| A Puzzle about Belief ReportsA Puzzle about Belief Reports KENT BACHI'd like to present a puzzle about belief reports that's been naggingat me for several years. I've subjected many friends and audiences to variousabortive attempts at solving it. Now it's time to get it off my chest andlet others try their hand at it.<1>My puzzle is not to be confused with either Frege's or Kripke's. Frege's(1892) puzzle about attitude reports, which derived from his more famouspuzzle about the informativeness of identity statments, concerns the effectof substitution of co-referring terms. Kripke's puzzle (1979) goes deeperthan that, showing that there is a similar problem about belief reportseven without substitution. In my view, their puzzles arise only on a certainseemingly innocuous assumption, that 'that'-clauses specify belief contents.More precisely, this 'Specification Assumption' says that for a belief reportof the form 'A believes that p' to be true, the proposition that p mustbe among the things that A believes. Frege and Kripke, despite their radicallydifferent views on the semantics of 'that'-clauses in belief reports, sharethis popular assumption. My puzzle arises once it is rejected. First I will use Kripke's Paderewski case, along with a simple linguisticobservation, to call the Specification Assumption into question. Next Iwill briefly sketch the main options available, given the SpecificationAssumption, for solving Frege's substitution puzzle, and suggest that theseoptions present an unpalatable dilemma. And then I will explain how givingup that assumption offers prospects for an intuitively more plausible approachto the semantics of belief reports (and attributions of other propositionalattitudes). However, this approach must confront a puzzle of its own. Forit turns out that every case is a Paderewski case, at least potentially.1. The Specification Asssumption and Kripke's PuzzleWhat could be more plausible than the supposition that a belief reportof the form, 'A believes that p', is true only if the proposition that pis among the things that A believes? Belief reports of this form certainlyappear to relate believers to things believed. Indeed, it is sometimes suggestedthat the clause 'that p' is a kind of singular term, whose reference isthe proposition that p (the idea is that 'that' is a term-forming operatoron sentences). Then we have a straightforward explanation of the apparentvalidity of such inferences as the following: I1. Jerry believes everything Hilary says. (x)(Shx -> Bjx) Hilary says that water is wet. Shp So, Jerry believes that water is wet.<2> BjpIf the clause 'that water is wet' is a term, then I1 has the form indicated on the right, in which case it is not only valid but formally valid. The analogous point seems to apply to the following inference: I2. Art believes that Paderewski had musical talent. Bap Bart believes that Paderewski had musical talent. Bbp So, there is something both Art and Bart believe. (Ex)(Bax & Bbx)But is it so clear that the 'that'-clause of a true belief report specifiessomething the believer believes? Consider Kripke's Paderewski case. On accountof what Peter believes regarding a certain pianist, an utterance of (1)is true. (1) Peter believes that Paderewski had musical talent. Even so, an utterance of (2) (2) Peter disbelieves that Paderewski had musical talent. could be true too, because of what Peter believes regarding a certainstatesman. It happens that these are the same man, Paderewski, but Peterdoes not realize this.<3> Kripke's puzzle is to explain how(1) and (2) can both be true (not that both would be uttered in the samecontext without qualification). They seem to have Peter believing and disbelievingthe same thing. That's what they must do if the following inference is formallyvalid, with the form indicated: I3. Peter believes that Paderewski had musical talent. BapPeter disbelieves that Paderewski had musical talent. DapSo, there is something Peter believes and disbelieves. (Ex)(Bax & Dax)Kripke's puzzle arises from the fact that Peter's problem is ignorance,not bad logic. But that can't be right if (1) and (2) really do have himbelieving and disbelieving the same thing, or, equivalently, believing contradictorythings. How could he believe contradictory propositions (simultaneouslyand consciously) without being illogical?Kripke is so pessimistic about finding a satisfactory way to say whatPeter believes that he is led to lament, 'When we enter into [this] area,we enter into an area where our normal practices of interpretation and attributionof belief are subjected to the greatest possible strain, perhaps to thepoint of breakdown' (1979, pp. 268-9). I say there's no such strain, oncewe see through the illusion that (1) and (2) have Peter believing