Lewis D (1979a) Attitudes De Dicto and De Se Philosophical Review

Abstract

This paper defends Lewis' (Philos Rev 88:513–543, 1979a) influential handling of de se attitudes from recent criticism to the upshot that a fundamental explanatory notion—self-ascription—goes unexplained (Cappelen and Dever in The inessential indexical, Oxford University Printing, Oxford, 2013; Holton, in: Loewer, Schaffer (eds) The Blackwell companion to David Lewis, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 399–410, 2015). It is shown that Lewis' treatment can exist reconstructed in a manner which provides clear responses. This sheds low-cal on the explanatory ambitions of those engaged in Lewis' project.

Introduction

Rather than taking the contents of attitudes to be sets of possible worlds (Hintikka 1962)—means a world might be—Lewis (1979a) proposed that we accept them to be properties—ways an private might be. A striking feature of Lewis' discussion is its brevity. At face value, quick reflection on some bones thought experiments reveals that possible worlds contents cannot exist the right objects of propositional attitudes after all. Recent writers take argued that the account Lewis (1979a) gives of de se attitudes suffers from a lacuna:

…information technology is not the revisionary theory of content that does the solving, but the unexplained notion of self-ascription of a belongings… (Cappelen and Dever 2013: p. 103). […] The role of cocky-ascription is trivial emphasized either by Lewis or in the subsequent literature. But the work of solving the informational puzzle[s] rests entirely on […] cocky-ascription (2013: p. 108).

The second part [of Lewis' account], which is much less to the fore in Lewis'southward presentation and in the subsequent give-and-take, involves treating our attitude to these properties as that of self-ascription (Holton 2015: p. 400). Taking self-ascription as archaic is crucial to Lewis'south business relationship (Holton 2015: p. 403)

Information technology is true that it is not just the revisionary theory of content that does the solving. Only it is false that self-ascription is itself a primitive relation, incapable of being illuminated. In this paper, I provide the emphasis which Cappelen and Dever (2013) and Holton (2015) ask for. What those who endorse Lewis' influential motility in characterizing de se attitudes need accept equally archaic is not some advert hoc mental attitude. In fact, whether or not Lewis' business relationship of the de se is correct, ^{Footnote 1} if information technology is problematic for the reasons to which recent critics have appealed, so theorists who attribute possible worlds (or centered worlds) contents to thinkers, and theorists who aspect contents which tin can merely exist evaluated for truth at a context, face up the same business. The complaints that "[t]aking cocky-ascription as archaic is crucial to Lewis'south business relationship" (Holton 2015: p. 403) and that this "unexplained notion" is what does the explanatory work (Cappelen and Dever 2013: p. 103) therefore miss their marker. Much more would need to be said in social club to undermine Lewis' (1979a) label of de se attitudes.

I begin in Sect. 2 by outlining Lewis' (1979a) archetype treatment of de se attitudes and clarifying the necessary details. Section three and so returns to the thing of explaining the notion of self-ascription in a way which disarms the complaints of the above critics. Section 4 closes with a cursory summary and conclusion.

Lewis, Lingens, and Frege

According to the framework in Lewis (1974), our folk-psychological talk and mental attitude-reporting practices are office of a 'full general theory of persons', the underlying principles of which set out "how beliefs and desires and meanings are normally related to one another, to behavioral output, and to sensory input" (1974: p. 334). This tacit, full general theory of persons may exist systematized into a set up of platitudes about conventionalities and desire, and put this mode it provides an implicit definition of the attitudes: they are whatever states play the right causal roles. Thus set out, Lewis thought, we are led to a program according to which contents are assigned "to narrate states of the caput; to specify their causal roles with respect to behavior, stimuli, and 1 another" (1979a: p. 526).

The propositions Lewis (1974) had in mind were possible worlds contents. Merely that conception of the objects of propositional attitudes was revised in his (1979a) in which he cites several arguments-by-thought-experiment for the claim that an adequate theory of intentionality must recognise an irreducible kind of indexicality: the phenomenon of de se attitudes. As Lewis subsequently summarized:

The contentful unity is the entire system of beliefs and desires […]. Its content is defined, insofar as it is defined at all, by constitutive rationality on the footing of its typical causal office. The content is in the first instance narrow and de se (1999: p. 324). ^{Footnote two}

Consider the plight of Rudolf Lingens, an amnesiac lost in Principal library, Stanford. In an endeavour to discover who and where he is, he reads many books, including i which is in fact a biography of his own life and another which is in fact a description of Master library. Unfortunately for Lingens, while he may acquire that Main library is next to Hoover tower,

[h]e still won't know who he is, and where he is, no matter how much knowledge he piles upwards, until that moment when he is prepare to say, 'This place is aisle five, floor half-dozen, of Main Library, Stanford. I am Rudolf Lingens.' (Perry 1977: p. 492).

