The view that dominates the literature on intentional attitudes holds that beliefs and desires both have propositional content. A commitment to what I call “content uniformity” underlies this view. According to content uniformity, beliefs and desires are but different psychological modes having a uniform kind of content. Prima facie, the modes don’t place any constraint on the kinds of content the attitude can have. I challenge this consensus by pointing out an asymmetry between belief contents and desire contents which shows content uniformity to be mistaken. I do this by revisiting the arguments of Richard (Philosophical Studies, 39(1): 1–13, 1981), and show that arguments which purport to show the temporal specificity of belief contents yield the opposite results for desire contents. I defend this preliminary conclusion from various strategies to neutralize the asymmetry claim. My defense provides occasions to respond to objections by Brogaard (2012) and Recanati (2007) to the Richard argument, and to get clearer on the role of temporal adjuncts in desire ascriptions. Finally, I consider whether the construal of attitude content as centered propositions (as in Lewis Philosophical Review, 88(4): 513–543, 1979) can be invoked to vindicate content uniformity. My conclusion is that while the framework itself doesn’t vindicate content uniformity, it could, but only if it availed itself of a further, substantive thesis about desire, which itself is in need of defense.

在关于意向态度的文献中占主导地位的观点认为，信念和欲望都具有命题内容。对我所谓的“内容统一性”的承诺是这种观点的基础。根据内容的统一性，信念和欲望只是具有统一的内容种类的不同心理模式。表面上看，这些模式对态度可以拥有的各种内容没有任何限制。我通过指出信念内容和欲望内容之间的不对称性来挑战这种共识，这种不对称表明了内容的统一性是错误的。我通过回顾理查德（哲学研究）的观点来做到这一点。，39（1）：1-13，1981），并表明声称显示信仰内容在时间上的特殊性的论点对于欲望内容产生了相反的结果。我捍卫了这一初步结论，其中包括各种旨在抵消不对称性主张的策略。我的辩护提供了机会来回应Brogaard（2012）和Recanati（2007）对理查德的论点的异议，并更清楚地了解时间辅助词在欲望归属中的作用。最后，我考虑态度内容的建构是否为中心命题（如《刘易斯哲学评论》中的），88（4）：513–543，1979）可以证明内容的统一性。我的结论是，虽然框架本身并不能证明内容的统一性，但它可以，但前提是它可以利用关于欲望的进一步实质性论文，而后者本身是需要辩护的。