and disbelievingthe same thing.The alternative is to reject the Specification assumption and say that(1) and (2) are true but not because Peter believes and disbelieves thesame thing. This is possible because the 'that'-clause they contain doesnot specify anything he believes or anything he disbelieves--it merely characterizessomething he believes and characterizes something he disbelieves, and theseneedn't be the same thing. Compare the following sentences: Peter likes a certain pianist. Peter dislikes a certain pianist. There is no implication here that Peter likes and dislikes the same pianist.Somewhat similarly, I suggest, (1) and (2) do not jointly imply that Peterbelieves and disbelieves the same thing. One and the same 'that'-clause,even though it expresses but one proposition, can characterize (as opposedto specify) two distinct belief contents. This entails that a belief reportcan be true even if the believer does not believe the specific propositionexpressed by the 'that'-clause. With (1), for example, Peter must believesomething such that Paderewski had musical talent, but he need not believe*that* proposition.You might think that believing that p just *is* believing the propositionthat p. After all, (2) seems equivalent to (2p), (2p) Peter disbelieves the proposition that Paderewski had musical talent. But the following are anything but equivalent: (2') Peter suspects/fears/realizes that Paderewski had musical talent. (2p') Peter suspects/fears/realizes the proposition that Paderewski had musical talent. The oddity of (2p') should make one wonder whether 'that'-clauses inattitude contexts really do refer to propositions. On the alternative 'descriptivist' view, 'that'-clauses in belief reportsdo not specify but merely characterize things believed. If this view iscorrect, inference I3 above does not have the indicated form and is notformally valid. But in that case inferences I1 and I2 do not have the formsindicated for them and are not formally valid either. That they are is anillusion due to the Specification Assumption. Once we abandon that assumption,we can see that even though their respective 'that'-clauses express thesame proposition, (1) and (2) can both be true without Peter believing anddisbelieving the same thing. 2. The Specification Asssumption and Frege's Substitution Puzzle The pernicious effect of the Specification Assumption is evident if weconsider the main options it allows for solving Frege's substitution puzzle.As we will see, it forces a dilemma on us: we must choose between a solutionthat requires terms mysteriously to acquire special semantic roles in beliefcontexts and one which implausibly rejects the intuitive explanation ofwhy the puzzle arises in the first place.Ordinarily, replacing one term with another, co-referring term does notand cannot affect truth value. For example, if 'Superman can fly' is true,then so is 'Clark Kent can fly'. But in belief contexts, substitution seemsto affect truth value. Even though Clark Kent is Superman, substituting'Clark Kent' for 'Superman' in (3) (3) Lois has always believed that Superman can fly. seems to turn a truth into a falsehood: (4) Lois has always believed that Clark Kent can fly. The puzzle is to explain why substitution can fail in belief (and otherattitude) contexts. How can being embedded matter? Whatever the answer,it should reckon with the apparent fact that (3) and (4) have Lois believingtwo different things, that Superman can fly and that Clark Kent can fly.Because she can believe one without believing the other, the truth valuesof (3) and (4) can differ accordingly. The problem is how to explain allthis, or else explain it away.<4>It is natural to suppose that the 'that'-clause in a belief report specifiessomething the believer believes and that substitution can affect what isspecified. The two traditional view suppose this. FREGEAN: This view deniesthat terms occurring in embedded clauses have their 'customary' references.It claims that they refer instead to their (customary) senses (their 'indirect'references). The embedded sentence refers to the 'thought' (or 'Fregeanproposition') that the person is being said to believe. Unembedded, thesentence would express the thought but not refer to it.<5>METALINGUISTIC: Likethe Fregean view, this view denies that terms occurring in embedded sentenceshave their customary references. It claims instead that such terms referto themselves, or, alternatively, to their translations in the believer'slanguage (or perhaps to their translations in his mental language). On sucha quotationalist or sententialist view, belief reports relate believersnot to propositions but to sentences (or mental representations).