The conclusion fatigued is that not all knowledge is propositional cognition, where propositions are stipulated to exist sets of possible worlds. Lingens might take all of that sort of noesis and nevertheless notwithstanding neglect to know who and where he is. Lingens needs more than information than is given by a partitioning of the set of worlds. Phone call the distinctive sort of knowledge lacked past Lingens de se knowledge. A more fine-grained sort of content is required to capture the de se state expressed by the sentence 'I am Rudolf Lingens'. The kind of content we must seek will partition not only possible worlds simply the individuals at those worlds. ^{Footnote 3}

Lewis (1979a) proposed that we conveniently have the objects of de se states to be properties. A possible worlds content determines a ready of worlds: those at which the content is true. And for any set of worlds we may talk of the corresponding globe ready property: the property of being at a world in that set. This suffices to found that properties are at to the lowest degree as fine-grained as possible worlds contents. Withal, properties also go further: if x instantiates property F while some worldmate y does non, F cannot correspond to a proposition. According to Lewis (1979a), we can then say that what Lingens needs to do, in order to find out who and where he is, is not to believe some possible worlds content but to self-accredit some property: to 'locate' himself not only among worlds but within them. In item, Lewis' (1979a) conclusion is that Lingens' revelation involves something more than just the cocky-ascription of a globe set belongings. Afterward all, learning that Main library is side by side to Hoover belfry did not assistance Lingens find out where he is. Lingens' revelation must involve the self-ascription of a more fine-grained belongings, 1 which cuts across the individuals at worlds. ^{Footnote 4}

The notion of cocky-ascription is introduced casually by Lewis (1979a: p. 518) as the relation a subject must bear to a property in order to count as entertaining a de se belief. ^{Footnote 5} Nosotros may as well follow Lewis (1979a) in translating talk of belongings-contents into an counterpart of what Quine (1968) called centered worlds contents, trading in a holding for a set of ordered pairs of a world and an individual at that globe. As Lewis suggests, "[a] grade of centered worlds corresponds to a property" (1979a: p. 532). ^{Footnote six} The idea is that both kinds of content are eligible to play the theoretical role of all-around the de se: "centered worlds [also] amount to presentations of possible individuals" (1983a: p. 25, due north. xviii). That these are intended past Lewis as two means of saying the same affair despite the latter involving no talk of cocky-ascription might raise prima facie suspicions about the alleged essentiality of that notion for Lewis' (1979a) account.

Granting the supposition that properties can in general be matched up one–one with sets of centered worlds, the results, for Lewis, are the following two equivalent characterisations of de se belief.

• Belief de se:

  S believes de se (at w) that she is F iff

  1. (i)

     every centered world <w′, southward′> in the set up of centered worlds compatible with S's behavior (at w) is such that south′ is F at westward′.

• Or, equivalently,

  1. (two)

     S cocky-ascribes (at due west) λten · x is F at west. ^{Footnote vii}

Since properties cocky-ascribed are at least as fine-grained every bit possible worlds contents believed, information technology should be possible to reduce all belief to de se belief. Notoriously, this is what Lewis (1979a) proposes. To believe the suggestion that cyanoacrylate glue dissolves in acetone is to self-ascribe the property of being located within the set of worlds at which cyanoacrylate glue dissolves in acetone: that is, λx · ten inhabits some w ∈ w′ where {w′: cyanoacrylate mucilage dissolves in acetone at due west′} (1979a: p. 518). In general, to accept a de dicto belief is to self-ascribe what I before called a globe set property.

While in that location are differences between the case of Lingens and others which Lewis (1979a) considers (the mad Heimson, the two gods, the insomniac…), the underlying argument is the same. In spite of the fact that the subject field knows all of the relevant propositions, there is some information she lacks. Information technology is tempting to draw an analogy between this sort of ignorance and the ignorance displayed in standard Frege cases. Indeed, one might worry that to the extent that there is a puzzle about propositional attitudes raised by cases like that of Lingens the amnesiac, it is reducible to familiar puzzles of cognitive significance.

