Propositional Objects Research Articles

Propositions on the cheap

According to the classical account, propositions are sui generis, abstract, intrinsically-representational entities and our cognitive attitudes, and the token states within us that realize those attitudes, represent as they do in virtue of their propositional objects. In light of a desire to explain how it could be that propositions represent, much of the recent literature on propositions has pressured various aspects of this account. In place of the classical account, revisionists have aimed to understand propositions in terms of more familiar entities such as facts, types of mental or linguistic acts, and even properties. But we think that the metaphysical story about propositions is much simpler than either the classical theorist or the revisionist would have you believe. In what follows, we argue that a proper understanding of the nature of our cognitive relations to propositions shows that the question of whether propositions themselves represent is, at best, a distraction. We will argue that once this distraction is removed, the possibility of a very pleasing, minimalist story of propositions emerges; a story that appeals only to assumptions that are (or, at least ought to be) shared by all theorists in the relevant debate.

Accusative/Genitive Under Negation in Russian: From Syntactic Marking to Semantics

This study investigates the reasons for choosing the genitive or accusative case for propositional nouns with verbs in negative sentences. The probable reason for the recommendation in grammars to choose the genitive case with abstract nouns in negative construction is two constructions overlapping: the negative construction and the construction of descriptive predicate. The study examines 22 examples taken from the National Corpus of the Russian Language 2000-2017 with the propositional abstract object otvet (answer). The examples are divided into two groups – with the object included in the construction of the descriptive predicate and with the verb naming one proposition, and two-subject-constructions. The examples of both groups mostly contain genitive nouns, but for different reasons.

Propositional attitude, affective attitude and irony comprehension

According to relevance theory, irony comprehension invariably entails the identification of some opinion or thought (echo) and the identification of the speaker’s dissociative attitude. In this paper, it is argued that it is also essential for hearers to identify not only that propositional attitude, but also the affective attitude that the speaker holds towards the source of this echo so that an optimally relevant interpretive outcome is achieved. This notion comprises feelings and emotions of a non-propositional quality which affect the propositional effects obtained in ironical communication. The paper further argues for the need to incorporate non-propositional effects into the traditional propositional object of pragmatic research.

Design on a Darkling Plain: Transcending Utility through Questions in Form

ABSTRACTThis practice-based design exploration considers the relationship of contemporary products to issues of sustainability and enduring meaning. The secondary or extrinsic value of products, which includes technological advancement and business development, is discussed. Instrumental value is also addressed, along with a product's intrinsic value – or lack of it. This yields a set of general propositions for countering triviality and waste and increasing intrinsic value, and some of these propositions fall under the remit of design. Against this backdrop, product meaning and intrinsic value are considered with reference to the philosophy of E. F. Schumacher as well as various critiques – from Arnold in the nineteenth century to Orr in the twenty-first – and a case is made for objects of design, rather than art, that have no practical utility but whose function is concerned with what might be referred to as ‘inner work’. These arguments and ideas are then translated into a series of propositional objects – or questions in form – that ask how matters of ultimate concern, which are inherently ineffable, might be appropriately expressed as contemporary, contemplative artefacts.

Form beyond function: practice-based research in objects, environment and meaning

This paper presents an overview of practiced-based research conducted over the last four years that explores new directions in product design. The research addresses the challenges of sustainability, including localisation of design and production, as well as substantive values and deeper, enduring understandings of human meaning. The approach iteratively combines scholarly inquiry, reasoned argument and the development of theory with speculative explorations to create tangible design propositions that both inform and exemplify the theoretical concepts. These propositional objects, together with the theoretical and philosophical ideas that informed their development, are an example of creative ‘academic-practice’. The direction taken recognises that the proliferation of product functionality via microprocessor-based technologies effectively frees ‘form’ to address other areas of significance – taking form beyond function to express deeper human meanings.

