This study is an exploration of the place of perspectivism in the philosophy of Henri Bergson. His work is compared with that of Thomas Nagel in terms of the mutual concern of these two philosophers to reconcile our increasingly objecti vist and impersonal understanding of reality with the perspectival apprehension of the world that living and conscious beings instantiate. It argues that Bergson's philosophy of time holds the key both to comprehending and to balancing the demands made upon us by (...) these conflicting interests. It is seldom that Bergson's name is thought of in this connection, his concerns more often than not being identified with some thesis about time, movement, or vital forces. One purpose of the present work, therefore, is to contest this interpretive slant, not merely by offering an alternative image of Bergson, but also by critically exploring his employment of perspectivism (both positive and negative). We pursue this goal through the double strategy of both unravelling the inconsistencies in Bergson's· treatment of perspective and separating his own argument from the multitude of myths, opinions, and interpretations, sympathetic and unsympathetic, that have arisen around what is currently understood by "Bergsonism". In retrieving his thought from such philosophical ghettoes as "vitalism," "spiritualism," and "psychologism," we will argue for a Bergsonian perspectivism which ultimately resides in a thesis propounding the primacy of perception. One consequence of this is the demotion of memory's importance within his thought. Not that the orthodox image of Bergsonism that retains the privileged place of memory is wrong. Rather, we argue that there is enough in Bergson's peculiar picture of perception to obviate the need for memory in his philosophy, and, moreover, that it is actually more Bergsonian that memory should be so discharged. (shrink)

A historical theory of rational norms claims that, if we are supposed to think rationally, this is because it is biologically normal for us to do so. The historical theorist is committed to the view that we are supposed to think rationally only if, in the past, adult humans sometimes thought rationally. I consider whether there is any plausible model of rational norms that can be adopted by the historical theorist that is compatible with the claim that adult human beings (...) are subject to rational norms, given certain plausible empirical assumptions about our history and capabilities. I suggest that there is one such model: this model centres on the idea that a procedure is rational if it has been endorsed (or at least not rejected) by mechanisms that have the function to ensure that the subject learns to reason in a way that approaches a certain kind of optimality. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper I discuss one apparent counterexample to the rationality constraint on belief ascription. The fact that there are inconsistent believers does not seem compatible with the idea that only rational creatures can be ascribed beliefs. I consider Davidson's explanation of the possibility of inconsistent believers and claim that it involves a reformulation of the rationality constraint in terms of the believers' subscription to norms of rationality. I shall argue that Davidson's strategy is partially successful, but that the (...) emphasis on the notion of subscription badly fits with the motivations behind his theory of interpretation. (shrink)

Ethologists and others studying animal behavior in a spirit are in need of a descriptive language and method that are neither anachronistically bound by behaviorist scruples nor prematurely committed to particular Just such an interim descriptive method can be found in intentional system theory. The use of intentional system theory is illustrated with the case of the apparently communicative behavior of vervet monkeys. A way of using the theory to generate data - including usable, testable data - is sketched. The (...) underlying assumptions of this approach can be seen to ally it directly with theorizing in evolutionary biology, which has recently come under attack from Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin, who castigate it as the Their arguments, which are strongly analogous to B. F, Skinner's arguments against point to certain pitfalls that attend the careless exercise of such thinking (and rival varieties of thinking as well), but do not constitute a fundamental objection to either adaptationist theorizing or its cousin, intentional system theory. (shrink)

Many physicalists are committed to an austere dichotomy: either beliefs, desires and intentions are scientifically respectable or attributions of such attitudes are all false. One physicalist, Daniel Dennett, offers a third alternative, which seems to permit a kind of instrumentalism concerning attitudes. I argue that Dennett's attempt to reconcile an instrumentalistic account of attributions of attitudes with a thoroughgoing physicalism founders on unresolvable conflicts between his official theory and his actual treatment of key concepts. As a result, instrumentalism concerning attitudes (...) is exposed as inadequate to be a genuine alternative to the physicalist's dichotomy. (shrink)

This is a draft of my chapter on Agency and Mistakes for the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Agency. In it, I focus on performance mistakes and distinguish them from other "derivative" mistakes that we make as agents. I argue that a proper understanding of these mistakes recommends a generalized fallibilism about human agency.

