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Consciousness and Meaning
Consciousness and
Meaning
Selected Essays

Brian Loar
EDITED BY

Katalin Balog and Stephanie Beardman

WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY

Stephen Schiffer and Katalin Balog

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/12/2016, SPi

3
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Preface

Ten years ago Brian Loar, my husband, arranged to publish a selection of his work
with Oxford University Press, but then illness prevented him from carrying out the
project himself. Before he died in 2014, Brian spoke of this collection with happy
anticipation, and though I regret that he did not live to see it materialize, I am much
gratified to see it brought forth now.
We don’t know exactly which papers Brian would have chosen. In addition to
papers that are well known, we wanted to include significant and difficult-to-locate
works—encouraged by the volume of emails Brian received from philosophers all
over the world requesting articles originally published in out of print collections that
are not accessible online. At the end of the book, we provide what we take to be a
complete list of Brian’s publications; circumstances and the passage of time don’t
allow absolute certainty that everything is included, but we hope the list is useful.
The papers are arranged mostly in chronological order and introduced in two
parts. Stephen Schiffer presents Brian’s work in the philosophy of language; Katalin
Balog introduces Brian’s papers in the philosophy of mind. These two philosophical
subfields interlink, of course, but this is especially true in Brian’s work: He had a large
holistic conception of consciousness, thought, language, and meaning that drove him
to pursue questions and propose answers that rely on a substantively unified view of
mind and meaning. The psychology of communication was something to which he
was particularly attuned, and it is not surprising that his curiosity about the nature of
language and of thought motivated him throughout his life. There was no sharp
division between philosophy and his life. He was, as they say, a philosopher’s
philosopher: fellow philosophers read him to learn not just what he thinks, but
how he thinks.
Stephanie Beardman
New York
October 5, 2015
Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Part I. Philosophy of Language

Introduction to Part I 3
Stephen Schiffer
1. Reference and Propositional Attitudes 14
2. Two Theories of Meaning 29
3. The Semantics of Singular Terms 48
4. Must Beliefs Be Sentences? 69
5. Names in Thought 84
6. Truth beyond All Verification 97
7. The Supervenience of Social Meaning on Speaker’s Meaning 124

Part II. Philosophy of Mind

Introduction to Part II 137
Katalin Balog
8. Social Content and Psychological Content 153
9. Subjective Intentionality 165
10. Phenomenal States 195
11. Can We Explain Intentionality? 220
12. Elimination versus Non-reductive Physicalism 238
13. Reference from the First-person Perspective 256
14. Transparent Experience and the Availability of Qualia 273
15. Phenomenal Intentionality as the Basis of Mental Content 291

List of Works by Brian Loar 319

Bibliography 321
Index 329
Acknowledgments

This book like all things has come into existence as a result of many conditions. The
biggest factor, of course, has been the inspiration of Brian’s work. A number of
people have generously offered assistance and advice for which we are grateful.
Special thanks are due to our editor at Oxford University Press, Peter Momtchiloff,
who has been encouraging and helpful in every way. Lisa Miracchi and Zachary
Miller have assisted with many time-consuming editorial tasks. Barry Loewer and
Georges Rey spent long hours going through the manuscript; we are very grateful for
their insightful suggestions. Special thanks to Stephen Schiffer for agreeing to write
one of the introductions and for the many other ways in which he helped this book to
come together.
Katalin Balog
Stephanie Beardman
The editors and Oxford University Press would like to thank all the publishers for
permission to republish the following papers previously published elsewhere. None
but the most minor editorial alterations have been made to the published texts. Every
effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently
overlooked the publisher will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the
first opportunity.
“Reference and Propositional Attitudes” (1972). The Philosophical Review 81:
43–62.
“The Semantics of Singular Terms” (1976). Philosophical Studies 30: 353–77.
“Must Beliefs Be Sentences?” (1982). In P. Asquith and T. Nickles (eds.), Proceed-
ings of the 1982 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 2,
Philosophy of Science Association, 627–43.
“Names in Thought” (1987). Philosophical Studies 51: 169–85.
“Subjective Intentionality” (1987). Philosophical Topics 1: 89–124.
“Truth beyond All Verification” (1987). In B. Taylor (ed.), Michael Dummett:
Contributions to Philosophy, Martinus Nijhoff, 81–116.
“Social Content and Psychological Content” (1988). In R. H. Grimm and
D. D. Merrill (eds.), Contents of Thought: Proceedings of the 1985 Oberlin
Colloquium in Philosophy, University of Arizona Press, 99–110.
“Can We Explain Intentionality?” (1991). In B. Loewer and G. Rey (eds.), Meaning
in Mind: Fodor and His Critics, Blackwell, 119–36.
“Reference from the First-Person Perspective” (1995). Philosophical Issues: Con-
tent, 6, Ridgeview Publishing Company, 53–72.
“Phenomenal States: Second Version” (1997). In N. Block, O. Flanagan, and
G. Guzeldier (eds.), The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, MIT
Press, 597–616.
“The Supervenience of Social Meaning on Speaker’s Meaning” (2001). In
G. Cosenza (ed.), Paul Grice’s Heritage, Brepols, 101–13.
“Phenomenal Intentionality as the Basis of Mental Content” (2003). In M. Hahn
and B. Ramberg (eds.), Reflections and Replies: Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler
Burge, MIT Press/Bradford Books, 229–57.
PART I
Philosophy of Language
 Introduction to Part I
Stephen Schiffer

