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Ascriptions of propositional attitudes. An analysis in terms of intentional objects

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Abstract

Having briefly sketched the aims of our paper, namely, to logically analyse the ascription of propositional attitudes to somebody else in terms, not of Fregean senses or of intensions-with-s, but of the intentional object of the person spoken about, say, the believer or intender (Section 1), we try to introduce the concept of an intentional object as simply as possible, to wit, as coming into view whenever two (or more) subjective belief-worlds strikingly diverge (Section 2). Then, we assess the pros and cons of Frege’s view that the indirect reference of an expression is nothing but its customary sense (Sections 3–4), and call the reader’s attention to the fact that in belief ascriptions de re we take it for granted that the believer’s intentional object is at the same time a ‘citizen’ of the belief ascriber’s subjective world (or, for that matter, the real word), and that the idea of such a ‘dual citizenship’ is even more obviously presupposed in the cases of true belief and propositional knowledge (Section 5). Then, we try to argue that it is more fertile to take the belief ascriber’s intentional object to be, not the whole state of affairs the believer has in mind and thinks to exist, but the latter’s intentional object as such, that is, as being his intentional object (Section 6). Finally, we discuss the intricate and mostly neglected question of whether an intentional object’s inhabiting two or more subjective belief-worlds should be considered to be sort of a ‘transmundane identity’ in the numerical sense or rather in some deviant sense of the term, which can be specified as a momentous subcase of a ‘categorial difference’ (Section 7).

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Notes

  1. The German counterpart of the term ‘intentional object’, namely, ‘intentionaler Gegenstand’, has been introduced into modern philosophy by Franz Brentano, who drew on mediaeval scholastics; but it has been made more familiar by phenomenologists, notably Husserl—for a discussion and sources, see Hoche (1973), esp. pp. 47–49, 72, 160–163, 199, and linguistic philosophers, especially GEM Anscombe (1965, Section I). In his contributions to a sociology as based on understanding (‘Verstehende Soziologie’), Max Weber (esp. 1922, p. 439) sometimes used, in at least a closely related way, the term ‘subjektiver Bezogenheitsgegenstand’ (‘subjective referent’). Certainly, we may adopt both of these terms, which we will treat as denoting one and the same concept, without committing ourselves to any historically given approach in phenomenology, linguistic analysis, or sociology.

  2. It is obvious that the approach in terms of intentional objects does not suit the treatment of the so-called alethic modalities (notably possibilities, impossibilities, and necessities of different sorts). But this indubitable fact does not in the least reflect on it. On the contrary, the addiction (as we do not hesitate to call it) to analysing indirect or oblique (‘ungerade’: Frege), non-extensional (Carnap), or referentially opaque (Quine) contexts of the alethic and the propositional sorts in basically one and the same way has, we take it, been detrimental to a proper understanding of the latter. For there seems to us to be vast evidence in favour of devising the logic of believing (doxastic logic) and the logic of intending (theletic logic) not separately but as mere parts of an integrated doxastico-theletic logic (see Hoche 2004). This, however, certainly cannot be done along the lines of alethic modal logic. For if we tried to do so, we would have to look for two doxastico-theletic counterparts of each of the alethic modalities, and we have not the slightest idea how we could possibly succeed in this search. So the impossibility of treating the different branches of ‘modal logic’ at large upon one and the same conceptual pattern does not get in the way of the ‘intentional’ approach to ‘intensional’ logic.

  3. In our view, the earliest and most succinct source, namely, Husserl (1907), is at the same time one of the most illuminating and convincing ones. For an appreciation, see Hoche (2013).

  4. Whereas what Husserl calls a ‘noematic object’ can only be the correlate of the reflective attitude of the transcendental phenomenologist, an ‘intentional object’ commonly so called can well be clarified by means of a conceptual analysis on the footing ground of the straightforward attitude of daily life and the natural sciences. So we think it undesirable to try to explain the concept of an intentional object via the clarification of the concept of a noema, which is an incomparably more intricate issue. Cf. 2.3, end of fn. 9, below.

