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Psychology Dictionary of Arguments

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Propositions, philosophy: propositions are defined as the meanings of sentences, whereby a sentence is interpreted as a character string, which must still be interpreted in relation to a situation or a speaker. E.g. “I am hungry” has a different meaning from the mouth of each new speaker. On the other hand, the sentence “I am hungry” from the mouth of the speaker, who first expressed the German sentence, has the same meaning as the German sentence uttered by him. See also meaning, propositional attitudes, identity conditions, opacity, utterances, sentences.
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Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.

 
Author Concept Summary/Quotes Sources

Brian Loar on Propositions - Dictionary of Arguments

II 140
Proposition/Davidson: (meanings as entities) are not independent of descriptions: "The meaning of "Theaetetus flies".
Problem: Relations between such descriptions cannot be specified in such a way that the compositionality can be shown.
>Compositionality
.
LoarVsDavidson: instead: semantics of possible worlds.
>Possible world semantics.
II 147
Proposition/Loar: Problem: if the form of the words is irrelevant, the reference becomes doubtful - this happens when propositional attitudes are made a relation between speaker, sentence and an intentional entity.
Solution/Frege: "that S" describes the meaning of "S" as an entity, but not S as "having a certain meaning".
>Meaning/Frege.
Even better solution: paratactic analysis/Davidson.
>Paratactic analysis.

- - -
Schiffer I 25f
Loar/Schiffer: establishes a theory in which there are a pair of functions from propositions to internal states in which one is determined by the content of the theory.
Propositions are then external indexes of the functional roles that you want to assign to physical states. So the propositions remained external to the system.
Analogy: Physical Properties/Stalnaker: For example, having a certain height or weight. This can be seen as a relation between a thing and a number, because they belong to a family of properties that have a common structure with the real numbers.
>Properties/Stalnaker.
In this way one can also pick out propositions: as a relation between person and proposition. The theory then has a form where the quantified variables (the "φ-s") pass over functions that map propositions to physical Z-types. If the theory is true then these Z-types have the functional roles that determine the theory.
(All this applies only with assumed relation theory, i.e. a relation to assumed objects of belief).
>Relation theory, >Objects of belief, >Objects of thought.
Schiffer I 45
Belief/Loar/Schiffer: Loar began with propositions. These later became superfluous. SchifferVsLoar: the theory is not completely general - only for normal adults. It is not immune to twin earth cases and arthritis examples ((s) >externalism, >arthritis/shmartritis).

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Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments
The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition.

Loar I
B. Loar
Mind and Meaning Cambridge 1981

Loar II
Brian Loar
"Two Theories of Meaning"
In
Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell, Oxford 1976

Schi I
St. Schiffer
Remnants of Meaning Cambridge 1987


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