DOCSLIB.ORG

The Epistemic Rationality of Emotions

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Epistemic Rationality of Emotions CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository THE EPISTEMIC RATIONALITY OF EMOTIONS: A NEW DEFENCE By Matilde Aliffi A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham March 2019 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. THESIS ABSTRACT Emotions and epistemic rationality have been traditionally considered to be in opposition. In the last twenty years, the role of emotions in epistemology has been increasingly acknowledged, but there is no systematic argument for the rational assessability of emotions that is compatible with both cognitivist and non-cognitivist theories of emotions and fits with the epistemic rational assessability of mental states in general. This thesis aims to fill this gap. Using empirically informed philosophical methodology, I offer a novel account of the rational assessability of emotions that fits with the rational assessability of other mental states and that could in principle be accepted by cognitivist and some prominent non-cognitivist theories of emotions. The possibility to epistemically rationally assess emotions opens up a fresh set of questions that regards the nature of the evaluations involved in the emotions, the epistemic norms that apply to them and the extent to which we are epistemically responsible for our emotions. This thesis aims to address these questions, ultimately showing that emotions and epistemic rationality are more intertwined than we previously thought. 2 To my grandparents who I remember with deep love and gratitude 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I will always be grateful to my lead supervisor Lisa Bortolotti for her encouragement, knowledge, trust in my ability and immense passion for philosophy. Her support has been invaluable and helped me to develop as a philosopher and beyond. I am also deeply grateful to Iain Law, my co-supervisor, for helping me to sharpen my philosophical skills. His insightful comments have been crucial for the successful production of this thesis. I have benefitted tremendously from the support and philosophical discussions with all members of the project PERFECT in the last four years. I owe a particular debt to Sophie Stammers and Kathy Puddifoot for discussing epistemic responsibility and cognitive penetrability with me, and for their valuable advice on many issues of academic philosophy. I also owe special thanks to Valeria Motta, for her patience to discuss with me about the rationality of emotions, and for teaching me that philosophy does not always need to provide answers. I would like to thank all members of the Philosophy Department at the University of Birmingham who have spent their precious time giving their advice on my thesis and my professional career. I am particularly grateful to Henry Taylor, Maja Spener, Herjeet Marway, Anneli Jefferson and Nick Jones for having helped me at various stages of my PhD. I would like to acknowledge my fellow PhD students at the University of Birmingham, with whom I had the pleasure to discuss most of the ideas developed in the thesis. Helen Ryland deserves a special mention for being a friend, a source of support throughout my whole PhD journey, and also a great collaborator. Special thanks to Helen and also to Gregory Mathers, Michael Roberts, Tom Baker, Alexander Miller Tate, Will Sharp and Thomas Davies for reading previous drafts of my thesis chapters and giving useful comments. I wish to thank Emily Walsh for teaching me how to bring kindness into philosophy and for showing me how to create new opportunities when there are none. I owe special thanks to the 4 Women and Non-Binary People in Philosophy group at the University of Birmingham for being a tremendous source of support at the moment when I needed it the most. I want to acknowledge the Midlands4Cities Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my research and for offering invaluable training opportunities throughout my PhD. This funding scheme enabled me to meet and collaborate with other fantastic PhD students at the University of Nottingham and the University of Leicester, and to attend events in the UK and overseas that contribute dramatically to improve the quality my work. I wish to thank also all staff from the University Graduate School, the Library Services and University Career Network for helping me to develop my academic skills more broadly. I am indebted to Fabrice Teroni and Julien Deonna for their comments on whole chapters of this thesis and for their insightful discussions during my research visit of the research group Thumos at the Swiss Centre for Affective Science in Geneva. They challenged and enriched my ideas in a way that greatly helped to improve the quality of my work. I learnt a lot from them. I also wish to thank the other members of the research group Thumos who taught me a lot about emotions: Kris Goffin, Juliette Vazard, Magalie Schor, Michele Ombrato, Ariele Niccoli and Steven Humbert-Droz. I wish to thank all the participants of the conferences and summer schools I attended in these four years, for their helpful comments on some of the ideas presented in this thesis. I also thank the anonymous reviewers who gave valuable feedback on previous drafts of my chapters. I am deeply grateful to my friends who live here in Birmingham, for sharing their happiness with me and rendering my PhD journey lighter. I also wish to thank all my friends who live far away for being always there when I needed them, no matter the distance. A special thank goes to all members of my family who always supported me during these four years. I thank my mother, for her love and her ability to look on the bright side in every circumstance. My father, for pushing me to accept the challenge of doing a PhD, and for 5 teaching me to look at things with creativity. To Cecilia and Giovanni, my siblings, for challenging me to do something meaningful with my study. I owe my deepest gratitude to Auro for his constant encouragement, support and for accepting all my rational and irrational emotions. I would not have been able to go through all the challenges of this PhD journey without his love. