Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Semantics for Propositional Attitudes' and 'Mental Files in Flux'

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2 ideas

19. Language / D. Propositions / 1. Propositions
A proposition is what can be asserted or denied on its own [Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: A proposition is what can be asserted or denied on its own, for example, 'It is day' or 'Dion is walking'.
     From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.65
     A reaction: Note the phrase 'on its own'. If you say 'it is day and Dion is walking', that can't be denied on its own, because first the two halves must each be evaluated, so presumably that doesn't count as a stoic proposition.
19. Language / D. Propositions / 4. Mental Propositions
There are speakers' thoughts and hearers' thoughts, but no further thought attached to the utterance [Recanati]
     Full Idea: There is the speaker's thought and the thought formed by the hearer. That is all there is. We don't need an additional entity, the thought expressed by the utterance.
     From: François Recanati (Mental Files in Flux [2016], 7.2)
     A reaction: This fits my view of propositions nicely. They are the two 'thoughts'. The notion of some further abstract 'proposition' with its own mode of independent existence strikes me as ontologically absurd.