I first met Brian Loar when I happened to sit next to him at a philosophy talk in
Oxford in January 1964. Because I had been away from Oxford during Michaelmas
term 1963, when Brian entered Balliol, it was only during the conversation I had with
him that evening that I learned we were both Balliol research students who happened
to be living in college. I can’t recall who the speaker was that evening, what his or
her talk was about, or the college in which the talk was held, but I have a vivid
recollection of meeting Brian. That may have been because immediately after intro-
ducing himself he asked me if I was a Quinean. Brian and I fast became very close
friends. This had as much to do with our distaste for Balliol’s dinners as it did with
our shared philosophical interests: several nights a week we would agree that the
thought of eating in Hall was intolerable and head off for the Taj in the Turl. Well,
there was also the fact that our philosophical conversations were enhanced by the
copious amounts of scotch and numerous unfiltered Players cigarettes that accom-
panied them. In what I think was the winter or spring of 1966, Brian and I attended a
seminar Paul Grice gave on topics he wanted to cover in the William James Lectures
he was committed to giving at Harvard in early 1967. After a few sessions of the
seminar, in which Brian and I routinely gave him a hard time, Grice asked us if we
would meet with him several mornings a week in his rooms at St John’s College to
discuss issues that arose in the seminar. Of course we agreed, and in those sherry-
drenched morning meetings began a close friendship that Brian and I enjoyed with
Paul Grice until his death in 1988.
Brian and I were already working collaboratively on the Gricean program when we
began meeting with Grice. I had recently begun work on my dissertation on Meaning1
under Peter Strawson’s supervision, and Brian was just beginning to think about
doing a dissertation on Sentence Meaning. As we conceived the Gricean program, it
was a reductionist program in two parts. In the first part, a notion of speaker-meaning
was defined, without presupposing any semantic notions, in terms of acting with the

1
A slightly revised version of the dissertation was published under the same title in 1972 by Oxford
University Press.
 INTRODUCTION TO PART I

intention of affecting an audience in certain ways. In the second part, expression-

meaning, the semantic properties of linguistic items, was defined, again without
presupposing any semantic notions, in terms of the now defined notion of speaker-
meaning, together with certain ancillary notions, such as that of a conventional
regularity in behavior, which themselves were definable in terms of non-semantic
propositional attitudes. If the program succeeds, it will have reduced all questions
about linguistic representation to questions about mental representation. Three
aspects of the program were of especial interest to Brian, and knowing what they
are may provide some useful background to the papers collected in this volume.

Reduction. The Gricean program, as conceived by Brian and me, was a reductionist
program: it aimed to reduce semantic facts to propositional-attitude facts. That
aspect of the program was attractive to Brian, but it was attractive to him because
he saw it as essential to a larger reductionist aspiration of his. This was the reduction
of semantic and propositional-attitude facts ultimately to physical facts, perhaps via a
reduction to functional facts realized by physical facts; for Brian saw that as the only
way of making sense of the place of intentionality—that is to say, of content-
involving facts—in the natural order. Impressed by Hilary Putnam’s early work on
minds and machines, and then, a few years later, David Lewis’s and Jerry Fodor’s
work on functionalism, Brian believed that psychological notions generally, but
especially propositional-attitude notions, could be defined in terms of functional
properties via their roles in psychological theories in which those notions functioned
as theoretical constructs, and it went without saying by everyone who was attracted
to functionalism that physical states and properties would be the ultimate realizers of
those functional properties. But while functionalism seemed a promising way to
reduce propositional-attitude and other psychological notions to non-psychological
notions, it didn’t seem to hold much promise as a way to achieve the needed
reductionist account of semantic facts. It’s precisely at this point that the attractive-
ness of the Gricean’s reduction of semantic notions to propositional-attitude notions
reveals itself to the aspiring physicalist: in showing that, and how, the intentionality
of language derives from the intentionality of thought, the physicalist is able to see
how she can get her desired reduction of all intentional notions by first reducing
semantic notions to propositional-attitude notions, and then reducing propositional-
attitude notions to functional notions realized by physical states and properties. Back
in the day, Griceans were often asked what was the point of a theory that defines the
representational features of language in terms of the representational features of
thoughts when it has nothing to say about the latter. Brian Loar saw the point. Brian’s
romance with functionalism culminated in his profound and ingenious book Mind
and Meaning (1981), in which he worked out in great detail what I believe is the best
functionalist account of propositional attitudes. Alas, however, best doesn’t mean
true, and once he had worked out what a functionalist account of propositional
attitudes needed to be, he was liberated to find problems with it. Brian gave up on
 INTRODUCTION TO PART I 

functionalism in the mid-eighties and it was then that he began his work on
‘subjective intentionality,’ represented primarily in the chapters that Katalin Balog
will introduce.
Expression-meaning. The biggest challenge to the Gricean program was to show in
detail how expression-meaning, the semantic features of linguistic items, could be
explicated in terms of the Gricean’s account of speaker-meaning (together with
relevant ancillary notions). Brian’s greatest interest in the Gricean program was in
seeing how this challenge could be met, and when, upon achieving the B.Phil. degree
in spring 1965 he was awarded a prize research fellowship at Magdalen College, he set
out to meet that challenge in his doctoral dissertation on Sentence Meaning. The
account of sentence meaning I offered in Meaning was to a large extent based on an
idea of Brian’s.
Reference. The referential properties of expressions are among their most important
semantic properties; one can’t be interested in expression-meaning without being
interested in reference. Brian’s interest in the problems of reference—the problems
posed by Frege, Russell, Strawson, Quine, and others—predated his involvement with
the Gricean program, and several of those problems famously concern the behavior
of singular terms in the ‘that’-clauses of belief and other propositional-attitude
reports, and the sort of functionalism that interested Brian had important implica-
tions for the semantics of those reports. But the Gricean program had its own special
interest in reference. For just as there is a speaker-meaning/expression-meaning
distinction, there is also a speaker-reference/expression-reference distinction, and
this strongly suggests that for the Gricean expression-reference needs to be defined
in terms of speaker-reference, which in turn needs to be defined in terms of the
Gricean’s account of speaker-meaning. That is no easy feat to accomplish, and the
definitions that seem to be needed have no small degree of complexity, as is witnessed
by the one thing Brian and I ever coauthored: the recursive definition of a speaker’s
referring to something qua its being such and such that appeared in my article
“Indexicals and the Theory of Reference” (Schiffer, 1981a).
Chapter 1 “Reference and Propositional Attitudes” (1972). This was Brian’s first
publication, and in it he offers a solution to a problem that was much exercising
philosophers at the time; it was intended to be a solution that a philosopher could accept
whether or not she was a physicalist or bought into the Gricean program. The problem
concerns belief reports that apparently contain referential occurrences of singular terms,
even though replacing the term with a coreferential term might well result in a belief
report whose truth-value differs from that of the first report. To see this, suppose that at a
costume ball S gestures in the direction of a certain masked man and says to A,
(1) Michael thinks that that masked man is a diplomat,
and then for good measure adds, ‘I know this because I overheard Michael say to
Jane, “That masked man is a diplomat.” ’ Intuitively, in uttering (1) S referred to the
 INTRODUCTION TO PART I

