Propositions
- LAST REVIEWED: 24 July 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 24 July 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0212
- LAST REVIEWED: 24 July 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 24 July 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0212
Introduction
Though there is significant disagreement among philosophers as to the nature of propositions, there is significant agreement as to what philosophical roles propositions are supposed to play. Hence, it is best to explain what propositions are by saying what they are supposed to do. It seems clear that sentences in some sense encode information and that two sentences of the same or different languages may encode the same piece of information. Perhaps “Snow is white” and “Schnee ist weiss” is an example of the latter. If we posit the existence of propositions, they can be identified with pieces of information encoded by sentences; and we can say that the above two sentences express the same proposition. Sentences are true or false in virtue of encoding the information, and hence expressing the propositions, that they do. Hence, propositions are sometimes called the primary bearers of truth and falsity, since sentences are derivatively true or false in virtue of expressing the proposition that they do. Propositions are also thought to be the bearers of modal properties, like being necessary or possible. Further, thinking agents are thought to bear various cognitive relations to propositions: they are the things we believe, doubt, assume, and deny. Related to this latter point, and turning now more to philosophy of language, sentences like “Frege believes that arithmetic reduces to logic” assert that there is a relation, believing, between Frege and the proposition that arithmetic reduces to logic, which is designated by “that arithmetic reduces to logic.” Propositions are also thought to be designated by other expressions, such as “Goldbach’s conjecture” and “what John just said.” Hence, sentences like “What John said entails Goldbach’s conjecture” and others suggest that propositions can stand in relation to each other (entailment) and possess a variety of properties. In addition, many believe that perceptual experiences have accuracy conditions: they can represent the way the world is around us accurately or inaccurately. Many think that the reason this is so is that perceptual experiences have as their contents propositions. However, even among those who agree on this, there is significant disagreement about the nature of the propositions that are the contents of perceptual experience and whether they can be expressed by sentences of natural languages. Finally, current thinking about propositions was very much influenced by the views of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Frege’s Theory of Thoughts
The German mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frege developed a theory of thoughts, which he took to be expressed by sentences of natural languages and which were true or false. Frege took sentences to be true or false in virtue of expressing true or false thoughts. Thoughts for Frege were believed, doubted, and so on. So Frege’s thoughts play many of the roles philosophers take propositions to play. For any simple or complex linguistic expression, including sentences, Frege distinguished the sense of the expression from its reference. The sense of an expression determines its referent. The sense of the name “Aristotle” could be thought of as a condition Aristotle uniquely satisfies, like being Plato’s greatest student. This sense determines the referent of the name (Aristotle himself) since the referent uniquely satisfies the sense. The referent of a predicate like “is smart” Frege took to be a function from objects to truth-values. In this case, it maps an object o to true iff o is smart; and to false iff o isn’t smart. Frege called functions from objects to truth-values concepts. The sense of such a predicate is a descriptive condition that the function just described uniquely satisfies. Frege thought that the sense of a one-place predicate like “is smart” is incomplete or in need of saturation in just the way the predicate “is smart” itself feels incomplete. Now Frege appears to say that the sense of the sentence “Frege is smart” is built up out of the senses of “Frege” and “is smart.” Frege thought the sense of “Frege” and the sense of “is smart” are held together in the sense of the sentence “Frege is smart” by the “whole,” “complete” sense of “Frege” saturating the incomplete sense of “is smart.” The sense of the sentence “Frege is smart” just is a thought. In general, the senses of complete declarative sentences are thoughts (ignoring contextually sensitive expressions). The referent of a sentence, determined by its sense/thought, is a truth-value: the true or the false. Finally, Frege held that thoughts, and senses generally, exist independently of minds and language in what he famously called the third realm. By this he meant that thoughts exist neither in the physical world nor only in our minds. Frege 1963, Frege 1997a, Frege 1997b, Frege 1997c, and Frege 1997d are central sources of the view just sketched. Burge 1979, Dummett 1981, and Heck and May 2011 are important secondary works on Frege.
Burge, Tyler. “Sinning against Frege.” Philosophical Review 88.3 (1979): 398–432.
DOI: 10.2307/2184957
Influential reexamination of the Fregean notion of sense. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Dummett, Michael. The Interpretation of Frege’s Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Comprehensive critical interpretation of Frege’s philosophy of language.
Frege, Gottlob. “Compound Thoughts.” Mind 72.285 (1963): 1–17.
