De Re And De Dicto: Against The Conventional Wisdom

Misplaced Modification and the Illusion of Opacity

“…The way to put notions and ideas at semantic issue is via what I have elsewhere called a fulsomely de re ascription. (Taylor 2002) In fulsomely de re ascriptions, the ascriber specifies what objects the ascribee putatively thinks about, what properties and relations the ascribee putatively takes those objects to have, and, at least indirectly, something about the notions or modes of presentation via which those objects are putatively thought about. Such ascriptions characterize the "how" of a belief, not via an embedded clause, but via unembedded modifying clauses.…”

“…I have argued against this view in detail elsewhere. (Taylor 2002(Taylor , 2003 I have argued that, even in the general case, embedding an expression (in subject place) does not from expressing various sorts of commitments that one otherwise would express using the same expression in an unembedded contexts. 10 For example, even the existential commitments that one would normally express by the use of a definite description typically cannot be escaped merely through the mechanism of embedding.…”

“…I have argued at length for this sort of conclusion elsewhere -though without explicit appeal to the notion of modificational neutrality. (Taylor 2002(Taylor , 2003a(Taylor , 2003b). I will not rehearse those arguments here, except to note that whether co-referring names are intersubstitutable in a given discourse contexts depends entirely on what dialectical constraints are operative between the discourse participants in the relevant contexts.…”

“…One merely has to deploy what I have elsewhere called a fulsomely de re ascription. (Taylor 2002(Taylor , 2003. And I will show that the device of fulsomely de re ascriptions actually provides a less problematic way to capture many of the quite correct insights about beliefs and their ascriptions that lie at the core of Perry's approach.…”

Concept originalism, reference-shift and belief reports

“…See KentBach (1997, p. 222). In rejecting the Specification Assumption, Sainsbury and Tye followBach (1997),Taylor (2002), andFara (2003), among others.13 That Mark and Michael believe the "same thing" does not imply that they are related to the same content. By using the terminology of "believing the same thing", we are simply following S&T who "grant that if Smith and Jones believe that the US financial situation is worsening, then they believe the same thing … [However,] it does not follow that there exists an entity Smith and Jones believe" (S&T, 2012, p. 115).…”