ABSTRACT
Barry Hallen and J. Olubi Sodipo are interested in propositional attitudes, that is, states in which a subject seems to adopt an attitude to a proposition, states such as ‘believing that’; ‘knowing that’; ‘wishing that’. More specifically, they are interested in apparent incongruities between the expressions of propositional attitudes that operate in Yoruba and those that operate in English. Kwasi Wiredu thinks that certain, though not all, philosophical problems are, as he says, tongue-dependent. In other words, some philosophical problems are not universal but only arise in certain languages. The planned lesson is one on length and its measurement. The teacher is supposed to take the students through the following exercise: a length of string is to be held level with the top of a student’s head and dropped till it just reaches the floor. Well, one might appeal to differences in language which render translation impossible between one language and another.