Metaethical expressivism is typically characterised as the view that normative statements express desire-like attitudes instead of beliefs. However, in this paper I argue that expressivists should claim that normative statements express beliefs in normative propositions, and not merely in some deflationary sense but in a theoretically robust sense explicated by a theory of propositional attitudes. I first argue that this can be achieved by combining an interpretationist understanding of belief with a nonfactualist view of normative belief content. This results in (...) a view I call ‘interpretative expressivism’. I then argue that traditional arguments employed by expressivists that normative statements express noncognitive attitudes can just as well support the claim that normative statements express nonfactual or nonrepresentational beliefs. Finally, I argue that this view has a number of advantages to versions of expressivism that deny that normative statements express non-deflationary normative beliefs. (shrink)

How we evaluate things and what we desire are closely connected. In typical cases, the things we desire are things that we evaluate as good or desirable. According to evaluation theories of desire, this connection is a very tight one: desires are evaluations of their objects as good or as desirable. There are two main varieties of this view. According to Doxastic Evaluativism, to desire that p is to believe or judge that p is good. According to Perceptual Evaluativism, to (...) desire that p is to perceive p as being good (or for p to seem good). The present paper poses a puzzle for such views. The puzzle should be familiar to theorists interested in the normativity and metaphysics of the emotions, but I am unaware of its application to desire. The aim of the present paper is to present the puzzle as it applies to desire, which should be of independent interest, but I also hope that by shining a light on the puzzle in this domain, we might put ourselves in a better position to offer a solution in all cases. At the end of the paper, I gesture towards a promising way ahead that departs from relying on contradictory contents. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present and analyze arguments provided for the Psychological Principle of Non-Contradiction which states that one cannot have, or cannot be described as having, contradictory beliefs. By differentiating two possible interpretations of PNC, descriptive and normative, and examining arguments provided for each of them separately I point out the flaws in reasoning in these arguments and difficulties with aligning PNC with the empirical data provided by research done in cognitive and clinical psychology. I claim (...) that PNC cannot be derived from any metaphysical stance regarding the mental phenomena and that having contradictory beliefs should be regarded as possible. Furthermore, I argue that interpreting a subject as having contradictory beliefs, and therefore abandoning PNC, can be more effective in explaining the phenomena of contradictory beliefs and irrational behaviour than solutions consistent with the PNC. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend the main claims of our earlier paper “Mental Fictionalism as an Undermotivated Theory” (in The Monist) from Gábor Bács’s criticism, which appeared in his “Mental fictionalism and epiphenomenal qualia” (in Dialectica). In our earlier paper, we tried to show that mental fictionalism is an undermotivated the-ory, so there is no good reason to give up the realist approach to the folk psychological discourse. The core of Bács’s criticism consists in that our argumentation rests on an (...) equivocation concerning the folk psychological concepts of conscious experiences. In our present argumentation, at first, we shortly recapitulate our earlier argumentation and Bács’s main objection to it. After that, we argue against the case of equivocation, claiming that it rests on a highly implausible and unsupported verificationist approach. Lastly, in answering another remark of Bács’s, we discuss the possibility of a realist mental fic-tionalism and conclude that it is an incoherent standpoint. (shrink)

Metaethical realists disagree about the nature of normative properties. Naturalists think that they are ordinary natural properties: causally efficacious, a posteriori knowable, and usable in the best explanations of natural and social sciences. Non-naturalist realists, in contrast, argue that they are sui generis: causally inert, a priori knowable and not a part of the subject matter of sciences. It has been assumed so far that naturalists can explain causally how the normative predicates manage to refer to normative properties, whereas non-naturalists (...) are unable to provide equally satisfactory metasemantic explanations. This article first describes how the previous non-naturalist accounts of reference fail to tell us how the normative predicates could have come to refer to the non-natural properties rather than to the natural ones. I will then use the so-called qua-problem to show how the causal theories of reference of naturalists also fail to fix the reference of normative predicates to unique natural properties. Finally, I will suggest that, just as naturalists need to rely on the non-causal mechanism of reference magnetism to solve the previous problem, non-naturalists, too, can rely on the very same idea to respond to the pressing metasemantic challenges that they face concerning reference. (shrink)

Clinical delusions have traditionally been characterized as beliefs in psychiatry. However, philosophers have recently engaged with the empirical literature and produced a number of objections to the so-called doxastic status of delusion, stemming mainly from the mismatch between the functional role of delusions and that expected of beliefs. In response to this, an appeal to dispositionalism about the nature of belief has been proposed to vindicate the doxastic status of delusion. In this paper, I first present the objections to attributing (...) beliefs to delusional patients and the application of dispositionalism in the attempt to vindicate doxasticism. I then assess this application and some responses to the objections to the doxastic characterization. Finally, I offer some conclusions about the limits of folk-psychological concepts in the characterization and explanation of complex psychological phenomena such as delusions. (shrink)

