that, of course, was precisely the point of comparison in the first two points. The content of the proposition is not, somehow, currently 'in the mind' of the subject, so there may be a lack of introspectible propositional content. For example, while it is true that I believe that the earth is round, and I suspect it will be windy tomorrow, and true that I had those propositional attitudes early this morning, the content of those propositions was not present to me until a moment ago.
So how, on this picture, does talk about propositional attitudes have content at all? It is not crudely that if we are justified in making a claim about a subject's propositional attitudes then the subject must have the concepts with which we make the ascription. We do, for example, at the limiting case, sometimes want to ascribe propositional attitudes (as well as sensations) to animals. It is instructive to think both about the extent to which we are seriously ascribing content, and about the conditions under which this makes sense. Consider
Wittgenstein's example, at #650.
"We say a dog is afraid his master will beat him; but not, he is afraid his master will beat him tomorrow. Why not?"
The answer is, of course, that the concept of 'tomorrow' is not one we have any right to ascribe to a dog: it is a concept which it is impossible to get a grip on without some linguistic competence. But it is a subtle matter to spell out what that means. After all, when we say the dog is afraid his master will beat him, it would be equally implausible to think that in doing so we claim that the dog has a specific conception of a beating, or even of a master. We use our concepts to describe the dog's fear, and indeed our concepts to pick out the object of his fear.33
33por a more extended discussion of the proper ascription of propositional attitudes to the dog, see Crispin Wright’s discussion. He has rather different philosophical fish to fry; his intention is to show the degree to which we are entitled to ascribe propositional attitudes above the head of the subject; mine is to set the limit on the degree to which that is possible. The common ground is the insistence that propositional attitude in this case is fixed by context and behaviour. 'Theories of Meaning and Speakers' Knowledge', in Realism Meaning and Truth.
The temptation is to think that what makes it true that the dog is afraid his master will beat him is something like the fact that there is a representation of the proposition mv master will beat me somewhere in the dog's mind, surrounded by a nimbus of fear. If that is entirely wrong, what is going on? Is it not true, then, that that is the content of the attitude? First, the negative claim: what makes that the right description is not simply facts about the dog's current mental state. What makes that the right description is the fact that the dog feels fear in a
particular context. The context would presumably be quite rich. The dog's fear would have to have a particular causal history. Someone would presumably have had to beat him. Had he always been treated with kindness, and never observed any beatings, the dog could not have that fear. There is a limit to a dog's, if not a human's, capacity for neurosis. And even if we wanted to say something like 'That dog is the most neurotic dog I've ever met. It has never been treated with anything but kindness and yet it cowers and cringes whenever it sees its master', even that description of its behaviour, if it were cut off from an appropriate causal history, would radically underdetermine 'He is afraid his master will beat him' as the correct mental ascription. He might, for example, sense some occult evil about his master, or dislike the smell of his g a l o s h e s .3 4 in order for the content to be fixed, there would have to be facts about the dog's history which would fix on that ascription as the most appropriate one. Similarly, future facts would have to bear out the ascription. In particular, facts about how the animal responds to his master in the future are pertinent. The remark would be false, made of a dog which bounced up with a wagging tail when its master came home. (There is a limit to a
34Even if we were to suppose that the dog only responded with cowering and cringing when his master had a stick in his hand, without the appropriate context we would not be justified in claiming that it feared its master would beat it. Apparently some small rodents have a pre-wired, not a leamed, response to a hawk shaped shadow. If it falls upon them, they respond by fleeing. In a context in which a dog had a similar response to an upraised stick, it would be wrong to say it feared its master would beat it.
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