  5. Our example is desirably simple but may not be representative for the bulk of cases of someone’s looking for something, which, following Quine (1960, §32, esp. pp. 152, 154–156; cf. 1956, Section 1, pp. 101 f.) we may aptly paraphrase as endeavouring to find (or get) something. More often than not, we look, not for a certain bottle of wine, but for some arbitrary bottle of a given vintage, i.e. of a specified sort, or simply for ‘a good wine’ in the cellar (see also Husserl 1894, esp. §§4–6, esp. p. 313). Furthermore, for both kinds of looking for, it is not an indispensable prerequisite that I believe that what I want to get (still) exists (in a given place); rather, not believing that it does not exist will do. So here, different degrees of an indeterminacy of my intentional object make themselves felt. An additional indeterminacy may come into play in our example (1). For in saying that Tom believes that John’s killer has been arrested, we make an ambiguous statement which, following Quine (ibid.), we can disambiguate by distinguishing the ‘referentially transparent’ reading ‘There is some person x such that Tom believes that x has murdered John as a single perpetrator and (that Tom believes) that x has been arrested’. from the ‘referentially opaque’ reading ‘Tom believes that there is some person x such that x has murdered John as a single perpetrator and that x has been arrested.’. Discussing such complications would go beyond the scope of this paper—not to speak of such statements as ‘Inspector Armstrong wants to arrest John’s killer.’, where we may distinguish between ‘There is someone x such that Armstrong believes that x has murdered John as a single perpetrator and that Armstrong intends to arrest x.’ from ‘Armstrong believes that there is someone x such that x has murdered John as a single perpetrator and that Armstrong intends (himself) to arrest x.’, the latter of which may be logically analysed as ‘(Ba) :. (Ex) : x murdered John & (y) . y murdered John → y = x . & (Wa) . a* arrests x’. (Here ‘a*’ is to symbolise the quasi-indicator ‘himself’: see Hoche and Knoop (2010, III.2). For the position of the ‘theletic’ operator ‘(Wa)’, see Hoche (2004), V.3, esp. the Operator Rule RW5.)

  6. Wittgenstein (1922, 1–2.063) took the (real) world to be the totality of the facts, i.e. of the states of affairs that exist. Similarly, by someone’s subjective belief world we may understand the totality of the states of affairs the person in question believes to exist.

  7. According to Anscombe (1965, p. 160), ‘the verb “to intend” comes by metaphor from [“to shoot at”]—“intendere arcum in”, leading to “intendere animum in”’. Irrespective of whether or not this etymological note is correct, at any rate he who wants to fetch a bottle of wine may be said to be aiming at, or intending (in the sense of having in view, or having in mind, or being concerned with), a certain ‘object’ which, in the eyes of a better informed on-looker, need not, but of course can, really exist. To make this obvious, it is advisable to speak, not of an ‘object’ simpliciter (that is, without a qualifying, especially a modifying, addition), but of an ‘intended [or: intentional] object’, or an ‘object meant’. But it should be added that, whereas he who sees, hears, remembers, imagines, worships, etc., something or someone may well be said to ‘intendere animum in’, that is, to direct his mind at something or somebody, in the case of such basic intentional experiences—and likewise in the case of such intentional dispositions or states (habitual intentionalities) as believing, hoping, loving, etc.—the picture of ‘shooting at’ or ‘aiming at’ may be misleading rather than helpful.

  8. Other relevant examples are, e.g. my writing a letter to a friend who died last night without my having been informed yet; my greeting a stranger whom I mistake for my neighbour Smith; my sawing a plank that belongs to Smith (Anscombe 1957, §6); my inadvertently using Smith’s pen, or worshipping a tin god, or shooting at a boar but shooting down one of the beaters (cf. Anscombe 1965, pp. 159 f., 166–168). We take it that in these examples we have invariably to do with a definite (determinate) intentional object (cf. fn. 5, above).

