Review of Mark Richard’s Propositional Attitudes: An Essay On Thoughts And

How We Ascribe Them Cambridge University Press 1990 x+266 pages

Richard’s book is principally concerned with the semantics of propositional attitude

ascriptions. Because this is not a topic which can be fruitfully discussed without
consideration of issues in the philosophy of mind, the book takes up questions about
the nature of psychological states, the distinction between explicit and implicit
beliefs, and about the psychological states of animals. However, while it could not be
said that the discussion of these questions is peripheral, it is certainly correct to say
that the main focus of the book is on issues in the philosophy of language.

The thesis which Richard defends is (roughly) this: that a sentence of the form “S #’s
that p” (where “#” is a verb of propositional attitude) is true when tokened in a
particular context c provided that the content sentence “p” faithfully represents one of
the sentences which constitute S’s states of #-ing. An important aspect of the theory -
- and one which distinguishes it from familiar sententialist accounts of propositional
attitude ascriptions -- is that whether “p” faithfully represents one of the sentences
which constitute S’s #-states depends upon features of the context c.

In more detail, the plan of the book is as follows:

In Chapter 1 (“Structure”), the main thesis for which Richard argues is that a correct
semantics for propositional attitude ascriptions is sentential, and this in two ways.
First, Richard argues that the semantic contents of the content clauses of attitude
ascriptions (hereafter: “propositions”) are sentential entities (i.e. entities which
resemble sentences); and, second, Richard argues that the psychological states which
constitute the attitudes themselves have sentential structure.

Richard’s defence of the view that “propositions mirror the structure of sentences
which express them” has two parts. First, he argues that Robert Stalnaker’s defence
of “structureless propositions” is defective: any view which holds that propositions
have no internal structure is unable to account for certain facts about deduction.
Second, he argues that there are examples which show that almost any syntactic
structure must sometimes have an analogue in propositional structure -- and hence
that there is really no option but to take it that propositions have something which is
very much like sentential structure. Sandwiched between these two arguments, there
is an interesting critical discussion of Max Cresswell’s “structured intension” account
of propositions.

Richard’s defence of the view that the psychological states which constitute the
attitudes themselves have sentential structure is almost exclusively concerned to show
that this view does not have certain bad consequences which it is commonly supposed
to have. Richard argues that “psychological sententialism” does not entail that
animals have no mental lives, nor that functionalism about psychological states must
be false, nor that psychological representation is atomistic. Moreover, he argues that
examples involving “tacit beliefs” which are commonly thought to refute
psychological sententialism do not in fact do so -- primarily because, in any
interesting sense, there are no such things as tacit beliefs.
In Chapter 2 (“Some cognitive theories of content”), Richard turns his attention to
theories which hold that expressions have context-independent cognitive contents --
i.e. contents which are either favoured ways of thinking about entities (Fregean
senses), or else functional or conceptual or computational roles of mental
expressions. Richard’s view is that all such theories are mistaken; but since there are
so many such theories, he provides detailed arguments against only some typical
examples. First, he argues that Fregean (and neo-Fregean) theories -- such as those
provided by Frege, Church, McGinn, and Forbes -- are unable to provide a correct
assignment of truth-values to all tokenings of propositional attitude ascriptions. (He
also argues that many attempts to improve upon Fregeanism turn it into a theory
which is indistinguishable from the Russellian alternative.) And, second, Richard
argues that, while Boer and Lycan’s conceptual role theory appears to get the
assignment of truth-values correct, there is actually no satisfactory way of filling out
their account of conceptual role.

Chapter 3 (“Ascribing Attitudes”) begins with a critical account of Russellian

theories of propositional attitudes -- e.g. theories defended by Russell, Soames,
Salmon, and some of Richard’s former selves. In Richard’s view, the only really
damaging objection to Russellianism lies in the construction of a theory which shares
the virtues of Russellianism, but which is not forced to deny widespread intuitions
about the truth of various propositional attitude ascriptions. Richard then goes on to
provide the outlines of what he claims is such a theory.

The basic entities in Richard’s analysis are what he calls Russellian annotated
matrices (RAMs). These are set-theoretic constructions which one obtains by pairing
off the constituents of sentences with their Russellian interpretations. (Some readers
will be familiar with a similar sort of construction used by Howard Burdick.) Richard
claims that a tokening of a belief ascription t believes that S in a context c is true iff
the RAM which is the content of that S in the context c represents a RAM in the
representational system of the referent of t (in the context c) under a mapping
between RAMs in English and RAMs in the representational system of the referent of
t (in the context c) which obeys certain restrictions which are operative in the context
c.

In order to meet certain technical difficulties (involving functions which take

themselves as arguments), Richard holds that “believes” is systematically ambiguous,
and that mappings between RAMs in English and RAMs in representational systems
have a hierarchical structure. However, he also observes that there are “technologies”
around which could avoid these complications (e.g. Peter Aczel’s theory of non-well-
founded sets).

