An empirically-informed cognitive theory of propositions

Abstract

Scott Soames has recently argued that traditional accounts of propositions as n-tuples or sets of objects and properties or functions from worlds to extensions cannot adequately explain how these abstract entities come to represent the world. Soames' new cognitive theory solves this problem by taking propositions to be derived from agents representing the world to be a certain way. Agents represent the world to be a certain way, for example, when they engage in the cognitive act of predicating, or cognizing, an act that takes place during cognitive events, such as perceiving, believing, judging and asserting. On the cognitive theory, propositions just are act types involving the act of predicating and certain other mental operations. This theory, Soames argues, solves not only the problem of how propositions come to represent but also a number of other difficulties for traditional theories, including the problem of de se propositions and the problems of accounting for how agents are capable of grasping propositions and how they come to stand in the relation of expression to sentences. I argue here that Soames' particular version of the cognitive theory makes two problematic assumptions about cognitive operations and the contents of proper names. I then briefly examine what can count as evidence for the nature of the constituents of the cognitive operation types that produce propositions and argue that the common nature of cognitive operations and what they operate on ought to be determined empirically in cross-disciplinary work. I conclude by offering a semantics for cognitive act types that accommodates one type of empirical evidence.

Keywords::

• act-based theory of propositions
• cognitive significance
• cognitive theory of propositions
• hyperintensionality
• unity of the proposition

Notes

^1. It seems that Forbes would largely agree that if co-substitution of necessarily co-extensional terms is permissible, then we do not get the unspecific reading, and the existential commitments are normal. According to him, search verbs (e.g., ‘look for’), depiction verbs (e.g., ‘draw’) and desire verbs are anomalous in all three ways. Evaluative verbs (e.g., ‘admire’) and emotion verbs (e.g., ‘fear’) are anomalous in the first and third way but do not typically have an unspecific reading. ‘Need’ as well as transaction verbs (e.g., ‘owe’) are atypical in that they allow for certain types of substitution but not others.

^2. This, of course, could be extended to other types of expressions. For example, quantifier expressions can be treated as second-order predicates, or type≪e, t>,≪e, t>, t≫, denoting relations between sets of individuals.

^3. The extension of the whole sentence is taken to be a constituent of the structured extension. This move is redundant for structured intensions but will become important when we look at structured hyperintensions.

^4. Of course, it could also be the case that Soames' belief set includes a belief that involves a descriptive name ‘Vulcan’ that is equivalent to something like ‘the planet Urbain Le Verrier thought existed on the basis of peculiarities of Mercury's orbit’. In that case he might hold a belief to the effect that Vulcan doesn't exist.

^5. I am grateful to David Hunter and Gurpreet Rattan for helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Berit Brogaard

Berit Brogaard is Professor of Philosophy at Department of Philosophy and The Center for Neurodynamics, University of Missouri, St. Louis. Her publications have appeared in journals such as Journal of Philosophy, Nous, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophers' Imprint, Analysis, Consciousness and Cognition and Cognitive Science. Her book Transient Truths appeared with Oxford University Press in 2012. In her academic research she specializes in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences.