Simchen Introduction

Necessary Intentionality: A Study in the Metaphysics of Aboutness
Ori Simchen
Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780199608515 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May-12 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608515.001.0001
Introduction DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608515.002.0007
Our cognitive interactions with our surroundings establish cognitive facts pertaining to human cognition. Such facts involve humans and their relations to portions of the world just as much as do facts of human digestion or human ambulation. And yet our cognitive powers and their exercise have tended to incite the philosophical imagination in such ways that have often suggested an exclusion or exception of human cognitive facts among the rest. One dominant source of this exception has been the widespread idea that human cognitive facts include items assessed for their rational standing; and so, any account of such facts would have to furnish us with means for explaining how we can be justified in thinking what we think or saying what we say. Consider, for example, the fact that I am thinking of my computer that it is new. On the face of it, the fact in question concerns me, the thinker, my computer as a subject matter for my thought, and being new as the property I ascribe to the subject matter at hand. But then a certain explanatory requirement may suggest itself: my thought is reasonable under the circumstances, let us suppose, so surely whatever we are to say theoretically about it should incorporate provisions for how I can be justified in thinking such a thought under the circumstances (circumstances that include, presumably, other thoughts of mine and various aspects of my evidential situation). Obviously no such requirement has been forthcoming for human digestive or ambulatory facts. It has been hardly as appealing, for example, to suppose that it is incumbent on an account of the facts underlying human digestion to address further questions about conditions for successful digestion. In the latter case it is understood that digestive optimality is a separate explanatory task, albeit one that depends on a proper understanding of the digestive system. But the distinction between
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the descriptive project and the normative one in accounting for cognitive matters is rarely as clear. The story I tell in this book seeks to abstract from normative matters most notably the justificatory standing of various mental states and episodes. The history of modern philosophy is replete with variations on the theme that any philosophical study of the mind must address epistemic (p. xi ) concerns about justificationmost notably that of beliefs. My focus, by contrast, will be metaphysical, and I shall seek to avoid the well-trodden path of allowing epistemic matters to intrude into the metaphysics. Matters pertaining to the normativity of agents hosting cognitive episodes or occupying cognitive states in various circumstances, questions addressing cognitive facts as denizens of a realm of reasons belonging to the order of justification, will be left out entirely. I believe it is of the utmost methodological importance to keep what we maintain about our mentality from the theoretical standpoint of a surveyor of the cognitive scene distinct from what we maintain about it from an empathetic perspective addressed to a deliberating epistemic agent. My general orientation will fall squarely within the former rather than the latter type of explanatory enterprise. The main focus of this work is what after Franz Brentano is called the intentionality or aboutness of cognitive states and episodessay the fact that a given thought that my left shoe is pinching is about a certain shoe, the one on my left foot. My point of departure will be the shift in our thinking about intentionality prompted by the revolutionary contributions of Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan, Saul Kripke, Ruth Barcan Marcus, and Hilary Putnam to the theory of reference. Many have now come to realize that our understanding of intentionality or aboutness has had to undergo significant revisions in order to accommodate the lessons of this important body of work. One such revision is the by now familiar idea that we are not after all in possession of reference-fixing criteria for the referring terms we employ, and by extension not in possession of criteria that fix the objects of our cognitions. Other revisions are less familiar but no less demanded by the theory. For example, if the theory is on the right track, then it seems not merely false that by employing the English term water Putnams earthdwelling Oscar refers to some alien substance meeting all the operational tests for water.1 Rather, given Oscars historical situation here on earth the right thing to say is that Oscar cannot refer to an alien lookalike substance by employing the English term water, that such a thing is strictly speaking impossible for him.
