Re: Ontolog Forum • William Frank

William Frank asked a question about propositional attitudes and presuppositions.

WF:

Are there any formal languages, such as Common Logic, that adequately represent statements about propositions — statements from which, in natural reasoning, one can draw conclusions about the elements of the embedded proposition?

Dear William,

Propositional attitudes and presuppositions were hot topics in the ’80s —
scanning an old bib I see:

• Salmon, N.U., and Soames, S. (eds., 1988), Propositions and Attitudes,
  Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

And everyone was reading:

• Barwise and Perry, Situations and Attitudes

But the roots of the problem go way back, and of course it can’t be rooted out till
more people read and comprehend and apply Peirce’s theory of triadic sign relations.

At this point in time, however, the gravitational pull of Russell’s Planet and its inconstant satellite Quine continue to weigh against any real progress being made.

But even Russell almost, barely, just not completely broke orbit at one of those critical branch points of intellectual history — it appears it was only Wittgenstein who pulled him back from the brink of 3-adicity and back to the 2-folds of dyadic relations.

I discussed all these issues in some detail in the old Standard Upper Ontology (SUO) group and its kin.  Here’s a few pertinent fragments I archived at my current haunts:

• Russell’s Theory Of Knowledge
• Russell’s Philosophy Of Logical Atomism • Note 25

Regards,

Jon

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