A notorious affair called exportation

Howard Burdick

pp. 363-377

in: Synthese 87 (3), 1991.

Abstract

In ‘Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes’, Quine held (a) that the rule of exportation is always admissible, and (b) that there is a significant distinction between ‘a believes-true ‘(Ex)Fx’’ and ‘(Ex) a believes-true ‘F’ of x’. An argument of Hintikka's, also urged by Sleigh, persuaded him that these two intuitions are incompatible; and he consequently repudiated the rule of exportation. Hintikka and Kaplan propose to restrict exportation and quantifying in to favoured contexts — Hintikka to contexts where the believer knows who or what the person or thing in question is; Kaplan to contexts where the believer possesses a vivid name of the person or thing in question. The bulk of this paper is taken up with criticisms of these proposals. Its ultimate purpose, however, is to motivate an alternative approach, which imposes no restrictions on exportation or quantifying in, but repudiates Quine's other intuition: this is the approach taken in my ‘A Logical Form for the Propositional Attitudes’.

Cited authors

Quine Willard Van Orman