Why Acceptance that P Does Not Entail that P

Abstract

I have no objections to make to the distinction between different uses of belief-ascriptions that Professor Clarke draws in Part IV of his very stimulating paper. But I do not think that what he says there helps —as he claims it helps—to strengthen arguments against separating belief from acceptance. He points out in that part of his paper that an ascription of belief has two different possible uses: first, to provide a basis for predicting or explaining the behaviour of the alleged believer, and secondly, to provide a basis for evaluating the truth of the proposition that is said to be believed. But an analogous distinction could be drawn among ascriptions of acceptance, or indeed among ascriptions of indefinitely many other content-oriented mental attitudes, states, policies or acts (such as fearing, expecting, inferring, denying, assuming, intending, being glad, being sad, etc. etc.). So the issue about whether or not acceptance that p entails belief that p is left quite untouched by the fact that Clarke’s distinction can be drawn in the case of belief-ascriptions. Clarke says that without having the right kind of belief-ascriptions available we should lack any basis for evaluating and correcting a scientist’s state of mind. But my answer to him is that we can use instead the right kind of acceptance-ascription.