Contents
33 found
Order:
  1. Problems for Russellian Act-Type Theories.Arvid Båve - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    I here discuss two problems facing Russellian act-type theories of propositions, and argue that Fregean act-type theories are better equipped to deal with them. The first relates to complex singular terms like '2+2', which turn out not to pose any special problem for Fregeans at all, whereas Soames' theory currently has no satisfactory way of dealing with them (particularly, with such "mixed" propositions as the proposition that 2+2 is greater than 3). Admittedly, one possibility stands out as the most promising (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  2. Pretense, Cancellation, and the Act Theory of Propositions.Manuel García-Carpintero - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Several philosophers advance substantive theories of propositions, to deal with several issues they raise in connection with a concern with a long pedigree in philosophy, the problem of the unity of propositions. The qualification ‘substantive’ is meant to contrast with ‘minimal’ or ‘deflationary’ – roughly, views that reject that propositions have a hidden nature, worth investigating. Substantive views appear to create spurious problems by characterizing propositions in ways that make them unfit to perform their theoretical jobs. I will present in (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  3. Content Pluralism.Alex Grzankowski & Ray Buchanan - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    How fine-grained are the contents of our beliefs and other cognitive attitudes? Are the contents of our beliefs individuated solely in terms of the objects, properties, and relations that figure in their truth conditions, or rather in terms of our concepts, or modes of presentation of those objects, properties, and relations? So-called Millians famously maintain the former whereas their Fregean rivals hold the latter. Though much ink was spilled on the question of grain, relatively little was ever achieved by way (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. Reference, Predication, Judgment and their Relations.Indrek Reiland - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Over the course of the past ten-plus years, Peter Hanks and Scott Soames have developed detailed versions of Act-Based views of propositions which operate with the notions of reference to objects, indicating properties, predication, and judgment (or entertaining). In this paper I discuss certain foundational aspects of the Act-Based approach having to do with the relations between these notions. In particular, I argue for the following three points. First, that the approach needs both an atomistically understood thin notion of reference, (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  5. The problem of unarticulated truths.Torsten Odland - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (4):1-15.
    In recent years, a variety of philosophers have argued that the fundamental bearers of representational properties like truth are concrete particulars produced by cognitive agents—representational vehicles (“RVs”), as I will call them. This view apparently conflicts with other judgments that are part of our common sense understanding of truth. For instance, it is plausible that there are truths about the Milky Way that have and never will never be articulated by anyone. Whatever these truths are, it looks like they cannot (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. Perceptual Content and the Unity of Perception.David de Bruijn - 2022 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 60 (4):540-569.
    In recent work, Scott Soames (2010, 2013, 2015, 2019) and Peter Hanks (2011, 2013, 2015) have developed a theory of propositions on which these are constituted by complexes of intellectual acts. In this article, I adapt this type of theory to provide an account of perceptual content. After introducing terminology in section 1, I detail the approach proffered by Soames and Hanks in section 2, focusing on Hanks’s version. In section 3, I introduce a problem that these theories face, namely, (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7. Acts of desire.Henry Ian Schiller - 2021 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 64 (9):955-972.
    ABSTRACT Act-based theories of content hold that propositions are identical to acts of predication that we perform in thought and talk. To undergo an occurrent thought with a particular content is just to perform the act of predication that individuates that content. But identifying the content of a thought with the performance of an act of predication makes it difficult to explain the intentionality of bouletic mental activity, like wanting and desiring. In this paper, I argue that this difficulty is (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  8. (1 other version)Force, content and the varieties of unity.Michael Schmitz - 2021 - In Gabriele Mras & Michael Schmitz (eds.), Force, Content and the Unity of the Proposition. New York: Routledge. pp. 71-90.
    In this paper I propose three steps to overcome the force-content dichotomy and dispel the Frege point. First, we should ascribe content to force indicators. Through basic assertoric and directive force indicators such as intonation, word order and mood, a subject presents its position of theoretical or practical knowledge of a state of affairs as a fact, as something that is the case, or as a goal, as something to do. Force indicators do not operate on truth- or satisfaction evaluable (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  9. Questions are higher-level acts.Michael Schmitz - 2021 - Academia Letters:1-5.
