Spectator in the Cartesian Theater: Where Theories of Mind Went Wrong since Descartes 1666923753, 9781666923759

Citation preview

Spectator in the Cartesian Theater

Spectator in the Cartesian Theater Where Theories of Mind Went Wrong since Descartes Peter Slezak

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN 978-1-66692-375-9 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-66692-376-6 (ebook) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Preface vii Acknowledgements xi Introduction: Illusions

1

 1  Dangerous Meditations

17

 2  Illusionism and The Phenomenological Fallacy

29

 3  What It’s Like: Conscious Experience Itself

49

 4  Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Diagonal Deduction

69

 5  The Mind’s Eye: Visual Imagery

97

 6  In the Chinese Room: Life Without Meaning

119

 7  Meaning: Interpretation or Explanation?

135

 8  Proper Names: The Omniscient Observer

153

 9  The Theory of Ideas: Fodor’s Guilty Passions

187

10  Descartes’ Neurocomputational Philosophy

215

11  What is Knowledge? The Gettier Problem

233

12  Disjunctivism: The Argument from Illusion (Again)

243

13  Newcomb’s Problem: Demons, Deceivers, and Liars

257

Conclusion 279

v

vi

Contents

References 283 Index 317 About the Author

319

Preface

As a student, I found important parts of philosophy difficult and obscure. Much later, I discovered that it was not my fault. This book explains why. I’m not referring to Continental philosophy whose obscurity is notorious but to central parts of Analytical philosophy that prides itself on clarity, rigorous argument, and intolerance of conceptual confusion. Understandably, it took a while to gain confidence in the idea that the most important doctrines of the most important philosophers are deeply problematic. Moreover, I had a nagging hunch that some of the problems appeared to have a common origin. Like the psychologist G.A. Miller (1956) who confessed in his most famous article that he was pursued by an integer, ‘The magical number seven plus or minus two,’ or perhaps like Freud’s neurotic (1893) patient Lucy R. who was pursued by the smell of burnt pudding, I have been pursued by a compelling kind of conceptual confusion. I suggest that a seductive error involved in ascribing mental representations acts as a prism which refracts a single notion into a seemingly divergent spectrum of puzzles, and the present study is concerned to trace these philosophical rays back to their common source — in one guise, the illusion of the Spectator in the “Cartesian Theater.” The metaphor is Dennett’s (1991) famous image of the intuitive but fatally flawed idea that consciousness involves a homunculus or “little man” who watches the screen on which our thoughts and sensations appear as in a movie. However, despite its influence, I will suggest that this critique must be significantly modified if the fatal error is to be properly understood. Moreover, once the critique is corrected, we can see how the Spectator error is more widespread. That is, I argue that a range of seemingly unrelated puzzles have a deep connection with one another that has not been noticed. I suggest that in other guises and captured in other metaphors we can recognize the same underlying mistake. Inevitably, the connection among disparate problems will seem vii

viii

Preface

unlikely in advance but, just like a card trick, it will appear obvious when exposed. Indeed, we will see that recalcitrant philosophical controversies in various domains of philosophy and psychology have nothing in common except a seductive mistake. For example, using a different metaphor, Putnam (1981, 49) gives a diagnosis of the externalist perspective on ideas which depends on adopting a “God’s Eye” point of view. He asks a question that captures my central theme here: “From whose point of view is the story being told?” Stated in this way, it is clear that the question is not specific to any particular domain of theorizing about the mind. Indeed, I will suggest that this question is the key to unlocking a range of recalcitrant problems because it helps us to notice the theorist’s role that disguises the explanatory inadequacy of a theory. Chomsky (1962, 528) captures the source of this error: “Reliance on the reader’s intelligence is so commonplace that its significance may be easily overlooked.” We see the same warning in Fodor’s precept that may serve as the motto for the book: “The question is not what is obvious to the theorist; the question is what follows from the theory.” In exploring certain perennially attractive mistakes, I propose an answer to Curley’s (1986, 46) question concerning notorious arguments like the Argument from Illusion. He asks, “Why, if this argument is fallacious, has it had such a strong appeal to so many people over such a long period of time?” The question invites paying serious attention to history. For example, something else I didn’t learn in graduate school was the importance of philosophers such as Arnauld, Malebranche and Reid who have been neglected by Analytic philosophers despite their serious engagement with Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant. It is salutary to discover that Putnam’s critique of metaphysical realism from a God’s Eye point of view is essentially Arnauld’s critique of Malebranche’s notorious doctrine of the Vision of All Things in God. In this light, my suggestion that Fodor is channelling Malebranche will seem less far-fetched. Nadler (1992b, 73) notes that it is both “strange and not a little embarrassing” that the Malebranche-Arnauld debate which was a cause célèbre in the seventeenth century should remain largely ignored or misunderstood by philosophers and historians alike today. This is all the more so since they are not only re-inventing the same theories but rehearsing the same mistakes. Of course, if seventeenth century philosophers anticipated both the problems and solutions seen in cognitive science today, then it is clear that these have nothing to do with the modern theoretical framework of computational or other representational models as generally assumed. Thus, the following chapters reveal unnoticed connections between disparate problems but in other respects, the originality of my book lies in pointing out that I have little new to say. Of course, if my ideas are not as original



Preface ix

as I had hoped, they are not as crazy as I had feared. Or, if they are crazy, I am in good company. In the same spirit, Strawson (2006a) remarks “almost everything worthwhile that I have thought of has been thought of before.” Indeed, far from personal disappointment, Strawson says “this isn’t in any way a depressing fact.” Strawson (2006a, 184) celebrates discovering “that one has powerful allies among the heroic shades of philosophy” which provides a “powerful source of support” and “a moment of illumination, not defeat” (2006a, 200). While sharing Strawson’s pleasure in discovering historical allies, I confess that, in the face of Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence, I am more ambivalent. My joy is tempered by recognizing that in philosophy “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it” (Nietzsche 1887, §341). Accordingly, attention to history suggests that the natural alternative to Stoljar’s (2017) “reasonable optimism” is a reasonable pessimism. Claiming to have exposed the pseudo-problems of philosophy, Wittgenstein (1922) says his Tractatus would achieve its purpose “if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it.” However, I share something like Woody Allen’s sentiment: “If my film makes one more person feel miserable, I’ll feel I’ve done my job.”1 If the neglect and misunderstanding of Malebranche and Arnauld is strange and embarrassing, the misunderstanding of Descartes is even more so. I argue that he has been misunderstood even in his most well-known writing, the famous Cogito argument of his Meditations which provides an insight into our contemporary controversies concerning consciousness. Descartes is the hero of my story and I show that his theories provide a corrective to much contemporary philosophy. Indeed, I draw attention to a significant historical injustice, a scandal of modern philosophy. Despite the consensus and the currency of Dennett’s term, Descartes himself was not guilty of the “Cartesian Theater” fallacy. This misattribution is a staple of academic teaching and scholarship but it is an egregious mistake. We will see that the Descartes revealed by historians is unrecognizably different from the Descartes of the Analytical tradition in philosophy. In particular, his physiological writings neglected by philosophers reveal that Descartes’ recognized the homunculus error. Far from being guilty of the most notorious error in the history of philosophy, Descartes articulated how the pseudo-explanation arises exactly as Chomsky (1962, 528) warns, that is, by depending on “an intelligent and comprehending reader” – the insight which is the leitmotif of my book.