  9. The simpler term ‘subjective world’ would suffice; but we take it that anybody’s believing is the basis of all other of his intentional states (propositional attitudes), notably hoping, being afraid, wishing, etc.—and even intending to act (see fn. 11, below). Sometimes, the divergence of subjective belief worlds may be called, not inter-personal, but intra-personal. For whereas we cannot say ‘Unavailingly, I am just going for a bottle of wine.’, or: ‘I erroneously believe that there is still a bottle of wine in the cellar.’, in hindsight we may say: ‘Unavailingly, I went for a bottle of wine.’, or: ‘I erroneously believed that there was still a bottle of wine in the cellar.’. In such cases, I obviously adopt the better informed spectator’s part with respect to one of my own past actions or beliefs or, generally speaking, to one of my own past conscious experiences or—possibly non-conscious—propositional attitudes, which we take to be intentional states in the sense of mental dispositions, i.e. mental properties. For the distinction between conscious experiences (which, following Velmans (2000), we prefer to take to be always intentional) and (possibly, but not necessarily non-conscious) propositional attitudes or intentional states such as loving, remembering, believing, intending, wishing, hoping, etc., see Hoche (2008), IV.2.3.3 (p. 136); V.1.6.2 (p. 206). For subsuming the concept of an action of mine as it is accessible to myself (i.e. in my own first-person perspective) under the concept of my own consciousness at large, see ibid., IV.2.3.2 (pp. 135 f.); VI.3 (pp. 246–252). Note that also in the course of my perceiving a physical object or state of affairs, especially one of which I cannot immediately make heads or tails, not only others but also I myself can play the better informed onlooker’s role with respect to a former interpretation of, or an assertion about, what I am perceiving (have perceived). Let us finally add that in an analogous though, we take it, quite different way we may say that the better informed spectator’s part is adopted by the transcendental phenomenologist who, during ‘office-hours’ and for strictly methodological reasons, focuses, not on ‘real objects’, but on ‘noematic objects’; see Hoche (2013).

  10. For a further inquiry into the concept of an intentional object, see Section 6, below.

  11. See fn. 9, above. It should be added that, though in a way believing and intending (in the sense of willing to do) are equally primordial in that they cannot be reduced to one another (see Hoche 2004), I cannot intend to do something (say, to open the door) unless I believe something else (say, the door’s being closed) to be the case.

  12. In this connection, it is certainly worth noting that, according to our idiolectal feel for language, the meaning of the German phrase ‘sie meint, dass p’—unless it is not used in the quite different sense of ‘she means (to say) that p’—oscillates between ‘she believes that p’ and ‘she says [or: said] that p’.

  13. ‘Die ungerade Bedeutung eines Wortes ist […] sein gewöhnlicher Sinn’: Frege (1892, tr. 1952), p. 28; cf. p. 37. – In translating from this text of Frege’s, in most cases we will silently follow Max Black in Geach and Black (1952, pp. 56–78).

  14. ‘Wenn man in der gewöhnlichen Weise Worte gebraucht, so ist das, wovon man sprechen will, deren Bedeutung’: Frege (1892, tr. 1952), p. 28. It should be noted that Frege deliberately says: ‘what one intends to speak of’, and not: ‘what one speaks of’. Hence Feigl’s translation (‘what is talked about’) in Feigl and Sellars (1949, pp. 85–102), is not quite correct.

  15. Frege (1892, tr. 1952), p. 28; cf. p. 36. The case of direct speech is of no relevance to the present problems and hence will be left out of consideration in what follows. By the way, a couple of times Frege mistakenly spoke of ‘gerade Rede’ though what he had in mind was doubtless ‘gewöhnliche Rede’ (customary speech); see, e.g. Frege (1902a), p. 232; (1902b), p. 236.

  16. ‘In der ungeraden Rede spricht man von dem Sinne z. B. der Rede eines anderen’: Frege (1892, tr. 1952), p. 28.

