Embeddings

2021 ◽  
pp. 80-100
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. King
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitude

I consider the results of embedding sentences containing felicitous underspecified expressions in certain environments. In particular, I consider embeddings under negation, and verbs of propositional attitude. These cases give rise to a new possibility for update. The update rule from Chapter 3 is shown to handle these embedded cases.

The property theory and de se attitudes

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne A. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Property Theory ◽  
De Se ◽  
Propositional Theory ◽  
Independent Property

The property theory of de se belief denies that believing is a propositional attitude, maintaining instead that for Lingens to believe that he himself is lost is for him to self-attribute the property of being lost. For Lingens to believe that Lingens is lost is for him to self-attribute the independent property of being such that Lingens is lost. The chapter argues that this theory postulates differences where we expect uniformity, introduces unnecessary theoretical complexity, is false to a variety of linguistic and phenomenological facts, and fails to explain many psychological and linguistic facts. If “self-attribute a property” means “believing oneself to have the property,” then the theory provides no explanation of de se belief. The author sketches a propositional theory on which the objects of the attitudes are complexes of concepts (thoughts), de se attitudes involving one type of indexical concept.

Judgment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uriah Kriegel
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Objectual Attitude

One aspect of Brentano’s theory of judgment that is crucial for his ontology and metaontology is Brentano’s astonishing claim that judgment is not a propositional attitude, but an objectual attitude. In this chapter, I offer an exposition of this highly heterodox theory, discuss the case for it, and consider some objections. In the following two chapters, the theory’s implications for metaontology and ultimately ontology will be developed.

Against Intellectualism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Z. Zimmerman
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
The Other

The other animals fail to construct sentences, and Descartes inferred from this that they entirely lack beliefs. Contemporary intellectualists—e.g. B. Williams (1973) and D. Velleman (2000)—allow non-human animals beliefs in an “impoverished” sense of the term, while emphasizing the importance of an animal’s “aiming at the truth” when constructing representations of her environment. The pragmatists reject these forms of intellectualism. Humans use sentences to attribute beliefs to themselves and other animals; but there is no further sense in which belief is an essentially “propositional attitude.” Field ethologists report wolves, dolphins, chimpanzees, and scrub jays reflecting and planning, teaching and learning, loving and forgiving. It is a mark in favor of pragmatism that it allows us to understand these behaviors as manifestations of complex bodies of animal belief.

Truth and Belief

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Rowett
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Propositional Attitudes

The first part of the chapter explores the relations between knowledge and truth and between knowledge and belief. It challenges a number of muddles in the literature concerning propositional attitudes, particularly the idea that while belief is a propositional attitude, knowledge is not. Second, it explores ancient words for ‘truth’, and how truth and being are related in ancient thought, including the so-called veridical sense of the verb einai. It argues that truth is (both for Plato, and in truth) first a property of things, and is then derivatively found in likenesses, such as reflections, pictures, and descriptions, where it comes in degrees according to the representation’s faithfulness to the truth. Finally, it connects this to the iconic method in Plato, whereby he uses such images as a means of accessing the truth that cannot be seen.

scholarly journals La irracionalidad y el auto-engaño

1983 ◽  
Vol 15 (45) ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Silvia Bello
Keyword(s):  
Irrational Beliefs ◽  
Irrational Belief ◽  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Dividing Line

In this paper I have tried to present what seem to me the main problems to be confronted in explaining the formation of motivated, irrational beliefs, and the most important recent contributions to a solution of such problems. First, I make some classifications and present some important features of the different cases of motivated irrational belief formation. After expounding the problems and the central points that stand in need of explanation, I consider Davidson's view of the conflict between our standard way of describing and explaining mental phenomena and the idea that such phenomena can be irrational. Then, I present Davidson's suggestion to reconcile an explanation that shows a belief to be irrational with the element of rationality inherent in the description of any propositional attitude. I consider Davidson's and Pears' criteria for drawing a dividing line between mental systems, and argue that Davidson's criterion seems too wide and should be restricted to cases where motivation is involved. I also argue that it is the weaker version of Pears' criterion that must be defended and confronted with Davidson's. [S.B.]