Acknowledgements

It is a privilege to acknowledge the comments and criticism I have received over the long period of writing this book. I owe a special debt to the late Zenon Pylyshyn whose seminal work has been an inspiration in the development of my own thinking, and whose conversations, warm encouragement, and friendship have meant a great deal to me. I am also grateful to Noam Chomsky for conversations and correspondence and for his influence evident throughout the book which is in part a development of his critical engagement with philosophy of mind and language. I am very greatly indebted to David Pereplyotchik, Marcin Milkowsky and Nic Koziolek who made extensive, insightful comments on an earlier draft of the entire book which led to many valuable improvements. Michael Devitt gave generous comments on Chapter 8 and I am grateful for his conversations and warm collegiality over many years. I’ve had the benefit of conversations over many years and especially during a sabbatical visit in 2014 with Dan Hausman at University of Wisconsin, Madison. Michael Slezak has made very helpful criticisms and suggestions which have led to significant improvements. Others with whom I have had valuable conversations and correspondence include Mark Bickhard, Jim Franklin, Stephen Gaukroger, Richard Hamilton, Dominique Raynaud, Daniel Stoljar, Galen Strawson, John Sutton and Paul Thagard. I have had enjoyable and helpful discussions over many years with colleagues and students in the UNSW Cognitive Science Discussion Group, and I am grateful to Debra Aarons, Mengistu Amberber, Eran Asoulin, Justin Colley, Simon Convy, Jake Embrey, Jake Farrell, Clinton Fernandes, Iain Giblin, Michael Levot, Hughes Peters, Nick Riemer and Phillip Staines, among many others. It will be clear that, like much contemporary philosophy of mind, my book owes a great deal to Dan Dennett even, indeed especially, where I have disagreed with him. My criticisms are a development of Dennett’s fundamental insights and xi

xii

Acknowledgements

long-standing contributions to the understanding of the mind. In particular, my account of consciousness is a defence of his “heterophenomenology” – the only scientifically respectable inquiry into the mind. Standing on other shoulders too, I am indebted to Galen Strawson’s writing on the “real” Descartes, Reid and others. Strawson provides an essential corrective to widespread neglect and misunderstandings of these early modern philosophers and their ongoing relevance. In arguing for “real” materialism, Strawson makes severe criticism of Dennett but I disagree with both of them, suggesting a reconciliation of their shared materialism. Anonymous referees for the publisher have made helpful comments and I am especially grateful, above all, to Jana Hodges-Kluck and Deanna Biondi at Rowman & Littlefield, Lexington Press for their invaluable encouragement, support, and helpfulness throughout the editorial process. My greatest debt is to Margaret whose support has made the book and everything else possible. And, of course, Jamie, Michael, Amy and Billie helped too. NOTE 1.  Time Magazine Monday April 30, 1979.

Introduction Illusions

Toutes choses sont dites déjà; mais comme personne n’écoute, il faut toujours recommencer.1 André Gide (1891)

GHOST IN THE MACHINE Far from being easier to understand than anything else as Descartes suggests in his Meditations, many philosophers consider the mind to pose the deepest puzzle of all—perhaps “the largest outstanding obstacle in our quest for a scientific understanding of the universe” (Chalmers 1996, xi). However, there is an alternative, more modest, view. Rather than being the deepest scientific puzzle of all, the intractability of many problems of mind might be due to their being a particular kind of deeply compelling confusion. In this case, it should not be surprising if the same confusion appears in different guises in seemingly unrelated domains of philosophy and psychology, and throughout the history of these subjects. This is the suggestion I will defend in the following pages—that recalcitrant controversies in various domains of philosophy and psychology have nothing in common except the seductive Cartesian Theater error in various guises. The term was coined by Dennett (1991) for the notorious “homunculus” error, the idea of a little man inside us who receives our perceptions and motivates our actions, “the most tenacious bad idea bedevilling our attempts to think about consciousness.” However, in order to see the commonality with other problems, I argue that the metaphor of the Theater and the homunculus error must be understood quite differently from the way it has been introduced and popularized by Dennett (1991). Dennett (2013, 91) describes the 1

2

Introduction

error as “the temptation to imagine an inner agent,” the notorious homunculus “who sits in the control room in the brain and does all the clever work.” This conception of consciousness is taken to be the paradigmatic manifestation of the pseudo-explanation famously caricatured by Ryle (1949a) with “deliberate abusiveness” as the idea of a “ghost in the machine.” This idea is taken to give rise to the conviction that the incorrigible certainty of our subjective experience cannot be explained physically, and hence the mind must be distinct from the body—the deeply compelling illusion of dualism. WHO DOES THE CLEVER WORK? The critique has enjoyed general acceptance but it is fundamentally flawed, and it is only when a common misconception is corrected that we can see why the Cartesian Theater fallacy is so seductive and how it takes a variety of forms in seemingly unrelated philosophical puzzles. That is, in order to recognize the diversity and underlying commonality, we must understand that the temptation is not to “imagine an inner agent” but rather the, opposite, more subtle temptation to overlook the absence of an inner agent needed to make the theory or model work. In other words, the problem arises not from something included but from something that is omitted in the sense that a model may be incomplete and can’t work unless a homunculus is added to the system. The key insight is that we fail to notice that the “clever work” is being done by us, the theorists. Specifically, this clever work involves tacitly relying upon the very perceptual, cognitive competence that is the subject of our theory. When it is understood in this way, it is clear that the error is not confined to any one domain and the homunculus error in our theory of consciousness is only one form it may take. In a different domain, Chomsky (1962, 528) captures the source of the Theater error by noting the common, easily overlooked reliance on the theorist’s intuitive competence. Fodor (2007b), too, points out that we must not mistake what seems obvious to us for what follows from the theory. He asks “Why is it so hard to get this very rudimentary distinction across?” My book is an attempt to answer this question and I show that the failure to make this distinction is a pervasive, deeply compelling intuition. It is the failure to notice that we are the spectators in the Cartesian Theater. For example, regarding the idea of an internal, symbolic “language of thought” (Fodor 1975), the difficulty takes the guise of what Dennett (1977, 101; 1978b, 122) has called “Hume’s Problem” according to which representations may require an interpreter whereas, in a sense, they ought to “interpret themselves”—precisely the point of remarks by Chomsky and Fodor



