Are There 'De Re' and 'De Dicto' Beliefs?

'Maverick Philosopher' Bill Vallicella has written recently on the distinction between 'de re' and 'de dicto' beliefs. As he explains the distinction, a de dicto belief is a belief about a dictum (basically, a proposition). Thus, in "Sam believes that Cicero is a politician" the verb "believes" is followed by a 'that'-clause which expresses a proposition about Cicero (that he is a politician). A de re belief, on the other hand, is supposed to take as its primary object a res (or individual thing). Thus, in "Cicero is believed by Sam to be a politician" the verb "believes" takes Cicero himself as its grammatical object, not a 'that'-clause.

For more on the de re / de dicto distinction, see here.

Now, what's not immediately clear is what this distinction is supposed to amount to. Why aren't "Cicero is believed by Sam to be a politician" and "Sam believes that Cicero is a politician" synonymous? Well, the reason for differentiating between them has to do with the fact that this inference

1. Sam believes that Cicero is a politician.
2. Cicero = Tully.
   Therefore,
   
3. Sam believes that Tully is a politician.
   

looks invalid, whereas this inference

4. Cicero is believed by Sam to be a politician.
5. Cicero = Tully.
   Therefore,
   
6. Tully is believed by Sam to be a politician.

looks valid.

What I'd like to suggest, however, is that the difference between the two arguments doesn't really have to do with a distinction between two kinds of belief, de dicto and de re, but with whether we take an internal or an external standpoint on the sense of the name 'Cicero'. In other words, is the meaning of 'Cicero' to be evaluated from the perspective of the one to whom the belief is attributed (in this case Sam) or from the perspective of the person doing the attibuting?

Let's start with the internal perspective (Sam's). It is natural to suppose that, in believing that Cicero is a politician, Sam associates some descriptive content (a 'sense') with the name ‘Cicero’. (If 'Cicero' had no such content for Sam, then the name would be nothing but a placeholder for a 'something I know not what', in which case it's hard to see how Sam could be in a position to believe that that is a politician.) Suppose that the sense that Sam associates with ‘Cicero’ is simply ‘the author of this book’. In that case what Sam believes is that the author of this book is a politician. If, in addition, the name ‘Tully’ carries the same sense for Sam, then we can swap the two names without alteration of meaning. So this inference would be valid:

7. Sam believes that Cicero (as Sam conceives of him) is a philosopher.
8. Cicero = Tully (as Sam conceives of them)
   Therefore,
9. Sam believes that Tully (as Sam conceives of him) is a philosopher.

But, if we do not suppose that the two names carry the same sense for Sam then, even though we know that Cicero = Tully, the inference would be invalid:

10. Sam believes that Cicero (as Sam conceives of him) is a philosopher.
11. Cicero = Tully (as we conceive of them)
    Therefore,
12. Sam believes that Tully (as Sam conceives of him) is a philosopher.

The two preceding inferences concern only what are commonly called 'de dicto beliefs’, but notice that what explains the difference in validity has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the beliefs in question are de dicto or de re, and everything to do with whether we evaluate the semantic value of 'Cicero' and 'Tully' from Sam's (internal) perspective or from our (external) perspective.

What are commonly called ‘de re beliefs’ involve us assuming an external standpoint in which we pretend that we know something that the believer may not. Thus, we know that what Sam conceives of simply as ‘the author of this book’ is in fact Cicero. Furthermore, we know that Cicero = Tully. Hence, from our vantage point, we can validly reason as follows:

13. Sam believes that Cicero (as we conceive of him) is a philosopher.
14. Cicero = Tully (as we conceive of them)
    Therefore,
15. Sam believes that Tully (as we conceive of him) is a philosopher.

From a purely external perspective, Sam’s conception of Cicero is irrelevant. Hence we can safely suppose here (if we want to) that Sam’s conception of Cicero is a bare, contentless ‘that’, a name that refers but not via any senses. But we haven't really eliminated senses from the name. Rather, we have just substituted our sense for Sam's.

So, the difference between "Cicero is believed by Sam to be a politician" and "Sam believes that Cicero is a politician" amounts to nothing more than this: By placing a name ('Cicero') in the initial position, as opposed to inside an attitudinal 'that'-clause, we signal that the denotation of the name is to be assessed from an external vantage point. If, on the other hand, we place a name inside an attitudinal 'that'-clause, we signal that the denotation of the name is to be determined from an internal vantage point. There's nothing more to the de re / de dicto distinction that I can see.