Two dogmas of attitude reports

• The traditional view of the meaning of attitude reports is based on an assumption that is so widespread, undis-puted and unexplained that principle (A) can be called a dogma. (A) The meaning of an attitude report finds expression in the readings the report has. • When prompted, one would probably come up with a definition of a reading as in (R). (R) A reading of an attitude report is a logical form from a certain logical form formalism that is assigned to an attitude report to capture the conditions under which the attitude report is true. • The concept of a reading thus embodies the view that to know the meaning of a sentence is to know its truth-conditions. • Truth-conditions of a sentence are explicated with logical forms from a certain logical form formalism. (1) Adrian wants to buy a jacket like Malte’s. • It is widely accepted that (1) can be true in more than one way if the semantics of want is assumed to be a modal predicate indicating a preference-ranking of possible worlds. • That is, the NP a jacket like Malte’s can be placed either inside or outside the scope of the modal predicate want in the logical form that is assigned to (1). • The textbook presentation of the two most prominent logical forms of (1) is given in (2a) and (2b) respectively