The great beetle debate: a study in imagining with names

Statements about fictional characters, such as “Gregor Samsa has been changed into a beetle,” pose the problem of how we can say something true (or false) using empty names. I propose an original solution to this problem that construes such utterances as reports of the “prescriptions to imagine” generated by works of fiction. In particular, I argue that we should construe these utterances as specifying, not what we are supposed to imagine—the propositional object of the imagining—but how we are supposed to imagine. Most other theories of thought and discourse about fictional characters either fail to capture the intentionality of our imaginings, or else obscure the differences between imaginings directed toward fictional characters and those directed toward real individuals. I argue that once we have an account of prescriptions to imagine about real individuals, we can adapt the same framework to specify the contents of prescriptions to imagine about fictional characters, and thereby to account for the truth (or falsity) of statements about fictional characters.

Elle volait pour voler, comme on aime pour aimer : Les propositions d'analogie en comme

This paper describes a specific configuration in French, called analogical construction, in which the word comme ( “as” in English) relates two complete propositional objects (Le bonheur est la poésie des femmes, comme la toilette en est le fard, Balzac). The author questions the specific semantic contribution of comme in these constructions and she suggests that, as it is the case with “temporal” or “causal” constructions introduced by comme, the whole semantics is the result of inferences settled in relation with the properties of the two propositions or with respect to the common knowledge rather than a specific semantics coming from comme.

Elle volait pour voler, comme on aime pour aimer : Les propositions d’analogie en comme

This paper describes a specific configuration in French, called analogical construction, in which the word comme ( “as” in English) relates two complete propositional objects (Le bonheur est la poesie des femmes, comme la toilette en est le fard, Balzac). The author questions the specific semantic contribution of comme in these constructions and she suggests that, as it is the case with “temporal” or “causal” constructions introduced by comme, the whole semantics is the result of inferences settled in relation with the properties of the two propositions or with respect to the common knowledge rather than a specific semantics coming from comme.

I—Ronald de Sousa

Taking literally the concept of emotional truth requires breaking the monopoly on truth of belief-like states. To this end, I look to perceptions for a model of non-propositional states that might be true or false, and to desires for a model of propositional attitudes the norm of which is other than the semantic satisfaction of their propositional object. Those models inspire a conception of generic truth, which can admit of degrees for analogue representations such as emotions; belief-like states, by contrast, are digital representations. I argue that the gravest problem—objectivity—is not insurmountable.

Syntactical treatments of propositional attitudes

Syntactical treatments of propositional attitudes are attractive to artificial intelligence researchers. But results of Montague (1974) and Thomason (1980) seem to show that syntactical treatments are not viable. They show that if representation languages are sufficiently expressive, then axiom schemes characterizing knowledge and belief give rise to paradox. Des Rivières and Levesque (1988) characterize a class of sentences within which these schemes can safely be instantiated. These sentences do not quantify over the propositional objects of knowledge and belief. We argue that their solution is incomplete, and extend it by characterizing a more inclusive class of sentences over which the axiom schemes can safely range. Our sentences do quantify over propositional objects.

Subjective Guilt and Responsibility

Several recent authors on guilt and related notions apparently allow for the rationality of guilt feelings in at least some cases of unavoidable wrong. Their views. yield different decisions on some troubling real-life cases ranging from cases of survivor's guilt and vicarious or collective guilt to a case often brought up in the literature involving feelings of guilt after a car accident that without any fault on the part of the driver results in the death of a child. I want to take a new look at these cases and others-and a critical look at some of the views proposed-in an attempt to work out an understanding of the content of guilt and the grounds for its appropriateness that will better support the general conclusion that detaches grounds for guilt from grounds for blame. This project rests on a rejection of the standard view of the emotion as involving a corresponding evaluative judgment that we find, most notably, in Rawls (1971, p. 482). On this account emotional guilt-what we may distinguish as subjective guilt-requires a judgment (in the sense of a belief) that one actually is guilty, a judgment of objective guilt of the sort that implies moral responsibility. Views differ on whether this requirement is to be imposed only on instances or rather on all genuine instances of the emotion, as Rawls apparently has in mind. At any rate, there is a way of accommodating guilt for the unavoidable that remains within the judgmentalist framework but weakens the content of the requisite judgment to an attribution of causal responsibility that extends to cases like the accident case while apparently ruling out survivor's guilt and other disputed cases as impossible. What I want to defend here in opposition to this account is a nonjudgmentalist view of guilt that makes out the subjectively guilty agent as feeling as if he were morally responsible. On my own view guilt amounts to discomfort with a certain evaluative propositional object and hence may be said to correspond to a judgment-though one can undergo the feeling without holding the judgment. Indeed, I shall go on to argue elsewhere (see Greenspan forthcoming) that one can even undergo it appropriately (with appropriate taken to mean rationally

