From a recent review: "So Soames suggests that we identify a proposition with the cognitive event-type corresponding to the relevant predication. Soames allows that his own suggestion does not completely square with our normal way of talking about propositions. We don't normally take propositions to be the sorts of things that occur in Australia or have very few instances or that usually take less than half an hour. Nevertheless Soames thinks we can live with these odd results and they do not fundamentally undermine his suggestion. Soames goes on to consider whether the event-types he identifies with propositions exist in possible worlds where no events of the relevant type occur. In so far as event-types are abstract entities, he is sympathetic to the idea that propositions exist in worlds where they have no instances..." (emphasis added.)
Let me grant at once that (despite my recent ridicule), propositions can play a useful role in various theories about (artificial) languages (see for good overview of various arguments). But I have never witnessed normal talk about propositions. By this I don't just mean that ordinary folk are not very reflective (in fact, in my experience non-philosophers adore reflecting on language), but rather what evidence is there that ordinary (English) talk recognizes the existence of propositions of the sort posited by Soames (and his very gushing, uncritical reviewer)?
I have never had much sympathy for the Wittgensteinians, but language does seem to have gone on a distant holiday here.
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