Propositional Attitudes

Propositional attitudes are mental states such as believing, desiring, and hoping that involve taking an attitude toward a proposition.

Definition

A propositional attitude is a mental state that consists in a subject bearing a psychological relation, such as believing or desiring, to a proposition that gives the state its content.

Scope

This topic covers the nature and structure of propositional attitudes, the realism-instrumentalism debate over their status, the intentional stance, and eliminativist challenges to folk psychology. It addresses whether attitudes like belief are genuine inner states with causal roles.

Core questions

• What is the structure of a state like believing that it is raining?
• Are beliefs and desires real inner states or useful interpretive posits?
• Do propositional attitudes have causal powers in virtue of their content?
• Could a mature science eliminate the categories of folk psychology?

Key concepts

• belief
• desire
• intentional stance
• folk psychology
• eliminativism
• opacity

Key theories

Intentional-stance instrumentalism

Attributing beliefs and desires is adopting a predictive stance toward a system; attitudes are real patterns rather than discrete inner objects.

Realism about the attitudes

Propositional attitudes are genuine, causally efficacious internal states, plausibly realized as relations to sentences in a language of thought.

History

Debate over the attitudes crystallized around the status of folk psychology: Fodor defended realism with the language of thought, Dennett (1987) offered an intentional-stance reading on which attitudes are real patterns, and Churchland (1981) and Stich (1983) argued that folk psychology is a theory that science may overturn.

Debates

Realism versus instrumentalism

Whether propositional attitudes are genuine inner states with causal roles or interpretive posits we use to predict behavior.

Eliminativism about folk psychology

Whether the categories of belief and desire will survive in a mature cognitive science or be eliminated.

Key figures

• Daniel Dennett
• Jerry Fodor
• Paul Churchland
• Stephen Stich

Seminal works

• churchland1981
• stich1983
• dennett1987

Frequently asked questions

Why are they called 'propositional' attitudes?

Because such states involve an attitude, like believing or wanting, directed at a proposition, the content expressed by a that-clause such as 'that it is raining'.