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Propositional attitude
A propositional attitude is a mental state held by an agent
or organism toward a proposition.

In philosophy, propositional attitudes can be considered to be,

neurally-realized causally efficacious content-bearing internal
states (personal principles/values).[1]

Linguistically, propositional attitudes are denoted by a verb

(e.g. "believed") governing an embedded "that" clause, for
example, 'Sally believed that she had won'.

Propositional attitudes are often assumed to be the

fundamental units of thought and their contents, being
A basic illustration of an individual
propositions, are true or false from the perspective of the
holding a propositional attitude
person. An agent can have different propositional attitudes
towards proposition P.
toward the same proposition (e.g., "S believes that her ice-
cream is cold," and "S fears that her ice-cream is cold").

Propositional attitudes have directions of fit: some are meant to reflect the world, others to
influence it.

One topic of central concern is the relation between the modalities of assertion and belief, perhaps
with intention thrown in for good measure. Discrepancies can occur as to whether or not a
person's assertions conform to their beliefs. When the departure of assertion from belief is
intentional, it is called a lie.

Other comparisons of multiple modalities that frequently arise are the relationships between belief
and knowledge and the discrepancies that occur among observations, expectations, and intentions.
Deviations of observations from expectations are commonly perceived as surprises, phenomena
that call for explanations to reduce the shock of amazement.

Issues
In logic, the formal properties of verbs like assert, believe, command, consider, deny, doubt,
imagine, judge, know, want, wish, and a host of others that involve attitudes or intentions toward
propositions are notorious for their recalcitrance to analysis. (Quine 1956).

Indiscernibility of identicals

One of the fundamental principles governing identity is that of substitutivity, also

known as fungibility  — or, as it might well be called, that of indiscernibility of
identicals. It provides that, given a true statement of identity, one of its two terms
may be substituted for the other in any true statement and the result will be true. It is
easy to find cases contrary to this principle. For example, the statements:

(1) Giorgione = Barbarelli,

(2) Giorgione was so called because of his size.

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are true; however, replacement of the name 'Giorgione' by the name 'Barbarelli' turns
(2) into the falsehood:

(3) Barbarelli was so called because of his size.[2]

Quine's example here refers to Giorgio Barbarelli's sobriquet "Giorgione", an Italian name roughly
glossed as "Big George." The basis of the paradox here is that while the two names signify the same
individual (the meaning of the first statement), the names are not themselves identical; the second
statement refers to an attribute (origin) that they do not share.[A]

Overview

What sort of name shall we give to verbs like 'believe' and 'wish' and so forth? I should
be inclined to call them 'propositional verbs'. This is merely a suggested name for
convenience, because they are verbs which have the form of relating an object to a
proposition. As I have been explaining, that is not what they really do, but it is
convenient to call them propositional verbs. Of course you might call them 'attitudes',
but I should not like that because it is a psychological term, and although all the
instances in our experience are psychological, there is no reason to suppose that all the
verbs I am talking of are psychological. There is never any reason to suppose that sort
of thing. (Russell 1918, 227).

What a proposition is, is one thing. How we feel about it, or how we regard it, is another. We can
accept it, assert it, believe it, command it, contest it, declare it, deny it, doubt it, enjoin it, exclaim
it, expect it. Different attitudes toward propositions are called propositional attitudes, and they
are also discussed under the headings of intentionality and linguistic modality.

Many problematic situations in real life arise from the circumstance that many different
propositions in many different modalities are in the air at once. In order to compare propositions
of different colours and flavours, as it were, we have no basis for comparison but to examine the
underlying propositions themselves. Thus we are brought back to matters of language and logic.
Despite the name, propositional attitudes are not regarded as psychological attitudes proper, since
the formal disciplines of linguistics and logic are concerned with nothing more concrete than what
can be said in general about their formal properties and their patterns of interaction.

See also
Accessibility relation
Affect (linguistics)
Attitude
Belief
Disposition
Embedded clause
Habit
Intensionality
Knowledge
Responsive predicate
Qualia
Self-fulfilling prophecy

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Truth

Footnotes
A. See "Who's on First?."

Notes
1. "Propositional Attitudes | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy" (https://iep.utm.edu/prop-ati/).
Retrieved 2023-03-07.
2. W. V. O. Quine, Quintessence, extensions, Reference and Modality, p. 361

Bibliography
Awbrey, J. and Awbrey, S.(1995), "Interpretation as Action: The Risk of Inquiry", Inquiry: Critical
Thinking Across the Disciplines 15, 40–52.
Cresswell, M.J. (1985), Structured meanings. The semantics of propositional attitudes. MIT
Press, Cambridge & London 1985.
Quine, W.V. (1956), "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes", Journal of Philosophy 53 (1956).
Reprinted, pp. 185–196 in Quine (1976), Ways of Paradox.
Quine, W.V. (1976), The Ways of Paradox, and Other Essays, 1st edition, 1966. Revised and
enlarged edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1976.
Quine, W.V. (1980 a), From a Logical Point of View, Logico-Philosophical Essays, 2nd edition,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Quine, W.V. (1980 b), "Reference and Modality", pp. 139–159 in Quine (1980 a), From a
Logical Point of View.
Ramsey, F.P. (1927), "Facts and Propositions", Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 7,
153–170. Reprinted, pp. 34–51 in F.P. Ramsey, Philosophical Papers, David Hugh Mellor (ed.),
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1990.
Ramsey, F.P. (1990), Philosophical Papers, David Hugh Mellor (ed.), Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK.
Runes, Dagobert D. (ed.), Dictionary of Philosophy, Littlefield, Adams, and Company, Totowa,
NJ, 1962.
Russell, Bertrand (1912), The Problems of Philosophy, 1st published 1912. Reprinted, Galaxy
Book, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1959. Reprinted, Prometheus Books, Buffalo,
NY, 1988.
Russell, Bertrand (1918), "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism", The Monist, 1918. Reprinted,
pp. 177–281 in Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950, Robert Charles Marsh (ed.), Unwin
Hyman, London, UK, 1956. Reprinted, pp. 35–155 in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism,
David Pears (ed.), Open Court, La Salle, IL, 1985.
Russell, Bertrand (1956), Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950, Robert Charles Marsh
(ed.), Unwin Hyman, London, UK, 1956. Reprinted, Routledge, London, UK, 1992.
Russell, Bertrand (1985), The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, David Pears (ed.), Open Court,
La Salle, IL.

External links
Media related to Propositional attitudes at Wikimedia Commons
Propositional Attitudes (http://www.iep.utm.edu/prop-ati/), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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