The paper is about the thesis that the objects of belief should not be conceived as sets of possible worlds or propositions of sets of centered possible worlds or egocentric propositions (this is the propositional conception), but rather as sets of pairs consisting of a centered world and a sequence of objects (this is the intentional conception of the objects of belief) (section 16.1). Since the thesis is purely epistemological, it needs some stage-setting disentangling belief from language in five respects (section 16.2). The paper then explains the deep indirect significance of this thesis for the framework of two-dimensional semantics, indeed for any framework trying to adequately relate semantics and epistemology (which is here construed as what I call the Congruence Principle) (section 16.3). I give three arguments for this thesis, two preliminary indecisive ones by way of examples (section 16.4), and a third theoretical one alluding to a deep principle of philosophical psychology (which I call the Invariance Principle) (section 16.5). Section 16.6 concludes with some skeptical remarks on the primacy of sentence over word meaning.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science + Business Media B.V
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
(2009). The Intentional Versus the Propositional Structure of Contents. In: Spohn, W. (eds) Causation, Coherence, and Concepts. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 256. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5474-7_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5474-7_16
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-5473-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-5474-7
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)