Provides a unified semantics of de re and de se belief reports. First argues that de se belief is best thought of as a special case of de re belief, then examines whether we can extend this unification to the realm of belief reports. Formalizes the idea of a contextual resolution of acquaintance relations in a dynamic framework to arrive at a novel analysis that handles the classic de re puzzles as well more recent ones involving quantified and iterated reports, and monstrously shifted indexicals. Sheds new light on the special status of de se, and on the context-dependence and (non-)compositionality of de re reports.
@MISC{maier08acqres,
author = {Emar Maier},
title = {Acquaintance Resolution: A unified semantics for {\em de re} and {\em de se} belief reports},
month = {June},
year = 2008,
url = {http://ncs.ruhosting.nl/emar/em_acqres_08.pdf}
}