Research group: Attitudes, Concepts and Objects

Within the framework of folk-psychology, action is commonly explained as being intentional by reference to the propositional attitudes of the agent, in particular by referring to his beliefs and desires. The concept of propositional attitude used in this type of explanation plays a key role in the work of the research group Attitudes, Concepts and Objects.

The research group is primarily concerned with

the semantics of the linguistic means with which propositional attitudes can be expressed and attributed,
the acquisition of such attitudes by processes of perception and reasoning,
the criteria of identity for the content of beliefs and other propositional attitudes,
the conceptual abilities that underlie propositional attitudes,
the ontological status of contents of propositional attitudes, as well as of
their objects and subjects.

Within these topics, research carried out by the group can be assigned to -at least- one of the following sections:

The discussion of Propositional Content and Reference is concerned with the structure of beliefs and judgements in general. Special attention is devoted to the peculiarities of beliefs and judgements that can be expressed by using indexicals like "I", "we", "now" or "here" as well as to the peculiarities of propositional contents expressible by the use of (incomplete) descriptions.

The section called Acquisition of Propositional Attitudes covers beliefs, their legitimation, etiology, and the associated perceptual and reasoning processes. One of the questions currently discussed in this context is: Many inferences occur in everyday discourse situations, but what kind of reasoning theory can model them adequately?

Having the belief that something is F, requires possession of the concept of F. The studies on Concepts and Categories inquire into the mental basis of the ability to treat distinct things or events as belonging to the same `category'. Some of the guiding questions in this field are: Do concepts correspond to pre-existing natural categories (kinds) or are they rather constructed according to cognitive structures? What is the internal structure of concepts, in particular, how do we determine an object's falling under a concept and how is it determined? Is there a fundamental distinction between concepts that have a restricted domain of application and concepts that can be generalized and used in different fields?

Ontological questions of contents and different kinds of objects (things, events, state of affairs, places, times, (social) groups, boundaries) are investigated under the heading of Formal, Artificial and Natural Ontology. Similarities, peculiarities and interrelations between different domains are described using more abstract (or `artificial') structures such as orderings, topology or geometry. One goal is to formalize the ontological structure of natural and artificial domains on the basis of the inventory of a domain independent (formal) theory such as (classical) mereology.

(Last change: December 2, 1997)
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