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Of course, modal claims such as this are bound to be met with a suspicious eye. The astute reader will be quick to advance some contingency (p. xii ) claims about language and language acquisition whereby the semantic features of non-semantically individuated words are contingent; and so the semantics of the word water as employed by Oscar is contingent; and so whether or not the word water in Oscars lexicon applies to water or to anything operationally similar enough to water is contingent; and so it is possible for Oscar to refer to an alien lookalike substance after all. What this type of response misses, it seems to me, is the invitation extended by Donnellan et al. to reconsider the overall picture of cognitive isolation implicit in the traditiona picture that the new theorists sought to displace. What the new theory calls upon us to do is consider language useand by extension, mentality itselfas germinating out of a worldly setting in such a way that the mind becomes inextricably bound to its environment. In more concrete terms, if we take Oscar together with the relevant portion of his history-in-the-world, and if we take his term water with the relevant portion of its history-in-the-world, then it becomes closed to modal variation that the term water as employed by Oscar should apply only to water. We will then restore the sense in which it is impossibleimpossible tout court, as we might say after Kripkefor Oscars water to apply to some alien lookalike. But why consider Oscar and his water in such ways that close off possibilities for them? We can always close off possibilities for things by carving more broadly around the subject matter of our modal evaluations. Thus, for example, if we consider whether or not it is possible for a given chair to be otherwise located at a given moment in time, we will get a different verdict from the intuitive one if we include with the chair its entire locational history up to and including that moment in time. It will then become impossible for the chairthat is, the chair-of-the-vulgar-cum-itslocational-history-up-to-tto be otherwise located at t. Nothing too surprising there. But there is an important difference between the cases. We have independent reasons for considering in our modal evaluations Oscar and his water broadly, so to speak, even if our justification rests on a basis that is bound to seem even less palatable to those for whom the original impossibility claim seemed unpalatable. In a nutshell, such taking of Oscar and his water is demanded by what each of them already is, by their natures as speakers and words spoken, respectively. In the period immediately following the aforementioned revolution in the theory of reference a question arose as to whether essentialism can be (p. xiii ) derived from the theory of reference. Most philosophers became
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persuaded that one cannot get out of such a theory more essentialism than one put into it in the first place, and this seems right.2 Notwithstanding that, one of my main aims here will be to show that essentialism is, and has always been, the correct backdrop for the so-called new theory of reference, whether or not the original proponents of the theory were officially friendly to it. In other words, a certain modicum of essentialism is required for the full appreciation of the significance and extent of the revolution in our thinking about the relations between the mind and the world initiated by Donnellan et. al. When it comes to the relations between our cognitions and what they are about, a certain orthodoxy still prevails. It is commonplace to think of intentionality as paradigmatically a contingent affair. A run-of-the-mill cognitive episode, let us say, or a cognitive state, might have been just as it actually is in the absence of its object and the concomitant presence of something else or even nothing at all. This type of view is often driven by a constellation of views bundled together with a certain Humean outlook on modality. According to the latter, there are no necessary connections among distinct existences. The cognizer and the cognized are surely distinct things. And so are, the prevailing thought continues, the cognition and its object. Given this distinctness, how could the aboutness relation that the cognition bears to its object be anything but contingent? The idea that a given cognitionsay my perceptual belief of my left shoe that it is pinching or the episodic thought that it isis only contingently about my left shoe thus seems natural, almost commonsensical. This book will controvert it on two distinct fronts. On the modal side I argue for an alternative to Humeanism about necessary connections. The modal picture I paint is friendly not just to necessary connections among distinct things but also to essential connections among them. Thus for example, the mature oak is wholly distinct from the acorn from which it has sprung. And yet not only would it be impossible for the oak not to have originated from the acorn, but anything not originating from that very acorn would not be that very oak. Similarly, I claim, not only is there no possibility of producing the actual thought that the shoe is pinching absent the shoe, or of producing the actual token referring to (p. xiv ) the shoe absent the shoe, nothing would be that very episodic thought or that very token absent that very shoe. On the other hand, on the side of cognitive states I promote an account whereby such a state as my belief of my left shoe that it is pinchingunlike the episodic thought that it is or the token referring to itis not after all wholly distinct from the shoe. The state in question is the obtaining of a genuine relation,
