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Because How to Analyze and Evaluate Ordinary Reasoning Section 9: First person propositional attitude statements |
G. Randolph Mayes Department of Philosophy Sacramento State University |
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9.1 Propositional attitudes
In section 8.3c we noted that it is common to make statements that themselves attribute statements to others. (In fact, we just did.) In reasoning contexts, the most common way of attributing a statement to someone is to say that she thinks or believes it. Thinking and believing are what we call 'propositional attitudes'. A propositional attitude is just a psychological disposition toward a particular statement or proposition. For example, a proposition like:
is one toward which we can express a range of attitudes: belief, fear, hope, doubt, desire, etc. We express these attitudes with statements like:
Unlike value judgments, claims ascribing propositional attitudes can be candidates for both explanation and argument. But, as with value judgments, we'll see it's very easy to confuse argument with explanations in this context as well.
9.2 First person belief statements
Consider the following statements.
It's interesting to observe that these statements do not actually mean the same thing. The first one is a statement about what the tiger is doing. The second one is a statement about what the person making it is thinking. That said, no one can sincerely assert the first statement while denying the second. That is, anyone who truthfully says that the tiger is approaching would also be willing to say that that he thinks the tiger is approaching. The fact that he thinks it is, after all, why he said it.
So it's important to be aware that whenever we express ourselves in the first person, with statements expressing the propositional attitude of belief ("I believe ____," "I think ____," "I accept that ___," etc.) this is almost always just a way of asserting whatever statement we put in the blank. This means that when Bert himself says:
it should be clear that Bert is giving an argument for the conclusion that the tiger is getting near. He means to convince us of it. This is the correct reconstruction.
We would not write "Bert thinks the tiger is approaching Bert," because Bert is clearly not trying to convince us that he thinks the tiger is approaching. Nor is he giving us an explanation of the fact that he thinks the tiger is getting near. So whether construed as an argument or an explanation, the following would not be an acceptable reconstruction of Bert's reasoning.
It is interesting to observe that while people often argue for their beliefs, they rarely are in a position to explain them. This is because anytime we explain something we are simply representing that thing as a fact in the world. But we have a very hard time thinking of our own current beliefs simply as facts in the world. That's because our beliefs are the very means by which we represent the facts.
On the other hand, it is possible to adopt an explanatory perspective on things we once believed but no longer do. For example, if Bert said:
In this case Bert is definitely explaining a past belief. Clearly he is not arguing for it, since he no longer holds it to be true. Moreover, it is because he no longer holds it to be true, that Bert is capable of representing his past belief simply as a fact in the world.
Words like "think" and "believe" express cognitive attitudes. Some other terms that do this are
(It should be noted that most philosophers and logicians would like to ban the cognitive use of the phrase "I feel that ___." Logicians think that how you feel about a proposition is an emotional state, not a cognitive one. Nevertheless, people do say things like "I feel we should leave now," when they clearly just mean to express the statement "We should leave now." So logicians just have to deal with it.)
On the basis of these observations we can now provide this rule of thumb:
If someone makes a statement using a cognitive propositional attitude phrase like "I believe" this phrase generally should not occur in the reconstruction. Also, If this statement is functioning as the conclusion of a rationale, then this rationale will almost always be an argument.
(Some propositional attitude statements function as a way of denying the truth of a statement. For example, if Frank says "I doubt that the tiger is approaching," He is expressing his view that the tiger is not approaching. So when reconstructing a statement like this you not only drop the propositional attitude, but you negate the statement following it.)
The rule above is kind of cumbersome to state, but try not to let it confuse you. It is expressing an an idea that you already understand intuitively. The idea is just that when Bert says: "I think the tiger is coming, " he is not trying to get you to think about his beliefs, he's trying to get you to think about the tiger. So that's what any rationale you attribute to him should capture.
9.3 Other propositional attitudes
As noted in 9.1, lots of propositional attitude statements do not convey beliefs, but emotional states like fear, hope, sadness, excitement, etc. The rule for interpreting cognitive propositional attitude statements does not apply to statements like
If Bert were to tell us this, he clearly is not simply relating the fact that the tiger is approaching. Rather, he is telling us how he feels about the tiger approaching. So, if Bert were to say:
this would clearly be an explanation of Bert's emotional state. It is not an argument, because he is not trying to convince us either that the tiger is approaching or that he is stoked that the tiger is approaching. (Note how odd it would be for us to say: Bert, how do you know that you are stoked?) So the proper reconstruction of this reasoning would be:
When first person emotional attitude statements serve as the conclusion of a rationale the rationale is almost always an explanation. This is usually pretty apparent, however, so there is no need to formalize a rule.
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