Propositionalism and Questions that do not have Correct Answers

Abstract

AbstractAs the label suggests, according to propositionalism, each intentional mental state, attitude or event is or involves a relation to a proposition. In this paper, I will discuss a case that seems prima facie not to be accountable for by propositionalism. After having presented the case, I will show why it is different from others that have been discussed in the literature as able to show that propositionalism cannot be correct. I will then consider what the propositionalist can say to fix the problem and I will show that no strategy that is genuinely propositionalist seems promising. I will not conclude that propositionalism is doomed. But I will show that if propositionalism can account for our case at all, it can only do so by losing its main appeal, i.e. its elegance and simplicity. But then propositionalism seems to have lost its advantage with respect to its obvious alternative, i.e. a pluralist account according to which mental states, attitudes and events are not all homogeneously relations to propositions, but rather our mental life should be accounted for in terms of a plurality of kinds of relata.