propositional attitude

plural propositional attitudes

1. human sciencesA relational mental state connecting a person to a proposition, such as believing that, desiring that, or hoping that.

   1 more example

   Of course, the problem applies not only to belief, but also to a host of other mental phenomena which may be called propositional attitudes: doubting, considering, desiring, etc. In all these cases it seems natural to express the phenomenon in the form "A doubts p," "A desires p," etc., which makes it appear as though we were dealing with a relation between a person and a proposition.

   1922, Bertrand Russell, “Introduction”, in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus