now it’s just getting weird

Yesterday I posted about Dancy’s argument against the view that normative reasons are constituted by propositions. The specific view he is arguing against there is the view that motivating reasons are constituted by psychological states and normative reasons are constituted by the content of those states. The first step in his strategy to argue against this view is to show that normative reasons cannot be propositions. From this he concludes that in order for this view to get the result that one can act for the right reason it has to hold that the contents of belief are not propositions. He writes,

It follows from this [that propositions cannot be normative reasons] that the content-based strategy will need to produce a new account of the contents of our beliefs–the things that we believe. This account, if it is to serve the purposes of the content-based approach, must offer as contents things capable of being good reasons. To do this, it must somehow understand contents as states of affairs, or as at least capable of being states of affairs. But this will require significant revisions in current views within the philosophy of mind… (117)

So, the strategy is to show that the content-based strategy is committed to revising widely held views in the philosophy of mind. This is supposed to be a bad thing about the view. And I think that it certainly is! Keep in mind that this is the only objection he raises against this particular view.

In chapter 6 he introduces his preferred view. The main thing that he tries to show in chapter 6 is that when explaining why someone did p, ‘that p‘ is (almost always) just as good or a better explanation than ‘that she believed that p.’ After showing this, he writes,

It seems, then, that the explanation of action, at least that of intentional action, can always be achieved by laying out the considerations in the light of which the agent saw the action as desirable, sensible, or required. If things were as the agent supposed, there is no bar against the agent’s reasons being among the reasons in favor of doing what he actually did.

The reason why this is true is because the things that moved the agent to act were the contents of her beliefs in the form of ‘that p‘ (hmm… I wonder what those are usually called). Since Dancy (assumes at this point) holds that those are the same types of things that normative reasons are, it follows that normative reasons can easily be motivating reasons.

The incredibly weird thing about the argument at this stage is that (1) Dancy is already solidly committed to saying that normative reasons are not propositions and (2) that it is a bad feature of a theory to have as a consequence the rejection of propositional views about the contents of belief. So, what gives?

Well, in chapter 6 is addresses the following questions:

What are these ‘things believed’ that are supposed to be what explain intentional actions? Are they propositions? Are they states of affairs? Are they facts?

He quickly states that they cannot be propositions because of his argument (or, more accurately, his report of intuition) in chapter 5. He then offers up another gem of an argument against why they aren’t propositions,

We we believe may be the case of fail to be the case; it may obtain or fail to obtain. Propositions are true or false; they cannot obtain or be the case (147).

So, since propositions cannot obtain and the things we believe obtain, propositions are not the content of beliefs. Here is an analogous argument for why states of affairs aren’t the contents of beliefs. States of affairs aren’t true or false. Beliefs can be true or false. Therefore, states of affairs aren’t the contents of beliefs. I think Dancy would reject that beliefs can be true or false. That means that we cannot have true beliefs! JTB is really fucked now! Plus, the issue is finally settled about whether truth is the norm of belief. No belief can be true, so truth cannot be the norm of belief.

What is incredibly, incredibly weird about all of this is that he doesn’t even hint that his view is committed to redoing a lot of philosophy of mind (and epistemology, for that matter) in the same way he charged the content-based strategy of being committed to.

Of course, if we just hold that both motivating and normative reasons are constituted by propositions, we can hold nearly the same view as Dancy and not have to redo a bunch of philosophy of mind and epistemology. Just a thought.

~ by Errol Lord on June 10, 2008.