What does it mean to say that an agent fears? What are the conditions that make fear reports true? Is uncertainty necessary? Are brain states sufficient? These questions are partly linguistic, partly philosophical, and partly scientific. In this paper, I get clearer on the semantics of the intensional verb fears by reviewing discussions of it in analytic philosophy with particular focus on Prior’s puzzle—a Frege puzzle-like substitution failure of co-referential that-clauses and noun phrases tha…
Read moreWhat does it mean to say that an agent fears? What are the conditions that make fear reports true? Is uncertainty necessary? Are brain states sufficient? These questions are partly linguistic, partly philosophical, and partly scientific. In this paper, I get clearer on the semantics of the intensional verb fears by reviewing discussions of it in analytic philosophy with particular focus on Prior’s puzzle—a Frege puzzle-like substitution failure of co-referential that-clauses and noun phrases that occurs under fears and some other intensional verbs, but not under believes. The main challenge posed by Prior’s puzzle is to explain why sentences like “Sally fears that Fido barks” mean something different than sentences like “Sally fears the proposition that Fido barks” when “that Fido barks” and “the proposition that Fido barks” seemingly co-refer, and further, why this substitution failure doesn’t occur with believes.
