Do people have propositional attitudes? How does the form cognitive science should take depend on the answer to this question?
“We have no idea of how to explain ourselves to ourselves except in a vocabulary which is saturated with belief/desire psychology. One is tempted to transcendental argument: What Kant said to Hume about physical objects holds, mutatis mutandis, for the propositional attitudes; we can't give them up because we don't know how to. ” (source, Fodor)
Propositional attitudes are the mental states we hold towards propositions; in this context beliefs, desires, doubts, assurances, predictions etc. The mind-body problem arises from our current inability to comprehensively describe the structures, encoding and operations of the mind at the level of the neurological hardware said to drive it. The apparent intuitive existence of propositional attitudes from our own introspection …show more content…
If I believe that Clinton is president, my attitude is toward Clinton, the man himself, not toward the proposition. The proposition is the content, not the object, of my belief.” (source). This explication may seem pedantic at first glance, but the distinction is worthy of mention; cognitive philosophy, in its enthusiasm to describe intentionality both as behavioural strategies and/or sets of internally represented propositions, can lead to a confusion between attitudes towards ideas (including other ideas that might converge or supervene on those ideas) and the nature and contents of particular ideas themselves. Searle's main reason for highlighting this has an overarching agenda however; the positing of a theory of Biological
“We have no idea of how to explain ourselves to ourselves except in a vocabulary which is saturated with belief/desire psychology. One is tempted to transcendental argument: What Kant said to Hume about physical objects holds, mutatis mutandis, for the propositional attitudes; we can't give them up because we don't know how to. ” (source, Fodor)
Propositional attitudes are the mental states we hold towards propositions; in this context beliefs, desires, doubts, assurances, predictions etc. The mind-body problem arises from our current inability to comprehensively describe the structures, encoding and operations of the mind at the level of the neurological hardware said to drive it. The apparent intuitive existence of propositional attitudes from our own introspection …show more content…
If I believe that Clinton is president, my attitude is toward Clinton, the man himself, not toward the proposition. The proposition is the content, not the object, of my belief.” (source). This explication may seem pedantic at first glance, but the distinction is worthy of mention; cognitive philosophy, in its enthusiasm to describe intentionality both as behavioural strategies and/or sets of internally represented propositions, can lead to a confusion between attitudes towards ideas (including other ideas that might converge or supervene on those ideas) and the nature and contents of particular ideas themselves. Searle's main reason for highlighting this has an overarching agenda however; the positing of a theory of Biological