The case […] gives us no reason to accept a revisionary theory of content—information technology is, at best, just another instance of Frege'southward puzzle, [and] will be solved past any our general theory of opacity is… (Cappelen and Dever 2013: p. 103).

According to the Fregean […] Lingens has [non] learnt all the (relevant) true propositions: the proposition that is expressed (in the relevant context) using the sentence 'Y'all are in the Stanford library' is not the same proposition as the 1 expressed by ['Lingens is in the Stanford library'] […]. The Lingens case thus poses no special puzzle (Magidor 2015: pp. 254–255).

In combination with the concerns as to whether the notion of self-ascription is in good standing, this line of objection forms a two-pronged attack. In response, those who endorse Lewis' above characterization of de se attitudes must exercise two things: (a) explicate why we should treat the ii superficially like informational puzzles differently; (b) explain the 'unexplained' notion of self-ascription. In what remains of the nowadays section, I provide a brief explanation of the first kind, clarifying important details of Lewis' (1979a) picture along the way. Department 3 addresses (b).

The transition to the property-content framework higher up allows a unified solution to both Perry- and Frege-puzzles. Not only did Lewis reduce the de dicto to the de se, he reduced the (and so-chosen) de re to the de se. On Lewis' (1979a, 1983a) account subjects entertain de re thoughts only with respect to a relation of associate, where South and o are acquainted just in case there exists an "extensive causal dependence of [S's] states upon [o'southward]; and this causal dependence is of a sort apt for the reliable manual of information" (1979a: p. 542). Consider the following instance. Ba the Babylonian is familiar with the planet Venus under two different guises. He knows it as Phosphorus, the forenoon star, and as well equally Hesperus, the evening star. He is unaware that the two are identical and believes that Phosphorus is a young star while Hesperus is onetime. Ba bears both the P-relation and the H-relation to Venus, where P is the relation ten bears to y iff y is the unique object which x sees shining brightly in the morning sky, and H is the relation ten bears to y iff y is the unique object which ten sees shining brightly in the evening sky. The contents of Ba's beliefs are the backdrop λ10 · x bears P uniquely to a young star and λx · x bears H uniquely to an one-time star. By characterising the contents of subjects' belief states in this way, nosotros capture the differences in cerebral significance and dispositions to behaviour between Ba's belief that Hesperus is visible (λx · x bears H uniquely to something which is visible) and his conventionalities that Phosphorus is visible (λx · x bears P uniquely to something which is visible).

In full general, then, we take the following characterisation of de re belief (Lewis 1979a, 1983a).

• Belief de re:

  S believes de re (at w) that 10 is F iff:

  1. (a)

     there is some acquaintance relation R such that S bears R to x uniquely (at westward)

  2. (b)

     every centered world <w′, s′> in the set up of centered worlds compatible with S'southward beliefs (at due west) is such that the thing to which s′ bears R at west′ is F at west′.

• Or, equivalently (to (b)),

  1. (c)

     "…the subject self-ascribes [(at w)] the belongings of bearing relation [R] uniquely to something which has property [F (at w)]" (Lewis 1979a: p. 539).

So the way in which the Lewisian resolves to treat the Frege puzzles, in dissimilarity with the de se puzzles, is justified by the fact that we ultimately achieve a unified account of both phenomena. ^{Footnote 8} The burden of explaining the elusive notion of self-ascription remains, however.

Self-ascription

…even if one accepts that in that location is a special problem to be solved [i.e. beyond the general problem of opacity], information technology is not the revisionary theory of content that does the solving, only the unexplained notion of self-ascription of a holding… (Cappelen and Dever 2013: p. 103).

If the characterizations in (i) and (b) were available to Lewis, why did he introduce (ii) and (c) along with the elusive notion of self-ascription? Is self-ascription dispensable afterwards all? This section clarifies the explanatory project in which Lewis was engaged and uses this clarification to resolve these and other critical questions raised at the outset of the paper. What those who endorse either of Lewis' characterizations of belief de se must have as primitive is not some ad hoc attitude.

