4 - The de dicto/de re Ambiguity

Summary

The de dicto/de re ambiguity concerns the multiplicity of readings that many attitude reports give rise to depending on whether an expression in the complement clause is interpreted as part of the content of the attitude (de dicto reading) or as an attitude-external means of referring to or quantifying over some aspect of the content of the attitude (de re). For example, Beatrix wants to marry a plumber can report either that Beatrix wants her eventual spouse to have a particular occupation (de dicto) or that there is a particular plumber that Beatrix wants to marry (de re). We discuss the classic scope solution to this ambiguity, as well as theproblems for that approach that have inspired adjustments (world pronouns, split intensionality). We outline the implications of these adjustments for the grammar of attitude reports and of intensionality more generally. We then discuss a more serious problem (“double vision”) first noticed by W. V .O. Quine that has inspired a very different approach to de re readings, involving concept generators. We close by stepping back and asking: Should one approach ultimately be subsumed under the other, or are both needed in a comprehensive theory?