masked man with her utterance of ‘that masked man’ and reported Michael as
thinking something about him, to wit, that he is a diplomat. We would have no
trouble believing that S’s utterance of (1) was true. But now suppose S then utters
(2) But Michael doesn’t think that that guy who insulted Carla is a diplomat—
although as it happens, that masked man is that guy who insulted Carla.
Here, too, it would seem that, intuitively, in uttering (2) S referred to the guy who
insulted Carla with her, S’s, utterance of ‘that guy who insulted Carla,’ and here, too,
we would have no trouble accepting S’s utterance of (2) as true. But how can that be if
the occurrence of ‘that masked man’ in (1) and the occurrence of ‘that guy who
insulted Carla’ in (2) refer to the same person?
Nowadays philosophers are familiar with a few ways (1) and (2) can be true even
though the occurrences of the two singular terms refer to the same person, but that
wasn’t so when Brian wrote his paper in what was probably no later than 1971. The
solution he offered was inspired by Quine’s example involving the pair of sentences
(3) Giorgione was so called because of his size,
which is true, and
(4) Barbarelli was so called because of his size,
which is false, notwithstanding that ‘Giorgione’ in (3) and ‘Barbarelli’ in (4) refer to
the same person. We don’t think this is really much of a puzzle, because it’s pretty
clear what its solution is: as Quine points out, the difference in truth-value is
immediately explained when we see that (3) and (4) are equivalent, respectively, to
(5) Giorgione was called ‘Giorgione’ because of his size [true]
(6) Barbarelli was called ‘Barbarelli’ because of his size [false].
Brian’s proposal was that, just as ‘Giorgione’ is revealed to make two contributions
to the truth conditions of (3), one referring to the painter, the other not referring to
him, so ‘that masked man’ makes two contributions to the truth conditions of the
sentence to which the ‘that’-clause in (1) refers, so that the logical form of (1)
becomes
(7) B (Michael, ‘x is that masked man and x is a diplomat,’ that masked man),
thus revealing ‘that masked man’ in (1) to make two distinct contributions to the
truth conditions of (1): “one of these is referential; the other is a contribution to the
satisfaction conditions of the whole or, more precisely, a partial determination of
what open sentence is the middle term of the triadic relation asserted by (1)” (p. 21).
(At this interim stage of his analysis Brian, in deference to Quine’s formulation of the
problem, is provisionally assuming that representations of de re belief reports involve
a triadic relation among an agent, an n-place open sentence, and an n-ary sequence of
the things of which the agent is represented as believing the open sentence to be true.)
 INTRODUCTION TO PART I 

Chapter 2 “Two Theories of Meaning” (1976). This chapter reveals Brian’s

engagement with the Gricean program more than any other in this collection.
Donald Davidson spent the academic year 1969–70 in Oxford, in part to give the
John Locke Lectures, and his stay had a tremendous effect on such young Oxford
philosophers as Gareth Evans, J. A. Foster, John McDowell, Christopher Peacocke,
and David Wiggins, and even on more established philosophers such as Michael
Dummett and Peter Strawson. Davidson managed to convert a few of these philo-
sophers to his view that a meaning theory for a natural language should take the form
of a Tarski-style truth theory for that language, but what was more incredible was
that he managed to get all of them working on his semantic project. That engagement
was celebrated in Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics, edited by Gareth Evans
and John McDowell, in which almost all the papers engaged with issues defined by
Davidson’s semantic project. “Two Theories of Meaning” was Brian’s contribution to
that collection. The two theories referred to in the paper’s title were Davidson truth-
theoretic semantics and the Gricean’s intention-based semantics. I won’t rehearse the
objections Brian leveled against Davidson’s program, but in my estimation they are
devastating. The part on Davidson is the negative part of the chapter, the positive
part builds towards a Gricean account of expression-meaning. The strategy Brian
used was borrowed from David Lewis.2 Let a language be any function from finite
sequences of sounds or marks or whatever onto intensions, things that might actually
be sentence meanings. If L is in this stipulated sense a language and L(σ) = m, then we
may say that σ is a sentence of L and m is its intension, or meaning, in L. These
stipulative definitions aren’t the notions Brian is out to explain; they are merely
things to be used to get to the account of sentence meaning he seeks. This is the sense
of meaning in which meaning depends on use, and the Lewisian strategy is to define a
relation R—the actual language relation—that must obtain between a language L and
a population of speakers P in order for L to be the language of P. If R(L, P), then L is
the language used in P and every sentence of L means in P what it means in L. The
notion σ means m in P is the use-dependent notion of meaning that Brian sets out to
explicate. The account of the actual-language relation Brian gives is Gricean because
it assumes a Gricean account of speaker-meaning and a broadly Lewisian account of
convention and says that L is the language of P just in case there prevails in L a
convention conformity to which requires a member of P who utters a sentence of L in
circumstances of a certain kind to mean thereby a proposition that fits the meaning
that sentence has in L. Needless to say, it’s all in the details, and the account Brian
ends up with involves a subtle marriage of Grice and Chomsky; it’s probably as good
an account of sentence meaning as a Gricean can hope to achieve.
Chapter 3 “The Semantics of Singular Terms” (1976). Brian begins with a
beautifully concise statement of how for the Gricean “semantical theory is part of

