Propositions and higher-order attitude attributions

Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43 (5):741-765 (2013)
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Abstract

An important objection to sententialist theories of attitude reports is that they cannot accommodate the principle that one cannot know that someone believes that p without knowing what it is that he believes. This paper argues that a parallel problem arises for propositionalist accounts that has gone largely unnoticed, and that, furthermore, the usual resources for the propositionalist do not afford an adequate solution. While non-standard solutions are available for the propositionalist, it turns out that there are parallel solutions that are available for the sententialist. Since the difficulties raised seem to show that the mechanism by which sentential complements serve to inform us about attitudes and about sentence meaning does not depend on their referring to propositions, this casts doubt on whether talk of propositions should retain a significant theoretical role in the enterprise of understanding thought, language and communication.

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Kirk Ludwig
Indiana University, Bloomington

References found in this work

Demonstratives: An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics and Epistemology of Demonstratives and other Indexicals.David Kaplan - 1989 - In Joseph Almog, John Perry & Howard Wettstein (eds.), Themes From Kaplan. Oxford University Press. pp. 481-563.
The nature and structure of content.Jeffrey C. King - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
What is Meaning?Scott Soames - 2010 - Princeton University Press.
The things we mean.Stephen R. Schiffer - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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