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS THESIS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................................. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................................................ 7 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................... 10 CHAPTER 1: TOWARDS AN ACCOUNT OF THE EPISTEMIC RATIONAL ASSESSABILITY OF EMOTIONS ........ 13 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................................................... 13 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................................. 13 1.1. THE EMOTIONAL TURN IN EPISTEMOLOGY AND BEYOND ................................................................................. 16 1.2. WHAT IS AN EMOTION? ............................................................................................................................ 20 1.3. EMOTIONS AND OTHER AFFECTIVE STATES ................................................................................................... 22 1.4. “RATIONALITIES” OF EMOTIONS ................................................................................................................. 23 1.5. THEORIES OF EMOTIONS ........................................................................................................................... 28 1.6. ARE EMOTIONS EPISTEMICALLY RATIONALLY ASSESSABLE? .............................................................................. 41 1.7. METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................................................................... 43 1.8. SIGNIFICANCE ......................................................................................................................................... 45 1.9. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 47 CHAPTER 2: THE CONTENT OF THE EMOTION AND THE CONTENT OF THE CAUSAL EVALUATION ............. 48 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................................................... 48 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGES in the CHARACTERISATION and EXPLANATION of PSYCHIATRIC PHENOMENA LISA BORTOLOTTI University of Birmingham LUCA MALATESTI University of Rijeka
    EuJAP | VOL. 6 | No. 1 | 2010 INTRODUCTION: CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGES IN THE CHARACTERISATION AND EXPLANATION OF PSYCHIATRIC PHENOMENA LISA BORTOLOTTI University of Birmingham LUCA MALATESTI University of Rijeka Historically, analytic philosophy has not been as close to psychiatry as the continental tradition. For instance, no analytic philosopher has produced a treatise as important and comprehensive as Karl Jaspers’s General Psychopathology (Jaspers 1963 [1913]), a work deeply infl uenced by phenomenology. Similarly, no analytic philosopher so far has critically engaged with the practice and history of psychiatry as Michel Foucault did in his Madness and Civilization (Foucault 1965 [1961]). As late as in the eight- ies Anthony Quinton, by referring to analytic thinkers, was justifi ed to claim that it was a “remarkable fact that philosophers, in a sense the experts on rationality, should have taken so little interest in irrationality” (1985). Although at that time some rel- evant research was done within the philosophy of science (see for instance, Boorse 1976 and Grünbaum 1984) and moral philosophy (see for instance, Margolis 1966 and Glover 1970), philosophy of psychiatry could not be considered a mainstream discipline. It is surely a fact that in recent years analytically oriented philosophers have acquired and sustained an interest for psychiatry. b is movement, that concerns prominently philosophy but has also had some impact on psychiatry and cognitive psychology, has been given a name, the “new philosophy of psychiatry” (Banner and b ornton 2007). Psychiatry, as other branches of medicine, involves a theoretical dimension concerned with the description, classifi cation and explanation of mental disorders and a practi- cal dimension of intervention and treatment.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Birmingham Philosophy Bias
    University of Birmingham Philosophy bias and stigma Bortolotti, Lisa; Puddifoot, Kathy DOI: 10.1515/9783110650990-007 License: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Citation for published version (Harvard): Bortolotti, L & Puddifoot, K 2019, Philosophy bias and stigma. in D Bubbio & J Malpas (eds), Why Philosophy?. De Gruyter, pp. 51-64. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110650990-007 Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portal General rights Unless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or the copyright holders. The express permission of the copyright holder must be obtained for any use of this material other than for purposes permitted by law. •Users may freely distribute the URL that is used to identify this publication. •Users may download and/or print one copy of the publication from the University of Birmingham research portal for the purpose of private study or non-commercial research. •User may use extracts from the document in line with the concept of ‘fair dealing’ under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (?) •Users may not further distribute the material nor use it for the purposes of commercial gain. Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.