<6>Notice that both the Fregean and the metalinguistic views in effect rejectthe original terms of the substitution puzzle. They deny that substituting'Clark Kent' for 'Superman' in a belief context really *is* a case of substitutingone co-referring term for another--in such contexts the names do not havetheir usual references. This is the price these views are willing to payin order to explain the effect of substitution (e.g., that the differencebetween (3) and (4) concerns what they have Lois believing). Unfortunately,these views do not give an independently motivated account of how and whysuch reference shifts should occur. One symptom of trouble is that in asentence like (5), (5) Lois believes that Clark Kent can't fly, but he can. the pronoun 'he' refers to Clark Kent even though it is anaphoric onthe embedded name, 'Clark Kent', which is supposed not to refer to ClarkKent in this context. This difficulty may be superficial, but it illustrateswhy positing a reference shift just doesn't ring true.The contemporary approach is to avoid reference shifts and maintain thatconstituents of an embedded sentence have their usual references. But then,since 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent' have the same reference, it seems thatthe difference between (3) and (4) must consist in something other thanwhat they have Lois believing. Indeed, the two main current views on thesubject say precisely this. They both distinguish the 'how' from the 'what'of belief and claim that (3) and (4) differ not in what they have Lois believingbut in how they have her believing it.<7> They both hold thatan embedded sentence refers to a Russellian proposition, whose constituentsare objects and properties (or relations).<8> Since the 'that'-clausesof (3) and (4) refer to the same proposition, the singular proposition thatSuperman/Clark Kent can fly, (3) and (4) as a whole have Lois believingthe same thing.<9> Even so, utterances of (3) and (4) can differin how they have her believing it. Speakers, by how they word the 'that'-clausein a belief report, convey information about ways of thinking of thingsand ways of taking propositions, but this information is part of the semanticcontent of the 'that'-clause. In particular, using 'Clark Kent' rather than'Superman' conveys different information about how Lois thinks of the individualboth names name, so that using a 'that'-clause containing one name ratherthan the other conveys different information about how she takes the propositionthat he can fly.The two views in question differ in how they regard the semantic statusof such information.NEO-RUSSELLIAN: On thisview, such information is merely 'pragmatically imparted', as Salmon (1986)puts it (he proposes an ingenious explanation of how this information isreadily confused with semantic content). This view rejects the anti-substitutionintuition, at least as far as the semantic contents of belief reports areconcerned. (4) does follow from (3): to believe that Clark Kent can fly*is* to believe that Superman can fly, at least under some way of takingthat proposition.HIDDEN-INDEXICAL: Alternatively,information about ways of taking propositions, even though it is conveyedonly tacitly, *is* part of the semantic contents of belief reports.<10>Claiming this requires denying that (3) and (4) have the logical form theyappear to have: 'believe' (or any verb of propositional attitude) expressesnot a dyadic but a triadic relation, involving not only persons and propositionsbut also ways of taking propositions, to which utterances of belief sentencesmake tacit reference. Then (3) is true relative to one implicitly referredto way of taking the singular proposition that Superman/Clark Kent can fly,and (4) is false relative to another.<11>Both views are counterintuitive. The neo-Russellian view implausiblyrejects the anti-substitution intuition that gives rise to Frege's puzzlein the first place. This intuition is so strong that, as Mark Richard suggests,it would take 'bribery, threats, hypnosis, or the like ... to get most people'to think that (3) and (4) have Lois believing the same thing (1990, p. 125).<12>The hidden-indexical theory purports to respect the anti-substitution intuition,but in fact it claims, contrary to a key element of that intuition, that(3) and (4) do have Lois believing the same thing--they differ only in howthey have her taking that proposition. Moreover, it provides no linguisticexplanation of where the extra argument place comes from.<13>If the four views considered (and their variants) exhaust the optionsavailable on the Specification Assumption, then collectively they pose adilemma with respect to the anti-substitution intuition. The first two,in an effort to explain why (3) and (4) have Lois believing two differentthings, both posit theoretically unmotivated reference shifts. The lasttwo avoid reference shifts but deny the basis of the intuition, namely that(3) and (4) have Lois believing two different things. Escaping this dilemmarequires explaining, without positing reference shifts, how (3) can be truebecause of one thing Lois believes and how (4), if it were true, would betrue because of something else she believes?