terms and truth chap4

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Thus far our discussion of proper names and pronouns used anaphoricallyhas not treated their use in sentences that occur in intentional contexts,that is, in sentences within the context of a propositional attitude idiom toform a propositional attitude attribution. Considering just the belief atti-tude, we take the form of sentences expressing such attributions to be βbelieves that φα, where β is a singular term occurring freely at least oncewithin the wff φα.

In this chapter, I deal with two problems that involve such belief attri-butions. On the de dicto reading of a belief attribution, which is generallytaken to be a relation between an agent and a proposition, it is usually as-sumed that the agent, referred to by β, will assent to the wff Φα (or itstranslation into the agent’s language) that lies within the scope of the be-lief context. Indeed, Kripke has introduced customarily accepted prin-ciples of belief attribution that connect an agent’s verbal behavior with abelief attribution. The de dicto reading of a belief attribution is supposedto express the way the agent thinks of or represents the content of the at-tributed belief. The attribution allegedly captures the “point of view” ofthe agent. Thus any principle of de dicto belief attribution must capturethe agent’s point of view or perspective. Kripke’s principles, by connectingan agent’s assent behavior with a belief attribution, appear, as we willsee, to capture this point of view. Although I accept these principles ascapturing central cases of belief attribution, I question requiring them forall cases.

Our first problem, then, is to specify under what conditions it is appro-priate to make belief attributions for which the above principles fail. Oursecond problem is to specify in what sense such belief attributions (forwhich Kripke’s proposed principles fail) still capture an agent’s perspective

The Disquotational Principle, De Re andDe Dicto Belief Attributions, and anAgent’s Perspective

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or point of view. Here we intend to rule out an agent’s beliefs that are basedon mere “hunches” or on “feeling it in one’s bones.” Rather, we restrictourselves to an idealized rational agent’s beliefs that are formed in virtueof the agent being such an agent and having certain kinds of rational andsemantic commitments (as explained in chapter 5).

I do not discuss the issue of whether such conditions constitute truthconditions or merely what our practice deems appropriate. Suffice it tosay that on either view, we still need to account for these conditions inorder to account for either the truth or the appropriateness of these attribu-tions, since given our community practice, some of these attributions areaccepted and others are rejected. I also do not deal with the well-knownKripkean puzzle about belief: I am neither trying to solve the puzzle norclaiming that my conditions avoid the puzzle about belief. In passing, how-ever, some of my notions may help explain what happens when this phe-nomenon arises.

4.1 Principles of Belief Attribution

In this section, I argue that there are belief attributions deemed appropri-ate that violate Kripke’s principles of belief attribution. I further argue thatwhen we make such belief attributions, the agent cannot reflect upon hisor her resources alone and assent to the sentence that expresses the attrib-uted belief. We thus call a belief attribution that requires some extensionor modification of Kripke’s principles a secondary belief attribution; thesentence within the scope of the belief context of such an attribution wecall a secondary belief. Ordinary belief attributions that are not secondarywe call primary belief attributions; the sentence within the scope of the be-lief context of such an attribution we call a primary belief.

We begin with appropriate belief attributions that violate Kripke’s pro-posed customary principles of belief attribution. In his article “A Puzzleabout Belief,” Kripke argues that Frege’s puzzle about belief arises even incases in which we don’t apply the principle of substitutivity of coreferentialproper names, salva veritate, within propositional attitudes.1 Now with

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1. Saul Kripke “A Puzzle about Belief,” in Meaning and Use, ed. A. Margolit (Dor-drecht: Reidel, 1979); also in Propositions and Attitudes, ed. Nathan Salmon andScott Soames (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); all page references givenin this work are to the latter.


Kripke’s central conclusion—that the puzzle about belief can arise withoutappeal to this substitutivity principle, and hence that this puzzle is nota problem for the new theory of reference for proper names—I have noquarrels, provided names are restricted to F-type (as, indeed, most uses ofproper names are). But in so arguing, Kripke introduces the following twoprinciples of belief attribution. Where ‘P’ is to be replaced, inside and out-side all quotation marks, by any appropriate standard English sentence:

Principle 1 (the disquotational principle): If a normal English speaker, onreflection, sincerely assents to ‘P’, then he believes that P

and

Principle 2 (the strengthened biconditional disquotational principle): Anormal English speaker who is not reticent will be disposed to sincere re-flective assent to ‘P’ if and only if he believes that P.

