The identification of two possible readings – de re and de dicto – of modal claims is considered one of the greatest achievements of Abelard’s logic. In the Dialectica and the Logica “Ingredientibus,” Abelard uses this distinction as a basis for his modal semantics and theory of modalities. Rather than focusing on Abelard’s own theory, the aim of this article is to pay attention to a number of sources that – like Abelard’s logical works – are datable to the (...) first decades of the twelfth century, to investigate whether the de re–de dicto distinction was already adopted and debated in them. It argues that, even if there is no systematic theorization of the distinction in these sources, Abelard’s contemporaries put forward a number of questions concerning the syntax and the signification of modal claims that contributed to set the stage for the distinction’s identification and later development. (shrink)

Is the macro grounded in the micro? That is, is every truth about a macroscopic object fully grounded in a truth wholly about its microscopic parts? In a recent interesting paper, Martin Glazier argued for a negative answer. Following him, call the position that the macro is grounded in the micro ‘priority micro pluralism’ (‘pluralism’ for short). In this discussion note, I propose a way out for the pluralist. In brief, it consists in the recognition that some metaphysical positions, including (...) pluralism, are best expressed by fundamentally de dicto grounding claims. In that these claims have a distinctive modal force, this recognition has far-reaching consequences that go beyond a defence of pluralism. (shrink)

Expressions designating collectives, such as “the committee” or “the ships in the port”, may be interpreted de re or de dicto, depending on context, according as they pick out collectives defined by their members or collectives defined by some criterion for membership. We call these E-collectives and I-collectives respectively, and in this paper we explore in depth the relationship between these two categories. In particular, we identify important respects in which they differ, regarding the nature of the dependence of (...) the collective on its members, the nature of the parthood relation in which the members stand to the whole, and, from an application perspective, the different methods used for identifying the two forms of collective from large spatio-temporal data-sets. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer a critical review of the recent nonconceptualist reading of the Kantian notion of sensible intuition. I raise two main objections. First, nonconceptualist readers fail to distinguish connected but different anti-intellectualist claims in the contemporary philosophy of mind and language. Second, I will argue that nonconceptual readings fail because Kan- tian intuitions do not possess a representational content of their own that can be veridical or falsidical in a similar way to how the content of propositional (...) attitudes is true or false. In this paper, I will support my own reading that sensible intuition is better seen as what Evans and McDowell have called a de re sense, whose main characteristic is object dependence. In this sense, Kantian sensible intuitions can be seen as a sensible mode of donation of objects. In my reading, the Kantian opposition between intuitions and concepts is best seen as the opposition between the objectual de re perception of something and the propositional de dicto apperception that something is the case rather than the opposition between nonconceptual and conceptual contents. However, if Kantian sensible intuition is not a mental state with nonconceptual content, it is certainly in the general anti-intellectualist neighborhood. (shrink)

This paper argues for an account of the relation between thought ascription and the explanation of action according to which de re ascriptions and de dicto ascriptions of thought each form the basis for two different kinds of action explanations, nonrationalizing and rationalizing ones. The claim that de dicto ascriptions explain action is familiar and virtually beyond dispute; the claim that that de re ascriptions are explanatory of action, however, is not at all familiar and indeed has mostly (...) been denied by philosophers. I explain how de re ascriptions enter into non-rationalizing explanations of action and how attention to their distinctive explanatory nature reveals flaws in an alternative “dual-component” view about action explanation. (shrink)

Several scholars have argued that Wittgenstein held the view that the notion of number is presupposed by the notion of one-one correlation, and that therefore Hume's principle is not a sound basis for a definition of number. I offer a new interpretation of the relevant fragments on philosophy of mathematics from Wittgenstein's Nachlass, showing that if different uses of ‘presupposition’ are understood in terms of de re and de dicto knowledge, Wittgenstein's argument against the Frege-Russell definition of number turns (...) out to be valid on its own terms, even though it depends on two epistemological principles logicist philosophers of mathematics may find too ‘constructivist’. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to systematize the de re/de dicto distinctions that are most frequently used in philosophy. The paper highlights the main contexts in which these distinctions may be found and their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic definitions. The article consists of four points, which are discussed in turn: 1) the principal moments in the early history of the distinction between de re and de dicto; 2) the main theoretical contexts of this distinction; 3) contemporary attempts (...) to systematize the various versions of this distinction, derived from Thomas McKay and Michael Nelson; and 4) a similar attempt, conducted by the author, to make McKay and Nelson’s systematization more precise. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the logical form of valuing. I argue that valuing a concept or property is a universal statement qua logical form, that valuing an object is an existential statement qua logical form, and, furthermore, that a correct analysis of the logical form of valuing contains doxastic operators. I show that these ingredients give rise to an interesting interplay between uniform and ununiform quantification, on the one hand, and de dicto and de re beliefs, on the other. I (...) apply this analysis to the value of political freedom. The received view is that the value of freedom lies in the value of the specific things one is free to do. But Ian Carter has recently shown that freedom has irreducible, "non-specific" value, too. I show that underlying the debate between the proponents of the received view and their critics is a disagreement about logical form: ununiform de dicto beliefs about freedom as a concept, for the received view, and uniform half-de dicto-half-de re beliefs about freedom as an object, for its critics. (shrink)

