Propositions on the cheap

Philosophical Studies 176 (12):3159-3178 (2019)
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Abstract

According to the classical account, propositions are sui generis, abstract, intrinsically-representational entities and our cognitive attitudes, and the token states within us that realize those attitudes, represent as they do in virtue of their propositional objects. In light of a desire to explain how it could be that propositions represent, much of the recent literature on propositions has pressured various aspects of this account. In place of the classical account, revisionists have aimed to understand propositions in terms of more familiar entities such as facts, types of mental or linguistic acts, and even properties. But we think that the metaphysical story about propositions is much simpler than either the classical theorist or the revisionist would have you believe. In what follows, we argue that a proper understanding of the nature of our cognitive relations to propositions shows that the question of whether propositions themselves represent is, at best, a distraction. We will argue that once this distraction is removed, the possibility of a very pleasing, minimalist story of propositions emerges; a story that appeals only to assumptions that are shared by all theorists in the relevant debate.

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Author Profiles

Alex Grzankowski
Birkbeck, University of London
Ray Buchanan
University of Texas at Austin

References found in this work

What is Meaning?Scott Soames - 2010 - Princeton University Press.
The things we mean.Stephen Schiffer - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
New Thinking About Propositions.Jeffrey C. King, Scott Soames & Jeffrey Speaks - 2014 - New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press. Edited by Scott Soames & Jeffrey Speaks.

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