The Theory of Propositions (Judgment)

Traditional (medieval) theories of propositions resolve the issue into two components: meaning and truth. We resolve prepositional knowledge into two different components: information content and evaluation.

Declarative behavior,. e.g., propositional performance (saying, writing, thinking…) has an informational content independent of meaning, it tells us about the performer independent of any consideration of meaning. The evaluative element resolves itself into additional issues: Truth/Falsity, Informative/Uninformative, Interesting/Uninteresting, Provable/Unprovable, any and all characteristics or attributes of declarative statements and related behaviors. We include not only the traditional epistemic issues but also those evaluations that consider the behavior in a wider context, e.g., social or historical.

All declarative behavior can be divided into two categories: internally and externally determined according to whether the behavior is determined by the performers current sensory situation or not. Judgments involving past sensory experiences are internally determined even though the behavior is ultimately related to sensory experience. The point of this internal/external distinction is that the totality of internally based driving functions can be delineated scientifically. We can thus say what it is possible to say when the declarative behavior is internally determined. This is what epistemology is really all about, saying what can be said, and then selecting among the possibilities. But according to what criteria?

While it is impossible to generate a theory of possible experience, or then a theory of possible externally determined prepositional behavior, (I might see a Martian tomorrow, or develop a new scientific theory, a theory of possible experience is a theory of history); we can generate theories of possible internally determined performance, this is cognitive psychology, evaluating them is philosophy.