Curry, D. S. (2018). Beliefs as inner causes: The (lack of) evidence. Philosophical Psychology, 31(6), 850-877. doi:10.1080/09515089.2018.1452197
[Abstract]Many psychologists studying lay belief attribution and behavior explanation cite Donald Davidson in support of their assumption that people construe beliefs as inner causes. But Davidson’s influential argument is unsound; there are no objective grounds for the intuition that the folk construe beliefs as inner causes that produce behavior. Indeed, recent experimental work by Ian Apperly, Bertram Malle, Henry Wellman, and Tania Lombrozo provides an empirical framework that accords well with Gilbert Ryle’s alternative thesis that the folk construe beliefs as patterns of living that contextualize behavior.
[Citing Place (1996c)]
Citing Place (1996c) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
Section 3. The (lack of) evidence from mindreading research. 3.3 Mindreading researchers assume Davidson’s dogma
* ... none of the available evidence speaks against the Rylean option that mature mindreaders construe behaviors as merely counterfactually dependent on beliefs without positing beliefs as inner causes. Fn 17: The Rylean U.T. Place (1996: 30) has argued from ordinary use and epistemic limitations that intentional behaviors are counterfactually dependent on beliefs, which are in turn counterfactually dependent on brain processes. For my purposes, the relevant issue is the folk construal of beliefs, rather than the metaphysics of dispositions. Whether or not ordinary use and epistemic limitations are arbitrators of fundamental metaphysics, they are indispensable sources of insight into folk construals. If the folk construe beliefs as identical to patterns of dispositions, and do not construe dispositions as identical to inner producers of behavior, then the folk do not construe beliefs as identical to producing causes.