Title: The Access Problem for Act-type Theories of Propositions

Abstract: Recent work on propositions has seen the rise of act-type theories, according to which propositions are types of cognitive acts that derive their representational and truth-conditional properties from the token cognitive acts of agents. Act-type theories have been gaining traction as part of a rejection of what is called the ‘Fregean conception’, a “traditional” conception of propositions according to which they are intrinsically representational, mind- and language-independent abstracta, while cognitive attitudes such as belief and doubt derive their representational properties from their relation to propositions. Act-type theorists present two main objections to the Fregean conception:

• (i) The Explanation Problem: by construing propositions as non-derivatively representational and deriving the representation of the cognitive attitudes from the representation of propositions, Fregean theories turn truth-apt mental representation into an unsolvable mystery.
• (ii) The Access Problem: by construing propositions as mind- and language-independent abstracta, Fregean theories make our cognitive access to them an additional unsolvable mystery.

However, in their attempt to evade the difficulties that plague the Fregean conception, act-type theorists run into problems of their own—mainly centering around the crucial notion of predication. Peter Hanks has argued that the notion of predication at the heart of Scott Soames’ theory cannot explain representation and is incoherent (Hanks 2015: 36-39). And in a recent paper, Indrek Reiland endorses Hanks’ criticism of Soames, but argues that Hanks’ attempt to address objections to his own notion of predication is unsuccessful (Reiland 2019). Reiland offers a modified version of Hanks’ view that allegedly succeeds where Hanks’ proposed solution fails. I argue that the way Reiland modifies his view leads to a particularly acute version of the Access Problem. I then point out that this is a problem for Hanks and Soames as well, and that, by examining the way in which their theories face the Access Problem, we can see that they are also unable to solve the Explanation Problem.