Two notions of de se in desire reports

Abstract

I argue that de se-interpretations of infinitival complements in attitude reports may involve different notions of de se depending on the type of attitude predicate: ascriptive de se or evaluative de se. While in the case of ascriptive de se, the infinitival denotation is predicated to be true of every centered world in a set of Hintikka-alternatives, in the case of evaluative de se the infinitival denotation is used to characterize a set of centered worlds of which desirability above a certain threshold is predicated. The standard explanation for the de se-constraint on PRO does not carry over to the case of evaluative de se. The grammar of de se has a second source: de se measure functions.