In this article, I develop an argument against all Fregean approaches to the semantics of propositional attitude ascriptions. This is a bit pathological on my part given that my own view is itself Fregean in the relevant sense. Perhaps a more sensible strategy would be to sweep the whole thing under the carpet and hope no one notices. Originally, the intended targets of this argument were Fregean accounts of belief ascriptions that were, in my view, insufficiently sensitive to how particular (...) believers conceived of the objects of their beliefs. But the argument proved to be too strong. It shows that, for any Fregean view, including my own, the meanings of ascription complements must vary with believers. Something about babies and bath water seems apt. (shrink)

Words like you, here, and tomorrow are different from other expressions in two ways. First, and by definition, they have different kinds of meanings, which are context-dependent in ways that the meanings of names and descriptions are not. Second, their meanings play a different kind of role in the interpretations of the utterances that contain them. For example, the meaning of you can be paraphrased by a description like "the addressee of the utterance." But an utterance of (1) doesn't say (...) the same thing as an utterance of (2). (shrink)