In his book The Things We Mean, Stephen Schiffer advances a subtle defence of what he calls the ‘face-value’ analysis of attributions of belief and reports of speech. Under this analysis, ‘Harold believes that there is life on Venus’ expresses a relation between Harold and a certain abstract object, the proposition that there is life on Venus. The present essay first proposes an improvement to Schiffer’s ‘pleonastic’ theory of propositions. It then challenges the face-value analysis. There will be such (...) things as propositions only if they possess conditions of identity and distinctness. By analyzing Frege’s theory of propositions (Gedanken), I argue that such conditions may be found for the special case of beliefs and sayings advanced as premises and conclusions of deductive arguments. These conditions, however, are not applicable to most ordinary beliefs and sayings. Ordinary attributions and reports, then, do not place thinkers and speakers in relations to propositions. A bonus is exposure of the fallacy in the Putnam-Taschek objection to Frege’s theory of sense and reference. (shrink)

Divided into two parts, the first concentrates on the logical properties of propositions, their relation to facts and sentences, and the parallel objects of commands and questions. The second part examines theories of intentionality and discusses the relationship between different theories of naming and different accounts of belief.

Tim Crane addresses the ancient question of how it is possible to think about what does not exist. He argues that the representation of the non-existent is a pervasive feature of our thought about the world, and that to understand thought's representational power ('intentionality') we need to understand the representation of the non-existent.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Heidegger and OntologyEmmanuel Levinas (bio)The prestige of Martin Heidegger 1 and the influence of his thought on German philosophy marks both a new phase and one of the high points of the phenomenological movement. Caught unawares, the traditional establishment is obliged to clarify its position on this new teaching which casts a spell over youth and which, overstepping the bounds of permissibility, is already in vogue. For (...) once, Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by Heidegger’s work, fail to recognize how the originality and force of his achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive, painstaking, and close working-out of the argument—with that craftsmanship of the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride. In this study, it is important for us to understand, above all, the true intentions of our author, to illuminate what he thinks really needs to be said, and to surmise what is most critical for him.To get to the heart of Heidegger’s system, it seems fitting to begin with a problem that is generally familiar. We choose the problem of knowledge, a deeper understanding of which takes us to the very threshold of Heidegger’s thought. For this problem, central to modern philosophy, is one of the main obstacles of modern philosophy that Heidegger wishes to surmount. Neo-Kantianism, which takes knowledge as the philosophical problem of the first rank, is the movement against which Heidegger rebels with all his strength. We have, thus, every chance of gaining access to his thought by the main door, so to speak. Once inside the system we will try to trace its outlines, 2 reserving, for a second part of our work, the determination of Heidegger’s place in the history of ideas, especially in the phenomenological movement, as well as of his relations with the philosopher to whom he owes so much—Edmund Husserl. 31In its most general form, the problem of the theory of knowledge has a critical significance. It consists in delineating a domain where knowledge can be certain and in determining the criteria for the legitimate scope of knowledge. But this problem, as normal and as simple as it may appear, has deeper roots. That knowledge should need a criterion at all presupposes that truth is not identical to all that is known and that the course [End Page 11] of things can fail to correspond with the course of thought. “How does knowledge correspond to being?” is a more profound formulation of the problem of knowledge.But we are not going to touch anymore on the primordial phenomenon that generates the problem. The problem of correspondence between thing and thought presupposes a free activity of thought and its isolation in relation to the object. It is precisely this presupposition which renders their harmony and even their contact problematic. “How does the subject take leave of itself to attain the object?” is what the problem of knowledge, in the last analysis, boils down to. Its true source is thus the concept of “subject” as elaborated by modern philosophy. The cogito presided over the subject’s birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the subject’s connection to the rest of reality, the sui generis nature which opens up the passage from immanence to transcendence, the passage from ideas contained in the thinking substance to 4 their “formal existence.”The concept of the subject, understood as a substance having a specific position in the entire domain of being, presents us with difficulties of two kinds. First, how do we understand this leave-taking from the self which the thinking substance brings about and which displays an entirely original aspect? Indeed, we could say that thought, in reaching out toward objects, does not actually take leave of itself, since its objects—considered as ideas and contents of thought—are, in a certain sense, already within it. In order to make sense of this paradox, Descartes... (shrink)

Traditionally, ‘that’-clauses occurring in attitude attributions are taken to denote the objects of the attitudes. Prior raised a famous problem: even if Frege fears that the Begriffsschrift leads to a paradox, it is unlikely that he fears a proposition, a sentence or what have you as the alleged object denoted by the ‘that’-clause. The usual way out is to say that ‘that’-clauses do not contribute the objects of the attitudes but their contents. I will show that, if we accept (...) this answer, either we’d better stop working on attitude attributions or we’d better work harder on them. (shrink)

Divided into two parts, the first concentrates on the logical properties of propositions, their relation to facts and sentences, and the parallel objects of commands and questions. The second part examines theories of intentionality and discusses the relationship between different theories of naming and different accounts of belief.