    [Show full text]
  • Epistemic Benefits of Elaborated and Systematized Delusions in Schizophrenia Bortolotti, Lisa
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Portal Epistemic Benefits of Elaborated and Systematized Delusions in Schizophrenia Bortolotti, Lisa DOI: 10.1093/bjps/axv024 License: Creative Commons: Attribution (CC BY) Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Citation for published version (Harvard): Bortolotti, L 2015, 'Epistemic Benefits of Elaborated and Systematized Delusions in Schizophrenia', The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, pp. 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axv024 Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portal Publisher Rights Statement: Eligibility for repository : checked 15/01/2016 General rights Unless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or the copyright holders. The express permission of the copyright holder must be obtained for any use of this material other than for purposes permitted by law. •Users may freely distribute the URL that is used to identify this publication. •Users may download and/or print one copy of the publication from the University of Birmingham research portal for the purpose of private study or non-commercial research. •User may use extracts from the document in line with the concept of ‘fair dealing’ under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (?) •Users may not further distribute the material nor use it for the purposes of commercial gain. Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document.
    [Show full text]
  • Edinburgh Research Explorer
    Edinburgh Research Explorer Epistemically useful false beliefs Citation for published version: Pritchard, D 2017, 'Epistemically useful false beliefs', Philosophical explorations, vol. 20, no. Sup 1, pp. 4- 20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13869795.2017.1287291 Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1080/13869795.2017.1287291 Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Published In: Philosophical explorations General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 28. Sep. 2021 Philosophical Explorations An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action ISSN: 1386-9795 (Print) 1741-5918 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpex20 Epistemically useful false beliefs Duncan Pritchard To cite this article: Duncan Pritchard (2017) Epistemically useful false beliefs, Philosophical Explorations, 20:sup1, 4-20, DOI: 10.1080/13869795.2017.1287291 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13869795.2017.1287291 © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 11 Apr 2017.
    [Show full text]
  • Knowledge and Self-Knowledge of Emotions
    Knowledge and Self-Knowledge of Emotions Edoardo Zamuner Ph.D. University of Edinburgh 2008 ABSTRACT This thesis addresses two questions. One concerns the metaphysics of emotions and asks what kinds of mental states emotions are. The other asks how the metaphysics of emotions bears on first and third-personal knowledge of emotions. There are two prevailing views on the nature of emotions. They are the perception and cognitive views . The perception view argues that emotions are bodily feelings. The cognitive view, by contrast, contends that emotions are some sorts of evaluative judgments. I show that both views provide inadequate accounts of the nature of emotions. The perception view fails to do justice to the fact that emotions may not involve any bodily feeling. The cognitive view, by contrast, cannot account for the fact that emotions are states that adult humans have in common with infants and animals. On the basis of these criticisms, I put forward an alternative account of emotions. This involves five main arguments. The first is that emotions are enduring non-episodic dispositions that may or may not manifest themselves in experiential episodes such as emotional feelings and behaviour episodes such as expressions . The second argument is that emotional feelings are perceptions of specific bodily changes brought about by emotions. These feelings serve as clues as to what kinds of emotions the subject has. The third argument is that expressions are observable manifestations of emotions in virtue of which emotions can be perceived and subsequently known, directly and non-inferentially, by other people. The fourth argument is that when someone has an emotion without feeling it, she can still come to know it by believing true ascriptions that other people make about the emotion they perceive in her expression.
    [Show full text]
  • Selected Speaker Biographies (Where Provided)
    Selected Speaker Biographies (where provided) Please note speakers are arranged A-Z by first name. Aaron Brooks grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia. He received his B.S. in mathematics from Liberty University, an M.Div. from Duke University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from Florida State University. His primary area of research is in value theory and its relation to how we should live. In particular, he specializes on life’s meaning. He has been published in Unisinos Journal of Philosophy. He is currently an Instructor of Philosophy at Durham Technical Community College. Angel On Ki TING received her PhD from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2013 and is currently a lecturer in philosophy at School of Continuing Education of Hong Kong Baptist University. She teaches applied ethics and introduction to philosophy. Her research interests include bioethics, meaning in/of life, moral psychology, ethics, comparative philosophy, early Confucianism and Zhuangzi. 1 Anton Heinrich Rennesland obtained his MA and BA Philosophy degrees from the University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines, where he is currently a faculty member of the Department of Philosophy. He published several journal articles and has forthcoming book chapters on his fields of interest: Friedrich Nietzsche, Peter Sloterdijk, Comparative Philosophy, and the Anthropocene. Aribiah David Attoe is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Leadership ethics in Africa, University of Fort Hare, South Africa. He is a recipient of the Global Excellence Stature scholarship from the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He also holds a Doctoral Degree from the University of Johannesburg, a Master’s degree in philosophy of mind and a Bachelor’s degree (Hons.) from the University of Calabar, Nigeria.
