Animal Belief :: Philosophy Language Papers

Animal BeliefIf bloody shame believes a gussy up is on the lawn, then she literally believes that, though her tactual sensation may be mistaken. But, if her pet Fido rushes up to what is in fact a bit of bone-shaped plastic, then Fido does not believe that there is a bone on the lawn. However, the best explanation for Fidos behavior may be that he initially believed there was a bone on the lawn. Unless we argon methodological or analytical behaviorists, the claim that we rotter best pardon the behavior of uncommunicative animals by treating them as if they literally held beliefs (and desires) subject to several(a) rationality constraints is hardly surprising. I argue that this instrumentalism does not support the realist affect that dumb animals ar literally to be impute with beliefs. In particular, I focus on Davidsons argument that a creature can have beliefs only if it can be the interpreter of the speech of anformer(a). Davidsons argument, which has not won wide acceptan ce, is the most subtle examination to go out of the relation between belief and language. I examine the premises of his argument, point two major criticisms, and attempt to defend his conclusion that dumb animals want beliefs by adducing supporting arguments. This paper is concerned with the problem of whether non-language-using creatures literally have beliefs, rather than with the question as to whether it is predictively useful to ascribe beliefs to them. The result to this latter question is plainly in the affirmative. The issue of belief-ascription to dumb animals is a narrow form of a more general problem, the problem of whether dumb animals can literally be credited with thoughts. Still, it is reasonable to focus on the case of belief since it lies, as it were, at the centre of the cognitive domain. The attribution of any intentional state, such as desire, regret, hope and so on, to a creature presupposes the attribution of belief to that creature.ILike many other philoso phers, I will kick off with a brief reciprocation of Descartes views which many find wildly implausible. Descartes believed that dumb animals could not be credited with beliefs because he thought they were mindless machines dumb animals behave as if they sapidity fear, as if they believe various things, etc., but the truth is that all of the cases where we are inclined to ascribe psychological states to them, can be redescribed solely in terms of internal physiological processes set in motion by mechanical causation.