The biconditional form of the disquotational principle strengthens thesimple form of the principle by adding that failure to assent indicates lack ofbelief, just as assent indicates belief. It is only with the converse of principle1 (what the strengthened biconditional disquotational principle 2 addsto principle 1) that we will presently be concerned. We refer to this part ofthe strengthened disquotational principle as principle 2′, or the conversedisquotational principle. Principle 2, the strengthened biconditional dis-quotation principle, is the conjunction of principle 1 and principle 2′.

As a counterexample to principle 2′, let us suppose that I have a student,Mary, who writes a dissertation on Kripke’s work on inadmissible ordi-nals. Suppose further that I do not know how to evaluate various technicalclaims made in her dissertation and that I decide to show the dissertationto Kripke for his evaluation. On some other occasion, let us say, Kripkehears me mention Mary by name, but he does not associate that name withthe person whose dissertation I show him (her name is not on the copy Ishow him). Finally, suppose that Kripke, who has never met nor been other-wise acquainted with my student, reads the dissertation and concludesthat my student is brilliant.

Under these conditions, it seems that I can correctly report to Mary,

(1) Kripke believes that you are brilliant.

Moreover, let us suppose that my colleagues ask me what Kripke thinksof Mary. I can then correctly say the following:

Disquotational Principle, Belief Attributions, and Agent’s Perspective 75


(2) Kripke believes that Mary is brilliant.

But Kripke will not assent to the sentence ‘Mary is brilliant’ regardlessof how much reflection he gives to this query, since he does not know thatmy student’s name is ‘Mary’. Yet principle 2′ requires his assent to this sen-tence upon reflection in order to correctly make attribution (2). We regardthese attributions as correct, even though the agent cannot reflect upon hisresources alone and assent to the sentence that expresses the attributed be-lief. Thus, in this example, (1) and (2) are illustrations of secondary beliefattributions that violate principle 2′.

But are (1) and (2) genuine counterexamples to Kripke’s principles ofbelief attribution? In order to be so, they must be de dicto belief attribu-tions, since these principles are only designed to apply to such attributions.But are examples (1) and (2) really de dicto belief attributions?

Historically, a de dicto belief attribution is generally regarded as havingthe logical form of a dyadic relation between a believer and a propositionor a state of affairs.2 Thus a de dicto belief attribution may be expressed ina sentence of the form

(i) β believes that φ,

where β refers to an agent and φ is a sentence expressing a proposition.This formulation presents an immediate problem in arguing that (1) and

(2) are de dicto belief attributions, however. For, as we noted earlier, ade dicto belief attribution is supposed to capture the way the agent thinksof or represents the content of the reported belief.3 But the sentence withinthe belief context in (2) is generally regarded as expressing a singularproposition. A singular proposition is a structured proposition the con-stituents of which are individuals, rather than individual concepts, and anattribute or property. The individuals are referred to by directly referentialsingular terms in the sentence expressing the singular proposition; the at-tribute (or property) is expressed by the predicate of that sentence. Now

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2. My characterization of a de dicto and de re belief is based on Lynne RudderBaker’s “De Re Belief in Action,” The Philosophical Review 91, 3 (July 1982):363–387.

3. I am considering only what the practice deems correct. I am not discussingwhether or not the semantics of de dicto belief attributions requires capturing theway the agent thinks of or represents the content of the reported belief.


the problem with claiming that (2) (or (1)) is a de dicto belief report is notonly that Kripke will not assent to the sentence ‘Mary is brilliant’, andhence that sentence does not capture his way of thinking or representingthe content of the reported belief. Kripke will not assent to any sentencethat expresses the same content, that is, the same singular proposition, asexpressed by that sentence. Thus on this analysis of a de dicto belief as-cription, Kripke does not appear to have a de dicto belief relation to thissingular proposition. Moreover, characterizing a proposition as a set ofpossible worlds does not help in arguing that (1) or (2) is a de dicto beliefreport. For Kripke will not assent to a sentence expressing that this is aworld in which Mary is brilliant.4

Nor may (1) or (2) be interpreted as elliptical for some other specificde dicto belief ascription, where it attributes to Kripke having a (de dicto)belief relation to some other proposition. The problem is that since Kripkedoes not know that the student’s name is ‘Mary’, he would refer to her byusing any one of several other linguistic expressions. He might, for in-stance, point to the dissertation and use the referring expression ‘the per-son who wrote this’ or, while addressing me, use the linguistic expression‘your student who wrote the paper you just gave me’. We could then use,for example, the following sentence to express a certain de dicto beliefascription:

(3) Kripke believes (the proposition) that Berger’s student who wrotethe dissertation that Berger showed Kripke is brilliant.

