Abstract:The term proposition is traditionally used for the entities that are: (i) the primary bearers of truth and falsity; (ii) the entities expressed by declarative sentences; and (iii) the objects of belief, assertion, and other speech acts and propositional attitudes. 1 What entities have these properties? The most popular theories take propositions to be sets of possible worlds, Russellian n-tuples of objects and properties, or Frege's sui generis abstract particulars. A recently popular view takes propositions t… Show more
“…Content and force are clearly separated in Frege's philosophy of language, in that[…] the propositional contents of speech acts are supposed to be bare, forceless representations that are put forward in different ways in different speech acts. The force of a speech act is the way in which a proposition is put forward.(Hanks, 2007, p. 142) 4 Act‐theorists offer instead a unified view, in which the force of a speech act or a mental state “corresponds to the way in which a subject has combined together objects, properties or relations” (Hanks, 2007, p. 152; see also Hanks, 2011; Soames, 2013, 2019; Davis, 2021). States with assertive force thus involve a subject applying a property or relation to some objects; states with interrogative force involve a subject asking whether a property or relation holds of some objects; states with imperative force involve a subject wanting to bring about that a property or relation holds of some object.…”
Section: Tripartite Versus Dual Viewsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The order of representation is, so to say, inverted. Propositions are acts or states of thinking beings , such as the act of asserting that F is a (Davis, 2021, p. 67). Mental states do not gain their representational power through being directed at propositions; rather, propositions inherit their representational features from being types of concrete tokens of mental actions performed by subjects.…”
Section: Tripartite Versus Dual Viewsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In line with our discussion so far, Davis, who is also a proponent of the act‐type theory of propositions, also identifies Frege's shortcoming in his overlooking the possibility that thoughts are psychological types. According to Davis, thoughts, being cognitive types, are abstract objects, which however do not exist in the third realm, but are mental events occurring in our natural world, whose tokens are “concrete events in the causal order” (2021, p. 680). One could then try to reverse the order of explanation and identify different types of mental states through abstraction of the common features between different concrete mental acts.…”
Section: Conclusion and Return To The Tripartite View (Or Something O...mentioning
In this paper, I defend a tripartite metaphysics of intentional mental states, according to which mental states are divided into subject, content, and attitude, against recent attempts at eliminating the attitude component (e.g., Montague, Oxford studies in philosophy of mind, 2022, 2, Oxford University Press). I suggest that a metaphysics composed of only subject and content cannot account for (a) multisensory perceptual experiences and (b) phenomenological differences between episodes of perception and imagination. Finally, I suggest that some of the motivations behind the rejection of the attitude component can be accommodated within the tripartite framework.
“…Content and force are clearly separated in Frege's philosophy of language, in that[…] the propositional contents of speech acts are supposed to be bare, forceless representations that are put forward in different ways in different speech acts. The force of a speech act is the way in which a proposition is put forward.(Hanks, 2007, p. 142) 4 Act‐theorists offer instead a unified view, in which the force of a speech act or a mental state “corresponds to the way in which a subject has combined together objects, properties or relations” (Hanks, 2007, p. 152; see also Hanks, 2011; Soames, 2013, 2019; Davis, 2021). States with assertive force thus involve a subject applying a property or relation to some objects; states with interrogative force involve a subject asking whether a property or relation holds of some objects; states with imperative force involve a subject wanting to bring about that a property or relation holds of some object.…”
Section: Tripartite Versus Dual Viewsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The order of representation is, so to say, inverted. Propositions are acts or states of thinking beings , such as the act of asserting that F is a (Davis, 2021, p. 67). Mental states do not gain their representational power through being directed at propositions; rather, propositions inherit their representational features from being types of concrete tokens of mental actions performed by subjects.…”
Section: Tripartite Versus Dual Viewsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In line with our discussion so far, Davis, who is also a proponent of the act‐type theory of propositions, also identifies Frege's shortcoming in his overlooking the possibility that thoughts are psychological types. According to Davis, thoughts, being cognitive types, are abstract objects, which however do not exist in the third realm, but are mental events occurring in our natural world, whose tokens are “concrete events in the causal order” (2021, p. 680). One could then try to reverse the order of explanation and identify different types of mental states through abstraction of the common features between different concrete mental acts.…”
Section: Conclusion and Return To The Tripartite View (Or Something O...mentioning
In this paper, I defend a tripartite metaphysics of intentional mental states, according to which mental states are divided into subject, content, and attitude, against recent attempts at eliminating the attitude component (e.g., Montague, Oxford studies in philosophy of mind, 2022, 2, Oxford University Press). I suggest that a metaphysics composed of only subject and content cannot account for (a) multisensory perceptual experiences and (b) phenomenological differences between episodes of perception and imagination. Finally, I suggest that some of the motivations behind the rejection of the attitude component can be accommodated within the tripartite framework.
“…Acts do not have truth or satisfaction conditions (Twardowski 1912, Ulrich 1976, Moltmann 2013chap. 4, 2017, 2019, Davis 2020. By contrast, entities like claims, requests, and questions, the products of acts do, as do entities like rules, beliefs, and intentions, which are not generally the products of acts.…”
Section: The Unity Of the Proposition Problemmentioning
“…Davis proposes that propositions are types of mental event (Davis, 2002, pt. 3; 2005, Chapter 2; 2021b). 3 Moltmann proposes that products of mental acts play many of the roles of propositions (Moltmann, 2013b; 2013a, Chapters 3–4; 2017b).…”
Many philosophers believe in things, propositions, which are the things that we believe, assert etc., and which are the contents of sentences. The act‐type theory of propositions is an attempt to say what propositions are, to explain how we stand in relations to them, and to explain why they are true or false. The core idea of the act‐type theory is that propositions are types of acts of predication. The theory is developed in various ways to offer explanations of the important properties of propositions. I present the core idea of the theory, and some developments of it. I discuss the relationship between the theory and the content–force distinction. I also present an important type of objection that has been raised to the explanations offered by the act‐type theory.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