  17. We borrow these terms from a frequently discussed example to be found in Quine (1956).

  18. See Frege (1906a), pp. 213 f.; cf. (1906b), pp. 105 f., and also (1891, tr. 1952), p. 14; (1892, tr. 1952), p. 32. We take it that in the latter three passages it is silently understood that the speaker/hearer’s command of the language used has to be presupposed. On the basis of this criterion for the sense-identity of whole declarative sentences, we may perhaps think of something like the following criterion for the sense-identity of the semantically relevant components which, in Frege’s view, can make up complete sentences, namely, function-signs, argument-signs, and component propositions (including subordinate clauses): Any two such signs S and S′ express the same Fregean sense if and only if there is at least one pair of thought-identical propositions ξ and ζ which solely differ with respect to their component parts S and S′, respectively, or, more precisely, in that in all or some ‘homologue’ positions ξ contains S and ζ contains S’. Cf. Frege (1896), pp. 369 f.; see also Hoche (1982), 1.6.1.

  19. Here, and likewise in what follows, by ‘premises’ or ‘sentences’ we always understand ‘sentences as used in a given speech situation and interpreted in accordance with each other’.

  20. Here, and also in Schema V, the believing subject’s ‘rationality’ is silently presupposed. In fact, neither a doxastic logic nor an integrated logic of conviction and intention (doxastico-theletic logic) can even start without such a presupposition, that is, without the firm resolution to only take into account what we call the non-spontaneous, considered, and possibly maieutically enlightened modes of believing and intending. For details, see Hoche (2004), esp. VIII.4 and IX.1.

  21. ‘As many’ since we take it that the belief-worlds of different personal subjects practically never completely coincide; and ‘at least as many’ since we take it that the belief-world of each of us is subject to temporal change.

  22. Striking evidence seems to us to be the fact that, more often than not, we use to say, not something like ‘in my opinion [to my mind], however’, but something like ‘in truth [or: in fact], however’. Only unusually modest, reflective, and/or scrupulous speakers would prefer, we think, the former wording. Nonetheless, there is a kernel of truth in equating the objective or real world with the world believed to be real by the given speaker, i.e. with the given speaker’s subjective belief-world. This has to do with the fact that he who utters a proposition with ‘assertive force’ (‘behauptende Kraft’: Frege) as a rule takes it for granted that, with respect to the given speech situation, he is sufficiently informed or at the very least better informed than the subject of a ‘propositional attitude’ whom he is speaking about; see 2.2–2.3, above, and 5.4, below.

  23. With respect to different counterfactually possible worlds (see 7.1 and 7.4, below), logicians and ontologists use to speak of a ‘transmundane identity’. With a grain of salt (for this caveat, see 7.1, below), we may perhaps borrow this succinct term for the analogous identity of an object belonging to the subjective belief-world of one person as well as to the subjective belief-world of another one. If we do so, the question arises whether a ‘transmundane identity’ with respect to subjective belief-worlds (with the limiting case of what we take to be the objective world: see 5.1 with fn. 22, above) is, or is not, the same as a ‘transmundane identity’ with respect to counterfactually possible worlds (including their factual reference point, i.e. the world supposed, in a given situation, to be real). The answer would depend on whether or not we are justified in regarding subjective belief-worlds as special cases of counterfactually possible worlds. At the very least, this seems to us to be doubtful; but this is not, of course, the place to deal with the problem.

  24. Here, a few comments seem to be indicated. On condition that the speaker of (4′) uses grammatically proper names the way we do, he implies that he believes Tom and himself to refer to the same man and hence to have the same state of affairs in mind. For otherwise, the speaker would have chosen the alternative first conjunct ‘Tom believes that a (certain) Mr Fletcher has been arrested’ (see also 7.5 with fn. 52, below). But look at the variant (4″) ‘Tom believes that John’s killer has been arrested, and John’s killer has (in fact) been arrested.’ At first sight, there may seem to be no difference; for, according to one of the most basic rules of conversation, within the unity of a given speech act (or ‘in one and the same breath’) an individual constant, be it a definite description or a proper name, must never be used to refer to different objects. Mind, however, that for the sake of a non-circular analysis of belief ascriptions de re, say, (4), we need to stipulate a purely de dicto reading of the first conjuncts of (4′) and (4″). So, by ‘John’s killer’ Tom and the speaker of (4″) may refer to different persons, from which it follows that they may have different states of affairs in mind. Hence, (4″) may be true without the analysandum’s ‘Tom rightly believes that John’s killer has been arrested.’ being true. But crucial though such subtleties are—their discussion must be postponed to the second of the sequels referred to in Section 1, above.

