Teaching and Learning Guide for: Recent Work on Propositions
Authors: Hanks Peter 
Published: September 2009

Author’s Introduction

Some of the most interesting recent work in philosophy of language and metaphysics is focused on questions about propositions, the abstract, truth‐bearing contents of sentences and beliefs. The aim of this guide is to give instructors and students a road map for some significant work on propositions since the mid‐1990s. This work falls roughly into two areas: challenges to the existence of propositions and theories about the nature and structure of propositions. The former includes both a widely discussed puzzle about propositional designators as well as direct and indirect arguments against the existence of propositions. The latter is dominated by what is currently the central debate about the metaphysics of propositions, i.e. whether they are structured, composite entities or unstructured ontological simples. This issue has eclipsed older debates about whether propositions can be identified with sets of possible worlds or other kinds of sentence intensions.

Author Recommends

Soames, Scott. ‘Direct Reference, Propositional Attitudes, and Semantic Content.’Philosophical Topics 15 (1987): 47–87. Reprinted in Propositions and Attitudes. Eds. N. Salmon and S. Soames. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. 197–239.

Essential groundwork for more recent work on propositions. Soames gives a careful and exacting presentation of the case against identifying propositions with sets of possible worlds or other truth‐supporting circumstances. Also contains a detailed statement of the Russellian conception of propositions on which propositions are ordered sets of objects, properties and relations.

King, Jeffrey. ‘Designating Propositions.’The Philosophical Review 111 (2002): 341–71.

Sometimes substituting a definite description for a corresponding ‘that’‐clause can lead to bizarre changes in truth‐conditions: compare ‘Bill fears that Hillary will be president’ with ‘Bill fears the proposition that Hillary will be president’. This puzzle about propositional designators threatens the relational analysis of propositional attitude reports, the view that ‘believes’ expresses a relation to the proposition designated by its ‘that’‐clause, and thereby poses an indirect threat to the existence of propositions. King’s solution posits an ambiguity in verbs like ‘fear’ that embed both ‘that’‐clauses and definite descriptions.

Jubien, Michael. ‘Propositions and the Objects of Thought.’Philosophical Studies 104 (2001): 47–62.

A direct attack on the existence of propositions. Jubien deploys an analogue of the problem that Paul Benacerraf raised for set‐theoretical reductions of numbers against metaphysical reductions of propositions. Just as numbers can be reduced to sets in many different ways, any reduction of propositions brings with it equally good variants, thus making any such reduction arbitrary and unmotivated. The only alternative is to treat propositions as abstract metaphysical primitives. As Jubien argues, however, abstract primitive entities are incapable of doing what propositions must do, i.e. represent objects and states of affairs on their own, without the input of thinking subjects. The upshot is the propositions cannot be reduced and they cannot be primitive, and so they must not exist.

Hanks, Peter. ‘How Wittgenstein Defeated Russell’s Multiple Relation Theory of Judgment.’Synthese 154 (2007): 121–46.

Scepticism about propositions has recently led some philosophers, Jubien included, to resuscitate Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgment, the idea that judgment is a many‐place relation to objects, properties and relations. This paper explains why Russell himself abandoned that theory, and why the theory is still refuted by an objection due to Wittgenstein.

Hofweber, Thomas. ‘Inexpressible Properties and Propositions.’Oxford Studies in Metaphysics. 2 vols. Ed. D. Zimmerman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 155–206.

An indirect attack on the existence of propositions. Hofweber argues that sentences like ‘Bill believes something that Hillary asserted’ do not commit us to the existence of propositions. His view is that propositional quantification is an instance of what he calls ‘internal’ or ‘inferential role’ quantification, a kind of quantification that carries no ontological implications.

Schiffer, Stephen. The Things We Mean. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. esp. chs 1–2.

Schiffer defends his theory of pleonastic propositions, on which propositions are unstructured, have no parts, and are very finely grained.

Bealer, George. ‘Propositions.’Mind 107 (1998): 1–32.

Bealer defends his algebraic theory of propositions, which, like Schiffer’s pleonastic account, treats propositions as unstructured metaphysical simples.

King, Jeffrey. The Nature of and Structure of Content. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

The best developed current theory of the structure in structured propositions. King identifies propositions with certain kinds of facts in which objects, properties and relations are bound together by amalgams of syntactic and semantic relations.

Hanks, Peter. ‘Recent Work on Propositions.’Philosophy Compass 4 (2009): 1–18.

A survey of work on propositions since the mid‐1990s that complements this teaching and learning guide. Contains responses to Jubien’s and Hofweber’s arguments against propositions and critical discussions of Schiffer’s pleonastic propositions and King’s theory of propositional structure.

Online Resources

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/propositions/

  Propositions (Matthew McGrath)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/propositions‐structured/

  Structured Propositions (Jeffrey King)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/propositions‐singular/

  Singular Propositions (Greg Fitch)

Sample Partial Syllabus

The following partial syllabus can be used as a unit on recent work on propositions in graduate level courses in philosophy of language or metaphysics.

Week 1: A Substitution Puzzle About Propositional Designators

King, Jeffrey. ‘Designating Propositions’.

Moltmann, Friederike. ‘Propositional Attitudes Without Propositions.’Synthese 135 (2003): 77–118.

Week 2: The Benacerraf Problem and Propositional Representation

Benacerraf, Paul. ‘What Numbers Could Not Be.’Philosophical Review 74 (1965): 47–73.

Jubien, Michael. ‘Propositions and the Objects of Thought.’

Week 3: Propositional Quantification

Hofweber, Thomas. ‘Inexpressible Properties and Propositions’.

Hofweber, Thomas. ‘A Puzzle about Ontology.’Noûs 39 (2005): 256–83.

Week 4: Schiffer on Pleonastic Propositions

Schiffer, Stephen. ‘Language‐Created Language‐Independent Entities.’Philosophical Topics 24 (1996): 149–67.

Schiffer, Stephen. The Things We Mean, chs 1–2.

Week 5: King on Structured Propositions

King, Jeffrey. ‘Structured Propositions and Complex Predicates.’Noûs, 29 (1995): 516–35.

King, Jeffrey. The Nature and Structure of Content, chs 1–3.

Focus Questions

Why does identifying propositions with sentence intensions, e.g. sets of possible worlds, ‘require the attitudes to have a particular sort of closure under logical consequence, which they clearly don’t have’ (Mark Richard)?

How does the difference between (a) and (b) pose a threat to the existence of propositions?

What is the Benacerraf problem for metaphysical reductions of propositions?

Why must a proposition represent ‘on its own cuff’ (Michael Jubien)? Why is this a problem for the view that propositions are primitive abstract entities?

What does it mean to say that propositions are structured? Give two different accounts of what propositional structure might be.