Propositional Attitudes? *

According to the standard lore on propositions, there are many propositional attitudes, including belief, fear, and desire. The standard lore is partly correct: belief is a propositional attitude. But, so this paper argues, fear and desire are never propositional attitudes, not even when the content of the relevant fear or desire can be fully expressed by using a that-clause. 1. What I Mean by ‘Proposition’ I think that propositions are the primary bearers of truth and falsity. Moreover, I think that propositions represent things as being a certain way. For example, the proposition that O is F represents O as being F. And I think that propositions are the objects of belief. Suppose that Jones believes that O is F. Then I say that Jones stands in the believing relation to the proposition that O is F. The standard lore on propositions includes all that I have just affirmed, and more besides. For example, the standard lore says that not only is belief a propositional attitude, but fear and desire, among many others, are propositional attitudes as well. Consider these representative remarks, found at the opening of Nathan Salmon and Scott Soames’s introduction to Propositions and Attitudes: The concept of a proposition is important in several areas of philosophy, and central to the philosophy of language. What is a proposition?...propositions are the sorts of things that are true or false. But making true or false assertions is not the only thing we do with propositions. We also bear cognitive attitudes toward them. Propositions are what we believe, disbelieve, or suspend judgment about. When you fear that you will fail, or hope that you will succeed, when you venture a guess or feel certain about something, the object of your attitude is a proposition. That is what propositions are. (1988, p. 1) Salmon and Soames say that propositions are the objects of attitudes such as belief and fear and (let us add) desire. And in saying this, they take themselves to be articulating ‘the very concept’ of a proposition (1988, p. 1). It might turn out that no single kind of entity does everything that the standard lore says that propositions do. If this is how things turned out, we could draw one of two conclusions. First, we could conclude that, because it is conceptually necessary that nothing counts as a proposition unless it lives up to the lore in its entirety, there are no propositions. Second, we could conclude that the standard lore on the concept of a ∗ Meeting of the Aristotelian Society, held in Senate House, University of London, on Monday, 27 April,