Propositions and Attitude Ascriptions

Another new online paper: "Propositions and Attitude Ascriptions: A Fregean Account".  This lays out the two-dimensional account of Fregean senses and propositions that I now favor (this is a change from the view in "On Sense and Intension"), and uses this to give an account of propositional attitude ascription (one that is mostly compatible with the remarks on this subject in "The Components of Content" but which goes beyond this and is much more detailed).  Along the way I address a number of standard puzzles about attitude ascriptions.  In my favorite part of the paper, the Fregean hierarchy of senses is reconstructed in 2-D terms.  In the last section of the paper, I respond to Scott Soames' objections (in his book Reference and Description) to my earlier account of attitude ascriptions.

The paper is still a draft and comments are very welcome.  The typesetting is still a work in progress.  I've just returned to using LaTeX after many years away and I'm sure there are plenty of errors.

Comments

[Gregg Rosenberg]

Hi David,

From the beginning your 2-D views to me have always seemed Platonic, and I think the version in this current paper is the most Platonic of all. Yet in many of your writings you also come across as quite pragmatist in your views about ontology, meaning and truth. What's your attitude towards this appearance of Platonism in your work? Are you instrumentalist about it? If so, how do you explain the appearance of Platonism away? If not, what are your views about the existence of abstract objects, ideal limits, ideally rational decisions, etc.? I've always wanted to ask you this.

best,
--Gregg

[djc]

Hi Gregg,

It's true that I use a lot of abstract objects in this sort of work, but I don't think this commits me to Platonism any more than does the use of a lot of abstract objects by a mathematician. There's a lot more on this sort of thing in my new paper on "Ontological Anti-Realism". As for ideal rationality, I'm a kind of epistemic realist in that I think there are objective facts about justification and rationality, but again I don't think this commits me to a strong sort of Platonism.