The propositional objects of mental attitudes

This paper has three sections and an appendix. In c1 offer an informal analysis in which I argue that mental attitudes like believing that, desiring that, and wondering whether have two objects, one true or false, the other containing all their indexical features. Intuitively truths and falsehoods, propositions, are 'about' things. Often people are judged to believe the same things because their beliefs are about the same things. It is argued further that propositional identity must take this into account. If propositional identity is based upon mutual implication, Parry's Analytic Implication [14, 15] caters very well to this 'aboutness', but is too liberal in certain other areas. c2 sets out a fairly ordinary semantics of 'stories', as opposed to the 'story semantics' introduced by Daniels [8], in which the virtues of Analytic Implication are retained and a more refined notion of propositional identity of the right sort for mental attitudes can be defined. c3 contains a sound and complete axiomatization for this semantics. The Appendix contains proofs of the soundness and completeness of the axiomatization.

On the foundations of intelligent processes—I. An evolving model for pattern learning

A general adaptive model unifying existing models for pattern learning is proposed. The model, in addition to preserving the merits of geometric and syntactic approaches to pattern recognition, has decisive advantages over them. It can be viewed as a far-reaching generalization of the perceptron, or neural net, models, in which the vector representation and the associated vector operations are replaced by more general structural representation and the corresponding structural operations. The basis of the model is the concept of a transformation system, which is a generalization of Thue (Post-production) systems. Parametric distance functions in transformation systems are introduced. These are generalizations of weighted Levenshtein (edit) distances to more general structured objects. Learning model for transformation systems, unifying many existing models (including that of neural nets), is proposed. The model also suggests how various propositional object (class) descriptions might be generated based on the outputs of the learning processes: these descriptions represent “translation” of some information encoded in the nonpropositional “language” of the corresponding transformation system, representing the environment, into the chosen logical (propositional) language, whose semantics is now defined by the “translation”. In the light of the metric model the intelligence emerges as based on simple arithmetic processes: first, those related to the optimal distance computation, and, second, “counting” and comparing the results of counting for various “important” features, detected at the learning stage (arithmetic predicates).

What an Emotion is: A Sketch

1. In the paradigm cases; emotions are felt. Furthermore, there is a strong inclination to identify the feeling with the emotion (analogously with: The feeling of a pain is the pain). But unlike pains, emotions are not always felt, being sometimes subceived and sometimes wholly beneath consciousness. 2. Emotions are intentional states, and have propositional objects in the sense that what the emotion is about, of, for, at, or to can in principle be specified prepositionally. 3. Some emotions have typical physiological concomitants, some of which are to some degree felt; and people are sometimes inclined to identify the feeling of the emotion with the feeling of these changes. 4. Typically an emotion depends on the subject believing some state of affairs to obtain (for example, A would not fear this spider if he didn't believe it likely that the spider is harmful); but this is not always so: Sometimes we experience an emotion despite not believing its propositional content. 5. Some emotions beget dispositions to kinds of actions; so references to such emotions are often a powerful way of explaining actions.

Might Events be Propositions?

By the term 'propositional object' I mean anything which is not an individual and is both a bearer of truth value and a possible object of someone's propositional attitude such as thinking that . . ., believing that . . ., remembering that . . ., intending that . . ., fearing that . and so on.' I assume that there are two sorts of propositional objects: propositions and states of affairs. A 'proposition' is a propositional object which is true or false once and for all, while a 'state of affairs' is a propositional object which may be true on some occasions and false on others. For instance, the sentence 'Socrates dies in 399 B.C.' expresses a proposition, while the sentence 'Socrates walks' expresses a state of affairs. The question I wish to investigate is whether the class of events may be reduced to a subclass of propositions in the sense just described. Such a view has interesting consequences for a variety of fundamental philosophical problems such as the nature of causality, scientific laws, explanation and prediction, human action, the freedom of the will, and the theory of the relation of mental events to behavior and to episodes in the brain or nervous system.z Fundamentally, a propositional object is a bearer of truth value which may be an object of thought or some other mental act. However, I am not claiming that the object of a mental act must be a proposition; on the contrary, it may be an individual. Thus if I think of Ronald

