Abstract
Several philosophers have recently appealed to predication in developing their theories of cognitive representation and propositions. One central point of difference between them is whether they take predication to be forceful or neutral and whether they take the most basic cognitive representational act to be judging or entertaining. Both views are supported by powerful reasons and both face problems. Many think that predication must be forceful if it is to explain representation. However, the standard ways of of implementing the idea give rise to the Frege–Geach problem. Others think that predication must be neutral, if we’re to avoid the Frege–Geach problem. However, it looks like nothing neutral can explain representation. My aim in this paper is to present a third view, one which respects the powerful reasons while avoiding the problems. On this view predication is forceful and can thus explain representation, but the idea is implemented in a novel way, avoiding the Frege–Geach problem. The key is to make sense of the notion of grasping a proposition as an objectual act, where the object is a proposition.
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Notes
One of the main differences between iconic and propositional content is that the former is not canonically decomposable in a conceptually articulated fashion whereas the latter is. Consider a picture of a book on a table. Its content can be said to represent the book on top of a table or a table below the book. Both ways of decomposing it are fine, but either is arbitrary with respect to the other since the content itself isn’t conceptually articulated. Contrast this with the sentence ‘this book is on top of the table’. Its content can be said to represent a particular book on top of the table. And this way of decomposing it is not arbitrary since it conforms to the content’s conceptual articulation. For further discussion of some of the differences see Burge (2010: Ch. 11).
I use ‘judge*’ because Hanks’s thinks that the basic propositional act is defined in terms of taking a stand on whether the object has the property. In contrast, the ordinary notion of judging has intuitively more packed in it than just taking such a stand. For example, it is common to think that to judge that p is the case one has to have considered the question whether p is the case and taken a reflective stand in the light of one’s evidence. Here’s another way to put it. When one guesses that p, one judges* that p, but doesn’t judge that p. Here’s a yet another way. When you judge* you exhibit being a representational agent, but not necessarily yet an epistemic one. However, when you judge you do exhibit being an epistemic agent. I discuss this further in Reiland (2017).
The conjunction relation is the relation two propositions stand in iff both are true. Similarly, the disjunction relation is the relation two propositions stand in iff one or the other is true (Hanks 2015: 105).
In fact, Hanks now takes a more complicated view about what it is to perform judgments* of complex propositions (Hanks 2015: 99–100). I’ll come back to this in the final section.
See also the arguments in Hom and Schwartz (2013).
For Soames’s take on the argument see his (2015: 219–223).
Two points. First, on this view the fact that somebody has the capacity to perform an atomic judgment* is sufficient for the judgment*-type to exist. Second, identifying proposition with judgment*-types is not mandatory. Like Brogaard and Moltmann we could also identify propositions with judgments*’ product-types if this is for some reason preferable. Some things in our story in Sect. 5 would have to be changed accordingly.
This depends on whether one thinks there are creatures that can perform only atomic judgments without being able to perform complex judgments or not.
See also the insightful discussion in Forbes (2017).
To avoid confusion, let me stress that I’m not advocating retaining the Platonist or Fregean picture of cognitive representation. Like on Hanks’s view, on the third view we say that to perform atomic judgments* is to just perform an act of predication. We thus abandon the Fregean picture of atomic judgment on which you must first grasp a proposition. What I advocate retaining are the Fregean ideas that:
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(a)
we can grasp propositions without antecedently judging* them;
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(b)
grasping is an objectual act; and
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(c)
to perform judgments* of complex propositions you must first grasp the constituent propositions.
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(a)
I’m not sure that we can do this. Names like ‘Logicism’ seem to refer to views, things that could be stated by using different, though logically equivalent propositions. Nathan Salmon has called what logically equivalent propositions have in common logical content and argued that it amounts to an intermediate value between propositions and intensions (Salmon 1992). Names like ‘Logicism’ might thus refer to logical contents, and not propositions.
See also the discussion in Hanks (2015: 14–15).
I want to leave it open, here, how exactly to think of PMPs. However, there are two views of the relation of knowledge how and PMPs: one could take knowledge how to ground ability to think under PMPs or take ability to think under PMPs to ground know how. I take the first view to be the natural one. Jason Stanley and Tim Williamson famously and controversially defend the second view (Stanley and Williamson 2001, for criticism see Glick 2015). For one recent view of PMPs see Pavese (2015).
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Acknowledgements
I want to thank Stephen Barker, Ray Buchanan, Jonathan Cohen, Daniel Cohnitz, Alex Davies, Chris Hom, Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, Kathrin Glüer-Pagin, Geoff Georgi, Alex Grzankowski, Peter Hanks, Bjørn Jespersen, Jaan Kangilaski, Lorraine Keller, Jinho Kang, Jeff King, Uriah Kriegel, Max Kölbel, Riin Kõiv, Taavi Laanpere, Indrek Lõbus, Marc Moffett, Jeremy Schwartz, Gary Ostertag, Peter Pagin, Bryan Pickel, Francois Recanati, Peter Ridley, Michael Schmitz, Mark Schroeder, Scott Soames, Uku Tooming, and audiences at the Society for Analytic Philosophy in Tartu, the 9th Barcelona Workshop on Issues in the Theory of Reference at LOGOS, Institut Jean Nicod, King’s College London, and the Force, Content, and the Unity of Proposition workshop at University of Vienna/WU Vienna for helpful comments and/or discussion.
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Reiland, I. Predication and the Frege–Geach problem. Philos Stud 176, 141–159 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-1009-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-1009-z