Introduction 3

just noted. Generally, it seems difficult to avoid the error of positing internal representations which have their meaning because we can “understand” them in a special intuitive sense of this term. METAPHORS The traditional focus on the idea of a “little man in the head” has made it difficult to notice the commonality among errors in different domains. Chomsky’s (1962, 528) warning about “reliance on the reader’s intelligence” in linguistics has no apparent similarity to the posit of a homunculus. In other contexts, too, a different metaphor for the same mistake is more apt. For example, in Chapter 8 we will see that the referentialist account of proper names makes explicit appeal to the standpoint of an “Omniscient Observer” which involves a tacit reliance on the theorist’s understanding. In such cases we can see the wider relevance of Fodor’s warning that we must distinguish what is apparent to the theorist from what follows from the theory. In another case, we see the metaphor of the “God’s Eye view” which is intended by Searle (1983, 230) and Putnam (1981, 49) to capture essentially the same problematic intuitions. Rorty (1979, 12) takes a different metaphor to be holding us captive—the mind as a “Mirror of Nature.” Rorty (1979, 45) refers to the idea of an “Inner Eye” with which “the intellect inspects entities modelled on retinal images.” On this conception, mental things are “objects of quasi-observation” by an “inner observer” (1979, 50). The idea that knowing is to be modelled on seeing, the “ocular metaphor,” has been characterized by Rorty (1979, 60, 146) as “the original sin of epistemology.” Rorty’s analysis of the key intuitions is insightful as far as it goes. However, Rorty explains that in his Wittgensteinian view the intuition is “never anything more or less than familiarity with a language-game.” In particular, the game is “merely a result of Locke’s unfortunate mistake about how words get their meaning” (1979, 32). In these terms, Rorty (1979, 22) offers a diagnosis of the intuition involved as “no more than the ability to command a certain technical vocabulary,”— “a matter of how we talk.” However, the following chapters make a case for understanding the problematic intuitions to be deeper and more seductive than a more or less arbitrary terminological matter. Rorty (1979, 51) rejects the suggestion that the problem has a deep origin and he is critical of the idea “that Ryle was attacking a basic human intuition when he attacked the notion of the ghost in the machine.” Rather, Rorty sees the notorious doctrine as “a Cartesian idiosyncrasy,” merely the misleading use of language. Responding to Rorty along the lines to be developed here, historian of philosophy Robert Pasnau (1997, 294) suggests that the misleading picture of the mind “is not

4

Introduction

just the product of a few idiosyncratic seventeenth-century thinkers.” The following chapters provide support for Pasnau’s suggestion that the problematic conception is “a picture that comes quite naturally to us when we think about the mind, and it’s one that has been around much longer than is commonly thought.” THE REAL DESCARTES Strawson (2006c, 201) and Frankfurt (2008) reflect on the extremely uncharitable attributions to Descartes by philosophers. However, despite their more realistic portrait, historians, too, have made unusually harsh criticisms. His neurological speculations are said to be “uncontrolled,” “speculative” and “disastrous.” He is alleged to have had an “incautious dependence on reason divorced from adequate observation” and, indeed, to have made “almost every mistake it was possible to make.” However, these claims are not textual commentary but scientific judgements. For this reason I will suggest that historians have attributed an unlikely degree of confusion and error to one of the geniuses of the Scientific Revolution. In fact, the errors are more likely to be on the part of his critics. As Bertrand Russell (1946, 103) put it, a lesser person’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate “because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.” Specifically, I will argue that commentators on Descartes’ science fail to understand their subject because of a commitment to philosophical prejudices which distort their interpretation of key scientific ideas – the same errors which we see in various guises in contemporary theories. Remarkably, for example, Descartes gave an explicit account of the way that movements of nerve filaments encode and transmit the impinging effects of the external world. This is the insight that resolved the puzzle of inverted, reversed retinal images which stumped Kepler because he shared the assumption that the image on the retina is seen rather than interpreted.2 Of course, this is the Spectator error which Descartes recognized as the source of the homunculus fallacy. We will see that his dualism had different grounds. Descartes recognized that clockwork machines are incapable of the infinite “creativity” of language and it was not until the twentieth century with the advent of computers that we learned how a purely mechanical device might produce the fundamental properties of language and thought. It seems unfair to blame Descartes for not being Alan Turing or Noam Chomsky.



Introduction 5

PHENOMENOLOGICAL FALLACY Amid a vast literature I offer arguments in the spirit of Strawson’s (2021, 233) view that there is “no reason for thinking that consciousness isn’t wholly physical.” Specifically, he says that to solve the mind-body problem is to “cease to feel that there’s a problem—for the right reason.” Of course, giving the right reason is the difficult matter concerning consciousness and other recalcitrant puzzles, the project of this book. However, I suggest that in each case the right reason is indirect. We “cease to feel there’s a problem” about consciousness only in the sense that, we continue to suffer from the problem intuitions, but we come to appreciate their material aetiology. This is just as we don’t cease to experience visual illusions when we learn their psychological mechanism. That is, my approach is to address the “meta-problem” (Chalmers’ 2018, 6) of explaining “why we think that there is a problem” in the spirit of David Armstrong’s (1973a 190) suggestion: The case for materialism would be greatly strengthened by an independently plausible materialist account of why the doctrine seems introspectively implausible. We need to show why, as Dennett (2005, 128) remarks, the counter-intuitiveness of materialism is just what we would expect if the doctrine were true. However, I disagree with both Strawson and Dennett about the specific details of the right reason to stop feeling that there’s a problem. On Dennett’s (2016, 65, 72) account, the Theater mistake is a kind of “illusion” by analogy with the effects of stage-magic. However, the effects of stage-magic are not illusions in the psychological sense but deceptions—a crucial distinction to be emphasized because it bears on a proper understanding of the error involved. Dennett says “I am happy to confirm that I am, and have always been, a card-carrying strong illusionist” (2019, 48). However, “Strong Illusionism” is “committed to denying the central, apparently introspectively obvious data about consciousness” (Chalmers 2018, 43, 54). This is the reason Strawson (2019, 34) describes Dennett as “the leading prophet of ‘The Denial’ in our time.” Indeed, in some formulations, by appearing to deny the reality of conscious experience, Dennett is seen as playing the role of Descartes’ malin génie, the deceiving Evil Demon of the Meditations. Critics protest that Dennett claims to have achieved something Descartes proved to be impossible, that is, denying his own consciousness. More broadly, Strawson (2021, 235) suggests that the outright Denial of phenomenal experience ψ “took flight only in the twentieth century.” Indeed, Dennett acknowledges his indebtedness to Place’s (1956) classic manifesto for materialism. However, it is significant that Place’s “Phenomenological Fallacy” is not “Strong Illusionism” because Place does not deny the reality of subjective, phenomenal experience. Place articulates the kind of “real materialism” that Strawson (2021, 243) defends

