{"id":89,"date":"2007-05-11T21:15:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-12T01:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=89"},"modified":"2007-05-11T21:15:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-12T01:15:00","slug":"are-there-de-re-and-de-dicto-beliefs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2007\/05\/are-there-de-re-and-de-dicto-beliefs\/","title":{"rendered":"Are There ‘De Re’ and ‘De Dicto’ Beliefs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Maverick Philosopher<\/a>‘ Bill Vallicella has written recently<\/a> on the distinction between ‘de re<\/span>‘ and ‘de dicto<\/span>‘ beliefs. As he explains the distinction, a de dicto<\/span> belief is a belief about a dictum <\/span>(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<\/span> belief, on the other hand, is supposed to take as its primary object a res<\/span> (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.<\/p>\n

For more on the de re<\/span> \/ de dicto<\/span> distinction, see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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 <\/span>inference<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Sam believes that Cicero is a politician.<\/li>\n
  2. Cicero = Tully.
    Therefore,<\/li>\n
  3. Sam believes that Tully is a politician.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    looks invalid, whereas this <\/span>inference<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Cicero is believed by Sam to be a politician.<\/li>\n
    2. Cicero = Tully.
      Therefore,<\/li>\n
    3. Tully is believed by Sam to be a politician.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      looks valid.<\/p>\n

      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<\/span> and de re<\/span>, but with whether we take an internal <\/span>or an external <\/span>standpoint on the sense of the name ‘Cicero’. In other words, is the meaning of ‘Cicero’ to be evaluated from the perspective<\/span> of the one to whom the belief is attributed (in this case Sam) or from the perspective of the person doing the attibuting?<\/p>\n

      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 \u2018Cicero\u2019. (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 <\/span>that that <\/span>is a politician.) Suppose that the sense that Sam associates with \u2018Cicero\u2019 is simply \u2018the author of this book\u2019. In that case what Sam believes is that the author of this book is a politician. If, in addition, the name \u2018Tully\u2019 carries the same sense for Sam, then we can swap the two names without alteration of meaning. So this inference would be valid:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Sam believes that Cicero (as Sam conceives of him) is a philosopher. <\/li>\n
      2. Cicero = Tully (as Sam conceives of them)
        Therefore, <\/li>\n
      3. Sam believes that Tully (as Sam conceives of him) is a philosopher. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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

          \n
        1. Sam believes that Cicero (as Sam conceives of him) is a philosopher. <\/li>\n
        2. Cicero = Tully (as we <\/span>conceive of them)
          Therefore, <\/li>\n
        3. Sam believes that Tully (as Sam conceives of him) is a philosopher. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          The two preceding inferences concern only what are commonly called ‘de dicto<\/span> beliefs\u2019, but notice that what explains the difference in validity has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the beliefs in question are de dicto<\/span> or de re<\/span>, 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.<\/p>\n

          What are commonly called \u2018de re<\/span> beliefs\u2019 involve us assuming an external standpoint<\/i> in which we pretend that we know<\/i> something that the believer may not. Thus, we know<\/i> that what Sam conceives of simply as \u2018the author of this book\u2019 is in fact Cicero. Furthermore, we know<\/i> that Cicero = Tully. Hence, from our vantage point<\/span>, we can validly reason as follows:<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Sam believes that Cicero (as we conceive of him) is a philosopher. <\/li>\n
          2. Cicero = Tully (as we conceive of them)
            Therefore, <\/li>\n
          3. Sam believes that Tully (as we conceive of him) is a philosopher. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            From a purely external perspective, Sam\u2019s conception of Cicero is irrelevant. Hence we can safely suppose here (if we want to) that Sam\u2019s conception of Cicero is a bare, contentless \u2018that\u2019, 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<\/span> for Sam’s.<\/p>\n

            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<\/span> \/ de dicto<\/span> distinction that I can see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            ‘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\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}