The Measure of Mind : Propositional Attitudes

This fascinating book is about propositional attitudes. In it, Robert Matthews pursues, with great rigour and tenacity, the question how we should understand our practice of attributing propositional attitudes and, in particular, the specific question how subjects must be built (given the best available accounts of the building materials) if they are to serve as proper targets for that practice. Many philosophers have been struck by the thought that putative assignments of propositions to subjects’ attitudes are somehow akin to assignments of numbers to their weights. One of Matthews’ central aims is to develop that thought into a serious hypothesis. He seeks to use work on the theory of measurement proper as the basis for a (broadly) measurement theoretic (MT) account of our practice of attitude attribution and to provide reasons for thinking that the latter account is adequate to the practice. In so doing, he hopes to present a hypothesis able to challenge (what he thinks of as) the hegemony of (what he refers to as) the Received View (RV, his majusculation). A central component of RV is the following claim: