Russellian Belief Reports, Shared Presentations, and Two-Place Propositional Attitudes

Mihnea Capraru
Syracuse University

Russellian semantics of belief reports delivers a prima facie convincing answer to the question `what do we believe?' --- we believe Russellian propositions. Alas, this answer is fraught with Fregean paradox. To dispel the paradox, Contextualist Russellians have posited that belief is a threeplace relation, one whose third place is filled by modes of presentation. There are good reasons, however, to insist that belief is two-place. That is why I advocate a two-place version of Contextualist Russellianism. On this version of the theory, while belief reports can indeed refer to modes of presentation, the latter are not arguments of belief. I ally my analysis of belief reports to a metaphysical analysis of presentations. I maintain that presentations are public and concrete psychosocial processes. I show how the structure of these processes induces a relation analog to kinship, and I propose that the puzzling nature of presentations stems from conflating kinship and identity. Finally, I show how the kin theory of presentations can solve the diverse and often formidable puzzles occasioned by reporting beliefs and by sharing presentations.