Abstract

Traditionally conceived, rational action is action founded on reasons. Reasons involve the propositional attitudes — beliefs, desires, intentions, and the like. What are we to make of the propositional attitudes? One possibility, a possibility endorsed by Donald Davidson, is that an agent’s possession of propositional attitudes is a matter of that agent’s being interpretable in a particular way. Such a view accounts for the propositional content of the attitudes, but threatens to undercut their causal and explanatory roles. I examine Davidson’s view and the suggestion that the explanatory value of appeals to propositional attitudes is best understood on analogy with measurement systems, and argue that, appearances to the contrary, this conception of the propositional attitudes can be reconciled with the idea that reasons are causes.