This paper is an attempt to present a solution to Kripke's puzzle about belief. My solution is one that allows exportation, i.e. the transition from de dicto to de re. I won't present the details of the story imagined by Kripke in his well-known article, which I assume to be known to the reader. The most usual thing said about Kripke's puzzle about belief is that exportation is not allowed, since if Pierre's beliefs that Londres est jolie and London is not pretty were interpreted de re, this would lead to a contradiction. What I hold is, however, a more refined answer, namely one that allows exportation. The first part of my essay is a criticism of the thesis that exportation cannot be allowed in the Kripke's puzzle about belief. The second part provides a more constructive solution, according to which exportation is allowed. What I hold is that exportation in the case of Kripke's puzzle depends on the truth-value of some counterfactuals about beliefs, and that the truth-value of these counterfactuals depends on the firmness of belief.
A terminological note. I will write much about de dicto beliefs and de re beliefs. In most cases, when I report a belief in ordinary language I will try to mention whether it is de dicto or de re. But in all cases I will respect the following convention: a de dicto belief is rendered formally as B(Fa) and in plain language as believes that Fa, while a de re belief is rendered formally as (BF)a and in plain language as believes about a that it is F.
I.
Pierre in Kripke's example is not an irrational person, yet he believes two sentences that, unbeknownst to him, express a proposition and its contradictory, namely that 'London is not pretty' and that 'Londres est jolie'. If both beliefs were interpreted de re, then it would follow that the city London-Londres is such that Pierre believes it is pretty and that he believes it is not pretty. But this is impossible, if Pierre is a rational person. Therefore � so the usual conclusion reads � Pierre does not believe anything about London-Londres: his beliefs are de dicto and not de re.
What I hold is that this answer is wrong for a simple reason. The reason is that, in Kripke's story, Pierre came to believe that London is not pretty at a definite moment of time (call it t), long after he had come to believe that Londres est jolie. But we have all reasons to believe that before moment t, Pierre really believed, or at least might have believed, about London-Londres that it was pretty � at least if we are ready to ascribe the de re belief about London that it is F to any competent speaker of French who believes that Londres est F and knows about London everything that Pierre does (for example, that Londres est la capitale d'Angleterre, that it lies on such-and-such coordinates on the map), even if s/he has never seen London. That is: if we denied to Pierre-before-t the belief (de re) about London, then we should deny such a belief to all Frenchmen who had various beliefs that F(Londres) and are as linguistically competent and knowledgeable as Pierre. But it is counterintuitive to deny such a belief to all these Frenchmen.
I suppose that for many x, if x is a civilized person of the contemporary Western society, it is true that x believes that Osama bin Laden is a detestable person and that x has a gentle neighbor on his or her floor, whom x believes to be admirable for his benevolence. But how can we know that Osama bin Laden does not hide exactly on our floor, disguised as the gentle neighbour of whom we believed that is admirable for his benevolence? Can any of us honestly claim to have a 100" guarantee that s/he is not and will never be in such a situation? No, unless one knows and would know in reasonable details the biography of all one's neighbours. And still, this is not a reason to doubt that we believe Osama bin Laden to be detestable. Even if he were disguised in the gentle neighbor whose benevolence we admire, we would still believe that bin Laden is detestable, even during the time when we believed that the gentle neighbour was admirable for his benevolence. Therefore: the mere fact that one has a de dicto belief that Fa and is unable to recognize a as the reference of 'a' when becoming acquainted with a does not preclude one from having a de re belief about a. Therefore it is unacceptable to refuse to ascribe beliefs about London to all the Frenchmen who had various beliefs of the form Londres est F and who never saw London and who would not have recognized London if they saw it. But from all we know about Pierre, he is one of these Frenchmen. Therefore: Pierre-before-t might really have had a belief about London. (If he didn�t have it, then the reason is not that he was, and perhaps would have been, unable to recognize the city of London as the reference of 'Londres'). Thus: nothing prevents us, in principle, from ascribing to Pierre-before-t the de re belief about London-Londres.
I emphasize that I do not imply that all those who believe de dicto that Fa and are unable to recognize a as the reference of 'a' when acquainted with a have a de re belief about a. But I only want to point that they may have such a de re belief. If we want to exclude some de dicto beliefs from the club of beliefs worthy of exportation, then the mere fact that the believer would not have recognized the object is not a sufficient reason.