2
See, e.g., Lewis (1969) and (1975).
 INTRODUCTION TO PART I

the psychology of communication” (p. 49) and “the sentences of a language form a
system of conventional devices for making known communicative intentions”
(p. 48). On this view, a sentence’s meaning is something that constrains what a
speaker can mean in producing a literal and unembedded utterance of the sentence.
Within this Gricean framework, Brian then sets out a Fregean view of singular terms
wherein “the function of a singular term is to introduce an individual concept into
what is meant or expressed on its particular uses” (p. 49), and along with that a
description theory of names according to which the meaning of a name N is
equivalent to the meaning of the definite description ‘the thing or person called N.’
Brian develops the details of this account with his characteristic subtlety and ingenu-
ity. In defending his Fregean views, Brian shows that, contrary to what just about
everyone at the time believed, Kripke hadn’t disproved the description theory of
names. Kripke’s Feynman and Gödel ‘counterexamples’ fail because in both cases he
overlooks the possibility that the reference of a name for a speaker may be fixed by a
metalinguistic description of the form (roughly speaking) ‘the person called N by
those from whom I acquired the name.’ Kripke’s modal argument to show that
names aren’t rigid designators fails because it depends on the claim that, while ‘Saul
Kripke might not have been Saul Kripke’ has no reading on which it’s true, it would
have a reading on which it’s true if the description theory were true and the sentence
were equivalent to, say, ‘The author of Naming and Necessity might not have been the
author of Naming and Necessity.’ But Brian in effect points out that it’s consistent
with the description theory that names must take a wider scope than the modal
operator in such sentences so that, if ‘Saul Kripke’ meant the same as ‘the author of
Naming and Necessity,’ then ‘Saul Kripke might not have been Saul Kripke’ could
only mean ‘The author of Naming and Necessity is such that he might not have been
himself,’ which, of course, has no reading on which it’s true. One might also note that
in the course of developing his views Brian presents an account of self-ascriptive
belief (e.g., ‘I believe that I’m a paragon’) that anticipates David Lewis’s account of
de se belief (as Lewis himself acknowledges).3
Chapter 4 “Must Beliefs Be Sentences?” (1982). Here Brian compares and con-
trasts two kinds of functionalist accounts of propositional attitudes: the ‘language of
thought hypothesis’ (LOT) and the ‘propositional attitude based theory’ (PAT) (my
acronyms). LOT is a philosophical hypothesis that presupposes a scientific hypoth-
esis. The presupposed scientific hypothesis is that “central among the causes of our
behavior are inner states with linguistic structure that play roughly the role we pre-
scientifically ascribe to our beliefs and desires” (p. 69). The philosophical hypothesis
is an explicative strategy for determining the contents of propositional attitudes. Let
‘believes*’ express that relation that a person x bears to a sentence s of her mentalese
just in case s is tokened in x as a belief. Then the idea is that we reach an account of

3
Lewis (1979).
 INTRODUCTION TO PART I 

what it is for a person to believe a proposition in two steps: in the first step we define
‘s means p in x’s mentalese,’ and then in the second step we say that:
x believes p iff for some sentence s of x’s mentalese, x believes* s and s means p in
x’s mentalese.4
PAT is also an explicative strategy for determining the contents of propositional
attitudes. It explicates ‘x believes p’ directly, rather than explicating it in terms of a
more fundamental ascription of content; so “if there is a language of thought, its
sentences’ meanings would be explained in terms of the propositional attitudes they
somehow instantiate or realize” (p. 70). Brian calls PAT a “functionalist theory of
propositional attitudes,” but that may be slightly misleading in that, unlike the most
familiar versions of functionalism, PAT doesn’t define believing as a functional
relation; that is to say, it doesn’t say that x believes p just in case x is in a state that
has such-and-such functional role. PAT, like LOT, offers a two-component analysis of
content. In LOT believing* is defined as a functional relation between a person and a
sentence of mentalese, and then believing is defined in terms of believing* and
meaning-in-mentalese. PAT interprets propositional-attitude ascriptions “as ascrib-
ing functional states with certain associated truth conditions” (p. 70): the first
component of content (‘narrow’ content) is that determined by the ascribed func-
tional, or conceptual, roles, and the second component of content (‘wide’ content) is
whatever determines the truth conditions the ascription associates with the func-
tional role it ascribes. While narrow content doesn’t determine wide content, it does
make a context-free contribution to wide content (i.e., to truth conditions); specific-
ally, it determines what Brian calls general truth conditions, and which may be
explained in the following way. Suppose Lulu and Marie each has a belief she
would self-ascribe using ‘I am witty.’ The specific truth conditions of Lulu’s belief is
that she is witty, and that of Marie’s belief is that she is witty; but there is a sense in
which their two beliefs have the same truth conditions—to wit, each is true iff the
believer is witty—and Brian calls these truth conditions general truth conditions.
According to PAT, functional role determines both general truth conditions and the
way in which specific truth conditions then depend on ‘context.’ According to LOT,
he says, wide content—i.e., specific truth conditions—is to be determined by an ‘ideal
indication theory,’ which seeks to refine the rough idea that p is the truth condition of
s for x iff p’s being true would given optimal conditions cause x to believe* s.5
Brian’s comparison of LOT and PAT is done with an eye towards showing that
PAT is the better strategy for explicating the propositional contents of beliefs, but
I think Brian was already concerned about problems confronting the version of
functionalism defended in Mind and Meaning, and the chapter tellingly ends with

4
I’ve changed the wording, but not the content, of Brian’s formulation a little.
5
Again, my wording departs slightly from Brian’s.
 INTRODUCTION TO PART I

what may now be seen as a good segue to how his soon-to-be-discovered theory of
subjective intentionality enables a physicalistically acceptable account of wide content.
Chapter 5 “Names in Thought” (1986). Here we find Brian weighing in on
Kripke’s puzzling Pierre.6 Kripke argues that certain principles governing our de
dicto belief ascriptions lead us in the case of Pierre to a contradiction. In Paris Pierre
says ‘Londres est jolie,’ and principles of disquotation and translation entitle us to say
‘Pierre believes that London is pretty.’ But Pierre moves to an ugly part of London
where he finds himself living among fairly uneducated people, and even after picking
up English from interacting with the people around him, he doesn’t realize that
‘Londres’ and ‘London’ refer to the same city, and, without changing his mind about
‘Londres est jolie,’ he now says ‘London isn’t pretty’ (and so of course is unwilling to
say ‘London is pretty’). His saying that conjoins with what Kripke calls the strength-
ened disquotation principle (“A normal English speaker who is not reticent will be
disposed to sincere reflective assent to ‘p’ [iff] he believes that p”) to entitle us to say
‘Pierre does not believe that London is pretty.’ Brian thinks that our ordinary belief
ascriptions don’t lead to contradiction, and that the appearance of contradiction
disappears when we realize, first, that we have standards of varying degrees of
permissiveness as to when we can say such things as ‘Pierre believes that London is
pretty,’ and second, that Kripke’s strengthened disquotation principle really ought to
read “A normal English speaker who is not reticent will be disposed to sincere
reflective assent to ‘p’ or to something which ‘p’ translates [iff] he believes that p,”
which, unlike Kripke’s principle, won’t lead by contraposition to ‘Pierre does not
believe that London is pretty.’ But, Brian realizes, his solution still leaves us with
another of Kripke’s puzzles, viz., that our ordinary principles of belief ascription will
commit us both to
(1) Pierre believes that London is pretty
and to
(2) Pierre believes that London is not pretty,
notwithstanding that Pierre is a leading philosopher and logician who would never
let contradictory beliefs pass. But, Brian asks, does this show there is something
wrong? To which he answers, only “if you assume it is the function of de dicto
ascriptions to capture how believers conceive things” (p. 89). This brings us to Brian’s
real interest in Pierre. That interest is to discuss what Brian perceived as the
disconnect between the way names function in the ‘that’-clauses of our belief reports
and the way they function in thought.
As for the way names function in belief reports, Brian’s view is apparently the one
he ascribes to a character he calls the ‘impure Millian.’ “The impure Millian may say

