Abstract
Well-worn examples have led many philosophers to claim that verbs expressing psychological states or activities force their objects to refer in a non-standard way.1 When Oedipus married Jocasta, he married his mother. Prior to his marriage, Oedipus would have confessed to wanting to marry Jocasta, but he would have denied any desire to marry his mother. The view that psychological verbs place their objects into an intentional context (where we only need worry about how the object of the verb is conceptualized by the subject of the verb) allows Oedipus’ claims concerning these desires to be taken at face value. When he kisses Jocasta, he kisses an actual physical human being who is one and the same person as his mother—he kisses his mother. This cannot be denied. But, when he desires Jocasta, he desires her as he conceptualizes her, or under a certain description.
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Reshotko, N. (2011). Beyond De Re: Toward a Dominance Theory of Desire Attribution. In: Anagnostopoulos, G. (eds) Socratic, Platonic and Aristotelian Studies: Essays in Honor of Gerasimos Santas. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 117. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1730-5_8
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