In sensu composito, in sensu diviso

Adapted from M. Lieberman, language log:


Suppose that Jordan said something like

"U.S. forces in Iraq have intentionally killed 12 journalists."

Lieberman:

"This isn't an exact quote -- some people believe that Jordan resigned to prevent the transcript from being released -- but whatever he said was apparently subject to the same ambiguity. Jay Rosen, from NYU's department of journalism, put it like this."

"The original account was too ambiguous for me. It had him saying United States soldiers targeted journalists, and then claiming that's not what he meant. He later explained it as: the soldiers were trying to kill these people, but did not know they were shooting at journalists."

"That interpretation is the de re ("about the thing") reading."

"The soldiers were trying to kill certain people, without knowing that their targets would turn out to be journalists."

"And Oedipus wanted to marry Jocasta, without knowing that she was his mother."

"Here the belief or desire is all about the thing referred to -- the targeted person, the spouse, whatever -- and the description comes from outside.
The alternative is the de dicto ("about the saying" ) reading."

"Here the belief or desire is all about the description: the soldiers want to go out and kill some journalists; Oedipus is an adoptee who wants to find his mother and marry her."

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

"The idea of the systematic distinction

between the readings de dicto (in sensu

composito) and de re (in sensu diviso) of

modally qualified statements was introduced into

medieval discussions in Abelard's investigations

of modal statements"

ABELARD:

Super Perihermenias, 3-47.

Also:

ABELARD:

Dialectica 191.1-210.19).

"It was often mentioned, as in the

Dialectica Monacensis,

in discussions of the composition-division ambiguity of sentences."

"Despite his understanding of the de re/de dicto distinction, Abelard came to a more troubled end than Eason Jordan did."

"All the same, his legacy includes the University of Paris, an enduring story of love in adversity -- and one of the few bits of Latin that remain in common philosophical use."

"One example of the prevalence of the traditional use of modal notions can be found in the early medieval de dicto/de re analysis of examples such as

‘A standing man can sit’.

----" (I am discussing this vis a vis very apt expansion on Lewis's point about the reference to 'Language' in phrases which contain that term -- vide online, Dale, "The theory of meaning", chapter 5 for his own solution to Lewis's use of the divisio-compositio distinction here.

---

"It was commonly stated that the composite (de dicto) sense is as follows."

‘It is possible that a man sits and stands at the same time’

"and that on this reading the sentence is false."

"The divided (de re) sense is ‘A man who is now standing can sit’ and on this reading the sentence is true."

"In the middle of the 20th century, W.V. Quine re-analyzed this distinction as a matter of the scope of logical operators, and applied it to propositional attitude terms such as believe."

--- this is indeed the point by Lewis, as noted by Dale. But as Dale notes, the issue of compositio and divisio applies to any sentence and not just to an ascription of a propositional or psychological attitude, where 'de re' and 'de dicto' will do just as well.

As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains Quine's analysis:

[1] Ortcutt believes that someone is a spy.

This could mean just that

[2] Ortcutt believes that there are spies

or that Ortcutt has more interesting information:

[3] Someone is an x such that Ortcutt believes that x is a spy.

Lieberman:

"The distinction here can be seen as a distinction of scope for the existential quantifier. In [2], the existential quantifier is interpreted as having small scope, within the propositional clause of the belief attribution."

[2*] Ortcutt believes: ∃x, x is a spy.

"In [3], however, the existential quantifier has large scope, selecting an individual and then ascribing a belief that relates Ortcutt to that particular individual."

[3*] ∃x, Ortcutt believes that x is a spy.

"The backwards E is the "existential quantifier", so that the de re version ∃x, Ortcutt believes that x is a spy is read "there exists an x such that Ortcutt believes that x is a spy"."

"OK, how could this help us with "It is rare, Hamblin knows, for these kinds of situations to end better than they normally do"?"

"Let's start with a scope ambiguity involving a comparative and a verb like want, which will make a good Quinian de re/de dicto example."

"Kim wants to score higher than Leslie scored."

"This could mean that there exists some score L (which we describe as the score Leslie got) such that Kim wants to score higher than L. That's the de re reading -- it's all about the numerical score. Kim doesn't care that it was Leslie's score, and maybe she doesn't even know who Leslie is."

"Alternatively, the same sentence could mean that Kim wants her score to beat Leslie's, regardless of what it is. That's the de dicto reading -- it's all about Leslie's level of achievement."

"We can get a similar scope ambiguity with a predicate like rare.
It was rare for Kim to score higher than Leslie did.
Translated into "heavy English", this might mean something like
"There was an L=Leslie's score, such that it was rare that there was a K=Kim's score and K was greater than L.""

or it might mean something like

"It was rare that there was an L=Leslie's score and a K=Kim's score such that K was greater than L."

"Here the de re/de dicto distinction doesn't arise from the interpretation of a traditional modal operator (like "necessarily") or a propositional attitude verb (like "wants"), but instead in reference to a statistical sampling process."

"We're not talking about whether necessity, belief or desire applies to a thing per se or to a thing under a given description. Instead, we've got a scope ambiguity having to do with a sampling process: do we fix Leslie's score and then look at the statistics of Kim's scores relative to it? or do we look at the statistics of the relationship between Kim's scores and Leslie's scores?"

"However, I'm not sure that the original example
"It is rare ... for these kinds of situations to end better than they normally do."
involves a coherent scope ambiguity of this type, because the reference point "how these situations normally [end]" comes out of the same sampling process referred to by the phrase "it is rare"."

"The idea seems to be that how these situations normally end is "badly", and if we substitute "badly" for "how they normally do" in
It's rare for these situations to end better than they normally do.
then we get
It's rare for these situations to end better than badly.
which is awkward but coherent. I agree that this is probably what the writer had in mind, and it does seem analogous to some of the medieval de re/de dicto examples, but I don't see a coherent reconstruction in terms of a Quinian scope difference."