6

Introduction

and is, therefore, not among those materialists guilty of “the great philosophical aberrations of our time.” However, while acknowledging that phenomenal experience ψ certainly exists as Strawson (2021, 238) insists, Place gives an alternative to the resort to panpsychism that Strawson, like Goff (2017), considers to be “the most natural, most parsimonious, least implausible view of the fundamental nature of χ [the physical].” Panpsychism is the idea that everything is conscious and Goff acknowledges that it seems “crazy.” However, he defends it by appealing to the history of science in which some crazy theories turned out to be true. This is the tactic of advocates of the paranormal who also invoke historical cases when heresies became orthodoxies.3 Goff’s gambit might be termed the “optimistic meta-induction” by analogy with Laudan’s (1981) famous “pessimistic meta-induction” against realism: Our best theories in the past have turned out to be false, so our best theories today are probably false too. By contrast, Goff hopes that our worst theories might turn out to be true. However, even more parsimonious and plausible than panpsychism is Place’s way of helping us “to cease to feel that there’s a problem.” That is, Place gives an account of why we are inclined to think that consciousness isn’t wholly physical. Such an ad hominem account is not Strong Illusionism, but rather “to solve the so-called mind–body problem” in a different way as a certain kind of puzzlement about ourselves—Gunderson’s (1970) mind-body perplexity arising from the “asymmetry” between our relation to ourselves and to the world. Contrary to the shared explanatory framework of Strawson, Dennett and Chomsky (who sees the puzzle as concerning the body rather than the mind), this is to frame the mind-body problem quite differently. Rather than a scientific matter of current ignorance and future reduction or unification as in the case of other “explanatory gaps,” the mind-body problem is an introspective, first-person perplexity or paradox having no ontological, scientific implications. Thus, we may agree with Strawson that “we are each individually ‘directly acquainted’ with ψ” but, instead of panpsychism, the reality and the certainty of subjective experience can be acknowledged in Place’s manner as the error of imagining that these very experiences involve viewing an inner screen, the “Spectator” error. Remarkably, we will see that the conception of a Spectator is adopted in psychology by Kosslyn (1994) as his acclaimed pictorial theory of visual imagery. On this account, “the mind’s eye” is supposed to look at an uninterpreted “display” on the “visual buffer.” Appropriately, Dennett (1991, 286) asks “Have cognitive psychologists discovered that the Cartesian Theater exists after all?” The theory has been described as a paradigm of cognitive science research (von Eckardt 1993, 32) but it has been persistently charged with committing the homunculus fallacy—”probably the most ubiquitous and damaging conceptual confusion in the whole imagery literature” (Pylyshyn 1981, 18). Pictorial theorists have strenuously protested their innocence of the charge of positing a little man inside their models. However, like their



Introduction 7

critics, they have been looking in the wrong place. Once the homunculus error is properly understood, we can see that the pictorial theory is an explicit endorsement of the Spectator error and a template for the seemingly disparate puzzles explored in this book. Specifically, it is the failure to notice that the theory gives an illusion of explanatory completeness because we are using the very perceptual faculty that is the subject of our theory. I suggest that the analysis of the Spectator error gains persuasive confirmation when it is seen to correspond with the independent analysis of problems in other domains. For example, in Chapter 6 I suggest that the question of what is intelligible to the theorist is the basis of Searle’s (1980a) famous ‘Chinese Room’ thought-experiment to prove the impossibility of genuine computer intelligence or “Strong AI.” In this independent domain, the same question arises for Searle as for Kosslyn concerning what is intuitively meaningful to the theorist. In Searle’s case, symbolic representations fail this test whereas in Kosslyn’s case pictorial representations succeed. It’s the same mistake in both cases. Bickhard (2009) has explored the incoherence arising from the most common conception of encoded representations that tacitly invoke an external interpreter. In yet another area concerned with the semantics of natural language, the subject of Chapter 7, philosophers have sought to understand meaning in a special, avowedly interpretative or hermeneutic sense – the methodological doctrine of Davidson and Quine. In response, Chomsky has quipped that adopting the viewpoint of the bee is no help to the entomologist. It is prima facie surprising and, therefore, significant that controversies over the ‘Hard Problem’ of consciousness, the pictorial theory of imagery and Davidson’s truth conditional semantics inter alia can be shown to arise from this common source. Perhaps the most surprising manifestation of the Spectator is seen in Newcomb’s Problem (Nozick 1969), the topic of Chapter 13. In this guise the “intelligent and comprehending reader” is the intelligent and comprehending decision-maker. The source of puzzlement arises from constraints on a choice specified in a science-fiction problem. These constraints on the decision have been universally accepted as framing the deep anomaly for decision theory, but they are not mandatory for the theorist. By deliberating on the subject’s dilemma, the theorist is using the very cognitive faculty we are trying to explain, the common source of other philosophical controversies. EL NARRADOR-FILÓSOFO In other domains, relying on what is obvious to the theorist may take the form of the theorist’s knowledge of the truth. We see an illuminating metaphor in novelist Vargas Llosa’s (1975) discussion of the familiar literary device of the invisible narrador-filósofo omnisciente, the omniscient philosopher-narrator who relates things unknown to characters in the story. Remarkably, in the

8

Introduction

philosophy of language, one of the founders of the anti-Frege referentialist revolution in the 1970s, Donnellan (1974), appeals explicitly to the perspective of an omniscient observer to explain the reference of proper names. Adopting this imaginative standpoint has not been seen as a fatal error. Similarly, Kripke’s (1972) famous doctrine of ‘rigid designators’ for proper names rests on thought experiments whose persuasiveness depends implicitly on our knowledge as theorists which is unavailable to the subject whose competence is to be explained. Thus, Devitt (2022, 406) refers to Kripke’s “most powerful argument” against description theories, namely, the “ignorance and error” argument—meaning ignorance and error on the part of the subject. In Bianchi’s (2020, 121) summary, theories of proper names rely on “the crucial role played by historical facts that might be unknown to the speaker.” We imaginatively adopt a vantage point as spectators of mental representations and compare these to the ‘worldly’ facts, thereby providing the seemingly objective mind/world relations. We see a revealing remark by Fodor (2000b, 4) who explains that truth and reference are paradigms of semantic properties involving mind/world relations. He says, “Referring to a chair is like seeing one; both processes have got chairs on the far end, and chairs are ‘things in the world’.” However, we will see that the case of empty names like Santa Claus suggests the profound difficulty with the idea that there is something on the far end of the referring relation. Referring is quite unlike seeing since there is no objective relation with anything at the “far end” except in the mind of the speaker and the philosopher-narrator. Price (2011, 10), too, has argued that externalist semantic representation “is a theoretical category that we should dispense with altogether.” That is, we should “abandon the project of theorizing about word-world relations.” Indeed, the intuition is mocked by Putnam (1981, 51) as the conception of occult “noetic rays” that are supposed to connect words and thoughts to their referents. Despite the general consensus among philosophers, Kripke’s view of names has been criticized along these lines by Searle (1983, 217, 230) and Dummett (1973) and, therefore, there are grounds for suspecting with Chomsky (2012) and Fodor (2004) that “something has gone awfully wrong” in this domain. Indeed, I will argue that the same thing has gone wrong here, as in other theories that have nothing in common besides the fatal Spectator error. It is striking to notice a parallel with the Wimmer and Perner (1983) SallyAnne “false belief” task in which a child’s ascription of belief to others is based on the child’s own knowledge of the truth rather than on the other person’s justified beliefs. Of course, this corresponds precisely with Donnellan’s “omniscient observer” in the theory of names. Indeed, I suggest that this is the same tacit assumption of the theorist’s “omniscience” which also accounts for the persistent controversy concerning the Gettier Problem. In such cases, phi-



