14 September 1995 Page 1

Belief Reports and Interpreted-Logical Forms (Draft)

Joe Lau
The Department of Philosophy

The University of Hong Kong

One major obstacle in providing a compositional semantics for natural languages is that it is not clear
how we should deal with propositional attitude contexts. In this paper I will discuss the Interpreted
Logical Form proposal, focusing on the case of belief. This proposal has been developed in different
ways by authors such as Harman (1972), Higginbotham (1986,1991), Segal (1989) and Larson and
Ludlow (1993). On this approach, the that-clause of a belief report is treated as a singular term,
referring to the interpreted logical form (ILF) of its embedded sentence. The ILF of a sentence is
made up of two parts : a syntactic representation of the sentence at the level of logical form, and an
assignment of semantic values to parts of the representation.1 Thus, given a belief report such as,

(1) Jen believes that Bill Gates is rich.

we might represent the referent of its that-clause with a tree-diagram as follows :

(2)

The belief report (1) is true if and only if Jen believes the ILF displayed above.2

The ILF proposal has three noteworthy features. First, because the constituent expressions of a
that-clause are incorporated into its referent, the theory implies that the truth-value of a belief report
might not be preserved under substitution of coreferring expressions. Second, the referent of a
that-clause contains in itself an assignment of semantic values, and so its truth-conditions are absolute,

1
To simplify, one might think of the ILF of a sentence as consisting of the sentence type plus the
semantic values.
2
See Larson and Ludlow (1993) for a formal recursive definition of the ILF of a sentence. Unlike the
case of (2) their definition assigns semantic values to all nodes of the phrase-marker, and does not invoke
relations or properties as semantic values. These differences are not relevant here.
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not relative to an interpretation. Third, the theory is compatible with the "principle of innocence",3
that words inside attitude contexts have the same ordinary referents they have when they are outside.
The ILF proposal should be attractive to those who think that a correct semantics for English should
incorporate these features.

Unfortunately this theory cannot be correct as it stands. It predicts that whenever we attribute beliefs
to a single individual, the belief reports have different truth-conditions only if their embedded
sentences differ in either their syntactic or referential properties. But there are at least three type of
cases where this prediction turns out to be wrong. Larson and Ludlow (1993) have offered solutions to
some of these counterexamples, but I shall argue that their responses are inadequate. Instead, I shall
borrow an idea from Higginbotham (1991), and suggest that the ILF proposal stands in need of a more
radical Fregean revision.

The first type of problem cases concerns demonstratives, as illustrated by the following example.
Suppose Lois points to a photograph of Superman in his red cape and says,

(3) I believe that he is Superman.

She then points to a picture of Clark Kent in a suit and says, again,

(4) I believe that he is Superman.

Let us suppose that Superman indeed exists. Lois recognizes Superman by his outfit in the first photo,
but she does not know that Clark Kent, her colleague in the second photo, is one and the same person
as Superman. So it would seem that (3) is true and (4) is false. However, the ILF proposal predicts
otherwise. The embedded sentence of both reports are of the same sentence type, and their parts have
the same referents. According to the ILF proposal, the that-clauses of both (3) and (4) therefore refer
to the same ILF, and so the two reports have the same truth-conditions, which they don't.

Larson and Ludlow have discussed this problem, and they propose that the semantic value for a
demonstrative should include not just the object that the speaker refers to, but also the particular
referential act or event itself. In the Superman example, Lois's two belief reports are associated with
two different referring events. On Larson and Ludlow's proposal, the that-clauses of the (1) and (2)
would then refer to distinct ILFs, each containing a different event. Thus we can preserve the intuition
that the two statements have different truth-conditions.

However, this proposal succeeds in solving one problem only by creating another. The new problem

3
See Davidson (1984) for discussion.
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is that in attributing a belief using demonstratives, what the subject is said to believe will now contain
particular referring events. This implies that what the subject believes will not have existed if the
referring events had not occurred. This is not plausible, as can be seen in the following example.
Suppose I point to the first photo of Superman and say,

(5) If I wasn't here, then Lois would not have believed that he is Superman.

