Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;Progressing from Wittgensteinian foundations the author argues that psychological attitudes such as desires and beliefs should be understood as essentially serving to rationalise, or make sense of, the behaviour of agents, including speech behaviour. Quine's project of radical translation and its consequence of meaning indeterminacy are critically appraised and contrasted with a Davidsonian theory of radical interpretation and its consequences. Using Davidson's theory as a basis, the claim is developed that an agent is rationalisable only if his patterns of behaviour conform to norms, such that he is attributed desires, beliefs and related attitudes with a content that is characteristic of the attitudes of a normal human agent. Reflecting on this idea that the truth-theory produced by radical interpretation necessitates rational subjects to be similar in their attitudes to the world, it is argued that the notion of objective truth can be successfully analysed in terms of a criterion of intersubjective agreement. The author then considers, and rejects, the view that moral judgments are objectively true when true, but goes on to explore a conception of rational moral practice where a sense of externality, and of validity independent of subjective will or inclination, attaches to moral values and moral reasons based upon the agreement, or similarity, in appetitive attitudes among rational agents