A Remark on Attitudes De Dicto and De Se

Abstract

This is a two-fold response to the theory of attitudes presented by David Lewis in his paper Attitudes De Dicto and De Se. Lewis’ theory is on the specification of attitudes. On the one hand, it is obvious in his text that Lewis attempts to specify the objects of attitudes uniformly. I will argue that the attempt fails. The reason is that from Lewis’ formulation of an attitude, we cannot read the object of it. On the other hand, Lewis’ account could have been a theory on the specification of attitudes without any commitment on what the objects of attitudes are. I will argue that this does not hold either. In order to do that, I will construct pairs of cases in which the attitude in one case has the same formulization as in the other case according to Lewis’ theory. I will argue that in one such pair of cases, the focus of the attitude in one case can be different from that in the other, while the Lewisian theory of attitudes does not help to specify an attitude’s focus.