Now it is said that that at moment t+n, when Pierre reached London and formed the belief that London is not pretty, exportation is not allowed from any of Pierre's beliefs involving names of London-Londres. But if this is correct, then it follows that a de re belief ceased to be de re once a(nother) de dicto belief was acquired. That is: Pierre's acquiring the (de dicto) belief that London is not pretty had the power of cutting the link, so to speak, between the name Londres as it occurred in Pierre's previous belief that Londres est jolie and the real object London-Londres. A de dicto belief caused a de re belief to stop being de re and becoming de dicto, it 'disexported' it. This is very counterintuitive. But unexportation might oblige us to precisely this step.
If we allowed such a phenomenon of unexportation to occur, then we would always be at risk to lose control of it. Indeed: how can we be sure we are not in the situation of Pierre before t+n? For any name that I believe refers to a certain object and which occurs in a de dicto belief of mine that is F, how can I be sure that I won't learn another name of it, in another language, that I won't recognize to be a name of the same object and will occur in a belief of mine that it is not-F? This skeptical question is different from and more radical than the skeptical question 'How can we be sure that we are not, all of us, in Pierre's situation?'. Perhaps there are some grounds that keep us all from being in Pierre's situation, but definitely there is no reason that keeps any of us from coming to be in Pierre's situation in the future. If we find ourselves in Pierre's situation, we won't recognize it on the cuff. If the possibility of unexportation is allowed, then for any belief of mine that Fa it is, in principle, possible to discover that it is no longer about a. The situation may be generalized to entire linguistic communities. I believe (together with most of those who know English and have at least some rudimentary notions of history) that Napoleon was short: Not only that I believe this, but I am very convinced of this. But nothing logically prevents the possibility that I, or all of us, will learn some exotic African language, spoken in a former French colony, in which Napoleon is called by a name unrecognizable to us as 'Napoleon', for example Numburburu. Let's assume that all speakers of that exotic language know all true things about Napoleon, namely that he was the most famous French Emperor, that he won the battle of Austerlitz and lost the battle at Waterloo and so on) except for the information that he was short. They believe that Numburburu was tall (they cannot conceive that French emperors could be short). If I learn their language and adopt their beliefs about Numburburu in their language my previous belief that 'Napoleon was short' will stop being about Napoleon. (This belief will be unexportated by the belief containing the name 'Numburburu'). If I come to be in such a situation, I will be with respect to Napoleon-Numburburu like Kripke's Pierre with respect to London-Londres. We can assume that if I am in such a situation I have the intellectual means to discover it and correct my beliefs; but even so, I won't be able to diagnose immediately such a situation. And during the interval between the time at which I acquire my that Numburburu was tall and the time at which I diagnose my epistemic situation, I will be having no belief about Napoleon-Numburburu at all. If so, then I am in danger of discovering that my current beliefs about Napoleon will have ceased to be about Napoleon at all. But what happens to Napoleon may happen to any other term which appears in any belief of mine. If so, then I am in danger of discovering that I will have stopped having beliefs about anything at all.
We may want to respect the intuition that a de re belief cannot become de dicto: that, if a belief is de dicto, it has been so during all its lifetime. I consider this intuition to be correct. But if this intuition is combined with the thesis that exportation is not admissible from any of Pierre's beliefs, then both of Pierre's beliefs were de dicto from the moment each of them was acquired. If so, then the situation will be even more dramatic. Since it is � as I showed in the above paragraph � possible that any of us will some time be in Pierre's situation and not recognize it immediately � then it follows that none of us has any de re belief. We do not risk that all our de re beliefs should be unexportated, but risk instead to discover that none of them is ever, has ever been, de re! If none of Pierre's beliefs could be interpreted de re, then no human belief could be interpreted de re. This is too strong and counterintuitive a conclusion.
II.
