The `Fido'-Fido Theory of Belief

Many will agree with Gareth Evans (1982) that there are what he called Russellian thoughts: thoughts that are about objects and whose contents cannot be specified without reference to those objects. The thought that I express when I say 'I am contemplating my future' is Russellian, and it is plausible that the same would be true of a thought expressed by an utterance of 'This is enjoyable', when the object in question is a visible book, and of a thought expressed by an utterance of 'Michael Innes is J. I. M. Stewart'. But merely to know that the content of my belief that Fido is a dog includes Fido is not yet to know what that content is. According to one view, the content of my belief is a singular whose only constituents are Fido and doghood, a proposition that may be represented by the ordered couple