The cognitive theory of propositions and metaphysics of properties

One of the central arguments of the so-called ‘cognitive’ theory of propositions has been that their representational character —and with it their truth conditions— is derived from the primitive representational character of concrete cognitive acts by which an agent predicates a property of an object. Propositions inherit their representational character because they are ‘types’ of particular cognitive acts that have the ‘same’ representational content. It is argued in this work that this assumption is in conflict with the fact that concrete cognitive acts are instances of certain types. Under most conceptions of what founds the fact that a plurality of objects shares the ‘same’ nature —for example about how they are something ‘one’ in the multiple many— the qualitative character of an object is founded in universals or in some other construction acceptable for the nominalist.