106 PIERS RAWLING

things which are outside me” (Descartes 1955 [1643], p. 160). Although Descartes rejects the view that our “ideas” are similar to their causes,8 it is common to attribute to him a view on which the mind contains ideas that somehow correspond to external objects. There are many objec- tions to this sort of picture. On Davidson’s novel alternative, such Carte- sian “ideas” are simply rejected – and this is consistent with a reading of Davidson that has him advocating a measurement-theoretic reduction of the propositional attitudes to mere posits. (Note that the Cartesian popu- lation is only culled: there remain pains and their ilk – these are not mere posits.)

On this reading perhaps we can maintain our ordinary ways of talk- ing about our fellows: we use the posits to track the dispositions of our neighbors – instrumentalism and realism agree that the phenomena must be saved. But there are other phenomena to be saved, and a host of difficul- ties associated with abandoning the attitudes – for example, epistemology (and much else, of course) is apparently undercut, since there is no such state as knowing that P.9_{Davidson himself is committed to the existence} of propositional attitudes. In his monistic metaphysics, he quantifies over mental events. “Anomalous monism” (Davidson 1980c [1970]) is his view that all mental events are also physical, but that the mental and the physical are linked by no strict laws. Coming to have a certain propositional attitude is an event, on this view, but if there are no propositional attitudes there are no such events. There is no occupant for the mental side of the monistic equation.

Propositional attitudes are also intrinsic to Davidson’s causal account of action. He famously argues that propositional attitude states of the agent cause actions (Davidson 1980 [1963]; 1980a; see Chapter 2 for discussion). And he challenges those who would deny this to furnish an account of the distinction between merely rationalizing reasons for a particular act, and those rationalizing reasons for which the agent acted. A politician presses for environmental legislation. She believes that pressing the leg- islation will garner votes in the impending election. She also abhors the destruction of the environment. She claims that she acted only for the lat- ter reason. On Davidson’s account, her claim is tantamount to claiming that the latter, but not the former, propositional attitude was part of the cause of her pressing of the legislation. (This is oversimplified: see Davidson 1980a [1973].) What becomes of Davidson’s account if there are no propo- sitional attitude states? Of course, there are still behavioral dispositions, but these dispositions can do no rationalizing – they have no propositional content.

Radical Interpretation 107

Indeed, if a necessary condition for a bodily movement to be an action is that it be caused by intentional states (Davidson 1980a), then, absent the latter, there are no actions. In essence, Davidson claims, following Quine, that there can be nothing more to the intentional than is necessary for communication. And this, I have argued, given indeterminacy, rules out intentional states. But this rules out actions.

Instrumentalism concerning the propositional attitudes might be de- fended by noting that we attribute propositional attitudes in order to track “real” behavioral dispositions. However, there are strong arguments for realism about the attitudes, one of which is the fruitfulness of the essays collected in Davidson’s Essays on Actions and Events (1980). Some aspect of Davidson’s view has to give way. The conclusion that there are no proposi- tional attitudes results from the combination of indeterminacy and evidence dependence with respect to them. I shall endeavor to counter Davidson’s commitment to the latter.10

Recall Davidson’s remark that, when it comes to interpretation, “a satisfactory theory is one that yields an acceptable explanation of ver- bal behavior and dispositions” (Davidson 1984a [1979], p. 237). With this remark he seems already to have endorsed evidence transcendence: dispositions can be present without ever being made manifest. Why then insist that propositional attitudes be evidence-dependent, when evidence- transcendent dispositions are countenanced? There appear to be two no- tions of evidence transcendence at work. Davidson is willing to countenance “potential” evidence (Davidson 1984a [1979], p. 237); so although dispo- sitions are evidence-transcendent in the sense that they can be present without ever being made manifest, perhaps there must be potentially avail- able evidence for their presence. However, this line continues, the in- determinacy of propositional attitude attribution outruns even the total- ity of potential evidence. (Recall Quine: “translation [is] indeterminate in principle relative to the totality of speech dispositions” [Quine 1960, p. 221].) What distinguishes propositional attitude attribution from dis- position attribution, then, is that, unlike the latter, the former outruns all potential evidence – hence the nonexistence of propositional attitude states.

However, such a line will lead to a form of antirealism with respect to many dispositions. Many current dispositions will evaporate without ever being made manifest or even leaving a trace for future generations. They are currently real because they do not now outrun all potential evidence. Yet their claim to have existed will eventually outrun all potential evidence, and will thereby come to languish in the no-man’s-land between truth and