One might be inclined to think that Richard’s theory will fall to something like
Church’s translation argument; however, Richard provides a number of arguments
which are designed to show that there is really no such danger. In these arguments,
the contextual restrictions on mappings between RAMs in English and RAMs in
representational systems do most of the work.

Finally, Richard argues that his theory provides a neat solution to Kripke’s puzzle
about belief, and a satisfactory reply to Scott Soames “context-hopping” argument in
favour of Russellianism. Once again, it is appeals to features of the context of
utterance of propositional attitude ascriptions which do the work. (The main point is
that (e.g.) “Pierre believes that London is pretty” and “Pierre believes that London is
not pretty” get identical truth-values only when they are assessed relative to different
contexts -- and, moreover, only when they are assessed relative to contexts which
differ in the restrictions which they impose on mappings between RAMs in English
and RAMs in Pierre’s representational system.)

Lastly, in Chapter 4 (“Some issues in logic and semantics”), Richard takes up some
complications and subsidiary issues which were passed over in Chapter 3. In
particular, he discusses: (i) quantification and its connection to Leibniz law of
identity; (ii) demonstratives and what Nathan Salmon has called the problem of
reflexive beliefs; (iii) the retention of propositional attitudes over time; (iv) RAMs
and truth-bearers; and (v) attributions of propositional attitudes to animals.

There are many issues which Richard leaves unattended or unresolved. In a footnote
(p.62) he admits that he has said nothing about what he means by the word
“property”. However, especially in view of Stephen Schiffer’s arguments in The
Remnants Of Meaning, it must be said that this is a very sizeable omission. Also,
Richard does not have very much to say about the exact nature of the evidence for
which his theory is supposed to account. He does note that a semantic theory must be
responsive to more than speakers’ intuitions about whether certain kinds of uses of
sentences are true; that (e.g.) such theories must be responsive to intuitions about
validity, intuitions about the nature of the objects of attitudes, etc. However, it is not
clear to me that these “speakers’ intuitions” are really evidence for any sort of theory.
After all, the sorts of intuitions which Richard mentions seem to be of a sort which is
informed by prior philosphical theory (however naive). Perhaps the real evidence for
semantic theories just lies in speakers’ dispositions to assent to (and to dissent from)
certain uses of sentences. But if that is right, then we seem to lose any evidential
difference between Russellianism and the theory which Richard defends. At the very
least, it seems to me that a more careful discussion of these issues is required.

Of course, one can’t do everything in a single book -- so there is a sense in which the
previous criticisms are not very weighty. However, there are also many points upon
which I would be inclined to disagree with Richard. In particular, it seems to me that
he would do better to forgo his commitment to psychological sententialism, and to
speak instead of correlations to “ways of thinking” or “modes of presentation”. The
advantage in this is that it will allow his theory to be correct if it turns out that our
thoughts do not have syntactic structure (even in the weak sense which he requires). I
do not see that there is anything in Richard’s semantic theory which turns on the
assumption of psychological sententialism; consequently, it seems to be a good idea
to emphasise that this is an optional part of the deal.

This move also has the advantage of exhibiting more clearly the relationship between
Richard’s theory and previously defended Fregean and Russellian theories. What we
might say is that Richard’s theory is the extended neo-Fregean theory which you get
if you allow the correlation betweem terms and modes of presentation to be partially
determined by context. Richard does provide some discussion of the connections
between his view and neo-Fregeanism. However, I don’t see that he has any good
objection to the view which takes it that restictions (or conditions) on modes of
presentation actually form a contextually contributed part of the semantic content of
propositional attitude ascriptions. (I have discussed this issue elsewhere -- cf. my “A
Semantics For Propositional Attitude Ascriptions”.)
I am also inclined to think that the brief remarks which Richard makes on the
question of how it is that contexts of utterance constrain restrictions on mappings
between RAMs in English and RAMs in representational systems take off in the
wrong direction. In Richard’s view, these restrictions are determined by the intentions
of the speaker in the context -- though, as he notes, it is not easy to say which
observable aspects of context can serve to allow hearers to gain access to these
intentions. I suspect that there are a host of contextual features -- e.g. mutual
background knowledge, saliences introduced by prior conversation, saliences
provided directly by context, mutual interests, etc. -- which do the work which
Richard wishes to assign to speakers’ intentions.

Despite these differences, I do share with Richard the conviction that any satisfactory
account of propositional attitude ascriptions will have to exhibit something very
much like the sensitivity to context of utterance which is to be found in his theory.
Moreover, I doubt that there is a better book around for anyone who wishes to know
what is currently being done by those working in the tradition of Frege and Russell.

Although some of Richard’s arguments are fairly complex, he has managed to keep
technicalities (and technical jargon) reasonably under control. Moreover, he has a
nice, clear style of writing. And -- also important -- the book is relatively free from
typographical errors. (Some errors which I found: p.13, line 14: barbers shave only
those who do not shave themselves; p.136, line 6: Taschek; p.215, note8: Chastain.)
No doubt, the book is fairly expensive (I used a library copy); perhaps you might
think about stealing it.

Wollongong University
December 21, 1990.