Propositions as Structured Cognitive Event‐Types

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (3):665-692 (2021)
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Abstract

According to act theories, propositions are structured cognitive act‐types. Act theories appear to make propositions inherently representational and truth‐evaluable, and to provide solutions to familiar problems with alternative theories, including Frege’s and Russell’s problems, and the third‐realm and unity problems. Act theories have critical problems of their own, though: acts as opposed to their objects are not truth evaluable, not structured in the right way, not expressed by sentences, and not the objects of propositional attitudes. I show how identifying propositions with other cognitive event‐types, namely thoughts, has the perceived virtues of act theories without the defects.

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Wayne Davis
Georgetown University

Citations of this work

Objects and Attitudes.Friederike Moltmann - 2024 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Act‐type theories of propositions.Thomas Hodgson - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 16 (11).
Problems for Russellian Act-Type Theories.Arvid Båve - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
Quotational and other opaque belief reports.Wayne A. Davis - 2021 - Analytic Philosophy 63 (4):213-231.
Defending (perceptual) attitudes.Valentina Martinis - 2024 - European Journal of Philosophy 32 (2):560–576.

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References found in this work

Frege’s Puzzle (2nd edition).Nathan U. Salmon - 1986 - Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company.
Principles of mathematics.Bertrand Russell - 1931 - New York,: W.W. Norton & Company.
The Language of Thought.J. A. Fodor - 1978 - Critica 10 (28):140-143.

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