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    There are no propositions — Carmelics
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    Challenges→Sentences apparently expressing truths about propositions are false, because there are no propositions to serve as their referents.

    There are no propositions

    Philosophy of LanguageTruth & Knowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Quine's criterion of ontological commitment shows we quantify over sentence types, not abstract propositions, in successful semantic theories.
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    • 2.Churchland's eliminativist program demonstrates that folk-psychological posits like propositions can be replaced by neurophysiological state descriptions without explanatory loss.
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    • 3.If propositions were real, there would be a determinate fact about which proposition a belief token expresses, but Kripkenstein's rule-following paradox shows no such fact exists.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Sellars's nominalism establishes that apparent reference to abstract objects dissolves under analysis into reference to linguistic roles and functional equivalence classes.
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    • 2.Hartry Field's fictionalism about mathematics provides a successful template: propositional talk is useful fiction, not ontological commitment to abstract entities.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.The Easy Arguments against propositions are valid
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    • 2.Certain attitude ascriptions are true
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    • 3.Abstract entities face serious epistemological and identification problems
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    Topics

    Philosophy of LanguageTruth & Knowledge

    Connections

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    Skepticism1 linked

    Related

    Abstract entities face serious epistemological and identification problemsCertain attitude ascriptions are trueChurchland's eliminativist program demonstrates that folk-psychological posits l...Hartry Field's fictionalism about mathematics provides a successful template: pr...
    +4 moreShow less
    If propositions were real, there would be a determinate fact about which proposi...Quine's criterion of ontological commitment shows we quantify over sentence type...Sellars's nominalism establishes that apparent reference to abstract objects dis...The Easy Arguments against propositions are valid

    Similar

    There are no propositions.99%There are propositions87%Conceptualism about propositions is ruled out84%There exist such things as propositions83%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: propositions
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    Many philosophers deny that there are propositions precisely because they accept the validity of these Easy Arguments (and the truth of certain attitude ascriptions). There are familiar problems besetting the believer in abstract entities. The two “Benacerraf problems,” in particular have received much attention in the literature: the epistemological problem and identification problem. The epistemological problem for abstract propositions, roughly, is this: how can we know about abstract proposi
    Extraction notes

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

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit