Abstract
In this chapter we begin our study of the formal structure of what we think when we are engaged in thinking practically. We start unfolding our story about the contents of practical thinking by developing its main characters. Our concern in this chapter is with role delineation. Each of the units of practical thinking is sketched out in basic outline, sufficient to bear the character development of the rather intricate plot to be unveiled in the following chapters.
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References
See P. F. Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory (London: Methuen and Company; New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1952); Richard Cartwright, ‘Propositions’, in R. J. Butler, ed., Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell Ltd.; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1962): 81–103; Richard Cartwright, ‘Propositions Again’, Nous 2 (1968): 299–246. For further enrichments of my conception of propositions, see my ‘Indicators and Quasi-indicators’, American Philosophical Quarterly 4 (1967): 85–100, especially pp. 90ff, and ‘On the Logic of Attributions of Self-Knowledge to Others’, The Journal of Philosophy 64 (1968): 439–456. These enrichments arise from an examination of demonstrative reference and the attribution to others of demonstrative reference. For yet further enrichments involving an analysis of predication see H-N. Castañeda, ‘Thinking and the Structure of the World’, Philosophia 4 (1974): 3–40.
See P. F. Strawson, ‘Identifying Reference and Truth-values’, Theoria 30 (1964): 109ff.
After careful study of the structure of contemplative thinking and its relations to its contents and the world, I have adopted the simplified view that: so-called states of affairs are just propositions, true propositions are just facts, and that thinking refers to facts without intermediaries. These and other theses are placed in their proper niche in H-N. Castañeda, ‘Thinking and the Structure of the World’, mentioned in note 1 above.
Especially in my ‘Actions, Imperatives, and Obligations’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 68 (1967–68): 25–48, and in ‘Intentions and Intending’, American Philosophical Quarterly 9 (1972): 139–149. In the earlier ‘Outline of a Theory on the General Logical Structure of the Language of Action’, Theoria 26 (1960): 151–182, practitions were called imperative-resolutives; but this term was also used to refer to expressions of practitions.
This view is formulated in the papers mentioned in note 4 as well as in my ‘Imperatives, Decisions, and Oughts: A Logico-metaphysical Investigation’, in Hector-Neri Castañeda and George Nakhnikian, eds., Morality and the Language of Conduct (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963; paper-back, 1965): 219–299.
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© 1982 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Castañeda, HN. (1982). Practical Thinking: Dramatis Personae. In: Castañeda, HN. (eds) Thinking and Doing. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9888-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9888-5_2
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