On Denoting Propositions and Facts

On Denoting Propositions and Facts Terence Parsons Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 7, Language and Logic. (1993), pp. 441-460. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583%281993%297%3C441%3AODPAF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H Philosophical Perspectives is currently published by Blackwell Publishing.

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Philosophical Perspectives, 7, Language and Logic, 1993

ON DENOTING PROPOSITIONS AND FACTS*

Terence Parsons

University of California, Irvine

Introduction In "On Denoting," Bertrand Russell maintains that the key to an understanding of denoting ordinary things is an analysis of the logical syntax of sentences containing the definite article 'the'. In somewhat the same vein, I think that the key to an analysis of denoting propositions and facts must be an analysis of the logical syntax of sentences containing the complementizer 'that7, the word that forms that-clauses, such as 'that snow is white'. 1 But my conclusions are the opposite of Russell's. His insight was tp reject the natural idea that combining 'the' with a common noun phrase yields a phrase, a definite description, that acts as a syntactic-semantic unit and refers to a thing. I defend the natural idea that combining 'that' with a sentence yields a phrase, a thatclause, that acts as a syntactic-semantic unit and refers to a proposition or fact. Treating that-clauses as units flies in the face of conventional practice of the last few decades of work in modal, epistemic, and deontic logic. In these enterprises, the role of the word 'that' is to adhere to a verb or adjective to produce an operator, such as 'It is possible that' or 'x knows that', the whole of which combines with sentences in non-truth functional ways. Russell, had he considered this view, would have said "This leaves that-clauses, by themselves, wholly devoid of meaning, but gives a meaning to every proposition in whose verbal expression they occur" (paraphrased from On Denoting).This practice sees 'Mary believes that snow is white' as having the structure Mary I believes-that / snow is white, where the that-clause has dissolved, much as definite descriptions dissolve under Russellian analysis. I see the sentence instead as having the structure that one naively attributes to it:

442 1Terence Parsons

Mary / believes / that-snow is white. The conventional practice of incorporating 'that' into modal operators has been challenged by a number of recent writers (Anderson 1984, Bealer 1982, and others), who argue that that-clauses refer to propositions, and that adjectives and verbs stand for properties of propositions. I want to build on these arguments and explore some of their consequences. I will also survey other uses of thatclauses in English, and I will (weakly) endorse the view that some that-clauses refer to facts.

1 'That' Combines with Sentences, not with Verbs and Adjectives 1.1 Syntax Most current linguistic theory assigns to the word 'that' the role of complementizer, which means that it combines with a sentence to produce a syntactically special kind of thing, a complement. The gross syntactic structure of a sentence like 'Mary believes that S' is:

NP

V

COMPLEMENT

Mary believes that [snow is white] The complement is a unit; it does not consist of a piece of the verb ('that7) artificially transferred to the sentence. This complement can also appear in other constructions, such as 'What Mary believes is that snow is white', 'It seems that snow is white', 'That snow is white is what Mary told John', and so on. The contrary view that eschews that-clauses in favor of combining 'that' with verbs and adjectives would involve complications in syntactic theory so far-reaching that they are not seriously contemplated in linguistics.2 The verb 'believe' may also combine with a noun phrase, so another kind of structure with 'believe' is

NP I Mary

V NP I I it believes

In more complex cases, the NP is quantified, to yield a structure like 'Mary believes everything Agatha says'. The quantificational part may then be expanded to

On Denoting Propositions and Facts / 443 NP,x NP V NP

I I I

I Everything Agatha says: Mary believes x

Here the 'x' replaces the 'it' of the previous example. This type of quantification is perfectly ordinary, and there is no indication that the 'believes' creates a structure different from that in 'Mary sees everything Agatha sees'. For simplicity, I will ignore the extra structural complexity of quantifiers. Does 'believe' have a different meaning when it occurs with a complement and with an NP? There is no indication of this, and so the simplest view of English is that 'believes' bears the same semantic relation to its complement as it bears to its direct object NP when it has one (or the variable bound by that NP in quantificational cases). If so, the role of 'it' and of 'that snow is white' are semantically the same in the two constructions. This hypothesis can be put to test. 1.2 Semantics: Explaining Validity As many authors have noted, this view gets semantic credibility from the fact that valid arguments link that-clauses and ordinary NP's. Anderson 1984 gives the examples Kant knows that 5+7 = 12.

It is necessary that 5+7 = 12.

.: There is something which Kant knows and which is necessary. Nobody knew before Godel proved it that arithmetic is incomplete. :.There is something which nobody knew before Godel proved it. If that-clauses are referring units, and if the quantifiers behave normally, then these arguments are valid in the predicate calculus. If the that-clauses are torn apart, their validity is a mystery. These inferences seem to be independent of the particular choice of verb or adjective in the sentences. So we have good arguments that cut across deontic, modal, and epistemic contexts. The first argument above illustrates this, as well as

Nothing Agatha believes is impossible.