    Questions are not on all fours with assertions or directions, but higher-level acts that can operate on either to yield theoretical questions, as when one asks whether the door is closed, or practical questions, as when one asks whether to close it. They contain interrogative force indicators, which present positions of wondering, but also assertoric or directive force indicators which present the position of theoretical or practical knowledge the subject is striving for. Views based on the traditional force-content distinction take (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. Propositions and logical form.Andrea Iacona - 2020 - Rivista di Filosofia 111:33-53.
    In my book Logical Form I outline some reasons for thinking that, in the sense of «logical form» that matters to logic, logical form is determined by truth conditions. This paper compares three theories of propositions that might be employed to substantiate the underlying notion of truth conditions: the naturalized propositions theory, the truthmaker theory, and the classificatory theory. Its aim is to show that, while the naturalized propositions theory and the truthmaker theory accord equally well with the idea that (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. Iconic Propositions.Jesse J. Fitts - 2020 - Philosophia Scientiae 24:99-123.
    Je défends ici la nécessité, et ébauche une première version, d’une théorie iconique des propositions. Selon celle-ci, les propositions sont comme les objets de représentation, ou similaires à eux. Les propositions, suivant cette approche, sont des propriétés que l’esprit instancie lorsqu’il modélise le monde. Je connecte cette théorie aux récents développements de la littérature académique sur les propositions, ainsi qu’à une branche de recherches en sciences cognitives, qui explique certains types de représentations mentales en termes d’iconicité. I motivate the need (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Acts and Alternative Analyses.Arvid Båve - 2019 - Journal of Philosophy 116 (4):181–205.
    I show that the act-type theories of Soames and Hanks entail that every sentence with alternative analyses (including every atomic sentence with a polyadic predicate) is ambiguous, many of them massively so. I assume that act types directed toward distinct objects are themselves distinct, plus some standard semantic axioms, and infer that act-type theorists are committed to saying that ‘Mary loves John’ expresses both the act type of predicating [loving John] of Mary and that of predicating [being loved by Mary] (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  13. Expressivism and Cognitive Propositions.James L. D. Brown - 2019 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (3):371-387.
    Expressivists about normative thought and discourse traditionally deny that there are nondeflationary normative propositions. However, it has recently been suggested that expressivists might avoid a number of problems by providing a theory of normative propositions compatible with expressivism. This paper explores the prospects for developing an expressivist theory of propositions within the framework of cognitive act theories of propositions. First, I argue that the only extant expressivist theory of cognitive propositions—Michael Ridge's ‘ecumenical expressivist’ theory—fails to explain identity conditions for normative (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  14. Propositions as Objects of the Attitudes.Ray Buchanan & Alex Grzankowski - 2019 - In Chris Tillman & Adam Murray (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Propositions. Routledge.
    Propositions are the things we believe, intend, desire, and so on, but discussions are often less precise than they could be and an important driver of this deficiency has been a focus on the objects but a neglect of the attitudinal relations we bear to them. In what follows, we will offer some thoughts on what it means for a proposition to be the object of an attitude and we will argue that an important part of the story lies with (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  15. Attitudinal Objects and Propositions.Friederike Moltmann - 2019 - In Chris Tillman & Adam Murray (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Propositions. Routledge.
    This paper defends the view that attitudinal objects such as claims, beliefs, judgments, and requests form an ontological category of its own sharply distinguished from that of events and states and that of propositions. Attitudinal objects play a central role in attitude reports and avoid the conceptual and empirical problems for propositions. Unlike the latter, attitudinal objects bear a particular connection to normativity. The paper will also discuss the syntactic basis of a semantics of attitude reports based on attitudinal objects.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  16. (1 other version)Attitudinal Objects: their Ontology and Importance for Philosophy and Natural Language Semantics.Friederike Moltmann - 2019 - In Brian Brian & Christoph Schuringa (eds.), The Notion of Judgment: Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 180-201.
