Circumstantial attitudes and benevolent cognition

An agent’s beliefs, desires, and other cognitive attitudes depend not only on the agent’s mental states and various necessary (or at least universal) facts connecting mental states with the rest of the world, but also on contingent circumstances that vary from individual to individual. This circumstantial nature of the attitudes is a more or less direct consequence of the circumstantial nature of reference. If the object an idea is about depends on such circumstances as the causal paths leading to its occurrence, the identity of the agent, and the time and place of cognition, then what the agent believes or desires in virtue of the cognitions of which that idea is a component will vary with these contingent facts too. The circumstantial nature of the attitudes strikes many philosophers as puzzling, inappropriate, or even unacceptable. Sometimes it is t hought that there must be a layer of noncircumstantial attitudes underlying the circumstantial ones; this is one thought behind thede dictovs.de redistinction. Sometimes it is supposed that the whole line of reasoning that leads to the circumstantial nature of the attitudes must be confused. A central cause of puzzlement is the idea that the circumstantial nature of the attitudes would render inexplicable the regular nomic links between what we believe and desire and what we do. But these nomic links are a central part of commonsense psychology, our conception of how we work. In this paper, I claim that the circumstantial nature of the attitudes does not threaten, but rather renders intelligible, this insight of commonsense psychology. I do this by showing how an appreciation of the circumstantial nature of the attitudes allows us