and prediction of coming conduct in Dennett’s. Somehow folk psychology
itself has to handle questions about why people did what they have done
andabout what they are going to do next.
2.1 DavidsonIn a number of articles Davidson has insisted on theanomalism of the
mental(see especially: 1970, 1974), by which he means that there can be no
genuinely law-like generalisations framed in our ordinary psychological
vocabulary. His main reason for thinking this, is that in interpreting the
behaviour of others we attempt to make the best sense we can of them as
rational agents, and that the best interpretation is therefore the one which
bestWts their behaviour subject to the normative constraints of rationality.
Norms of rationality therefore play a constitutive role in determining
which intentional states are to be attributed to other agents: what people
believe and desire is just what the best normatively constrained inter-
pretations of those peoplesaythat they believe and desire. The crucial
point is that rationality plays a double role – not only do we as folk
psychologists suppose that people will do what it is rational for them to do,
given certain beliefs and desires, but what beliefs and desires they have is
given by the rational interpretation of what they do.
Davidson is also a token-physicalist, however; and so in one (very weak)
sense he endorses a form of realism. Davidson’s view is that each particular
(or ‘token’) belief or desire possessed by an individual thinker will be (will
be identical to, or none other than) some particular state of their brain. So
each token mental state or event will be a real physical state or event. And
Davidson secures a causal role for the mental by maintaining that it will be
these token brain-states which causally determine the person’s behaviour.
But for Davidson there is nomorereality to the mental statetypes(for
example,beliefas opposed todesire,orthe belief that Pas opposed tothe
belief that Q) other than that they are involved in our interpretations of
behaviour in the light of our normative principles.
On Davidson’s view a good theory of interpretation must maximise
agreement between interpreter and interpretee, and we must even ‘take it
as given thatmostbeliefs are correct’ (1975). Why? The thought is that in
order to do so much as identify the subject matter of someone’s beliefs we
must attribute to them ‘endless true beliefs about the subject matter’.
Attributing false beliefs to an interpretee about some object undermines
the identiWcation of that object as the subject of their thoughts. For
example, someone may have remarked on how blue the water of the PaciWc
is, leading us to attribute to them the belief that the water of the PaciWcis
blue. But if it turns out that they think the PaciWc can be seen from the
Two varieties of anti-realism 27