Propositional attitude

A propositional attitude is a mental state held by an agent or organism toward a proposition. In philosophy, propositional attitudes can be considered to be neurally realized, causally efficacious, content-bearing internal states (personal principles/values). Linguistically, propositional attitudes are denoted by a verb (e.g. believed) governing an embedded "that" clause, for example, 'Sally believed that she had won'.

Propositional attitudes are often assumed to be the fundamental units of thought and their contents, being propositions, are true or false from the perspective of the person. An agent can have different propositional attitudes toward the same proposition (e.g., "S believes that her ice-cream is cold," and "S fears that her ice-cream is cold"). Propositional attitudes have directions of fit: some are meant to reflect the world, others to influence it.

One topic of central concern is the relation between the modalities of assertion and belief, as well as intention. A person's assertions may not conform to their beliefs. When the departure of assertion from belief is intentional, it is called a lie.

Other comparisons of multiple modalities that frequently arise are the relationships between belief and knowledge and the discrepancies that occur among observations, expectations, and intentions. Deviations of observations from expectations are commonly perceived as surprises, phenomena that call for explanations to reduce the shock of amazement.

In logic, the formal properties of verbs like assert, believe, command, consider, deny, doubt, imagine, judge, know, want, wish, and a host of others that involve attitudes or intentions toward propositions are notorious for their recalcitrance to analysis. (Quine 1956).

Quine's example here refers to Giorgio Barbarelli's sobriquet "Giorgione", an Italian name roughly glossed as "Big George." The basis of the paradox here is that while the two names signify the same individual (the meaning of the first statement), the names are not themselves identical; the second statement refers to an attribute (origin) that they do not share.

Bertrand Russell introduced the idea of handling propositions like this:

How one feels about or regards a proposition is different than what a proposition is – they can be accepted, asserted, believed, commanded, contested, declared, denied, doubted, enjoined, exclaimed, or expected, for example. Different attitudes toward propositions are called propositional attitudes; they are also discussed under the headings of intentionality and linguistic modality.

Many problematic situations in real life arise from the circumstance that many different propositions in many different modalities are in the air at once. In order to compare propositions of different colours and flavours, as it were, there is no basis for comparison but to examine the underlying propositions themselves, returning to matters of language and logic. Despite the name, propositional attitudes are not regarded as psychological attitudes proper, since the formal disciplines of linguistics and logic are concerned with nothing more concrete than what can be said in general about their formal properties and their patterns of interaction.

• Accessibility relation
• Affect (linguistics)
• Attitude
• Belief
• Disposition
• Embedded clause
• Habit
• Intensionality
• Jerry Fodor
• Knowledge
• Responsive predicate
• Qualia
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
• Truth

• Awbrey, J. and Awbrey, S.(1995), "Interpretation as Action: The Risk of Inquiry", Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 15, 40–52.
• Cresswell, M.J. (1985), Structured meanings. The semantics of propositional attitudes. MIT Press, Cambridge & London 1985.
• Quine, W.V. (1956), "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes", Journal of Philosophy 53 (1956). Reprinted, pp. 185–196 in Quine (1976), Ways of Paradox.
• Quine, W.V. (1976), The Ways of Paradox, and Other Essays, 1st edition, 1966. Revised and enlarged edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1976.
• Quine, W.V. (1980 a), From a Logical Point of View, Logico-Philosophical Essays, 2nd edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
• Quine, W.V. (1980 b), "Reference and Modality", pp. 139–159 in Quine (1980 a), From a Logical Point of View.
• Ramsey, F.P. (1927), "Facts and Propositions", Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 7, 153–170. Reprinted, pp. 34–51 in F.P. Ramsey, Philosophical Papers, David Hugh Mellor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1990.
• Ramsey, F.P. (1990), Philosophical Papers, David Hugh Mellor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
• Runes, Dagobert D. (ed.), Dictionary of Philosophy, Littlefield, Adams, and Company, Totowa, NJ, 1962.
• Russell, Bertrand (1912), The Problems of Philosophy, 1st published 1912. Reprinted, Galaxy Book, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1959. Reprinted, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1988.
• Russell, Bertrand (1918), "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism", The Monist, 1918. Reprinted, pp. 177–281 in Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950, Robert Charles Marsh (ed.), Unwin Hyman, London, UK, 1956. Reprinted, pp. 35–155 in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, David Pears (ed.), Open Court, La Salle, IL, 1985.
• Russell, Bertrand (1956), Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950, Robert Charles Marsh (ed.), Unwin Hyman, London, UK, 1956. Reprinted, Routledge, London, UK, 1992.
• Russell, Bertrand (1985), The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, David Pears (ed.), Open Court, La Salle, IL.

• Media related to Propositional attitudes at Wikimedia Commons
• Propositional Attitudes, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy