Cognitive Science: Propositional Attitudes - Research Proposal Example

Running Head: Cognitive Science: Propositional Attitudes Cognitive Science: Propositional Attitudes Abstract Names of feelings as the belief and wish should be given some kinds of special terms and should be dealt with in a proper manner. In the English dictionary and as some critics say, these are the form of verbs and these should be known as propositional verbs. The reason is that these are the verbs that create a connection between the object and proposition. Therefore, calling them propositional verbs is more than just a convenience. But in the other case these are the verbs that can also called be as attitudes and they reflect the behaviors of people. However, it is in this case that the verbs are psychological ones, whilst they can be different in others. Introduction Stueber (2006) argues that when philosophical terms are taken into account proposition needs to have a consideration in detail. The content, the logic or the meaning of the rationale declarative sentence can be regarded as proposition. In any case the expectation is that propositions carry with themselves the truth and logic of the sentence and they are expected to be either true or false. Some philosophers do not agree to the meaning of proposition in the context of the true meaning saying that if the meaning to the sentence is accepted, the nature of the meaning can be found to be controversial. Therefore, the controversy that arises here is that either the proposition is being dealt with under the context of the words or meanings that the worlds hold. Wittenbrink and Schwarz (2007) have consistently argued the fact that when proposition is discussed in relation to mind and psychological terms that is referred to as propositional attitudes. Attitudes such as belief, desire, fear, hope and wish are the attitudes that are dealt with under the folk psychology. The mental states through which a person goes through are generally dealt with under the propositional attitudes. These kinds of mental states are always referring to something and that is the proposition. Thereby, these kinds of mental states are known as intentional mental states. Soames (2002) argues that there has been a debate since many years between philosophers related to the relationship of proposition and propositional attitudes. The debates have been focused on facts that either the propositional attitudes are external or internal entities or they are mind dependent or mind independent entities. In this case the most important point that needs to be considered is the manner in which propositional attitudes can be grouped or aggregated into one single attribute. In addition to this, the more important point is the way aggregation can still help in making a rationale or logic behind propositional attitudes to be the same as it had been in the original sense. The propositional attitudes Prinz (2004) argues that propositional attitudes, when an attempt is made to put them in words, can be said to be the mental state in which a person is connected to relative proposition. By the addition of an element of attitude it means here that the person having a relation in mind with these propositions can have specific kinds of behaviors being shown, including the different behavioral patterns towards different kinds of propositions which are the simplest mental states, such as thinking, desiring and believing. Beliefs and desires can be said as to be the models that illustrate the fact that an individual holds certain kinds of attitudes towards certain kinds of propositions. A belief on proposition is taken only when an individual is under the belief that proposition is in the true form and is to be believed in such a form. In many places and context it has been written that it is not only human beings facing propositional attitudes. In fact, the role of propositional attitudes can be counted in situations wherein a person has to make many important decisions as the courts, the juries, the legislatures, multi member governments, boards of the companies and so on. These are only a small set of examples of collectives who are required to make a use of propositional attitudes during joint decision making. Schick (2003) argues that in the case of these people, beliefs are made and shaped according to various facts that surround their environment and even the world itself and on the basis of these believes the decisions are made. Gazzaniga and Bizzi (2000) say that in this case it can be noticed that people are as collective as a group and all are the ones who have to come up with one single decision in this case. Therefore, it can be said here that people in these groups are the ones having aggregated propositional attitudes. The aggregation of propositional attitudes is one fact that needs to be realized by all means as group decision is the one fact that is the basis of aggregated attitudes. Heil (2004) says that apart from the group context aggregation of propositional attitudes have also been noticed in the case of intrapersonal contacts. In this case this can be explained in a better manner by saying that an individual sometimes faces a situation when the decision he has to make is in the light of an opinion of the other people and also in regards of personal opinion and this is the situations wherein the need of aggregation of propositional attitude needs to be realized. The overall attitude of individual agents can also be conceptualized as to be composite systems. In linguistic terms propositions are denoted by the clause “that”. Propositional attitudes in some cases are the ones that have directions to fit, that is, they are the terms that are reflective of two related states but having opposing meanings. Propositional attitudes are the relationships that people have in cognitive prospects. In this case there are many puzzles that have been developed in relation to propositional attitudes. In the year of 1892, Gottlob Frege suggested that the words that are discussed within the scope of propositional attitude are not allowed to behave and act in the way they are supposed to. He presents his puzzle as the one that relates the relationship between cognitive value that the expression holds as well as the ordinary references and in addition it is also argued that both are considered to be distinct