5.3 Reductionism
5.3.1 Success for Davidson
According to Davidson, we’re to think of the type to which rationalising explanations belong as neutral on whether p is a genuine reason for the subject toϕ: in so far as an explanation is of that type, it doesn’t follow that p is a fact which favours theirϕ-ing. But Davidson thinks of the rationalising type in a distinctive way. According to Davidson, an explanation’s being a rationalising explanation requires it to take the agent’sϕ-ing as
explanandumand the state of S’s believing that p asexplanans, where the explanation is underwritten by an efficient-causal relation holding between the state and theϕ-ing. An explanation of that type holds in both the good case and the bad case.
Now let us ask Davidson the following question: what is it to ϕ in response to the normative reason that p? Since that condition constitutively involves the obtaining of a rationalising explanation, Davidson will say that part of the answer is thatϕ-ing in response to a normative reason involves the agent ϕ-ing because of their belief that p, where the explanatory link is underwritten by a causal relation between the two. But Davidson cannot rest content with that answer, becauseϕ-ing in response to a normative reason requires that p is true and is a normative reason, butϕ-ing because of one’s belief that p doesn’t entail that: the type of explanation present doesn’t guarantee that those features of the success case obtain. So he will have to add: ϕ-ing in response to the normative reason that p consists inϕ-ing because of one’struebelief that p – where the explanation is causal and p favours one’sϕ-ing. But what about the Epistemic Thesis: thatknowingthat p is required for ϕ-ing in response to a normative reason?10 Davidson can incorporate this point just
by dint of the fact that one’s knowledge in the good case is one’s belief. Thus, properly developed, Davidson’s position on the good case is this: toϕin response to the reason that
p is toϕ because of one’s knowledge that p, where p favours one’s ϕ-ing and where the explanation is efficient-causal.
At this point, what the Davidsonian position amounts to exactly depends on how the state of knowing is conceived. If, on the one hand, the state of knowing were thought of as reducing to the state of believing, plus truth and warrant,11Davidson would end up saying
that theexplanansin the good case is identical to theexplanansin the bad, and hence that the two explanations would be the same explanation. Theexplananswould be the same because the state the subject is in in the bad case would be token identical to the state they are in in the good case. It’s just that theexplanansin the good case would happen to have certain properties which give it the status of knowledge. If, on the other hand, the state of knowing were thought of as a primitive type of propositional attitude in its own right, as Williamson (2000) would have us believe, then Davidson would be committed to saying that theexplanansin the good case is genuinely different to theexplanansin the bad. For we would have a different kind of state present in the good case than in the bad. Either way, it’s worth emphasising, thetypeof explanation would be the same.12
So Davidson’s position needs to be developed so that he incorporates the point that knowing is required for responding to a normative reason. This point is incorporated by an identification of the state of believing with the state of knowing in the good case. This position then divides into two sub-positions, each corresponding to the two different ways of conceiving of knowing. The first position, which utilises the standard conception of knowledge as a special kind of believing, commits Davidson to the claim that particular rationalising explanations are exactly the same in the good case and bad: both appeal to a state of believing. The second position, which utilises the Williamsonian conception of knowledge, generates the result that the particular explanations are different, for they appeal to different kinds of state. Both explanations are of the same type: rationalising explanation, thought of as a type which is neutral on whether the subject is in the good case.
There are two points to highlight about the ways of developing the Davidsonian posi- tion which have just been explored. First, each way of developing the position differs with respect to its relationship with Williams’ Dicta. The second way of developing the posi-
11Here I identify warrant with whatever factor converts true belief into knowledge.
12The initial way of incorporating the point that responding to a normative reason requires knowing was to
say that theexplanansof the good-case rationalising explanationisthe state of knowing. The ‘is’ there can be an ‘is’ of identity, if the standard conception of knowledge is assumed. If the Williamsonian view is assumed then the ‘is’ could still be the ‘is’ of identity, in which case a disjunctive conception of believing, of the sort rejected by Williamson himself, will have to be operated with. That is the way I have tacitly assumed things would go. However, it could be interpreted as an ‘is’ of constitution if the Williamsonian conception of knowledge is assumed too. This raises the possibility that Davidson could incorporate the epistemic point in a different way, in order to avoid committing himself to the claim that the explanations are different across good cases and bad. What he could say is that theexplanansis a belief in both cases, it’s just that in the good case the belief is constituted by a state of knowing. That would be a third way of developing Davidson’s position which I leave out of the text in order to not make the discussion even more complicated than it already is.
tion combines a rejection of Williams’ Dictumswith an acceptance of Williams’ Dictumw.
It accepts the latter because it says that rationalising explanations do not belong to a type which require that p is a normative reason for S toϕ. But it rejects the former because it says that explanations in the good case take asexplanantiastates of knowing, which just are the states of believing that cause one’sϕ-ing. So the particular explanation to which one’s ϕ-ing is subject in the good case is not identical to the explanation to which one’s ϕ-ing is subject in the bad case. On the first way of developing the position, however, both of Williams’ Dicta are maintained. Williams’ Dictumw is maintained in the same way
and Williams’ Dictumsis also accepted because theexplanansis a state of mind identical
across the good case and bad.
Davidson’s position thinks of the form exemplified by all rationalising explanations as neutral, so that if a particular rationalising explanation takes as its explanansan item which can function asexplanansonly in the good case – for example, the fact that p or the state of knowing that p – then that will be accidental from the point of view of the way in which it makes the relevantexplanandumintelligible – it will be accidental from the point of view of the form of the explanation. This brings me to my second point. Although the state of knowing can figure in Davidsonian rationalising explanations, as it does on each development of the basic position, it cannot be that the agent’sϕ-ing in the good case is explained by a state of knowingquaknowing. The way in which rationalising explanations makeϕ-ings intelligible, for Davidson, is simply by dint of connecting theϕ-ings with the relevant causally active state of mind that constitute theappearanceof normative reasons to the subject, not to those states of mind which constitute the subject’sawarenessof such reasons. So even though knowing can figure in rationalising explanations in the good case, for Davidson, it is accidental to the way in which the explanation makes the relevant judgement sensitive phenomenon intelligible that the state of knowing plays the role it does. There might be a sense in which knowing does explanatory work for Davidson, but we must not be misled into thinking that it isquaknowing that the agentϕs.