Introduction 9

losophers appear to make the same mistake as three-year olds. Floridi (2004, 76) argues that the Gettier Problem is unsolvable because truth and justification cannot be assumed to be “pre-coordinated a priori.” However, this is just circumlocution for the fact that we who tell the story know that truth and justification are pre-coordinated. Hetherington (2012) has given an analysis of the Gettier problem as an “epistemological chimera” and “illusion” in which “truth remains essential” and in the same vein Kirkham (1984, 508) observes that Gettier counterexamples put the reader in the position of an ideal observer who knows all the relevant facts. Although subsequently abandoned by Hetherington (2016), his original diagnosis was “People reacting in the standard way to Gettier cases are being infallibilists, without realizing this about themselves.” Hetherington was right the first time. This is another way of saying that the puzzle arises from the narrator’s “omniscience,” the viewpoint of the ubiquitous Spectator. ALL THE RAGE THESE DAYS My diagnostic approach addresses what Chalmers (2018, 6) calls the “metaproblem” of explaining “why we think that there is a problem” concerning consciousness and other recalcitrant phenomena. However, Rosenthal (2019, 197) challenges Chalmers’ claim that the crucial “problem intuitions” are “widely shared well beyond philosophy” and, therefore, he suggests it’s doubtful whether there is a meta-problem at all. We are reminded of G.E. Moore’s complaint that he hadn’t dreamt of certain problems arising from the sciences but only from the worries of other philosophers. However, even if Rosenthal and Moore are right, the meta-problem remains. Even if confined to academic philosophy, we still need to answer Curley (1986, 46) who asks why some fallacious arguments seem to have had such strong appeal throughout history. In this way, my thesis gains support from a different direction. I indicate that we are rehearsing controversies in the early history of modern philosophy debated by Descartes and his followers. In light of this history, my book may be seen as challenging Stoljar’s (2017) case for a “reasonable optimism” about progress in philosophy. For example, a truly staggering modern literature on consciousness has arguably made no progress since the seventeenth century when Malebranche and Locke explicitly enunciated Jackson’s (1982, 1986) famous “Knowledge Argument.” And Malebranche’s rival Antoine Arnauld anticipated Place’s (1956) dissolution of the “phenomenological fallacy” that Dennett (2016, 70) acknowledges as the precursor to his own analysis.

10

Introduction

In another area of contemporary philosophy Georges Rey (2003, 140) said “Mental representation is all the rage these days” and, in the same vein, Robert Cummins (1996, 1) described the vexed problem as “the topic in the philosophy of mind for some time now.” They didn’t mean four hundred years. It is salutary to notice that Scholastics, Cartesians, and British Empiricists were all seeking to explain how ‘ideas’ succeed in representing objects in the external world, the modern puzzle of intentionality.4 The modern debate is a reenactment of the controversy between Malebranche and Arnauld which was a cause célèbre among philosophers of their time. Their disagreement arose from Descartes’ Third Meditation distinction between the réalité formelle and réalité objective of representational ideas, essentially the modern contrast between internalism and externalism or between narrow and wide semantic content. Nothing could seem more remote from modern theories in cognitive science today than Malebranche’s (1712) notorious doctrine of mental representations or ‘ideas’ as the “vision of all things in the mind of God.” On the contrary, however, despite the theological trappings, we can recognize the profound affinity of Malebranche’s views with those at the very forefront of theorising today in psychology and philosophy, essentially Fodor’s (1998a, 7) account of concepts as semantically evaluated mental particulars. For the same reason, Arnauld’s (1683) critique exactly prefigures recent “adverbial” attacks on representational theories. Adverbialism claims that sensing is experiencing in a certain way rather than being presented directly with any object.5 I suggest that when we transpose the seventeenth century theological idiom into our own, we can see that Malebranche’s tripartite account of ideas is the intuitively compelling view today. Indeed, Fodor (2003) takes modern theories of representation to be essentially a version of Hume’s Theory of Ideas which was derived from Malebranche’s notorious Spectator doctrine or “vision” in the mind of God. DIRE IMPLICATIONS The received view of representation as mediating between mind and world is to be contrasted with ‘Direct Realism’, the view that the objects of perception are not our ideas but non-mental things in the external world. Direct Realism was defended by Arnauld and Reid and their neglect today reflects the dominance of views long regarded as fatally flawed. For example, Fodor (2000a, 2003) relegates Reid to a few dismissive footnotes on the grounds that “there is no direct realist theory of perception (or of anything else that’s mental).” He says this view flies in the face of the success of modern psychology and, if it were not for the notion of mental representation, “much of what the mind



Introduction 11

does would be miraculous.” Thus, Fodor sees the classical Theory of Ideas as essentially the modern concept of representation in philosophy and cognitive science. Consequently, it is significant that Lehrer (1989, 7), like Wolterstorff (2001), considers Reid’s trenchant criticisms of Hume as correct. Wolterstorff holds that Reid’s refutation of a fatal flaw in the Empiricist doctrine of ideas was decisive despite the doctrine holding a powerful grip on philosophical imagination for many philosophers then and now. According to this doctrine, “the very things we perceive are perceptions, in the sense of specifically mental items, and not physical objects” (Bricke 1980, 7). That is, like Malebranche, Hume has a Spectator conception of ideas as “fundamentally a matter of contemplating or viewing [a mental] object” (Stroud 1977, 225). Clearly, if Fodor (2003) is right about Hume’s Treatise being the founding document of modern cognitive science, Reid’s critique has dire implications for the contemporary field for reasons that Wolterstorff notes: … central elements of the pattern of thought against which he tirelessly polemicized – the Way of Ideas, he called it – have been so deeply etched into our minds that we find it difficult even to grasp alternatives, let alone find them plausible (Wolterstorff 2001, 1)

On Strawson’s (1990) diagnosis, notable among the reasons for the neglect of Reid is that he was “fantastically level-headed” and avoided the “perennially attractive” mistakes of the most celebrated philosophers in history. Strawson remarks that Reid is forgotten, in spite of being the “unacknowledged father and astonishing anticipator” of correct views in modern psychology. Wolterstorff (2001, ix) judges Reid to be second only to Kant among great philosophers of the eighteenth century. However, Reid has almost disappeared from the canon of Western philosophy because his philosophy has been trivialized and misunderstood. Typical is Fodor’s (2003) relegation of Reid to dismissive footnotes. However, the disparagement or neglect of Reid brings into relief the difficulties of representational theories today when it is seen that Reid does not hold the caricatured version of ‘direct realism’ attributed to him by Fodor.6 THE BAD ARGUMENT Searle’s (2015) book Seeing Things as They Are neglects to mention Reid but defends Direct Realism and seeks to expose the flaws in the dominant Representative view today because “it is the central mistake of modern epistemology.” As we have noted, this is the contemporary version of the idea that internal experiences, perhaps “sense-data,” are themselves objects