Agatha believes that giraffes fly.

.: It's possible that giraffes fly. Whatever ought to be the case is possible.

It ought to be the case that there is world peace.

:. It is possible that there be world peace.

444 1Terence Parsons

This suggests that there is a systematic semantics for that-clauses that is common to the various versions of nonextensional logics. The obvious proposal is that arguments such as those above contain quantification and instantiation, where the instantiation is to that-clauses, and that these refer to things that are quantified over. Ignoring the internal structure of the that-clauses, the rest of the arguments are just predicate calculus. If we do not give this answer, then we are at a loss to understand these validities.

1.3 A Problem about the Language of Modal Logic Here is a case where this view of that-clauses is helpful. Gupta 1980 considers this problem about the semantics of modality: if we are discussing negation, we can give this general analysis:

'4'is true iff 'S' is not true. But the parallel statement about the modal operator 'it is necessary that' is implausible: 'US' is true iff it is necessary that 'S' is true. The sentence 'Necessarily, everything is bald or not bald' is true, but it is not necessary that 'Everything is bald or not bald' be true, because it is not necessary that the sentence have the meaning it has; in other possible worlds, 'or' may mean what 'and' means in this world, and in such a world the sentence would not be true.3 But how else can we phrase a recursive clause for necessity? 4 This problem dissolves upon decomposing the operator into an adjective and a 'that'. On this construal, the condition needed is of the form 'Necessary(that-S)' is true iff...?... The blank is easily filled on analogy with a familiar condition such as 'Clever(Agatha)' is true iff what 'Agatha' refers to is clever. The condition is 'Necessary(that-S)' is true iff what 'that-S' refers to is necessary. This does not yield an account of what 'that-S' refers to (see below), but it eliminates an artificial impediment to giving a recursive account of the semantics of talk about modality.

On Denoting Propositions and Facts / 445

1.4 A Material Adequacy Conditionfor Meaning The right view of logical syntax should guide us to interesting methodologies. For decades it has been generally recognized that there are issues in the theory of meaning that transcend those of the theory of reference. In the theory of reference, it has been suggested, we have a clear guide to adequacy: the construction of a theory of truth that meets Tarski's criterion of material adequacy. This criterion states that any adequate theory of truth should yield as output every sentence of the form: s is true iff p where 's' is a structural name of a sentence of the object language and 'p' is the corresponding sentence of the metalanguage. (In the simple cases in which the object language is the same as the metalanguage prior to the introduction of semantic terminology, 's' names 'p' itself, thereby bypassing some issues about translation.) The significance and substance of this test of adequacy have been much debated, and I have little to add to that debate. Instead, I want to ask whether there may be a similar criterion of adequacy for the theory of meaning. Why should we not envisage theories of meaning with all of the virtues (and controversies) of theories of reference and truth, with criteria of adequacy of their own? It is easy to see what the criterion should be, at least informally: a good theory of meaning should yield all instances of: s means that p where, in the simplest case, 's' is a name of 'p' itself. This proposal is discussed in a classic paper by Donald Davidson (1967,23), where its fate is as follows: The theory will have done its work if it provides, for every sentence s in the language under study, a matching sentence (to replace 'p') that, in some way yet to be made clear, 'gives the meaning' of s. One obvious candidate for matching sentence is just s itself, if the object language is contained in the metalanguage; otherwise a translation of s in the metalanguage. As a final bold step, let us try treating the position occupied by 'p' extensionally: to implement this, sweep away the obscure 'means that', provide the sentence that replaces 'p' with a proper sentential connective, and supply the description that replaces 's' with its own predicate. The plausible result is s is T if and only if p. What we require of a theory of meaning for a language L is that without appeal to any (further) semantical notions it place enough restrictions on the predicate 'is T' to entail all sentences got from schema T when 's' is replaced by a structural description of a sentence of L and 'p' by that sentence. ...the condition we have placed on satisfactory theories of meaning is in essence Tarski's Convention T that tests the adequacy of a formal semantical definition of truth.

