Because

  How to Analyze and Evaluate Ordinary Reasoning

  Section 10:  Third  person propositional attitude statements

 G. Randolph Mayes

 Department of Philosophy

 Sacramento State University

10.1   Second and third person propositional attitude statements

 

Second and third person propositional attitude statements are just statements attributing  propositional attitudes to other people.  Grammatically speaking, 2nd person statements involve the use of the pronoun "you".   Third person involves use of "he," "she" and "they."   Since  we treat second and third person cases the same, we'll just speak of 3rd  person  for the sake of brevity.

 

The important thing to understand is that 3rd person propositional attitude statements do not typically function as a way of asserting the corresponding proposition.  For example, if I say:

  • Jaime thinks Fred is a jerk.

I am conveying to you what Jaime thinks.  I'm not saying Fred is  a jerk, Jaime is saying Fred is a jerk.  So, if I said:

  • Jaime thinks Fred is a jerk because Jaime saw Fred  hitting on his girlfriend Mattie at the party last night.

you would represent this as an explanation of the fact that Jaime thinks Fred is a jerk as follows:

 

Of course, the point we made in section 8 for first person propositional attitudes holds in this situation as well. It is not at all unusual for people to say things like:

  • I think Jaime thinks Fred is a jerk.

If you were rationally reconstructing  this statement, you would simply apply the rule of thumb from section 8 and drop the "I believe".

 

It's important to know that 3rd person  propositional attitude statements can participate in both argument and explanation.  We just saw an explanation of the fact that Jaime thinks Fred is a jerk.  Here is an argument for the same conclusion

  • Jaime must really think Fred is a jerk.  Anytime Fred comes around, Jaime just leaves the room.

You will notice here that the speaker is not explaining why Jaime thinks Fred is a jerk.   Nor is he arguing for the conclusion that Fred is a jerk.  Rather, he is arguing for the conclusion that Jaime thinks Fred is a jerk.  The proper reconstruction is:

 

10.2  Arguments vs. psychological explanations

 

We're now in a position to observe something interesting about the way people typically use first and third person propositional attitude statements. 

  • The reason I think Mike's grandmother is Shirley Temple is because Mike told me that.

  • The reason Doug  thinks Mike's grandmother is Shirley Temple is because Mike told him that.

The only difference between these two examples is that the first is in the 1st person and the second is in the 3rd person.  What's interesting is that the first example is properly represented as an argument and the second is properly represented as a psychological explanation as follows:

 

 

 

A psychological explanation is just an explanation of someone's psychological state or attitude.  As we saw above, 3rd person explanations of people's cognitive attitudes toward a proposition imply nothing whatsoever about the truth of the proposition itself.   So, someone who offers an explanation of the fact that Doug thinks Mike's grandmother is Shirley Temple may actually believe that this is nonsense and that Mike is actually lying.

 

What's interesting is that we very often use the third person explanatory mode because we doubt the proposition in question.  Essentially we are saying:  "I understand what causes you to have that belief, but I do not think the cause of your belief is adequate evidence for that belief."

 

While we often use the 3rd person explanatory mode for the purpose of registering skepticism, it is not a reliable rule.  Sometimes, for example, we will use the 3rd person to relate the reasoning of authorities with whom we are in no position to disagree.  For example:

  • Epidemiologists believe that obesity is a largely inherited trait because they have found thatidentical twins separated at birth and raised in substantially different environments are much more likely to have similar levels of obesity than fraternal twins and siblings.

This reasoning is presented as a 3rd person explanation of the beliefs of epidemiologists, but because the epidemiologists are clearly being treated as authorities in this area, it is probably best to reconstruct this it as an argument for the claim that obesity is an inherited trait.