The Story About Propositions
Noûs 46 (4):635-674 (2012)
Abstract
It is our contention that an ontological commitment to propositions faces a number of problems; so many, in fact, that an attitude of realism towards propositions—understood the usual “platonistic” way, as a kind of mind- and language-independent abstract entity—is ultimately untenable. The particular worries about propositions that marshal parallel problems that Paul Benacerraf has raised for mathematical platonists. At the same time, the utility of “proposition-talk”—indeed, the apparent linguistic commitment evident in our use of 'that'-clauses (in offering explanations and making predictions)—is also in need of explanation. We account for this with a fictionalist analysis of our use of 'that'-clauses. Our account avoids certain problems that arise for the usual error-theoretic versions of fictionalism because we apply the notion of semantic pretense to develop an alternative, pretense-involving, non-error-theoretic, fictionalist account of proposition-talk.Author Profiles
DOI
10.1111/j.1468-0068.2010.00794.x
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Citations of this work
Propositional or Non-Propositional Attitudes?Sean Crawford - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (1):179-210.
From Mathematical Fictionalism to Truth‐Theoretic Fictionalism.Bradley Armour-Garb & James A. Woodbridge - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (1):93-118.
The Propositional Benacerraf Problem.Jesse Fitts - forthcoming - In Chris Tillman (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Propositions. Routledge:
New problems for modal fictionalism.Bradley Armour-Garb - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (5):1201-1219.
References found in this work
Naming and Necessity: Lectures Given to the Princeton University Philosophy Colloquium.Saul A. Kripke - 1980 - Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment.Robert Brandom - 1994 - Harvard University Press.