THREE CONTRASTED VIEWS OF SINGLING OUT AN OBJECT

When something is singled out, an object of some sort impinges on a conscious subject, and the subject, in having the de re thought that he has when he is so impinged upon (a thought that may issue in a claim such as ‘That bald man has been standing out there in the snow for four hours’), takes the object for something that it is (a bald man). The subject apprehends the object in at least one way correctly (even if, in all sorts of ways that are neither cognitively nor practically crucial, he misapprehends it). Let us label this claim (i). (i) is not drafted in order to exclude animals from the role of subject.

We can also say (ii) that, when the subject singles out an object, his thought is answerable for its success to the nature and condition of the object singled out and his thought counts as the kind of thought that it is by virtue of being answerable in that particular way to that particular object.

At this point, the contentions of Chapter Five will suggest a further claim (iii): that, when an object is singled out by a subject in the manner described in (i) and (ii), it will not be determinable without reference to the content of that sort of thought on the subject's part what object it was that impinged upon his mind.