6
Kripke (1979).
 INTRODUCTION TO PART I 

that that-clauses have two functions: they capture the ‘singular’ proposition that
would be asserted, and they capture (or make a stab at capturing) directly or by proxy
how the belief would be expressed” (p. 93). This brings us to the function of names in
thought:

Let us call the consistency in belief that intuitively we find in Pierre his psychological
consistency. The joint acceptability of (1) and (2) then implies this: either
(a) psychological consistency is consistency in a kind of content—call it psychological
content—and beliefs’ de dicto ascriptions do not (always) capture their psychological
content; or
(b) psychological consistency is not as such consistency in a kind of content; perhaps it is a
kind of syntactic consistency. (p. 93)

Brian says there is good reason to opt for (a), which is the view of psychological
content presupposed in Chapter 3, but he puts that view aside in order to consider
the view he is now inclined to favor, a view that resonates with the two-component
view of psychological content already mentioned in the preceding two chapters. This
is the view that “psychological content might consist in conceptual role and not truth
conditions: ‘Londres’ and ‘London’ have different conceptual roles for Pierre, and it is
relative to them that Pierre’s beliefs are consistent” (p. 94).
Chapter 6 “Truth beyond All Verification” (1987). In one sense of the philosoph-
ical term of art ‘realism,’ realism is the view that the truth or falsity of a statement is
independent of our ability to verify or falsify it, and that, consequently, it’s possible
for a statement to be true or false even though it isn’t possible for us either to verify or
to falsify it. Michael Dummett has famously argued that there is a problem as to how
we could understand statements if their truth or falsity transcended our ability to
verify or falsify them. The problem, as Dummett sees it, is that a person’s capacity to
understand statements must be manifestable in her behavior, but that it’s very
unclear how a capacity to understand statements whose truth conditions transcend
their verifiability conditions could be manifested in a person’s behavior. Brian agrees
with Dummett that “if a realist understanding of statements were not manifestable in
behavior, there would be something wrong with realism” (p. 98). But Brian thinks
that a grasp of verification-independent truth conditions can be manifested in
behavior, and that is what this chapter aims to show. Dummett assumes that realism
requires a language to have a truth-conditional theory of meaning, which is to say, a
theory that compositionally determines the truth conditions of its statements on the
basis of the referential semantic values of its words as determined by the way speakers
of the language use those words. Brian’s strategy for undermining Dummett’s
anti-realism appeals to the sort of two-component theory of meaning sketched in
the preceding chapter, but here his strategy is to show that realism can be supported
by the conceptual-role component of a two-component theory of meaning, where the
second, truth-theoretic, component need be nothing more than a disquotational
theory of truth according to which saying, e.g., that ‘snow is white’ is true is simply
 INTRODUCTION TO PART I

a metalinguistic way of saying that snow is white. The idea, developed by Brian in
some detail, is “that (a) realism about the natural world is simply a consequence of
our theory of nature, and (b) the conceptual role or quasi-holistic theory of under-
standing explains perfectly well how such a realist conception of nature is possible”
(p. 110). As for the requirement that our realist understanding of verification-
independent states of affairs be manifestable in behavior, Brian claims that we get
to satisfy that requirement “for the simple reason that the relevant conceptual roles
are manifestable in our verbal behavior” (p. 115). It is unclear what Dummett means
by his demand that our understanding of a notion be manifestable in our behavior,
and perhaps Brian’s deferential use of ‘manifestable’ inherits that unclarity. But it’s
(a) and (b) that are doing the heavy lifting in Brian’s defense of our realist conception
of nature, and those two points strike me as being in excellent shape. As for (b), the
conceptual roles of our beliefs are obviously consistent with our scientific beliefs, so
the crucial point here must be (a). But isn’t Brian obviously correct to take (a) to be
obviously correct? For it’s indeed obvious that the verifiability of statements about
the physical world “is dependent on natural contingencies in such a way that it is a
natural or scientific possibility that [those statements] be true even if not verifiable”
(p. 110). Just think of the all the contingent truths about how our visual systems work
in order for us to verify by sight that there is a tree in the quad.
Chapter 7 “The Supervenience of Social Meaning on Speaker’s Meaning” (2001).
Here we find Brian evaluating with the benefit of both hindsight and his distinction
between ‘social content’ and ‘psychological content’ the Gricean thesis that “the
literal meaning of sentences in a social or public language, as used in communication
by a population of speakers, is derived from regularities in those speakers’ Gricean
communicative intentions in using that language—together perhaps with other non-
social psychological facts about individual speakers.” Brian calls this a moderate
Gricean thesis, and he says that the key to it is that it is “individualist about the basis
of social meaning” (p. 125). By this he means that the contents of the intentions and
beliefs on which meaning is supposed to supervene are not even partly determined by
the meanings of one’s expressions in one’s public language of communication. Brian
points out that as originally conceived the Gricean project aimed at giving reductive
explications of speaker-meaning and expression-meaning. Brian doesn’t hold out
much hope for the program so conceived, but in this chapter he proposes for
consideration a more modest Gricean position—namely, that there is a theoretically
important way of understanding the Gricean project that doesn’t depend on giving
explication in the form of sets of necessary and sufficient conditions. The relaxed
Gricean position holds that “if we knew all the communicative intentions and other
propositional attitudes of members of P, as well as their correlations with utterances
of sentences of L [= the language of P] within P, and if we had time enough and
computational power for ideal reflection, we could then directly infer a priori that L
is the language of P” (p. 127). Thus, the question confronting this pared-down
Gricean position is: “Does literal meaning asymmetrically supervene on speaker’s
 INTRODUCTION TO PART I 

intentions, and other psychological properties, including causal relations to external

factors that do not presuppose social-semantic factors?” The answer, which Brian goes
on to develop in terms of his distinction between social content and psychological
content, is no, if speaker’s intentions and beliefs are individuated in a way that assigns
them truth conditions, but yes “if they are individuated in terms of internally consti-
tuted properties.” But then, as Brian goes on to demonstrate, the affirmative answer “is
perhaps not terribly exciting” (p. 131).
 1
Reference and Propositional
Attitudes