446 /Terence Parsons This turns the proposed criterion of adequacy for meaning into a criterion of adequacy for truth, thereby suggesting that there is no deep difference between the two enterprises. And, indeed, something like this is the thrust of Davidson's argument. But the move that yields this surprising result is not a naturally comfortable one. Where is room left, e.g., for the important differences between two true sentences with different meanings? When Davidson "sweeps away the obscure 'means that"' he is not sweeping away a genuine semantic unit; he is sweeping away artificially combined portions of different units. Suppose that instead of construing the criterion as: s / means-that / p we parse it as: s / means / that-p. There is no 'means that' here to sweep away. For simplicity, suppose that each term has exactly one meaning. The criterion can then be rephrased as: the meaning of s = that-p where there is no longer any hint of anything to be swept away. Here, I suggest, is a legitimate methodological goal for a theory of meaning: produce a theory that is strong enough to yield every instance of this schema. This will not be all that we require of such a theory, but it helps to have at least one goal that is as clear and coherent as the parallel one for truth. And it is a criterion of adequacy that welcomes phenomena that transcend the theory of reference, such as cases of sentences that share truth value without sharing meaning. Suppose that one has a theory in which phrases with the same meaning are interchangeable everywhere without alteration of truth. When combined with empirical data such as: Agatha does not believe that Grenada is a U.S. state,

Agatha believes that snow is purple,

this theory should allow us to infer 'Grenada is a U.S. state' does not mean that snow is purple. The criterion suggested above does this.5 Its recommended transformation into Tarski's Convention T would not. 1.5 An Example

As an example of what I have in mind, consider the following. First, suppose that we are dealing with a case in which our language is rich enough to have terminology that refers to meanings. (I am arguing, in an admittedly

On Denoting Propositions and Facts / 447 bootstrap manner, that English itself is an example of this.) For simplicity, suppose that the language works as Frege says, so that sentences name truthvalues, predicates refer to and express functions, and in opaque contexts words shift their references: they come to refer to the meanings that they otherwise express. I will follow Montague 1974 in using the caret '"' in front of a word or phrase to indicate that it has such shifted reference. In front of a sentence, '"' can be pronounced 'that7: A[white(snow)]= that snow is white, in front of a predicate it can be pronounced 'to': "[clever] = to be clever, and it is arguable whether there is a natural reading for it in front of a name. Suppose also that the theory contains names of meaningful phrases of the language. (I will use quotation marks for these.) Then a primitive theory of reference, truth, and meaning is given by the following principles, which are meant to be statements in the language itself (or statements in the metalanguage, if we distinguish object language and metalanguage): ATOMIC CONDITIONS: These state what the atomic terms refer to and express: OBJECT TERMS:

ref('Mary') = Mary

ref('snow') = snow

expr('Mary') = "[Mary]

expr{'snow7)= "[snow] PREDICATE TERMS:6

ref ( 'White') = White

ref ( 'Believe') = Believe

expr('White') = "[White]

expr('Believe') = "[Believe]

PREDICATE-ARGUMENT: These principles say how what is referred to and expressed by predicate-argumentstructures depend on their parts: ref (F(a)) = ref (F)(ref (a)) expr(F(a)) = expr(F)(expr(aJ) SHIR: Shifting reference for a complex expression is the same as shifting it for the parts: "[F(a)I = AEl(A[al) This primitive theory has the following consequences. The criterion of adequacy for truth. Since I have adopted the simplifying Fregean assumption that sentences refer to truth values, the Tarski adequacy condition for truth as applied to the sentence 'Snow is white' can be stated as:

448/Terence Parsons

This is established from the theory in two steps as follows: ref( 'White(snow)') = ref('White' ) (ref('snow')) = White(snow)

by PRED-ARC by ATOMIC

The criterion of adequacyfor meaning. The criterion of adequacy for meaning for a sentence such as 'Snow is white' requires that we be able to prove the formal analogue of: what 'Snow is white' expresses is that snow is white. This is:

This is established from the theory as follows: expr('White(snow)') = expr('White' ) (expr( 'snow')) = ADyhite](A[snow]) = ADyhite(snow)]

by PRED-ARG by ATOMIC by SHIFT

More complicated cases. We have not yet considered object language sentences that themselves contain that-clauses. For them we need an additional clause in our theory: Frege's assumption that identifies the meaning of a sentence with the proposition that it denotes when embedded in a that-clause: THAT: ref('A[X]') = expr('X'). Then an example of the material adequacy condition for truth for 'Mary believes that snow is white' is:

It is proved as follows:

(The rules appealed to are respectively PRED-ARG, ATOMIC, THAT, PREDARG, ATOMIC, and SHIFT.) Finally, to address the meanings of sentences containing that-clauses, we need to say something about the meanings of that-clauses themselves. This opens up a host of options. The simplest is the assumption that the sense

