Russellianism unencumbered

Abstract

Richard Heck, Jr. has recently (in ''Intuition and the substitution argument,'' Analytical Philosophy 2014) reconfigured the debate over Russellianism about proper names. Sidestepping the usual argument, which concerns ''intuitions'' about substitutions within ''that''-clauses, he proposes a new argument based on the claims that (i) beliefs are individuated by their psychological roles and (ii) ordinary language has belief-specifying locutions that reflect that individuation. Focusing on (ii) I argue that contrary to what Heck claims, ''that''-clause ascriptions are not the only candidates. In fact there are much better candidates: ascriptions involving direct quotations. I explain how the proposal is novel (it avoids the usual problems with such ascriptions) and how it answers the requirements of Heck's argument.More broadly what Heck's argument brings out is the diversity of resources ordinary language has for specifying beliefs; a defense of Russellianism needn't rest entirely on claims about ''that''-clause ascriptions.

Quotational and other opaque belief reports

“…Other propositional attitude and speech‐act verbs that accept quotational complements are know , realize , decide , infer , wonder , say , admit , reply , order , and promise . As McCullagh (2017a: 2840, fn. 13) notes, Geach (1967: 167) described philosophers as having a “curious prejudice” against the quotational construction even though it is “common in all vernaculars.”…”

“…McCullagh (2017a: 2839) identifies another problem with his rebuttal: “actual uses of the canonical form of a q‐ascription—‘X has a belief she can express by asserting ⌈ p ⌉’ —are rare to nonexistent.” They cannot then be fulfilling the common need Heck identified. McCullagh found, however, that there is a common way of doing so.…”

“…In my experience, the neglect is based largely on two ideas: that quotational belief reports are not conventional English; and that they are somehow metalinguistic, with the quoted sentence being mentioned rather than used. McCullagh (2017a: 2840) recognized that the first idea is mistaken, but endorses the second, as did Geach (1957: 80) and Kaplan (1977: 511). What I will argue now is that quotational belief reports are not metalinguistic, and that if they were, they would not be a way to report the psychologically individuated beliefs Heck focuses on.…”

“…McCullagh (2017a: 2841) also suggests that “mixed” belief reports are a common way of at least partially meeting Heck's need. He gives a good example from USA Today , which is mixed in that it contains both the complementizer that and quotation marks.…”

“…In this case, McCullagh (2017a: 2841) thinks that “a belief is being specified partly by a specification of words the subject used to express it in some assertion.” However, it is not required that the words quoted be words the subject used. The USA Today report would be completely accurate if Kennan had delivered his address in French and used words correctly translated as ‘fateful error of American policy’ and ‘inflamed.’ Moreover, the mixed report does more than ascribe a belief to Kennan.…”