On The Logical Structure Of Propositional Attitudes

Propositional attitudes is an important research topic in the field of linguistics,philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemic logic, artificial intelligence,knowledge representation and information economics. Different proposals for thestructure of propositional attitudes are faced with many difficulties. The core of theproblem is: Frege’s puzzles, which led many issues which related propositional attitudes,such as: attitudes formalization, attitudes ascription (ontology), the representation ofattitudes content (semantics). From the aspects of propositional attitudes of the syntacticand semantic, guided by the criterion of Fodor’s theory, this thesis is to make a systematicinspection to the structure of propositional attitudes, and to compare different approacheswhich have the advantages and disadvantages, and to give a more reasonable solution.Frege’s puzzles show that the research of propositional attitudes is already begin,and its derive the two major variants: Kripke’s puzzle and Richard’s puzzle, indicatingthat the research of the logical structure of the propositional attitudes is in depth. Frege’spuzzle show that the Principle of Identity is invalid in the context of salva veritate, andthe Kripke’s puzzle show that there is a puzzle without use the Principle of Identity in thecontext of salva veritate, and Richard’s puzzle indicates that the Principle of Identity isinvalid in some transparent context, thus the puzzle is more challenging.Logical syntax of propositional attitudes shaped structure around the relationship ofthe agent-attitudes–statement. There are several main ways: A. The predicate ofattitude. The result of this approach will directly lead to logical contradiction. B. theoperator of attitude. The operator point of view leads a distinction between the opacityand transparency, and introduces the connotation individual and omniscience agent,which are not coincide with intuition. C. The type operation. The development is byMontague (1974).Logical, syntactic and semantic is generally one to one. Thus, the logical semanticsof propositional attitudes corresponding to the above three structures have acorresponding semantic interpretation: A. compound semantics. This is a basic principleof Frege’s semantics. B. possible world semantics, which putted forward by manyscholars such as Hintikka and Kripke, brought a new ontological commitment. C. Thetype of logical semantics.Some of the problems in logic such as the problem of logical omniscience, epistemicparadox, and the principles of epistemic closure, are all associated with the Frege’s puzzle. So, the theory of propositional attitudes may be able to provide a solution.