If (2) were to express a particular de dicto belief attribution, such as (3),then it would matter which of the above referring expressions I substitute


4. There is an alternative view of a de dicto belief report that analyses its logicalform as a triadic rather than a dyadic relation, where the third relatum is the modein which the object of the belief is accessible to the agent. (See, e.g., Mark Crim-mins and John Perry, “The Prince and the Phone Booth: Reporting Puzzling Be-liefs,” The Journal of Philosophy 86, 12 (1989): 685–711; Mark Richard,Propositional Attitudes (Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1990); and Stephen Schif-fer, “Belief Ascription,” The Journal of Philosophy 87 (1992): 602–614). On thisview, Kripke would bear the relation to the singular proposition expressed by thesentence ‘Mary is brilliant’ where Mary is accessible to Kripke under the mode ofpresentation of ‘the author of the dissertation’ or some such mode of presentation.This view can thus analyze (10) and (11) as a de dicto belief attribution. But thisview cannot handle the example in chapter 5 as either a de dicto or de re beliefascription.


(in the appropriate context) for ‘Mary’ in (2), since each substitution givesus a sentence that expresses a different proposition. But, in fact, thereseems to be no basis to favor any of these substitutions over the others;Kripke could have used any one of them to express his belief. So it does notseem that (2) is an abbreviation for any of these resulting belief ascriptions.In fact, (2) does not imply that Kripke believes the proposition that is theobject of the belief attributed to him in (3) or in any of the sentences re-sulting from substitution of one of the above referring expressions. Thus(2) does not seem to express or imply any of these specific de dicto beliefattributions. And if this is the case, do we really have a counterexample tothe converse disquotational principle?

Perhaps, then, (1) and (2) should more properly be considered de re be-lief attributions. A de re belief attribution is generally regarded as havingthe logical form of a triadic relation among a believer, an object or objects,and a property or relation that the believer ascribes to the object(s). A de rebelief attribution may be expressed in a sentence of the form

(ii) β believes that φα,

where α is an exportable singular term in that exportation of α from thebelief context to the referential position must be permissible salva veritate.Accordingly, we may apply existential generalization to (ii) and obtain

(ii′) ∃x(β believes that φx),

where φx is a result of substituting ‘x’ for α in φα (observing the usual re-strictions).

The conditions that must obtain in order for a reporter to make a truede re belief attribution are far from clear. The problem with establishingsuch conditions is that the notion of de re attribution is not a notion in or-dinary language. It is a notion invented by philosophers. So we don’t have in-tuitions of how we use this notion in ordinary language. If the notion issupposed to capture the notion of a belief’s being about an object, then wedo not have clear intuitions regarding the application of this notion. For thenotion of being “about” something is a vague notion. Is the expression ‘thepresident of the United States in 1972’ about Richard Nixon? In some sense,the answer to this question is yes. But clearly, it does not follow that if some-one has the de dicto belief that the president of the United States in 1972 isa Republican, that person has the de re belief of Nixon that he is a Repub-lican. As a result of these considerations, that there is no notion of de re be-

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lief attribution in ordinary language and that the notion of aboutness isvague, I consider de re belief attribution to be vague and a matter of degree.

Consider a paradigm case, due to Quine,5 in which we attribute tosomeone a de re belief: An agent, Ralph, believes, of the suspicious man inthe raincoat whom he is looking at, that he is a spy. In such paradigm cases,three conditions seem to obtain. First, the constituent object of the beliefis (or has been) in direct causal or cognitive contact with the agent. Sec-ond, as a result of this causal contact, the agent, Ralph, forms some justi-fied belief (from his or her perspective), at the time of causal contact. Forexample, Ralph believes that the person appears in front of him and has asuspicious appearance of a spy. We call this justified belief epistemic con-tact. Third, the agent can recognize the object about which he has a de rebelief. This is sometimes called the “knowing who” condition.