In this paper we wish to raise the following question: which conceptual obstacles need to be overcome to arrive at a scientific and theoretical understanding of the mind? In the course of this examination, we shall encounter methodological and explanatory challenges and discuss them from the point of view of the philosophy of chemistry and quantum mechanics. This will eventually lead us to a discussion of emergence and metaphysics, thereby focusing on the status of objects. The question remains whether this (...) could be interpreted in terms of a re-description or dissolution of seemingly troubling problems in the philosophy of mind, or whether it further emphasizes the problematic: the ubiquitous and irreducible role of mind and consciousness in scientific activities. (shrink)

This book defends a novel view of mental representation—of how, as thinkers, we represent the world as being. The book serves as a response to two problems in the philosophy of mind. One is the problem of first-personal, or egocentric, belief: how can we have truly first personal beliefs—beliefs in which we think about ourselves as ourselves—given that beliefs are supposed to be attitudes towards propositions and that propositions are supposed to have their truth values independent of a perspective? The (...) other problem is how we can think about nonexistents given the widespread view that thought essentially involves a relation between a thinker and whatever is being thought about. The standard responses to this puzzle are either to deny that thought is essentially relational or to insist that it is possible to stand in relations to nonexistents. This book offers an error theory to the problem. The responses from this book arise from the same commitment: a commitment to treating talk of propositions—as the things towards which our beliefs are attitudes—as talk of entities that actually exist and that play a constitutive and explanatory role in the activity of thought. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that if it is possible to believe that p without believing that q, then there is some difference between the object of the thought that p and the object of the thought that q. This assumption is challenged in the present paper, opening the way to an account of epistemic opacity that improves on existing accounts, not least because it casts doubt on various arguments that attempt to derive startling ontological conclusions from (...) seemingly innocent epistemic premises. (shrink)

Prior apparently left a substantially completed manuscript dealing with the objects of thought when he died in 1969. Geach and Kenny have edited this material, supplementing it with both published and unpublished other writings, including an appendix on names in lieu of Prior's intended final chapter. The result is an interesting, often non-standard, discussion of many issues central to philosophical logic. There are two major concerns treated--what is it that we think?, and what is it that we think about?. (...) These are the two principle ways in which 'thinking of' can occur as a relation for Prior. An examination of the first sense results in a defense of the view that propositions, as language-independent logical constructions, are the objects of thought. In doing so, a large number of related issues are discussed to include criticisms of extentionalist [[sic]] theses, a sympathetic version of the assertive redundancy theory of truth, and an account of non-assertoric logic. Prior also devotes chapters to paradoxes such as that of the liar, and to Tarskian and alternative semantics. Perhaps the most interesting section of the book is that devoted to discussing what sentences are about, especially when their ostensible subjects are non-existent, e.g., "The King of France is bald." It is not clear just what his positive views are, but Prior has a number of criticisms directed against current intentionalistic views of names as well as against Russellian names. His chief worry seems to concern oratio obliqua constructions in which a reporter does not believe in the existence of that of which/whom a reportee speaks. Although critical of writers influenced by either the early Brentano or the later Russell, Prior appears to be sympathetic to both schools in that he seems to view non-demonstrative sentences as never being directly about their subjects. Thus, neither "Gustavus is bald" nor "The King of Sweden is bald" would be about the King of Sweden, i.e., Gustavus. However, since Gustavus is the King of Sweden, the sentences are indirectly about him. Presumably, such a move precludes a reporter's being committed to the reportee's ontology, thereby avoiding the difficulty. An interesting but undeveloped aspect of his view is the role of background stories in our use of names. While some use is made of formal logic in the Polish notation, unfamiliarity with either is not a bar to following the text as English translations and keys are provided. It is unfortunate that we cannot look forward to further elucidation of Prior's views.--K. T. (shrink)

Entitled merely “On the Object of Thought,” Chapter 8 of Gurwitsch’s Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966) has the following note attached to its title: “Paper read at the meeting of the Phenomenological Society, April 27, 1946, at Hunter College, New York City. It was not possible to include here all the discussion. The original version was published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research VII (1947).” What seems the integral script read at the International (...) Phenomenological Society meeting has, however, survived in the Nachlass. It is 596 lines long and 291 lines of it, i.e. practically half, correspond closely to the published version. The following, however, was added to the previously published version: and I must also forsake surveying the elaboration of concepts analogous to that of the “object of thought” in several contemporary psychological sciences. I have in view the abandonment of the constancy hypothesis in Gestalt theory, the studies of the late Gelb and Prof. Goldstein on the psychical effects of brain injuries, the late Levy-Bruhl’s account of mental functions in primitive societies, the views of the phonological school in linguistics, Max Weber’s verstehende Soziologie and especially his distinction between objektiver and subjektiver Sinn. (shrink)

The notions of mental representation and intentionality are thought to have originated with Descartes in the seventeenth century. The authors in this book challenge this assumption and show that the history of these ideas can be traced back to the medieval period. They conclude that there is no clear dividing line between western late medieval and early modern philosophy.

Is there anything new to be said about Anselm's ontological argument? Recent work by Lynne Baker and Gareth Matthews raises some interesting and important questions about the argument. First, Anselm's argument is set in the context of a prayer to God, whose existence Anselm seeks to prove. Is that peculiar or paradoxical? Does it imply that Anselm's prayer is insincere? Baker and Matthews have offered a novel interpretation of Anselm's argument, designed to solve a crucial problem with it. Does their (...) interpretation succeed in solving that problem? This paper addresses both of these questions. (shrink)

Our objectives in this article are to bring some theoretical order into developmental sequences and simultaneities in children’s ability to appreciate multiple labels for single objects, to reason with identity statements, to reason hypothetically, counterfactually, and with beliefs and desires, and to explain why an ‘implicit’ understanding of belief occurs before an ‘explicit’ understanding. The central idea behind our explanation is the emerging grasp of how objects of thought and desire relate to real objects and to each other. To (...) capture this idea we make use of the notion of discourse referents, as did Perner and Brandl (2005), to explain the developmental link between understanding beliefs and alternative naming. We present confirming evidence of the prediction from this analysis that children should have comparable problems with understanding identity statements. We explain the precociously correct answers in ‘implicit’ false belief tests based on indirect measures in the following way: From infancy children are able to keep track of other people’s experiences, to reason about counterfactual circumstances, and to reason about goal-directed (rational) action depending on given circumstances. Indirect tasks reduce the bias to use actual circumstances for reasoning about goal directed action compared to the traditional task, which leads to more correct answers. An emerging metarepresentational understanding helps overcome these biases and enables not only correct action prediction but also the explanation of erroneous actions. The common metarepresentational element explains why false belief tasks and the alternative naming task are mastered at the same time as children understand identity statements. (shrink)

One of the most widespread claims combining epistemology and metaphysics in post-Avicennian Islamic philosophy was that every object of thought is real. In Muʿtazilite reading, it was endorsed due to a theory of knowledge which states that knowledge is a connection or relation between the knower and the object known. Avicennists accepted it due to the rule that in a proposition “s is p” if p is something positive s has to be positive and real too. Hence, (...) insofar as one can conceptually distinguish between two non-existent items, they have to be real. In this article, the author presents significant consequences of this theory: the acceptance and denial of non-existent yet real extramental objects; the concept of mental existence as an alternative solution; the conceivability of paraconsistent ideas and their reality or reducibility to some real objects. (shrink)

What makes Book Lambda the most important book of Metaphysics is to mention the fundamental substance of being. Therefore, Book Lambda is a book that has been regarded as valuable and has been studied extensively. Arabic translations of this book were in high demand in the Islamic world. We have also considered Arabic metaphysical translations, especially the translation of Book Lambda. The translation you will read is a commentary of the ninth chapter of Book Lambda by Themistius. The Greek original (...) commentary of Lambda was lost, and after the Arabic translation, it was transferred to Latin and Hebrew. However, later parts of the Arabic text were also lost. In this chapter, Themistius comments on the part in which Aristotle discusses the difficulties on the nature of divine intellect and tries to prove that the object of reason, the act of thinking and the object of thinking are the same things. (shrink)

Tim Crane's The Objects of Thought is, I think, a much needed corrective to standard ways that analytic philosophers think about nonexistence. It starts from our common sense thought and talk, and tries to carve out a position that can defend this starting point in the face of criticism. It is well-written, a pleasure to read, and largely clear. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the problems of nonexistence. In §1 I sketch Crane's central ideas about (...) the nonexistent, before turning to themes that I would like to have heard more about. In §2, I distinguish two problems of nonexistence, showing that whilst Crane solves one, he does not address the other. Although Crane did not seek to address both problems, I think we should recognize that there is this residual problem of nonexistence remaining. Next (§3), I argue that whilst Crane is correct to think that a negative free logic has to be rejected if we construe it as making a claim about grammatical subject-predicate sentences, we might be able to salvage it if we recognise a class of logical predicates. But whether this is possible or not, depends on the solution to the unaddressed problem of nonexistence. In the final two sections I briefly raise a concern about Crane's view of quantification, before making a suggestion about his view might be employed in addressing Geach's problem of intentional identity. (shrink)