Propositional attitudes

Quoting mosesquine

There exists some x such that Ralph believes y(y is a spy) of x.

This is a faulty formalization, because it doesn't properly represent what is expressed by "Ralph believes there is a spy". What is expressed is Ralph believes that there is some x, such that y (is a spy) is a property of x.

Notice the difference. In your representation the object x, which is believed to have the property y, is assumed to exist. In my representation, the object x, which is assumed to have the property y, is believed to exist.

Quoting mosesquine

Quine formalizes 'Ralph believes there is a spy' as:

There exists some x such that Ralph believes y(y is a spy) of x.

I don't recall this offhand, but I agree with Metaphysican Undercover's comment. That Ralph believes there is a spy doesn't imply "there exists some x."

An easy way to see this is to imagine a Twilight Zone scenario: Ralph awakes and sees that no one is around him. He wonders where everyone has gone to. He figures that people have just disappeared from his town, and he begins to get paranoid and believe that someone is spying on him--he believes that he's being subjected to some sort of experiment. However, in reality, everyone in the world has disappeared but for Ralph. "Ralph believes there is a spy" is still true, but it doesn't imply "There exists some x." Rather Ralph believes there exists some x . . .

Reply to Terrapin Station
Actually, Quine offers two possible interpretation on 'Ralph believes there is a spy':
(1) Ralph believes there exists some x such that x is a spy. (de dicto)
(2) There exists some x such that Ralph believes y(y is a spy) of x. (de re)

Reply to mosesquine

Yeah, I found and I'm reading that paper now. (1) is a "relational" translation per Quine's terminology, and he believes it has problems. (2) is a "notional" translation that he believes is better. I'm still reading through the paper though.

Oh, and your (2) is still wrong, at least with respect to Quine's "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes"--there's no "There exists some x" at the beginning of the notional version. The notion version is simply "Ralph believes that (?x) (x is a spy)"

Reply to Terrapin Station
Quine actually offers '(7) (?x)(Ralph believes that x is a spy). It is interpreted in Quine's method as '(?x)(Ralph believes y(y is a spy) of x)
In Quine's paper, (7) is de re interpretation, and (8) is de dicto interpretation.
(8) is 'Ralph believes that (?x)(x is a spy)'.

Right, so if what Ralph believes is not just that someone has some particular property, but that in a case like "Ralph believes there is a spy," he believes there is a someone to have the property in the first place, then the object of a propositional attitude wouldn't simply be an intension, unless we try to say that Ralph believing there is someone of whom the property is true is itself an intension.

By the way, I've always seen a lot of this sort of work as an upshot of the ridiculousness of trying to avoid psychologism or simply a subjectivist account of how language works.

When you realize and don't shy away from the fact that what Ralph believes depends solely on what's present in Ralph's mind on a particular occasion, attempts to parse it in some uniform way simply seem silly.

Reply to Terrapin Station
The question was whether there is a better approach than of Quine...
Simple rejection does not help.

Reply to mosesquine

But I just said this: the better approach is to simply talk about what's present in an individual's mind on a particular occasion of an utterance.

Quoting Terrapin Station

But I just said this: the better approach is to simply talk about what's present in an individual's mind on a particular occasion of an utterance.

I agree with this, what is present in the individual's mind is the proper context of the utterance. We tend to want to place the utterance in a context of the speaker's environment. So when the speaker says "the cup is on the table", we look to the immediate environment for the meaning, a cup on a table. But this is demonstrably inadequate, as the speaker is often talking about a distant place or time. And, when it comes to abstract conceptualization, it is often necessary to ignore the environment completely, and focus directly on the mind of the individual who is speaking, giving the words the proper context within that individual's mind, in order to grasp the conceptualization.

Quoting Terrapin Station

When you realize and don't shy away from the fact that what Ralph believes depends solely on what's present in Ralph's mind on a particular occasion, attempts to parse it in some uniform way simply seem silly.

One odd thing about 'Ralph believes there is a spy' is that the primary propositional attitude is that of the unnamed maker of the sentence, and yet this anonymous sentence-maker is generally ignored in all these ravellings and unravellings of purported logical form. When I read 'Ralph believes there is a spy' my first question is about the credibility of the writer-about-Ralph, not of Ralph.

I agree, TS, this stuff feels eventually like Castles In The Air, a way of sounding as if we understand logically what we don't. But it's useful in talking with machines, for formal language is all the pesky critters understand.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

..what is present in the individual's mind is the proper context of the utterance

I agree, and would only add, that what is present in the interlocutor's mind is also part of the context. To whom is this addressed and why?

Quoting mcdoodle

One odd thing about 'Ralph believes there is a spy' is that the primary propositional attitude is that of the unnamed maker of the sentence, and yet this anonymous sentence-maker is generally ignored in all these ravellings and unravellings of purported logical form. When I read 'Ralph believes there is a spy' my first question is about the credibility of the writer-about-Ralph, not of Ralph.

That's a very good point.