WHAT DO PROPOSITIONS MEASURE IN FOLK PSYCHOLOGY

In this paper I examine the analogical argument that the use that is m ade of propositions in folk psychology in the characterisation of prop ositional attitudes is no more puzzling than the use that is made of n umbers in the physical sciences in the measurement of physical propert ies. It has been argued that the result of this analogy is that there is no need to postulate the existence of sentences in a language of th ought which underpin the propositional characterisation of proposition al attitudes in order to provide a naturalistic account of their use. I argue that a closer examination of the analogy implies rather than a voids the existence of structured representations constituting a langu age of thought, and thus that it should be abandoned by those who wish to avoid the postulation of such internal representations.