mental life – with all of the experiences, and many of the thoughts and
desires, of you or I. But there is no behaviour here to be interpreted, and
there seems nothing to be gained by adopting the intentional stance
towards such a person. How is this to be explained in other than the
realist’s terms?
(Of course it is very hard toseethe behaviour of someone with cerebral
palsy as imbued with mentality, and interacting with such a person is
diYcult – which is why such people face prejudice and discrimination. That
is not the point. The point is that the folk are perfectly prepared tobelieve
that there may well be a rich mental life behind the mask of disability.)
Davidson will have to say that the thoughts of the folk concerning the
mental lives of the paralysed arereallythoughts about how such people
couldbe interpreted if they werenotparalysed. But then such thoughts
become either trivially true or covertly realist, depending upon how the
antecedent of the conditional (‘if he were not paralysed then he would.. .’)
is cashed out. They become trivial if the antecedent just means ‘if he were
behaving normally’, forof coursewe would be attributing thoughts to him
if he were! But they become covertly realist if the antecedent means ‘if the
physical obstacles to the expression of his beliefs and desires were re-
moved’, since this requires such states to be real, and to be operative –
interacting with one another, at least – independently of the existence of
any behavioural manifestation.
Dennett, too, will have problems with such cases. For the assumptions
about optimal design and functioning which are supposed to underpin
mental state attributions from the intentional stance (see the quotation
given earlier) are plainly inappropriate here. And again the thoughts of the
folk about the mental lives of the paralysed will have to be cashed as
thoughts about the mental states wewouldattribute to them from the
intentional stance if theywerefunctioning normally. And again the di-
lemma is that this becomes trivially true or covertly realist, in exactly the
manner explained in the previous paragraph.
3.3 Inner commitmentsWe have argued that folk psychology is committed to certain sorts of
mental structuring, or certain kinds of inner organisation. But justwhatis
it committed to in the way of inner organisation?
(1)Existence: In theWrst place, folk psychology is committed to the
existenceof intentional states for people to have. This is fundamental, but
it is also a hollow claim unless we say something more about what is
involved. After all, the anti-realist can always agree, provided that it can be
34 Folk-psychological commitments