ones. Another puzzle has been given in by Bertrand Russell. His theory can be called as the theory of thought which is based on the acquaintance. He adds that the thoughts that an agent has are the result of the inter relationship with the concerned individual. Moreover, some of the critics say that proposition attitudes are always concerned with the beliefs of the subject. It can be explained here by saying that the belief is not the only factor that matters, in fact the main thing to be taken into consideration is the fact that how the belief is believed by the subject, what are the constituents of the belief that are taken into account by the individual. Matthews (2007) says that an existence of proposition cannot be disputed as it has existed since many years and it is different to the term as to what we feel about the relative proposition. In other words the feelings and mental states that are associated with relative proposition is a different term than proposition alone. The proposition can be believed, can be commanded, it can be contested, it can be exclaimed and so on. Therefore, there are different attitudes that are to be shown and regarded for the different attitudes and they are known as propositional attitudes. There are many ways to discuss propositional attitudes and the other popular ways in which these are discussed are known as intentionality and linguistic modality. Erneling and Johnson (2005) say that it has been noticed that many of the problems in real life arise because of the existence of too many propositions at the same time in one situation. Propositions cannot be compared with each other when they are needed to be compared the most. However, still the mind does have senses and powers to compare propositions by going deep into the meanings that they have. And here the matters of logic and rationale are the ones that arise after all comparisons are made. Although propositional attitudes are the ones that are counted among the psychology of the state of minds, they are still not talked about in strict psychological terms. Propositional attitudes are designed under logics and principles of logics and linguistics, and therefore they cannot be discussed until the interactive ways and their properties are taken into account. Burge (2007) says that one topic that should be taken into account is the relationship between modalities of assertions as well as the central beliefs of an individual. Here another point that needs to be cleared out is the intention. Individuals face main questions on a daily basis that whether the assertions that the person has are based on his beliefs or not. And if the answer comes out to be in negative, there can be many reasons for these kinds of discrepancies. However, the main ideology that lies behind this fact is the separation of beliefs from an individual’s assertions, and this is the point where proposition takes the form of a lie. There are many other forms where multiple modalities arise in a frequent manner and these are in the context of knowledge as well as beliefs and discrepancies that are known to occur at the level of anticipations, intentions and observations. Surprises is the term that defines deviations of observations from anticipations as well as expectations. It would not be wrong or untruthful to say here that propositional attitudes make up one of the most important concept in the rational theory of agency. An individual is an agent who is expected to have some beliefs or desires and these are the two elements that make him play his roles in a given society. On the other hand, if the individual’s beliefs as well as attitudes can be falling into only one category, it means that this is the only category that decides the person’s actions taking over all the other categories of beliefs as well as desires. Categorization of the propositional attitudes Crano and Prislin (2008) say that at least two dimensions can be given to propositional attitudes in this case. The first category can be defined in the words by mentioning the important roles that are played by propositional attitudes within the limits of logical and rational performance of an individual. Rationale performance can be any one from being the desire like or being the belief like or both in this matter. The second category is defined by the formal structure that propositional attitudes have. Here the formal structures can be binary ones or an admittance of the degrees. In this case belief can be defined as the way an individual behaves towards a certain proposition. The proposition can be called as the belief of an individual, if proposition is the one ideology reflective of the way a person takes his surroundings or the world in a cognitive manner. The proposition can be called as a desire if it is reflective of the motivational state of an individual showing how an individual wants his surroundings to be like. In the case of a belief like attitude towards a proposition shows the true or a false behavior of an individual. In comparison the desire like attitude is the state where an individual reflects if he is in favor or against the truth behind proposition. Binary attitudes If the individual’s attitude towards proposition is either negative or positive, it is called binary. Binary affirmation of a single proposition shows that an individual believes and acts positively on proposition or behaves in such a way that reflects that proposition is not taking the shape of beliefs of the person. Andersen and Fretheim (2000) say that this kind of binary belief like attitudes is sometimes referred to as judgments in literature. In this case the individual has a choice to judge proposition to be true in any sense in regard to his beliefs. The binary desire like attitudes can be regarded as to be the goals or categorical preferences. In this case the individual has a choice to make preferences in the case of any one proposition to be true or any other to be false. The goal of an individual thereby in this case is the truth that lies behind the proposition. Non binary attitudes The individual’s attitudes towards proposition can be considered to be of a non binary nature if he admits to the degrees of propositions. In this case the admittance to degrees can be in various forms and faces as it can be somewhere in between full affirmation and complete non affirmation. In this