If we have enough time to acquire empirical information, we can recognize whether we are in the situation of Kripke's Pierre and leave it. All we need to do is a two-stepped task: (1) to find all the pairs of our de dicto beliefs, in various languages, that contain contradictory predicates and then (2) to check whether the names contained in these beliefs are coreferential or not. To scrupulously complete this task is within the intellectual power of anyone who does not have an infinite number of de dicto beliefs and who is linguistically competent. Let's admit that we do not have an infinite number of beliefs and that we can complete this task. But to complete it takes time. Therefore: nothing guarantees that we won't be, for some time, in the situation of Kripke's Pierre. And if Pierre's situation is one in which two beliefs that seemed de re are actually de dicto, and they (as we admitted above) they have always been de dicto, this means that we cannot guarantee for any of our beliefs that it is de re. If we want to have any de re belief at all, then we have no reason of denying this privilege to Pierre. This is, in my opinion, a sufficient reason to say that Pierre's case is one that allows exportation. If both of Pierre's Londonese beliefs were de re, he would contradict himself. Therefore, at most one of Pierre's Londonese beliefs may be exportated. The obvious question is: which one?
Let's pay attention to the following three counterfactuals, only one of which may be true:
(1) If Pierre had known that London is Londres, he would have maintained his belief that Londres est jolie, would have abandoned his previous belief that London is not nice and came to believe, in English, that London is nice.
(2) If Pierre had known that London is Londres, he would have maintained his belief that London is not nice, would have abandoned his previous belief that Londres est jolie and came to believe, in French, that Londres est jolie.
(3) If Pierre had known that London is Londres, he would have abandoned both his beliefs and suspended judgement; he would have said in English I don't believe either that London is pretty or not pretty and in French Je ne crois ni que Londres est jolie ni que Londres n'est pas jolie.
It is obviously true that these are all the three possibilities counterfactually open to Pierre if he is rational and that these three counterfactuals are mutually exclusive: one of them must be true if Pierre is rational. A rational person may hold contradictory beliefs if, because of factual ignorance, s/he may not recognize them as contradictory; but s/he would not hold such beliefs if s/he were presented with the adequate empirical information.
What I hold � and this is the central thesis of this paper � is that exportation depends on which of the above three counterfactuals is true in the following way:
If (1) is true, then exportation is allowed from the 'French belief': Pierre believed about London-Londres that it was nice. Exportation is not allowed from the English belief.
If (2) is true, then exportation is allowed from the 'English belief': Pierre believed about London-Londres that it was not nice. Exportation is not allowed from the French belief
If (3) is true, then exportation is not allowed from either belief. Pierre did not believe anything at all about London-Londres.
This seems to me the most reasonable solution that allows exportation, allows Pierre to be rational and avoids the total skepticism that threatened us if we did not allow exportation. Let's remember the example of Osama bin Laden and the gentle neighbour. My thesis was that most of us would still believe that Osama bin Laden is detestable even during the time when we believed that our gentle neighbour (who, unbeknownst to us, is Osama bin Laden in disguise) was admirable. Parenthetically: this example proves that a believer may believe that Fa and be able to recognize a as the reference of 'a' and still fail to believe anything de re about a. In this example, most of us don�t believe about our neighbour that he is admirable, although we believe that our neighbour is admirable and we can recognize our neighbour.
The reason is that if we had known that Osama bin Laden is the same as the gentle neighbour, we would have stopped believing that the gentle neighbour is admirable and would have come to believe instead that the gentle neighbour is detestable. Thus, we can formulate the desired criterion for exportation from beliefs that Fa where 'a' refers to a real object a: a belief de dicto that Fa deserves to be exportated if for any belief ~Fb we could have, if we would discover that a=b, then we would continue to believe that Fa and abandoned the belief that ~Fb in favour of the belief that Fb.
True, we are still in the danger of discovering that some of what we took to be our de re beliefs were actually de dicto; since we may become or even be in Pierre's situation. Indeed Pierre, if he learns that London is Londres, will discover that some of what he took to be de re beliefs were actually de dicto .But my solution has a note of optimism in that this danger is unlikely to concern all one's beliefs. In other words, it is, most likely, not the case that it could be discovered that all the beliefs that one took to be de re were actually de dicto. Such an unpleasant discovery would be made only if I would have suspended judgment as to whether Fa or ~Fb, whenever a and b are discovered to be coreferential. But I think that for most of our de dicto beliefs that Fa it is (1) either the case that we would continue to believe that Fa even if we discovered that we believed that ~Fb and a=b; or that (2) we would stop believing that Fa and would replace this belief with the belief that ~Fa once we discovered that we also held the belief that ~Fb and that a=b.