    [Show full text]
  • Resistant Beliefs, Responsive Believers∗
    Resistant Beliefs, Responsive Believers∗ Carolina Flores April 2021 Abstract Beliefs can be resistant to evidence. Nonetheless, the traditional view analyzes beliefs as evidence-responsive attitudes. I address this tension by developing an account of belief that does justice to its epistemic role without limiting beliefs to idealized epistemic agents. In doing so, I argue for a capacities-first account of belief: belief requires the capacity for evidence-responsiveness. More precisely, if a subject believes that 푝, then they have the capacity to rationally respond to evidence bearing on 푝. Because capacities for evidence-responsiveness are fallible and may be masked, beliefs can be held in the face of strong counter-evidence. Indeed, I will argue that our best science of belief supports the claim that evidence- resistant beliefs result from masks on evidence-responsiveness capacities. This account of belief not only allows for resistance to evidence, but provides us with a framework for describing and explaining actual cases of evidence-resistance. Word count: 9,135 1 Introduction Belief plays a central role in both epistemology and cognitive science, yet the roles it plays in these two areas are in tension. Belief’s role as the central object of epistemic assessment motivates the orthodox view in epistemology that belief is constitutively evidence-responsive. This is hard to square with the cognitive science of belief revi- sion, according to which resistance to evidence is the norm. In the face of this tension, one may be tempted to throw away the orthodox con- ception of belief and start from scratch. But, in line with recent work by Helton (forthcoming) and Ganapini (forthcoming), I think the orthodox view—if articulated carefully enough—has much to offer.
    [Show full text]
  • Stem Cell Research, Personhood and Sentience
    RBMOnline - Vol 10. Supp 1. 2005 68–75 Reproductive BioMedicine Online; www.rbmonline.com/Article/1587 on web 5 November 2004 Stem cell research, personhood and sentience Dr Lisa Bortolotti is a research associate in the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy (School of Law) at the University of Manchester. Her research interests are in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of psychology and applied ethics. She has written on the notion of rationality, theories of interpretation, delusions and animal cognition. She works now at the EURECA project on delimiting the research concept and research activities. The project, funded by the European Commission, is co-ordinated by Professor John Harris and has eight project partners across the European Community. Lisa Bortolotti1, John Harris Centre for Social Ethics and Policy, School of Law, Williamson Building, Oxford Road, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, UK 1Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract In this paper the permissibility of stem cell research on early human embryos is defended. It is argued that, in order to have moral status, an individual must have an interest in its own wellbeing. Sentience is a prerequisite for having an interest in avoiding pain, and personhood is a prerequisite for having an interest in the continuation of one’s own existence. Early human embryos are not sentient and therefore they are not recipients of direct moral consideration. Early human embryos do not satisfy the requirements for personhood, but there are arguments to the effect that they should be treated as persons nonetheless. These are the arguments from potentiality, symbolic value and the principle of human dignity.
    [Show full text]
  • Delusions Penultimate
    The University of Manchester Research When words speak louder than actions: Document Version Accepted author manuscript Link to publication record in Manchester Research Explorer Citation for published version (APA): Rose, D., Buckwalter, W., & Turri, J. (2014). When words speak louder than actions: Delusion, belief, and the power of assertion. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 92(4), 683-700. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00048402.2014.909859? Published in: Australasian Journal of Philosophy Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on Manchester Research Explorer is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Proof version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Research Explorer are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Takedown policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please refer to the University of Manchester’s Takedown Procedures [http://man.ac.uk/04Y6Bo] or contact [email protected] providing relevant details, so we can investigate your claim. Download date:29. Sep. 2021 WHEN WORDS SPEAK LOUDER THAN ACTIONS: DELUSION, BELIEF AND THE POWER OF ASSERTION* David Rose, Wesley Buckwalter and John Turri People suffering from severe monothematic delusions, such as Capgras, Fregoli or Cotard patients, regularly assert extraordinary and unlikely things. For example, some say that their loved ones have been replaced by impostors.