Intuitively this statement is false, since presumably Lois would still believe that the caped hero in the
first photo is Superman, whether I am here or not. But on Larson and Ludlow's account, my statement
turns out to be true. For if I wasn't here, the event which consists of my pointing at the photo could
not have occurred. But then the ILF that is the actual referent of the that-clause would not have
existed either, since the pointing event is part of it. So if I wasn't here, the ILF that Lois actually
believes would not have existed, and so she could not have believed it either. Thus the report is
predicted to be true contrary to intuition, and so Larson and Ludlow's proposal is not satisfactory.

Another problem for the ILF proposal involves puzzle cases first introduced by Kripke (1979). Here is
a variation from Larson and Ludlow. Suppose Ralph believes that there are two persons with the name
"Paderewski". One is his reclusive upstairs neighbour, the other is a flamboyant conductor. Ralph
thinks that his neighbour is shy and that the conductor is not, even though unknown to him they are
one and the same person. Larson and Ludlow suggest that the following two statements can both be
true in different contexts :

(6) Ralph believes that Paderewski is shy.

(7) Ralph does not believe that Paderewski is shy.

Let us agree with their intuition that both these statements can be true. But then this poses a problem
for the ILF proposal. The proposal predicts that the that-clauses refer to the same ILF, but it is
impossible that Ralph both believe and does not believe the same ILF.

According to Larson and Ludlow, such cases are to be treated in the same way as ambiguous
homophones, such as "bank". A semantics for English will use diacritics to distinguish formally
between the homophones, as in "bank1" and "bank2". Applying the the same method in the
Paderewski case, Larson and Ludlow suggest that it involves two syntactically distinct names :
"Paderewski1" and "Paderewski2".4 The that-clauses of (6) and (7) refer to ILFs that contain different
names. So they do not amount to an assertion and its denial, and both can be true.

It seems to me that this proposal is quite ad hoc. The only argument given by Larson and Ludlow is

4
See Larson and Ludlow (1993), pp.318-319.
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that "the grammar of the report will have resources that allow a single entity to bear several names, all
homophonous, but formally distinct." However, it is one thing to say that semantic theory has the
resources to implement their proposal. It does not follow that a correct semantic theory should in fact
make use of such resources here. After all, in the case of "bank", the use of diacritics is justified
because it is a semantic fact about English that the word is ambiguous, and it is the business of a
semantics for English to register such a fact. However, it is not a semantic fact about English that
Ralph mistakenly believes there are two and not one person under the name "Paderewski". Unless this
entails that the name is ambiguous in English, it is hard to see why a semantics for English should
register such a fact.

In any case, diacritics can only be used to distinguish between homophones within a given language,
and not across different languages. So suppose we change the example slightly : (6) is an utterance of
English, and (7) is an utterance of English*, a language distinct from but very similar to English in
that (7) has the same referential properties as (6). If Larson and Ludlow allow that (6) and (7) can
both be true as utterances of English, surely they must also allow that (6) and (7) can also be true as
utterances of English and English* respectively. This would again lead to a contradiction, but this
time diacritics are of no use here.

Discussion of the semantics of belief reports begins with the observation that the semantic
contribution of a that-clause cannot be determined solely by the ordinary referents of the embedded
expressions. This led Frege to argue that words in attitude contexts refer not to their ordinary referents
but to senses, or modes of presentations. In effect, the hope of the ILF approach is that by
incoporating lexical items into the object of belief, these items might play the role of senses.5 But it is
doubtful whether lexical items can fulfill such a role, as the above examples show. The reason is
simply that the such items are uninterpreted : the same item might be used with different senses to
attribute different objects of belief, even if the item has the same ordinary referent under these uses.

