Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Philosophy

Advisor

Eric Mandelbaum

Committee Members

Stephen Neale

Daniel Harris

Gary Ostertag

Harvey Lederman

Subject Categories

Philosophy of Language | Philosophy of Mind | Semantics and Pragmatics

Keywords

attitude ascription, belief reports, desire reports, folk psychology, experimental philosophy, decision theory

Abstract

Attitude reports are sentences such as “Tomasz thinks the Earth is flat” or “Susan wantsvice cream.” It is commonly assumed that the main reason people use them is to make sense of the reportee’s behavior: to explain their past actions, or predict future ones. To play this role effectively, attitude reports have to accurately describe what is going on in the reportee’s head. Let’s call attitue reports that do not meet this condition “Liberal attitude reports.” For example: Alice is a vegan doctor who thinks that every vegan should take a B12 supplements. It is felicitous to say to your vegan friend, whose existence Alice is unaware of: “Alice thinks you should take a B12 supplement.” Chapter 1 proposes a novel analysis of such belief reports and leverages it to argue that the main function of belief reports is not to make sense of people’s behavior, but to learn from them. Chapter 2 presents the results of a survey experiment probing ordinary people’s intuitions about liberal belief reports. Chapter 3 criticizes a recent analysis of liberal desire reports due to Ethan Jerzak and suggests a way of explaining his data within a more orthodox Kratzerian framework. Chapter 4 strengthens the argument of chapter 3 by showing that the Kratzerian analysis of desire reports does the best job accounting for desire reports under uncertainty. Chapter 5 defends latitudinarianism about belief reports against Saul Kripke’s “The Eiffel Tower Objection.”

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