Understanding People: Normativity and Rationalizing Explanation

✍ Scribed by Alan Millar

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 279
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Alan Millar examines our understanding of why people think and act as they do. His key theme is that normative considerations form an indispensable part of the explanatory framework in terms of which we seek to understand each other. Millar defends a conception according to which normativity is linked to reasons. On this basis he examines the structure of certain normative commitments incurred by having propositional attitudes. Controversially, he argues that ascriptions of beliefs and intentions in and of themselves attribute normative commitments and that this has implications for the psychology of believing and intending. Indeed, all propositional attitudes of the sort we ascribe to people have a normative dimension, since possessing the concepts that the attitudes implicate is of its very nature commitment-incurring. The ramifications of these views for our understanding of people is explored. Millar offers illuminating discussions of reasons for belief and reasons for action; the explanation of beliefs and actions in terms of the subject's reasons; the idea that simulation has a key role in understanding people; and the limits of explanation in terms of propositional attitudes. He compares and contrasts the commitments incurred by propositional attitudes with those incurred by participating in practices, arguing that the former should not be assimilated to the latter. Understanding People will be of great interest to most philosophers of mind, as well as to those working on practical and theoretical reasoning.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 16
1. Personal understanding......Page 18
2. Propositional attitudes and rationality......Page 20
3. Rationalizing explanation......Page 26
4. Propositional attitudes and generalizations......Page 33
5. Understanding and the normative dimension of the mental......Page 38
6. The way ahead......Page 56
1. Introduction......Page 58
2. Reasons for belief......Page 59
3. Reasons for action......Page 74
4. The constitutive aim of intentional action......Page 80
5. Motivating reasons......Page 85
2. Beliefs, intentions, and commitments......Page 89
3. Commitments and justification......Page 96
4. Normative commitments and practices......Page 100
5. Can practices give rise to reasons in the way proposed?......Page 106
6. Differences between kinds of commitments......Page 108
7. Normativity, normative concepts, and normative import......Page 109
1. The way ahead......Page 117
2. Dispositionalism......Page 120
3. Dispositionalism and the explanation of normative import......Page 125
4. How we relate to our current intentions and beliefs......Page 127
5. Intentions, beliefs, and psychological commitment......Page 135
6. The problem of representing the dispositions characteristic of beliefs and intentions......Page 142
7. Back to explanatory irrelevance......Page 148
1. The high conception of beliefs and intentions......Page 150
2. Reflexivity......Page 155
3. Intention and reflexivity......Page 156
4. Precarious intentions......Page 163
5. Unreflective intention......Page 165
6. The reflexivity of belief......Page 166
7. Self-deception......Page 168
1. The topic......Page 176
2. Normativity, correctness, and use......Page 177
3. Normativity and truth......Page 183
4. How meaning can be normative......Page 184
5. Deflationist tendencies......Page 192
6. Words and concepts......Page 195
7. Content and psychological explanation......Page 203
8. Normativity and truth again......Page 205
9. Reflexivity in relation to concept-use......Page 207
1. The character of the problem......Page 209
2. The messiness of rationalization......Page 220
1. Simulation theory versus the theory-theory......Page 230
2. Rationality and ‘being like us’......Page 242
1. Taking stock......Page 247
2. Limitations of available explanations......Page 252
3. Limitations to the availability of explanations......Page 254
4. Expectations......Page 258
Bibliography......Page 265
C......Page 276
M......Page 277
R......Page 278
W......Page 279