Frege’s best discussion of the internal structure of thoughts and complex thoughts (e.g., thoughts expressed by sentences containing “and,” “or,” etc.). English translation of Logische Untersuchungen. Dritter Teil: Gedankengefüge, first published in 1923. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Frege, Gottlob. “On Sinn and Bedeutung.” In The Frege Reader. Edited by Michael Beaney, 151–171. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997a.
Central text in which Frege makes the distinction between sense and reference. English translation of Über Sinn und Bedeutung, first published in 1892.
Frege, Gottlob. “Function and Concept.” In The Frege Reader. Edited by Michael Beaney, 130–148. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997b.
Central text in which Frege makes the distinction between concept and object. Also contains one of his best explanations of his notion of concept. English translation of Funktion und Begriff, first published in 1891.
Frege, Gottlob. “On Concept and Object.” In The Frege Reader. Edited by Michael Beaney, 181–193. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997c.
Central discussion of Frege’s notions of concept and object. Raises the famous problem of the concept “horse.” English translation of Über Begriff und Gegenstand, first published in 1892.
Frege, Gottlob. “Thought.” In The Frege Reader. Edited by Michael Beaney, 325–345. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997d.
Frege’s most explicit discussion of thoughts and their properties. English translation of Der Gedanke, first published in 1918.
Heck, Richard G., Jr., and Robert May. “The Composition of Thoughts.” Nous 45.1 (2011): 126–166.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0068.2010.00769.x
Critical discussion of Fregean thoughts and the respect in which they have internal structure. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- A Priori Knowledge
- Abduction and Explanatory Reasoning
- Ability
- Abortion
- Abstract Objects
- Action
- Addams, Jane
- Adorno, Theodor
- Aesthetic Hedonism
- Aesthetics, Analytic Approaches to
- Aesthetics, Continental
- Aesthetics, Environmental
- Aesthetics, History of
- African Philosophy, Contemporary
- Alexander, Samuel
- Analytic/Synthetic Distinction
- Anarchism, Philosophical
- Animal Rights
- Anscombe, G. E. M.
- Anthropic Principle, The
- Anti-Natalism
- Applied Ethics
- Aquinas, Thomas
- Argument Mapping
- Art and Emotion
- Art and Knowledge
- Art and Morality
- Artifacts
- Assertion
- Astell, Mary
- Atheism
- Augustine
- Aurelius, Marcus
- Austin, J. L.
- Autonomy
- Bacon, Francis
- Bayesianism
- Beauty
- Belief
- Bergson, Henri
- Berkeley, George
- Biology, Philosophy of
- Bolzano, Bernard
- Boredom, Philosophy of
- British Idealism
- Buber, Martin
- Buddhist Philosophy
- Burge, Tyler
- Business Ethics
- Camus, Albert
- Canterbury, Anselm of
- Carnap, Rudolf
- Causation
- Cavendish, Margaret
- Certainty
- Chemistry, Philosophy of
- Childhood, Philosophy of
- Chinese Philosophy
- Cognitive Ability
- Cognitive Phenomenology
- Cognitive Science, Philosophy of
- Coherentism
- Color
- Communitarianism
- Computational Science
- Computer Science, Philosophy of
- Computer Simulations
- Comte, Auguste
- Concepts
- Conceptual Role Semantics
- Conditionals
- Confirmation
- Confucius
- Connectionism
- Consciousness
- Constructive Empiricism
- Contemporary Hylomorphism
- Contextualism
- Contrastivism
- Cook Wilson, John
- Cosmology, Philosophy of
- Critical Theory
- Culture and Cognition
- Daoism and Philosophy
- Davidson, Donald
- de Beauvoir, Simone
- de Montaigne, Michel
- Death
- Decision Theory
- Deleuze, Gilles
- Democracy
- Depiction
- Derrida, Jacques
- Descartes, René
- Descartes, René: Sensory Representations
- Descriptions
- Dewey, John
- Dialetheism
- Disability
- Disagreement, Epistemology of
- Disjunctivism
- Dispositions
- Divine Command Theory
- Doing and Allowing
- du Châtelet, Emilie
- Dummett, Michael
- Dutch Book Arguments
- Early Modern Philosophy, 1600-1750
- Eastern Orthodox Philosophical Thought
