Re: [jboske] Opacity and belief

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

And Rosta scripsit:

> > If gorse and furze are synonyms
> > for John, then John can't possibly believe that gorse is not furze, unless
> > he is a Tortoise
> 
> Yes, but I'm not sure what your point is!

You were saying that "John believes that furze is not gorse" uses "furze" and/or
"gorse" in a non-standard sense. But this is not necessary, given that
belief that-clauses are inherently de dicto.

> If you're right, then I think we need to separate de re into pure de re,
> where everything is exportable out of the subordinate proposition
> from dedictoey de re, where nothing is exportable out of the subordinate
> proposition, but the description of the subordinate proposition is
> language-independent.

Well, I understand your distinction, but your terminology is rebarbative:
the whole point about de re ("concerning the thing") beliefs is that
they are beliefs *about* some object *that* some predicate applies to it.
Exporting, or rather not importing in the first place, is of the essence.

> There is no problem with reporting this in Lojban. We just need one
> predicate that denotes what Pierre's 'Londres' denotes and another
> predicate that denotes what his 'London' denotes.

I don't think that such predicates can exist. Pierre's London is a real
place, but his Londres is a projection of a concept that doesn't refer.

> That's right. But from someone's belief that A is B, you can't infer
> that they believe the words A' and B' to be synonymous, since the
> latter belief requires the supporting belief that the synonymy is
> part of the body of language beliefs believed by other competent
> speakers.

Fair enough.

-- 
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