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with the shoe and me among its relata.3 Absent the shoe, this instance of the relation cannot obtain. Cognitive states as relational thus depend on their objects as relata. These two ideasthe essential dependence of the products of cognition on their objects and the basic relationality of cognitive statesleave no foothold for the commonplace that aboutness is paradigmatically a contingent relation in the relevant sense. Each of the ideas taken separately may be developed in a way that belies the contingency of aboutness. While my thinking of the shoe that it is pinching is distinct from the shoe, if Humeanism about necessary connections is false then the thought can still be necessarily, even essentially, dependent on the shoe despite being distinct from it. On the other hand, if the state of my believing the shoe to be pinching is the bearing of a genuine relation to the shoe itselfas I contend in Chapter 5then even the complete absence of necessary connections among distinct existences would cut no ice against the view that my belief is about the shoe as a matter of necessity. This is so, again, because the state of my believing the shoe to be pinching and the shoe itself are not relevantly distinct. Taken together, the two ideas make a strong case against the commonly assumed contingency of the intentionality of cognitive episodes and states. The overall plan of the book is as follows. The first two chapters provide the modal metaphysical backdrop for the ensuing three chapters (p. xv ) on intentionality. Chapter 1, Particular possibilities, is a discussion of modality de re. It may seem surprising that this should be the first modal metaphysical topic broached: it is far more common in the modal metaphysics literature to consider first what possibilities are in general, and only then to turn to the thorny matter of possibilities pertaining to particular things.4 Indeed, it is a widespread assumption that modality de re is secondary in the order of metaphysical explanation. My approach, by contrast, takes possibilities pertaining to particular things, or particular possibilities, as basic and explanatorily prior to other modal matters, specifically to non-particular, or general, possibilities (sometimes misleadingly called de dicto). On the view I present in the first two chapters, all real possibilities reduce to particular ones, to possibilities pertaining to particular things, whereas the latter possibilities are determined by what the particular things are, their natures or essences. The view thus attempts to rehabilitate a certain twelfth-century doctrine due to Peter Abelard, whereby genuine possibility is possibility-for, or de re possibility, which issues from the nature of the thing.5 Now, any such position is bound to run
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up against what is widely regarded as an unassailable intuitive datum: that what is possible for a particular thing depends not (only) on what the thing is but (also) on how it is specified in thought and talk. Thus, for example, it is sometimes suggested that while it is not possible for the thing that is Elizabeth II, qua human, not to have originated from her actual origins, it is possible for that very thing, qua molecules held together in a lattice, not to have originated from its actual origins.6 I deny any such relativization of modal profiles to the ways things are described. I also provide a diagnostic conjecture for the intuitive datum that modal predication is sensitive to how the subject matter is described, and argue that my diagnosis fares better than a familiar alternative account due to Kripke. Chapter 2, General possibilities, continues to fill in the modal metaphysical background to the books overall argument. In it I defend my commitment to a constellation of views in the metaphysics of modality that are widely assumed to lead to insurmountable difficulties. The first is (p. xvi ) the view that there are no non-actual things, only actual ones, and that whether or not it is generally possible that there be a turns on whether or not it is specifically possible for something in particular to be a . The second is the view that what a given thing isits nature or essencecannot be had contingently. A familiar objection to such dual commitment to actualist essentialism is that the position cannot accommodate properties of a particular sort: ones that cannot be had contingently and that happen not to be instantiated by anything. For let be such a propertysay the property of being ununseptium, one of the missing elements in the periodic table. Assuming that it is possible that there be ununseptium, from the first commitment above it follows that something or other is possibly ununseptium. And from the second commitment it follows that whatever is possibly ununseptium is necessarily ununseptium, and so actually ununseptium. And yet nothing is actually ununseptium. The key to my reconciliation lies in the way I understand general possibilities. Chapter 2 defends a conception whereby general possibilities are no less determined by what actual things there are and what they are like than particular possibilities, and it is concluded that there are far fewer general possibilities than we were initially inclined to suppose. Another diagnostic conjecture is then offered to explain why it can seem that there are more general possibilities than there really are. Chapters 1 and 2 jointly provide the requisite modal backdrop for the rest of the book. The next three chapters concern intentionality, starting with the intentionality of words. The linguistic case has certainly occupied center
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stage within recent discussions of intentionality, with the intentionality of non-linguistic items sometimes seen as derivative. Any treatment of the intentionality of words must utilize the type/token distinction or some analog of that distinction.7 Chapter 3 makes a case for referring tokens of nouns being necessarily about what they are about. Admittedly it can easily seem that the aboutness of tokens of linguistic types is contingent. This is so as long as we think of tokens as mere instances of sound or inscription patterns. That an instance of a shape, let us say, should be about whatever it is about seems like a perfectly contingent feature of that instance. But referring tokens of nouns are not mere instances of sound or inscription patterns. Once we view such tokens as full-fledged (p. xvii ) phonological itemsthe proper objects of study for phonologythe commonplace that the intentionality of a given token of a noun is contingent begins to flounder. I argue that as objects of phonology referring tokens of nouns are not contingently about whatever they are about after all. And so, to the extent that we regard linguistic types as referential, the types are not contingently about whatever they are about either. The rest of Chapter 3 is devoted to providing truth conditions for instances of disquotation such as Socrates refers to Socrates in light of previous findings. It turns out not to be a trivial matter how exactly to secure the necessary truth of instances of disquotation as required by the metaphysical conclusions reached earlier in the chapter. By bringing Kaplans framework of indexicals and demonstratives to bear on a demonstrative