Avoiding the Emotion–Thought Conundrum

If I am overjoyed that my daughter will act the lead in her high school play next month, then I must believe that she will. The so-called 'object' of my rejoicing in this case is both future and propositional. I use these terms because if you ask what I am gleeful about, my answer will contain a future tensed declarative sentence. My daughter's performance is not yet taking place, nor has it already occurred. So, on the fairly safe assumption that backwards causality is impossible, we must deny that the object of my joyful mood is a cause of my mood. XWhat then should we say brings about my pleasure? The next candidate in line is my belief that my offspring will play Hedda Gabler. This is a more plausible general position anyway. Even in those circumstances where a present or past item is available to engender my emotion toward the item, how could I get stirred up about it if I am totally uncognizant of it? Thus we might as well assert that the 'causal link' between our affective attitudes and their propositional or non-propositional objects always 'passes through thought or perception'., Our difficulty then is to explain how a link as intimate as that between our object-directed emotion and our matching cognitive state may also be causal. I shall propose a method of sidestepping this problem altogether. But for readers who have not yet agonized over the conundrum, I should formulate it more precisely. First we might notice that many standard effects outlast their causes. A forest will keep on blazing long after nothing remains of the lighted cigarette which started the conflagration. By comparison, suppose I stop believing that my daughter will portray Hedda Gabler -perhaps because I hear the production has been cancelled. I think no more of the matter. Then it is logically impossible for me to continue exulting that my daughter will act the lead. Emotion is not temporally independent of thought in the way that most effects are from their causes. Another contrast dovetails with this one. Take any event or state which indisputably results from others: we do not contradict ourselves if we imagine that it begins in their absence. There is no absurdity in supposing the woods spontaneously burst into flame, without the accompaniment of smouldering cigarettes, sparks, lightning-or the presence of oxygen. But could I be completely ignorant of my offspring's theatrical endeavours, having not so much as wondered if she will be in a play, and yet suddenly

Attitudes De Dicto and De Se

If I hear the patter of little feet around the house, I expect Bruce. What I expect is a cat, a particular cat. If I heard such a patter in another house, I might expect a cat but no particular cat. What I expect then seems to be a Meinongian incomplete cat. I expect winter, expect stormy weather, expect to shovel snow, expect fatigue-a season, a phenomenon, an activity, a state. I expect that someday mankind will inhabit at least five planets. This time what I expect is a state of affairs. If we let surface grammar be our guide, the objects of expectation seem quite a miscellany. The same goes for belief, since expectation is one kind of belief. The same goes for desire: I could want Bruce, want a cat but no particular cat, want winter, want stormy weather, want to shovel snow, want fatigue, or want that someday mankind will inhabit at least five planets. The same goes for other attitudes to the extent that they consist partly of beliefs or desires or lacks thereof. But the seeming diversity of objects might be an illusion. Perhaps the objects of attitudes are uniform in category, and it is our ways of speaking elliptically about these uniform objects that are diverse. That indeed is our consensus. We mostly think that the attitudes uniformly have propositions as their objects. That is why we speak habitually of attitudes. When I hear a patter and expect Bruce, for instance, there may or may not be some legitimate sense in which Bruce the cat is an object of my attitude. But, be that as it may, according to received opinion my expectation has a propositional object. It is directed upon a proposition to the effect that Bruce is about to turn up. If instead I expect a cat but no particular cat, then the object of my expectation is a different proposition to the effect that some cat or other is about to turn up. Likewise for our other examples. The case of expecting a cat shows one advantage of our policy of uniformly assigning propositional objects. If we do not need a Meinongian incomplete cat as object of this attitude, then