  25. In the present subsection, we do not simply summarise the considerations of Dudda (2007) but proceed in a slightly different way, which, however, is fully compatible with them.

  26. As always in such cases—see, e.g. also (4) vs. (4′) in 5.3, above—in proving the ‘semantic equivalence’ between ordinary language propositions each of us has to rely on his or her personal ‘feel for language’ or ‘sprachgefühl’ or, more precisely speaking, on his or her own imaginative and idiolectal competence, which we can systematically bring to bear by making use of the well-defined method of assenting tests (pragmatico-semantic combination tests); see esp. Hoche (1981); (2008), II.1–2.

  27. Let us add in passing that the ‘justified-true-belief’ interpretation of propositional knowledge appears to have a coequal competitor in the Wittgenstein–Ryle suggestion to interpret (5) as meaning the same as (5′) ‘Tom learnt [has been reliably informed; found out; saw (with his own eyes); could see; has seen; (has) perceived; etc.] that Mr Fletcher has been arrested.’ (For sources, see the detailed discussion in Hoche and Strube (1985), A.III.2 and A.V.2.a; the most concise formulation is certainly Ryle’s (1962, p. 195): ‘To know something is to have discovered or learned something and not to have forgotten it.’.) But mind, first, that seeing with one’s own eyes or, more generally speaking, perceiving or finding out through one of one’s own senses is usually taken to be the most cogent reason for believing something (to be true), that is, for being convinced that a given state of affairs really exists and hence may be asserted as a fact; second, that the strict, reality-implying uses of verbs of perception, such as ‘to see’, definitely prevail over their wider, sensation-centred uses (see Hoche 2008, IV. 3.12); third, that for this very reason a speaker would commit a linguistic blunder if he used the verbal phrases italicised in (5′) in a different (i.e. in the purely sensation centred) way without passing a qualifying remark to this effect; and, fourth, that therefore the speaker himself subscribes to the truth of Mr Fletcher’s having been arrested. Hence, (5′) seems to us to amount to at least nearly the same statement as (6) and, for that matter, (5). Thus, in our view (5′) is rather sort of an ally than a competitor of (6).

  28. Of course, in Frege’s view one ‘token’ of a given expression-type’ can refer to a Fregean thought and another ‘token’ of the very same ‘type’ can refer to a truth-value. This can be seen, e.g. from (4′), provided the particle ‘that’ is considered to be part and parcel of the belief operator (‘Tom believes that …’). Furthermore, it should go without saying that the customary sense of a token of one expression-type (for instance, ‘the man in the brown hat’) can well be the customary reference of a token of another expression-type (for instance, ‘the sense of the definite description “the man in the brown hat”’); cf. Frege (1892, tr. 1952), p. 28.

  29. In our view, the philosopher—at least as long as he can possibly avoid it—should forbear from tampering with the naturally grown language, and especially from declaring familiar and useful ordinary language formulations improper.

  30. As Frege (e.g. 1914, pp. 247, 253) stressed, wherever an individual constant occurs in a declarative sentence, we are free to consider the remaining part of the sentence to be a concept sign. This fertile strategy of Frege’s has been adopted by many logicians, first of all Carnap (e.g. 1947, §1 [‘sentential matrix’] and §4 [‘compound predicator’]).

  31. Anscombe (1965, p. 162) leaves no doubt that in her view it is the lacuna in ‘to believe—to be a scoundrel’ where the (name of) the intentional object belongs.