theory of quotation it is argued that instances of disquotation are semantically equivalent to certain analytic types in Kaplans sense, whose tokens are guaranteed to express necessary truths in any context of use. The chapter is immediately followed by an appendix in which some of the technical details are finessed. Chapter 4, Epistemology factualized, considers what our overall epistemic situation should look like through the methodological lens of looking at the cognitive facts underlying our epistemic situationfacts that are to a large measure shaped by our actual relations to portions of our surroundings. The pretext is Kripkes diagnostic efforts in (Kripke 1980) and elsewhere to explain away intuitions of contingency regarding various necessitiessuch as the necessity of Hesperus being Phosphorus or of water being H2O or of a given wooden lectern being made of wood. Famously, Kripke proposes that intuitions of contingency when it comes to these necessities are to be explained in terms of epistemic possibility. Thus, while it is not possible for Hesperus not to be Phosphorus, it is meant to be nevertheless epistemically possible for Hesperus not to be Phosphorus. The question is what this can come to when we consider the actual cognitive facts underlying our
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epistemic situation. Chapter 4 goes through some alternative ways of spelling out Kripkes basic proposal and finds them all wanting. All seem to presuppose the widely shared but mistaken notion that cognitive episodes and states could have been just as they actually are in relevant respects had they been directed at something other than what they are in fact directed at. Importantly, such accounts are shown to conflict with the general understanding of intentionality called upon by the new theory of reference to which Kripke made (p. xviii ) such significant contributions. Much of Kripkes efforts in (Kripke 1980) can be seen as part of an ongoing attempt to pry apart metaphysical matters from epistemic ones against the countervailing forces of tradition. The distinction between possibility tout court and epistemic possibility is part and parcel of this general effort, but in Kripkes own hands it misfires because it undermines his achievement on the intentionality front. Most critically for our purposes, the discussion of Kripke on epistemic possibility is a sustained illustration of how not to think about cognitive access to things. Chapter 5, Cognitive states as relational, offers a construal of cognitive states such as beliefs and desires according to which such states are in the first instance the bearing of genuine relations between agents and the particular things those states are about. The account concerns the facts underlying such attitudinal states themselves and is not a purported semantics for reports of those states. I take it that a proposed metaphysics of attitudes and a proposed semantics of attitude reports are distinct explanatory enterprises. I focus on the former, treating cognitive states about particular things as primary in the order of explanation and treating states that are not about particular things as secondary. The account I end up with makes heavy use of subjunctives, and thus depends on the modal metaphysical picture sketched in the first two chapters of the book. Several familiar objections to the idea that in attitudinal states we bear direct cognitive relations to things receive extensive treatment: the point that we can believe o to be while not believing o to be (as in Kaplans amplification of W. V. Quines case of believing Ortcutt to be a spy while not believing him to be a spy), the point that it seems that we can have attitudes towards nothing (as in the case of Le Verrier purportedly believing Vulcan to be a planet), and the point that we can have attitudes that are not directed at any particular thing (as in the case of believing that someone is a spy without believing anyone in particular to be one). In the course of addressing the third objection I recast the familiar distinction between attitudes de re and de dicto as a distinction between specific and generic attitudinal states. The picture that emerges is one whereby the intentionality
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of cognitive states becomes a prerequisite for further cognitive relations borne to particular things, such as specific beliefs and desires, rather than a higher-level cognitive task in its own right. Finally, an appendix to Chapter 5 subjects the account to a rigorous treatment under the idealization that the (p. xix ) clausal complements of reports of beliefs are fully regimentable into first-order quantification theory and under the further idealization that the account provides both necessary and sufficient conditions for the states under consideration. I prove a relative consistency result: the set of deliveries of the theory with respect to a believer who is answerable to certain proposed criteria for omniscient believing, so that the complement clauses of the reports of such a believers beliefs form a consistent set and where this is the only constraint on what the believer believes, is itself a consistent set. Many of the ideas defended in this book seem to go against the grain of much of what passes for platitudinous in contemporary discussions. It might even be felt that some of the ideasespecially, perhaps, on the intentionality front, less so on the modal frontare sufficiently at odds with major trends in their respective fields that they cannot be assessed properly in the absence of a detailed and sustained engagement with the more familiar approaches. I believe, however, this impression of vast disparity to be overblown. Being an outsider on the finer details of cognitive architecture, my official position on those details is openness to empirical investigation. The situation in contemporary philosophy of mind vis--vis cognitive science seems to have the peculiarity that while philosophers of mind are often deferential to cognitive sciencethis is to be expected, of coursecognitive scientists, in their interpretation of the experimental results, are often deferential to the philosophy of mind. In this regard, and again from the standpoint of an outsider, the situation here seems very different from parallel situations in the philosophy of biology or the philosophy of physics. Anyone who is worried about such a tight circle of deference should welcome an effort to say something useful philosophically about cognitive matters while remaining officially agnostic on many of the controversial details that should become better understood in the course of inquiry. Finally, I am convinced that remaining differences between the present approach and more familiar ones can be traced back without too much difficulty to divergences in basic methodological and metaphysical commitments. I therefore ask the readers indulgence in the form of a deduction theorem. Where some highly controversial thesis is presented it should be traced back to antecedent commitments and the overall argument
