Abstract:

In his classic article "A Puzzle About Belief", Saul Kripke presents two important puzzles concerning our ordinary practices of belief attribution, and he uses those puzzles to cast doubt on the legitimacy of well-known substitution arguments against the Millian doctrine that the linguistic meaning of a name is exhausted by its referent. In the closing pages of that article (and elsewhere), Kripke makes some intriguing suggestions concerning the source of these puzzles and their relationship to issues involving substitution. In particular, he suggests that the puzzles result from a breakdown in our ordinary practices of belief attribution, and a breakdown in what he calls "the apparatus of propositions". This suggestion, though arresting, is somewhat obscure. What exactly would a breakdown in our ordinary practices of belief attribution involve? To what extent would a breakdown in those practices involve a breakdown in the apparatus of propositions itself? And how would a breakdown of this sort explain, or otherwise illuminate, the puzzles presented by Kripke and their relationship to arguments from substitution?

In this dissertation, I use recent developments in the philosophy of language to provide a novel account of Kripke's puzzles, to assess the legitimacy of classical substitution arguments, and to explore the notion of linguistic meaning. In doing so I explicate the sense in which a breakdown of the sort suggested by Kripke really does occur, arguing that previous accounts of the puzzles fail in part because they do not fully incorporate crucial aspects of this breakdown. However, I maintain that it is a mistake to conclude, as Kripke suggests, that the puzzles involve a breakdown in the very apparatus of propositions itself, where that apparatus is thought of simply as one involving abstract entities that are bearers of truth and falsity and objects of attitudes such as belief and assertion.