A plea for (purely) singular propositions: The cases of belief correction and de re attitude reports

Abstract

In this paper I assume that it is reasonable to claim, as Michael Devitt does, that a definite description can express, in certain contexts, a genuinely referential meaning, but I discuss the requisite, also defended by Devitt, that the predicates involved in the description at stake should apply to the referred object. In so doing, I consider some cases of sentences containing definite descriptions constituted by general terms that, strictly speaking, don't apply to the intended object but are nonetheless intuitively true. Along these lines, in the last paragraphs, I suggest that the role of the predicative material of a referential definite description can be regarded as secondary or instrumental, a mere guide to the identification of the object referred to.