<14> To appreciate how this can be, compare Lois's situation with that ofPerry White, Clark Kent's editor at the Daily Planet. For him, believingthat Clark Kent can fly amounts to the same thing as believing that Supermancan fly. This is so because he was party to Superman's Clark Kent ploy inthe first place. Perry has always believed that Superman can fly and alsothat Clark Kent can fly, but that is in virtue of only one belief of his.No wonder Perry believes that only one individual can fly. Things wouldbe different with Lois even if she came to believe that Clark Kent can fly.Suppose she saw Clark, attired in a grey suit, suddenly soar into the airbut she was still so smitten with Superman that she did not make the obviousinference. We would describe her as now believing that Clark Kent can fly,but the belief that makes this so would be distinct from her longstandingbelief that Superman can fly. Together they lead her to believe that twoindividuals can fly. Unlike her, Perry believes that only one individualcan fly.3. Giving up the Specification Assumption: A New PuzzleWhy does it take bribery, threats or hypnosis to get most people to thinkthat (3) and (4) say the same thing? The reason is very simple. (3) and(4) have Lois believing two different things. It's not that she believesthe same thing in two different ways--she believes two different things.An analogous point explains what's puzzling about the Paderewski case. Thepuzzle here concerns what Peter believes, not how he believes it. (1) istrue because Peter believes one thing, and (2) is true because he disbelievessomething else. So, we might ask, how can this be, if the same 'that'-clauseoccurs in both? That is my puzzle.The solution *begins* with the rejection of the Specification Assumption.Once we realize that the 'that'-clauses in (1) and (2) do not specify anythingPeter believes and disbelieves, we can see that (1) and (2) do not expressrelational propositions, of the form 'Bap' and 'Dap' respectively. 'Believes'and 'disbelieves' express dyadic relations all right, and Peter is one ofthe terms of that relation, but there is no reference to, or specificationof, the other term of that relation. For the only thing that could be theother term is the proposition that Paderewski had musical talent, but thatis not what Peter believes or disbelieves. What he believes is somethingthat requires the truth of that proposition, but that proposition is notwhat he believes. Similarly, what he disbelieves is something that requiresthe truth of that proposition (he believes something that requires the falsityof that proposition). But neither what he believes nor what he disbelievesis specified by the 'that'-clause in (1) and (2). The puzzle, then, is toexplain what makes (1) and (2) true anyway.A solution must answer three questions: Q1: What is the relation between the proposition expressed by the 'that'-clause in a true belief report and the belief(s) that it characterizes? Q2: How can propositionally equivalent 'that'-clauses characterize differentbeliefs?Q3: How can they characterize different beliefs in one context (as withLois) and the same beliefs in another context (as with Perry)? It is important to realize that my puzzle about belief reports is notlimited to isolated cases like Paderewski. It is epidemic--every case isa Paderewski case, at least potentially. Kripke thinks that the puzzle casesare special cases (he is reluctant to draw conclusions from them because'hard cases make bad law'), but there is nothing special about 'that Paderewskihad musical talent'--it is a perfectly ordinary 'that'-clause. Similar puzzlesarise with belief reports whose 'that'-clauses express general propositionsrather than singular ones. For *any* 'that'-clause 'that S', there couldbe circumstances in which someone believes that S and disbelieves that Swithout being illogical. For it need not specify anything that he both believesand disbelieves. It might seem that the problem here is merely one of insufficient detail.Make the 'that'-clause more specific in one way and you can say what Peterbelieves; make it more specific in another way and you can say what he disbelieves.Yes, we could embellish (3) and say that Peter believes that Paderewskithe pianist had musical talent and embellish (4) and say that he disbelievesthat Paderewski the statesman had musical talent, but ultimately this strategemdoes not work. Suppose that Peter hears two