A logical form for the propositional attitudes

Abstract

The author puts forth an approach to propositional attitude contexts based upon the view that one does not have beliefs of ordinary extensional entitiessimpliciter. Rather, one has beliefs of such entities as presented in various manners. Roughly, these are treated as beliefs of ordered pairs — the first member of which is the ordinary extensional entity and the second member of which is a predicate that it satisfies. Such an approach has no difficulties with problems involving identity, such as of The Morning Star and The Evening Star (section 1). Given the second members of the pairs, the “modes of presentation”, it is quite natural to allow exportation everywhere. There is no need for “essentialism”. (One also can have non-essentialistic modal logic if one grants analyticity or the like.) (section 2). Given that the second member of the pair need only be one that is satisfied by the entity that is the first member (and need not be specificative), the method has no difficulties when one is concerned only with discriminations (and not specifications) (section 3). When this method is combined with the Frege-Carnap method of descriptions, fictional “entities” can be accommodated; Goodman's unicorn-picture and the like can be brought within a Tarskian semantics; and Geach's difficulties with “intentional identity” appear to be handled (section 4). Given the author's ordered pair construals, there appears to be no additional need for notional construals; i.e., the author's one unified method appears satisfactory for dealing with both traditionalde re (relational) andde dicto (notional) construals. The Paradox of the Knower and the like do not appear formulatable against the author's approach. (section 5). The author also argues against the basic principles behind the Church-Langford translation argument (section 6).