12

Introduction

of perception, the Spectator conception. Searle says this is “the single greatest disaster” in philosophy today based on the “Bad Argument,” essentially the traditional Argument from Illusion. We will see in Chapter 12 that these classical issues are revived at the forefront of Analytic philosophy today in the form of ‘Disjunctivist’ theories of perceptual experience.7 Since they were debated by philosophers even in the medieval period, the PR hype about the radicalism of fresh new arguments is misleading, to say the least. I will argue that, if we are to judge the merits of such theories, it is fruitless to engage in philosophical discussions without seeing them in their historical context. For example, leading proponents of Disjunctivism today such as Pritchard (2012) make no reference even to Austin’s (1962) famous Sense and Sensibilia, though it is widely regarded as having settled the question.8 Austin himself referred to the “melancholy” fact of the contemporary re-enactment of disputes among Early Modern philosophers. WHO CARES WHAT DESCARTES SAID? To be sure, one might choose to engage only with one’s contemporaries and simply ignore earlier philosophers who wrote on problems of interest. Who cares what Descartes said? Indeed, many philosophers share Quine’s (1985, 194) dismissive attitude to the history of philosophy on the grounds that the historian “tries to recapture the very tangles, confusions, and obscurities from which the scientist is so eager to free himself.” I will indicate that by avoiding the tangles, confusions and obscurities in the history of their discipline, philosophers have simply repeated them. In his intellectual biography of Descartes, Gaukroger (1996, 8) disparaged efforts to show that Descartes was a precursor of modern cognitive science as a “pointless exercise, of no use in understanding anything.” However, on the contrary, I hope to show that history of philosophy and contemporary cognitive science can learn a lot from each other. As Pasnau (1997, 294) has said, “The point... is not to establish who said what first but to show that current ways of conceptualizing problems in these areas aren’t just an accidental product of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” In some cases, we may discern something more than fortuitous, independent reinvention. There is a more interesting kind of recurrence which deserves attention because it is a manifestation of deeper, and therefore, more illuminating causes, a sign of some underlying pathology. Commenting on Reid’s diagnosis of fatal flaws concerning mental representation, Wolterstorff asks the question that I pose throughout this book: Isn’t this much too easy? Can a theory of perception which held so powerful a grip for so long on the imagination of so many intelligent philosophers, and



Introduction 13

which to a considerable extent still does, be subject to so briskly decisive a refutation as this appears to be? One does indeed hesitate for this very reason; but I think the answer has to be: Yes, the refutation is decisive (Wolterstorff 2001, 87).

Garber (2005, 132, 145) also argues for the value of “a more antiquarian approach” to philosophy, but he confesses that this is only a matter of personal fascination that won’t have direct importance to the practising Analytical philosopher by helping to solving contemporary problems of interest. Garber is too modest. I show that antiquarian history can make a direct contribution to solving modern puzzles. My epigraph from André Gide seems apt: Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens, we have to keep going back and starting all over again. In particular, Descartes’ theories provide a corrective to much contemporary philosophy. I indicate the ways in which he has been misrepresented by commentators as a result of the same philosophical prejudices we see elsewhere today. For example, Descartes’ physiological works that have been ignored by philosophers give an explicit critique of the idea that internal mental representations might resemble their external objects. Descartes’ prescient “neurocomputational” physiology is misunderstood ironically because his rigorous mechanical, reductionism is still widely rejected. Descartes proposed that the movements of nerve filaments encode and transmit the impinging effects of the external world. This was, of course, an account of abstract information and isomorphism in the brain long before the twentieth century, perhaps inspired by Descartes’ innovation in encoding plane geometry symbolically as algebra in his “Cartesian Coordinate” system. Obviously, he didn’t know about axon potentials, synapses or neurotransmitters, but his analogy with signals conveyed through the blind man’s stick captures the idea of information transmission in nerve fibres as a transduction and encoding of properties of the external world. Of course, this is the way that the homunculus error is avoided, precisely as Descartes explains, because it avoids positing representations that are resembling images to be seen and, thereby, rely on the theorist’s “intelligence.” I will argue that Descartes has been misunderstood even in his most wellknown writing, the famous Cogito argument of his Meditations. I offer an account which is not only of scholarly, textual interest but sheds light on contemporary controversies. Descartes’ perplexity about the mind is our own and, therefore, the Cogito presents a case-study of our own puzzlement about consciousness. However, in view of the ongoing exegetical debates, the biggest mystery of the Cogito is why it is still a mystery after 400 years. Any fully satisfactory account of the Cogito will have to reveal the reasons for its extraordinary recalcitrance. The lack of an uncontroversial solution to the Cogito puzzle may be evidence of its intrinsic intellectual depth, but it

14

Introduction

may also be due to a different, peculiar kind of elusiveness. Indeed, I suggest that, just as consciousness may be demystified in terms of Rosenthal’s (2005) ‘Higher Order Thought’ (HOT) account, so also the Cogito puzzle can be explained in this framework as “the human mind, when directed towards itself” (CSM 2, 7) and as “the knowledge which I have of myself” (CSM 2, 247). Just as Rosenthal’s account explains consciousness is constituted by a mental state being the intentional content of another, higher-order state, so Descartes insists that “the mind, when engaged in private meditation, can experience its own thinking” (CSM 2, 247) and he refers to his “internal awareness” (CSM 2, 285), “that awareness or internal testimony which everyone experiences within himself” (CSM 2, 148). Taking these remarks seriously, I show the Cogito to be a variant of familiar paradoxical or “ungrounded” statements like The Liar—a kind of Cantorean “Diagonal” argument.9 The Cogito turns out to be a member of a family of notorious paradoxes and, thereby, of more general interest. Among other things illuminated in Descartes’ work I suggest a solution to a problem that has kept a philosophical industry busy for three hundred and fifty years—the puzzle of whether Cogito ergo sum is a logical inference, an intuition or something else, perhaps a “performance” according to Hintikka’s (1962) acclaimed article. Contrary to much commentary that discounts half of what Descartes says about his own insight, we can also see why the Cogito is both an inference and an intuition—precisely as we see in mathematical discovery which proceeds according to the method of Analysis, as Descartes describes his Meditations. In his last paper, Hintikka (2013) made a significant shift from his original famous position on the Cogito and acknowledged the insight of the Diagonal account. By capturing the logical basis for the indubitability of the Cogito, my analysis not only vindicates Descartes but indicates how to dissolve the “Hard Problem” of consciousness, that is, to “cease to feel that there’s a problem—for the right reason.” REAL PHILOSOPHERS My attention to historical matters here is in the spirit of Chomsky’s (1966) Cartesian Linguistics. In his remarkable and largely neglected work, Chomsky sought to understand the theoretical insights of the pre-modern period to appraise their contemporary relevance. This is also Fodor’s (2003) purpose in his study of Hume’s theory of Ideas. Chomsky (1996, 11) notes that the modern cognitive revolution has rediscovered and reformulated “some of the most venerable themes of our cultural tradition, back to its early origins.” Not just in linguistics. And not just the good ideas are being reinvented today, but the mistakes as well. Consequently, and in extenuation, I note that to some degree the style of writing here is dictated by this source of the problem



