A Path to an Expressivist Meaning of Propositional Attitude Verbs

In this paper, I defend a non-descriptivist and non-psychological account regarding the meaning of propositional attitude verbs versus the standard theory of propositional attitudes (and attitude-attributing sentences). My purpose is to avoid some problematic consequences associated with the standard theory, such as a) the postulation of intentional objects; b) the assumption that subject to whom a particular mental state is attributed, using a propositional attitude verb, stands in a first-order relation to such intentional objects; c) the assumption that propositional attitude sentences are used to describe such a relation. My defence will take advantage of classical texts by Wittgenstein, Ryle, and Urmson and will be bolstered, prior characterizing expressivism, with the semantic expressivism developed, in several recent articles, by M.J. Frápolli and N. Villanueva for functions of propositions. In summary, the aim is to show that by employing the notion of functions of propositions, it is possible to explain the expressive meaning of propositional attitude verbs and to avoid a) - c).