Abstract

If you cannot lucidly doubt that you exist as a thinking thing, then nor can there be a lucid doubt about the reality of those psychological states and attributes whose possession is distinctive of thinkers, par excellence their being subject to the various kinds of doxastic and conative states involved in goal-directed thought. Thus, it seems a short step from the Cogito to at least a limited application of the categories of ordinary attitudinal psychology. Yet many leading modern philosophers—for instance, Dennett, Stich, the Churchlands and, above all, Quine—have been united, notwithstanding other differences, in a tendency to skepticism about the reality of attitudinal states.