    This paper argues for the philosophical and semantic importance of attitudinal objects, entities such as judgments, claims, beliefs, demands, and desires, as an ontological category distinct from that of events and states and from that of propositions. The paper presents significant revisions and refinements of the notion of an attitudinal object as it was developed in my previous work.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  17. Predication and the Frege–Geach problem.Indrek Reiland - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (1):141-159.
    Several philosophers have recently appealed to predication in developing their theories of cognitive representation and propositions. One central point of difference between them is whether they take predication to be forceful or neutral and whether they take the most basic cognitive representational act to be judging or entertaining. Both views are supported by powerful reasons and both face problems. Many think that predication must be forceful if it is to explain representation. However, the standard ways of implementing the idea give (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  18. (1 other version)Predication and Two Concepts of Judgment.Indrek Reiland - 2019 - In Brian Andrew Ball & Christoph Schuringa (eds.), The Act and Object of Judgment: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives. New York: Routledge. pp. 217-234.
    Recently, there’s been a lot of interest in a research program that tries to understand propositional representation in terms of the subject’s performance of sub-propositional mental acts like reference and predication (e. g. Burge 2010, Hanks 2015, Soames 2010, 2015). For example, on one version of the view, for a subject to predicate the property of being a composer of Arvo just is what it is to perform the to the basic propositional act of judging that Arvo is a composer (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  19. Force, content and the varieties of subject.Michael Schmitz - 2019 - Language and Communication 69:115-129.
    This paper argues that to account for group speech acts, we should adopt a representationalist account of mode / force. Individual and collective subjects do not only represent what they e.g. assert or order. By asserting or ordering they also indicate their theoretical or practical positions towards what they assert or order. The ‘Frege point’ cannot establish the received dichotomy of force and propositional content. On the contrary, only the representationalist account allows a satisfactory response to it. It also allows (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  20. Force, content and logic.Michael Schmitz - 2018 - In Gabriele Mras, Paul Weingartner & Bernhard Ritter (eds.), Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics, Contributions to the 41st International Wittgenstein Symposium. Berlin: Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. pp. 221-223.
    The Frege point to the effect that e.g. the clauses of conditionals are not asserted and therefore cannot be assertions is often taken to establish a dichotomy between the content of a speech act, which is propositional and belongs to logic and semantics, and its force, which belongs to pragmatics. Recently this dichotomy has been questioned by philosophers such as Peter Hanks and Francois Recanati, who propose act-theoretic accounts of propositions, argue that we can’t account for propositional unity independently of (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  21. Act-Based Conceptions of Propositional Content: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives.Friederike Moltmann & Mark Textor (eds.) - 2017 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Ever since Frege, propositions have played a central role in philosophy of language. Propositions are generally conceived as abstract objects that have truth conditions essentially and fulfill both the role of the meaning of sentences and of the objects or content of propositional attitudes. More recently, the abstract conception of propositions has given rise to serious dissatisfaction among a number of philosophers, who have instead proposed a conception of propositional content based on cognitive acts (Hanks, Moltmann, Soames). This approach is (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  22. Propositional Content. [REVIEW]Indrek Reiland - 2017 - Philosophical Review 126 (1):132-136.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23. Wollen und Wahrheit.Michael Schmitz - 2016 - In Neil Roughley & Julius Schälike (eds.), Wollen. Seine Bedeutung, seine Grenzen. Mentis. pp. 43-70.
    In diesem Aufsatz argumentiere ich, dass die Standardauffassung von Propositionen und propositionalen Einstellungen inadäquat ist, ein Artefakt der gegenwärtig herrschenden theorielastigen Auffassung von Intentionalität, Sprache und Rationalität, und skizziere eine alternative Auffassung. Im folgenden Abschnitt belege ich erst einmal die These der Theorielastigkeit anhand einiger Beispiele vor allem aus der gegenwärtigen analytischen Philosophie. Der dritte Abschnitt erklärt, wie diese Theorielastigkeit im Standardverständnis von Propositionen und propositionalen Einstellungen verkörpert ist. Im vierten Abschnitt argumentiere ich, dass dieses Standardverständnis der Proposition zwei unvereinbare (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  24. Review of Peter Hanks, Propositional Content, Oxford University Press, 2015. [REVIEW]Andreas Stokke - 2016 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  25. Propositional or Non-Propositional Attitudes?Sean Crawford - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (1):179-210.
