Are Propositional Attitudes Mental States?

I present an argument that propositional attitudes are not mental states. In a nutshell, the argument is that if propositional attitudes are mental states, then only minded beings could have them; but there are reasons to think that some non-minded beings could bear propositional attitudes. To illus...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMinds and machines (Dordrecht) Vol. 32; no. 3; pp. 417 - 432
Main Author Baysan, Umut
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.09.2022
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Artificial Intelligence
Attitudes
Cognitive Psychology
Computer Science
Economics
Game Theory
General Article
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Science
Social and Behav. Sciences
Theory of Computation
Propositional attitudes
Mental states
Consciousness
Group minds
Functionalism
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ISSN0924-6495
1572-8641
DOI10.1007/s11023-022-09594-x

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Summary:I present an argument that propositional attitudes are not mental states. In a nutshell, the argument is that if propositional attitudes are mental states, then only minded beings could have them; but there are reasons to think that some non-minded beings could bear propositional attitudes. To illustrate this, I appeal to cases of genuine group intentionality . I argue that these are cases in which some group entities bear propositional attitudes, but they are not subjects of mental states. Although propositional attitudes are not mental states, I propose that they are typically co-instantiated with mental states. In an attempt to explain this co-instantiation, I suggest that propositional attitudes of minded beings are typically realized by mental states.
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ISSN:0924-6495
1572-8641
DOI:10.1007/s11023-022-09594-x