Modes of presentation?

Abstract

man flies' and 'Superman doesn't fly'. Thus, Schiffer gives no reason to think that Floyd violates the principle of rationality that if one is disposed to think something of the form Sa and --Sb then one will be disposed to think -(a = b). Floyd does not have these syntactic strings in his belief box, so he does not flout this maxim. So the neat explanation that modes are syntactic items in a language of thought, survives Schiffer's objections. Armed with this, one can then go on to explain behaviour via the contents of thoughts (and desires). Elsewhere we have argued that this theory has great explanatory power: handles twin-earth problems, names puzzles, vacuous singular thoughts, opacity problems, identity puzzles, and a host of other traditional issues in the philosophy of mind and language. It's a good thing Schiffer is wrong!4