  32. Such accusative-with-infinitive (‘aci’) constructions (and/or accusative-with-accusative constructions) of terms of believing are ubiquitous—in English as well as, say, in Latin or German. Think, e.g. of ‘She considers [thinks; takes; deems; etc.] him (to be) a scoundrel.’ or of the famous Latin dicta ‘Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam’ (Cato the Elder) and ‘Homo sum; nil humani a me alienum puto’ (Terence). In present-day German, such constructions as ‘Sie glaubt sich in Gefahr.’ or, equivalently, ‘Sie glaubt in Gefahr zu sein.’ (‘She believes herself to be in danger.’) are quite common; but the corresponding complete aci-construction ‘Sie glaubt sich in Gefahr zu sein.’ has long since become obsolete. This was not so, however, in eighteenth century German: see, e.g. Kant (1785, A 54): ‘wenn ich mich in Geldnot zu sein glaube’. So (1′)-style and closely related constructions of terms of believing are far from being mere exceptions.

  33. For the common identification of someone’s intentional object with his ‘object-about-which’ see, for instance, Husserl (1901), First Logical Investigation, §§12, 34; Fifth Logical Investigation, §§17, 31, 39; 1948, §§59 f.; Anscombe (1965), Section I; Searle (1983, pp. 16–19, 50).

  34. We should not be taken aback by the identity of the believer’s and the belief ascriber’s intentional object. For the believer and the belief ascriber are, of course, far from asserting the same thing of their intentional object, say, John’s killer: Whereas the believer asserts John’s killer to have been in fact arrested, the speaker of the belief ascribing proposition asserts John’s killer to have been arrested in Tom’s opinion (subjective belief-world), from which it follows that, in our example (1′), Tom makes a predication about John’s killer simpliciter, the speaker, however, about John’s killer qua being Tom’s intentional object. (For a further problematization, see the sequel ‘Analysing belief ascriptions de re’ referred to in Section 1, above.)

  35. To forestall a misunderstanding: In uttering (7) or (7′) we say, first, that the state of affairs of Mr Fletcher’s not having been arrested exists in the speaker’s belief world; hence, second, that the the state of affairs of Mr Fletcher’s having been arrested does not exist in the speaker’s belief world; and, third, that the state of affairs of Mr Fletcher’s having been arrested, though it does not exist in the speaker’s belief world, is nonetheless ‘contained’ in it in the derivative form of a state of affairs believed to exist by Tom. Or in other words: What we say to truly exist in the speaker’s belief world are, first, the state of affairs of Mr Fletcher’s not having been arrested and, second, the state of affairs of Tom’s believing that Mr Fletcher has been arrested.

  36. If we decided on the competing option that it is the dual citizenship, not of the believer’s intentional object, but of the whole state of affairs he has in mind that should be regarded as the sufficient as well as necessary (or, for that matter: defining) condition for a belief ascription to be de re, then we would have to live with the awkward situation that the belief ascription (4) is de re, the closely related belief ascription (7), however, de dicto.

  37. This preliminary stage will be stepwise refined in the sequel ‘Analysing belief ascriptions de re’ referred to in Section 1, above.

  38. In so doing, we should keep in mind that it is an open question whether we are justified in regarding subjective belief-worlds as special cases of counterfactually possible worlds; see 5.3, fn. 23, above.

  39. This sort of a difference seems to be characteristic of objects belonging to (numerically) different ‘categories’ in somewhat the sense of Ryle’s (1949)—hence the name.

  40. See Hoche (1990, p. 120; 2008, III.5 and III.9). Whereas we cannot assign a number to a purely qualitative concept, such as ‘horse’ or ‘inhabitant’, we can, at least in principle, do so if we add, as we may call it, a suitable index and consider such extended—or, as we suggest to call it, ‘individually bound’—concepts as ‘horse that draws the [present Prussian] King’s carriage’ or ‘inhabitant of Germany at New Year 1883, Berlin time’: Frege (1884, tr. 1950), §46. See also 7.4, fn. 50, below.

