Notion specification in belief ascriptions

In the spotlight of the semantics of belief contexts is the problem that in these contexts the substi-tutivity of identity principle is violated. One of the theories which pretend to explain this phenomenon is the theory of hidden indexicals. In this paper this theory given in version of Stephen Schiffer and in version of Mark Crimmins and John Perry is considered. Schiffer argues that belief is to be analyzed as a three place relation between an agent, a proposition and some mental entity which he calls mode of presentation. From his point of view, truth condition for belief ascription includes a designation of type of mode of presentation such that this type can be supposed on the basis of context. But one may reasonable doubt that, when a reporter ascribes a belief to an agent, he actually means what he would mean according this type-specifying condition. Schiffer comes to the following conclusion: to assume that the reporter mean one certain type of mode of presentation we should have sufficient reasons to deny that he mean any other type of mode of presentation which can be supposed on the context basis. But in general we do not have such reasons. The version of Mark Crimmins and John Perry avoid this problem fragmentary. A parallel to Schiffer's mode of presentation they call a notion. According to their theory, a reporter usually is able to refer to some notion directly, without the mediation on its type. To do this he only need to know that the agent has this notion. The reason for such knowledge may consist in simple fact that once the agent was in situation disposing to form the notion of an object and he was interested in this object. One weakness of such notion specification is as follows: any changes in agent's notions must affect to the truth value of the belief ascriptions involving direct reference to these notions. Sometimes it seems to be implausible. Besides, in some contexts, as one may reasonably assume, belief ascription is true exactly because of the fact that the reporter mean not the notion itself but the notion type. To analyze such contexts Crimmins and Perry give their own formulation of type-specifying condition, and for this condition the problem raised by Schiffer occurred to be actual too.

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