De Re Language,De Re Eliminability,and the Essential Limits of Both

De re modality is eliminable if there is an effective translation of all wffs into non-de re equivalents. We cannot have logical equivalence unless logic has odd theses, but we can have material equivalence by banning all essences, something the non-de re facts let us do, or by giving everything such humdrum essences as self-identity and banning the more interesting ones. Eliminability cannot be got from weaker assumptions, nor independent ones of even modest generality. The net philosophical import is that, quite apart from the merits of essentialism, de re language has scant utility.     

Self-Ascription and Belief De Re

Philosophical Studies -     

Conceivability and De Re Modal Knowledge

The paper presents a dilemma for both epistemic and non‐epistemic versions of conceivability‐based accounts of modal knowledge. On the one horn, non‐epistemic accounts do not elucidate the essentialist knowledge they would be committed to. On the other, epistemic accounts do not elucidate everyday life de re modal knowledge. In neither case, therefore, do conceivability accounts elucidate de re modal knowledge.     

Collective De Se Thoughts and Centered Worlds

Two lines of investigation into the nature of mental content have proceeded in parallel until now. The first looks at thoughts that are attributable to collectives, such as bands' beliefs and teams' desires. So far, philosophers who have written on collective belief, collective intentionality, etc. have primarily focused on third‐personal attributions of thoughts to collectives. The second looks at de se, or self‐locating, thoughts, such as beliefs and desires that are essentially about oneself. So far, philosophers who have written on the de se have primarily focused on de se thoughts of individuals. This paper looks at where these two lines of investigations intersect: collective de se thoughts, such as bands' and teams' beliefs and desires that are essentially about themselves. There is a surprising problem at this intersection: the most prominent framework for modeling de se thoughts, the framework of centered worlds, cannot model a special class of collective de se thoughts. A brief survey of this problem's solution space shows that collective de se thoughts pose a new challenge for modeling mental content.     

Gricean Communication and Transmission of Thoughts

Gricean communication is communication between utterers and their audiences, where the utterer means something and the audience understands what is meant. The weak transmission idea is that, whenever such communication takes place, there is something which is transmitted from utterer to audience; the strong transmission idea adds that what is transmitted is nothing else than what is communicated. We try to salvage these ideas from a seemingly forceful attack by Wayne Davis. Davis attaches too much significance to the surface structure of sentences of the type ‘S communicates the belief (desire …) that p to A’ by assuming that the communicated entity is denoted by the grammatical object following ‘communicates’. On our proposal, what is communicated in all Gricean cases is a thought. And since S communicates the thought that p to A only if S means that p and A understands what S means, the thought that p will be transmitted from S to A.     

中外和谐交往思想资源及其现代价值

构建和谐社会必然包含着建立和谐的人际交往关系.我们应该加强和谐交往关系中的道德研究和建设,吸收中国传统文化中的和谐交往思想遗产,借鉴西方和谐交往理念及其实现机制,挖掘中外和谐交往思想资源的现代价值.