ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the famous Russell-Frege theory of descriptions that attempted to account for naming but that also laid the foundation for much of the current interest in representations. It explores the role of ascriptions in the development of mental representation and the relation between ascription of intention and epistemological understanding. Ascriptions allow us to furnish our social worlds with shared ideas, hypotheses, beliefs, and arguments. In addition, they allow us to form an explicit epistemology, an understanding of the conditions of knowledge, and the ability to contribute to the “archival store” of knowledge. Epistemological development is a matter of learning how to recognize and categorize types of claims and other statements and the ways that those statements can be criticized.