    Propositionalism is the view that intentional attitudes, such as belief, are relations to propositions. Propositionalists argue that propositionalism follows from the intuitive validity of certain kinds of inferences involving attitude reports. Jubien (2001) argues powerfully against propositions and sketches some interesting positive proposals, based on Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgment, about how to accommodate “propositional phenomena” without appeal to propositions. This paper argues that none of Jubien’s proposals succeeds in accommodating an important range of propositional phenomena, such as the (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  26. On Product‐based Accounts of Propositional Attitudes.Giulia Felappi - 2014 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 3 (4):302-313.
    Propositional attitude sentences, such as "John believes that snow is white," are traditionally taken to express the holding of a relation between a subject and what ‘that’-clauses like ‘that snow is white’ denote, i.e. propositions. On the traditional account, propositions are abstract, mind- and language-independent entities. Recently, some have raised some serious worries for the traditional account and thought that we were mistaken about the kind of entities propositions are. Over the last ten years there has then been a boom (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  27. Representational entities and representational acts.Jeff Speaks - 2014 - In Jeffrey C. King, Scott Soames & Jeff Speaks (eds.), New Thinking About Propositions. New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.
    This chapter is devoted to criticisms of the views of propositions defended by my co-authors, Jeff King and Scott Soames. The focus is on criticism of their attempts to explain the representational properties of propositions. The criticisms are varied, but one theme is a tension between their view that our actions can explain the representational properties of propositions and their commitment to the idea that propositions have their representational properties essentially.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  28. An empirically-informed cognitive theory of propositions.Berit Brogaard - 2013 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43 (5):534-557.
    Scott Soames has recently argued that traditional accounts of propositions as n-tuples or sets of objects and properties or functions from worlds to extensions cannot adequately explain how these abstract entities come to represent the world. Soames’ new cognitive theory solves this problem by taking propositions to be derived from agents representing the world to be a certain way. Agents represent the world to be a certain way, for example, when they engage in the cognitive act of predicating, or cognizing, (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  29. Propositions, attitudinal objects, and the distinction between actions and products.Friederike Moltmann - 2013 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume on Propositions, Edited by G. Rattan and D. Hunter 43 (5-6):679-701.
    This paper argues that attitudinal objects, entities of the sort of John's judgment, John's thought, and John's claim, should play the role of propositions, as the cognitive products of cognitive acts, not the acts themselves.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   38 citations  
  30. Propositional Attitudes and Mental Acts.Indrek Reiland - 2012 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 1 (3):239-245.
    Peter Hanks and Scott Soames have recently developed similar views of propositional attitudes on which they consist at least partly of being disposed to perform mental acts. Both think that to believe a proposition is at least partly to be disposed to perform the primitive propositional act: one the performance of which is part of the performance of any other propositional act. However, they differ over whether the primitive act is the forceless entertaining or the forceful judging. In this paper (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  31. What Is Meaning? By Scott Soames. Soochow University Lectures in Philosophy. [REVIEW]Sergeiy Sandler - 2012 - The European Legacy 17 (5):708 - 709.
    The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 5, Page 708-709, August 2012.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  32. Acts and their objects.Barry Smith - 1983 - In Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Vienna: Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky. pp. 85--88.
    I shall begin with the assumption that there are, among our mental acts. some which stand in direct contact with ohjects in the material world. The aim of this paper will he to clarify and to draw out certain implications of this somewhat trivial assumption, and ultimately to say something about the ontological structure of those of our acts which effect the function of bringing us into contact with material acts which serve. as we might say, as the most external (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  33. Comments on David Johnston's "Identity, Necessity, and Propositions".Peter Alward - manuscript
    Johnston maintains that the notion of a proposition -- ”a language independent (abstract) particular” -- can be dispensed with in philosophical semantics and replaced with that of a propositional act. A propositional act is a component of a speech act that is responsible for the propositional content of the speech act. Traditionally, it is thought that a propositional act yields the propositional content of a speech act by being an act of expressing a proposition. And it is the expressed proposition (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark