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Propositions as Cognitive Acts

  • Unity of Structured Propositions
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Abstract

The paper reviews the central components of the cognitive theory of propositions and explains both its empirical advantages for theories of language and mind and its foundational metaphysical and epistemological advantages over other theories. It then answers a leading objection to the theory, before closing by raising the issue of how questions, which are the contents of interrogative sentences, and directives, which are the contents of imperative sentences, are related to propositions.

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Notes

  1. See Chapter 1 of Soames (2015), Chapter 3 of King et al. (2014), Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of Soames (2010) and Soames (1987, (2005b, (2006, (2008).

  2. The view sketched below is developed in detail in Soames (2015).

  3. Other attitudes that are arguably both propositional and non-truth-normed include hoping, as in ‘I hope that Sam will win’, dreaming as in ‘I dreamed that pigs fly’, imagining as in ‘I imagined there being mice in the bathtub’, and questioning/wondering as in ‘Mary questioned/wondered whether arithmetic is complete’.

  4. See pp. 119–122 of Soames (2010).

  5. These alternatives are more fully elaborated in Soames (forthcoming).

  6. See Chapter 7 of Soames (2010) and Chapter 2 of Soames (2015).

  7. Russell (1905).

  8. For discussion see Salmon (2005), Chapter 7 Section 5, Chapter 8 Section 2.3, and Chapter 9 Section 5.5 of Soames (2014a) as well as Chapter 2 of Soames (2015).

  9. This methodology is discussed in Soames (2014b).

  10. Chapters 2 and 4 of Soames (2015).

  11. For classic examples and discussion see Perry (1977, (1979) and Lewis (1979).

  12. Detailed analysis is given on pp. 46–56 of Soames (2015).

  13. For complications see pp. 56–60 of Soames (2015). The account is extended to uses of ‘actually’ to designate the world-state of the context of use on pp. 60–66 of Soames (2015).

  14. Although it is not semantically expressed by the sentence (see pp. 76–77 of Soames 2015), it is one of the propositions entertained whenever the speaker uses the sentence with its semantic meaning, it is one of the propositions believed when one who understands the sentence sincerely accepts it, and it is one of the propositions asserted by standard utterances of the sentence in contexts in which it is understood.

  15. My use of descriptively enhanced propositions to resolve some instances of Frege’s puzzle stems from Soames (2002, (2005a). The new ingredients here invoked—linguistically enhanced propositions and a pragmatically expanded conception understanding—extend the mechanisms explored in earlier work in ways explained on pp. 181-186 of Soames (2015).

  16. On pp. 84–93 of Soames (2015), the discussion is extended to cover uses of natural kind terms and propositional attitude reports, including those that report agents speaking other languages.

  17. Uses of demonstratives and the puzzles to which they give rise are discussed on pp. 105–116 of Soames (2015).

  18. Complicated and philosophically interesting cases of puzzles involving perceptual cognition and attitude reports of perceptual contents—including those found in Nagel (1974) and Jackson (1986)—are discussed on pp. 96–105 of Soames (2015).

  19. This important cognitive phenomenon is discussed at length in Fine (2007) and Salmon (2012).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Scott Soames

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  1. Scott Soames
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Soames, S. Propositions as Cognitive Acts. Synthese 196, 1369–1383 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1168-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1168-z

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