Mick McGlone

In his famous 1979 article 'A Puzzle About Belief' Saul Kripke presents two puzzles regarding belief attribution, and he uses them to cast doubt on classical substitution arguments against the Millian view that a proper name has a 'denotation' (or reference) but no 'connotation' (or sense). In this article, I present Kripke's puzzles in what I take to be their most revealing form, discuss their relevance to the abovementioned arguments, briefly survey the ways in which philosophers have responded to these puzzles, and call attention to some issues related to the puzzles that have yet to receive the consideration they deserve.

This paper considers Kripke's (1972, 1980) modal arguments against descriptivism about proper names, the descriptivist reply that the meaning of a name is given by a description involving the modifier ‘actually’, and Kit Fine's (1994) distinction between necessary and essential attributes. It explains how Kripke's modal arguments can be recast in essentialist terms by appealing to Fine's distinction, and it argues that the resulting essentialist arguments are immune to the abovementioned descriptivist reply to the original modal arguments

In "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" Putnam argues, among other things, that "'meanings' just ain't in the head". Putnam's central arguments in favor of this conclusion are unsound. The arguments in question are the famous intra-world Twin Earth arguments, given on pages 223-227 of the article in question. Each of these arguments relies on a premise to the effect that this or that Twin Earth scenario is both logically possible and one in which certain individuals are in the same overall "psychological [state] in the narrow sense". The problem is that none of the scenarios are as advertised; that is, none of them are logically possible situations in which the relevant individuals are in the same overall "psychological [state] in the narrow sense"

A strong impossibility is a situation that is epistemically, but not metaphysically, possible. Opponents of strong impossibilities (including Chalmers, Jackson and Stalnaker) have argued that we have “overwhelming reason” to reject and “very little” or “no reason” to think that such impossibilities exist. This partial draft argues that there are strong impossibilities and (very briefly) discusses the manner in which the existence of strong impossibilities is related to some much-discussed arguments in the philosophy of conscious experience. (The full version of the paper will ultimately include a reply to the most significant argument against strong impossibilities, and a (slightly) more involved discussion of the relevance of all of this to issues in the philosophy of conscious experience.).

In “What Puzzling Pierre Does not Believe”, Lewis ([4], 412‐4) argues that the sentences (1) Pierre believes that London is pretty and (2) Pierre believes that London is not pretty both truly describe Kripke’s well‐known situation involving puzzling Pierre ([3]). Lewis also argues that this situation is not one according to which Pierre believes either the proposition (actually) expressed by (3) London is pretty or the proposition (actually) expressed by (4) London is not pretty. These claims, Lewis suggests, provide a starting point from which a correct resolution of Kripke’s puzzles about belief ([3]) can be developed. At the end of his paper ([4], p. 414‐7), Lewis considers and replies to a number of potential objections to his position. According to one of these, Lewis’s contentions regarding (1)‐(4) cannot all be true because ‘believes that’ and ‘believes the proposition that’ are synonymous. Although the objection Lewis considers is unsound and his response to it correct, a minor variant of that objection provides significant reason to be skeptical of his contentions. This variant, moreover, is not persuasively addressed by anything either Lewis or any other well‐known defender of this sort of view (such as Stalnaker [8]) has had to say on the matter. All of this is relevant, moreover, not 2 only when it comes to assessing Lewis’s contentions regarding (1)‐ (4), but also when it comes to drawing lessons from certain standard objections to the view that the propositional objects of belief and assertion are sets of metaphysically possible worlds.