W&O: §§ Pete Mandik Chairman, Department of Philosophy Coordinator, Cognitive Science Laboratory William Paterson University, New Jersey USA

2 § 44. Other objects for the attitudes If ‘believes’ and similar verbs are relative terms, to what objects are believers thereby related? n Propositions? n Class abstractions? n Intensional abstractions? n Utterances? n Eternal sentences? Quine rejects these options

3 “…[T]here is no need to recognize ‘believes’ and similar verbs as relative terms at all…This means viewing ‘Tom believes [Cicero denounced Catiline]’ no longer as of the form ‘Fab’ with a = Tom and b=[Cicero denounced Catiline], but rather as of the form ‘Fa’ with a = Tom and complex ‘F’.” pp

4 § 45. The double standard On the relation of Brentano’s thesis of the irreducibility of the intentional (with a ‘t’) and Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation: “The Scholastic word ‘intentional’ was revived by Brentano in connection with the verbs of propositional attitude and related verbs of the sort studied in § 32--’hunt’, ‘want’, etc. The division between such idioms and the normally tractable ones is notable.” p. 219

5 “The analysis in §32 was such as to spare us any temptation to posit peculiar “intentional objects” of hunting, wanting, and the like. But there remains a thesis of Brentano’s, illuminatingly developed of late by Chisolm, that is directly relevant to our emerging doubts over the propositonal attitudes and other intentional locutions. It is roughly that there is no breaking out of the intentional vocabulary by explaining its members in other terms.”p. 220

6 “Chisholm counts the semantical terms ‘meaning’, ‘denote’, ‘synonymous’, and the like into the intentional vocabulary, and questions the extent to which such terms can be explained without the help of other semantical or intentional ones. Adapted to the example ‘Gavagai’ (Ch. II), the sort of difficulty he has in mind is this: we cannot equate ‘Gavagai’ and ‘Rabbit’ as outright responses to rabbits for assent to these sentences is prompted not by the presence of rabbits but by their believed presence; and belief is intentional.” p. 220

7 “[U]sing the intentional words ‘believe’ and ‘ascribe’, one could say that a speaker’s term is to be construed as ‘rabbit’ if and only if the speaker is disposed to ascribe it to all and only the objects that he believes to be rabbits. Evidently, then, the relativity to non-unique systems of analytical hypotheses invests not only translational synonymy but intentional notions generally. Brentano’s thesis of the irreducibility of intentional idioms is of a piece with the thesis of indeterminacy of translation.” pp

8 The double standard: “If we are limning the true and ultimate structure of reality, the canonical scheme for us is the austere scheme that knows no quotation but direct quotation and no propositional attitudes but only the physical constitution and behavior of organisms.” p. 221

9 The double standard: “But if our use of canonical notation is meant only to dissolve verbal perplexities or facilitate logical deductions, we are often well advised to tolerate the idioms of propositional attitude. Our purposes may then be well served by admitting the apparatus of propositional attitudes as of the end of §44--hence minus the right to quantify over the attitudinal objects.” p. 221

10 § 46. Dispositions and conditionals Subjunctive conditionals are the most respectable when they express dispositions and dispositions are the most respectable when regarded as describing structural features actually present in objects.

11 § 47. A framework for theory Anything worth saying in science is expressible in the canonical notation of quantification, general terms and logical connectives. There is no fundamental set of general terms. Pp Yet, any vocabulary of general terms is reducible to a single dyadic relative term. P. 232

12 Study question: What does the indeterminacy of translation have to do with the admissibility into the canonical notation of intentional idioms such as ‘belief’?

13 THE END