HAVE I referred to Cynthia if I say that Herbert hopes that he will marry her?—if, for
example, I say, ‘Herbert hopes that he will marry Cynthia’? It would appear so.
Frege nevertheless held that names and other singular terms do not have their
normal reference in such ‘oblique’ contexts. Since Frege, weighty arguments have
been advanced and accepted, and the view is well entrenched. But it is a most
implausible claim, not easy to reconcile with certain obvious and ordinary facts.
Quine has come as close as anyone to recognizing this in print, but even he appears to
accept a variant of Frege’s theory. There is, though, in Quine’s qualified theory,1 a
foothold from which one might arrive at a more acceptable view. So I shall begin by
describing his theory.

I
Suppose that
(1) Ralph believes that a certain person is a spy.
This clearly supposes rather more than that Ralph believes that spies exist. It appears
to be a quantification into an oblique context, and hence by the usual conventions of
mixing quantificational notation and English it should be equivalent to
(2) (Ex) Ralph believes that x is a spy.
Quine points out that, despite its initial appeal, the significance of this sentence is
doubtful. Here is a story he tells.
There is a certain man in a brown hat whom Ralph has glimpsed several times
under questionable circumstances on which we need not enter here; suffice it to
say that Ralph suspects he is a spy. Also there is a gray-haired man, vaguely
known to Ralph as rather a pillar of the community, whom Ralph is not aware of
having seen except once at the beach. Now Ralph does not know it, but the men
are one and the same.
Quine (1966), p.185.

1
Quine (1966).
 REFERENCE AND PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES 

Now let us suppose that Ralph, if required to give an opinion, would sincerely deny
that the man seen at the beach is a spy. We then have a case in which the man in the
brown hat is the man seen at the beach, and in which it is true that
(3) Ralph believes that the man in the brown hat is a spy
but in which it is false that
(4) Ralph believes that the man seen at the beach is a spy.
Quine draws from this failure of implication the conclusion that (3) does not assert a
relation between Ralph and some man. His assumption appears to be that if a relation
were thus truly asserted the same relation would be truly assertable between Ralph
and the man under any description. As a result, (2) is held by Quine to make no
sense, for it clearly requires that Ralph stand to someone in the putative relation.
Since the point about (3) is quite general, no relation is expressed by the context
(5) x believes that . . . y . . . .
If Quine is right, the man whose spyhood is in question ‘does not receive reference’ in
(3) ‘because of referential opacity.’ Thus Frege’s theory is upheld. To accommodate
this alleged fact, Quine proposes that we take (3) as asserting a relation between
Ralph and a sentence. So we have:
(6) B* (Ralph, ‘the man in the brown hat is a spy’).2
The irreferentiality of singular terms in belief contexts is thus to be explained by their
occurring in the formal mode.
But how are we then to construe the acceptable sentence (1)? Quine’s suggestion is
that, just as Ralph may stand in the required relation to a sentence, he may similarly
be related to an open sentence (predicate) and some item of which, as it were, he
believes the open sentence to be true. Thus it may be true that
(7) B (Ralph, ‘x is a spy,’ the man in the brown hat).
The problematic term has here a normal referential occurrence, and together with the
identity (7) will imply
(8) B (Ralph, ‘x is a spy,’ the man seen at the beach).
Both of these are to be taken as true in Quine’s story, though of course Ralph will not
know that his beliefs thus relate him to the man seen at the beach. (One may read (8)
as ‘Ralph believes of the man seen at the beach that he is a spy.’) Using this device we
may now represent the structure of (1), for we may generalize (7) to get:
(9) (Ey) B (Ralph, ‘x is a spy,’ y).

2
The notation is not Quine’s. ‘B*’ may be read ‘believes true,’ and the subsequently introduced ‘B’ may
be read ‘believes true of.’
 REFERENCE AND PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES

This, then, is Quine’s version of (1).

An attractive feature of the analysis is that it enables us to represent concisely a
certain not uncommon way of being mistaken. In the case described, it may happen that
(10) B (Ralph, ‘x is not a spy,’ the man seen at the beach).
The joint truth of (8) and (10) convicts Ralph, not of irrationality, but merely of
fallibility. For it does not follow that
(11) B (Ralph, ‘x is a spy and x is not a spy,’ the man seen at the beach).
To make it plausible that this is a non sequitur and thus to defend both Ralph and Quine,
I suggest the following. If (8) does what we intuitively require, it will ascribe to Ralph that
state of mind he would be in if he were sincerely to assert, referring to the man in the
brown hat (who is the man seen at the beach), ‘He is a spy.’ (10), in parallel fashion, will
ascribe to Ralph that state of mind required for sincerely asserting ‘He is no spy,’ referring
to the same man. Even though Ralph has revised no judgments, he is not prepared
sincerely to assert of that man, ‘He is a spy and yet no spy.’ This is not to suggest that belief
has a satisfying analysis in terms of sincere assertion, but merely that the connection
between the two makes it possible to point up features of this crucial notion ‘belief of.’
Before we proceed, there is a complication which needs to be dealt with. As we
have treated it so far, (4) is false in Quine’s story; but another way of reading it makes
it true—namely, as meaning something like ‘Ralph believes of the man seen at the
beach that he is a spy.’ (We are at the beach and I say, ‘Ralph thinks that that fellow is
a spy,’ proceeding with the story.) This is, in itself, no problem for Quine, since (8)
captures it. But (3) will then also have two readings, a strong interpretation (the one
we have given it so far) and a weak interpretation, on which it is rendered by (7). This
characterization (‘strong’ and ‘weak’) is given on the assumption that the former
implies the latter, but not conversely; that is, if Ralph believes that the man in the
brown hat is a spy, then Ralph believes of him that he is a spy. The result of this
assumption is that (3), on its strong interpretation, together with the identity, implies
(4) on its weak interpretation. The upshot is that there is a reading of (4) on which,
given the identity, it follows from both interpretations of (3). Although this requires
a qualification of the claim that substitution of the coreferential term in (3) fails
to preserve truth, the point remains that if the result of the substitution—namely,
(4)—is taken on its strong interpretation, truth is not preserved; indeed this failure to
be implied is the mark of the strong interpretation.
My assumption that the strong interpretation implies the weak has, in effect, been
maintained by Quine, for he holds with regard to a pair of sentences parallel to (3)
and (7) that “the kind of exportation which leads from [3] to [7] should doubtless be
viewed in general as implicative.”3 The device of considering would-be sincere

