2026/04/05 by Nigel Hems · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Embodied and Extended Cognition #Philosophy and History of Science #Philosophy and Theoretical Science
paper · doi:10.1111/ejop.70084
openalex publication_date 2026/04/05 · openalex created_date 2026/04/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract In this paper, I argue for a systematic account of propositions as statements through reconstructive engagement with A. J. Ayer and Gilbert Ryle, using historical analysis as the method rather than the end to highlight their shared effort to eliminate mentalistic and realist assumptions. Both aim to explain factual and non‐factual statements without appeal to intentional acts or abstract “objects of thought.” Ayer's Thinking and Meaning (1947, hereafter TaM ) reduces propositions to meaningful symbols, while his later “Meaning and Intentionality" (1967, hereafter MaI) advances a more thoroughgoing eliminativism that dissolves propositional talk altogether. I respond by developing a framework that treats propositions as statements, preserving their role in ordinary language while avoiding metaphysical commitments. Drawing on Ryle's “Are There Propositions?” (1971b, hereafter ATP), I reconstruct the implicit conceptual structures of his account to articulate a triadic system of “thinking of … as,” matter–form schemata, and empirico‐logical conditionals. These structures function as formal resources rather than ontological posits. The resulting reconstruction provides a novel anti‐representationalist and anti‐realist account of propositions—one that preserves the empirical significance of statements while bridging the divide between eliminativist and ontologically inflationary approaches.