Abstract
Karttunen observes that a presupposition triggered inside an attitude ascription, can be filtered out by a seemingly inaccessible antecedent under the scope of a preceding belief ascription. This poses a major challenge for presupposition theory and the semantics of attitude ascriptions. I solve the problem by enriching the semantics of attitude ascriptions with some independently argued assumptions on the structure and interpretation of mental states. In particular, I propose a DRT-based representation of mental states with a global belief-layer and a variety of labeled attitude compartments embedded within it. Hence, desires and other non-doxastic attitudes are asymmetrically dependent on beliefs. I integrate these mental state representations into a general semantic account of attitude ascriptions which relies on the parasitic nature of non-doxastic attitudes to solve Karttunen’s puzzle.
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This paper is based on a remark by Ede Zimmermann on a passage about non-doxastic de re attitudes in my thesis (Maier 2006, pp. 34–35, 320–321). I thank Julie Hunter, Paul Portner and three anonymous reviewers for detailed feedback on earlier versions. Further thanks to Hans Kamp and the audiences at the workshop Centered Content and Communication (Barcelona, May 2012) and Ede Zimmermann’s Birthday Colloquium (Frankfurt, September 2014). This research is supported by the EU under FP7, ERC Starting Grant 263890-BLENDS.
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Maier, E. Parasitic attitudes. Linguist and Philos 38, 205–236 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-015-9174-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-015-9174-z