[...]... issue about personal understanding is whether its distinctive subject-matter calls for a distinctive kind of understanding a kind of understanding that differs in some marked way from the theoretical understanding of science.1 Is there any reason to think that understanding why someone wishes to change job in terms of her dissatisfaction with her current job differs qua understanding, and not just in subject-matter,... immense debt to Rose-Mary and ´ Stephane for their forbearance A.M Stirling, September 2003 This page intentionally left blank Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 Personal understanding Propositional attitudes and rationality Rationalizing explanation Propositional attitudes and generalizations Understanding and the normative dimension of the mental The way ahead 2 Reasons for Belief and for Action 1 2 3... 237 241 248 259 chapter 1 Introduction 1 Personal understanding You might understand why a colleague is seeking information about jobs in terms of her beliefs about and feelings towards her current job That is an example of the kind of understanding of people that is the topic of this book I shall call it personal understanding Other examples are understanding why a teenager wants to study at a university... political or cultural events and movements And, of course, how we understand our own feelings, decisions, and so forth, is important too and can obviously affect how we judge ourselves, and what we do as a result Not all personal understanding goes deep Sometimes we want to understand the simplest things, for instance why someone is heading in a particular direction We gain understanding by learning of an... on which they emerge as being clear and plausible, and as having interesting implications for the character of our understanding of people En route I highlight problems for opposing views On the one hand, we have ascriptions of beliefs and intentions and claims about what people mean by words On the other hand, we have normative considerations about the commitments people incur because of what they believe... rationalizing explanation has a central role in our attempts to understand people Indeed, necessarily creatures with beliefs, desires, and intentions think and act in ways that admit of rationalizing explanation, since the roles that are characteristic of these attitudes guarantee that they will sometimes issue in belief or action for reasons However, the relation between rationalizing explanation and rationality... explicable how he could have treated a bad reason as a good one Rationalizing explanation does bring considerations about rationality into the understanding of why people come to think things, do things, and so on But, as I have shown, the link is not straightforward, and it is not such as to make out all belief and action admitting of rationalizing explanation as rational or reasonable in the ordinary sense... Rationality and Simulation 1 Simulation theory versus the theory-theory 2 Rationality and ‘being like us’ 9 159 159 160 166 167 175 178 186 188 190 1 The character of the problem 2 The messiness of rationalization 8 133 138 139 146 148 149 151 The topic Normativity, correctness, and use Normativity and truth How meaning can be normative Deflationist tendencies Words and concepts Content and psychological explanation. .. Commitments and the Very Idea of Normativity 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 The topic Beliefs, intentions, and commitments Commitments and justification Normative commitments and practices Can practices give rise to reasons in the way proposed? Differences between kinds of commitments Normativity, normative concepts, and normative import 4 Explaining Normative Import The way ahead Dispositionalism Dispositionalism and the explanation. .. days and need some exercise I feel ashamed because I have just given an ill-prepared lecture and I ought to have given a far better one In each of these cases there is a rationalizing explanation of something—an explanation in terms of my reason for, respectively, believing something, or doing something, or wanting something, or feeling some way.6 Since people believe, desire, and so on, for reasons, rationalizing .