On Denoting Propositions and Facts / 449 expressed by a that-clause is exactly the same as the sense expressed by its contents. (This is the simplest option, not the only option.7) This assumption can be stated as: MEANING OF THAT-CLAUSE: expr('"[)[]') = expr ( 'X' ) . This requires a related presumption in the metalanguage: REDUNDANCY OF DOUBLE THAT: "["[XI] = "[XI. Then we get the criterion of adequacy for meaning for 'Mary believes that snow is white': expr('Believe(Mary, AIWhite(snow)])')= = expr( 'Believe' ) (expr ('Mary'), e~pr('~lWhite(snow)]')) = AIBelieve](AIMary],expr('A~te(snow)]')) = AIBelieve](AIMary] ,expr('White(snow)' )) = AIBelieve](AIMary] ,expr('White') (expr('snow' ))) = AIBelieve](AIMary],A~ite](A[snow])) = "[Believe] ("Flaryl ,AIWhite(snow)]) = AIBelieve](AFlary],AIA[white(snow)]]) = "[Believe(Mary, AIWhite(snow)])]. (The rules appealed to are respectively PRED-ARG, ATOMIC, MEANING OF THAT-CLAUSE, PRED-ARG, ATOMIC, SHIFT, REDUNDANCY OF DOUBLE THAT, and SHIFT.) Sentences with multiple embeddings of thatclauses within that-clauses work on the model of the one just given; no additional assumptions are needed.

1.6 Issues The sample theory invites a number of questions. Some are questions of detail: What about quantification, quantifying in, and so on? How does the assumption that words shift reference in that-clauses compare with theories in which there is no such shifting? What about Frege's hierarchy of senses; will each word end up with an infinite number of meanings, thus perhaps making the language unlearnable? This is not the place to carry out such investigations, but based on work elsewhereg let me hazard these answers: Quantification is unproblematic if quantifying into that-clauses is disallowed; quantifying into that-clauses requires extension of the theory in one of a number of ways well-discussed in the literature. There are alternative ways to develop the theory, differing primarily in whether and how the meanings of words or phrases change when they are embedded in a that-clause within another that-clause. In some of these alternatives each word gets an infinite number of unrelated meanings and

450 / Terence Parsons the language is arguably unlearnable, in others each word gets an infinite number of meanings but they are all predictable from its customary meaning, and in still others (such as the one given above) each word has a single meaning. On a more methodological level, many readers will be disappointed that I have assumed a theory in which we state outright the meanings of the atomic parts of the language without attempting to reduce or analyze them. Davidson answers a similar complaint about theories of truth as follows: It would be inappropriate to complain that this little theory uses the words 'the father of' in giving the reference of expressions containing these words. For the task was to give the meaning of all expressions in a certain infinite set on the basis of the meaning of the part; it was not in the bargain also to give the meanings of the atomic parts.

Part of an answer to the similar charge about meaning can be obtained by replacing Davidson's 'the father of by '"[white]' and changing 'reference' to 'meaning'. Still, there remains an important difference. In theories of truth of the sort that are usually discussed, we use only primitive vocabulary with which we are familiar, such as 'the father of', along with some technical notions from formal logic. But in the case of meanings, we are familiar with some of the caretbracketed phrases (that-clauses) but, arguably, not with caret-bracketed terms for the atomic parts of the language. We are familiar with '"[White(snow)]', under its native wording 'that snow is white', for this is part of English, but we are not already familiar with terms such as 'A[snow]'.We know how to use these new terms in the theory, but they are new. Does this defeat the theory? We want a theory that addresses important issues, that gets them right, and that we understand. The theory given above addresses important issues and it satisfies natural criteria of correctness, but it does so by using auxiliary terminology that we are not familiar with prior to theorizing. In fact, I doubt that anyone seriously engaged in studying meaning expects theorizing to get by without some technical vocabulary. Some see this as a reason to abandon the enterprise, but I am not among them. There is no way to know at the beginning if a given theoretical vocabulary is understandable or not short of constructing a detailed theory that involves it. I am encouraged to develop the theory, hoping that my understanding of that-clauses from my own native language may be extended by the theory in such a way as to illuminate the required technical terms. Only after we fully develop the theory will we be able to know if it was worth the effort. It is not obvious, of course, that theories of truth do not also need theoretical terminology. They may avoid such,terminology so long as they do not address the hard cases, such as contexts containing that-clauses, but the hard cases need to be dealt with too. When such contexts come up, the theorizing is often put on hold for a methodological digression about attributes and

On Denoting Propositions and Facts 1451 intensions, or alternatives to appealing to them. There are not many examples of theories of truth for languages with that-clauses in which the details are worked out and in which Tarski's material adequacy condition is actually met. Because that-clauses apparently refer to something very much like meanings, I suspect that a fully developed, materially adequate, theory of truth will be no more able to avoid technical terminology than a theory of meaning. This may support Davidson's idea that a theory of truth is sufficient for a theory of meaning, though perhaps from a different perspective than his. 2 Some Contrary Views

Returning to that-clauses, it is worth considering some contrary views. Prior 1963 says I want to suggest that the word 'that' doesn't go with the sentence that follows it to turn it into a name; it goes, rather, with the verb that precedes it

to turn it, or at all events that end of it, into a sentential connective ...'thinks that' is not a two-place predicate-it does not express a relation between James and anything whatever, for what goes on to the other end of this expression isn't a name-neither the. name of a form of words nor the name of a 'proposition'-but another sentence.

