Belief and Synonymy
Dissertation, Princeton University (
1981)
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Abstract
My general contention is to defend the compositional principle of meaning--that the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meanings of its parts --with respect to belief contexts, which do not always appear to allow salva veritate substitutivity of synonyms. I argue that this appearance is an illusion which results from confusing beliefs that are not about linguistic expressions with beliefs that are about linguistic expressions. In doing so, I invoke and elaborate the Gricean distinction between what a sentence means and what the speaker means in using the sentence