But these conditions for attributing a de re belief to someone, for thereasons stated above, are not clear and seem to be matters of degree. As forthe first condition, although the agent may be (or may have been) in causalcontact with the object of belief, the causal contact may not be direct. Theagent may see a picture of the object or, perhaps, hear a singer’s voice, say,that of Maria Callas, and identify the singer as the best soprano of the cen-tury. In still other cases, even weaker causal contact with the object maysuffice in order to attribute a de re belief to the agent. For example, wemight be willing to attribute a de re belief to the agent even though he is incausal contact with the object only on the basis of a report from someother person who is in direct causal contact with the object.

As for the second condition, the agent need not form the justified belief(i.e., establish epistemic contact) at the time of causal contact. Someonemay mention something to the agent at a later date (say, “the person whowe were talking to yesterday at the party is a spy”).

As for the third condition, it is obvious that no agent can recognize theobject under every circumstance. This is the source of Quine’s point thatin one circumstance (in which Ralph, say, is looking at Ortcutt, the suspi-cious man in the raincoat), Ralph believes that Ortcutt is a spy, while inanother circumstance (say, in which Ralph sees his neighbor, who happensto be Ortcutt), Ralph believes that he is a respectable member of society.


5. W. V. O. Quine, “Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes,” in The Ways ofParadox (Cambridge, MA: Random House, 1966), 183–194.


Moreover, it does not suffice in order for an agent to have a de re beliefabout an object that the agent can recognize the object under some cir-cumstance (e.g., when he or she is looking at a name tag on the object).

Now these three conditions are at best sufficient conditions for makinga de re belief attribution. Nonetheless, based on these conditions and theproblem of de re belief attribution stated above, there appears to be the fol-lowing necessary condition for such an attribution. If we can attribute toan agent a de re belief toward a person or an entity, then the agent can moreor less identify that person or entity again on the basis of those traits thatfigured in the agent’s epistemic contact with the person or entity. There are,of course, obvious counterexamples to this condition, involving confusingthe agent with an identical twin or other obvious skeptical predicaments.There is also the problem of distinguishing an entity’s traits in the relevantsense from a product produced by the entity or from a trace of the entity.For example, can a person’s singing figure in an agent’s epistemic contactwith the person? Can a person’s photograph figure in this way? Grantingthat there are these problems for a precise formulation of a necessary con-dition for attributing a de re belief to an agent, nevertheless the above nec-essary condition still seems plausible.

The following two considerations can be raised against interpreting (2)as expressing a de re belief attribution. First, it is a fact that Kripke has nei-ther met Mary nor otherwise become acquainted with her. If having a de rebelief about someone requires having direct causal or cognitive contactwith the person, then this alone makes it impossible to interpret (2) in thepresent context as a de re belief attribution. Second, having asserted (2),we can then correctly and consistently assert

(4) But Kripke doesn’t know who Mary is.

Now, suppose that the third condition (knowing who) is required in or-der to make a true de re belief attribution, that is, that the agent must rec-ognize the person about whom the agent has the belief. This is thecondition of knowing who the person is. But then the fact that we can as-sert (4) consistently with (2) is further evidence that (2) does not express ade re belief attribution.

Nevertheless, despite these considerations, we still might say that insome sense (2) is a de re belief attribution. For it seems that despite theconsiderations above—namely, that Kripke fails to have direct causal or

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cognitive contact with Mary and that in some sense he does not know whoshe is—Kripke has a belief about Mary, namely, that she is brilliant. Wehave this intuition because (i) Kripke has direct causal or cognitive contactwith the product of Mary’s that is his basis for attributing the property ofbrilliance to her and (ii) in some sense Kripke believes that only a brilliantperson could have produced such a product, or that to produce this prod-uct essentially, that is, necessarily in some sense (to be elaborated later), re-quires that the producer is brilliant.

