Propositional Attitudes

FACTS AND STATES OF AFFAIRS

Common Three-Way Equivalence:

Sentence meaningsThe objects of the attitudesThe referents of ‘that’-clauses

Propositional Attitudes

Agent + Attitude + ContentAttitudes = belief, knowledge, desire, hope, etc.The functionalist consensusWhat are the objects of the attitudes (contents)?

Propositional Attitude Ascriptions

Subject + Attitude Verb + ‘that’-ClauseAttitude Verbs = “believe,” “know,” “desire,” “hope,” etc.Attitudes distinct from their ascriptionsContents of ‘that’-clauses objects of attitudes?

Evidence for Equivalence

Anaphora:“Today is Tuesday but John doesn’t know it.”Conjunction Reduction:“It’s true that it’s raining and John believes that it’s raining.”“It’s true that, and John knows that, it’s raining.”

Correspondence Theory

Truth as ‘correspondence with the facts.’Sentences/ statements are true/ falseNo semantically evaluable semantic entitiesObtainingSentences mean facts?

Facts

Objects, properties, and relations“Going together in the world”InstantiationThe Unity of the Fact (problem thereof)

Plato’s Third Man

a is Fa instantiates F-ness<a, F-ness> instantiate instantiation<<a, F-ness>, instantiation> instantiate instantiationetc.

“We note that when a detective says ‘Let's look at the facts’ he does not crawl round the carpet, but proceeds to utter a string of statements.” (Austin, “Truth”)

The Multiple Relations Theory

No such thing as false facts.What do we believe when we believe something false?Belief is a relation to “semantically unjoined” objects, properties, and relations.Problem of unity: order.

States of Affairs

Like facts, but don’t need to actually exist, only possibly exist.

Problems for SofA

Problems for SofA = MeaningsNo impossible states of affairs(“going together” again)Problems for SofA = Objects of AttitudesCoarse-grainedness of SofAProblems for SofA = Referents of ‘That’-ClausesCompositionality

Truth-Evaluable?

Sentences are true vs. sentence meanings are trueWhat I believe is true vs. my belief is true(You can believe what I believe, but you can’t have my belief)“John believes something true” vs. “John’s belief is true.”

Propositionalism

Maintain equivalencePropositions fine-grained, truth-evaluable– more language-likeStill mind-independentA new type of “going together”

Mind-Independence

a proposition (“gedanke”) “is like a planet which, already before anyone has seen it, has been in interaction with other planets.”“when one apprehends or thinks a [proposition] one does not create it but only comes to stand in a certain relation… to what already existed beforehand.”

Ordinary Language Scruples

“I imagined [F: the proposition] that a purple donkey was nibbling on lettuce.”“I was surprised [*the proposition/ F: at the proposition] that John never came to the party.”

PROPOSITIONS AS SETS OF POSSIBLE WORLDS

Possible Worlds Semantics

Possible worlds: Lewis and StalnakerPossible worlds semantics: Carnap and MontagueAnalysis of necessity and possibilityMeanings as “truth-conditions”Functions from worlds to truth-valuesSets and characteristic functions

Problems

The deduction problemThe “aboutness” problemDirectly referential expressions collapsed into rigid expressions

Even less coarse-grained than SofA: all necessities equivalent, all impossibilities equivalent.Going diagonal (or metalinguistic)Still get all provable truths equivalent, for those who accept the axioms.

Lewis’s Two Gods

“Consider the case of the two gods. They inhabit a certain possible world, and they know exactly which world it is. Therefore they know every proposition that is true at their world. Insofar as knowledge is a propositional attitude, they are omniscient…”

Lewis’s Two Gods

“…Still I can imagine them to suffer ignorance: neither one knows which of the two he is. They are not exactly alike. One lives on top of the tallest mountain and throws down manna; the other lives on top of the coldest mountain and throws down thunderbolts. Neither one knows whether he lives on the tallest mountain or the coldest mountain; nor whether he throws manna or thunderbolts.”

De Se Exceptionalism

1. The manna god knows exactly which world she inhabits.

2. She does not know that *I am the manna god.*

3. Therefore, *I am the manna god* is not solely about which world she inhabits.

4. Therefore, the de se is special and subject to special semantic treatment.

STRUCTURED PROPOSITIONS

Structured Propositions

Like SofAs: objects, properties, relationsStructural isomorphism w/ sentencesNew kind of “going together”Limits: articulated non-constituents“John is a tall ballet dancer”Limits: unarticulated constituents

Benefits

Systematicity: if you can think aRb, you can think bRaReverse compositionalityConflating contexts: ‘watch’ + PAST vs. ‘watch’ + PROG + PAST

Grainedness

SPs strictly more fine grained than SofAsSPs determine sets of possible worlds, not vice versa (composition post-linguistic)No logical omniscience, deduction, aboutness problemsToo much grain? A & B vs. B & ANames and natural kind terms, a = b vs. a = a

Problems

Which set-theoretic objects? (order arbitrariness)Why do some set-theoretic objects have truth-conditions and others (regular ones) not?Is the “going together” really not set-theoretic? If not, then what is it?

Overly Linguistic-y?

If propositions have a largely linguistic structure… do they get it from language?If so, are they really mind/ language dependent?If so, did the proposition that dinosaurs exist not exist until we did?And can animals think?

INTERPRETED LOGICAL FORMS

Interpreted Logical Forms

Linguistic syntaxLFs vs. surface structure (not particularly important)Interpreted LFsNo new “going together”

Benefits

Strictly greater grain the SPs(Hence same or worse grainedness problems, same or better benefits)Names and natural kind terms, a = b vs. a = aMeaningful sentences with empty names?Sensible why they have truth-conditions

Problems

Compositionality?Speakers of different languages no longer expressing the same proposition, believing the same thingsData: “I believed that even when I was a monolingual French speaker!”Attitudes, propositions dependent on languagePierre and “Londres est jolie”