In this book, Scott Soames argues that the revolution in the study of
language and mind that has taken place since the late nineteenth century
must be rethought. The central insight in the reigning tradition is that
propositions are representational. To know the meaning of a sentence or
the content of a belief requires knowing which things it represents as
being which ways, and therefore knowing what the world must be like if
it is to conform to how the sentence or belief represents it. These are
truth conditions of the sentence or belief. But meanings and
representational contents are not truth conditions, and there is more to
propositions than representational content. In addition to imposing
conditions the world must satisfy if it is to be true, a proposition may
also impose conditions on minds that entertain it. The study of mind and
language cannot advance further without a conception of propositions
that allows them to have contents of both of these sorts. Soames
provides it.
He does so by arguing that propositions are repeatable, purely
representational cognitive acts or operations that represent the world
as being a certain way, while requiring minds that perform them to
satisfy certain cognitive conditions. Because they have these two types
of content--one facing the world and one facing the mind--pairs of
propositions can be representationally identical but cognitively
distinct. Using this breakthrough, Soames offers new solutions to
several of the most perplexing problems in the philosophy of language
and mind.