  41. The misty wording of Husserl (1927, p. 294) seems to us to be due, not only to the enormous intricateness of the problem (he certainly had no clear conception of a categorial difference yet), but also to the fact that Heidegger participated in Husserl’s work at the Encyclopaedia Britannica article and may well have edited parts of it; see Husserliana, Vol. IX, pp. XV, 590 f., and Biemel (1950, esp. pp. 303, 308–315). CV Salmon, the translator of the Encyclopaedia Britannica article (‘Phenomenology’), as loosely as sensibly put this as: ‘what differentiates them is merely a change of attitude’.

  42. Translated from Husserl (1948), p. 432. See ibid., §§39 f., 91, and Husserl (1987), Supplement XIX, p. 205, where he answers the question ‘Or are they neither different nor identical?’ in fn. 2 as follows: ‘This is correct; for (being) different and (being) identical simpliciter means a relation of something interrelated. But here we have a relation of something completely “relationless”. It is, we may also say, a “difference” of its own [eine eigene “Verschiedenheit”]’ (our translation). See also Hoche (1990), 9.6.

  43. Translated from Husserl (1929), §§89 f. (Husserl’s italics). Analogously, Carnap (1931, tr. 1959, §§1, 4) argued that the string of words (‘Wortreihe’) ‘Caesar is a prime number’—if taken to be a fully interpreted sentence of the English language concerning the well-known Roman statesman Gaius Julius Caesar—is not a false proposition but merely a would-be proposition or pseudo-proposition (‘Scheinsatz’). For, he argues, an expression of the form ‘a is a prime number’ yields a false proposition if and only if a can be divided by a natural number which is neither a nor 1, and hence, he continues, it is ‘obvious’ that ‘a’ cannot be replaced with ‘Caesar’. Note that it can be easily shown that ‘Caesar is a prime number’ is meaningless if and only if the apparent identity statement ‘Caesar is identical to the number 3’ is meaningless. Hence, if we want to find out whether the two of them are in fact mere pseudo-propositions or not, we can work from either side (see Hoche 2008, III.1). For Carnap’s choice of the example, see Frege (1884, tr. 1950), §56.

  44. This idea has been worked out in detail in Hoche (2008).

  45. See Hoche (2008), IV.3.16; V.2.6–2.7. For the groundbreaking discovery of the so-called mirror neurons and their relevance to phenomenology, see, e.g. Gallese (2001); Zahavi (2012).

  46. See Wittgenstein (1953), passim, esp. §§202, 217, 219, 243, 256, 258, 261, 270 f., 293, 304–308; Kripke (1982); Hoche and Strube (1985), A.III.2–4.

  47. This is not the place to delve into assessing the divergent positions in the theory of counterfactually possible worlds, to wit, that of ‘trans-world heir lines’, as David Kaplan once aptly put it, i.e. of a transmundane or intermundane identity as it has been prominently defended by Kripke (1971, 1972), which certainly is intended to be a numerical identity, on the one hand and that of a numerical difference on the other—see, e.g. Lewis (1968, pp. 114 f.; 1973, p. 39), who claims to adduce reasons for speaking of a mere ‘counterpart relation’, or the quotation from Leibniz’s Letter to Arnauld from July 14, 1686, in Plantinga (1974, VI.2). Making use of the concept of a categorial difference might have helped mediate between the sound intuitions of the ‘identitists’ and those of the ‘non-identitists’.

  48. Cf. Hoche (1990), 9.3–9.5; for the importance of a stipulated identity, see esp. ibid., pp. 168–171.

  49. By an ‘object’ (‘thing’, ‘entity’) in the widest and purely formal sense, which is essential to formal logic, we may understand any ‘subject of possibly true predications’, or ‘the subject of true and false predications’: Husserl (1913, tr. 1931), §3, p. 49; cf. §22, p. 80. Virtually the same definition of the concept ‘object’ has been given by Carnap (1928, §§1, 18).

