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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Yes and no. It depends on the meaning of the question. Traditionally, those on the affirmative side — predominantly neo-Fregeans — hold that Ralph's believing about Ortcutt, de re, that he is a spy is identical with, or otherwise reducible to, Ralph's believing some proposition or other of the form The such-and-such is a spy, for some concept the such-and-such that is thoroughly conceptual or qualitative (or perhaps thoroughly qualitative but for the involvement of constituents of Ralph's consciousness or of other mental particulars), and that uniquely determines, or is uniquely a concept of, Ortcutt (in Alonzo Church's sense of ‘determines’ and ‘concept of’). Concerns over Ralph's believing that whoever is shortest among spies is a spy while not suspecting anyone in particular have led some neo-Fregeans (not all) to qualify their affirmative response by requiring that the concept the such-and-such and its object bear some connection that is epistemologically more substantial than that between the shortest spy and the shortest spy.
1 I am grateful to the Santa Barbarians Discussion Group for its comments on some of the arguments presented here. Anthony Brueckner and Francis Dauer made particularly helpful observations.
2 See for example Dennett, Daniel ‘Beyond Belief,’ in Woodfield, A. ed., Thought and Object (Oxford University Press 1982), 1–95Google Scholar (e.g., at 84); Searle, John ‘Are There Irreducibly De Re Beliefs,’ in Intentionality (Cambridge University Press 1983), ch. 8, § 2, 208-17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 In Davidson, D. and Hintikka, J. eds., Words and Objections: Essays on the Work of W. V. Quine (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1969), 178–214Google Scholar; reprinted in Linsky, L. ed., Reference and Modality (Oxford University Press 1972), 112-44Google Scholar. All page references herein are to the latter printing.
4 The Twin Earth thought experiment is due to Putnam, Hilary See his ‘Meaning and Reference,’ Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973) 699–711CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a similar argument, see Burge, Tyler ‘Individualism and the Mental,’ in French, P.Uehling, T. and Wettstein, H. eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy IV: Studies in Metaphysics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1979), 73–121.Google Scholar
5 Journal of Philosophy 53 (1957) 177-87; reprinted in Quine's, The Ways of Paradox (New York: Random House 1967), 183-94Google Scholar; also in Linsky, L. ed., Reference and Modality (Oxford University Press 1971), 101-11Google Scholar, and elsewhere. All page references herein are to the Linsky printing. See also Burge, Tyler ‘Kaplan, Quine, and Suspended Belief,’ Philosophical Studies 31 (1977) 197–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Belief De Re,’ Journal of Philosophy 74 (1977) 338-62.
6 Kaplan symbolizes (3) as ‘Ralph B ‘the man seen at the beach is a spy’. While I have altered his symbol for de dicta belief I am preserving elements of his syntax, which is aptly suited to clarifying the issues under discussion. (See especially note 22 below.)
7 See ‘On the Nature of Truth and Falsehood,’ in Russell's, Philosophical Essays (New York: Simon and Schuster 1968), 147-59Google Scholar; Our Knowledge of the External World (New York: New American Library 1956), 52-3; Pears, D. ed., The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (La Salle: Open Court 1985), 79–93Google Scholar.
Quine writes (6) as ‘Ralph believes z(z is a spy) of the man seen at the beach’, Kaplan as ‘Ralph Bel (‘x is a spy’, the man seen at the beach)’.
8 ‘Relational Belief,’ in Leonardi, P. and Santambrogio, M. eds., On Quine: New Essays (Cambridge University Press 1995), 206-28Google Scholar
9 ‘Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes,’ 106
10 The recant is made in ‘Replies,’ in Davidson, D. and Harman, G. eds., Words and Objections, 337-8, 341-2Google Scholar; the recant of the recant in ‘Intensions Revisited,’ in French, P.Uehling, T. and Wettstein, H. eds., Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1979), 268-74, at 272-3Google Scholar, reprinted in Quine's, Theories and Things (Harvard University Press 1981), 113-23, at 119-21Google Scholar.
I must note that exportation cannot be generally valid for all propositional attributions. Otherwise, from the empirical premise that there are in fact exactly nine planets, and the philosophical observation that there might instead have been an even number of (or more specifically, eight or ten) planets, one could validly infer that nine might have been even (or eight or ten).