I here respond to four SERRC commentators on my paper ‘Perspectivism, Deontologism and Epistemic Poverty’: Shira Elqayam, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Rik Peels and Hamid Vahid. I maintain that all accounts of epistemic justification must be constrained by two limit positions which have to be avoided. One is Conceptual Limit Panglossianism (an excessively subjective, ‘emic’, ‘bounded’ and ‘grounded’, relativistic perspectivism, whereby anything the epistemic agent takes to be justified, is). The other is Conceptual Limit meliorism (an excessively objective, ‘etic’, ‘unbounded’, ‘ungrounded’, absolutism, (...) whereby the fundamental normative-epistemic notion of justification is wholly divorced from regulative, human, capacities). Within these bounds one may offer an account of rationality or epistemic justification that is closer to Meliorism or Panglossianism. Remarked upon are my respondents’ considerations on Alston, on suggestions for a separation between a more-subjective epistemic justification and a more-objective rationality, and objections to my position based on the assumption that we must embrace a very objective and truth-conducive concept of epistemic justification. (shrink)

This paper defends Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis , a proposed empirical methodology for explicating philosophical concepts. This methodology attributes to our shared concepts whatever application conditions they would need to have in order best to continue delivering benefits in the ways they have regularly delivered benefits in the past. In the first stage of my argument I argue that Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis has what I call normative authority : we have practical and epistemic reason to adopt the explications that it delivers (...) even if we think doing so requires stipulative revisions in the meanings of our concepts. I then use this normative authority to argue that Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis also has what I call descriptive authority : when we understand concept-meaning in the way we ought to understand it (in the way licensed by the normative authority of Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis) we see that, rather than being revisionary, Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis is a semantically conservative tool that uncovers (what we should think of as being) the meanings our concepts already have. (shrink)

This paper challenges some leading views about the conditions under which the ascription of beliefs and desires can make sense of, or provide reasons for, a creature's behavior. I argue that it is unnecessary for behavior to proceed from beliefs and desires according to the principles of logic and decision theory, or even from principles that generally get things right. I also deny that it is necessary for behavior to proceed from principles that, though perhaps subrational, are similar to those (...) that we ourselves use. I then propose some conditions that are considerably weaker, and argue that they fulfill the descriptive and explanatory requirements of intentional ascription. (shrink)

1. When we attribute beliefs, desires, and other states of common sense psychology to a person, or for that matter to an animal or an artifact, we are assuming or presupposing that the person or object can be treated as an intentional system. 2. An intentional system is one which is rational through and through; its beliefs are those it ought to have, given its perceptual capacities, its epistemic needs, and its biography…. Its desires are those it ought to have, (...) given its biological needs and the most practicable means of satisfying them…. And its behavior will consist of those acts that it would be rational for an agent with those beliefs and desires to perform. [beliefs + desires  action] 3. If rationality is absent, we cannot coherently ascribe beliefs at all. 4. Therefore, no experiment could demonstrate that people systematically invoke invalid or irrational inferential strategies. (shrink)

Naive physics beliefs can be systematically mistaken. They provide a useful test-bed because they are common, and also because their existence must rely on some adaptive advantage, within a given context. In the second part of the commentary we also ask questions about when a whole family of misbeliefs should be considered together as a single phenomenon.

This paper tries to argue that at least some alluring, trendy or fashionable problems to do with thought and language — several of which are discussed in this volume — are in fact alluring, trendy or fashionable red herrings or cul-de-sacs. I shall primarily be concerned with the ascription of thought and intelligence to non-language-users; but, en route to that, will need to brood over our ascriptions of such terms quite generally.

1. Introduction For philosophers, the current phase of the debate with which this volume is concerned can be taken to have begun in 1986, when Jane Heal and Robert Gordon published their seminal papers (Heal, 1986; Gordon, 1986; though see also, for example, Stich, 1981; Dennett, 1981). They raised a dissenting voice against what was becoming a philosophical orthodoxy: that our everyday, or folk, understanding of the mind should be thought of as theoretical. In opposition to this picture, Gordon and (...) Heal argued that we are not theorists but simulators. For psychologists, the debate had begun somewhat earlier when Heider (1958) produced his work on lay psychology; and in more recent times the psychological debate had continued in developmental psychology and in work on animal cognition. (shrink)

The contention that cognitive psychology and radical behaviorism yield equivalent accounts of decision making and problem solving is examined by contrasting a framework of cognitive interpretation, Dennett's intentional stance, with a corresponding interpretive stance derived from contextualism. The insistence of radical behaviorists that private events such as thoughts and feelings belong in a science of human behavior is indicted in view of their failure to provide a credible interpretation of complex human behavior. Dennett's interpretation of intentional systems is an exemplar (...) of the interpretive stance radical behaviorism requires; a corresponding interpretive position can be based initially on a radical behaviorist view of human behavior and its determinants. This "contextual stance" is ontologically and methodologically distinct from the intentional stance over the range of explanations for which scientific psychology, cognitive or behaviorist, is responsible. (shrink)

