Abstract
I argue that mental descriptivism cannot be reasonably thought superior to rival theories on the grounds that it can (while they cannot) provide an elegant account of reference failure. Descriptivism about the particular-directed intentionality of our mental states fails when applied to desires. Consider, for an example, the desire that Satan not tempt me. On the descriptivist account, it looks like my desire would be fulfilled in conditions in which there exists exactly one thing satisfying some description only Satan satisfies (call it the Satanic Description). However, against this analysis, it is clearly compatible with desiring that Satan not tempt me that I also desire that there exist nothing satisfying the Satanic Description. The descriptivist has room for maneuver here, but the cost of accommodating this phenomenon is that the descriptivist shall no longer be able to use her theory to ameliorate the possibility of reference failure.
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Notes
In ‘Social Content and Psychological Content’, Loar (1988) suggests that the theorist’s attribution of content to psychological states is constrained by explanatory constraints not present in the case of language. That what is said and the beliefs thereby expressed might systematically differ in their contents is affirmed, on a variety of grounds, by David Kaplan (1978), Mark Richard (1983), and Howard Wettstein (1986).
It is consistent with this supposition that they might communicate (via some pragmatic mechanism) some determinate proposition.
‘Exists’ should probably be understood to express existential quantification that is not temporally restricted, i.e., as exists at any time.
First, it might be suggested that even if S1 doesn’t express a determinate proposition, it expresses something that can perform some of the work of a determinate proposition. Maybe, for some examples, it expresses a function from objects to propositions, a property, or an unfilled proposition. See (Salmon 1998) and (Braun 1993) for prominent developments of this idea. On this view, assertions of S1 say something—even if they say nothing with a truth-value.
Braun argues that sentences with empty names as constituents might serve to assert what he calls unfilled propositions. Unfilled propositions are just like structured propositions, but they contain a gap that reflects reference failure. Consider, for example, sentences containing the non-referring names ‘Vulcan’ and ‘Ossian’. On Braun’s view, “‘Vulcan is a planet’ and ‘Ossian is a planet’ express the same unfilled propositional content” (Braun 1993, p. 464). Each expresses an unfilled proposition with a gap corresponding to the non-referring name—‘Vulcan’ in the first case and ‘Ossian’ in the second.
Second, I supposed that the truth-value of S1 is determined by functional application. The predicate, ‘is walking’, was understood to express a function from objects to truth-values. The truth-value of the sentence would be the value of the expressed function, given the object referred to by ‘Orm’. Perhaps we ought to relax the requirement that the truth-value of a sentence be determined in this way. Perhaps, for example, when the value of the function expressed by ‘is walking’ is undefined, the sentence should have FALSE as its semantic value (Braun 1993).
Third, we might also revise or reject Direct Reference Theory. Perhaps, in cases in which ‘Orm’ lacks reference it makes a “degenerate” semantic contribution. For example, Anthony Everett (2000, p. 42) suggests that a name takes “the singleton of its referent (if any)” as its semantic value and, in cases of reference failure, takes the empty set as its semantic value. This is a relatively friendly revision of Direct Reference Theory. Alternatively, we might take the conclusion that assertions of sentences containing non-referring names lack content as a reason for a wholesale rejection of Direct Reference Theory. See (Devitt 1989) for a recent deployment of this line of thought.
The postulation of unfilled propositions might exemplify this strategy, depending on how it is developed. Consider the belief someone might express by asserting the sentence ‘Vulcan is a planet’. Suppose that since ‘Vulcan’ does not refer, the belief possesses an unfilled proposition p as its content. Moreover, suppose that a belief would possess p as its content whether or not it is in a circumstance in which ‘Vulcan’ would refer. Then the postulation of unfilled propositions would be an instance of the strategy of postulating sturdy contents.
I ignore the second description—‘the lawn’—in my discussion.
The scare quotes around ‘about’ indicate that it is not clear to me that it follows from a sentence having a part with a semantic value x that the sentence is honest-to-goodness about x. If I am the semantic value of some part of a sentence, then it is natural to describe the sentence as about me. By contrast, consider the sentence, “I am happy”. Maybe it is right to describe this sentence as being about happiness or, perhaps, the set of happy things, but I am not sure. However, the relation indicated (between a predicate and its value) is similar to the relationship between a name and its semantic value in a way that is hard to articulate. I will dispense with the scare-quotes in what follows. But residual anxiety is warranted.
Of course, it is well-known that only some definite descriptions designate non-rigidly. Others designate rigidly—that is, they designate the same object in every circumstance of evaluation in which that object exists. For example, on the standard indexical interpretation of ‘actual’, ‘the actual inventor of the bifocal’ designates Ben Franklin in every world in which Ben Franklin exists—even those in which he did not invent bifocal glasses. Contrast this with ‘the inventor of the bifocal’, which, since Franklin is not essentially the inventor of the bifocal, designates different objects in different worlds.
For dissent from the Szabónian View see (Abbott 1999).
Though, it should be noted Strawson did not accept the Strawsonian View with perfect generality—applying it only to some definite descriptions.
I am pessimistic that a reductive account can be given of the difference between the state-content relation in the case of beliefs and the state-content relation in the case of desires. However, it is clear that we can sort mental states into belief-like and desire-like categories. Thus, for example, entertaining a hypothesis is plausibly belief-like rather than desire-like. So, while I am pessimistic about the prospects for a reductive account, I am optimistic that talk of differences in direction of fit is not nonsense. For some attempts at an account of this difference between belief-like states and desire-like states see: (Anscombe 1963); (Smith 1994); (Platts 1979); (Humberstone 1992); (Velleman 1992); (Zangwill 1998). For recent discussions see (Tenenbaum 2007) and (Schroeder 2004).
That I treat a circumstance as good, insofar as it is among the circumstances at which my desire is true, does not imply that I treat the circumstance as good all-things-considered. As Sergio Tenenbaum (2007, p. 73) points out, a desire is not an all-out attitude, but is instead provisional. Consequently, even if I desire that p and so am subject to an attitude that treats p as good, it might remain an open question whether I ought to actualize circumstances in which p is true. In this respect, desires that p are like appearances that p. If it appears to me that p, it remains to me an open question whether p is true.
In a recent discussion, Neale (2005, p. 846) following Kaplan (2005, p. 985) defends the Russellian theory against the phenomenon on which I have focused in this section. He describes it as a logical error to wield cases like the case of Othayna’s desire against the Russellian analysis of definite descriptions. Neale rests his argument on the fact that one cannot derive ‘Diogenes wonders whether there are any men’ from ‘Diogenes wonders whether there are any honest men’. However, whatever we say about the case of Diogenes’ curiosity, it is not clear that a result about wondering whether ought to generalize to the case of desiring that. See Paul Elbourne’s (2008) manuscript, ‘The Existence Entailments of Definite Descriptions’, for a discussion of these cases.
To be fair to Prior, he expresses considerable hesitancy about what to say here. He concludes the passage by noting ‘…I cannot pretend to be wholly happy about this’ (1968, p. 106).
Accepting S5 would commit you to believing that there is exactly one (relevant) squirrel. By contrast, accepting S6 would only commit you to believing that Mary believes this.
These three positions can be combined in various ways of course. Perhaps some cases of anaphoric designation ought to receive one analysis and other cases another (Neale 1990).
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Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Mark Criley, Elizabeth Goodnick, Eric Lormand, Peter Ludlow, Ian Proops, Jessica Rett, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper.
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Hughes, A. Desires, descriptivism, and reference failure. Philos Stud 165, 279–296 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9956-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9956-x