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    Sentences expressing propositional attitudes (such as 'Se... — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    Sentences expressing propositional attitudes (such as 'Seneca believed that man is a rational animal') express a relation between agents and propositions, where propositions are objective abstract entities that are the ultimate vehicles of truth and meaning.

    Philosophy of Language
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Sentences like 'Seneca believed that man is a rational animal' and 'Columbus believed that the world is round' require an object of the believing relation.
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    • 2.The most natural analysis of such sentences posits objective abstract entities (propositions) as that object.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Propositional attitude reports are sensitive to the specific words used, not just abstract truth conditions (Frege's puzzle, Kripke's 'Paderewski' case).
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    • 2.If propositions were the sole objects of belief, co-referential terms would be interchangeable in belief contexts without affecting truth value.
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    • 3.Since substitution of co-referential terms in belief contexts can alter truth value, propositions as typically construed cannot be the complete objects of belief.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Quine argued that propositional attitude sentences resist quantification into and create referentially opaque contexts, undermining their logical tractability.
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    • 2.An ontology of abstract propositions multiplies entities beyond necessity when behavioral or functional-state analyses can account for attitude ascriptions without positing abstract objects.
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    • 3.Churchland's eliminativist and Ryle's dispositional accounts show that 'believing' may denote complex behavioral dispositions, not genuine relations to abstract entities.
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    Topics

    Philosophy of Language

    Key Terms

    Abstract entities(as used in metaphysics and ontology)
    Things that exist but have no physical form—like numbers, meanings, or concepts; you can't touch them, but they seem real in some sense.
    Vehicles of truth and meaning(as used in philosophy of language)
    The things that carry or contain truth and meaning—in other words, what makes a statement true or false and gives it significance.
    proposition(Used in the context of a semantic theory sensitive to differences in subject matter.)
    The content expressed by a sentence, individuated at least in part by the subject matter of the sentence and the contents of its subsentential expressions.
    propositional attitudes(Fodor's 1980 reply to Searle)
    Mental states characteristic of an organism that has a brain, such as beliefs and desires, which computational symbol manipulation alone is insufficient to produce.

    Connections

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    Truth & Knowledge1 linked

    Related

    An ontology of abstract propositions multiplies entities beyond necessity when b...Churchland's eliminativist and Ryle's dispositional accounts show that 'believin...If propositions were the sole objects of belief, co-referential terms would be i...Propositional attitude reports are sensitive to the specific words used, not jus...

    Source

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    A natural analysis of such sentences is that they express a relation between Seneca or Columbus and the propositions that man is a rational animal or that the world is round, where such propositions are objective abstract entities that are the ultimate vehicles of truth and meaning. But there has been—and no doubt always will be—skepticism about the existence of such entities and this has motivated the view that sentences such as (1) and (2) express relations between agents and sentence types or
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    +4 moreShow less
    Quine argued that propositional attitude sentences resist quantification into an...Sentences like 'Seneca believed that man is a rational animal' and 'Columbus bel...Since substitution of co-referential terms in belief contexts can alter truth va...The most natural analysis of such sentences posits objective abstract entities (...

    Similar

    A semantic theory that limits its ontology to sentence types cannot pr...86%Sentences like 'Seneca believed that man is a rational animal' and 'Co...84%Intentional states are propositional attitudes — relations between ind...82%On the Fregean view, propositions are composed of senses (concepts/mea...81%
    Type
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    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit