‘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
- Sam believes that Cicero is a politician.
- Cicero = Tully.
Therefore, - Sam believes that Tully is a politician.
looks invalid, whereas this inference
- Cicero is believed by Sam to be a politician.
- Cicero = Tully.
Therefore, - 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:
- Sam believes that Cicero (as Sam conceives of him) is a philosopher.
- Cicero = Tully (as Sam conceives of them)
Therefore, - 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:
- Sam believes that Cicero (as Sam conceives of him) is a philosopher.
- Cicero = Tully (as we conceive of them)
Therefore, - 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:
- Sam believes that Cicero (as we conceive of him) is a philosopher.
- Cicero = Tully (as we conceive of them)
Therefore, - 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.
One source for thinking that there is a distinction between de re and de dicto beliefs is the apparent distinction between de re and de dicto necessity and possibility. Seeing that the latter distinction appears to be more than merely linguistic, it is tempting to think that all de re/de dicto distinctions are also in a similar way grounded in the non-linguistic world as well. Another source, of course, is the acceptance of direct reference for names, which you seem to reject (though it’s not clear what the semantics for names would be if direct reference is false – in general, many people think that a single given name should have the same semantic value across speakers which would seem to bar your ‘associated senses’ from being that semantic value and hence would make it harder to use them to refute the de re/ de dicto belief distinction). Of course, I’m not sure whether I accept direct reference in most cases.
As a side note, Searle also seems to think that there is no such distinction between beliefs (he says similar things to what are said in this post) – the de re/de dicto distinction is not a distinction that is appropriately applied to beliefs but only to sentences.
One way of cashing out the difference between de re and de dicto belief reports that doesn’t necessarily require there to be de re beliefs is to take the de re/ de dicto ambiguity in a sentence like 1 to be explained in terms of logical operators and scope ambiguities (I think all such de re/de dicto ambiguities can probably be explained this way). So the de re reading of 1 might come out as:
1dere. (Ex:x=Cicero) BELIEVES (Sam, politician x)
And de dicto:
1dedicto. BELIEVES (Sam, (Ex:x=Cicero)(politician x))
It would then be a further debate about the metaphysical import of “quantifying in” here.
Hi Ian,
Thanks for the comments. I haven’t thought much about the connection to de re/de dicto modality, though I think you may be right that such distinctions can be captured in terms of logical operators and scope ambiguities.
As for names and direct reference, I don’t have a well-developed theory here (phil. of language is not my forte), but I am inclined to deny that the semantic value of names is determined by direct reference. Contrary to the popular ‘semantic externalist’ school of thought, I do think that linguistic meanings are “in the head”.