It is difficult to reply to this, for a variety of reasons. The primary reason is that the proposal is not accompanied by any arguments in its favor, so there are no direct considerations to shed light on why one might believe it. We are left to explore it on our own. In illustration of his proposal, Prior gives examples like the following For some p, Paul believes that p and Elmer does not believe that p. But the natural rendering of this into English yields 'Paul believes that something and Elmer does not believe that it', which is not meaningful English. So some principles are needed to link his symbolism to English. One way to carry this out is to piggyback his account on the Fregean theory sketched above. We do this by making the following changes: 1. Replace every occurrence of 'believe' by 'believe-that', of 'necessary' by 'necessary that', and so on. 2. Erase the 'that' (our formal '"') from in front of every that-clause.

These two changes would, e.g., replace 'Mary believes "[S]' by 'Mary believesthat S'. And it would replace our symbolization of 'Mary believes everything Agatha says': (x)(Agatha says x -+ Mary believes x) by

(s)(Agatha says-that s -+ Mary believes-that s).

452 /Terence Parsons This yields Prior's symbolism, but, as far as I can see, without affecting the arguments produced above, which were about the unity and autonomy of thatclauses in English. The suggestion is for a certain innovation in logical symbolism, and it does not cast doubt in any way on the adequacy of the initial Fregean theory. Nor does it replace that theory, since it operates on its output. If this Priorian theory were not parasitic on some other one, it would need to start from scratch, and reanalyze the syntactic structures of English, replacing the linguists' 'Verb+[that S]' with '[Verb-that]+S', a change that would have repercussions throughout the whole of syntactic theory. I speculate, without having a detailed analysis, that such a proposal is not feasible. If this were the whole story, one might reasonably conclude that the unity of that-clauses is a matter of grammatical importance only, to be undone semantically by "decoding" the resultant semantically revealing forms by principles (1) and (2) above. But there is more to it, since Prior's theory has not yet confronted NP occurrences, such as that in Mary believes Gbdel's Theorem. It will not do merely to insert a 'that' after 'believes', for this is not well-formed on the proposed alternative. Part of the idea behind always suffixing 'believe' with 'that' is that 'believe-that' must always take a sentence or sentential variable as its argument. So we must not produce

Mary believes-that Gtidel's Theorem. Some sort of paraphrase is called for; Prior typically suggests something similar to Russell's theory of definite descriptions, something like the following (where '- is-that -' takes a name on the left and a sentence on the right, and where 'that- is-that -' takes sentences in each blank): (3s)(Gbdel's Theorem is-that s & (t)(Gbdel's Theorem is-that t -+ that t is-that s) & Mary believes-that s). However, this is problematic. There are plenty of questions about the adequacy of Russell's analysis of descriptions in ordinary contexts, but that analysis has never been plausible for embedded opaque contexts, such as double belief contexts. This is because the details of the analysis itself tend to end up as part of the content of what is believed. If Fred thinks (de dicto) that Mary believes Gijdel's Theorem, this gets represented as Fred thinks-that (h)(Gtide17sTheorem is-that s & (t)(Gbdel's Theorem is-that t -+ that t is-that s) & Mary believes-that s). It is prima facie implausible that Fred believes any such thing. This leads me to suspect that Prior's views, when fully developed, might be substantively different from-and worse than-the approach I described above.

On Denoting Propositions and Facts / 453 Ignoring problems with the account, what relevance do Prior's innovations have to the claim that that-clauses are units? So far as I can see, very little. For none of his logical forms actually succeed in divorcing the complementizer 'that' from sentences that follow it. In spite of Prior's way of describing his enterprise, in his revised forms the word 'that' never occurs without being immediately followed by a sentence (or by a sentential variable). Granted, he says that it is to be grouped with the word preceding it, rather than with the sentence following it, but there appears to be no cash value in this.9 His proposals to allow quantification of sentential variables are consistent with, and independent of, the structures of that-clauses. In summary, the proposal to link 'that' with verbs and adjectives instead of with sentences hints at a proposal that is either not substantively different than linking it with sentences, or that has not been implemented.10

3 Facts My claim that that-clauses refer to propositions has an epicycle: that-clauses sometimes refer to facts, and these are different from propositions. At least, there are good reasons to think so, reasons to which I now turn.

