De se belief and rational choice

Several philosophers have argued that de se beliefs—one’s thoughts about oneself in a characteristically ‘first-personal’ way—have special features that set them apart from other kinds of belief. Frege famously seemed to argue that everyone’s thoughts about themselves are distinct, and unshareable. Other philosophers have argued that some de se beliefs require a refinement of attitudinal content or severing antecedently plausible connections between the objects of belief and belief states. These claims raise further questions about whether the peculiarities of de se belief require special adjustments to theories in which such beliefs may play a role: for example, in the compositional semantics of attitude reports, accounts of assertoric content, and theories of rational belief change. The Sleeping Beauty puzzle raised in Elga (2000) has been used to argue that the latter theories of rational belief change do require such adjustments.