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Object-Dependent Thought

Some thoughts are purely general in the sense that they make no reference to specific individual things. Dogs are descended from wolves, and there are infinitely many prime numbers are both general in this sense. The first makes a statement about concrete spatiotemporal objects but none in particular; the latter, one about abstract objects but again none in particular. Most of our everyday thoughts, however, are singular or object-directed thoughts in that they make reference to particular individual objects, be they concrete or abstract. Frege was a mathematician; You are not supposed to smoke in here; It is hot over there; That lime tree is tall; This yellow after-image is fading; I am leaving now; 3 is a prime number: These are all singular thoughts because each involves reference to a particular thing or things. As these examples indicate, singular thoughts (beliefs, judgments) are usually expressed by sentences containing proper names (e.g., Frege), indexical expressions (e.g., you, I, and now), demonstrative pronouns (e.g., that lime tree, this yellow after-image, here, there), and numeral names (3). The debate over the nature of singular thoughts has been largely restricted to thought about concretely existing objects available to perception. This entry will discuss the controversial doctrine that singular thoughts are object dependent. The following two sections expound the doctrine and note some of its allegedly paradoxical consequences. The next two sections sketch the central argument in favor of object dependence and some objections to it coming from rival conceptions of singular thought.

Singular Thought as Object Dependent

Some philosophers maintain that the mental contents of singular thoughts are object dependent, meaning by this that the existence and identity of their mental contents depend on the existence and identity of the objects those mental contents are about. For example, consider the thought that is a lime tree had by you while looking at a particular tree, where the italicized expression specifies the mental content of your thought. According to the doctrine of object dependence, if, counterfactually, no tree at all had in fact been there to be singled out by you, owing perhaps to a referential illusion or hallucination—call this the “empty possibility”—then there would have been no singular thought content for you to entertain. Consequently, your psychological condition in this situation would be different from what it is in the actual situation. Moreover, if, counterfactually, your thought had instead singled out a qualitatively indistinguishable but numerically different tree—call this the “duplicate possibility”—then the resulting thought would have had a different content from the content it has in the actual situation. Again, your overall psychological state in this duplicate possibility is different from what it actually is.

First-person thoughts expressed with the indexical I seem clearly to be object dependent. The thought that you now express with the sentence I am hot surely could not exist unless you did. Furthermore, no one else, not even your identical twin, could have had the very same thought. The thesis that singular thoughts expressed with other indexicals, demonstratives, and proper names are object dependent is, however, highly controversial, because of its allegedly paradoxical consequences.

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