III.
It remains to present a method to assess the truth-value of these counterfactuals. One could think that the happiest situation is that in which Pierre � at some time t � actually learns that London is Londres and modifies his beliefs accordingly. If this happens, this will allow us to ascribe to him, retrospectively, the belief about London that it is not pretty or the belief that it is pretty. But this is wrong. We cannot assume that if at moment t it is true that p>q , then at any moment t+n, it will be alse that p & ~q. Such an assumption is wrong. I believe that the following situation might obtain: at moment t Pierre would have abandoned the French belief if he had learnt that London is Londres, then at t+n he learns that London is Londres and abandons the English belief while preserving the French belief. A counterfactual p>q (with a false antecendent) may be true even if p becomes actual at some later time when q is false. I am ready to admit that such situations may be rare, but they are nevertheless not impossible. To think otherwise implies that the truth value of a time-indexed counterfactual varies in time. Therefore: when trying to find what Pierre believed about London-Londres, we should be sensitive to what Pierre would have believed if he had known that London is Londres, but should be insensitive to what he believed if he actually came to know that London is Londres.
The empirical test desired is that of the firmness of one's de dicto beliefs. Some beliefs are firmer than other beliefs, and the firm belief that Fa would continue to be held even if the believer discovered that s/he believed that ~Fb and that a=b. Firm beliefs are, counterfactually, difficult to remove. Firmness of belief is a psychological concept, analoguous with the logical concept of necessity. Firm beliefs are, from a psychological point of view, what necessary truths are from a logical point of view: as necessary truths are true in all possible words, so firm beliefs are held by a believer in all, or in almost counterfactual epistemic situations. (An extremely firm belief of John is a belief that John would hold no matter what would happen, no matter what how his other beliefs changed. Less firm beliefs of John are the beliefs that he would hold in almost all counterfactual epistemic situations: i.e., if B(Fa) is a firm belief of John, then there are very few beliefs that John may acquire or lose so that he would stop believing that Fa.
Necessary truths are such that they make true any counterfactual in which they occupy the position of the sequent: If q is a necessary truth, then for any p, it is the case that if p had been the case, then q would (still) have been the case. Firm beliefs make true almost any counterfactual in which they occupy the position of the sequent: if q is a firm belief of John, then for almost any p, it is true that if John had believed that p, he would still have believed that q. I underlined the word "almost" in order to highlight that firm beliefs are still subject to potential reversal: an extremely firm belief is such that its believer would hold it true no matter what else he believed.
The idea that is present behind this counterfactual solution to Kripke's puzzle that I presented above reposes on the fact that Pierre faces a potential conflict between his English belief and his French belief. These beliefs are not contradictory if they are de dicto, but they become contradictory if they are taken de re. Whenever two de dicto beliefs threaten to contradict each other if they become de re, i.e. if exportation is allowed, there are, so to speak, two opposite tendencies of exportation. When these two tendencies meet each other, an explicit conflict between the two beliefs occurs and this conflict results in the revision of one belief - of course, under assumptions of rationality. This conflict between beliefs ends with the victory of the more intensely held belief. Thus, exportation goes hand in hand with, and depends on, a metric of the firmness of belief. When someone believes (de dicto) that Fa and ~Fb, not knowing that a=b, his beliefs are in most cases not of equal firmness. And the less firm belief survives, or rather seems to survive in the believer's system of beliefs only because the object that is the reference of a and of b is not recognized as the bearer of a and of b. If it were so recognized, then the less firm belief would be abandoned. That�s why exportation is to be allowed only from the firmer belief.
The reason why I introduced the concept of firmness of belief is that it is more intuitive, in my opinion, to measure the firmness of a belief than to assess whether a de dicto belief may rightly be interpreted de re. And - what is more important firmness of a belief is a parameter that allows us to test the belief's counterfactual power to eliminate other beliefs. If the firmness of a belief (de dicto) that Fa could be tested only when explicitly confronted with the de dicto belief that ~Fb, where 'a' and 'b' are two names that, unbeknownst to the believer, designate the same object, then the concept of firmness of belief would be useless to us. But if - as I hold �the firmness of a belief may be measured in the absence of such an explicit conflict, then making exportation dependent on it may be a step forward.
