propositional attitude

English

Noun

propositional attitude (plural propositional attitudes)

1. (philosophy) A relational mental state connecting a person to a proposition, such as believing that, desiring that, or hoping that.
   • 1922, Bertrand Russell, “Introduction”, in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:

     Of course, the problem applies not only to belief, but also to a host of other mental phenomena which may be called propositional attitudes: doubting, considering, desiring, etc. In all these cases it seems natural to express the phenomenon in the form "A doubts p," "A desires p," etc., which makes it appear as though we were dealing with a relation between a person and a proposition.