Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T16:42:20.168Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Actions, Products, and Truth-Bearers: A Critique of Twardowskian Accounts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2019

Silver Bronzo*
Affiliation:
National Research University Higher School of Economics, School of Philosophy, Moscow, Russian Federation

Abstract

Friederike Moltmann has recently proposed an account of truth-bearers that draws on Kazimierz Twardowski’s action/product distinction. Her account is meant to provide a third way between the dominant view of primary truth-bearers as mind-independent entities and the recently revived construal of them as mental or linguistic acts. This paper argues that there is no room for Twardowskian accounts because they are based on a notion of “nonenduring product” that defies comprehension, and no need for them because the linguistic data that Twardowskians take to refute the act-theoretic approach can, in fact, be handled by that approach.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aune, B. 1967. “Statements and Propositions.” Noûs 1: 215–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austin, J. L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brugmann, K. 1900. Griechische Grammatik. 3rd ed. In Handbuch der Klassischen Alterums-Wissenschaft, edited by von Müller, I., vol. 2. Munich: C. H. Beck.Google Scholar
Frege, G. 1979. Posthumous Writings. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Geach, P. 1957. Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Hanks, P. 2011. “Propositions as Types.” Mind 120: 1152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanks, P. 2015. Propositional Content. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanks, P. 2017. “Propositions, Synonymy, and Compositional Semantics.” In Act-Based Conceptions of Propositional Contents: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, edited by Moltmann, F. and Textor, M., 235–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
King, J. C., Soames, S., and Speaks, J.. 2014. New Thinking about Propositions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moltmann, F. 2003. “Propositional Attitudes without Propositions.” Synthese 135: 70118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moltmann, F. 2013. Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moltmann, F. 2014. “Propositions, Attitudinal Objects, and the Distinction between Actions and Products.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43 (5–6): 679701.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moltmann, F. 2017a. “Cognitive Products and the Semantics of Attitude Verbs and Deontic Modals.” In Act-Based Conceptions of Propositional Contents: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, edited by Moltmann, F. and Textor, M., 254–89. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Moltmann, F. 2017b. “Attitude Reports, Cognitive Products, and Attitudinal Objects: A Response to G. Felappi on Product-Based Accounts of Attitudes.” Thought 6: 312.Google Scholar
Moltmann, F. 2018. “Truth Predicates, Truth Bearers, and Their Variants.” Synthese: 128. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1814-8.Google Scholar
Moltmann, F. and Textor, M., eds. 2017. Act-Based Conceptions of Propositional Contents: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Soames, S. 2010. What Is Meaning? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soames, S. 2015. Rethinking Mind, Language, and Meaning . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Soteriou, M. 2007. “Content and the Stream of Consciousness.” Philosophical Perspectives 21: 543–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomasson, A. 1999. Fiction and Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Thomasson, A. L. 2004. “The Ontology of Art.” In The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics, edited by Kivy, P., 7892. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Twardowski, K. 1911. “Actions and Products. Some Remarks on the Borderline of Psychology, Grammar, and Logic.” In Act-Based Conceptions of Propositional Contents: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, edited by Moltmann, F. and Textor, M., 78104. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
van der Schaar, M. 2006. “On the Ambiguities of the Term Judgment: An Evaluation of Twardowski’s Distinction between Action and Product.” In Actions, Products and Things: Brentano and Polish Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, A. and Łukasiewicz, D., 3553. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.Google Scholar
Vendler, Z. 1957. “Verbs and Times.” Philosophical Review 66 (2): 143–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar