A logical-semantic analysis of utterances of intentional states of subject

• Published in: Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filosofiya, sotsiologiya, politologiya no. 79; pp. 17 - 25
• Main Author: Pavlukhina, Polina A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Russian
• Published: 2024
• ISSN: 1998-863X; 2311-2395
• DOI: 10.17223/1998863X/79/2

Utterances of the subject’s intentional states were analyzed in the second half of the 20th century by researchers of epistemic logic. This approach was unable to complete the solution of the problem of logical omniscience because the subject of utterances does not always know all the consequences of their knowledge in everyday life. Sometimes the subject is convinced that contradictory utterances are true. In this way, epistemic logic idealizes the position of the subject in the analysis of utterances and, moreover, fixes them in one state. Because of this, the subject cannot expand and supplement their knowledge, because they already know all the logical consequences of utterances at the same time. This issue can be solved remaining within the framework of epistemic logic. In this case we have to weaken the subject’s cognitive potential for that, and, moreover, we have to take into account the subjective nature of utterances. This approach is based on the analysis of the implicit knowledge of the subject. So, it is important to pay attention on the object of utterances because the perceiver’s attention is directed to it. In this regard, the author considers the analysis of utterances of intentional states of subject in situational semantics. Due to the latter, we take into account situations that the subject has in mind, and, moreover, we consider situations independently of the agent, based on the information provided by the context. It is semantics based on how the world, not the subject’s utterances about mental representations, such as knowledge, beliefs, etc., works. In this case, the information is part of the context; it exists independently of the subject and is extracted by them for further transformation into utterances. Also, situational semantics considers the object, which helps to learn more about the ontological aspect of this problem. This is due to the fact that the information that helps us analyze an utterance exists in situations, not in the subject’s attitudes. The author concludes that situational semantics appears to be a more universal method in the logical-semantic analysis of utterances of the subject’s intentional states, as compared to epistemic logic, because it allows us to consider various types of information of an utterance, not only that which corresponds to the propositional content.