Meanings and Concepts

Sentences, speech acts, and thoughts are alike in that they have propositional content. Thus, ‘La neige est blanche’ means that snow is white; in uttering ‘Over my dead body’, Betty was letting you know that the probability of her going out with you wasn’t very high; and one of your mental states is a belief that Palermo is south of Rome. Because sentences, speech acts, and thoughts all have propositional content, one can’t sensibly limit one’s semantic interests to the philosophy of language; the theory of content, my concern in this paper, is defined by issues that cut across both the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind.