Cognitive Significance, Attitude Ascriptions, and Ways of Believing Propositions

Please consider the platitudes presented in (1). (1) Some Platitudes We use names to talk about objects. We use predicates to talk about properties and relations. We use sentences to attribute properties and relations to objects. We say things when we utter sentences, often things we believe. Nearly all semantic theories are consistent with these platitudes. But it seems to me that the theory given in (2), which I call Naive Russellianism , captures the platitudes' spirit in a part icularly pleasi ng an d straightf orward w ay. (2) Naive Russellianism (NR) a. Words have contents. The content of a name is the object to which the name refers. The content of a predicate is a property or relation. b. Sentences have contents. The content of a sentence is a proposition, which is also what the sentence semantically expresses. c. Propositions have constituents. If a sentence S expresses a proposition P,