recordings, a beautiful performanceof Rachmaninov and a horrible jazz improvisation, both by Paderewski. Thenit wouldn't do any good to say that Peter believes that Paderewski the pianisthad musical talent, because we could just as well have said that he disbelievesthat Paderewski the pianist had musical talent. We could say that Peterbelieves that Paderewski the classical pianist had musical talent but thathe disbelieves that Paderewski the jazz pianist had musical talent. Butthis ploy won't ultimately work either. Suppose Peter hears a recordingof an atrocious performance of Mozart (by Paderewski) after the gorgeousperformance of Rachmaninov. We could say that Peter disbelieves that Paderewskithe classical pianist had musical talent, but this would not distinguishwhat he disbelieves from what he believes. We would need to say that Peterdisbelieves that Paderewski the classical pianist playing Mozart had musicaltalent, and that Peter believes that Paderewski the classical pianist playingRachmaninov had musical talent. ... When it comes to saying what someonebelieves, we can always say more but, it seems, we can never say enough.This deepens my puzzle about belief reports. Not only do 'that'-clausesmerely characterize belief contents, they are not inherently capable offully specifying the contents of beliefs. Any belief report is potentiallya Paderewski case. What, then, are belief contents, such that their contentscan't be specified fully by 'that'-clauses, and how *can* belief contentsbe specified fully? Now that's a puzzle.<15>Copyright Kent Bach 1997kbach@sfsu.eduReferencesBach, K. 1994. Conversational impliciture. Mind & Language9: 124-62.Crimmins, M. 1992. Talk about Beliefs. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Forbes, G. 1990. The indispensability of sinn. Philosophical Review99: 535-563.Frege, G. 1892. On sense and reference. In Translations of the PhilosophicalWritings of Gottlob Frege, ed. P. Geach and M. Black. Oxford: Blackwell.Kripke, S. 1979. A puzzle about belief. In Meaning and Use, ed.A. Margalit. Dordrecht: Reidel.Richard, M. 1990. Propositional Attitudes: An Essay on Thoughts andHow We Ascribe Them. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Salmon, N. 1986. Frege's Puzzle. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Schiffer, S. 1977. Naming and knowing. Midwest Studies in Philosophy2: 28-41.Schiffer, S. 1992. Belief ascription. Journal of Philosophy 89:490-521.Notes1. To make my puzzle clear, in giving the necessary but, I hope, familiarbackground I will often either omit details or relegate them to the endnotesand give references. 2. Contrary to philosophical legend, water is not wet--it only makesthings wet.3. As Kripke describes the situation, Peter uses the name 'Paderewski'for what he takes to be two different individuals, but it is inessentialto the problem that Peter even be familiar with the name. Uses of (1) and(2) could be prompted by Peter's reaction to two different photographs,for example. Frege's substitution puzzle is also not essentially about namesthe believer uses.4. One thing to keep in mind is this. If you utter 'Superman can fly',you thereby say, and express the belief, that Superman can fly. However,you are not saying that you are saying this or that you believe this. Ifyou uttered 'Clark Kent can fly' instead, your utterance would have thesame propositional content but you would not be expressing the same belief.But you are not talking about the belief--you are talking about Clark Kent(or Superman). Ordinary statements express beliefs but, unlike belief reports,are not about beliefs.5. Frege held that the referent of an unembedded sentence is a truthvalue (the True or the False), but one could hold, more plausibly, thatit is a proposition, of the sort composed of the referents of the constituentsof the sentence, and still be something of a Fregean. To be sure, this wouldbe not a 'Fregean' but a 'Russellian proposition'. Even so, as a Fregeanone could still hold that the sentence *expresses* a Fregean proposition,or what Frege himself called a 'thought'.6. A more extreme version of the metalinguistic view denies that constituentsof embedded sentences refer at all and that belief reports relate believersto anything at all. I will ignore this view in what follows. Obviously sucha view is not committed to the Specification Assumption. The most glaringdifficulty with such a view is that it has to treat each belief-predicate(of the form 'believes that S') as semantically primitive.7. Both theories, though anything but Fregean--they claim that 'that'-clausesrefer to Russellian propositions, not Fregean ones--still exploitFrege's notion of 'mode of presentation.' They distinguish individuals fromways of thinking of them, and (Russellian) propositions from ways of takingthem. Ways of taking Russellian propositions (modes of presentation of them)are essentially Fregean propositions, or thoughts.8. In the case of (3) and (4), this is a 'singular' proposition, so-calledbecause its subject constituent is an individual (or sequence of individuals).The simplest form of such a proposition may be represented as a sequenceof the form: <a,F>. 