Short description:

Provides a comprehensive overview of the philosophy of propositions, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Comprising 33 original chapters by an international team of scholars, the volume addresses both traditional and emerging questions concerning the nature of propositions.

Long description:

Propositions are routinely invoked by philosophers, linguists, logicians, and other theorists engaged in the study of meaning, communication, and the mind. To investigate the nature of propositions is to investigate the very nature of our connection to each other, and to the world around us. As one of the only volumes of its kind, The Routledge Handbook of Propositions provides a comprehensive overview of the philosophy of propositions, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Comprising 33 original chapters by an international team of scholars, the volume addresses both traditional and emerging questions concerning the nature of propositions, and our capacity to engage with them in thought and in communication. The chapters are clearly organized into the following three sections:

I. Foundational Issues in the Theory of Propositions

II. Historical Theories of Propositions

III. Contemporary Theories of Propositions

Essential reading for philosophers of language and mind, and for those working in neighboring areas, The Routledge Handbook of Propositions is suitable for upper-level undergraduate study, as well as graduate and professional research.

Table of Contents:

Introduction  Part I: Foundational Issues in the Theory of Propositions  1. The Linguistic Basis for Propositions  2. Propositions, Posits, and States of Affairs  3. Instrumentalism about Structured Propositions  Part II: Historical Theories of Propositions  4. Ancient Theories of Propositions  5. Medieval Theories of Propositions: Ockham and the Later Medieval Debate  6. Lockean Propositions  7. Kant, Propositions, and Non-Fundamental Metaphysics  8. Bolzano?s Theory of Satz an sich  9. Frege on Thoughts  10. Russell on Propositions  Part III: Contemporary Theories and Further Issues  11. Propositions as (Flexible) Types of Possibilities  12. Truthmaker Accounts of Propositions  13. Syntactically Structured Propositions  14. Propositions as Interpreted Abstracta  15. The View of Propositions as Types of Actions  16. Cognitive Propositions: Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Empirical Adequacy  17. Propositions as Cambridge Properties  18. Why 0-Adic Relations Have Truth Conditions: Essence, Ground, and Non-Hylomorphic Russellian Propositions  19. Propositions without Parts  20. Hylomorphic Propositions  21. Temporal Propositions and Our Attitudes toward the Past and the Future  22. Frege's Other Puzzle: Relativity in Propositional Content  23. Propositions and Attitudes De Se  24. Propositional Dependence and Perspectival Shift  25. Attitudinal Objects and Propositions  26. Propositions as Objects of the Attitudes  27. The Varieties of Gappy Propositions  28. Plenitudinous Russellianism  29. Semantic Relationism  30. Propositions and Questions  31. The Propositional Benacerraf Problem  32. Reference, Propositions, and the World  33. Propositional Paradox