Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Intentionality is that property of many mental states and events by which they are directed at or about or of objects and states of affairs in the world" (ibid.

This idea was clearly articulated by Davidson (1989, 11): Just as in measuring weight we need a collection of entities which have a structure{ XE "structure" } in which we can reflect the relations between weighty objects, so in attributing states of belief{ XE "belief" } (and other propositional attitude{ XE "attitude: propositional" }s) we need a collection of entities related in ways that will allow us to keep track of the relevant properties of the various psychological states.

In thinking and talking of the weights we need not suppose there are such things as weights for objects to have.

A concept, Frege (1892b) argued, is, as a rule, something under which a given object may or may not fall; hence it is a way of classifying objects into two groups (those falling under it and those not falling under it); and so it can be identified with a function mapping objects on the two truth values – truth and falsity.

Hence a predicate can be seen as mapping names onto sentences and, on the semantic level, referents of names, i.e. objects, on the truth values of sentences.

But like the painters who, finding themselves unable to represent equally well on a plain surface all the different faces of a solid body, select one of the chief, on which alone they make the light fall, and throwing the rest into the shade, allow them to appear only in so far as they can be seen while looking at the principal one; so, fearing lest I should not be able to compense in my discourse all that was in my mind, I resolved to expound singly, though at considerable length, my opinions regarding light; then to take the opportunity of adding something on the sun and the fixed stars, since light almost wholly proceeds from them; on the heavens since they transmit it; on the planets, comets, and earth, since they reflect it; and particularly on all the bodies that are upon the earth, since they are either colored, or transparent, or luminous; and finally on man, since he is the spectator of these objects.

But because I have essayed to expound the chief of these discoveries in a treatise which certain considerations prevent me from publishing, I cannot make the results known more conveniently than by here giving a summary of the contents of this treatise. It was my design to comprise in it all that, before I set myself to write it, I thought I knew of the nature of material objects.

The propositions of philosophy are not factual, but linguistic in character - that is, they do not describe the behaviour of physical, or even mental, objects; they express definitions, or the formal consequences of definitions.

It was this approach which seemed to provide the needed framework for making meanings explicit, by reconstructing them as set-theoretical objects.

The fact that the structures which linguistic theories ascribe to an expression are not really to be found on the expression itself has forced many linguists to acquire the conviction that what they are studying are - ultimately - not expressions, but rather mental objects which the This is, of course, only an anecdotic hint at the case made against mentalism by Frege, Wittgenstein and others.