- Education, Philosophy of
- Emotion
- Engineering, Philosophy and Ethics of
- Environmental Philosophy
- Epicurus
- Epistemic Basing Relation
- Epistemic Defeat
- Epistemic Injustice
- Epistemic Justification
- Epistemic Philosophy of Logic
- Epistemology
- Epistemology and Active Externalism
- Epistemology, Bayesian
- Epistemology, Feminist
- Epistemology, Internalism and Externalism in
- Epistemology, Moral
- Epistemology of Education
- Ethical Consequentialism
- Ethical Deontology
- Ethical Intuitionism
- Eugenics and Philosophy
- Events, The Philosophy of
- Evidence
- Evidence-Based Medicine, Philosophy of
- Evidential Support Relation In Epistemology, The
- Evil
- Evolutionary Debunking Arguments in Ethics
- Evolutionary Epistemology
- Experimental Philosophy
- Explanations of Religion
- Extended Mind Thesis, The
- Externalism and Internalism in the Philosophy of Mind
- Faith, Conceptions of
- Fatalism
- Feminist Aesthetics and Feminist Philosophy of Art
- Feminist Philosophy
- Feyerabend, Paul
- Fichte, Johann Gottlieb
- Fiction
- Fictionalism
- Fictionalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics
- Film, Philosophy of
- Foot, Philippa
- Foreknowledge
- Forgiveness
- Formal Epistemology
- Foucault, Michel
- Free Will
- Frege, Gottlob
- Gadamer, Hans-Georg
- Geometry, Epistemology of
- God and Possible Worlds
- God, Arguments for the Existence of
- God, The Existence and Attributes of
- Grice, Paul
- Habermas, Jürgen
- Hart, H. L. A.
- Heaven and Hell
- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Aesthetics
- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Metaphysics
- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Philosophy of History
- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Philosophy of Politics
- Heidegger, Martin: Early Works
- Hermeneutics
- Higher Education, Philosophy of
- History, Philosophy of
- Hobbes, Thomas
- Horkheimer, Max
- Human Rights
- Hume, David: Aesthetics
- Hume, David: Moral and Political Philosophy
- Husserl, Edmund
- Idealizations in Science
- Identity in Physics
- Images
- Imagination
- Imagination and Belief
- Immanuel Kant: Political and Legal Philosophy
- Impossible Worlds
- Incommensurability in Science
- Indian Philosophy
- Indispensability of Mathematics
- Inductive Reasoning
- Infinitism
- Instruments in Science
- Intellectual Humility
- Intentionality, Collective
- Intuitions
- James, William
- Japanese Philosophy
- Kant and the Laws of Nature
- Kant, Immanuel: Aesthetics and Teleology
- Kant, Immanuel: Ethics
- Kant, Immanuel: Theoretical Philosophy
- Kierkegaard, Søren
- Knowledge
- Knowledge-first Epistemology
- Knowledge-How
- Kristeva, Julia
- Kuhn, Thomas S.
- Lacan, Jacques
- Lakatos, Imre
- Langer, Susanne
- Language of Thought
- Language, Philosophy of
- Latin American Philosophy
- Laws of Nature
- Legal Epistemology
- Legal Philosophy
- Legal Positivism
- Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
- Levinas, Emmanuel
- Lewis, C. I.
- Liberty
- Literature, Philosophy of
- Locke, John
- Locke, John: Identity, Persons, and Personal Identity
- Logic
- Lottery and Preface Paradoxes, The
- Lucretius
- Machiavelli, Niccolò
- Martin Heidegger: Later Works
- Martin Heidegger: Middle Works
- Marx, Karl
- Material Constitution
- Mathematical Explanation
- Mathematical Pluralism
- Mathematical Structuralism
- Mathematics, Ontology of
- Mathematics, Philosophy of
- Mathematics, Visual Thinking in
- McDowell, John
- McTaggart, John
- Meaning of Life, The
- Mechanisms in Science
- Medically Assisted Dying
- Medicine, Contemporary Philosophy of
- Medieval Logic
- Medieval Philosophy
- Memory
- Mental Causation
- Mereology
- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice
- Meta-epistemological Skepticism
- Metaepistemology
- Metaethics
- Metametaphysics
- Metaphilosophy
- Metaphor
- Metaphysical Grounding
- Metaphysics, Contemporary
- Metaphysics, Feminist
- Midgley, Mary
- Mill, John Stuart
- Mind, Metaphysics of
- Modal Epistemology
- Modality
- Models and Theories in Science
- Modularity
- Montesquieu
- Moore, G. E.
- Moral Contractualism
- Moral Naturalism and Nonnaturalism
- Moral Responsibility
- Multiculturalism
- Murdoch, Iris
- Music, Analytic Philosophy of
- Nationalism
- Natural Kinds
- Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics
- Naïve Realism
- Neo-Confucianism
- Neuroscience, Philosophy of
- Nietzsche, Friedrich
- Nonexistent Objects
- Normative Ethics
- Normative Foundations, Philosophy of Law:
- Normativity and Social Explanation
- Objectivity
- Occasionalism
- Olfaction
- Ontological Dependence
- Ontology of Art
- Ordinary Objects
- Other Minds
- Pacifism
- Pain
- Panpsychism
- Paradoxes
- Particularism in Ethics
- Pascal, Blaise
- Paternalism
- Patriotism
- Peirce, Charles Sanders
- Perception, Cognition, Action
- Perception, The Problem of
- Perfectionism
- Persistence
- Personal Identity
- Phenomenal Concepts
- Phenomenal Conservatism
- Phenomenology
- Philosophy for Children
- Photography, Analytic Philosophy of
- Physicalism
- Physicalism and Metaphysical Naturalism
- Physics, Experiments in
- Plato
- Plotinus
- Political Epistemology
- Political Obligation
- Political Philosophy
- Popper, Karl
- Pornography and Objectification, Analytic Approaches to
- Practical Knowledge
- Practical Moral Skepticism
- Practical Reason
- Pragmatics
- Pragmatism
- Probabilistic Representations of Belief
- Probability, Interpretations of
- Problem of Divine Hiddenness, The
- Problem of Evil, The
- Propositions
- Psychology, Philosophy of
- Punishment
- Pyrrhonism
- Qualia
- Quietism
- Quine, W. V. O.
- Race
- Racist Jokes
- Rationalism
- Rationality
- Rawls, John: Moral and Political Philosophy
- Realism and Anti-Realism
- Realization
- Reasons in Epistemology
- Reductionism in Biology
- Reference, Theory of
- Reid, Thomas
- Relativism
- Reliabilism
- Religion, Philosophy of
- Religious Belief, Epistemology of
- Religious Experience
- Religious Pluralism
- Ricoeur, Paul
- Rights
- Risk, Philosophy of
- Rorty, Richard
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
- Rule-Following
- Russell, Bertrand
- Ryle, Gilbert
- Sartre, Jean-Paul
- Schopenhauer, Arthur
- Science and Religion
- Science, Theoretical Virtues in
- Scientific Explanation
- Scientific Progress
- Scientific Realism
- Scientific Representation
- Scientific Revolutions
- Scotus, Duns
- Self-Knowledge
- Sellars, Wilfrid
- Semantic Externalism
- Semantic Minimalism
- Semiotics
- Seneca
- Senses, The
- Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology
- Shepherd, Mary
- Singular Thought
- Situated Cognition
- Situationism and Virtue Theory
- Skepticism, Contemporary
- Skepticism, History of
- Slurs, Pejoratives, and Hate Speech
- Smith, Adam: Moral and Political Philosophy
- Social Aspects of Scientific Knowledge
- Social Epistemology
- Social Identity
- Sounds and Auditory Perception
- Space and Time
- Speech Acts
- Spinoza, Baruch
- Stebbing, Susan
- Strawson, P. F.
- Structural Realism
- Suicide
- Supererogation
- Supervenience
- Tarski, Alfred
- Technology, Philosophy of
- Testimony, Epistemology of
- Theoretical Terms in Science
- Thomas Aquinas' Philosophy of Religion
- Thought Experiments
- Time and Tense
- Time Travel
- Toleration
- Torture
- Transcendental Arguments
- Tropes
- Trust
- Truth
- Truth and the Aim of Belief
- Truthmaking
- Turing Test
- Two-Dimensional Semantics
- Understanding
- Uniqueness and Permissiveness in Epistemology
- Utilitarianism
- Vagueness
- Value of Knowledge
- Vienna Circle
- Virtue Epistemology
- Virtue Ethics
- Virtues, Epistemic
- Virtues, Intellectual
- Voluntarism, Doxastic
- War
- Weakness of Will
- Weil, Simone
- Well-Being
- William of Ockham
- Williams, Bernard
- Wisdom
- Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Early Works
- Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Later Works
- Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Middle Works
- Wollstonecraft, Mary