Introduction 15

in various guises in various domains. As G.E. Moore (1942, 14) famously remarked, neither the world or the sciences would ever have suggested any philosophical problems to him, only those things which other philosophers have said about the world or the sciences. Crane (2015, 83) reports that this remark is “sometimes taken as a sign of Moore’s superficiality” since “real” philosophers “just think philosophically and don’t need the stimulation of other writers.” I think this is a telling, uncharitable misinterpretation of Moore who was taking a swipe at the pseudo-problems of philosophy. Indeed, in Chapter 12 we will consider his famous defence of common-sense against the extravagant claims of idealism. Moore’s paradoxical argument suggests a Wittgensteinian reading according to which philosophical problems are typically misconceptions. Accordingly, I have given more than the usual attention to those things which other philosophers have said which serves as evidence of the fairness of my indictment. The book is an exploration of variations on an underlying theme and, therefore, my project dictates a strategy in which I proceed in a parallel, rather than serial, manner. Accordingly, to forestall criticism, I note that my book is not the development of a single, continuous argument in the manner of conventional philosophical works. In each chapter, separate well-known problems are explored in detailed, independent arguments which are shown to converge upon what is recognizably the same analysis. For this reason, each chapter is independent of the others and may be read separately. Nevertheless, although Descartes scholars, imagery theorists and philosophers of language might have little interest in each other’s problems, I hope to show that they have more in common than they may have realized – a shared origin of their puzzles and controversies. If you are concerned with proper names and you don’t care about the Gettier Problem or vice versa, you may be surprised to discover the underlying affinities. Indeed, I suggest that theories in disparate domains of psychology and philosophy have nothing in common besides the error inherent in the most popular theory in each case—a variant of the external Spectator or Omniscient Narrator fallacy. Of course, it might be as Nietzsche (1887, 228) said: “seeing things as similar and making things the same is the sign of weak eyes.” On the other hand, as Freud (1953, 89) remarked of unrelated phenomena whose aetiology appeared strikingly similar, “So far-reaching an agreement can scarcely be a matter of chance.” NOTES 1.  Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens, we have to keep going back and beginning all over again. 2.  Lindberg (1976, 203).

16

Introduction

3.  The first chapter heading of Targ and Puthoff (1977) is ‘When Paranormal Becomes Normal’ and they ask “Where will you be standing when the paradigm shifts?” 4.  See Yolton (1984), (1996), (2000). 5.  See Tye (1984), Crane and French (2021), Egan (2022). 6.  See Copenhaver (2004). 7.  See Doyle et al. (2019). 8.  Rorty (1997, 2) remarks: “Austin’s criticism of Ayer in his posthumous Sense and Sensibilia played the role in Britain which Sellars’s [1956] article played in America. Though they greatly admired Austin, American philosophers had already pretty much given up on sense-data by the time Sense and Sensibilia appeared.” 9.  See Slezak (1983), (2010), Meadows (2021).

Chapter One

Dangerous Meditations

THE BASIC COGNITIVE EPISODE: THE TRI-PARTITE MODEL Curley (1986, 46) asks the most important question about the problems of interest in this book. He suggests that anyone doing a proper study of certain philosophical arguments should see them from an historical point of view. In particular, if a certain argument is fallacious, they should ask why it has had such a strong appeal over a long period of time. For example, of particular relevance here, Curley cites the Argument from Illusion which has persisted in different guises throughout the history of philosophy and among theories current today. The argument leads to the conception of Ideas as the direct objects of perception, mediating between the mind and the world. Pasnau (2017, 79) notes that it was familiar to medieval authors and can be seen in Locke’s (1689/1975) Essay in which he characterizes ‘ideas’ in perceptual terms as “whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks.” Earlier, Malebranche had a version of the same view that ideas are the “immediate object” of perception which Hume adopted and which Fodor (2003) sees as “interchangeable” with modern conceptions of mental representation. Malebranche made the notorious Argument from Illusion which is revived today in the philosophy of perception as the hot topic of “Disjunctivism”1 we will examine in Chapter 12. Searle (2015, 23) addresses this “Bad Argument” which he describes as “the foundation of modern epistemology” and “one of the biggest mistakes in philosophy in the past several centuries.” The Bad Argument is the attempt to treat perception as “an actual or possible object of experience,” that is, as if we are Spectators of our own mental states. The problem arises inevitably from a tripartite schema that has been ubiquitous. Arthur Danto (1989, xii) refers to the “the basic cognitive episode” which is 17

18

Chapter One

Figure 1.1.  The basic cognitive episode. Author’s reproduction, based on Arthur Danto’s Triadic schema

composed of three components and three relationships that he described as “the fundamental concepts of philosophy” (Figure 1.1). Since it seems little more than a truism, alternatives to the model seem inconceivable, a fact that explains its popularity in different theories and different disciplines at different times. For example, in a discussion of Sellars’ famous “Myth of the Given”—the idea that there is something immediately presented to consciousness—Brandom explains: Philosophers have found it easy to suppose that such a sentence as “The tomato looks red to Jones” says that a certain triadic relation, looking or appearing, obtains among a physical object, a person, and a quality (Brandom 1997, 34).

Danto (1989, xii) draws attention to the problematic schema, describing Descartes’ project based on this tripartite model as “the dangerous meditations... with which modern philosophy properly began.” Pasnau (1997, 2017) has shown that these ideas have a much earlier provenance, and the danger arises from what Danto calls the basic cognitive framework in terms of which most of philosophy may be understood. Danto (1989, xi, xiv) suggests “pretty much every basic philosophical position may be defined against the triadic structure of subject, representation, and the world.” There are several resonances with Danto’s work here. Danto suggests that this picture of representation is owed to Descartes who looms large in his overview of philosophy, as it does here. However, this attribution is a widely shared but mistaken understanding of Descartes’ view which is more apt for his follower Malebranche. Nevertheless, Danto’s elegant précis of the fundamental schema which has defined much philosophy encapsulates the puzzle that has bedeviled thinking about the mind throughout the history of philosophy and psychology. An



Dangerous Meditations 19

Figure 1.2.  Representation. William Bechtel (1998); Permission obtained by email: December 16, 2022.

essentially identical scheme is given in a modern text by Blackburn (1984). This picture will be seen in theories of cognition in various, often unrelated, domains. We see an identical schema independently in a modern discussion of mental representation by William Bechtel (1998) (Figure 1.2). Bechtel (1998, 299) explains “There are... three interrelated components in a representational story: what is represented, the representation, and the user of the representation.” Bechtel articulates a conception of representations intervening between the mind and the world. This conception is remarkable for its precise correspondence with the problematic picture throughout the history of philosophy, essentially the classical Theory of Ideas as intermediary, direct objects of perception. Not always illustrated by means of a diagram, nevertheless, such pictures are found frequently capturing the key elements and their relationships. For example, conforming with Danto’s template, Ogden and Richards (1923) offered the Semiotic Triangle in their early influential book The Meaning of Meaning. We see essentially the same picture in an account of Frege’s “purely logical” view of the foundations of semantics by Capuano (2012, 10), the subject of later chapters. Following Peirce, computer scientist Luc Steels (2008), proposes the “Semiotic Triad” to capture the relations between symbol, concept and the world.

