β Scribed by Peter Smith
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
In his book Linguistic Behaviour, 1 Jonathan Bennett argues that it is possible for creatures which lack a language to have both beliefs about the past and also beliefs about another creature's beliefs. The point is important, for if such relatively simple mental states are not available to the language-less, then certainly Gricean intentions will be unavailable -and Bennett's favoured programme of analysis in the philosophy of language collapses. 2 However, Bennett's arguments about animal beliefs also have an intrinsic interest quite apart from any ambitions to underpin a Gricean programme. For while generosity in attributing mental states to language-less creatures could merely reflect a casually relaxed attitude to the conditions for legitimately ascribing such states, this is not Bennett's position. On the contrary, he emphatically insists on keeping mental talk on a tight behavioural rein: he adopts the tough-minded methodological policy of "being as grudging as possible in the making of mental attributions on behavioural evidence". 3 So Bennett is defending the bold and interesting claim that, even if we adopt a very tough-minded policy, we can still countenance attributing beliefs about the past and even beliefs about beliefs to the language-less. I will argue, however, that Bennett fails to reconcile his generous ascriptions with his grudging policy. The cases which are supposed to illustrate the sort of bebavioural grounds on which we can legitimately ascribe non-linguistic beliefs about the past or about another's beliefs do not in fact meet Bennett's own stringent standards.
Bennett's discussion of past beliefs centres on the rebuttal of an earlier argument of his own which tried to show that animals cannot have beliefs about the past. 4 I agree that the earlier negative argument is a failure. My complaint
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
The adventures of a little boy named Marvin. He visits a farm, plays with a friend, goes to school, interacts with various friends and family members.
## Abstract We illustrate the application of Bennett's acceptance ratio method (BAR) to problems in which standard methods to compute free energy differences (thermodynamic integration, exponential formula) are not practical. Our starting point is the observation that BAR can often compute the free