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André Sant’anna - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Episodic Memory as a Propositional Attitude: A Critical Perspective.
Frontiers in psychology, 2018Co-Authors: André Sant’annaAbstract:The questions of whether episodic memory is a Propositional Attitude, and of whether it has Propositional content, are central to discussions about how memory represents the world, what mental states should count as memories, and what kind of beings are capable of remembering. Despite its importance to such topics, these questions have not been addressed explicitly in the recent literature in philosophy of memory. In one of the very few pieces dealing with the topic, Jordi Fernandez (2006) provides a positive answer to the initial questions by arguing that the Propositional Attitude view of memory, as I will call it, provides a simple account of how memory possesses truth-conditions. A similar suggestion is made by Alex Byrne (2010) when he proposes that perception and episodic memory have the same kind of content, differing only in degree. Against the Propositional Attitude view, I will argue that episodic memory does not have Propositional content, and therefore, that it is not a Propositional Attitude. My project here is, therefore, mainly critical. I will show that, if empirical work is to inform our philosophical theories of memory in any way, we have good reasons to deny, or at least to be skeptical, of the prospects of the Propositional Attitude view of episodic memory.
Robert Van Rooij - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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A Modal Analysis of Presupposition and Modal Subordination
Journal of Semantics, 2005Co-Authors: Robert Van RooijAbstract:In this paper I will give a modal two-dimensional analysis of presupposition and modal subordination. I will think of presupposition as a non-veridical Propositional Attitude. This allows me to evaluate what is presupposed and what is asserted at different dimensions without getting into the binding problem. What is presupposed will be represented by an accessibility relation between possible worlds. The major part of the paper consists of a proposal to account for the dependence of the interpretation of modal expressions, i.e. modal subordination, in terms of an accessibility relation as well. Moreover, I show how such an analysis can be extended from the Propositional to the predicate logical level.
Robert J. Matthews - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Measurement-Theoretic Accounts of Propositional Attitudes
Philosophy Compass, 2011Co-Authors: Robert J. MatthewsAbstract:In the late 1970s and early 1980s a number of philosophers, notably Churchland, Field, Stalnaker, Dennett, and Davidson, began to argue that Propositional Attitude predicates (such as believes that it’s sunny outside) are a species of measure predicate, analogous in important ways to numerical predicates by which we attribute physical magnitudes (such as mass, length, and temperature). Other philosophers, including myself, have subsequently developed the idea in greater detail. In this paper I sketch the general outlines of measurement-theoretic accounts of Propositional Attitudes, explaining in the briefest terms the basic idea of such accounts, why some have thought such accounts plausible, how these accounts might go, what their implications might be both for our conception of Propositional Attitudes and for their role in cognitive scientific theorizing, and where the potential problems with such accounts might lie.
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The Measure of Mind
2007Co-Authors: Robert J. MatthewsAbstract:Recent philosophical accounts of Propositional Attitudes typically assume a relational conception of Propositional Attitudes: they are relations between their possessor and a "proposition", that is, a semantically evaluable entity, the "object" of the Attitude. This conception is threatened by an analogy, recently noted by a number of philosophers,2 between Propositional Attitude predicates (e.g., "believes that it is sunny today") and measure predicates (e.g., "has a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius", "has a Moh hardness of 5"). Although both sorts of predicate appear to be used to ascribe to their logical subjects a relation to an abstract entity, a proposition or a number, it has been argued that appearances are deceptive: the predicates are relational in form, yet in neither case do they express genuine relations. To say that an object has a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius is not to say that the object stands in a relation to the number 20; likewise, to say that a subject has a certain Propositional Attitude is not to say that the subject stands in a relation to a proposition. Rather, it is to attribute to that person a certain psychological state which is specified by means of its location in a measurement space, in just the way that we specify the temperature of an object by means of its location on a measurement scale. Propositions are simply abstract entities used to index the psychological states of those to whom Propositional Attitudes are ascribed; they are not "objects" of these states. The suggested analogy has remained largely undeveloped. The present paper attempts to develop it, sketching the broad outlines of a non-relational measurement-theoretic account of Propositional Attitudes. The focus is metaphysical rather than semantic: I am concerned here with the nature of Propositional Attitudes, not with the semantics of Propositional Attitude predicates, though the account has import for such a semantics, since a semantics for these predicates
