at least see
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whether the same machinery could deal with both. It is however at least as important that an account should be unified enough to make the connections natural, and let us express those connections by saying things like ‘Lois admires everyone she believes is brave’, which should be inconsistent with ‘Lois thinks Clark is brave but doesn’t admire Clark’. This will be hard to explain if our analysis of ‘Lois thinks Clark is brave’ is unrelated to our analysis of ‘Lois admires Clark’.
3.14 A plausible ontology
As with many debates in philosophy, one way of choosing between competing theories is to look at their ontological commitments. We don’t want our theory to commit to too many things. If it does, it is good if they are things we are committed to already for some other reason. If they are not, it is good if the new things are not too strange. In all cases, it is good if there is a satisfying explanation of how the considerations at hand give reasons to think that there are such things, rather than that people mistakenly think there are such things. If it sounds like these platitudes are being used to stitch up the Meinongians, that is because in a way they are. However, they really are platitudes, people really do reject Meinongianism on the basis of them, and part of the project of this thesis has been to provide a viable and ideally preferable alternative to Meinongianism. I’m not dismissing Meinongianism out of hand or saying it is incoherent, but that doesn’t mean I can’t draw attention to its costs.
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