Modes of presentation in attitude reports

International audienceIn the first half of this chapter I present Loar’s criticism of Quine’s distinction between notional (de dicto) and relational (de re) attitude reports. I defend the claim that, whenever the content clause of an attitude report contains a genuine singular term referring to some individual the attitude is about, the report has to be construed as ‘relational’, even if it is opaque and fails substitutivity. In the second half of the chapter, I argue that Loar’s alternative picture is still not comprehensive enough, as there are more cases of relational opacity than it can accommodate. Some of the cases I discuss involve a divergence between the ‘exercised’ mode of presentation and the ‘ascribed’ mode of presentation, while others involve echoic uses or ‘protagonist projection’. I offer a more comprehensive picture, within the mental file framework