scholarly journals Indexical Sinn: Fregeanism versus Millianism

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (39) ◽  
pp. 465
Author(s):  
João Branquinho
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Direct Reference ◽  
Cognitive Significance ◽  
De Re ◽  
General Conception ◽  
Attitude Reports ◽  
Singular Reference ◽  
Reference Theory ◽  
Careful Assessment

This paper discusses two notational variance views with respect to indexical singular reference and content: the view that certain forms of Millianism are at bottom notational variants of a Fregean theory of reference, the Fregean Notational Variance Claim; and the view that certain forms of Fregeanism are at bottom notational variants of a direct reference theory, the Millian Notational Variance Claim. While the former claim rests on the supposition that a direct reference theory could be easily turned into a particular version of a neo-Fregean one by showing that it is bound to acknowledge certain senselike entities, the latter claim is based upon the supposition that a neo-Fregean theory could be easily turned into a particular version of a Millian one by showing that De Re senses are theoretically superfluous and hence eliminable. The question how many accounts of singular reference and content are we confronted with here — Two different (and mutually antagonistic) theories? Or just two versions of what is in essence the same theory? — is surely of importance to anyone interested in the topic. And this question should be answered by means of a careful assessment of the soundness of each of the above claims. Before trying to adjudicate between the two accounts, one would naturally want to know whether or not there are indeed two substantially disparate accounts. Grosso modo, if the Fregean Claim were sound then we would have a single general conception of singular reference to deal with, viz. Fregeanism; likewise, if the Millian Claim were sound we would be facing a single general conception of singular reference, viz. Millianism. My view is that both the Fregean Notational Variance Claim and its Millian counterpart are wrong, though naturally on different grounds. I have argued elsewhere that the Fregean Notational Variance Claim - considered in its application to the semantics of propositional-attitude reports involving proper names — is unsound. I intend tosupplement in this paper such a result by trying to show that the Millian Claim - taken in its application to the semantics of indexical expressions — should also be rated as incorrect. I focus on a certain set of arguments for the Millian Claim, arguments which I take as adequately representing the general outlook of the Millian theorist with respect to neo-Fregeanism about indexicals and which involve issues about the cognitive significance of sentences containing indexical terms.

Platonism and Mathematical Explanations

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-122
Author(s):  
Fabrice Pataut ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Theory ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Abstract Objects ◽  
Mathematical Explanations ◽  
Parsimony Principle ◽  
The Face ◽  
Numerical Formulation ◽  
The One

Ontological parsimony requires that if we can dispense with A when best explaining B, or when deducing a nominalistically statable conclusion B from nominalistically statable premises, we must indeed dispense with A. When A is a mathematical theory and it has been established that its conservativeness undermines the platonistic force of mathematical derivations (Field), or that a non numerical formulation of some explanans may be obtained so that the platonistic force of the best numerical-based account of the explanandum is also undermined (Rizza), the parsimony principle has been respected. Since derivations resorting to conservative mathematics and proofs involved in non numerical best explanations also require abstract objects, concepts, and principles under the usual reading of “abstract,” one might complain that such accounts turn out to be as metaphysically loaded as their platonistic counterparts. One might then urge that ontological parsimony is also required of these nominalistic accounts. It might, however, prove more fruitful to leave this particular worry to the side, to free oneself, as it were, from parsimony thus construed and to look at other important aspects of the defeating or undermining strategies that have been lavished on the disposal of platonism. Two aspects are worthy of our attention: epistemic cost and debunking claims. Our knowledge that applied mathematics is conservative is established at a cost, and so is our knowledge that nominalistic proofs play a genuine theoretical role in best explanations. I will suggest that the knowledge one must acquire to show that nominalistic deductions and explanations do indeed play their respective theoretical role involves some question-begging assumptions regarding the nature and validity of proofs. As for debunking, even if the face value content of either non numerical claims, or conservative mathematical claims, or platonistic mathematical claims didn’t figure in our causal explanation of why we hold the mathematical beliefs that we do, construed or understood as beliefs about such contents, or as beliefs held in either of these three ways, we could still be justified in holding them, so that the distinction between nominalistic deductions or non numerical explanations on the one hand and platonistic ones on the other turns out to be spurious with respect to the relevant propositional attitude, i.e., with respect to belief.

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