From owner-cse663-fa08-list@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Sun Sep 21 16:29:47 2008 Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:29:39 -0400 From: "William J. Rapaport" Subject: 663: Belief Representation Systems To: CSE663-FA08-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: Belief Representation Systems ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Duncan asks: > Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:28:38 -0400 > From: Bill Duncan > To: "William J. Rapaport" > Subject: de re / de dicto > > On page 101 of your encyclopedia article (p. 5 of the pdf) you give > three readings of the following sentence (or is it a statement?): > > Pat believes that Mike wants to meet Jim's wife > > I'm unclear as to how the three reading are generated by the de re / de > dicto distinction. Well, it's not me who gives those three readings; it's Creary. So I don't have to defend them; I only have to clarify them. And, given that I haven't read Creary's paper in a long time and also that my presentation is (admittedly) a bit cryptic, here's my best shot: There are 3 interpretations; I'll call them "top", "middle", and "bottom": top: "pure" de dicto: an attempt to represent what's in Pat's mind, from Pat's point of view. mid: mixed de re/de dicto: Pat believes that there is some P such that... (but we don't know how Pat characterizes that individual) bot: "pure" de re: the reporter says that there is some P such that Pat believes of that P that Mike wants to meet P, and, moreover, P is Jim's wife; all of this is represented from the reporter's point of view.