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Notes
King et al. (2014).
See e.g. King (1995).
In saying that Frege and Russell both thought that propositions had truth conditions, I mean only that if asked under what conditions the proposition (thought) that A differs from B is true, both would have been happy to answer that the conditions are that A in fact does differ from B. Thanks to an anonymous referee here.
King (2009, pp. 259–261).
King (2007, pp. 7–8).
I raised this objection to the propositions-as-tuples view in King (2007, pp. 7–8).
Immediately prior to this passage, I was discussing Stalnaker’s (1984) claim that on the view that propositions are functions from possible worlds to T and F, it doesn’t matter what T and F are, as long as there are exactly two of them: “A proposition is a function from possible worlds into truth-values...There are just two truth-values—true and false. What are they: mysterious Fregean objects, properties, relations of correspondence and noncorrespondence? The answer is that it does not matter what they are; there is nothing essential to them except that there are exactly two of them” (p. 2).
King (2013b, pp. 82–83).
Speaks denies propositions represent, but holds they have truth conditions. But since propositions are just properties, to say that propositions are true or false at worlds is just to say they are instantiated or not at them (or would be instantiated at a nonactual world w if w were actual). And it seems to me plausible to think that they need be no explanation of the fact that properties are instantiated or not by certain kinds of things. So perhaps Speaks can get away with not having to explain how/why propositions have truth conditions. See King et al. (2014, p. 146).
Heim and Kratzer (1998, p. 105).
PA ends up being revised several times, with the final version appearing on p. 186.
If, as some people think, there is no linear order to elements at LF, talk here of left and right terminal nodes is misleading and should be replaced by talk of simply occurring at terminal nodes. See note 32 below.
Of course the explanation cannot be that they have cognitive access to the facts that are propositions because they are expressed by the sentences they are deploying. For we are now trying to explain how certain facts came to be propositions (by having their propositional relations interpreted in certain ways, etc.) and so we cannot appeal to the fact that they already are propositions expressed by sentences of the relevant languages.
We can describe the fact 1IE as follows: Michael is the semantic value of ‘Michael’ relative to some context c and assignment f, and the latter occurs at the left terminal node of the syntactic relation R that in English encodes ascription and the English word ‘swims’ occurs at the right terminal node of R and has as its semantic value relative to c and f the property of swimming. The figures in 1IE and 1IG fail to capture that ‘Michael swims.’/’Michael schwimmt.’ is English/German and that Michael is the semantic value of ‘Michael’ relative to a context of utterance (this qualification is unnecessary here, but would be crucial if we considered the sentence ‘I swim’ in a context with Michael as the speaker).
King (2007, pp. 59–61).
King (2009, pp. 266–268).
Jeff Speaks notes this in King et al. (2014, p. 152) and note 4.
Because of this, Caplan and Tillman (2013, p. 116) are wrong to claim that on my view F (which they call the plain propositional fact) could exist and not have truth conditions or could exist and have different truth conditions (they actually consider a different proposition but the point is the same). In saying this, they are assuming that it is e.g. metaphysically possible for sentence 1 to exist and have its sentential relation encode ascription, while FAST exists and either its propositional relation isn’t interpreted at all or it is interpreted differently. For the reasons given, neither of these things is metaphysically possible. They are also wrong to claim that I hold that F existed prior to its propositional relation encoding ascription, again for reasons given above (p. 118, 119) . They cite a passage from King (2009) where I talk of speakers coming to interpret the propositional relation of F, suggesting that I do hold F existed prior to its propositional relation encoding ascription. But immediately following the passage they quote, which is part of something I call a highly idealized mythological story, I explicitly say that my talk of temporal priority in the myth is a device to highlight explanatory priority (p. 268). So I was explicit that the talk of temporal priority in the passage they cite is really talk about explanatory priority and should not be understood temporally. Though Caplan and Tillman note this in a footnote (p. 119 note 33), they nonetheless claim in the main text that I hold that F existed before its propositional relation encoded ascription. To repeat, I don’t.
F+ is unnecessarily larger since it has additional components not had by F, but F plays the proposition role as well. Caplan and Tillman (2013, p. 120) consider this as a reason for claiming F is more eligible than F+ to be FAST, but reject it on the grounds that I hold that F existed before it had truth conditions, making it less eligible to be FAST. As I’ve indicated, they are wrong to think that on my view F existed prior to having truth conditions. See note 23.
It cannot be ruled out at this point that the having of an innate UG requires the having of states that are in some sense contentful. But even if so, the point is that there is every reason to think that these states and their contents are nothing like ordinary propositional attitudes and their contents, which is what we are giving an account of.
Occurrences of expressions with parentheses around them indicate that they have been moved/copied to another location in the syntactic tree.
Indeed, a higher percentage of the world’s languages are SOV languages than are SVO languages.
In discussing semantic values here, I suppress reference to context and assignment function. Also, since the composition of semantic values occurs in the definition of the truth of a proposition at a world, we also need a world parameter, which I suppress as well.
An anonymous referee wondered whether the propositional relation here binding together Sophie, Carl and the loving relation in the proposition that Sophie loves Carl is itself a “bona fide syntactic relation” requiring some further language in which a sentence has this syntax. The answer to that is no. The propositional relation here obtains between Sophie, Carl and the loving relation in part because of the existence of sentences like 2LF and 3LF with their (different) syntactic relations. But the propositional relation itself is not a syntactic relation. The referee worried that if it isn’t, “a prior, language-independent notion of proposition [is] then required in order to understand that the two sentences express the same proposition”. I can only reply that I don’t see why one would think that from the fact that the propositional relation is not a bona fide syntactic relation, it would follow that a prior language independent notion of proposition is required. In this respect, the new view is no different from the old view. On that view as well, the propositional relation is not a syntactic relation. But again, I don’t see why this would mean that some language independent notion of proposition would be needed.
To some people, talk of something being existentially quantified over in a fact can sound like a category mistake. But it is not. Think of the fact of there being F’s, for some property F. Here instances of F are quantified over in the fact. That is, the existentially general fact of there being F’s consists in F having the property of having instances. So this existentially generalized fact consist of a property having a property.
If, as Chomsky (1996) and others have argued, there is no linear order to elements at LF, then 2LF and 3LF above are similarly misleading. According to this way of thinking, linear order of elements is imposed in the phonological component. At LF, we only have hierarchical relations (dominance, c-command, etc.). However, according to Kayne’s (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA), which Chomksy [1996] is clearly sympathetic to, the hierarchical relations at LF (specifically, asymmetric c-command) uniquely determine the linear order required at PF (phonological form). On this picture, the LCA can be thought of as a principle of the phonological component. Linearization is required of the outputs of PF simply because they need to be strings of sounds or signs.
Some also think that ‘by’ assigns the agent \(\uptheta \) role to ‘Hank’ but that won’t be relevant to us here.
References
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A version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Propositions on May 8, 2014 sponsored by the ERC Nature of Representation Project at the University of Leeds and at the Unity and Individuation of Structured Propositions Conference: Ninth Barcelona Conference on Issues in the Theory of Reference June 22–24 2015. I thank both audiences for their helpful comments. Thanks also to an anonymous referee for helpful comments.
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King, J.C. On propositions and fineness of grain (again!). Synthese 196, 1343–1367 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1291-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1291-x