11 An individual concept is a concept for (i.e. a concept whose function is to determine) an individual, and may thus serve as the semantic content of singular term.
12 Evidently on Kaplan's account, the following sentence is alleged to be an analytic truth:
If Ralph believes the man seen at the beach to be a spy, then there is a vivid individual concept ? that determines, and is for Ralph a name of, the man seen at the beach such that Ralph believes ‘α? is a spy’. Similarly for its converse. I believe, on the contrary, that neither the conditional nor its converse is analytic. Even if the conditional were both necessary and a priori, the inference from antecedent to consequent, or vice versa, does not feel to me like one that is licensed strictly as a matter of the principles governing correct reasoning and the meanings of ‘believe,’ ‘vivid,’ ‘name of,’ etc. As a matter of fact, the Twin Earth considerations mentioned in the first paragraph of this article demonstrate that the conditional need not even be true. By contrast, the mutual inference between (4) (or (2)) and (6) does feel to me to be licensed by pure logic. Cf. my remarks concerning the modal-propositionallogical system T as compared with stronger systems, in ‘The Logic of What Might Have Been,’ The Philosophical Review 98 (1989) 3-34.
13 Cf. my ‘A Millian Heir Rejects the Wages of Sinn,’ in Anderson, C. A. and Owens, J. eds., Propositional Attitudes: The Role of Content in Logic, Language, and Mind (Stanford: CSLI 1990), 215-47, at 239-40Google Scholar. Kaplan does not explicitly regard (K6) as a consequence of a contextual definition for open ‘that’ -clauses; I suggest this merely as a possibly enlightening interpretation of his program. He proposes (K6) specifically as an analysis of (6), rather than of (4), which Quine had found improper. Kaplan does, however, suggest (114 n3) that instead of repudiating (4) altogether, it might be taken as analyzed by (6). Quine later came around to this same view, in ‘Intensions Revisited,’ 268,274 n9.
14 Quine appears to prefer this option Cf. ‘Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes,’ section II. He there takes ‘Bdr’ to be multi-grade, i.e. “letting it figure as an nplace predicate for each n > 1” (‘Intensions Revisited,’ 268). This allows one to say that Ralph believes of the man in the brown hat and the man at the beach that the former is taller than the latter by writing ‘Ralph Bdr’ (the man in the brown hat, the man at the beach, ‘λxy[x is taller than y]’)’. The de dicto predicate ‘Bdd’ may then be taken to be the limiting case of ‘Bdr’ where n = 2. But how exactly does this give us (I)?
15 I criticize this analysis (which is Kaplan's, not mine) of suspension of judgment as being too strong, in my ‘Being of Two Minds: Belief with Doubt,’ Noûs 29 (1995) 1–20Google Scholar. There is no doubt in this case, however, that the conjunction is indeed true with respect to Act II.
16 Ibid, 141. Here as elsewhere I have slightly altered the text for the purpose of matching numbered expressions with the numbers used in the present paper.
17 In ‘Kaplan, Quine, and Suspended Belief,’ 198. I have expanded on Burge's actual proposal, keeping to both its letter and spirit, in order to secure the full force of suspension of judgment as opposed to mere failure to believe.
18 Whereas Burge aims to refute Kaplan's argument for reducibility, he does not himself endorse the proposal he makes on Quine's behalf, and instead says that the conjunction of (6) with (8) may be formulated along the lines of something like:
Ralph believes the man seen at the beach to be this man and a spy, and Ralph neither believes the man seen at the beach to be that man and a spy nor believes the man seen at the beach to be that man and not a spy,
as spoken with three references to Ortcutt, in his guises as this man (in the brown hat) and as that man (seen at the beach). This proposal seriously distorts the very de re locutions it employs. Indeed, it contains a contradiction, its first conjunct expressing about Ortcutt exactly what the second conjunct denies.
