Thursday, November 23, 2006
Indexicals and Belief Reports
Indexicals and Belief Reports (PDF) by J N Foster
"Abstract
Problems with the semantics of belief reports, typified by Frege’s Puzzle, are the source of the most serious objections to the theory of Direct Reference. Kaplan’s work on indexicals hints at a reply to these objections based on his notion that belief is mediated by the characters of linguistic expressions. However his account is only successful in explaining belief reports which involve indexicals – it fails to explain a large class of puzzling reports which contain proper names. In this dissertaion, I argue that there are good reasons for supposing that names are indexicals and show that using this thesis, we can extend Kaplan’s solution to Frege’s Puzzle to many more belief reports."
"Abstract
Problems with the semantics of belief reports, typified by Frege’s Puzzle, are the source of the most serious objections to the theory of Direct Reference. Kaplan’s work on indexicals hints at a reply to these objections based on his notion that belief is mediated by the characters of linguistic expressions. However his account is only successful in explaining belief reports which involve indexicals – it fails to explain a large class of puzzling reports which contain proper names. In this dissertaion, I argue that there are good reasons for supposing that names are indexicals and show that using this thesis, we can extend Kaplan’s solution to Frege’s Puzzle to many more belief reports."
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