  50. In the case of humans, we may think of the material concept of being a man residing in the real world and/or being a man residing in a contrary-to-fact variant thereof. But although this adjunctive concept is sortal and thus at any rate permits us to start counting what falls under it, we are not sure that it will do. For as it stands, it is not individually bound yet and hence falls short of being a counting concept in that it does not permit us to also stop counting what falls under it (and thus to determine the definite number of the concept). So we are confronted with the challenge of incorporating into it a suitable delimitation. Now what suits the concept of a human being are precise spatio-temporal boundaries within which he is to reside and/or an individual that he is to stand in a specific relation to, say, the relation of being-a-pupil-of. But if every counterfactually possible world should span its own space–time—a question we do not dare to answer yet—, then spatio-temporal restrictions would be relative to one or another of these possible worlds, from which it would follow that we cannot indicate any spatio-temporal restrictions for what belongs to more than one such world. In any case, however, we cannot determine an individual that can serve as a fixed point which humans inhabiting numerically different possible worlds are specifically related to. For he who is, say, a pupil of Aristotle’s in the real world (Alexander the Great, for one) need not be a pupil of Aristotle’s in a counterfactually possible world, notably one in which Aristotle, having been exchanged for his nurse’s son as a baby, grew up as a homespun peasant and had no pupils at all. See Hoche (1985), esp. 5.1, where it was argued that in any and every counterfactually possible world Aristotle is the person who is named ‘Aristotle’ in (English speaking philosophising circles of the beginning twenty-first century of) the real world; cf. Plantinga (1974), IV.10. See also Hoche and Strube (1985), A.I.3–5 and, of course, Kripke (1971, 1972).

  51. We think there is good reason to say that any and every grammatically proper name can, and on behalf of doing linguistico-logical analysis should, be considered a definite description sui generis, to wit, a definite description which, unlike definite descriptions of the garden variety, is ‘rigid’ in the sense of Kripke (1971, 1972) and in a way also guarantees, in any concrete speech situation given, the unique existence of its bearer (see Hoche 1985). Of course, this view does not properly work unless we are prepared to clearly distinguish between (interpreted) ‘names’ and (uninterpreted) ‘name-radicals’ (see ibid.) in the same way we must distinguish between sentences as used and mere sentences of a given language. It ought to be noted that the first- and second-person pronouns ‘I’, ‘we’, and ‘you’ should not be regarded as grammatically proper names, which in the usage of grown-ups and older children always stand for (‘third’) persons or objects not identical with the speaker(s) or hearer(s).

  52. As the first conjunct of (8) needs to be read as an ascription de dicto (see 5.3, fn. 24, above), Tom is believed to be also referring to Mr Fletcher by the name ‘Mr Fletcher’. But of course the isolated proposition ‘Tom believes that Mr Fletcher has been arrested.’ also admits of a reading de re, in which case Tom would perhaps not be prepared to call Mr Fletcher by this name; for he might be simply thinking of John’s killer and believe that it was none other than Richard Roe who had murdered John. So then we would have another parallel to the situation in possible-world semantics touched upon in 7.4 with fn. 50, above.

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Acknowledgments

Two drafts of this paper have been discussed in the Logisch-sprachanalytisches Kolloquium [Logico-linguistic Colloquy] at the Institute of Philosophy I, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany on January 30, 2009 and April 13, 2012. We thank the participants of these meetings, notably (in alphabetic order) Privatdozent Dr. Friedrich Dudda, Privatdozentin Dr. Tania Eden, Benedikt Fait, B.A., Professor Dr. Ulrich Pardey, and Daniela Zumpf, M.A. Furthermore, we are grateful to Dr. Rochus Sowa, formerly of Husserl-Archives Leuven, Belgium, for having carefully read the manuscript and given us many valuable hints as to sources as well as some issue-related questions.

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Hoche, HU., Knoop, M. Ascriptions of propositional attitudes. An analysis in terms of intentional objects. Phenom Cogn Sci 12, 747–768 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-012-9272-0

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