Lewis (1983b: p. 230) observes that it is possible to represent the semantic notion of a context of use as an ordered pair of a globe and a speaker at that world. ^{Footnote ix} Everything else, including 'standards of permissibility' (Lewis 1979b: pp. 340–341), 'rankings of comparative salience' (ibid. 348–fifty), 'standards of precision' (ibid. 351–4), inter alia, may be recovered from these minimal coordinates. According to Lewis (1980), the input to compositional semantics for languages eliciting context-sensitivity will be a pair of a sentence-type Southward and a context of use c. The output will exist an assignment of a truth-value to the semantic value of Southward at every alphabetize (every ordered pair of a globe and speaker). At this point we face a challenge. If what gets evaluated for truth is a sentential semantic value with respect to each index, what does such a notion—truth at an alphabetize—take to do with any sort of truth which might plausibly norm linguistic practice? What we want is for the semantic values of natural language sentences to receive truth-values which, past default, tell usa something about our de facto utterance situations. On the orthodox style of resolving this challenge, we choose to fix or initialize the index parameter values, by default, to those corresponding to the given utterance state of affairs. ^{Footnote 10} As Lewis puts it,

…we must distinguish two sorts of indices: Original indices, in which the shiftable features are every bit determined by the context […]; and shifted indices, in which that is non and so. Truth in a context is truth at an original alphabetize, and this is the semantic notion that is directly relevant to truthful speech (Lewis 1983b: p. 231).

By accessing the context of use, we can extract a notion of truth with chatty import—truth at a context of use—from the notion of truth at an index. Specifically: for all sentences S, Due south is true at c iff the semantic value of Southward is true at <w _c, due south _c > .

At present what does all this have to do with cocky-ascription? In a footnote to the (1983b) postscript to 'General Semantics', Lewis remarks:

Information technology will not escape the reader of 'Attitudes De Dicto and De Se' […] that these 'contexts' are the same as the 'subjects' that self-ascribe properties, and that sets of them are the self-ascribed backdrop (1983b: p. 230, n. 2). ^{Footnote xi}

This telling remark suggests the following picture. Contexts are centered worlds. And sets of centered worlds, or indeed of contexts, are equivalent to property-contents. A subject'due south total conventionalities state, the content of which is narrow and de se co-ordinate to Lewis, determines a set of centered worlds (equivalently, a collection of property-contents). For example, the content expressed by the belief that cyanoacrylate glue dissolves in acetone is a set of centered worlds <West′, S′> (equivalently, the property λx · 10 inhabits some west ∈ W′ where {W′: cyanoacrylate glue dissolves in acetone at Westward′}).

Notice that none of these contents, centered worlds or properties, can exist evaluated for truth simpliciter. If belongings-contents, for instance, are to exist truth-evaluable at all, we need a specification of an object which serves to determine the truth-value of the property-content. By analogy, what would it be for us to evaluate the sentence-type 'It is raining', independent of any specification of time or identify? This is where the semantic resource higher up enter in. Information technology is the process of initialization—of defining truth at a context of utilise via truth at an index—which forces our hand to evaluate conventionalities contents in a way which privileges the world and agent of the context of the belief over the coordinates of some capricious index.

Recall that Lewis introduced the notion of cocky-ascription casually just to denote the relation a discipline must bear to a property in guild to count as having a de se belief (1979a: p. 518). In light of the proposal suggested by this (1983b) remark, information technology is this process of initialization which secures the correct relation betwixt subject and fix of centered worlds (or belongings-content) believed. ^{Footnote 12} Talk of cocky-ascription is and then just an intuitive gloss on piece of work performed past the stipulative process of initialization. This is our first insight into the character of Lewis' (1979a) proposal. Self-ascription is not some ad hoc attitude. Information technology is a phrase used to express the relation that a believer, S, bears to a property-content which is true at c where Southward is the subject of c. ^{Footnote thirteen}

In the balance of this section I provide responses to three worries. Each of these responses will serve to clarify the reconstruction of Lewis' (1979a) account of de se conventionalities I have begun to suggest. The third worry, in detail, will clarify what notions Lewis' characterisation does take as primitive.

Kickoff, the reconstruction above draws on remarks Lewis made about language. In spite of the encouragement in the quote above (1983b: p. 230, north. 2), conclusions most the nature of thought fatigued from conclusions about the nature of language require serious scrutiny. Specifically, indices are devices used by linguistic semanticists to capture the deportation of sentences across parameters such as time and location. It is arguably a necessary condition on positing an index-parameter in a semantic theory for a language that there exist a sentential operator which shifts that parameter. Does that mean that we take to non only make sense of but posit 'Mentalese' alphabetize-shifting operators to support Lewis' claims most the index-relativity of belief?