Such a diagnosis is further confirmed in the case of empty names. As an example, consider (8) :

(8) Jane believes that Santa Claus exists.

An utterance of (8) by an English speaker would attribute to Jane a belief in the existence of a certain
mythical Christmas character. But now imagine a different language L which is like English, except
that the proper name "Santa Claus" is stipulated to refer to the largest prime number. So "Santa Claus"
is an empty name in both English and L. Now it might happen to be the case that Jane believes in the
existence of Santa Claus, but that she does not believe that there is a largest prime number, having

5
This much is acknowledged by Larson and Ludlow in their paper : "Such objects [i.e. ILFs] in effect
represent a semantic value together with its linguistic 'mode of presentation'.", Ibid p. 305.
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been shown Euclid's proof. An utterance of (8) in English would therefore be true, whereas an
utterance of the same sentence in L would be false. However, the ILF proposal is unable to distinguish
between the truth-conditions of the two utterances, since "Santa Claus" is an empty name in both
English and L, and so the that-clause of (8) would refer to the same ILF in both languages. Again, the
source of the trouble here is that the difference in what is attributed lies in the difference in the sense
associated with the name "Santa Claus", and does not concern syntax or reference.

So far I have identified three problems for the ILF proposal. What they show is that contrary to the
proposal, the semantic contribution of a that-clause cannot be solely determined by its syntactic and
referential properties. This strongly suggests that an adequate semantics would have to appeal to some
such notion as sense. But Jim Higginbotham claims that there is another alternative, which is that in
the interpretation of belief reports, that-clauses "are to be understood as if their speakers said them."6
This schematic proposal is offered as a solution to yet another problem for the ILF theory, which we
will not discuss here. But this suggestion does seem to provide a solution to the problems that have
been raised. Take for example the problem concerning demonstratives. Lois's two utterances of "I
believe that he is Superman" can have different truth-conditions, even though the two tokens of the
that-clause correspond to exactly the same ILF. But if we consider Lois's understanding of the two
tokens, then obviously the relevant difference is that with her first utterance, Lois understands the
demonstrative pronoun "he" as referring to Superman in his red cape, whereas with the second
utterance the pronoun is understood as referring to Clark Kent. If Higginbotham is right, then maybe
this difference in understanding can account for the difference in the truth-conditions of the two
utterances, and similarly for the other problems we have discussed.

Although this proposal is promising, it is not very clear how it can be accommodated within a
compositional semantic theory, especially given Higginbotham's view that the verb "believe"
expresses a binary relation7 between a believer and what he believes. If believe is indeed a binary
relation, presumably a belief report of the form

(9) X believes that p

is true if and only if X believes the referent of the that-clause. But our discussion has shown that the
that-clause cannot simply refer to the ILF of the embedded sentence. Higginbotham would have to say
that a that-clause refers to a complex that includes not just a syntactic and a referential component, but
also some additional third component which is determined by the speaker's linguistic understanding.
Unfortunately, as far as the nature of this third component is concerned, Higginbotham is completely
silent. In fact, linguistic understanding does not come in at all when he presents the axioms for his

6
See Higginbotham (1991), pp. 344-353 for discussion.
7
Not including the temporal parameter of course, which I shall ignore in this discussion.
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semantic theory.8 Higgbotham's schematic suggestion therefore does not help solve the problems
facing the ILF theory.

The only way I can think of to implement Higginbotham's suggestion is to appeal to something like
Fregean senses. One might suggest that how a speaker understands a sentence is to be explained by
the sense or the thought that the speaker associates with it, made up of the senses that the speaker
associates with the constituent expressions of the sentence. The referent of a that-clause can then be
identified with the ILF of its embedded sentence together with its sense. The semantic contribution of
a that-clause would therefore include a syntactic, a referential, and a sense component. Such a
tripartite account would I think be immune to the previous objections against the simple ILF theory.
Take the problem concerning demonstratives. It is plausible to think that the sense of a demonstrative
vary from use to use, depending on the referential intention of the speaker. In the Lois example then,
the tripartite account can therefore allow that her two utterances (3) and (4) have different
truth-conditions. Here is a case where the that-clauses differ in the sense, but not the syntactic and
referential component. The other two cases can be dealt with similarly by noting that the names
"Paderewski" and "Santa Claus" are associated with distinct senses in the different utterances.

