Saving the Traditional View of Contents From the Messy Shopper and His Crazy and Amnesiac Acolytes

In this paper I propose a way of saving the traditional view of contents and attitudes from the threat posed by famous scenarios such as Perry’s messy shopper. I argue that, with the solution I suggest, traditionally construed beliefs and contents can play all the roles we traditionally want them to play, including the notoriously problematic explanation of action. I dub the view laid out here the Double Belief Theory because it analyzes de se attitudes as, in fact, two conjoined beliefs, one of which is a second-order belief about the other.