Peter Hanks, Philosophy
"Structured Propositions as Types"
Reading

• Hanks, P. (2007) The content-force distinction, Philosophical Studies 134:141–164
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     My aim in this paper is to defend a view about the nature of propositional content by, among other things, showing how it can solve Frege’s puzzles about the substitution of co-referential names in identity and belief sentences. I am going to argue for the view that structured propositions are certain types of actions. For example, the proposition expressed by the sentence ‘George is clever’ is, I propose, a type of action a speaker performs when she asserts or judges that George is clever.

      One component of this type is an act of spoken or mental reference to George. This type of reference act is the semantic contribution of the name ‘George’ to the proposition expressed by ‘George is clever’. I will argue, therefore, that the semantic contents of proper names are types of reference acts. As we will see, this account accommodates the rigidity of proper names while offering simple and intuitive solutions to Frege’s puzzles.