{"id":132,"date":"2006-07-09T23:18:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-10T03:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=132"},"modified":"2006-07-09T23:18:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-10T03:18:00","slug":"propositions-and-states-of-affairs-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2006\/07\/propositions-and-states-of-affairs-iv\/","title":{"rendered":"Propositions and States of Affairs – IV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Awhile back, I did a series of three posts (I<\/a>, II<\/a>, and III<\/a>) in which I was trying to work out the relations between propositions (“props” for short) and states of affairs (“sofas” for short). I’ve since been rethinking things a bit. So here’s my new and (hopefully) improved theory.<\/p>\n

Earlier I had written that propositions are assertoric<\/span> units of meaning, but I now see that this is ambiguous between their being assertions <\/span>and their being assertible<\/span>. The second reading is correct, and so “assertoric” should be replaced with “assertible” for clarity’s sake.<\/p>\n

One problem with the first reading is that, strictly speaking, it is only persons<\/span> that make assertions, so defining propositions as assertions makes it analytic that there can be no propositions without persons. But it is doubtful that that should be admitted as an analytic truth. There is no clear contradiction is supposing that some proposition or other being true or false.<\/p>\n

A second problem with the first reading is that it makes it difficult to construe the common element in “Is p true?” and “p is true”, where the latter expresses an assertion and the former does not. More generally, if we treat propositions as assertions, then to handle non-assertoric “propositional attitudes” we have to treat them as second-order qualifications of assertions. Thus, doubting that p becomes doubting whether to assert that X; withholding that p becomes withholding whether to assert that X; and so forth. X here, stands for an abstract entity that is just like a proposition except for being attitudinally neutral<\/span>. Philosopher Roderick Chisholm employs abstract states of affairs<\/span> to fill that role, and until recently I basically followed him in that. On this view, a proposition p posits<\/span> an abstract state of affairs S and is true just in case that abstract state of affairs corresponds to a concrete state of affairs<\/span> that “obtains”.<\/p>\n

But all this is awkward and, I now think, needlessly complex. If we simply say that propositions are assertible<\/span> units of meaning<\/span>, then we can treat all propositional attitudes in the same way and we don’t need to bloat our ontology by admitting abstract states of affairs in addition to<\/span> propositions.<\/p>\n

My current view may be summed up as follows:<\/p>\n