It seems plausible, then, that we may consider, perhaps in some loose orextended way, (2) as a de re belief ascription. For I consider such second-ary belief attributions analogous to (or attempts at) making de re beliefattributions: Such secondary beliefs are “about an object,” and such sec-ondary beliefs require that the agent (here, Kripke) has direct causal orcognitive contact with a product of the person whom the belief is aboutand, reasoning from this product, the agent attributes a property (here, be-ing brilliant) to its producer. Accordingly, we may think of this kind of sec-ondary belief attribution as a secondary de re belief attribution, as it is asecondary direct causal or cognitive contact, through direct contact withthe product, that the agent has with the object of the belief and that formshis or her basis for attributing a property to the producer of that product.

Once we thus liberalize the criteria of direct causal or cognitive contact,however, we must be careful in presenting criteria for this liberalization.Otherwise, the required kind of direct causal or cognitive contact can bemade implausibly loose. For example, suppose that we let merely being onthe chain of an F-type proper name count as having a de re attitudetowards the referent of the F-type name, perhaps by making direct causalor cognitive contact a transitive relation for members on the chain. Thus,for example, suppose John overhears his friends discussing Feynman, buthears only that he is a physicist. Suppose further that John believes themand thus he forms the belief that Feynman is a physicist. Since John has ac-quired the name in a normal way that places him on the chain of referencefor the name ‘Feynman’, the above liberalization, on the basis of this alone,deems the sentence “John believes that Feynman is a physicist” a de re be-lief ascription.6 I find this implausible.


6. But Nathan Salmon in personal communication has taken and defends such aposition.


So it seems that (1) and (2) are, indeed, de re belief attributions. If so, thenwhy should they be considered counterexamples to principle 2′? The answerlies in the following Principle of Restricted Universal Importation schema:

If β believes of α that φit, α = γ, and if β does not dissent from ‘φγ’, then β believes that φγ,

where γ is a directly referential expression in the agent’s language, wherenecessary accompanied by a grunt, gesture, demonstration, or the like,and φγ results from φit by substitution. (In some cases γ may be used for de-ferred ostension.)

This principle seems very plausible, especially since we don’t require thelanguage to contain γ, so that γ could be a demonstrative (together witha demonstration). Accordingly, if an agent believes de re of an object α thatφα, it seems prima facie plausible to attribute to the agent the de dicto be-lief that φα, even if he or she is unable to express it for want of the term αor because he or she fails to realize that α (rigidly) designates the object ofhis or her belief. Such an attribution would be defeated by the agent’s hav-ing a contrary belief such as ~φγ, where ‘γ’ rigidly designates α; this is whatgenerates the puzzle cases, and I am offering only a diagnosis, not a solu-tion, of these. But, when the agent does not dissent from any sentence ex-pressing the (singular proposition) belief in question, it seems reasonableto attribute this belief to the agent.

Now from the principle of restricted universal importation and from thefact that (1) and (2) are true de re belief attributions, it follows that we mayalso read (1) and (2) as true de dicto belief attributions. For in this ex-ample, Kripke never dissents from the sentence ‘Mary is brilliant’. Thus ac-cepting the above plausible principle of restricted importation leads toviewing (1) and (2) as counterexamples to Kripke’s principle 2′.

The problem with principle 2′ is that although it accounts for a speaker’sassent upon reflection, there are two different sorts of considerations thatwe allow an agent to reflect upon when we attribute a belief to the agent.But principle 2′ cannot account for both sorts. First, there is reflection thatoften requires coaxing the agent so that he or she may reflect upon his orher own resources. For example, an agent may mistakenly not say some-thing that he or she “really” believes or may mistakenly say something thatgoes against what the agent is committed to believing. We may then re-mind the agent of various beliefs that he or she already strongly acceptsbut did not consider and that imply that the agent should revise his or her

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verbal behavior upon reflection on these beliefs. When a baseball fan saysthat the Yankees will win the game today, we may remind the fan that (heor she believes that) the Yankee pitcher injured his arm and that the starplayer for the Yankees is in the hospital. We thus remind the fan of variousbeliefs he or she already strongly holds, or of norms the agent has towardbeliefs, that is, that they should be consistent, based upon evidence, andthe like. Now such a case is an instance of aiding the agent so that he orshe may reflect upon his or her own resources; this is what is meant in theliterature by “reflective assent.”

