In this wide-ranging paper, Lewis defends the view that propositional attitudes consist in relations to properties, which themselves are sets of possible individuals. In so doing, he champions the importance of self-ascribing attitudes (i.e. what he coins ‘de se’ attitudes), arguing that “the de se subsumes the de dicto, but not vice versa.” Along the way, a host of topics are discussed, including time-slices of continuant persons, centered possible worlds, and decision theory.
Keywords: centered possible worlds, de dicto, de re, de se, decision theory, haecceitism, indexical, David Kaplan, John Perry, propositional attitudes, Quine, Stalnaker