Why fuss about these quirks of the vernacular? Propositional attitude sentences in Prior’s nachlass
Why fuss about these quirks of the vernacular? Propositional attitude sentences in Prior’s nachlass
In English, in order to speak about Arthur’s attitudes, we use sentences like “Arthur believes that natural language is messy”. For sentences of this kind we have a standard theory, according to which the ‘that’-clause ‘that natural language is messy’ denotes a proposition. As Prior showed for the first time, the standard theory appears to be at odds with some linguistic data. Geach and Prior both assumed that linguistic data are to be taken as reliable guides to a correct semantic account and I will start by raising some worries concerning their methodology. Because of these data, Prior and Geach suggested some non-standard accounts. I will then show that if we take linguistic data seriously, their non-standard accounts do not fare any better than the standard theory. My general conclusion will thus not only be that Prior’s and Geach’s methodology is disputable, but also that their conclusions do not seem to follow even if we grant the reliability of their methodology.
3521–3534
Felappi, Giulia
9c0bc4c5-5547-434e-8bbd-0c785bece1bc
1 November 2015
Felappi, Giulia
9c0bc4c5-5547-434e-8bbd-0c785bece1bc
Felappi, Giulia
(2015)
Why fuss about these quirks of the vernacular? Propositional attitude sentences in Prior’s nachlass.
Synthese, 193 (11), .
(doi:10.1007/s11229-015-0903-1).
Abstract
In English, in order to speak about Arthur’s attitudes, we use sentences like “Arthur believes that natural language is messy”. For sentences of this kind we have a standard theory, according to which the ‘that’-clause ‘that natural language is messy’ denotes a proposition. As Prior showed for the first time, the standard theory appears to be at odds with some linguistic data. Geach and Prior both assumed that linguistic data are to be taken as reliable guides to a correct semantic account and I will start by raising some worries concerning their methodology. Because of these data, Prior and Geach suggested some non-standard accounts. I will then show that if we take linguistic data seriously, their non-standard accounts do not fare any better than the standard theory. My general conclusion will thus not only be that Prior’s and Geach’s methodology is disputable, but also that their conclusions do not seem to follow even if we grant the reliability of their methodology.
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 9 September 2015
e-pub ahead of print date: 19 September 2015
Published date: 1 November 2015
Organisations:
Philosophy
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 396936
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/396936
ISSN: 0039-7857
PURE UUID: ffbe11a4-4048-477a-b9fa-2a228775f8a5
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Date deposited: 17 Jun 2016 08:17
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:53
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