No. To meet why, let united states of america consider the distinction Lewis (1980) emphasises between sentential semantic value and content. ^{Footnote 14} Outset, suppose we chose not to recognise any such distinction, affirming that the semantic values of sentences are contents (à la Kaplan (1989)). In that case, it would not be a plausible necessary status on positing an index-parameter that there exist a sentential operator which shifts that parameter. For not all constraints on the nature of content come from semantic theorising. Lewis' (1979a) point was precisely that thought experiments like Perry'due south (1977) give u.s.a. expert, and good plenty, reason to think of mental content as an agent-relative entity.

On the other manus, suppose we were to recognise a distinction betwixt the semantic values of sentences and contents. In that case, despite Lewis' (1983b) use of the term 'indices' in the remark quoted in a higher place, information technology is clear that Lewis' intent would be to talk about points of evaluation: sequences of parameters against which contents are to be evaluated. ^{Footnote 15} The notions of index and point of evaluation were not still distinguished at the time of the (1970) paper which his (1983b) postscript concerns. But Lewis did later emphasise a distinction between these ii notions. ^{Footnote 16} One time that distinction is in place, nosotros open the possibility to evaluating contents with respect to a parameter—for example, an agent or possible globe—for reasons somewhat independent of compositional semantics. And once that possibility opens up, information technology becomes possible to theorise near the nature of mental content somewhat independent of 'psycholinguistic' semantic theorising. ^{Footnote 17} Hither, once again, Lewis' (1979a) betoken was that thought experiments similar Perry's (1977) give the states proficient, and skilful plenty, reason to think of mental content as an amanuensis-relative entity.

A second worry concerns the relationship betwixt believer and content believed. If property-contents are to be truth-evaluable, we need a specification of an object. Since Lewis (1979a) claims that all thought is de se idea, nosotros demand the property to be evaluated for truth with respect to the believer at the context of the belief in question. What determines that information technology is the believer? Too, on the centered worlds label of mental content, in virtue of what does the centre of a centered world stand for the believer?

I said above that initialization—the process of defining truth at a context of use via truth at an index (or point of evaluation)—is what enables united states of america to evaluate contents in a way which privileges, past default, the world and bailiwick of the context of apply. Every bit Ninan (2008) has pointed out, in that location is something merely stipulative about the respond to this second worry: "[there is] an implicit stipulation that, when we consider a centered earth equally a candidate doxastic alternative for some agent ten, the heart of that centered world represents ten" (59). Truth at an alphabetize, or truth at a point of evaluation, bears lilliputian familiarity with the notion of truth which norms linguistic practise and inquiry. Opting to define truth at a context is what allows united states to recapture the familiar notion of truth. In Lewis' words: "Truth at a context is truth at an original index [or context-initialized point of evaluation], and this is the semantic notion that is straight relevant to true spoken communication" (1983b: p. 231). And so the fact that the centre of a centered world content represents the believer is no coincidence. This is explicitly stipulated in the intentional theory. Moreover, considering Lewis (1979a: p. 518) introduces cocky-ascription just to denote the relation a subject must bear to a belongings in society to count as having a de se belief, and because all belief is de se conventionalities, what it is for Southward to cocky-ascribe property-content P, it turns out, is for the process of initialization for P to determine that Southward is the believer at the context at which P is to be evaluated for truth.

A 3rd and final worry. Even if this story elucidates the mechanics of cocky-ascription, how does it get us beyond a treatment of mere 'x-ascription by x', a set of attitudes of which the de se is a proper subset? ^{Footnote 18} For it is possible to ascribe a belongings to oneself without self-ascribing that property. Consider Kaplan'due south (1989: p. 533) case of ascribing the belongings of existence on burn to that human being, where the man in question is, unbeknownst to Kaplan, himself.

