UC Davis

This is a dissertation about the philosophical notion of singular thought. It is argued that singular thought is a theoretical notion in philosophy in the process of being conceptual engineered, and that there are a multiple conceptually engineered concepts that are expressed by the term ‘singular thought’. We focus on further developing one of these notions. The novel theoretical account we introduce and defend is developed out of traditional theories that identify singular thought with those thoughts that have singular contents. Unlike traditional theories, we defend an account that does not commit to object-dependence or acquaintance. Additionally, we develop a defeasible heuristic for determining whether a sentence expresses a singular content. In those cases in which the heuristic tells in favor of a sentence expressing a singular content, we have prima facie reason for thinking that attributions of thought that contain those sentences within the that-clause of the attribution are attributions of singular thoughts.