Slide 33 of 37
Notes:
Suga, N. (1990). Cortical computational maps for auditory imaging. Neural Networks, 3, 3-21.
“One way of telling that we are attributing a propositional attitude is by noting that the sentences we use to do the attributing may change from true to false if, in the words that pick out the object of the attitude, we substitute for some referring expression another expression that refers to the same thing” (Davidson, 1982, p. 320). A person may believe that a cat went up a certain tree and, if that tree were the unknowingly the oldest tree in town, the person might not believe that the cat went up the oldest tree in town. Changing the term used to refer to the same object can change the sentence from true to false, thus indicating the presence of a propositional attitude. On the other hand, the dog might believe that the cat ran up a particular tree, but it has not description of the tree that would simultaneously pick out the specific tree in question and fail the substitution test. Presumably the dog is limited to some kind of ostensive definition, which cannot change the description without pointing to something else.