So I think such a tripartite account is preferrable to the original ILF proposal. One obvious objection
though is that the introduction of senses seems to make the syntactic and referential components
redundant : if senses are to be invoked, why not simply take that-clauses to refer to senses? The short
answer is that we need the syntactic and the referential components of an ILF to overcome problems
in a purely Fregean account. The syntactic component is needed to deal with cases where substitution
of coreferential expressions does not preserve truth-value. Consider for example (10) and (11) :

(10) Lusina believes that Mark Twain wrote novels.

(11) Lusina believes that Samuel Clemens wrote novels.

The speaker of (10) and (11) might know that "Mark Twain" and "Samuel Clemens" refer to the same
person, and use the name interchangeably. Short of a detailed account of what senses are, we have to
allow the possibility that the speaker might in fact associate the same sense with syntactically distinct
names. Such a possibility is likely to obtain particularly if the sense a speaker associates with a name
is a body of descriptive information that she takes to be true of the referent of the name. If the referent
of a that-clause refers solely to the sense associated with the embedded sentence, this might mean that
(10) and (11) have the same truth-conditions, which they do not. On the tripartite account, this
difference in truth-conditions can be traced to a difference in the syntactic component of the referent
of the that-clauses.

8
In Higginbotham (1991), the objects of belief are taken to be signed phrase markers, which are ILFs
by another name. But then this proposal faces the same objections as before.
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The referential component, on the other hand, is needed to provide the correct truth-conditions for the
object of belief. Here I am assuming that the sense a speaker associates with a name does not uniquely
determine its reference, as argued by Putnam (1975) among others. Consider then an utterance of
(12) :

(12) I believe that water quenches thirst.

In uttering (12) I am attributing to myself a belief that is true if and only if H2O quenches thirst. But
when my twin-earth counterpart utters (12), he attributes to himself a belief that is true if and only if
XYZ quenches thirst. It is not clear, however, whether this difference in the belief attributed can be
made out if a that-clause refers to the sense of its embedded sentence, since it is possible that me and
my twin associate the same sense with the embedded sentence. On the triparte account, this difference
in what is attributed is readily explained by a difference in the referential, and not the syntactic or
sense component.

These examples help motivate the idea that the referent of a that-clause is made up of three parts : a
syntactic component, a referential component, and a sense component. Each of these components
have a semantic role to play in accounting for the truth-conditions of belief reports. For those who
find the ILF proposal attractive, I hope to have shown that this tripartite account is preferable to the
original theory. Whether it will work out in the end remains to be seen, but I think it is a promising
alternative to explore.

References

Davidson, Donald (1984) "On Saying that" in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation Oxford :
Clarendon Press, pp.93-108.
Harman, Gilbert (1972) "Logical Form" Foundations of Language 9, pp. 38-65.
Higginbotham, James (1991) "Belief and Logical Form" in Mind and Language Vol.6, No.4, pp.
344-369.
Kripke, Saul (1979) "A Puzzle about Belief" in A. Margalit (ed.) (1979) Meaning and Use Dordrecht :
D. Reidel, pp. 206-242.
Larson, R.K. and Ludlow, P. (1993) Synthese 95, pp. 305-355.
Putnam, Hilary (1975) "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" in Gunderson (ed.) (1975) Language, Mind and
Knowledge : Minnesota studies in the Philosophy of Science Vol. VII, Minneapolis :
University of Minnesota Press, pp.131-193.
Segal, Gabriel (1989) "A Preference for Sense and Reference" The Journal of Philosophy 86, pp.
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73-89.