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assessed as an argument for the conditional with the conjunction of commitments as antecedent and the thesis as (p. xx ) consequent. Separate arguments favoring those initial commitments will be offered here and there, but will not occupy center stage. One has to begin somewhere, and my main concern is to draw implications for the topic of intentionality from a certain methodological perspective and a certain metaphysical outlook. The methodological perspective is the self-conscious effort to pry apart matters pertaining to the metaphysics of cognition from epistemological matters, with the exclusive focus on the former. The metaphysical outlook includes a commitment to actualism (the non-existence of non-actual things), a commitment to essentialism (including origin essentialism), a commitment to the reducibility of general modal facts (modal facts that seem not to arise from the modal profiles of particular things) to particular modal facts (modal facts that do arise from the modal profiles of particular things), and a commitment to the grounding of particular modal facts in essentialist facts (facts pertaining to the natures of the underlying particular things). These should all be borne in mind as the overall argument of the book unfolds. For the remainder of this Introduction I turn to the task of situating the books general approach to intentionality within a wider menu of options. A basic organizing question for me is whether cognitive states and episodes are typically determined to be what they are independently of what they are about, or whether, rather, they are typically dependent for what they are on what they are about. For example, could the belief that Barack Obama is President be just as it actually is had Barack Obama never existed? Or is this belief, rather, dependent for what it is on what it is aboutnamely, Barack Obama? This is a special case of a general concern about ontological dependence. And we can also consider the kind of aboutness at issue. How is it that such cognitive attitudes as believing that Obama is President are about the things they are aboutin this case, Obama? And how does the kind of aboutness at issue inform the issue of dependence? Ongoing attempts to answer such questions post-Frege provide us with an inventory of alternative construals of cognitive attitudes in relation to what they are about. The list below is surely not exhaustive, and is bound to miss subtle variations on the discussed alternatives. But the options to be discussed have been the principal contenders. I think of them as organized into grades of particularistic involvementby analogy to Quines grades of modal involvementexcept that by present (p. xxi ) lights plausibility is meant to increase rather than decrease as we go up the grades. As we go
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up the grades the attitudes become more and more closely intertwined with what they are about.
First grade: Freges Gedanke

According to this first option, cognitive attitudes are the graspings of Fregean Gedanken, or thoughts, which are both objects for the attitudes and senses for whole sentences.8 These items are understood to be independent of what in the world they might be about in at least two respects. First, Gedanke purportedly reside in a realm of abstractathe notorious third realmwhose denizens interact with us and with the rest of the world in what can only be described as a mysterious way. Their interactions with us appear to be both causal and unidirectional. We grasp them, we learn, and we change thereby, whereas they remain changeless. In this they are like mathematical entities according to Fregean doctrinealso denizens of the third realmexcept that our intellectual grasp of them is not meant to be perception-like but rather to consist in understanding. The independence of Gedanke from the world is sufficiently pronounced to put the idea that such items can be about anything in the world under considerable strain. And yet they are topically as varied as is required for thinking about anything under the sun.9 Second, the availability of whole Gedanke to our minds is supposedly as undifferentiated wholes. Frege is explicit about denying that thinkers put together thoughts in the act of thinking from antecedently available thought-constituents. Such a denial is part of a general effort to displace the traditional subject-predicate model of predication and supplant it with the argument-function model.10 What we do in analyzing the (p. xxii ) inferential relations among thoughts is carve up the sentences that express them according to the argument-function model.11 This means that the particular thought that Obama is President, and so the belief that Obama is President, can only be about Obama in a rather derivative way. The thought is about him to the extent that the sentence Obama is President is carved around Obama as an object-expression, where Obama refers to the man. But it is about a second-level function from first-level functions to truth-valuesa higher-level property true of all and only lower-level properties of Obama to the extent that the sentence is carved around Obama as a second-level predicate or quantifier. But nothing about the thought itself betrays how it ought to be carved. The Fregean priority of the whole thought to its parts
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makes the relation between the thought and what it is about all the more distant. The thought that Obama is President is about Obama in a derivative sense that depends on how the sentence expressing it is carved up. So it is contingently about Obama due to the contingency of our interests in analyzing Obama is President as being about Obama rather than as being about the second-level function. In short, original Fregeanism offers the most distant of the aboutness relations considered here. It exhibits the lowest grade of particularistic involvement. On this view, believing that Obama is President is only derivatively and contingently about Obama.