9. This assumes that proper names such as 'Clark Kent' and 'Superman'are devices of direct reference, even as they occur in belief contexts.You might turn the point around and argue that the two 'that'-clauses referto different propositions, hence that names are not devices of direct reference,at least in belief contexts. Rejecting the Specification Assumption, aswe will do later, makes this issue moot. The alternative is to deny, e.g.,that (3) is true because Lois believes the singular proposition its 'that'-clauseexpresses. One could deny this on grounds first given by Schiffer (1977),namely that singular propositions cannot comprise complete contents of beliefs.10. This proposal was first advanced by Schiffer (1977) and has sincebeen developed in detail by Crimmins (1992). It claims, in effect, thatbelief sentences fail to express complete propositions independently ofcontext, that they are semantically incomplete (for discussion of this notion,see Bach 1994). Significantly different versions have been proposed by Forbes(1990) and by Richard (1990).11. (4) could be true relative to the way of taking that propositionrelative to which (3) is true. However, because 'Clark Kent' is being usedrather than 'Superman', a typical utterance of (4) would refer to a differentway of taking that proposition, and relative to that way of taking it (4)is false. 12. Only the neo-Russellian view regards the inference from (3) to (4)as formally valid, having the following form: Bl<s,F> k = s So, Bl<k,F> The trouble is, taking I4 to have this form is tantamount to rejectingthe anti-substitution intuition.13. This is one of several objections brought by Schiffer (1992) againstthe hidden-indexical theory. He calls this the 'logical form' problem. Thereis a related grammatical form problem: the hidden-indexical theory seemsto violate the principle of Compositionality, which says, roughly, thatthe meaning of a sentence is determined by its syntactic structure and themeanings of its constituents. There is no evident syntactic basis for thealleged device (the "hidden" indexical) of tacit reference. Thehidden-indexical theory at least respects the principle of Semantic Innocence,which says that embedding expressions in particular constructions, suchas 'that'-clauses in belief reports, does not change their meaning or reference.These principles and how they tie in to Frege's puzzle are discussed inCrimmins (1992, ch. 1). The Fregean and the metalinguistic views, with theirclaim of a reference shift, violate Semantic Innocence. Crimmins also explainsthe relevance of the principle of Direct Reference, which denies that determinantsof reference, as opposed to the referents themselves, enter into semanticcontents). Notice that Semantic Innocence is logically independent of DirectReference, although proponents of the former generally endorse the latter.14. How do the four types of theory sketched above fare with the Paderewskicase, which does not involve substitution? Here, it seems, the referentiallyshifty approaches have a real problem, inasmuch as (1) and (2) contain identical'that'-clauses. The Fregean and metalinguistic views would like to claimthat Peter is being said to believe one thing and to disbelieve somethingelse. Its strategy in the substitution case was to claim that substitution(e.g. of 'Clark Kent' for 'Superman') changes the reference in a beliefcontext. But the same move is not available in the Paderewski case, wherethere is no substitution. There is no linguistic difference between the'that'-clauses of (1) and (2), nothing to capture the difference betweenwhat Peter is being said to believe and what he is being said to disbelieve.The neo-Russellian and the hidden-indexical theories claim that (1) and(2) have Peter believing and disbelieving the same proposition, but undertwo different ways of taking it. The trouble with this claim, quite simply,is that (1) and (2) *seem* to have Peter believing one thing and disbelievingsomething else. The puzzle with Peter seems to be what he believes, nothow he believes it. The challenge in solving that puzzle is to reckon withthe fact that there is no difference between the 'that'-clauses of (1) and(2), nothing to mark the difference between what Peter believes and whathe disbelieves.15. Thanks to David Sosa for his very helpful advice. |
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