KYLE DICKEY

There are several philosophical issues surrounding the logic of de re and de dicto propositional attitudes such as belief, and under what conditions one can export from within an attitude context to derive a de re attribution from a de dicto attribution. Kripke has offered a rather devastating counterexample to the semantic instrumentalist position which accepts that exportation is unrestricted. He shows that the view takes rational agents as having an explosion of de re attitudes, most of which seem absurd and incorrect to attribute. However, Kripke’s example relies on a particular semantics for definite descriptions, taking them to be singular terms. If definite descriptions are treated along Russellian lines, Kripke's criticisms of unrestricted exportation are not quite as damning. Thus, the validity of unrestricted exportation may ultimately be linked to how one treats definite descriptions. Relatedly, questions of the nature of propositions is implicated in this debate and answers to these questions will likely influence the general plausibility of the semantic instrumentalist position.

SINGULARITY AND SEMANTIC INSTRUMENTALISM

Semantic Instrumentalism maintains that singular thoughts can be had merely by manipulating the syntactic components of thought. If one thinks the general thought that there is a uniquely tallest female spy, one can introduce a mental name for that individual and thereby come to think singular thoughts about her. This semantic instrumentalist position has recently been revived and defended, however, it suffers from a serious dilemma. The intentions involved in the introduction of mental names must be either singular or general. The intentions cannot be singular on pain of circularity, and yet if they are general, it is unclear how they could be successful at producing singular thoughts. Semantic Instrumentalism is untenable without a solution to this dilemma.

REDUCING THE DE DICTO TO THE DE RE

Of the two kinds of propositional attitude, it is common to explain de re attitudes in terms of de dicto attitudes. Quine and Kaplan, in pioneering work on this distinction, follow Frege in attempting to reduce the de re. Ultimately Kaplan explains object directed attitudes in terms of proposition directed ones. And yet, there are other options for theorizing about the distinction. The two kinds of attitude could ultimately be distinct, the distinction may concern two ways of thinking of the same attitude, or the reduction may be reversed. Following up on ideas found in the work of Russell and Tarski, Wallace proposed reducing the de dicto to the de re, the reverse of Kaplan's view. To accomplish a full reduction of the de dicto to the de re a relational rather than notional theory of propositional attitudes is put forward and a new explanation of the distinction results. De dicto attitudes turn out to be de re attitudes aimed at purely general properties. By treating quantifiers as second order predicates, all propositional attitudes can be taken turned into a form of de re attitude. This possibility will be established along with suggestions of how such a position might be maintained.