Second grade: Fregean descriptivism

As in the first grade, in the second grade of particularistic involvement we have cognitive attitudes as the graspings of Fregean Gedanken, except now the priority of the whole thought to its constituents is compromised. We may now speak of singular sentences, for example, as those expressing (p. xxiii ) distinctly singular thoughts.12 The relation between the sense expressed by Obama and the man Obama is a relation between a descriptive condition and something that uniquely satisfies it. The man is the referent of the name to the extent that the sense expressed by the name specifies him uniquely. (On Carnaps version Obama is the actual extension of an individual concept.13) And if the sense specifies nothing, then it is empty, as in Freges own example of the description the least rapidly convergent series.14 (On Carnaps version the extension of the individual concept will be an arbitrary object.) The thought expressed by the sentence The least rapidly convergent series converges least rapidly is neither true nor false. (On Carnaps version whether it is true or false will depend on the choice of an arbitrary object.) Frege sometimes speaks of such cases as cases of unknowingly slipping into fiction, where non-truth-evaluable thoughts are regarded as non-genuine- or mock-thoughts. Strawsonians speak of such cases as cases of presupposition failure.15 As in the previous grade, we have ontological independence of the thought that Obama is President from the man himself. This is so to the extent that the descriptive condition associated with Obama is the item that it is independently of its unique satisfier. And it also seems obvious that had something other than Obama satisfied the condition associated with the name Obama, then the thought in question would be about that other thing. In this way, the relation of aboutness between the thought and the man is
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clearly contingent. Consequently, the belief that Obama is President is itself only contingently about Obama.
Third grade: existence-dependent contents

With the third grade of particularistic involvement we are facing two principal alternatives: neo-Fregeanism and neo-Russellianism. Both construe cognitive attitudes as relations to the contents of complex (p. xxiv ) expressions, and both presume that the contents of complex expressions are compositionally generated out of the contents of simpler ones. The distinguishing characteristic of the third grade in its neo-Fregean variant is that the relation of aboutness between the sense and the referent is not a species of satisfaction. Rather, the sense is understood to be a mode of presentation of the referenta way the referent is presented to the thinker. In being perspectival in this way, senses may indeed be non-descriptive. Fregeans of this persuasion insist that senses are not in general removed conditions that are determined to be what they are independently of what in the world they specify. A niche is carved for so-called de re senses, which depend for what they are on what they are about. As can be expected, such senses cannot be empty.16 An empty de re sense is non-sensesomething that can only masquerade as the real thing. The view banishes empty de re senses altogether. If it so happens that there is nothing there, so to speak, then there is nothing that can be of anything there either. Two salient features of the present Fregean approach distinguish it from Fregean descriptivism. First, senses are not taken to be denizens of a realm of abstracta. The Fregean variant of the third grade accommodates them within Freges second realm: the realm of psychological entities. Second, it is only natural to suppose that with de re senses we get a necessary aboutness relation obtaining between the content of a given attitude and what in the world it is about. A de re sense depends for what it is on what it is about because it is a way in which the relevant res presents itself to the thinker. This means that the existence of a given de re sense presupposes the existence of the relevant resit is existence-dependent. So the one is necessarily about the other: it is not possible for the sense to exist without the object existing. It also seems plausible that there is a relation of essential dependence here: the sense would not be what it is were it not for the object it is of. With the assumption that the content of Obama is President constitutively depends on the sense of Obama via compositional generation, this means that the content of Obama is President is necessarily about Obama. There remains the issue of whether
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the cognitive attitude itself of believing that Obama is President is also thereby necessarily about Obama. And here we can say that on the present account if the belief in question would not be what it is had it not been the (p. xxv ) grasping of the content of Obama is President, which is, in turn, necessarily about Obama, then the belief in question is itself necessarily about Obama. We will return to this issue in the discussion of the fourth grade of particularistic involvement below. Existence-dependent contents also have a neo-Russellian variant. With neoRussellianism on board, the relation between what is said or thought and what in the world it is about is no longer achieved via sense intermediaries as in all varieties of Fregeanism. On the neo-Russellian variant of the third grade, to say or think that Obama is President is to bear a relation to a complex constituted by the man Obama and the property of being President, typically represented by an ordered sequence. And this complex is about Obama to the extent that Obama is a constituter of it in the relevant way, the aboutness represented by Obama being an item occupying a node in the sequence, perhaps the member of the singleton set among the two members of the set that reduces the sequence. Note that while neo-Russellianism supplants the conceptual ingredients of the Fregean thought with objectual ingredientsclearly an anathema to any variety of Fregeanismit preserves an important feature of the Fregean picture: namely, that in our cognitive attitudes we bear relations to entities structured like sentences. Russellian propositions are complexes of objects and properties that seem unlike sentences only if we attend to their constitutional makeup. But if we abstract from matters of constitution we clearly see that these entities are much like sentences by dint of their structure. This is most evident in the case of traditional subjectpredicate singular sentences expressing propositions that consist of a subject and a property predicated of it. But the isomorphism is there for general propositions as well, as evidenced by the likes of the neo-Russellian assignment of the content ##Every, S#, P# to the sentence Every spy is suspicious, where S denotes the property of being a spy and P the property of being suspicious.17 Turning now to consider the modal status of the relation between the Russellian singular proposition expressed by Obama is President and what it is about, as in the neo-Fregean variant of the third grade we have here a necessary aboutness relation between the proposition and Obama as well. But the grounds for the necessity in the neoRussellian case are different.
