Abstract

Counterfactual attitudes like imagining, dreaming, and wishing create a problem for the standard formal semantic theory of de re attitude ascriptions. I show how the problem can be avoided if we represent an agent's attitudinal possibilities using multi-centered worlds, possible worlds with multiple distinguished individuals, each of which represents an individual with whom the agent is acquainted. I then present a compositional semantics for de re ascriptions according to which singular terms are assignment-sensitive expressions and attitude verbs are assignment shifters. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.5 BibTeX info

Highlights

  • I can imagine that Obama lost the 2008 US presidential election even though I know that he won

  • I show that counterfactual attitudes pose a problem for the approach to de re attitude ascription standardly assumed in the formal semantics literature (Cresswell & von Stechow 1982), an approach based on Lewis’s (1979, 1983) centered worlds account of de se and de re attitudes

  • Cumming 2008, Santorio 2012), this account yields a simple semantics for attitude reports which avoids both the problem raised by counterfactual attitudes, along with a well-known compositional problem facing the standard account

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Summary

Introduction

I can imagine that Obama lost the 2008 US presidential election even though I know that he won. I show that counterfactual attitudes pose a problem for the approach to de re attitude ascription standardly assumed in the formal semantics literature (Cresswell & von Stechow 1982), an approach based on Lewis’s (1979, 1983) centered worlds account of de se and de re attitudes. In response to this problem, I explore an alternative account, one on which attitudinal alternatives are represented by multi-centered worlds, possible worlds with multiple distinguished individuals, each of which is used to represent someone from the agent’s world. Combined with the idea that attitude verbs are ‘assignmentshifters’ (cf. Cumming 2008, Santorio 2012), this account yields a simple semantics for attitude reports which avoids both the problem raised by counterfactual attitudes, along with a well-known compositional problem facing the standard account

De se attitudes
De re attitudes
Attitude ascription
The problem stated
Questions of identification
Pair-centered worlds
Multi-centered worlds
Assignment-sensitivity
Third-person pronouns
I and you
Proper names
Definite descriptions and quantifiers
Full Text
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