Jay David Atlas - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Aboutness and Quantifying Into Intensional Contexts: A Pragmatic Topic/Comment Analysis of Propositional Attitude Statements
Further Advances in Pragmatics and Philosophy, 2018Co-Authors: Jay David AtlasAbstract:It is not rare to find students of language interested in the many ways in which speakers talk about Fred or about the weather, assert of Fred or of the weather that he is fat or that it is fine. Many philosophers, logicians, and linguists share an interest in what words or phrases designate or describe, and what speakers refer to, mention, and say things about. But it is also notable that the Grammarian and the Philosopher, especially the Metaphysician, have looked at intentionality in different ways. In this lecture I sketch the ways that the Philosophers Nelson Goodman and W.V.O Quine and by contrast the Grammarians have analyzed and used the notion of Aboutness, in Quine’s case in his famous argument against Quantifying Into intensional sentences. Goodman’s and Quine’s analyses are motivated by different intellectual goals from the Linguists’. By contrast Linguists have the notion of Topic Noun Phrase. I shall argue that the Linguists’ notion of Topic Noun Phrase offers clarification and an intellectual advance over Goodman’s and Quine’s notions, especially in the treatment of Propositional Attitude sentences.
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aboutness and quantifying into intensional contexts a pragmatic topic comment analysis of Propositional Attitude statements
2018Co-Authors: Jay David AtlasAbstract:It is not rare to find students of language interested in the many ways in which speakers talk about Fred or about the weather, assert of Fred or of the weather that he is fat or that it is fine. Many philosophers, logicians, and linguists share an interest in what words or phrases designate or describe, and what speakers refer to, mention, and say things about. But it is also notable that the Grammarian and the Philosopher, especially the Metaphysician, have looked at intentionality in different ways. In this lecture I sketch the ways that the Philosophers Nelson Goodman and W.V.O Quine and by contrast the Grammarians have analyzed and used the notion of Aboutness, in Quine’s case in his famous argument against Quantifying Into intensional sentences. Goodman’s and Quine’s analyses are motivated by different intellectual goals from the Linguists’. By contrast Linguists have the notion of Topic Noun Phrase. I shall argue that the Linguists’ notion of Topic Noun Phrase offers clarification and an intellectual advance over Goodman’s and Quine’s notions, especially in the treatment of Propositional Attitude sentences.
Paolo Bonardi - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Manifest validity and beyond: an inquiry into the nature of coordination and the identity of guises and Propositional-Attitude states
Linguistics and Philosophy, 2019Co-Authors: Paolo BonardiAbstract:This manuscript focuses on a problem for Millian Russellianism raised by Fine (Semantic relationism, Blackwell, Oxford, 2007: 82): “[Assuming] that we are in possession of the information that a Fs and the information that a Gs, it appears that we are sometimes justified in putting this information ‘together’ and inferring that a both Fs and Gs. But how?” It will be my goal to determine a Millian-Russellian solution to this problem. I will first examine Nathan Salmon’s (“Recurrence”, Philos Stud 159:407–441, 2012) Millian-Russellian solution, which appeals to a non-semantic and subjective notion of coordination defined in terms of guises. I will object that in order to convincingly solve a specific version of Fine’s problem (the “Bruce” case), identity conditions for guises must be provided. On the other hand, the most plausible way to individuate guises is by means of the equivalence classes (if any) of coordination itself. But, if so, the guise-based strategy to solve Fine’s problem risks being circular; in addition, there are serious doubts that coordination is transitive. An alternative Millian-Russellian solution to Fine’s problem will then be explored, which gives up guises and employs, instead, a non-semantic and subjective relation of coordination not defined in terms of guises, along with occurrences of Russellian propositions of a special sort, for which identity conditions will be provided and via which token Attitude states intuitively more fine-grained than guises will be individuated.