3
Quine (1966), p. 188.
 REFERENCE AND PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES 

assertions may make this clear. If (3) is true, Ralph is in that state in which he would
be if, referring to the man in the brown hat, he were sincerely to assert, ‘The man in
the brown hat is a spy.’ In that case, he would be in a state appropriate to the sincere
assertion of ‘He is a spy,’ referring to that man. The latter state, though, is what is
reported by (7).
The obtaining of this implication, however, leads to serious difficulties with
Quine’s analysis, as follows. Recall that Quine holds that (3) (on our strong inter-
pretation) does not assert a relation between Ralph and some man; in fact, the
adequacy of (6) as a final analysis depends on it. But this is hardly compatible with
(3)’s implying (7), for the latter asserts some such relation. So, if the implication
holds, it would be natural to suppose that ‘the man in the brown hat’ occurs with its
normal reference in (3), on its strong interpretation, since a statement of its truth
conditions would introduce, to speak roughly, the man in the brown hat, and not
merely ‘the man in the brown hat.’
But how is this possible? If the relevant singular term occurs with its normal refer-
ence on the strong interpretation of (3), the same should hold of (4). But then if (4),
on its strong interpretation, asserted a relation between Ralph and some man (in
consequence of the man’s being referred to), it would seem that (4), on that
interpretation, should be true if that relation were truly asserted between Ralph
and that man under any other description of him. But that would be so only if (4),
on its strong interpretation, followed from (3) with the identity, and that, as we have
seen, fails to be so. So it would appear that certain natural assumptions lead us to a
contradiction.
I shall try to strengthen one of our incompatible assumptions, as a preliminary to
an attack on the other. Let us say that, on the weak interpretation of sentences like (3)
and (4), the relevant singular term occurs extensionally, and that, on the strong
interpretation, it occurs non-extensionally. Now there are independent reasons for
supposing that singular terms may occur in belief contexts non-extensionally, and yet
with their normal reference.
There is a tendency in some quarters to ignore pronouns and demonstratives when
considering the behavior of singular terms. This neglect, I think, is partially respon-
sible for Frege’s and Quine’s view of singular terms in belief contexts.
Suppose that we are at a costume ball, and I say, pointing to a certain man,
(12) Michael believes that that masked man is a diplomat.
Now in some circumstances it would be perfectly natural to take this on the strong
interpretation. That is, (12) may be asserted not merely on such grounds as that the
masked man is Ambassador Brown and that Michael believes that Ambassador
Brown is a diplomat. But even on this non-extensional occurrence of the term, it
seems plausible that I (and my words) referred to the masked man, and that, if you
like, I asserted a certain relation to hold between Michael and him. I offer the
following considerations in support of this.
 REFERENCE AND PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES

(i) There seems, in this case, to be that need for specification from the context
which is characteristic of normally referential occurrences of demonstrative
phrases. Thus the speaker may be asked, ‘To which masked man are you
referring?’ with the same appropriateness as if he had uttered, ‘That masked
man is a diplomat.’ Notice that this question is totally inappropriate in at least
certain cases in which the term ‘that masked man’ occurs in the formal mode.
Consider it as a response to: ‘Jones wrote in his notebook the words “That
masked man is a diplomat.” ’
(ii) It seems not far-fetched that, in uttering this sentence, I asserted a certain
relation to hold between Michael and the masked man. For, in showing that
what I said is false, one might quite aptly point out that certain relations fail to
hold between the two, or that certain other relations do hold. Thus:
(a) Michael was not in his vicinity all evening. Perhaps you mean someone else.
(b) Michael was heard to say, pointing at the fellow, ‘He’s obviously a gate-
crasher.’
(c) The two were seen deep in conversation and the masked man, as we
know, speaks ungrammatically.
(d) The masked man is Congressman Smith, whom Michael would recog-
nize anywhere.
(iii) Consider the inference:
Whoever Michael believes is a diplomat is a diplomat. Michael believes that that
masked man is a diplomat. So, that masked man is a diplomat.

My intuitions have it that this is a perfectly acceptable inference. The most natural
way of construing its validity is to take it as having the form

‘ðxÞðFx ! GxÞ; Fa; so; Ga:’

Of course there may be more complex ways of representing its validity while denying
the relevant singular term in the minor premise a normal reference. But on the
obvious way of doing it the term has to be treated as having a normal reference.

(iv) The analysis of certain complex sentences would be simplified if we could

suppose such terms to have a normal reference. For example,

(13) Michael thinks that that masked man is a diplomat, but he obviously is not.