Martin Bell; X*—The De Dicto/De Re Distinction in Relation to Actions, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 83, Issue 1, 1 June 1983, Pages 159–174.

Hintikka's second generation epistemic logic introduces a syntactic device allowing to express independence relations between certain logical constants. De re knowledge attributions can be reformulated in terms of quantifier independence, but the reformulation does not extend to non-factive attitudes like belief. There, formulae with independent quantifiers serve to express a new type of attitude, intermediate between de dicto and de re, called ‘de objecto’: in each possible world compatible with the agent's belief, there is an individual with the specified (...) property – in each world the same individual, which or who need not exist actually. The philosophical benefits of our analysis of propositional attitudes include a refined account of the behaviour of proper names as well as of indefinite and definite descriptions in attitude reports. Some remarks about perception and about the hallucination argument are also presented. (shrink)

During the last few decades, the historical turn within the tradition of the analytic tradition has experienced growing enthusiasm concerning the procedure of rational reconstruction, whose validity or importance, despite its paradigmatic examples in Frege and Russell, has not always enjoyed a consensus. Among the analytic philosophers who are the frontrunners of this movement, Robert Brandom is one of a kind: his work on Hegel as well as on German Idealism has been increasing interest in, as well as awareness of, (...) Hegel´s possible contributions to some current problems in that tradition, and connecting Hegel scholars to current questions. Thus, this work aims to explore Brandom´s methodology of rational reconstruction, as well as his dialogue with history of Philosophy, mainly exposed in his Tales of the mighty dead (2002). As we will see, Brandom´s distinction between a de dicto and a de re approach intends to present a way of identifying and analyzing a given philosopher´s theoretical (hidden) commitments that can be useful to improve the quality of the dialogue with past philosophers. From such methodological exposition, I to turn to Kierkegaard in order to make explicit some of his ontological commitments and presenting Brandom’s approach as a valuable tool for doing history of philosophy. (shrink)

Following halberstadt ("int. log. rev." 1970, i) a counterfactual may be meaningless, the antecedent being syntactically faulty. the author thinks this to be pointless, since indicative and subjunctive mood may, in certain cases, present no apparent difference. halberstadt does not distinguish between subjunctive and counterfactual conditionals. the author thinks that this distinction is needed, and proposes a time factor as distinctive factor. so, the counterfactual 'i a had been the case, b would have happened' is expressible as 'if, at time (...) t, a, then b, and now time is t+n', while the subjunctive leaves open whether the sentence is uttered at time t or t+n. further, halberstadt proposes a formulation of counterfactuals which does not distinguish between 'de re' and 'de dicto'. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom has it that there is a class of attitude ascriptions such that in making an ascription of that sort, the ascriber undertakes a commitment to specify the contents of the ascribee’s head in what might be called a notionally sensitive, ascribee-centered way. In making such an ascription, the ascriber is supposed to undertake a commitment to specify the modes of presentation, concepts or notions under which the ascribee cognizes the objects (and properties) that her beliefs are about. Consequently, (...) it is widely supposed that an ascription of the relevant sort will be true just in case it specifies either directly or indirectly both what the ascribee believes and how she believes it. The class of “notionally sensitive” ascriptions has been variously characterized. Quine (1956) calls the class I have in mind the class of notional ascriptions and distinguishes it from the class of relational ascriptions. Others call the relevant class the class of de dicto ascriptions and distinguish it from the class of de re ascriptions. More recently, it has been called the class of notionally loaded ascriptions (Crimmins 1992, 1995). So understood, the class can be contrasted with the class of notionally neutral ascriptions. Just as the class of notional/de dicto/notionally loaded ascriptions is supposed to put at semantic issue the ascribee’s notions/conceptions/modes of presentation, so ascriptions in the relational/de re/notionally neutral class are supposed not to.. (shrink)

