Summary |
De re thoughts are thoughts that single out particular
objects. For example, the thought that He
is the world’s tallest man —had while looking at a particular person— is de re, but the thought that Somebody is the world’s tallest man is
not. Attributions of de re thoughts are (utterances of) sentences containing
that-clauses, in turn containing either singular terms or variables bound
from outside the attitude verb. Issues surrounding these two phenomena include
the following. What is the relationship between our theory of de re thoughts
and our theory of de re attributions? What is required to have a de re thought? What is required for a de re attribution to be true or felicitous? What kind of semantic content
should be used to type de re thoughts and de re attributions? Can we have de re
thoughts about abstract and fictional entities? Can one have a priori de re knowledge? What role should de re thought
play in the theory of reference? |