It will serve us well to remember how things work on the classical possible worlds semantics for belief (Hintikka 1962). A subject area'southward belief land is taken to determine a set of possible worlds: those worlds which are compatible with what the subject believes. This notion of compatibility with what a subject field believes is taken every bit primitive. The goal, in brusque, is to characterize the subject's belief state in a way which makes various doxastic and logical relations explicit. For Lewis (1979a), of course, belief simpliciter volition non do. This is precisely the betoken of the advisory puzzles about Lingens and other characters, recalled in Section 2. What Lewis' (1979a) decision amounts to is to take as primitive the notion of a set of centered worlds (or, equivalently, a property-content) being compatible with what a subject believes de se. In other words, Lewis' (1979a) archaic simply is de se belief. ^{Footnote nineteen}

The biconditionals in Belief de se, above, do not have the condition of reductive analyses of de se belief. Lewis (1979a) only does not pursue whatever such analysis. The target notion is in fact implicitly appealed to on the right side of the biconditionals. As nosotros might say more explicitly:

• Belief de se (explicit):

  S believes de se (at w) that she is F iff:

  1. (i)

     every centered earth <w′, due south′> in the set of centered worlds compatible with S'south de se beliefs (at w) is such that due south′ is F at west′

• Or, equivalently,

  1. (ii'*)

     S believes de se (at w) λx · x is F at w

For Lewis, all belief is de se belief. And all belief expresses a content which is to be evaluated for truth at a context. This is the import of the irreducible sort of indexicality needed to treat the puzzle about Lingens. The de se is not analysed but taken equally a fundamental component of Lewis' intentional theory. The aim is to provide a not-reductive characterization of belief de se, analogous to Hintikka's (1962) not-reductive label of belief 'per se'. This, according to Lewis (1979a) is what we need if we are 'to narrate the states of Lingens' caput; to specify their causal roles with respect to behavior, stimuli, and i another'. ^{Footnote twenty}

Conclusion

To summarise, whichever mode yous piece information technology—(i*) or (ii*)—what is sought is a non-reductive characterisation of belief de se. Lewis achieves this characterisation by stipulating (in the fashion of a possible worlds semanticist with belief simpliciter) that the phenomenon of belief de se be tracked by the specification of a certain sort of content. Such content can only exist evaluated for truth at a context; a context providing a laic. Self-ascribing is not something the field of study does. It is a phrase used to express the relation borne past Southward to a property-content which is true at c, where S is the believer at c; an system stipulated to rail South'south de se beliefs. Cappelen and Dever (2013) are right that a mere shift in the so-called objects of conventionalities is non what solves the thought experiments to which Lewis (1979a) appealed equally motivation, and Holton (2015) is right that a new primitive is introduced in club to support the solution he provided. But that primitive is compatibility with a subject'south behavior de se, replacing the archaic of the classical possible worlds account, compatibility with a subject's beliefs per se. This is made explicit in (i*) and (two*), to a higher place.

Whether or non Lewis' characterization of de se belief is correct, then, if it is problematic for the reasons to which recent critics take appealed, and so theorists who attribute even possible worlds contents to thinkers, and theorists who in general attribute contents which tin but be evaluated for truth at a context, face up the same problems. This is not, of class, to say that such critics would exist wrong to have gripes with such primitives, or with the explanatory interest of the resulting projects. Insofar equally these constitute their gripes, however, they apply far wider than to Lewis' (1979a) characterization of de se belief. Correctly understood, and then, Lewis' (1979a) characterization of de se belief is resistant to much of the criticism it has faced in the recent literature.

Notes

1. For a presentation of other considerable difficulties facing Lewis' (1979a) account of mental content, see Magidor (2015). I will not be defending the account confronting these objections. Neither volition I be addressing scepticism as to whether there is whatsoever distinctive kind of de se representation (inter alia, Cappelen and Dever 2013).

2. Encounter also Lewis (1986: p. 36).

3. Perry'south (1977) ain proposal was to instead suggest that the belief relation is third: we have the agent, the content believed, and the agent's conventionalities state.

4. As Holton (2015: p. 402) observes, what Lingens actually needs to find out who and where he is is 'breakthrough noesis': de se knowledge which connects up with the de dicto noesis he gains in the library. What kinds of backdrop is it possible to cocky-ascribe? In brusque, whatsoever way an individual could be. If you were to believe you were a poached egg, y'all would thereby self-accredit λ10· x is a poached egg. Come across Lewis (1979a: p. 530).

5. Note that self-ascribing a property-content is local to the characterisation of conventionalities. Perhaps in the example of desiring de se that i eat pasta nosotros could speak of self-prescribing the content λ10 · ten is eating pasta. On counterfactual attitudes such as imagining that, and the issues they raise for Lewis' (1979a) account, come across Ninan (2013).