In this paper, I undertake to apply the de dicto/de re distinction familiar to philosophers of language from objects to properties. To do this, I come up with a new characterization of the distinction, and apply it to some cases in the literature to show how it deals with them, and how the phenomena are more common and varied than one might think. I discuss how it would apply to color-blind people’s understanding of color terms, to show its intuitiveness, (...) and how it would call for the use of Higher Order Logic, and then apply it to outstanding questions in Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind, Moore Studies, Metaphilosophy, Metaethics, and Philosophy of Science, in order to develop new and significant ideas and insights. By doing this, I hope not only to cast light on old problems, and support some common and traditional, and I hope, common sense, views by showing how the distinction has the potential to deal with some familiar objections, but also to provide support for accepting the view that the de re/de dicto distinction makes sense when applied to properties, and that we should therefor embrace it and Higher Order Logic, because of their fecundity. (shrink)

Hintikka's second generation epistemic logic introduces a syntactic device allowing to express independence relations between certain logical constants. De re knowledge attributions can be reformulated in terms of quantifier independence, but the reformulation does not extend to non‐factive attitudes like belief. There, formulae with independent quantifiers serve to express a new type of attitude, intermediate between de dicto and de re, called ‘de objecto’: in each possible world compatible with the agent's belief, there is an individual with the specified (...) property – in each world the same individual, which or who need not exist actually. The philosophical benefits of our analysis of propositional attitudes include a refined account of the behaviour of proper names as well as of indefinite and definite descriptions in attitude reports. Some remarks about perception and about the hallucination argument are also presented. (shrink)

The paper solves the problems connected with the occurrences of expressions in the de re or de dicto supposition. It is shown that some expressions, e.g. definite descriptions, that are seemingly ambiguous are in no way ambiguous, they denote in all the contexts one and the same “thing” and have a precise definite meaning which is best explicated by the TIL logical construction. What differs is only the supposition in which they occur. The precise definition of the distinction between (...) de re, de dicto occurrence is provided, and using this definition four kinds of problems are analysed, namely de re / de dicto using definite descriptions , sentences , definite descriptions in notional attitudes, and embedded sentences in propositional attitudes. The paper provides a certain adjustment and correction of Tichý’s approach to the problem. (shrink)

The paper completes a “serial” of my contributions to the hot problems of current semantics, i.e. propositional / notional attitudes, de dicto / de re, synonymy, homonymy, equivalence, meaning, sense, denotation, reference. Two kinds of believing, knowing, etc. are distinguished, namely implicit believing of an ideal believer and explicit believing of a logical / mathematical ignorant . A special case of a week, hidden homonymy is considered and we show that when claiming two expressions being synonymous we have to (...) be careful, for a more fine-grained analysis may reveal that there is a semantic difference between them. The distinction between de dicto / de re supposition is defined and a special case of ‘existence’ being de dicto / de re is solved. (shrink)

Abstract It would be puzzling if the morally best agents were not so good after all. Yet one prominent account of the morally best agents ascribes to them the exact motivational defect that has famously been called a “fetish.” The supposed defect is a desire to do the right thing, where this is read de dicto . If the morally best agents really are driven by this de dicto desire, and if this de dicto desire is really (...) a fetish, then the morally best agents are moral fetishists. This is puzzling. I resolve the puzzle by showing that on a proper understanding of the interaction between de dicto and de re moral motivation, it is not only not fetishistic, but quite possibly desirable, to be motivated by a de dicto desire to do the right thing. My argument relies partly on an appeal to a non-buck-passing account of moral rightness, according to which rightness is itself an additional reason-giving property over and above the right-making properties of an action. If this account of moral rightness is correct, then we would expect the morally best agents to exhibit de dicto moral motivation. However, since their de dicto desire acts in concert with de re desires, there is no reason to consider it a fetish. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9825-z Authors Vanessa Carbonell, Philosophy Department, University of Cincinnati, P.O. Box 210374, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0374, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

One of the most surprisingly prominent themes in Robert Brandom’s A Spirit of Trust is the role of genealogical explanations. Brandom sees genealogies or ‘debunking arguments’ as significant because of their ability to deprive our discursive acts of the normative status they require to be genuinely discursive or conceptual. His solution to the problem of genealogy is to offer rationalizing reconstructions of others’ discursive acts, which credit them with normative status. He calls this “forgiveness”. In this paper, I provide some (...) additional conceptual resources to explicate Brandom’s notions of genealogy and forgiveness. These resources allow me to discriminate between two alternate and seemingly incompatible ways of responding to genealogies. One way depends on rationalizing explanations that still attempt to attribute commitments to their subjects, the other avoids making such attributions in favor of explaining commitments only in terms of norms accepted by the rationalizer. I argue that Brandom’s work sometimes promotes the latter response to genealogy but that this tendency should be eliminated from the account. (shrink)

Martin Bell; X*—The De Dicto/De Re Distinction in Relation to Actions, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 83, Issue 1, 1 June 1983, Pages 159–174.