Davidsons Beliefs, Rationality and Psychophysical Laws :: Psychology Essays

Davidson's Beliefs, Rationality and Psychophysical Laws ABSTRACT: Davidson argues (1) that the connection between belief and the "constitutive ideal of rationality" (2) precludes the possibility of their being any type-type identities between mental and physical events. However, there are radically different ways to understand both the nature and content of this "constitutive ideal," and the plausibility of Davidson’s argument depends on blurring the distinction between two of these ways. Indeed, it will be argued here that no consistent understanding of the constitutive ideal will allow it to play the dialectical role Davidson intends for it. I. Davidson’s Argument Davidson argues that there can’t be type-type identities between metal and physical events because: (a) if there were such identities, then there would be lawlike statements relating mental and physical events, and (b) there can be no such lawlike statements. According to Davidson, there can be no lawlike connections between the mental and the physical because of the ‘disparate commitments’ (3) of the two realms. Davidson’s argument for this claim can be schematized very roughly as follows: 1. The application of mental predicates is constrained by the constitutive ideal of rationality. 2. The application of physical predicates is not constrained in this way. 3. Therefore, there can be no lawlike statements relating the two sorts of predicate. According to Davidson, if we are to ascribe propositional attitudes such as beliefs and desires to people at all, we are committed to finding them to be rational. As Davidson puts it ‘[n]othing a person could say or do would count as good enough grounds for the attribution of a straightforwardly and obviously contradictory belief.’ (4) If someone were treated as having such manifestly contradictory beliefs, the fault would lie with the interpretation of the person’s thoughts, not with the thoughts themselves. (5) Since this ‘constitutive ideal of rationality’ controls our interpretations, ‘we must stand prepared, as the evidence accumulates, to adjust our theory in the light of considerations of overall cogency,’ (6) and in doing so we ‘necessarily impose conditions of coherence, rationality, and consistency’ (7) on the beliefs ascribed. The constitutive ideal will thus affect which mental predicates we actually attribute. Th ere is, however, no corresponding pressure upon our attribution of physical predicates. As a result, we cannot expect there to be any lawlike connections between the two types of predicates, even if the two happen to occur together. As Davidson puts it: As long as it is behavior and not something else we want to describe and explain, we must warp the evidence to fit this frame.