But not all coaxing aids the agent in reflecting upon his or her resourcesalone. We may also consider what the agent would, or should, say were weto present the agent with a name (or directly referential term) designatingthe object to which the agent bears the appropriate epistemic relation inthe corresponding de re belief attribution. In our example above involvingmy student and Kripke, we considered what Kripke would or should saywere he given the fact that the name of the student about whom he wastalking is ‘Mary’.7 We would then feel that upon reflection on this fact, aswell as his own resources, Kripke would assent to the sentence ‘Mary isbrilliant’, or at least that he should assent to it. We feel justified in at-tributing to him the (de dicto) belief that Mary is brilliant because we be-lieve that Kripke satisfies the following conditions. First, that Kripke hassome general view (to be elaborated in chapter 6) that people have names;second, that Kripke has expertise in the domain of inadmissible ordinals;and third, that Kripke does not dissent from and in fact if asked would sin-cerely assent to the following:

(5) α is brilliant, where α is the name of my student that wrote the paper.

But why should we accept (5) as a basis for attributing to Kripke the (dedicto) belief that Mary is brilliant? For surely we would not attribute to anagent the belief that, say, John Doe is a spy, if John Doe is the shortest spy,simply because the agent may assent to the sentence “‘α is a spy’, where ‘α’stands for the name of the shortest spy.” The difference is that in the for-mer case, Kripke satisfies the epistemic condition required to have the


7. By supplementing an agent’s knowledge with this additional fact of which theagent may not be aware, I am not suggesting that the relation between a name andwhat or whom it denotes is analytic in a given language. Rather, I am invoking theattributer’s view of what the agent would use as a name for the object of the agent’sbelief if the agent had the resources available to express his or her belief.


belief about Mary that she is brilliant. In particular, Kripke is in epistemicor cognitive contact with her, or a product produced by her, which is hisbasis for attributing brilliance to her. In the John Doe case, what is miss-ing is the agent’s having the right kind of epistemic contact with John Doe.

We conclude, then, that the principle of restricted universal importationis incompatible with the converse disquotational principle 2′. If we acceptthe principle of restricted universal importation, which I have been de-fending, we must conclude that (1) and (2) can have a de dicto reading andare thus counterexamples to principle 2′.

4.2 Conditions for Secondary Belief Attributions

Since we have seen that there are secondary belief attributions, that is, truebelief attributions that violate Kripke’s principle 2′, what then are the con-ditions for accepting these attributions? In order to state these conditions,we must introduce the notion of a product for a given agent.

An agent may be in “direct contact” with or have “direct cognitive ac-cess” to a certain product, process, or trace that is the agent’s basis for be-lieving that the producer of this product, process, or trace has a certain trait.For example, the written dissertation is the product that is Kripke’s basisfor believing that the producer of this product is brilliant. In other cases, apolitical office may be thought of as the product or process that is an agent’sbasis for believing something about the person who holds that office. A cer-tain trace, such as a fingerprint on a gun, may be the detective’s basis for be-lieving that the producer of this trace is a criminal. The product, process, ortrace with which the agent is in direct cognitive contact or to which theagent has direct cognitive access that is the agent’s basis for attributing agiven trait to the producer we call the product for the given agent.

Accordingly, we formulate the following condition for forming true sec-ondary belief attributions.

Condition schema: (a) an agent, β, attributes a trait φ to the producer ofthe product for the agent and believes that it is “essential” that the pro-ducer have this trait in order to produce this product; (b) further, there isa sentence ‘φγ’ to which β assents, whose content is that γ has trait φ, andwhere ‘γ’ designates the producer of the product for the agent, and(c) the attributer’s referring expression for this producer is a directly ref-erential term ‘α’, and β does not dissent from ‘φα’, where ‘φα’ is a resultof substituting ‘α’ for ‘γ’ in ‘φγ’ (observing the usual restrictions).

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If this condition is satisfied, we may substitute the attributer’s directly ref-erential term ‘α’ for the term ‘γ’ within the belief context of the belief at-tribution β believes that φγ.

Thus in the secondary belief attribution ‘Kripke believes that Mary isbrilliant’, Kripke is the agent and ‘Mary’ is the attributer’s name for theproducer of the product (the dissertation) for Kripke. We formed the at-tribution by substituting the name ‘Mary’ for, say, ‘the author of this dis-sertation’ (while pointing to the dissertation) in the belief attribution‘Kripke believes that the author of this dissertation is brilliant’. Condition1 may be thought of as an epistemic condition for a de re belief attribution,especially if we consider true de re belief attributions a matter of degree.

