 Quine (1956) introduced contemporary philosophy of mind to the distinction between de re and de dicto belief attributions (as it is now generally called) by means of examples like the following. Ralph sees a suspicious-looking man in a trenchcoat, and concludes that that man is a spy. Unbeknownst to him, however, the man in the trenchcoat is the newly elected mayor, Bernard J. Ortcutt, and Ralph would sincerely deny the claim that “the mayor is a spy”. So does Ralph believe that the mayor is a spy? There appears to be a sense in which he does and a sense in which he does not. Philosophers have attempted to characterize the difference between these two senses by saying that Ralph believes de re, of that man (the man in the trenchcoat who happens also to be the mayor), that “he is a spy”, while he does not believe de dicto that “the mayor a spy”.