A very plausible thing to say about the role of the pronoun ‘he’ is that it anaphorically
picks up the reference of ‘that masked man.’ (Compare it with ‘Jones wrote in his
notebook the words “That masked man is a diplomat,” but he obviously is not.’)
These considerations do not prove the point, but they suggest, I think, that our
theories would be simpler and more realistic if we could allow a normal reference to
some singular terms which occur non-extensionally. But to do so requires the denial
of a principle which is so deeply entrenched that it would seem eccentric to deny it.
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reports, or accounts of criminal deeds, or pictures, or stories of
deeds of bloodshed, lust or crime; or who,
3. In any manner, hires, employs, uses or permits any minor or
child to do or assist in doing any act or thing mentioned in this
section, or any of them,
Is guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction, shall be
sentenced to not less than ten days nor more than one year
imprisonment or be fined not less than fifty dollars nor more than one
thousand dollars or both fine and imprisonment for each offense.
Sec. 1143. Mailing or carrying obscene prints and articles. A
person who deposits, or causes to be deposited, in any post-office
within the state, or places in charge of an express company, or of a
common carrier, or other person, for transportation, any of the
articles or things specified in the last two sections, or any circular,
book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice relating thereto, with the
intent of having the same conveyed by mail or express, or in any
other manner, or who knowingly or wilfully receives the same, with
intent to carry or convey, or knowingly or wilfully carries or conveys
the same, by express, or in any other manner except in the United
States mail, is guilty of a misdemeanor.
 Footnotes
[1] “James Branch Cabell is making a clean getaway with Jurgen,
quite the naughtiest book since George Moore began ogling
maidservants in Mayo. How come? Dreiser had the law hot after
him for The Genius and Hager Revelly came close to landing
Daniel Carson Goodman in Leavenworth, yet these volumes are
innocent compared with Jurgen, which deftly and knowingly treats
in thinly veiled episodes of all the perversities, abnormalities and
damn-foolishness of sex. There is an undercurrent of extreme
sensuality throughout the book, and once the trick of transposing
the key is mastered one can dip into this tepid stream on every
page. Cabell has cleansed his bosom of much perilous stuff—a
little too much, in fact, for Jurgen grows tiresome toward the end
—but he has said everything about the mechanics of passion and
said it prettily. He has a gift of dulcet English prose, but I like
better the men who say things straight out and use gruff Anglo-
Saxon monosyllables for the big facts of nature that we are
supposed to ignore.
“It is curious how the non-reading public discovered Jurgen. A few
days after it appeared on the newsstands a male vampire of the
films who once bought Stevenson’s Underwoods in the belief that
it was a book of verses hymning a typewriter, began saying up
and down Broadway: ‘Say, kid, get a book called Jurgen. It gets
away with murder.’
“This sold the first edition quickly. How do they discover these
things?”
Walter J. Kingsley.
[2] See page 77.
[3] “John S. Sumner, Agent New York Society for the Suppression
of Vice, being duly sworn, says: That on the 6th day of January,
1920, and prior, and sworn thereto at the city and county
aforesaid Robert M. McBride & Company, a corporation, and Guy
Holt, manager of said corporation, Book Department, did at No.
31 East 17th Street in the city and county aforesaid, unlawfully
print, utter, publish, manufacture and prepare, and did unlawfully
sell and offer to sell and have in their possession with intent to sell
a certain offensive, lewd, lascivious and indecent book, in
violation of Section 1141 of Penal Code of the State of New York.
At the time and place aforesaid, the said Robert M. McBride &
Company by and through its officers, agents and employees did
print, publish, sell and distribute and on information and belief the
said Guy Holt did prepare for publication and cause to be printed,
published, sold and distributed a certain book entitled Jurgen by
one James Branch Cabell, which said book represents and is
descriptive of scenes of lewdness and obscenity, and particularly
upon pages 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 63, 64, 67, 80, 84, 86, 89, 92, 93,
98, 99, 100, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 114, 120, 124, 125,
127, 128, 134, 135, 142, 144, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155,
156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 171,
174, 175, 176, 177, 186, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 203, 206, 207,
211, 228, 229, 236, 237, 238, 239, 241, 242, 271, 272, 275, 286,
321, 340, 342, 343, thereof, and which said book is so obscene,
lewd, lascivious and indecent that a minute description of the
same would be offensive to the Court and improper to be placed
upon the records thereof. Wherefore a fuller description of the
same is not set forth in this complaint....”
[4] COURT OF GENERAL SESSIONS OF THE PEACE IN AND
FOR THE COUNTY OF NEW YORK

People of the State of New York:

vs
Guy Holt, Robert M. McBride & Co.,
and Robert M. McBride:

THE GRAND JURY OF THE COUNTY OF NEW YORK by this

indictment, accuse Guy Holt, Robert M. McBride & Co. and
Robert M. McBride of the crime of UNLAWFULLY POSSESSING
AN INDECENT BOOK, committed as follows:
The said Guy Holt, Robert M. McBride & Co., a corporation at
all times herein mentioned existing under the laws of the State of
New York, and Robert M. McBride, acting together and in concert,
in the County of New York aforesaid, on the 14th day of January,
1920, and for a considerable time prior thereto, with intent to sell
and show, unlawfully possessed a lewd, lascivious, indecent,
obscene and disgusting book entitled JURGEN, a more particular
description of which said book would be offensive to this Court
and improper to be spread upon the records thereof, wherefore
such description is not here given; against the form of the statute
in such case made and provided, and against the peace of the
people of the State of New York, and their dignity.
Edward Swann,
District Attorney.
[5] The numerals in parentheses refer to the pages.
[6] (Cf. the old Scottish Border legend, “The Eve of St. John”, to
be found in Scott’s “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border”; and
Compton Mackenzie’s latest novel, “Altar Steps”.)
[7] It would be impossible to go further except by quoting all (290–
308). It should be read.
 Transcriber’s Notes
The prologue has numbered footnotes and the body text used footnotes
marked with asterisks. Continued the numbered footnotes through the
body text. Moved the footnotes to the end of the text.
Changed three instances of “mediaeval” to “mediæval” which was used in
four other instances.
Changed three instances of "to-day" to "today", which was used more
frequently in both plain and quoted texts.
The author uses "St. Hubert’s Guild v. Quinn (64 Misc. 336)" both with and
without the possessive on "Hubert." These inconsistencies left as in the
original.
p. 43 Corrected "typefies" to "typifies".
p. 52 Removed duplicate “have” from “should never have have been
allowed”.
p. 64 Added missing end quote after “city of Pseudopolis”.
p. 65 Section (d) in the original was originally labelled as section (e) and
there was no section (d).
p. 78 In the New York state code, the paragraph starting with "3." ends with
a comma. Corrected this to be consistent with other numbered paragraphs.
p. 78 Corrected "misdeameanor" to "misdemeanor".
All other uncommon or contemporary spellings and punctuation left as in
the original.
The text under discussion is available from Project Gutenberg: Jurgen: A
Comedy of Justice by James Branch Cabell.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JURGEN AND
THE LAW ***

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