Attitudinal propositionalism is the view that all mental attitude content is truth-evaluable. While attitudinal propositionalism is still silently assumed in large parts of analytic philosophy, recent work on objectual attitudes (i.e. attitudes like ‘fearing Moriarty’ and ‘imagining a unicorn’ that are reported through intensional transitive verbs with a direct object) has put attitudinal propositionalism under explanatory pressure. This paper defends propositionalism for a special subclass of objectual attitudes, viz. experiential attitudes. The latter are attitudes like seeing, remembering, and imagining whose (...) grammatical objects intuitively denote (events or) scenes. I provide a propositional analysis of experiential attitudes that preserves the merits of propositionalism. This analysis uses the possibility of representing the target-scenes of experiential attitudes by the intersection of all propositions that are true in these scenes. I show that this analysis makes available the usual (Russellian) account of intensionality and the common (Boolean) logic for entailments. (shrink)

We can find in the passages that set out the Master Argument a precursor to the paradox of knowability. That paradox shows that if all truths are knowable, all truths are known. Similarly, Berkeley might be read as proposing that if all sensible objects are (distinctly) conceivable, then all sensible objects are conceived.

L’article expose et discute l’interprétation de l’immatérialisme de Berkeley par James Frederick Ferrier. Dans deux articles denses , contre l’historiographie reidienne dominante, celui-ci rejette la thèse selon laquelle Berkeley souscrit à la méthode des idées et par là aux principes élémentaires du représentationnalisme. Loin de défendre l’idéalisme subjectif, Berkeley adhère à une forme de réalisme direct. Dans les Institutes of Metaphysic , Ferrier va plus loin et se sert du « maître argument » de Berkeley pour risquer ses propres thèses (...) métaphysiques.The paper sets out and discusses James Frederick Ferrier’s interpretation of Berkeley’s immaterialism. In two dense papers , against the prevailing Reidean historiography, Ferrier rejects the claim that Berkeley subscribes to the way of ideas and thus to the basis tenets of representationalism. Far from defending subjective idealism, Berkeley holds some form of direct realism. In his Institutes of Metaphysic , Ferrier goes further and draws on Berkeley’s master argument to venture his own metaphysical views. (shrink)

Intentionality, or the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for things, remains central in the philosophy of mind. But the study of intentionality in the analytic tradition has been dominated by discussions of propositional attitudes such as belief, desire, and visual perception. There are, however, intentional states that aren't obviously propositional attitudes. For example, Indiana Jones fears snakes, Antony loves Cleopatra, and Jane hates the monster under her bed. The present paper explores such mental states (...) in an introductory but opinionated way. (shrink)

This paper offers a positive account of an important but under-explored class of mental states, non-propositional attitudes such as loving one’s department, liking lattice structures, fearing Freddy Krueger, and hating Sherlock Holmes. In broadest terms, the view reached is a representationalist account guided by two puzzles. The proposal allows one to say in an elegant way what differentiates a propositional attitude from an attitude merely about a proposition. The proposal also allows one to offer a unified account of the non-propositional (...) attitudes that captures both empty and non-empty cases by properly locating the posited representations in the metaphysical structure of the attitudes. (shrink)