3.1 Reference to Facts Since Kiparski & Kiparski 1970, linguists have recognized a kind of context called factive. Such contexts are identified by a number of overlapping tests, tests that are jointly persuasive even though individually imperfect. One common symptom of factive contexts is that occurrences of that-clauses in them can usually be rephrased with "the fact that." Examples are: Agatha regretted [the fact] that she failed the exam.

[The fact] that she came alone surprised us.

[The fact] that Vietnam has a large army is not well-known.

These contrast with the anomalous paraphrases: Agatha believed [*the fact] that she failed the exam.

[*The fact] that she came alone is likely.

[*The fact] that Vietnam has a large army is not true.

A more definitive test is that factive contexts presuppose the truth of their embedded sentences, and this presupposition is preserved under sentence-internal negation: Agatha regretted [did not regret] that she failed the exam. (Both presuppose that she failed the exam.)

454 / Terence Parsons That she came alone surprised us [did not surprise us].

(Both presuppose that she came alone.)

That Vietnam has a large army is [not] well-known.

(Both presuppose that Vietnam has a large army.)

Such presupposition can be overridden by emphasizing the 'not', or in special contexts. There is no complete consensus as to what such presupposition consists in, but the phenomenon is real, however it is to be analyzed. The examples above contrast with Agatha did not believe that she failed the exam.

(Does not presuppose that she failed the exam.)

That she came alone is not likely.

(Does not presuppose that she came alone.)

That Vietnam has a large army is not true.

(Does not presuppose that Vietnam has a large army.)

What does this have to do with facts? Well, if 'that S' is used to refer to a fact, then it is a phrase that successfully refers if and only if it is a fact that S. So the factive use of 'that S' refers if and only if 'S' is true. This would provide a nice explanation for the presuppositions noted above. For it is a commonplace that simple "atomic" sentences of English presuppose the reference of their singular terms, and this presupposition is retained under internal sentence negation. The sentences 'Agatha stole the gems' and 'Agatha didn't steal the gems' both presuppose that 'the gems' refers. If that-clauses in factives refer, and if their verbs and adjectives are normal (as I argued above), then these sentences should be expected to presuppose that their that-clauses refer successfully. If it is facts to which they refer, this is equivalent to the containing sentences' presupposing the truth of the subsentences embedded in their that-clauses. This presupposition is what we observe, and so this is evidence that that-clauses in factive contexts refer to facts.

3.2 Facts are not True Propositions I argued earlier that that-clauses refer to propositions, and now I say that sometimes they refer to facts. Is this an inconsistency? Frege thought not: 'Facts, facts, facts' cries the scientist if he wants to bring home the necessity of a firm foundation for science. What is a fact? A fact is a thought that is true. (Frege 1918, 25)

Frege's thoughts are the referents of that-clauses in non-factive contexts, and so they are my propositions. Are the true ones facts? I think not. One reason is familiar from metaphysical considerations: as philosophers construe facts, the fact that Carter was president in 1979 would not have existed had Carter not been president in 1979, but the true proposition that Carter was president in 1979

On Denoting Propositions and Facts / 455 would have existed had Carter not been president then; it merely would not have been uue.11 However, this does not settle the issue before us, for it is not obvious that the facts philosophers discuss are the ones I am assuming. My facts are whatever it is that that-clauses refer to in factive contexts, and even though that-clauses are paraphrasable in such contexts by 'the fact that', this is a locution of ordinary speech, and it may not identify the philosopher's facts. This is especially pertinent since the ordinary language context ' is a fact' is not a factive context. ('It is not a fact that there is life on Mars' does not presuppose that there is life on Mars.) In spite of appearances, 'is a fact' and 'is true' are rough synonyms, and both apply to propositions, not to facts.12 There is a direct argument that the things I am assuming as the referents of that-clauses in factive contexts are not propositions. This is the incongruity of the sentences that result when we attempt to quantify such things using locutions appropriate to propositions. I have in mind the oddity of claims that attempt to simultaneously quantify both factive and nonfactive contexts, like *She believes everything her mother regrets.

*She says everything that is tragic.

*Whatever amuses him is likely.

These may be contrasted with the acceptability of cross-quantifying nonfactives She believes every true thing her mother says.

She says everything that is probable.

Whatever he proposes is likely.

and the corresponding acceptability of cross-quantifyingfactives She is amused by everything her mother regrets.

She grooves on whatever is tragic.

Whatever amuses him distresses us.