    [Show full text]
  • Stories of Solitude - Speakers
    Stories of Solitude - Speakers Jude Brereton Senior Lecturer in Audio and Music Technology, University of York Jude teaches a number modules in the areas of acoustics, psyschoacoustics, virtual acoustics andauralization, music performance analysis, voice analysis and synthesis on postgraduate and undergraduate programmes. She designed the department’s popular MSc in Audio and Music Technology and was programme leader until 2017. Jude is heavily invovled in a outreach and public engagement activities including a community-based project “Tang Hall Dynamo”; to raise the profile of creative engineering amongst young people through music and art workshops. Until 2017 she was chair of the Electronic Engineering Equality and Diversity Committee and lead the department to gain an Athena SWAN bronze award for its committment to gender equality. She is still committed to improving gender equality in HE and often gives keynote talks on the subject, as well as serving as a Chair for UK Athena SWAN assessment panels. Her research interests include: the design and perception of spatial sound in virtual auditory environments; the use of spatial sound to enhance performer and listener experience and interaction; the analysis, perception and evaluation of musical performance; the analysis and synthesis of the human voice. In 2008 Jude was winner of the British Voice Association Van Lawrence Prize for Voice Research. Before beginning her academic career she worked in arts and music administration and is still active in promoting research-inspired music and theatre events for public engagement and outreach. Dr. Matthew Causey Professor in Drama and Fellow of Trinity College Dublin where he is Head of School of Creative Arts and Director of the Arts Technology Research Laboratory.
    [Show full text]
  • The Causal Role Argument Against Doxasticism About Delusions
    Delusions AVANT, Vol. V, No. 3/2014 ISSN: 2082-6710 avant.edu.pl/en DOI: 10.26913/50302014.0112.0003 The Causal Role Argument against Doxasticism about Delusions Kengo Miyazono, Philosophy Department, University of Birmingham k.miyazono[]bham.ac.uk Lisa Bortolotti Philosophy Department, University of Birmingham l.bortolotti[]bham.ac.uk Received May 2014; accepted December 2014; published winter 2014/2015. Abstract In this paper we consider an argument that is very influential in the philo- sophical literature, the argument from causal role against the view that delu- sions are beliefs. The argument has two premises, that many delusions fail to play belief-roles and that playing belief-roles is necessary for a mental state to be a belief. We assess both premises and suggest that they can be resisted. Keywords: delusions; beliefs; double bookkeeping; motivation; teleo-functio- nalism. Introduction Doxasticism about delusion, “doxasticism” hereafter, is the claim that delu- sions are beliefs. Delusions are usually regarded as beliefs in psychiatry. For instance, in the DSM-5 delusion is defined as a "false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly held despite what almost every- one else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary" (American Psychiatric Association 2013: 819). Moreover, cognitive scientists working on theories of delusion formation assume that the mechanisms responsible for the formation of delusions are also the mechanisms responsible for the formation of beliefs (Coltheart 2007; Corlett et al. 2010). However, doxasticism is not very popular among philosophers. Greg Currie and colleagues (Currie 2000; Currie and Jureidini 2001) argue that delusions are not beliefs but imaginings.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    Behavior and Philosophy, 32, 359-375 (2004) © 2004 Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies CAN WE INTERPRET IRRATIONAL BEHAVIOR? Lisa Bortolotti University of Manchester ABSTRACT: According to some theories of interpretation, it is difficult to explain and predict irrational behavior in intentional terms because irrational behavior does not support the ascription of intentional states with determinate content. In this paper I challenge this claim by offering a general diagnosis of those cases in which behavior, rational or not, resists interpretation. I argue that indeterminacy of ascription and paralysis of interpretation ensue when the interpreter lacks relevant information about the system to be interpreted and about the environment in which the system is embedded. Moreover, the heuristics of interpretation that guide the ascription of beliefs can be limited in scope. In the end I suggest that by giving up the idea of a necessary rationality constraint on the ascription of intentional states we can develop a new framework for a more psychologically realistic account of interpretation. Key words: interpretation, rationality, rationalization, heuristics, intelligibility Introduction Consider the following case. Someone says to you: “There are flies in my head.” You are not sure of what this person is trying to tell you. You might think he is attempting to use an idiomatic expression you are not familiar with, or to metaphorically allude to a state of confusion or dizziness. Another possibility is that this person believes that (literally) there are flies in his head. In a case such as this, in which you lack information about the man who is uttering the sentence, you might not be sure about the belief content to be ascribed to the speaker and leave it indeterminate.
    [Show full text]