The grammar of belief
pp. 3-24
in: Francesco Orilia, William J. Rapaport (eds), Thought, language, and ontology, Berlin, Springer, 1998Abstract
W. V. O. Quine argued, notoriously and persuasively, that it is meaningless to quantify into opaque contexts (see, for instance, Quine 1943, 1953, 1956). I will refer to this claim as "Quine's Thesis". The idea is this. Suppose that C is any sentential context containing an occurrence of a singular term such that substitution of co-referential singular terms (SUB) is an invalid mode of inference with respect to this occurrence. Thus, in Quine's terminology, C is an "opaque" context. Now let C* result from C by substituting a variable v for the term at the relevant opaque occurrence. Then Quine's Thesis says that binding of this occurrence of v by a quantifier outside the scope of C* results in a meaningless expression.
