The Embedding Objection, Part VI: The Objection from Ambiguity of Attitude Attribution Verbs

This is the sixth of a series of posts in which I try to make clear the different embedding difficulties that, as a family, are thought to present the most pressing objection to expressivism and to distinguish the different kinds of expressivism toward which each difficulty is most forcefully directed. The first post explained what I take expressivism to be. The second post distinguished four main kinds of expressivism: Simple non-truth-evaluable expressivism (e.g., Ayer's emotivism), Simple minimalist expressivism (e.g., Blackburn's projectivism), Complex minimalist expressivism (e.g., Stevenson's emotivism), and Complex robust expressivism (e.g., Hare's prescriptivism, my Expressive-Assertivism). The third, fourth, and fifth posts discussed The Objection from Truth Ascriptions, The Challenge from Incomplete Semantics, and The Objection from Pragmatics respectively. I actually haven't finished the last post yet, because I'm now not quite sure what I want to say about it. So, for now, I'll move on to a different embedding objection, what I'll call "The Objection from the Ambiguity of Attitude Attribution Verbs," which can be directed toward any kind of expressivist theory.

Attitude-attribution verbs, such as 'believes that', 'fears that', 'wonders whether', etc. attribute psychological states (belief, fear, wonderment, etc.) whose contents are given by the sentences used in their complements. For example, in (1),

 

1. John believes that the Patriots will win the Super Bowl again this year.

 

'believes that' attributes to John a representational state (belief) whose content is that the Patriots will will the Super Bowl again this year. Ethical sentences can also appear as complement sentences of attitude-attribution verbs. If expressivism is correct, then ethical sentences have expressive content. The question arises whether having this expressive content plays a role in determining the kind of psychological state that is attributed by these verbs. For simple expressivism, it is hard to see how the answer could fail to be 'yes', for there is nothing more to their content than what they express. So, it appears that, in (2),

 

2. John believes that donating to charity is right.

 

'believes that' attributes to John some kind of positive conative state, rather than some kind of representational state. Thus, it appears that simple expressivism has to hold that attitude-attribution verbs are ambiguous, sometimes attributing a representational state to the subject of the sentence in which they appear, sometimes attributing a conative state, depending on whether the complement sentence is an ethical sentence. Intuitively, however, these verbs are not ambiguous, so simple expressivism appears to be committed to something that is false. (Copp, for example, raises this objection in Morality, Normativity, and Society, p. 17.)

 

This objection can also be directed toward complex expressivist theories, since, according to complex expressivist theories, ethical sentences have expressive content in addition to representational content. (In Hare's case, ethical sentences have prescriptive content, but I'll ignore this point.) So, it appears that complex expressivism also has to hold that these verbs are ambiguous, sometimes attributing a simple representational psychological state, and sometimes attributing a complex psychological state with representational and conative components, depending on whether its complement sentence is an ethical sentence. Roughly, the Objection is as follows:

 

3. 'believes that' is not ambiguous in English, and more specifically, it would be extremely implausible to suggest that what it means is affected by what complement sentence appears after 'that'.
4. If expressivism is true, then when an ethical complement sentence is used with 'believes that', a conative psychological state (or a complex psychological state with a conative component) is attributed.
5. When a nonethical complement sentence is used with 'believes that', a representational psychological state alone is attributed.
6. If a representational state alone is attributed when a nonethical sentence is used as the complement of 'believes that', but a different type of psychological state is attributed when an ethical sentence is used as the complement of 'believes that', then 'believes that' is ambiguous.

                        Therefore,

7. If expressivism is true, then 'believes that' is ambiguous. ((3)-(6))

                        Therefore,

8. Expressivism is false. ((3), (7))

 

I think this objection fails because (6) is false. There are three main strategies for providing the semantics for sentences containing attitude-attribution verbs, which I'll call the "sentential account," "propositional account," and "utterance account." Any of these strategies can be adopted by expressivist theories without their being committed to the ambiguity of attitude-attribution verbs. I will focus on the sentential account, but a similar story could be told, mutatis mutandis, for the propositional and utterance accounts.

 

A sentential account of the semantics of 'believes that' would hold that the subjects of (1) and (2) have psychological states that are the same in content as the semantic content of their respective complement sentences. Let's assume for simplicity that the semantic content of a sentence is constituted only by the sentence's representational (truth-conditional) content and its expressive content. A sentential account of the semantics of (1) would then hold that John has a psychological state whose content is the same as the semantic content of the sentence 'The Patriots will win the Super Bowl again this year'. Since we can safely assume that 'The Patriots will win the Super Bowl again this year' does not have expressive content, the sentential account of the semantics of (1) would hold that John has a psychological state with the same representational content and (trivially) the same expressive content as the sentence 'The Patriots will win the Super Bowl this year'. A sentential account of the semantics of (2) would hold then that John has a psychological state whose content is the same as the semantic content of the sentence 'Donating to charity is right'. Since 'Donating to charity is right' (according to expressivism) has expressive content, the sentential account of the semantics of (2) would require that John has a psychological state with the same expressive content as 'Donating to charity is right', say, approval toward donating to charity. The important thing to note here is that the semantics of 'believes that', as it is used in (1) and (2), is the same: an attitude is being attributed to the subject of the sentence in which the verb is used, which is the same in content as its complement sentence. Of course, since the semantic contents of the respective complement sentences differ, so does the particular attitude being attributed to the subject of the sentence. However, this does not mean, in turn, that the semantics of 'believes that' also differs, i.e., this does not mean that 'believes that' is ambiguous. Analogously, even though our semantic evaluations of (9) and (10) differ significantly (since (9), but not (10), is to be evaluated as true or false), we do not think that 'and' is ambiguous.

 

9. Jackie is a lawyer and John is doctor.
10. Donating to charity is right and don't forget it.

 

Rather, the semantic evaluations of the sentences are a function of the embedded sentences interacting with a word that has a uniform meaning. Similar stories, I believe can be told for the propositional and utterance accounts, but I'll leave things here for now.