6. On whether a one–one correspondence between backdrop and centered worlds holds, meet Holton (2015: pp. 403–405). There is also a cluster of worries here familiar to unstructured views of mental content. If properties are just every bit fine-grained as centered worlds, volition Emerge'south ignorance that beingness a podiatrist is the aforementioned property as existence a human foot md consequence in usa construing her as having irrational beliefs? And will she come out as trivially believing 'logical truths' like 'I exist' (Kaplan 1989)? I fix these kinds of worries aside in this paper.

7. I employ lambda calculus in the specifications of properties for lucidity. Holton (2015) observes that nosotros will sometimes accept to be resourceful with the properties chosen to exist contents of attitudes. For example, the belief that "I chose myself to assess myself […] seems to involve self-ascribing the property of cocky-self-assessing-choosing" (2015: p. 408). The post-obit specification makes Lewis' proposal much more tractable, notwithstanding: λten · 10 chose x to assess x.

8. While Cappelen and Dever (2013: pp. 103–108) and Magidor (2015) mention this response, they take it to be unsuccessful considering it fails to provide answers to further problems. Cappelen and Dever'south complaints are the subject field of Sect. three. Magidor (2015: pp. 266–271) worries that the descriptivist elements of Lewis' treatment of de re attitudes are problematic (see also Holton (2015: pp. 405–406)). I focus on just the former complaint here, since my aim is to show that Lewis' (1979a) story can be reconstructed as a bona fide treatment of the de se, even if his broader picture show of singular thought suffers defects.

9. Purely for convenience of presentation hither, I presume that agents are (necessarily) time-slices of individuals. There are alternatives, of course, depending on one'due south metaphysical views. If agents are (necessarily) world-bound and then the earth element here is redundant: a context or centered globe is simply an private'due south singleton set. On the other hand, if nosotros deny that agents are (necessarily) fourth dimension-slices of individuals, we will demand a time element. The important point is that contexts and centered worlds take the same structure, whatever structure that is.

10. See as well Heim and Kratzer (1998: p. 243), Kaplan (1989: p. 547) and MacFarlane (2014: p. 53).

11. This remark again indicates Lewis' intended equivalence between properties and sets of centered worlds.

12. Specifically, when <W′, S′> is the content of a belief of southward at world w—which is to say at context c, where c is <w, s> —this centered worlds content is evaluated for truth at c. It is true at c just in case <w, s> is a member of <W′, S′> .

13. A referee for this journal has noted that similar suggestions about the function of self-ascription in Lewis' (1979a) account appear in Recanati (2007) and Pagin (2016, especially p. 277): "[w]henever a representation is tokened in the subject'southward listen, the content of the representation is evaluated with respect to a situation involving the subject and the time and place of the tokening. In other words, the content is construed equally a property which is ascribed to the context in which the representation is tokened" (Recanati 2007: p. 269).

14. Lewis appreciates the possibility of theorizing about the nature of mental content independent of 'psycholinguistic' theorizing and its would-be semantic values at (1980: p. 83).

15. To employ Kaplan's (1989) distinction, Lewis (1983b) is not talking almost content-generating parameters simply content-evaluating parameters.

16. On Lewis' distinction between sentential semantic value and content, see his (1980) and Rabern (2017).

17. As Rabern (2012) puts information technology: "Theorists working on the nature of assertoric content (or mental content and information) should welcome this distinction, as it allows them to theorize well-nigh the nature of content, somewhat liberated from the confines of the strict compositionality principle" (94–v).

18. This objection, and its phrasing, is due to Cappelen and Dever (2013).

19. Weber (2016: p. 257) makes a similar observation about the status of Lewis' proposal as against Hintikka's (1962).

20. Lewis (1979a: p. 526).

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Affiliations

1. St. Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, Queen's Lane, Oxford, OX1 4AR, Great britain

   James Openshaw

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Correspondence to James Openshaw.

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Special thanks to John Hawthorne, Tim Williamson, and anonymous referees for this journal for their comments. I am also grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Imperial Plant of Philosophy for their financial support during this period of inquiry.

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Openshaw, J. Self-ascription and the de se. Synthese 197, 2039–2050 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1781-0

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• Received: 24 August 2017

• Accepted: 03 April 2018

• Published: eighteen Apr 2018

• Issue Appointment: May 2020

• DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1781-0

Keywords

• De se
• Self-ascription
• David Lewis
• Centered worlds
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