98 PIERS RAWLING

That is to say, assent to the two sentences should be prompted by the same stimulations; likewise dissent. . . . It would seem that this matching of

observation sentences hinges on sameness of stimulation of both parties, the linguist and the informant. But an event of stimulation, as I use the term, is the activation of some subset of the subject’s sensory receptors. Since the linguist and his informant share no receptors, how can they be said to share a stimulation? We might say rather that they undergo similar stimulation, but that would assume still an approximate homology of nerve endings from one individual to another. Surely such anatomical minutiae ought not to matter here. (Quine 1990b, p. 2)

Davidson shares Quine’s doubts:

[L]et us imagine someone who, when a warthog trots by, has just the patterns of stimulation I have when there’s a rabbit in view. Let us suppose the one- word sentence the warthog inspires him to assent to is ‘Gavagai!’ Going by stimulus meaning, I translate his ‘Gavagai!’ by my ‘Lo, a rabbit’ though I see only a warthog and no rabbit when he says and believes (according to the proximal theory) that there is a rabbit. (Davidson 1990a, p. 74) According to Davidson’s distal theory ‘Gavagai!’ is to be interpreted as ‘Lo, a warthog’. His distal theory is part of what drives his claim that “it cannot happen that most of our plainest beliefs about what exists in the world are false” (Davidson 2001a [1991], p. 196).

Quine’s response to Davidson is to move “to an intermediate point between Don’s distal and [his] old proximal position” (Quine 1990a, p. 80), although he “remain[s] unswerved in locating stimulation at the neural input. . . . Unlike Davidson, [he] leave[s] the stimulations at the subject’s surface, and private stimulus meaning with them” (Quine 1990b, pp. 3–4). Space precludes details of Quine’s intermediate position, beyond noting that “the subject’s reification of rabbits and the like is. . . decidedly a part of the plot, not to be passed over as part of the setting” (Quine 1990b, p. 3). The position of reification marks a key distinction between Davidson and Quine on the issue of conceptual schemes.

In Davidson (1984b [1974]), Quine is one of the interlocutors who countenances what Davidson denies: the possibility of differing concep- tual schemes – incommensurate ways of carving up the world. Conceptual schemes that are incommensurate at the basic level of objects are a possi- bility only if “reification. . . is . . . a part of the plot.” On Davidson’s distal theory, however, reification is “part of the setting”: objects such as warthogs are intersubjectively accessible, and it is they that in part determine the con- tent of our speech and thought.

Radical Interpretation 99

The advocate of a proximal view might well maintain that the proposi- tional attitude states of an agent are caused by matters external to the agent, and cause him to behave in various ways. But, crucially, she would deny that matters external to the agent enter into the specification of such states. For Davidson, on the other hand, the contents of propositional attitude states are in part specified by their external causes:

The contents of beliefs and other mental attitudes are specified by men- tioning objects, or kinds of objects, with which the subject of those attitudes must have come into causal contact of one sort or another. (This is naturally not always true, but it must be so in the most basic cases.) (Davidson 1990c, p. 21)

And they are in part specified by what they are disposed to cause the agent to do external to her body:

[A] belief that a stone is lethal will, when combined with certain desires, cause an intention to kill. . . . (Davidson 1990c, p. 22)

This is not to say that propositional attitude states are not internal states of the agent – it is just that their specification qua contentful propositional attitude requires reference to external objects and events:

Though our beliefs, intentions, fears, and other feelings are private and subjective if anything is, they cannot be identified or explained except by tying them from the start to external objects and events. (Davidson 1990c, p. 23)

On Davidson’s view, a mind must have a history of causal interaction with the world, and dispositions toward it, in order for it to be in states that are about the world; and these two features enter into the standard psychological specification of those states.

In Davidson’s view, austere science, when mature, does not specify states in terms of causal history or disposition. ‘Sunburn’ and ‘frangible’ will not appear in mature science (Davidson 1990c, p. 22). A mature science will specify, say, the state of sunburned skin in a fashion that makes no reference to the sun. Let ‘X ’ abbreviate this specification. To learn that X can be caused by overexposure to the sun is to make an empirical advance beyond the fact that sunburn is caused by overexposure to the sun. To describe somebody as desiring warthog for supper is to specify their state in part in causal- historical terms, and in part in dispositional terms. Thus, propositional attitude talk will not appear in mature science. And neither will discussion of language, if it is specified partly in semantic terms.