case non binary beliefs are typically represented as the function that are composed for some real valued functions whereas the properties of these functions are the ones that are able to gain the attributes of formal structure of propositions. In this case functions need to be analyzed in a way that has to be more comprehensive. If functions represent the attributes which are unique only to monotonic transformations as the stretching as well as the squeezing, it can be said that the attributes are ordinal ones. Gazzaniga and Bizzi (2000) say that by contrast if numerical values of these functions are the ones that carry some significance over the ordering situation that they create over propositions, the attributes are known to be cardinal ones. If a proposition is needed to be counted as being rationale there are some perspectives and some conditions that need to be taken into consideration so that some of the conditions are satisfied. In this case conditions are the ones that depend upon the kinds of attributes that are taken into consideration at that moment. Full rationality in need of probabilistic coherence is often required in the case of cardinal non binary beliefs. Common leveled non binary desires requires that those desires are properly represented that are in preference to order the relevant propositions. However, these are the rationality conditions which are only in their illustrative forms at the moment. At the moment there can be a solution to the problem of attribute aggregation. Profile is the word that can be used for a combination of propositional attitudes. A question that arises in this case is that how can a profile or a combination of propositional attitudes in more than one individual be combined in such a way that they design a single aggregated propositional attitude. Moreover, the main problem here is how aggregation can be performed such that the logic as well as rationale behind aggregated propositional attitude remains the same. A reply to this entire crucial question is again the same and that is the choice of attitudes that is being made at a particular time and moment. Stueber (2006) says that in this case an aggregation of these propositions can be difficult when rationalities are kept in mind as well as when propositions are helped over a set of considered propositions. It has been estimated that if there are more than three objects of preferences the type of aggregation that makes its successful ways is the dictatorial kind. In the case of dictatorial aggregation the individual is the one who is the determinant of all levels of collective attitudes and in this case the individual can aggregate the rationale and logical preferences into rationale as well as collective ones and these are in relation to a minimum set if the conditions are satisfied by the individual. In the case of non binary cardinal attributes the scenario can be understood in a better way. There are some rules of aggregation that need to be implied in this case and these rules are known as the idea of averaging. And these are the rules that help an individual to make aggregation of the preferred propositional attributes into one single attribute by keeping in mind the rationality as well as the plausible conditions. In the case of the beliefs these are the rules that are known as linear pooling rules. Until this point the taxonomy as well as classification of propositional attitudes has been presented and it had been discussed as to what the essential ideas related to them are. The roles, types and structures of propositional beliefs are the ones that have been discussed. Here it can be noticed that there are some attitudes that are held on a specific set of propositional attitudes. Moreover, this is the statement that defines the problem of propositional attitudes aggregations and this is always represented in a suitable logic or a rationale. In this case the value that has been assigned to proposition can be the truth value of a particular propositional aggregate and the value can be the one that reflects the acceptability or rejectability of the proposition. Erneling and Johnson (2005) say that the attitudes of an individual are considered to be the rationale or logic ones if representative attitude function can be extended to a well defined function for valuation. Therefore, the individual attitude functions are aggregated into one permissible set that complies with a set of conditions in which the attitude function is adapted by the individual or an agent. Conclusion Characterization of linear and dictatorial aggregation rules is very important in this case. The importance lies in the case of the probability, the judgments as well as the preference of aggregation. This characterization is the only method by which literatures of propositions and propositional attitudes as well as attributes can be integrated. All of the results can be made to be more general if the study of a broader variety of propositional attitudes is taken into account. In this case aggregation rules are the ones that are considered to be other than just systematic, linear or even dictatorial ones. References Andersen, G., and Fretheim, T. (2000). Pragmatic markers and propositional attitude. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Burge, T. (2007). Foundations of mind. Oxford University Press. Crano, D. W., and Prislin, R. (2008). Attitudes and attitude change. CRC Press. Erneling, E. C., and Johnson, M. D. (2005). The mind as a scientific object: between brain and culture. Oxford University Press US. Heil, J. (2004). Philosophy of mind: a contemporary introduction. 2nd edition. Routledge. Matthews, J. R. (2007). The measure of mind: propositional attitudes and their attribution. Oxford University Press. Michael Gazzaniga, S. M., and Bizzi, E. (2000). The New Cognitive Neurosciences: Second Edition. 2nd edition. MIT Press. Prinz, J. J. (2004). Gut reactions: a perceptual theory of emotion. Oxford University Press US. Schick, F. (2003). Ambiguity and logic. Cambridge University Press. Soames, S. (2002). Beyond rigidity: the unfinished semantic agenda of Naming and necessity. Oxford University Press US. Stueber, R. K. (2006). Rediscovering empathy: agency, folk psychology, and the human sciences. MIT Press. Wittenbrink, B., and Schwarz, N. (2007). Implicit measures of attitudes. Guilford Press. Read More