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This paper discusses the semantics of so-called de re propositional attitudes. According to the standard Kaplanian analysis, the semantics of such dicta contains existential quantifica­tion over functions that map the attitude holder and the object of their de re attitude to an individual concept by which the attitude holder identifies the object. This existential quantifi­cation has a wider scope than the universal quantification over possible worlds that is general­ly associated with the semantics of attitude dicta. We explore examples of disjunctive de re attitudes and show that these dicta have truth conditions that cannot be grasped by the stand­ard analysis. To account for them, we propose a revision of the theory of concept generators and show how the revised theory makes correct predictions.

In recent years, political discourse and election results appear to be more polarized in western countries but is this associated with increasing attitude polarization of their general public? To answer this question, many different polarization measures have been proposed in the literature but no systematic empirical comparison exists. In an exploratory analysis of 4155 attitude distributions on 11-point scales from the European Social Survey, we find that most polarization measures for single attitude distributions correlate strongly with the average attitude discrepancy between randomly selected pairs. We propose this as a catch-all measure for polarization because it can be decomposed into components related to different groups. By analyzing attitude distributions of the left–right political self-placements and several other topics, we find that distributions are typically not unimodal or bimodal, but show more so a structure with up to five modes. We exploit this structure by fitting a model with five latent groups of moderates, extremists, and centrists. Finally, we use the decomposition of polarization with respect to these groups to analyze polarization and its different aspects across topics, countries, and time establishing an overview and new perspectives on single attitude polarization in Europe.

THE EURO-MEDIA HAS YET TO CATCH UP WITH THE CHANGING REALITY OF A NEW AND NOT VERY BRAVE EUROPE