Nathaniel Bulthuis

Foreshadowing in many ways theories of direct reference popular today, Walter Burley (died c. 1345) favors a theory of direct signification, according to which names directly signify things in the world. But he recognizes that opaque contexts, such as propositional attitude reports, represent a challenge to that theory. In response, Burley develops a sophisticated account of our noetic states, one according to which those states can be individuated more finely than in terms of their contents. Paired with a certain semantic analysis of propositional attitude reports, that account of our noetic states is ready-made to accommodate Burley’s commitment to direct signification even in the face of opacity considerations.

Walter Burley claims throughout his career that the mind can make a statement out of things. Since things include entities that exist outside of the mind, Burley appears to be claiming that the mind can form a statement out of things that exist outside of it. Most scholars of Burley offer a deflationary reading of this claim, arguing that it confuses two distinct but closely related philosophical issues: the nature of propositional content, on the one hand, and the role of facts in a compelling account of truth, on the other. But I argue that Burley means exactly what he says: that the mind can, quite literally, form statements out of things that exist outside of it. In Burley’s account, statements of this sort function as the propositional contents of our thoughts and written or uttered sentences. This account of propositional content is motivated by three more fundamental theses to which Burley is committed: referentialism, compositionality, and a claim about truth-conditionality I call intellectualism.