The article presents a brief reconstruction of naturalized epistemology, understood as a methodological approach. Three emblematic positions within naturalized epistemology are distinguished: rejection of apriorism inepistemology, favoring the use of the results of empirical science; attribution of an instrumental normativity to epistemology; and the thesis of the empirical assessability of the epistemic norms or principles. The text addresses the way in which, historically, these features are presented in the foundational works of Quine and Laudan. Furthermore, it studies how this project (...) is applied by three authors: Howard Sankey, who links naturalism to the debate of epistemic relativism; and Louise Antony and Elizabeth Anderson, who make use of these ideas as a foundation for feminist epistemology. Through these “applications”, it is possible to appreciate that naturalizedepistemology does not lead to the elimination of normative aspects, as was feared by early critics of Quine. It is also possible to appreciate that the approach of Sankey is naturalized because it is empirically informed, but it still depends on a priori arguments. On the contrary, appropriations by feminist epistemology carry out the naturalization project in a deeper sense, that is, they introduce a set of epistemological premises that are themselves empirical. (shrink)

SummaryIn this article I am criticizing Davidson's claim that psychological description and explanation are impossible without a strong assumption of rationality of the subject. I am trying to dispute his thesis that presupposition of coherence between propositional attitudes must be treated as a constitutive principle of psychology which fundamentally differentiates this science from physics and precludes the existence of strict psycho‐physical laws. Philosophical and empirical arguments are brought forward tho show that Davidson overestimates the role of rationality considerations in psychology. (...) There is no a priori reason why mental states should not be gradually included in a deterministic nomological net.RésuméDans cet article, je critique la thèse de Davidson selon laquelle la description et I'explication psychologiques sont impossibles si I'on ne fait pas I'hypothèse forte de la rationalité du sujet. Je conteste sa thése que la présuppositions d'une cohérence entre les attitudes propositionnelles doive être considérée comme un principe constitutif de la psychologie, principe qui la différencierait fondamentalement de la physique et interdirait I'existence de lois psycho‐physiques strictes. Des arguments philosophiques et empiriques sont produits pour montrer que Davidson surestime le rôle des considérations de rationalité en psychologie. II n'y a pas de raison a priori pour que des états mentaux ne soient pas graduellement introduits dans un réseau nomologique déterministe.ZusammenfassungIn diesem Artikel kritisiere ich Davidsons Behauptung, wonach psychologische Beschreibun‐gen und Erklärungen ohne starke Annahmen bezüglich der Rationalität des subjektes nicht mög‐lich sind. Ich versuche, die These zu widerlegen, der gemäss die Voraussetzung der Kohärenz zwischen propositionalen Haltungen als Konstitutives Prinzip der Psychologie betrachten werden muss, das diese Wissenschaft grundlegend von der Physik unterscheidet und deshalb auch die Möglichkeit von strenge psycho‐physischen Gesetzen ausschliesst. Philosophische und empirische Argumente werden vorgelegt urn zu zeigen, dass Davidson die Rolle von Rationalitätserwägungen in der Psychologie überschätzt. Es gibt keine apriorischen Gründe dafür, dass mentale Zustände nicht nach und nach in ein deterministisches Netzwerk von Gesetzen eingefügt werden könnten. (shrink)

According to some theories of interpretation, it is difficult to explain and predict irrational behavior in intentional terms because irrational behavior does not support the ascription of intentional states with determinate content. In this paper I challenge this claim by offering a general diagnosis of those cases in which behavior, rational or not, resists interpretation. I argue that indeterminacy of ascription and paralysis of interpretation ensue when the interpreter lacks relevant information about the system to be interpreted and about the (...) environment in which the system is embedded. Moreover, the heuristics of interpretation that guide the ascription of beliefs can be limited in scope. In the end I suggest that by giving up the idea of a necessary rationality constraint on the ascription of intentional states we can develop a new framework for a more psychologically realistic account of interpretation. (shrink)

Richard Nisbett's The Geography of Thought is one of several recent works that have highlighted purported differences in thinking patterns between East Asians and Westerners on the basis of empirical research. This has implications for teaching and for other issues such as cultural integration. Based on a framework consisting of three distinct notions of rationality, this paper argues that some of the differences alleged by Nisbett are either not real or exaggerated, and that his geography of thought fails to provide (...) an adequate account of thinking styles across cultures. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for teaching and learning critical thinking that can be drawn from the framework developed. (shrink)