Attidutes and Changing Contexts

In this book, the author defends a unified externalists account of propositional attitudes and reference, and formalizes this view within possible world semantics. He establishes a link between philosophical analyses of intentionality and reference and formal semantic theories of discourse representation and context change. Stalnakerian diagonalization plays an important role here. Anaphora are treated as referential expressions, while presupposition is seen as a propositional attitude. The relation between belief change and the semantic analyses of conditional sentences and evidential (knowledge) and buletic (desire) propositional attitudes is discussed extensively.

Offers a uniform analysis of propositional attitudes, pronouns, and presuppositions Shows the relevance of the philosophical theory of reference for semantics of natural language, and the relevance of the theory of belief revision for analysis of conditionals and propositional attitudes Demonstrates the importance of modern semantic theories of indefinites and anaphora for the theory of reference

Contenu
Content, belief and belief attributions.- Referential and Descriptive Pronouns.- Intentional Identity.- Presupposition Satisfaction.- Conditionals and belief change.- Some other attitudes.