CURRENT THEORIES OF PROPOSITIONS

In A Realist Conception of Truth, Alston distinguishes two classes of answer to the question of the nature of propositions, ontologically serious answers and deflationary answers, where deflationists about propositions may be otherwise serious about ontology, but resist being ontologically serious in the same way about propositions. Among the ontologically serious answers to the question of the nature of propositions, he distinguishes four main positions.

1. Propositions are states of affairs, which are the sort of thing expressed by a gerundial phrase, and are things that may or may not obtain with the ones that obtain being facts. This account is obviously based on a linguistic view of states of affairs and facts as opposed to a compositional view, and consequently it is not clear, ontologically speaking, what is being proposed. However, the arguments ofthe last chapter led to the conclusion that the most suitable interpretation for the facts and states of affairs of the linguistic view was that they were Platonic entities.

2. Propositions are complex abstract objects with components and structure, in other words, Platonic entities. It has seemed natural to most people to regard these abstract objects as being rather like eternal sentences. It is reasonable to suggest that a proposition as abstract object should have as components eternal Platonic counterparts of the things that the proposition is about.