The paper builds upon familiar arguments against identifying the proposition that Brutus stabbed Caesar with a given sequence containing Brutus, Caesar, and the stabs relation. It identifies a further problem, one that affects not only traditional Russellian accounts of propositions, but also the recent act-theoretic approach championed by Scott Soames and Peter Hanks. The problem is that there is no clear content to the idea that the pair  < Brutus, Caesar> instantiates the stabs relation. It is argued that this further problem presents a decisive objection to the act-theoretic approach to propositions.

Scott Soames has recently argued that traditional accounts of propositions as n-tuples or sets of objects and properties or functions from worlds to extensions cannot adequately explain how these abstract entities come to represent the world. Soames’ new cognitive theory solves this problem by taking propositions to be derived from agents representing the world to be a certain way. Agents represent the world to be a certain way, for example, when they engage in the cognitive act of predicating, or cognizing, an act that takes place during cognitive events, such as perceiving, believing, judging and asserting. On the cognitive theory, propositions just are act types involving the act of predicating and certain other mental operations. This theory, Soames argues, solves not only the problem of how propositions come to represent but also a number of other difficulties for traditional theories, including the problem of de se propositions and the problems of accounting for how agents are capable of grasping propositions and how they come to stand in the relation of expression to sentences. I argue here that Soames’ particular version of the cognitive theory makes two problematic assumptions about cognitive operations and the contents of proper names. I then briefly examine what can count as evidence for the nature of the constituents of the cognitive operation types that produce propositions and argue that the common nature of cognitive operations and what they operate on ought to be determined empirically in cross-disciplinary work. I conclude by offering a semantics for cognitive act types that accommodates one type of empirical evidence.

According to the traditional account of propositional content, propositions are the primary bearers of truth. Here I argue that acts of predication are the primary bearers of truth. Propositions are types of these actions, and they inherit their truth-conditions from their tokens. Against this, many philosophers think that it is a category mistake to say that actions are true or false. Furthermore, even if we grant that token acts of predication have truth-conditions, there are reasons for doubting that types of these actions also have truth-conditions. I respond to these objections in this paper. I also clarify what it means for propositions to inherit truth-conditions from token acts of predication.

In recent work, Peter Hanks and Scott Soames argue for the type view, according to which propositions are types whose tokens are acts, states, or events. Hanks and Soames think that one of the virtues of the type view is that it allows them to explain why propositions have semantic properties. But, in this paper, we argue that their explanations aren't satisfactory.

King develops a syntax-based account of propositions based on the idea that propositional unity is grounded in the syntactic structure of the sentence. This account faces two objections: a Benacerraf objection and a grain-size objection. I argue that the syntax-based account survives both objections, as they have been put forward in the existing literature. I go on to show, however, that King equivocates between two distinct notions of ‘propositional structure’ when explaining his account. Once the confusion is resolved, it is clear that the syntax-based account suffers from both Benacerraf and grain-size problems after all. I conclude by showing that King's account can be revised to avoid these problems, but only if it abandons its motivating idea that it is syntax that unifies the proposition.

It is a common view among philosophers of language that both propositions and sentences are structured objects. One obvious question to ask about such a view is whether there is any interesting connection between these two sorts of structure. The author identifies two theses about this relationship. Identity (ID) – the structure of a sentence and the proposition it expresses are identical. Determinism (DET) – the structure of a sentence determines the structure of the proposition it expresses. After noting that ID entails DET, the author argues against DET (and therefore also against ID). This argument is based on considerations to do with unarticulated constituents, but it is not ultimately empirical. As well as answering a question suggested by contemporary theories of propositions, the conclusion is significant because some, but not all, of the theories of propositions currently popular entail ID and/or DET. Unless there is a response to the argument here, those theories are refuted.

While it is highly controversial whether Frege's criterion of sameness and difference for sense is true, it is relatively uncontroversial that that principle is inconsistent with Millian–Russellian views of content. I argue that this should not be uncontroversial. The reason is that it is surprisingly difficult to come up with an interpretation of Frege's criterion which implies anything substantial about the sameness or difference of content of anything.

