Poll: Two belief ascriptions
Time for an intuition poll. Huey says to Dewey and Louie, "Let’s stipulate that ‘Lee’ refers to the youngest Chinese spy, if there is one." In fact there is a youngest Chinese spy, but Huey, Dewey, and Louie have had no direct or indirect interaction with this person. In conversation with Louie, Dewey makes the following belief ascriptions, the first of which is de dicto and the second of which is de re:
(A1) Huey believes that Lee is the youngest Chinese spy, if anyone is.
(A2) Concerning Lee (the individual who is the youngest Chinese spy): Huey believes of him or her that he or she is the youngest Chinese spy, if anyone is.
Question: What are the truth-values of (A1) and (A2)? Answers are welcome from anyone who is familiar with the difference between de dicto and de re attitude ascriptions. Relatively pre-theoretical judgments are especially welcome, though I don’t mind getting post-theoretical judgments if they’re marked as such. Comments along with the answers are welcome but optional. These attitude ascriptions were discussed in my entry on Soames Chapter 4, but if you haven’t read that entry already, it’s probably best to decide on your answer before reading it. I’m also interested to hear about people’s intuitions about two analogous pairs of ascriptions in which ‘believes’ is replaced by ‘knows’, yielding (B1) and (B2), and by ‘knows a priori’, yielding (C1) and (C2).
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