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On the neo-Fregean view, de re senses are necessarily connected to what they are about due to their natures as modes of presentation of things. That a whole singular thought containing a de re sense bears a necessary relation to what it is about is a product of two factors: (i) the whole thought being what it is due to its constitution-via-composition, being constituted by, among other things, the de re sense, and (ii) this de re constituent of the thought being what it is due to its being of what it is about. Both (i) and (ii) thus concern matters of essencea whole thought essentially (and so, necessarily) depends on its constituents, one of which essentially (and so, necessarily) depends, in turn, on what the thought is about. On the neo-Russellian alternative we may think of the role of Obama in the singular proposition that Obama is President as a case of self-representation: Obama in the singular proposition represents himself and the proposition as a whole represents Obama as of being President by including Obama as a constituent. This proposition is also necessarily about Obama. What we have here is, again, the necessity of a complex being constituted by its constituents. The necessity issues from matters pertaining to what the particular complex is. Switching again to the level of representing the proposition by a sequence or by its set-theoretical reduction, the essentialist point about the nature of the complex is represented by matters pertaining to the nature of a sequence or of its set-theoretical reduction. Focusing on the latter, we may suppose that it is of the essence of any set to contain its members. So the standard reduction of the sequence consisting of the individual Obama and the property of being Presidentthe set {{Obama}, {Obama, being president}}is the set it is due to containing the singleton set. And the singleton set is the set that it is due to containing Obama himself. In this way, absent the singleton set, the set reducing the sequence would not exist either. And absent Obama, the singleton set containing him would not exist. This bit of essentialism about sets and the entailed existential dependence represents a point about the nature of Russellian propositions and the existential dependencies thus engendered. Absent Obama, the singular Russellian proposition in question would not exist either. In this way the relation between the proposition and what it is about is a relation of existential dependence. And as with the neo-Fregean variant, if we assume that the belief that Obama is President would not be what it is had it not been the grasping of the singular Russellian proposition consisting of Obama and being President, then on the neo-Russellian variant too the belief that Obama is President can turn out to be necessarily about Obama.
(p. xxvi ) (p. xxvii )
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Fourth grade: all-out particularism

By way of introducing the fourth and final grade of particularistic involvement we borrow a page from Bertrand Russell. A familiar Russellian condition on grasping a proposition is that the thinker be acquainted with each and every one of the propositions constituents. Notoriously, Russell thought that the condition is not met in humdrum cases of propositions about portions of our ordinary surroundings. Thus, for example, no one but Obama can be in a position to grasp the proposition that Obama is President because only Obama can be acquainted with the subject of that proposition. The rest of us can only grasp a descriptive proposition that uniquely specifies Obama and with whose constituents we are acquainted. Russellian acquaintance is a difficult notion. At a bare minimum we should say that Russell is imposing a double restriction on our cognitions and their relations to what they are about. First, whether or not we can bear cognitive relations to things is understood to be beholden to an epistemic condition: namely, whether we can have knowledge regarding them.18 Second, whether we can know things in the relevant sense is understood to be beholden to a rather rarified condition of epistemic intimacy: namely, whether we are immune from radical doubt with respect to them. Few philosophers have been inclined to follow Russells latter restrictiveness in making the relevant knowledge of things beholden to being immune from radical doubt with respect to them. Many, however, have retained the spirit of Russells proposal in making de re attitudes beholden to an epistemic condition. Now, suppose we replace Russells condition of epistemic intimacy on being in a position to grasp a Russellian proposition with a condition of causal-historical rapport. And suppose further that such a condition is typically met by cognizers on the one hand and humdrum portions of their worldly surroundings on the other. Let us bear in mind the following two components of the Russellian proposal. First, a proposition, at least for the early Russell, is a possible fact, true propositions being the actual facts.19 Second, even Russells original epistemic criterion for (p. xxviii ) being able to grasp a proposition did not require that the thinker be acquainted with the entire proposition in question, whatever that might demand. What we are told, rather, is that in order to grasp a proposition the thinker has to be acquainted with the propositions constituents. Adapting this idea by replacing the notion of acquaintance with causal-historical rapport we can now say that it is a condition on grasping a fact in believing, let us say, that Obama is President, that we bear the right causal-historical relations to the
