JM: I wanted to ask you some questions about social science, but I'm reluctant to switch the topic that much. Well, maybe we can.

NC: It should be a short conversation [both laugh].

JM: The social sciences, and many philosophical approaches to mind, take very seriously the idea of mind as essentially a causal mechanism that is driven by some sort of belief-desire psychology. That raises questions about the status of this particular kind of enterprise. It's very tempting to think of it as an outgrowth of folk science, never breaking with common sense as the serious sciences have done – hence, not a serious science. However, there are people such as Hilary Putnam – in his functionalist days, at least – who simply adopted the framework of belief-desire psychology, presented it in functionalist terms, and claimed that it could be conceived of as a science. Could I get your views on the status of this kind of exercise?

NC: Let's take something concrete; let's take some of the standard examples. I look out the window, I believe it's raining, I desire to stay dry, I take my umbrella. So my belief and my desire caused me to take my umbrella.

I think that that's just a description of what I did. There's no independent notion of belief, desire, or cause that enters into this discussion. It's just a way of describing what we regard as rational action. If instead of taking my umbrella I take my clothes off, we say it's irrational. But there's no more or less notion of cause, and we don't even know that there are such entities as beliefs and desires. In fact, plenty of languages don't have those words. What you would say is, well, I think it is raining, and I want to stay dry, and so I'm going to take my umbrella. There's no [mental representation] belief, there's no [mental representation] desire; just [my saying] here's what I want, here's what I think, here's what I do. What I think and what I want are probably related in some way or another to what I do, but that's not a sufficient basis for a science.