If the objects of factives are true propositions, then the oddities should not be odd at all. I reluctantly conclude that that-clauses sometimes refer to propositions and sometimes instead to facts, which are different.13 Reluctantly, because it complicates semantic theory. But suppose this is so; how are we to accommodate the resulting apparent ambiguity of that-clauses? Some innovation in our theory is needed. It would be gratuitous to assume that all individual words of English are ambiguous, meaning one thing in a that-clause that refers to a proposition and another thing in a that-clause that refers to a fact. A more natural assumption is that individual words work the same in both contexts, always yielding a proposition for the whole, but that in factive contexts there is deferred reference to a fact intimately related to the proposition. This would have some theoretical

456 1Terence Parsons advantages. For example, Peterson 1977 follows Vendler 1975 in arguing that knowledge contexts are factive.14 Since belief contexts are not factive, Vendler suggests that we cannot believe what we know. This raises the question of whether inferring belief from knowledge involves a fallacy of equivocation. Peterson points out that this is not necessarily so, that the inference from 'x knows that S' to 'x believes that S' could be justified even if 'that S' has different referents in the two contexts. What is required is only that there be some appropriate relation between the premise and conclusion. What could it be? I suggest that the term for the relation should be 'corresponds', thus linking a long tradition in metaphysics and epistemology to the philosophy of language. This is the 'corresponds' that occurs in the explanation of truth as correspondence to the facts. This choice of terminology is a working hypothesis, based partly on the fact that there is so little independent content to the notion other than principles like It is the fact that snow is white that makes it true that snow is white.

The belief that snow is white is true iff it is a fact that snow is white.

Reflection on this philosophical tradition and on the logical behaviors of propositional and factive that-clauses suggests that if we are to correlate facts in some way with true propositions, we will want the correlation to be functional in the proposition-fact direction. This is because we never have a case in which there are two sentences, P and Q, which are interchangeable in propositional contexts but not in factive ones.15 But it is controversial whether the reverse is true. For example, suppose that the king is (secretly) the barber; this does not yield the equivalence of the (de dicto) propositional contexts 'Agatha thinks the king is a fink' and 'Agatha thinks the barber is a fink'. But some people (not including me) would hold that the factive 'Agatha regrets insulting the king' together with the identity of the king and the barber does entail the factive 'Agatha regrets insulting the barber'. Perhaps the fact that Agatha insulted the king is the fact that she insulted the barber, if the king is the barber. I think not, but I find that many people think so. Fortunately, I do not need to take sides on this. Adopting 'c' as a name for the correspondence function, consider a semantics that yields the form '"[S]' for the proposition that S, and 'c("[S])' for the fact that S.16 Typical sentential representations will be

Then, if 'knows' is factive, the claim that knowledge requires true belief would have the form: (p)(x knows c(p) + x believes p & p is true).

On Denoting Propositions and Facts / 457 And the correspondence theory of n t h would be: (p)(p is true = c(p) exists). This analysis supposes that in every factive context containing a that-clause there is reference to a proposition. This helps explain the acceptability of Peterson's (1977) example: I know that 5 + 7 = 12 and I believe it. Peterson suggests that although 'it' cannot have a fact as an antecedent, it has a "deeper and more elusive antecedent" in this sentence. On the present proposal, the form of the sentence is I know c(95 + 7 = 121) & I believe it,

where '"[5 + 7 = 121' is explicitly present as a proper antecedent for 'it7. This form also may help account for the numerous cases in which cross-quantifying factive and nonfactive contexts is at least partially acceptable.17

Conclusions That-clauses and similar constructions (such as 'for Mary to run') are semantical units that refer to propositions and facts. This assumption permits a simple account of the logic of talk framed in terms of that-clauses, and an account of the special presuppositions that occur in factive contexts. It also permits the formulation of a criterion of material adequacy for meaning analogous to Tarski's criterion of material adequacy for truth. Notes

* I am indebted to Penny Maddy for helpful comments on a draft of this paper. 1. For simplicity, I ignore other complementizers, such as 'for' in 'For Agatha to arrive late would surprise me'. Also, for want of space, I will not discuss the important cases of embedded interrogatives, such as whether-clauses.

2. For discussion of the role of that-clauses in different versions of contemporary linguistics see Sells 1985. It is hard to overemphasize the extent to which construing 'that' along with the embedded S instead of the main verb or adjective is integral to these theories. 3. The problem discussed here does not arise when doing modal semantics for modal logic. This is because the semantic notion under discussion in modal logic is not 'true' but rather 'true in', so that the clause can be:

'0s' is true in w iff 'S'

is true in every alternative to w. This does not solve the problem under discussion, it merely focusses attention elsewhere. Likewise, some have suggested that 'necessary' conceals quantification over possible worlds, and that the nonextensionality of necessity can be avoided by making this quantification explicit in the object language, replacing 'Necessarily, snow is white' by 'Snow is white in every world'. This may or may

458 /Terence Parsons not work for modal contexts but it cannot be extended to epistemic and deontic contexts. 4. Gupta 1980, 122 has a clever way to address this problem (which he attributes to E. Schorsch) while taking the displayed formula as consisting of an operator and a sentence. However, his solution, even if it works for the modal case, does not plausibly carry over to epistemic or deontic cases. 5. I am imagining a theory (such as the Fregean one sketched below in the text) rich enough to get us from the cited data to the truth claims: 'Agatha believes that Grenada is a U.S. state' is not true,

'Agatha believes that snow is purple' is true.