These remarks about exportation as dependent on the firmness of beliefs appear in a clearer light once we generalize Kripke's puzzle to entire sentences. Imagine that I am the disciple of an Indian sect and I took the oath to believe everything that my guru says. My guru speaks only in Hindi. He utters repeatedly, on an authoritarian voice, the sentence Rahaja patra. After he becomes convinced that I really believe him, he grants me a scholarship to India, where I meet people with a rudimentary knowledge of English. They ask me Rahaja patra true? and I nod. Unbeknownst to me, the meaning of Rahaja patra was actually the Sun revolves around the Earth. (Perhaps there were no Hindi words in it corresponding to the English words sun, to revolve and Earth but this does not affect this mental experiment). In such a case, my Hindi interlocutors will be right in ascribing to me the belief that rahaja patra, although they won't be right in ascribing to me the belief that the sun revolves around the Earth: indeed, my conversion to the guru's sect had not such a profound effect as changing my firm belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and not vice versa. (Perhaps a better way of expressing this situation would be to say that I believe that rahaja patra is true, but I don't believe that rahaja patra - of course, if the bearers of truth are taken to be sentences rather than propositions). The reason why I cannot be said to believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth is the counterfactual:
If I had known that rahaja patra means that the Sun revolves around the Earth, then I would no longer have believed that rahaja patra and - if I had learnt Hindi - i would have believed the contradictory (in Hindi) of rahaja patra.
And the truth of this counterfactual is exactly what we wanted to say when we said that my belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun is a very firm belief, and remained so even after my conversion to the guru's sect.
On the contrary, if my belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun had been less firm, and my conversion to the guru's sect had had more profound effects, then it would have been the case that the following counterfactual was true:
If I had learnt that rahaja patra means that the Sun revolves around the Earth, I would have abandoned my belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun and would have replaced it with the belief that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
This situation is a generalization of Kripke's puzzle about belief. The analogous of exportation is the transition from sentences to propositions, or from beliefs that sentences are true to beliefs that so-and-so.. This transition corresponds to what we usually call understanding of a sentence. Indeed, my merely believing that p does not guarantee the fact that I understand what p means. It is psychologically impossible to have very firm beliefs that we don�t understand; moreover, this isconceptually impossible if we must understand some beliefs at all. Aldous Huxley imagined in Brave New World the experiment of hypnopaedia - education-through-sleep, in which children are conditioned to learn various sentences during their sleep. This had the undesired result that they learn no more than sentences: their beliefs were de dicto and purely Quinean, i.e. did not involve any attitude to the components of the sentences believed:
�The Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second in length of all the rivers of the globe. Although falling short of the length of Mississippi-Missouri, the Nile is at the head of all rivers as regards the length of its basin, which extends through 35 degrees of latitude��
). By modifying a little Huxley's example, we may imagine that a child who was hypnopaedically conditioned learnt that 'The-Amazon-is-the-longest-river' and, based on the information he collects from other sources, he later comes to believe that the Nile is the longest river and Amazon is the second longest - this without abandoning his hypnopaedic belief. To the question 'What does he believe about the Amazon?', the answer is, again, dependent on the truth value of the three counterfactuals that may be formed (he would have abandoned one of his beliefs or both) and these counterfactuals reflect again the firmness of his beliefs - in our case, they reflect how strong his hypnopaedic indoctrination proved. Exportation is allowed from firm beliefs. We risk discovering that we have beliefs about nothing to the extent at which we have weak beliefs. And we risk discovering that we will only have beliefs about nothing if we could not replace our weak beliefs with stronger beliefs.
At breakfast the next morning, �Tommy,� someone says, �do you know which is the longest river in Africa?� A shaking of the head. �But don�t you remember something that begins: The Nile is the��
�The- Nile-is-the-longest-river-in-Africa-and-the-second-in-length-of-all-the-rivers-of-the-globe�� The words come rushing out. �Although-falling-short-of��
�Well now, which is the longest river in Africa?�
The eyes are blank. �I don�t know.�
�But the Nile, Tommy.�
�The- Nile-is-the-longest-river-in-Africa-and-the-second��
�Then which river is the longest, Tommy?�
Tommy bursts into tears. �I don�t know,� he howls