Philosophy of Language: Propositional Attitudes

Instructor: Jonathan Cohen (joncohenREMOVETHIS@aardvark.ucsd.edu (omit text in caps, which reduces automated spam))
office: (732) 445 6163
home: (718) 499 1213
Office hours: Tuesday, 12:30 to 2:00, in Psychology A132, on Busch Campus.

Overview

Among the most puzzling philosophical questions at the intersection of the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind are those concerning the so-called propositional attitudes. If propositions are understood as the contents sentences express, it seems appropriate to claim that we bear cognitive attitudes toward propositions: we stand in relations of belief, disbelief, doubt, hope, and so on toward particular contents.

However, questions about how we should characterize propositional attitudes and the semantics of propositional attitude reports ("Peter believes that Hesperus is beautiful") have been extremely vexing. For example, propositional attitude reports are widely taken as paradigm cases of what Quine called opaque contexts -- places where coreferring terms cannot be freely substituted for each other without a change of truth value. This is because, as Frege observed, "Peter believes Hesperus is beautiful" can be true while "Peter believes that Phosphorus is beautiful" is false, even though 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus' refer to the same entity. It has seemed to many that this phenomenon will require a complication of the semantics; it has been much less clear just what sort of complication is appropriate.

In this course we'll examine this and several other of the problems arising from propositional attitudes, and we'll consider some positive proposals for treating them.

Course Requirements

If you are taking the class for credit, you will be responsible for passing in two short papers (~10-12 pages) on some issue raised by the different readings we'll be covering. You must meet with me prior to writing any paper for the course to make sure that the topic you choose to write on is appropriate.

Suggested Reading List

Frege, "On Sense and Reference"
Frege, "The Thought"
Russell, "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description"
Davidson, "On Saying That"
Quine, "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes"
Kripke, "A Puzzle About Belief"
Perry, "The Problem of the Essential Indexical"
Lewis, "Attitudes De Dicto and De Se"
Schiffer, "Belief Ascription"
Crimmins, Talk About Beliefs, ch 5
Richard, Propositional Attitudes, ch 1-3
Higginbotham, "Linguistic Theory and Davidson's Program in Semantics"
Larson and Segal, Knowledge of Meaning, ch 11
Larson and Ludlow, "Interpreted Logical Forms"
Soames, "Direct Reference, Propositional Attitudes, and Semantic Content"
Salmon, Frege's Puzzle (selections)
Fodor, "Substitution Arguments and the Individuation of Beliefs"
Recanati, Direct Reference: From Language to Thought, ch 17-19
Davidson, "What is Present to the Mind"
Matthews, "The Measure of Mind"