Are there propositions

Abstract

The word ‘proposition’ occurs quite often in philosophical discourse. Sometimes it is used as if the reader should already know what it means, while at other times its introduction is accompanied by some preliminary considerations. Usually, in the latter case the writer explains that the word refers to things of a certain kind, and tries to convince us that it is right to “admit” or “postulate” things of that kind. By far the most popular strategy is to appeal to our ordinary way of speaking. According to a well known line of argument, ‘proposition’ stands for what we intuitively take to be the object of a mental act such as thinking, believing, and so on. We ordinarily talk of things thought, believed, and so on, and we seem to presuppose that such things are other than the act of thinking them, believing them, and so on. For example, if we say that both Tom and Mary think that the sea is blue, we seem to presuppose that their respective acts of thinking are different while the thing thought, that the sea is blue, is the same. Similarly, if we say that Tom can think that the sea is blue any number of times, we allow that the mental processes involved can be numerous while the thing thought, that the sea is blue, remains the same. Or if we say that Tom believes that the sea is blue but does not know it, we seem to presuppose that one and the same thing, that the sea is blue, can be thought by Tom in different “ways”. Another well known line of argument hinges on the distinction between the sentence and its meaning: one thing is the sentence, i.e. a string of words formed according to the syntactic rules of a language, another thing is the meaning attached to it by the speakers of that language. We ordinarily talk about things such as meanings. For example, we say that the English sentence