 Individuation-conditions: Thoughts are supposed to be the contents of propositional attitudes like belief and desire. Let “j” be shorthand for a propositional attitude verb (“desire”, “believe” etc). If one can j that p without eo ipso j-ing that q (and vice versa), the contents that p and that q are different. Now I can believe, for instance, that Hesperus shines without believing that Phosphorus shines. Hence, if thoughts are the contents of propositional attitudes, the thought that Hesperus shines is different from the thought that Phosphorus shines. If the thought that Hesperus shines is different from the thought that Phosphorus shines, thoughts cannot be logical complexes whose constituents are particulars and properties. Following Frege, many philosophers therefore take thoughts to be complexes that are built up out of modes of presentation. Here “thoughts” only refers to such complexes. Since there are different modes of presentation of the same particular (property), there can be different thoughts that concern or are about the same particulars and properties. In contrast, Hesperus’s shining and Phosphorus’s shining are the same state of affairs, namely the complex that contains only the planet Venus and the property of shining. We will see in  section 2.4  that not all philosophers follow Frege’s lead. If one has arguments for a coarse-grained individuation of the objects of belief, states of affairs may serve as contents of propositional attitudes.