Propositions on the cheap
Propositions on the cheap
复制标题
便宜的建议
作者：
Alex Grzankowski;Raymond Buchanan
根据经典理论，命题是自成一体的，抽象的，本质表征的实体和我们的认知态度，而我们体内实现这些态度的表征状态，通过它们的命题对象来表征。为了解释命题是如何代表的，最近关于命题的许多文献都对这一说法的各个方面施加了压力。为了取代经典的描述，修正主义者的目标是根据更熟悉的实体，如事实、心理或语言行为的类型，甚至属性来理解命题。但是我们认为关于命题的形而上学故事比古典理论家或修正主义者让你相信的要简单得多。在接下来的文章中，我们认为，对我们与命题的认知关系的本质的正确理解表明，命题本身是否代表的问题充其量只是一种分心。我们将论证，一旦这种干扰被移除，一个非常令人愉悦的极简命题故事的可能性就出现了；这个故事只适用于所有理论家在相关辩论中所认同的（或者至少应该是）假设。
According to the classical account, propositions are sui generis, abstract, intrinsically-representational entities and our cognitive attitudes, and the token states within us that realize those attitudes, represent as they do in virtue of their propositional objects. In light of a desire to explain how it could be that propositions represent, much of the recent literature on propositions has pressured various aspects of this account. In place of the classical account, revisionists have aimed to understand propositions in terms of more familiar entities such as facts, types of mental or linguistic acts, and even properties. But we think that the metaphysical story about propositions is much simpler than either the classical theorist or the revisionist would have you believe. In what follows, we argue that a proper understanding of the nature of our cognitive relations to propositions shows that the question of whether propositions themselves represent is, at best, a distraction. We will argue that once this distraction is removed, the possibility of a very pleasing, minimalist story of propositions emerges; a story that appeals only to assumptions that are (or, at least ought to be) shared by all theorists in the relevant debate.