Alexander Read (St Hilda’s): Debunking De Se Content
A recently popular line of thought is that there is nothing special about the de se. Puzzles involving such attitudes are merely instances of Frege’s Puzzle, and so whatever resources we have to deal with the latter, we can use to deal with the former. In opposition, there are those who argue that de se phenomena form a special class of propositional attitude (Special Attitudes), and as such, they present a unique problem that cannot be subsumed under the umbrella of Frege Puzzles (Special Challenge). Torre (2018) provides an argument for Special Attitudes. In this paper, I show that his argument fails, and I offer some considerations in favour of treating de se puzzles as opacity cases akin to Frege Puzzles.