In this paper, I criticize Structured Propositionalism, the most widely held theory of the nature of propositions according to which they are structured entities with constituents. I argue that the proponents of Structured Propositionalism have paid insufficient attention to the metaphysical presuppositions of the view – most egregiously, to the notion of propositional constituency. This is somewhat ironic, since the friends of structured propositions tend to argue as if the appeal to constituency gives their view a dialectical advantage. I criticize four different approaches to providing a metaphysics of propositional constituency: set-theoretic, mereological, hylomorphic, and structure-making. Finally, I consider the option of taking constituency in a deflationary, metaphysically ‘lightweight’ sense. I argue that, though invoking constituency in a lightweight sense may be useful for avoiding the ontological problems that plague the ‘heavyweight’ conception, it no longer proffers a dialectical advantage to Structured Propositionalism.

Propositions as mind-independent abstract objects raise serious problems such as their cognitive accessibility and their ability to carry essential truth conditions, as a number of philosophers have recently pointed out. This paper argues that ‘attitudinal objects’ or kinds of them should replace propositions as truth bearers and as the (shared) objects of propositional attitudes. Attitudinal objects, entities like judgments, beliefs, and claims, are not states or actions, but rather their (spatio-temporally coincident) products, following the distinction between actions and products introduced by Twardowski (1912). The paper argues that the action–product distinction is not tied to particular terms in a particular language, but is to be understood as the more general distinction between an action and the (abstract or physically realized) artifact that it creates. It thus includes the distinction between the passing of a law and the law itself and an act of artistic creation and the created work of art.

This paper defends the view that propositions – that is, what are picked about by complement clauses and the range of quantifiers like that in ‘Sanna believes all that Matti said’ – are states of affairs. States of affairs – and thus propositions – are not, in the primary sense, representational; what is representational and what is true or false in the first instance are mental states and sentence tokens that represent propositions. There is, it is argued, a derivative sense in which propositions are bearers of truth, but truth in that sense is a derivative, non-explanatory notion. This view is contrasted with views like the one Scott Soames develops in What is Meaning?. It’s argued that this view is superior to Soames’ in various ways.

At the core of the Gricean account of conversational implicature is a certain assumption concerning the phenomenon that its proponents hope to explain and predict – namely, that conversational implicatures are, essentially, cases of speaker meaning. Heck (2006), however, has argued that once we appreciate a distinctive kind of indeterminacy characteristic of particularized implicatures, we must reject this assumption. Heck’s observation is that there are cases where it is clear a speaker has conversationally implicated something by her utterance, but where there is no particular proposition – other than what the speaker said – that we can plausibly take the speaker to have meant, or intended to communicate. I argue that although Heck’s observation is ultimately not in conflict with the core Gricean assumption, it is in tension with the widely held thesis that the things we mean and implicate are propositions. I sketch an alternative account of the things we mean and implicate – one that that accommodates the fact that in many cases of successful communicative exchanges, there is no particular proposition that the speaker intends to communicate.

An important objection to sententialist theories of attitude reports is that they cannot accommodate the principle that one cannot know that someone believes that p without knowing what it is that he believes. This paper argues that a parallel problem arises for propositionalist accounts that has gone largely unnoticed, and that, furthermore, the usual resources for the propositionalist do not afford an adequate solution. While non-standard solutions are available for the propositionalist, it turns out that there are parallel solutions that are available for the sententialist. Since the difficulties raised seem to show that the mechanism by which sentential complements serve to inform us about attitudes and about sentence meaning does not depend on their referring to propositions, this casts doubt on whether talk of propositions should retain a significant theoretical role in the enterprise of understanding thought, language and communication.

Timothy Williamson has argued for the radical conclusion that everything necessarily exists. In this paper, I assume that the conclusion of Williamson's argument is more incredible than the denial of his premises. Under the assumption that Williamson is mistaken, I argue for the claim that there are some structured propositions which have constituents that might not have existed. If those constituents had not existed, then the propositions would have had an unfilled role; they would have been gappy. This gappy propositions view allows for a plausible response to Williamson's argument. Additionally, a slight variant of the gappy propositions view allows for plausible defense of Linguistic Ersatzism from the problem of contingent non-existents (also known as the problem of aliens).

I argue that propositions are contingent existents. Some propositions that in fact exist might not have existed and there might have been propositions that are distinct from every actually existing proposition. This is because some propositions are singular propositions, which are propositions containing ordinary objects as constituents, and so are ontologically dependent on the existence of those objects; had those objects not existed, then the singular propositions would not have existed. I provide both a philosophical and technical understanding of the contingent status of propositions.