It remains to explain the sense in which having a given trait is “essen-tial” in order for the producer to produce the given product. Now the sensein which such a trait is essential needs to be qualified in two importantrespects.

First, we are not in general talking about necessity in the deepest sense.We may, for example, only mean that given current biology and psychol-ogy or given a community-shared worldview (see chapter 6 for details), thetrait is necessary in order to produce the given product. In the above ex-ample, given Kripke’s generally shared community-wide beliefs and givenhis special expertise8 in the domain that the dissertation topic is in, Kripkebelieves that only a brilliant person could have written the dissertation.Among Kripke’s generally shared community-wide beliefs are that the dis-sertation was not written by typing randomly into a computer, that it didnot just fall from the sky, that the author was trying to do his or her bestwork, and various beliefs concerning the average intelligence of rationalhuman beings. Among his beliefs due to his special competence is that inthe domain that he has expertise, the dissertation contributes somethingthat must be the contribution of a brilliant person. Contexts and interestswill in general determine in what sense or how loosely we may be speak-ing of an essential trait, or even which essential trait is relevant.

Second, in calling a trait essential, we do not merely mean that the prod-uct could not have been produced unless the producer has this trait. For in


8. Again, see chapter 6 for details of a notion I call “institutional competence,”based on Hilary Putnam’s famous use of the role of “experts” in formulating hisnotion of the linguistic division of labor in “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” and“Meaning and Reference.”


our example above, had Kripke said only that the author of this disserta-tion was breathing when writing it, we would not be justified in makingthe secondary belief attribution

(6) Kripke believes that Mary was breathing when this dissertation waswritten.

The reason that we cannot make the above secondary belief attributionis that this essential trait (given our community-wide generally shared be-liefs) applies to any author of a dissertation. Thus suppose it is part of, say,our community-wide generally shared beliefs or special competence or ex-pertise that the trait the agent attributes to the producer of the product ap-plies to any producer of a product that is a member of the domain of suchproducts. Then this trait cannot serve as one that will permit us to substi-tute a name or pronoun for the agent’s referring expression in the sentencethat expresses the agent’s primary belief attribution (in the sense of a be-lief attribution that does not require some modification of Kripke’s prin-ciple of belief attribution).

For our guiding intuition regarding such substitution is that it is as ifone’s community-wide generally shared beliefs and expertise in a givendomain enables one to pick out the special type of producer of a givenproduct in that domain by means of a deferred ostension through one’s ac-quaintance with the product and one’s knowledge of the “essential trait”that the producer must have in order to produce that product. That is,given the expert’s cognitive contact with the product for the expert, an ex-pert has the right kind of epistemic relation with the producer of the prod-uct to be able to attribute a relevant (cognitive) property to the producerto distinguish the producer from many other members of the domain (pro-ducers of such a product). Consequently, we attribute to the agent a de rebelief attitude toward the producer of the product. This intuition is clearlyviolated when the trait attributed to the producer of the product appliesto any producer of any product that is a member of the domain of suchproducts. The domain of a given product (in this example, the class of dis-sertations) is relative to a description of the product. And as noted above,such a description is relative to the purpose, context, or interest in theproduct.

In our example above, Kripke shares with us various community-widegenerally shared beliefs, and he has the appropriate expertise in the do-main in question. That is, he is a member of a certain subgroup within the

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community that has special competence, or expertise, in the domain of thedissertation topic. Moreover, Kripke is in direct cognitive contact with thedissertation, which is his basis for forming the belief that the author is bril-liant. Given these factors, Kripke believes that anyone who has producedsuch a dissertation must have the property of being brilliant. Our intuitionthat Kripke has the right kind of epistemic relation with the producer ofthe product is satisfied, and we feel justified in substituting the name‘Mary’ for Kripke’s referring expression in the sentence that expresses hisprimary belief in order to form a true secondary belief attribution.

It should be clear that the notion of a trait essential in order for the pro-ducer to produce the given product (as well as the degree to which onewould be required to have competence in a given domain) is not meant tohave precise sharp criteria. If, for example, Kripke guessed that the authorof the dissertation was a woman with blue eyes, and even if that correctlydescribes Mary, the author of the dissertation, we would feel somewhat re-luctant to make the following attribution:

(7) Kripke believes that Mary is a woman who has blue eyes.