Then, using the contrapositive of the principle of the intersubstitutivity of phrases with the same meaning, we infer the meaning of 'Grenada is a U.S. state' + the meaning of 'snow is purple'. One application of the criterion of adequacy for meaning then yields the desired conclusion: 'Grenada is a U.S. state' does not mean that snow is purple. Some stronger versions of intensional logic would let us arrive at this conclusion without needing any empirical data at all; see Anderson 1984 for discussion. I favor an extension of the Fregean theory sketched below that would riot allow us to infer a priori that 'Grenada is a U.S. state' does not mean that snow is purple, but one that would allow us to infer it from generally available almost-a priori data such as: Agatha could believe that Grenada is a U.S. state without believing that snow is purple. 6. For simplicity these conditions are guided by Frege's view that the reference of a predicate term is a function that maps things that the predicate is true of to The True and maps everything else to The False. (The True and The False can be any two arbitrarily chosen things, so far as adequacy of the theory is concerned.) I am also guided by Frege's view that the sense expressed by a predicate is a function that maps the sense of a name to the proposition expressed by the whole sentence got by combining the name with the predicate. However, these explanations are not official parts of the theory. The theory itself consists of the conditions stated in the text. 7. A common alternative is that a word acquires a new sense with each re-embedding in a larger that-clause, and that that-clauses follow this upward chain of new senses. The simpler option that I give in the text requires that we be careful about what is well-formed in the language. In particular, we must not count as wellformed the string 'Believes(Mary, White(snow))' in which the embedded sentence is not in a that-clause, on pain of inconsistency; see Burge 1979 for a sketch of the kind of trouble that this causes. 8. "Fregean Theories of Truth and Meaning," forthcoming. 9. Prior and Ramsey view their notation as an improved analysis of what we mean by our sentences, including a philosophically exciting "redundancy" analysis of truth, and even (Prior hints) a way to avoid commitment to propositions. But the details are not developed. Early in Prior 1963, 147, he calls propositions, "obscure objects," and later [I501 he suggests replacing 'what we say by our sentences' by 'how we say things are'. This, however, is not to avoid propositions, but rather to get us to conceptualize them as ways things are said to be. Appeal to ways is not automatically appeals to nothing. Prior also advocates viewing propositions as "logical constructions," but this does not appear to be related to the issue of the status of that-clauses. 10. This comment probably calls for an extended discussion of the literature on the prosentential theory of truth. I am not prepared to give such a discussion here,

On Denoting Propositions and Facts / 459 but if I were, I would argue that this literature also does not actually conflict with anything I have claimed. 11. See Fine 1982 for a discussion of this sort of consideration. 12. Prior 1971, 5, identifies facts with true propositions partly on the grounds that 'is a fact' applies to true propositions. 13. This proposal is apparently not available to Prior, since he wants to avoid quantifying over anything. As a result, he cannot appeal to restrictions on the ranges of the quantifiers. Nor can he appeal to restrictions on permissible substitutions for his variables, since his variables are sentential, and the sentences that are legitimately substitutable in factive and nonfactive contexts are the same. 1 4 . Most of the tests for factives classify 'know' as factive; e.g. 'x doesn't know that S' presupposes that S. The one test that goes against it is that paraphrasing 'x knows that S' with 'x knows the fact that S' is awkward. An additional argument for the factivity of knowledge contexts is this: people say that God knows everything, but nobody says that God believes everything, even though knowing entails believing. This suggests that the totality of what can be said to be known is less than the totality of what can be said to be believed. 15. This does not mean that we cannot have two different facts, both of which "make true" the same proposition. It just means that the proposition only corresponds to one of them. For example, the fact that Fido and Rex are both dogs might make true the proposition that Fido is a dog, but the proposition that Fido is a dog only directly corresponds to the simpler fact that Fido is a dog. 16. This proposal is similar to one considered in Peterson 1982. He suggests representing factive that-clauses by 'that S is true'; I think that this particular choice does not yield reference to facts, but the idea is the same. My proposal is closer to what he calls the "Propositions-as-basic" account earlier in his paper. He combines these issues with apparently parallel ones concerning eventives, such as the subject of 'Mary's singing hurt my ears'. I think these are not really parallel; see Parsons 1990 for discussion. 17. Including e.g, the claim that most philosophers find acceptable: 'She believes everything she knows'.

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