A pragmatic solution to Ostertag’s puzzle

Gary Ostertag (Philos Stud 146:249–267, 2009) has presented a new puzzle for Russellianism about belief reports. He argues that Russellians do not have the resources to solve this puzzle in terms of pragmatic phenomena. I argue to the contrary that the puzzle can be solved according to Nathan Salmon’s (Frege’s puzzle, 1986) pragmatic account of belief reports, provided that the account is properly understood. Specifically, the puzzle can be solved so long as Salmon’s guises are not identified with sentences.