19 ‘Quantifying In,’ 139 n30. Quine proposes (in ‘Intensions Revisited,’ at 272-73) taking ‘(∃x)[Ralph Bdr(x, ‘(λz)(z = α)]’ — e.g., ‘There is someone whom Ralph takes to be the shortest spy‘— as the further premise required to validate the exportation inference from ‘Ralph Bdd that α is a spy’ to ‘Ralph Bdr, (α, to be a spy)’. See note 10 above. Influenced by Jaakko Hintikka, Quine incorrectly glosses this proposed premise as ‘Ralph has an opinion as to who α is. Even this stronger premise, however, is not up to the task; suppose, for example, that Ralph is of the erroneous opinion that the shortest spy is none other than Ortcutt. See Kvart, Igal ‘Quine and Modalities De Re: A Way Out?’ Journal of Philosophy 79 (June 1982), 295–328, at 298-302Google Scholar; and my ‘How to Measure the Standard Metre,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (New Series) 88 (1987 /1988) 193-217, at 205-6, 213-4. Quine's intent may be better captured by taking the additional premise to be instead ‘Ralph Bdr, (α, ‘(λz)(z =α)’)'— e.g., ‘Ralph believes the shortest spy to be the shortest spy.’ This move, in turn, suggests an analysis of (6) àIa Kaplan/Burge into (B6) (perhaps as part of a general analysis of attributions of de re beliefs other than identity beliefs). The alternative premise Kvart proposes, by comparison, suggests instead an analysis more along the lines of Kaplan's original (K6).
20 Cf. my Frege's Puzzle (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview 1986, 1991), at 171-2. An alternative scenario is also possible in which Ralph believes (on the basis of general suspicions) that the most trusted man in any town is a spy, and knows Ortcutt to be the most trusted man in town, while not yet concluding about Ortcutt that he in particular must be a spy. Such a case refutes the analysis suggested in note 19 above. Intuitively, one who believes that whoever is most trusted among men in town is a spy does not ipso facto believe of the most trusted man, de re, that he is a spy. (Notice that the description ‘the most trusted man in town,’ like ‘the shortest spy,’ qualifies neither as vivid, nor as a name of its referent, in Kaplan's quasi-technical senses.)
21 Cf. Frege's Puzzle, 2-7. See also my ‘How to Become a Millian Heir,’ Noûs 23 (1989) 211-20; and ‘A Millian Heir Rejects the Wages of Sinn,’ 223-7.
22 ‘Relational Belief,’ 216. The analysis is broadly Russellian in spirit. However, Russell himself embraced an epistemology that prevented him from accepting the analysis (and which may be part of the original motivation for his multiplerelation theory of de re belief). Quine also rejects it. Indeed, this is what led Quine to propose replacing (2) with something along the lines of (6). His objections, however, are dubious. See Kaplan, ‘Opacity,’ in Hahn, L. E. and Schilpp, P. A. eds., The Philosophy of W. V. Quine (La Salle: Open Court 1986), 229-89Google Scholar; and my ‘Relational Belief.’
Identifying the singular proposition about Ortcutt that he is a spy with the corresponding ordered pair, the proposed analysis of (6) might be revealingly reformulated as:
Ralph Bdr (the man seen at the beach, to be a spy) =def. Ralph Bdd <the man seen at the beach, to be a spy>.
23 More exactly, my view is that the dyadic predicate ‘Bdd’ is definable as: (λxp)[(∃y)(x BEL [p, y])].
24 Alternatively, something like Kaplan's full-blooded reducibility thesis might be invoked as a third premise in addition to (9), thus removing (B6S) still further from (S6). Alternatively, the ‘α’ may be replaced by an objectual variable. Analogously, Kaplan may have intended a version of (9) in which ‘?’ ranges only over ‘representing’ names, in his sense, while ‘β is not similarly restricted. Burge's objection that the relevant version of (9) is not guaranteed is appropriate regardless.
25 Cf. ‘A Millian Heir Rejects the Wages of Sinn,’ especially 234-47.
26 Kripke, Saul ‘A Puzzle about Belief,’ in Salmon, N. and Soames, S. eds., Propositions and Attitudes (Oxford University Press 1988), 102-48.Google Scholar
27 I respond to Kripke's puzzle, and to his objections to the solution I propose, in Frege's Puzzle, 129-32; and in ‘Illogical Belief,’ in Tomberlin, J. ed., Philosophical Perspectives, 3: Philosophy of Mind and Action Theory (Atascadero, Ca.: Ridgeview 1989), 243-85.Google Scholar
28 ‘A Millian Heir Rejects the Wages of Sinn,’ 220-2. It is difficult to see how one can maintain that the belief that tomatoes make a good sauce is not a belief of a certain proposition (but instead a relation to various entities) without committing oneself to the conclusion that no belief is of a proposition.
29 Cf. Frege's Puzzle, 92-128.
