Inquiry - Robert Stalnaker

The abstract structure of inquiry—the process of acquiring and changing beliefs about the world—is the focus of this important book. It first discusses propositions and propositional attitudes (the cluster of activities that constitute inquiry) in general, taking the position that the "pragmatic" rather than the "linguistic" picture better solves philosophical problems about the nature of mental representation, and better accounts for the phenomena of thought and speech. Most strikingly, it provides a sound and plausible philosophical foundation for the representation of propositional content and attitudes in terms of possible worlds, tackling head on the serious problems that this view raises.