Abstract

The chapter begins with a critical discussion of Frege and Russell’s views of the nature of belief and its relation to mental representation. An account of attitudes and their ascription is outlined, on which attitudes are realized by mental states with representational properties, and attitude ascription conveys information about both propositional content and its representation. Objections having to do with attitudes realized non-linguistically or by dispositions are discussed in this chapter. A coda discusses amendments to the formalism in succeeding chapters.