Theoretical Background
The project addresses the problem of how to account for the fact that propositions, understood as representational structures, have truth-conditions and serve as the contents of propositional attitudes conceived as mental states.
Contemporary philosophical responses to this problem fall into two dominant camps. The first (Soames 2014) holds that propositions are forceless: they can be entertained without any commitment-laden stance and are derivative of the more primitive notion of predication. This position faces two main challenges. First, it is unlikely to offer a satisfactory account of predication if predication itself is not grounded in a more primitive notion of propositionality (Tałasiewicz 2017). Second, if propositions are bearers of truth or falsity, they must involve some form of commitment to how things are (Hanks 2015).
The second camp (Hanks 2015, 2017, 2021; Recanati 2019, 2021, 2022) claims that propositions are unified by assertoric force. While this explains their capacity to bear truth-values, it struggles to account for propositional contexts in which no assertion is made, such as embedded propositions or fictional discourse. Attempts to address this difficulty appeal to doxastic decoupling, according to which assertoric force is cancelled in such contexts. Critics argue, however, that if propositional unity is derived from assertoric force, cancelling that force threatens propositional unity itself (Reiland 2019).
The present proposal develops a third kind of theory, inspired by an analytical tradition stemming from Husserl’s Logical Investigations (Husserl 2001). Although largely absent from contemporary debates on propositional unity, this tradition is alive in other areas of philosophy, notably in theories of logical syntax (Ajdukiewicz 1935, 1960; Leśniewski 1991; Carpenter 1997; Steedman 2000; Geach 1970; Simons 1981, 1999; Humberstone 2005; Tałasiewicz 2010). It emphasizes a sharp distinction between propositional acts, nominal acts, and assertive acts, but it lacks a positive account of the commitments involved in propositional acts.
This project aims to advance this tradition by providing such a positive account, hence the label neo-Husserlian. We argue that propositions are neither forceless nor assertive, but instead involve a primitive, sui generis propositional force. This force is understood as the simulation of positive states of affairs corresponding to atomic propositions, as part of the conditions for assertion or rejection of a proposition. It is important to stress that this simulation of a state of affairs is not meant as a simulation of a speech act of assertion.
Experimental Design
To entertain a compound proposition is to simulate all relevant constituent positive states of affairs and to represent them within a Boolean structure determined by the logical connectives involved, thereby reflecting the compound conditions for assertion or rejection. One such connective is negation. On our account, a negated proposition is already a compound proposition built from a positive atomic one. Entertaining a negated proposition therefore involves the same commitment as entertaining the corresponding positive proposition, namely, the commitment to representing the same positive state of affairs.
Suppose that entertaining an atomic proposition p involves representing a state of affairs s. Conditions for asserting p may be understood as the instruction: say “yes” if s obtains; conditions for asserting ¬p may be understood as the instruction: say “yes” if s fails to obtain. Conditions for rejection correspond to complementary instructions: for p, say “no” if s fails to obtain; for ¬p, say “no” if s obtains. Throughout all these cases, the positive state of affairs s remains in play. The commitment to simulating s is never cancelled or decoupled, neither under negation nor within more complex embeddings.
One of the key evaluative criteria in contemporary philosophy of language and mind is compatibility with empirical knowledge about cognitive functioning. The empirical hypothesis underlying our project is that the neo-Husserlian account differs from decoupling-based theories along a cognitively significant dimension, and that this difference is empirically testable.
The neo-Husserlian view exemplifies a plus type of theory. At the basic level, propositional representation consists in mere entertaining, albeit entertaining endowed with sui generis propositional force, while full assertion and rejection are added by distinct higher-level mental acts. By contrast, cognitively interpreted decoupling-based approaches exemplify a minus type of theory: they treat full assertion as the default level of propositional representation, with non-assertive mere entertaining requiring an additional subtractive operation of decoupling.
We propose an experimental setting in which this cognitive adding or subtracting is reflected in measurable behavioral patterns, specifically reaction-time differences in the evaluation of more or less embedded sentences. We distinguish four experimental conditions, in which a sentence is evaluated against a corresponding visual stimulus: (PA) a positive sentence, verified by the stimulus, eliciting assertion; (PR) a positive sentence that is falsified, eliciting rejection; (NA) a negative sentence that is verified; and (NR) a negative sentence that is falsified.
Predictions and Results
According to the neo-Husserlian account, asserting a positive sentence involves recognizing a match between the world and a previously generated representation of a positive state of affairs. Rejecting a positive sentence requires detecting a deviation from that representation, a cognitively more demanding task, since such deviation can take multiple forms. Accordingly, PR should yield longer reaction times than PA.
Asserting a negative sentence involves representing a positive state of affairs and recognizing its absence in the world, which again may take multiple forms. Rejecting a negative sentence, by contrast, should be easier and faster, since it merely requires recognizing that the world matches the positive representation associated with the negated sentence.
Thus, the neo-Husserlian account predicts that PR will be slower than PA, whereas NR will be faster than NA. The decoupling account yields a different prediction. While it also predicts that PR is slower than PA, it predicts that NR is slower than NA, since rejecting a negated sentence, as rejecting any previously asserted sentence, requires an additional decoupling step. The experiment is designed to determine which of these predictions is borne out.
Results will be added here when available.
References
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- Ajdukiewicz, Kazimierz. 1960. “Syntactical Connections between Constituents of Declarative Sentences”. In The Scientific World-Perspective and Other Essays, 1931-1963, edited by Jerzy Giedymin. D. Reidel.
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- Hanks, Peter. 2015. Propositional Content. Oxford University Press.
- Hanks, Peter. 2017. “Predication and Rule-Following”. In Philosophy and Logic of Predication, edited by Piotr Stalmaszczyk. Peter Lang.
- Hanks, Peter. 2021. “The Varieties of Cancellation”. In Force, Content and the Unity of the Proposition. Routledge.
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- Recanati, François. 2022. “Understanding Force Cancellation”. Inquiry.
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- Tałasiewicz, Mieszko. 2017. “The Sense of a Predicate”. In Philosophy and Logic of Predication, edited by Piotr Stalmaszczyk. Peter Lang.