Contém índice remissivo

Índice: Part I: The standard view and its problems; 1: Two conceptions of the attitudes; 2: Content and causation; 3: The myth of folk psychology; Part II: Explanation in theory and practice; 4: On standards of explanatory adequacy; 5: How beliefs explain; Part III: Practical realism and its prospects; 6: Belief without reification; 7: Mind and metaphysics; 8: Practical realism writ large

Resumo: Explaining Attitudes offers a timely and important challenge to the dominant conception of belief found in the work of such philosophers as Dretske and Fodor. According to this dominant view beliefs, if they exist at all, are constituted by states of the brain. Lynne Rudder Baker rejects this view and replaces it with a quite different approach: Practical Realism. Seen from the perspective of Practical realism, any argument that interprets beliefs as either brain states or immaterial souls tests on a false dichotomy. Practical Realism takes beliefs to be states of the whole person, rather like states of heath. What a person beliefs is determined by what person would do, say, and think in various circumstances. Thus beliefs and other attitudes are interwoven into as integrated, commonsense conception of reality.