Project overview
In our lives and in our human interactions, a crucial role is played by the things we think, believe, hope, fear, etc., by the things we assert, and by the things we attribute to others as things they think, etc. For example, we constantly aim to understand what other subjects assert and think in order to (i) gather information about the world - as when we acquire knowledge about the developments of the war on the basis of what the reporter asserted; (ii) understand others' behaviour - as when we rationalise a friend's decision to donate to one particular charity rather than another using our knowledge that she thinks that the former will use the funds more efficiently; and (iii) predict their future behaviour - as when we predict that a student will get in touch soon because we attributed to her the thought that it is time to have a chat about her dissertation. But what is the nature of these things that we think, believe, hope, fear, etc., assert and attribute to other subjects, which in philosophy are usually called propositions? In the endeavour of defining them, a number of challenging questions arise. For example: (1) Suppose that we know that Alisha is upset because she knows that somebody is sabotaging her career and she would like them to be fired, whomever they are, and also appreciates Carl as a colleague and hopes that he gets a promotion. If, unknown to Alisha, Carl is in fact the one who secretly sabotaged her career, is it correct to say that Alisha hopes that the one who sabotaged her career gets promoted? (2) When we aim at sharing what we think and feel, we use sentences of the natural languages we are speakers of, as when we can find ourselves asserting Life has a strange serendipity. What is the relationship between our thoughts and the language we use to express them? Are our thoughts structured, in a way similar to how our sentences are? Could we entertain the thought that life has a strange serendipity were we speakers only of a language into which serendipity is untranslatable? (3) Suppose that, thanks to my behaviour and what I told you, you understand that I think that I am happy. Can you entertain the very same thought I am entertaining, can you genuinely think what I myself think when I think that I am happy? While these and many other cognate questions are traditional open questions in philosophy, the debates these questions generated have been recently reinvigorated, thanks to an interdisciplinary approach, in which close attention is paid to a wide range of linguistic data concerning the sentences we use to attribute thoughts to subjects, such as Alisha hopes that Carl gets a promotion. Hence, debates that seemed settled have recently re-opened and there are two renewed research needs: i) To meticulously identify and articulate which linguistic data should guide our understanding of propositions; ii) Consequently, to undertake a novel and cutting-edge scrutiny of the recent and renewed accounts of propositions, in order to address the open questions propositions give raise to, such as (1)-(3) above. Those two current needs shape our networking project, which aims at advancing our understanding and knowledge of new ideas on the nature of propositions, by creating an unprecedented, international and interdisciplinary network, which crosses geographic, disciplinary and linguistic boundaries. Given that propositions are what we think and what we communicate when we share our thoughts, they not only play a central role in our lives and human interactions, but are also a crucial notion in each of the many disciplines concerned with thoughts and communication. In fostering understanding of the nature of propositions, the research carried out by the network will also be relevant to our conceptions of psychology, cognition and mental attitudes, to the nature of logical thinking and rational action, and of representation of belief in decision theory and computer science.
