Davidson on believers : can non-linguistic creatures have propositional attitudes?

Abstract

Donald Davidson has argued that only language-users can have propositional attitudes. His strongest argument in support of this claim is one that links having propositional attitudes to language via a concept of belief. Here I consider various possible interpretations of this argument, looking first at the canonical conception of a concept of belief from the Theory of Mind literature, then at a weaker notion of the concept of belief corresponding to a conception of objective reality, and finally at an intermediate notion involving the ability to attribute mental states. I argue that under each of these various interpretations, analysis and appeal to empirical evidence from developmental and comparative psychology shows the Davidsonian argument to be unsound. Only on a reading of the argument that slides between different interpretations of “concept of belief” are all the premises true, but in that case the argument is invalid. I conclude that Davidson doesn’t provide sufficient reason to deny that non-linguistic creatures can have propositional attitudes.