Solipsistic and inter-subjective attitude reports. From representational to volitionals

Résumé En

The utterability of bouletic attitude reports is understood as sensitive to semantic features of their prejacent. Since Heim's seminal work, much has been said on the constraints relative to beliefs and plausibility. Recently, the debate has focused on the distinction between action-oriented desire reports, in contrast to mere desire reports (Condoravdi & Lauer, 2016). Describing the first use, theoreticians have encoded in the semantics of want the requirement for structures of desire compatible with planning and action. These, in addition to ingredients referring to responsibility, have shown the proximity of some desire reports with intention reports. Here we understand these two interpretations as following from a fundamental difference between solispistic and inter-subjective profiles of the attitudes across the epistemic (representational) and the bouletic domain (preferential attitudes). Revisiting the classical Hamblinian view, we propose that attitudes feature speechact like content, which present p for uptake in the common ground. We argue that the uptake with repsentational is 'confirmation' and that with bouletics it is 'realization'. In our analysis, actionability follows as a felicity condition on the inter-subjective use of bouletics and WANT in particular. Focusing on a variety of bouletic expressions in Italian, we also derive their temporal constraints from this more general distinction between private and public attitudes.