Interpretivism without Judgement-Dependence
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Interpretivism without Judgement-Dependence Devin Sanchez Curry 1 Received: 8 January 2020 / Revised: 1 May 2020 / Accepted: 9 June 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In a recent article in this journal, Krzysztof Poslajko reconstructs—and endorses as probative—a dilemma for interpretivism first posed by Alex Byrne. On the first horn of the dilemma, the interpretivist takes attitudes to emerge in relation to an ideal interpreter (and thus loses any connection with actual folk psychological practices). On the second horn, the interpretivist takes attitudes to emerge in relation to individuals’ judgements (and thus denies the possibility of error). I show that this is a false dilemma. By taking a model-theoretic approach to folk psychology, and marrying interpretivism with dispositionalism, interpretivists can viably reject the notion of an ideal (or canonical) interpreter—and relativize attitudes to actual lay interpreters—without taking on board the unacceptable epistemological consequences of allowing that attitudes are judgement-dependent. Keywords Interpretivism . Dispositionalism . Judgement-dependence .
Mind-dependence . Folk psychology Interpretivists about a mental phenomenon hold that it emerges only in relation to an interpretive activity, capacity, or scheme. For instance, interpretivism about belief is the view that to believe is to be aptly interpretable as believing—not because what somebody believes is necessarily epistemically accessible, but because an interpreter renders them a believer in the first place. Poslajko (2020) has approvingly reconstructed Byrne’s (1998) dilemma for interpretivism about belief and the other so-called propositional attitudes. I will argue that due reflection on recent work on folk psychology undermines that dilemma. On the first horn of Byrne’s dilemma, the interpretivist takes attitudes to emerge relative to an ideal interpreter. On the second horn, the interpretivist takes attitudes to * Devin Sanchez Curry [email protected]
1
Department of Philosophy, West Virginia University, PO Box 6312, 650 Price Street, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA
Philosophia
emerge relative to individuals’ judgements. Poslajko argues that both horns are unacceptably pointy: “in the end, as Bryne correctly observes, the interpretivist must either idealize the interpreter to the point at which he loses any connection to the actual subjects who are engaged in real-life interpretation processes, or he must deny the possibility of errors in the attribution of mental states” (2020: 719). To be an attractive metaphysics of the objects of folk psychology, interpretivism must relativize them to actual folk psychological practices. But Byrne and Poslajko contend that, in so doing, the interpretivist must commit to an absurdity by giving up on the idea that folks can be wrong about what people believe and desire. Byrne and Poslajko are right that both of these horns are unacceptably pointy, but wrong that the interpretivist must be speared by one or the other. Interpretivists can viably r
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