This reluctance seems to come from the lack of any special institutionalcompetence or community-wide generally shared beliefs relating gender,eye color, and a certain kind of dissertation. First, Kripke does not haveany special competence regarding the trait of the gender and eye color ofan author of a dissertation. There is no institutionally accepted theory re-garding such a connection. Thus neither Kripke nor anyone else can be amember of the relevant subgroup that has special competence in this do-main. Second, there aren’t any community-wide shared beliefs or presup-positions linking gender and eye color to dissertation writing. For thesereasons, we feel reluctant to assert (7).

Now suppose that there were a strongly institutionally accepted theory(i.e., a scientific theory) linking gender and eye color to a certain kind orstyle of dissertation and that Kripke were one of the leading experts hav-ing special competence in this domain. Then our intuitions regarding thetruth of (7) would change.

My notion of secondary belief attribution is intended to rule out casesof an agent’s beliefs based solely upon a “hunch” or a random guess. But towhat extent a belief is the product of a hunch (or of rational justification)is often a matter of degree. The less the agent’s primary belief is based ona hunch, and the more it is rationally justified, the more inclined we are to



say that the agent has the right epistemic relation to the producer of theproduct, and thus has a de re belief attitude toward the producer. That is,the more the agent’s primary belief is based upon the agent’s approachingan idealized rational agent, the more we are inclined to make a secondarybelief attribution.9

Now sometimes, due to the pragmatics in a given situation, we placestronger requirements than condition 1 in order to form a secondary be-lief attribution by substituting a proper name for the agent’s referring ex-pression in the sentence that expresses his or her primary belief attribution.For example, suppose that a detective believes that Smith’s murderer is in-sane solely on the basis of examining Smith’s mangled body. Let us grantthat the detective has the appropriate expertise to have the right epistemicrelation to the producer of this product, that is, to Smith’s murderer. Evenso, we would not, in this situation, apply the principle of restricted im-portation to substitute a proper name, say ‘Jones’, for the referring expres-sion ‘Smith’s murderer’ in the primary belief attribution

(8) The detective believes that Smith’s murderer is criminally insane

to form the secondary belief attribution

(9) The detective believes that Jones is criminally insane.

Since the job of a detective is to find out who the murderer is, the prag-matics gives rise to the presupposition that such substitution is permis-sible only when the detective believes he or she knows who the murdereris. For that reason, in the situation described above, we do not permit suchsubstitution.

This situation is not, however, a counterexample to our claim that con-dition 1 in general suffices to permit such secondary belief attributions.For in general, in order to permit such substitutions to form secondary be-lief attributions, there are no presuppositions to the effect that an agent,even if an expert, must believe he or she knows who the producer of a givenproduct is.

Consider, for example, the situation in which we already know thatJones committed the murder, and he is about to stand trial. Suppose fur-ther that the detective, neither having met Jones nor knowing his name or

88 Chapter 4

9. In chapter 6, I make explicit the basic assumptions we are here implicitly as-suming regarding an idealized rational agent.


even having a clue as to who he is, is given Smith’s body to determinewhether the murderer is criminally insane. Finally, suppose that on this ba-sis alone the detective announces that Smith’s murderer is criminally in-sane. In such a situation, Jones’s defense attorney can say at Jones’s trialthat the detective believes that Jones is criminally insane. In order to makesuch an attribution, the presupposition that the detective must believe thathe or she knows who Smith’s murderer is does not hold, since the prag-matic situation is no longer one in which we are turning to the detective’sbeliefs to find out who Smith’s murderer is. What justifies making this at-tribution are the detective’s expertise in determining whether a murdereris criminally insane on the sole basis of examining the victim’s body, thatis, the detective’s special institutionally recognized competence in this do-main, and the detective’s belief that this trait, criminal insanity, is essentialin order for the murderer, the producer of the product for the detective, tocommit this crime. Thus condition 1 obtains.

Violations of other presuppositions place further constraints on ourconditions for forming secondary belief attributions by substituting aproper name for the expert’s referring expression in the primary beliefattribution.

In chapter 6, I develop further some of the notions in this chapter as wellas others and apply them to the problem of intentional identity.



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