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various components of this fact, which includes bearing the right causalhistorical relation to Obama himself. With the fourth grade of particularistic involvement we are in the following position. No longer are we committed to the idea, shared by Fregeans of all stripes and by the neo-Russellians, that our cognitive attitudes put us in relations to sentence-like entities, be they conceptual or objectual. Allout particularism considers attitudes to require real-world relations borne to portions of the cognizers surroundings. This means that our cognitive situation is related directly to worldly items without any mediation, not even the mediation of sentence-like complexes of worldly things (represented as sequences or sets of sets) as in the neo-Russellian variant of the third grade. On the present conception the relations between our Obama-attitudes and Obama are most immediate and direct. On both the neo-Fregean and neoRussellian options a necessary connection held between what is cognized the content of the attitudeand what the content is aboutthe man. But on neither view was it strictly required that there be a necessary connection between the cognition itself and what it is aboutat least not without further development of the view. This is perhaps more obvious for the neo-Russellian variant of the third grade of particularistic involvement than it is for the neoFregean variant. A neo-Russellian can easily maintain that the cognitive state or episode is characterized solely at the level of character or role, and that whichever content this character or role relates the thinker to is up to the vagaries of the context and plays no role in determining the state itself.20 In other words, for all the necessity of the relation that the Russellian singular proposition bears to the embedded individual thing, the neo-Russellian can still maintain that an attitude with such a content might have had a different content (p. xxix ) and thus might have been about something other than the actual subject. For a neo-Fregean like Evans, on the other hand, the sense of a singular term is given by an account of what makes it the case that the thinker is thinking about the referent.21 Can the thinkers cognitive state or episode remain invariant under variability of distinct things, and so under variability of distinct ways of thinking about distinct things? The situation is unclear. It is unclear whether differences in de re senses as such force differences in cognitive states or episodes. It is commonly assumed that the answer is in the affirmative; that is, that the graspings of two distinct de re senses are themselves distinct graspings due to the distinctness of the senses grasped. But it is unclear why this has to be so on the neo-Fregean construal. Compare: the state of my hand in grasping a baseball might have been the same had a numerically distinct baseball been in its grasp. It is
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unclear why neo-Fregeanism as such should be committed to denying this analogy with the state of the cognizers mind and the grasped de re thought. As for the modal status of the relation between believing that Obama is President and Obama himself according to the fourth grade of particularistic involvement, we have a necessary connection between Obama-attitudes and Obama himself. On the present conception, being related to Obama in the right causal-historical way is a precondition for the very possibility of believing him to be President. So there is a direct necessary dependence of believing that Obama is President on the man himself. Whereas in the previous cases the necessity could only arise from the natures of sentencelike entities to which the believer was assumed to be related in believing what she does, be it a neo-Fregean de re thought or a neo-Russellian singular proposition, matters in the present case are different. Here we say that being suitably related to Obama directly enters into what it is to believe that Obama is President. So it is of the very nature of believing such a thing that the agent be related in the requisite way to Obama. But the necessity of the relation between such a cognitive state or episode concerning Obama and the man himself does not arise from the nature of a sentence-like entity and the way such entity is constituted as before. The necessity issues directly from the very nature of the cognitive state in question. The following chart summarizes the forgoing discussion: (p. xxx )
(p. xxxi )
The rest of this book is devoted, in one way or another, to exploring the fourth grade of particularistic involvement, beginning with the modal metaphysical background to the view. It is to this task of laying down modal metaphysical foundations that I now turn. (p. xxxii )
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Introduction

Simchen Introduction

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Necessary Intentionality: A Study in the Metaphysics of Aboutness

Introduction DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608515.002.0007

First grade: Freges Gedanke

Second grade: Fregean descriptivism

Third grade: existence-dependent contents

Fourth grade: all-out particularism

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