Mieszko Tałasiewicz
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, represented by 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 as to how things are (Hanks 2015).
The second camp, represented by Hanks (2015, 2017, 2021) and 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 remains 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. I 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 asserting or rejecting a proposition. It is important to stress that this simulation of a state of affairs is not meant as the simulation of a speech act of assertion.
To entertain a compound proposition is to simulate all relevant constituent positive states of affairs and to represent them within a quasi-Boolean structure determined by the logical connectives involved, thereby reflecting the compound conditions for assertion or rejection. One such connective is negation. On this 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. The conditions for asserting p may be understood as the instruction: say “yes” if s obtains; the conditions for asserting ¬p may be understood as the instruction: say “yes” if s fails to obtain. The 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 the 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 entertaining endowed with sui generis propositional force, while 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 assertion as the default level of propositional representation, with non-assertive uses, such as “mere” entertaining or outright rejection, requiring an additional subtractive operation of decoupling.
The project proposes an experiment in which the presence or absence of this subtractive operation is reflected in measurable behavioural patterns.
Project Sections
References
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