20

Chapter One

TERTIUM QUID The foregoing illustrations indicate the pervasiveness of Danto’s schema involving user, representation and object. However, we will see that notorious puzzles arise because the user in the schema is a proxy for the unwitting theorist whose intelligence is thereby surreptitiously insinuated into the model. In this respect, it is significant that Bechtel’s account is taken to capture the central elements of modern theories of representation such as Kosslyn’s (1980) pictorial theory of imagery explicitly understood as a paradigm of the tripartite model (von Eckardt 1993). Thus, Danto’s statement of the triadic structure is remarkable not only for its synoptic comprehension of the history of philosophy, but for its aptness to recent theories and disputes in cognitive science. We will see that the schema is often hidden amid a welter of information-processing boxes and arrows, but discernible nonetheless as implicating the notorious, question-begging Spectator in the Cartesian Theater, ourselves. The elements of the schema may be distilled to their essentials as follows: External World → Representation → Consciousness It is difficult to conceive that cognition might be represented in any other way by means of “erasures” and “reductions,” as Danto describes the desperate measures to resolve the tri-lemma. Thus, for example, starting with Locke’s version of this tripartite schema, Berkeley’s solution, eliminating the external world, is no more palatable than Reid’s apparent elimination of representations. The first strategy, idealism, has not been popular among psychologists, and the second recommended by Putnam (1994/1999) has been ridiculed by Fodor (2000a) as the “miracle” theory of cognition. And expunging the third element, the conscious mind or perceiving subject, is scarcely more palatable. Nevertheless, following Descartes, Arnauld and Reid, we may conceive of representation as dyadic rather than triadic. As van Cleve (2015, 67) says, “It is not, as in the sense-datum theory, a triadic fact involving the table, the perceiver, and a sense-datum as an intervening item.”2 This is the modern “adverbial” conception that does not implicitly require apprehension of mental representations by a conscious intelligence or Spectator. On the usual tripartite view, when internal representations are conceived as if they were external ones like pictures or words, the theory only appears to work because the theorist contributes a crucial part of the explanation, as we see in the chapters to follow. For this reason, the Cartesian Theater or homunculus error is more subtle than the manifestly implausible postulation of an intelligent agent within the system. Consequently, as we will see in Chapter 5 on imagery, Kosslyn



Dangerous Meditations 21

(1980) can plausibly protest that his acclaimed theory is innocent of the persistent charge. I noted earlier that Dennett’s (1991) famous characterization of the Cartesian Theater error is crucially misleading in this respect about the source of the problem. It is not the “temptation to imagine an inner agent” (Dennett 2011, 2013) but precisely the opposite temptation to overlook the absence of an inner agent needed to make the model work. The tripartite schema disguises the way that the theorist is essential to the apparent working of the model because it is assumed that the components may be decomposed into simpler, explicable working parts. However, the homunculus error arises because pictorial or linguistic representations are not independently functional components since they are conceived like external representations “as if there were yet other eyes within our brain” (Descartes CSM 1, 167). Of course, this is not to actually postulate eyes in the brain but to use our own eyes to make the representations seem plausible. For this reason, the usual formulation of the homunculus charge and exasperated protestations of innocence both make the same mistake. Remarkably in view of the entrenched tradition, Descartes understood that the error is the failure to notice that mental representations conceived in certain ways require an intelligent agent. Moreover, in this form we can recognize that, despite appearing quite unlike the homunculus problem, the same error may arise in other cases such as in theories of language. The key insight is that all the “clever work” is being done by the philosopher-narrator, that is, by us. Thus, we begin to see why the triadic schema is at once obvious and deeply problematic. The conception appears to embody a truism, clearly implied by the standard philosophical locution according to which propositional attitudes such as belief involve the relation of a person to an internal representation that represents the world. It is striking that the orthodox conception of propositional attitudes (Fodor 1978, 178) corresponds precisely with Malebranche’s seventeenth century view of intentionality as a relation “between the perception (mental act) or the perceiving agent (mind) and a really present entity of some ontological sort or another” (Nadler 1992b, 81). It is no coincidence that Arnauld’s (1683, 77) critique of Malebranche advocated a non-relational conception and was also concerned to repudiate what he describes as “imaginary representations,” saying “I can, I believe, show the falsity of the hypothesis of representations.” In Arnauld’s case, as in Reid’s response to Hume, this is not the “miracle theory” that repudiates intermediaries altogether as Fodor (2000a) has uncharitably suggested. The debate between Arnauld and Malebranche is described by Nadler (1989, 6) as a debate between the direct realism of an ‘act theory’ and an indirect or representationalist ‘object theory’, respectively. He explains, “If ideas are representational mental acts [rather than entities], then they can put the mind in direct cognitive contact with the world—no intervening proxy, no tertium

22

Chapter One

quid, gets in the way.” To reject internal objects is not to reject mental representations as such altogether. This is Putnam’s (1994/1999, 59) concern with the idea of representations understood as an “interface” rather than an activity of representation. In her study, De Rosa (2010, 13) recognizes that by “idea” Descartes did not mean any third thing between thought and its object though this was not to repudiate representations as such. Quite apart from the evidence of Descartes’ own texts, ample support for these ascriptions is found in Arnauld’s writings which articulate an act-theory as an alternative to Malebranche’s representative ‘veil of ideas.’3 Arnauld (CSMK 175) saw this ‘direct perception’ view as faithful to Descartes, who confirms to Mersenne that it was Arnauld who “more than anyone else, has entered into the sense of what I wrote.” TOO BAD FOR YOU We see a further confirmation of the tripartite conception in von Eckardt’s (1993) overview of modern cognitive science. She gives a lengthy discussion of Charles Sanders Peirce’s analysis of the sign relation. Peirce held that all thought is in the form of signs and, therefore, that all thought is irreducibly triadic, being a relation between a sign, an object and an interpretant. Object → Sign → Interpretant The details of Peirce’s somewhat obscure theories need not detain us here, but it is worth noting von Eckardt’s (1993, 158) view that Peirce’s doctrine will help us understand the cognitive science conception of mental representation today. She explains: I propose to sketch a view of the nature of representation in general that was developed before cognitive science was even a gleam in the eyes of Newell and Simon – the view of Charles Sanders Peirce (von Eckardt 1993, 145).

While von Eckardt concedes that Peirce’s semiotic theory has its weaknesses, “the general outline, if not all the details, of what Peirce has to say about representation... is tacitly assumed by many cognitive scientists.” von Eckardt does not dissent from this consensus on the principal features of Peirce’s doctrine which she regards as “extremely helpful in introducing some order to the rather messy current concept of mental representation” (1993, 145). Indeed, I believe that von Eckardt is correct on both counts—namely, that the triadic account is tacitly assumed by many cognitive scientists and that it is,



Dangerous Meditations 23

therefore, helpful in clarifying the messy state of current theory. Indeed, this judgment is shared by Ramsey who writes: Peirce’s analysis is important for our purposes because, as it turns out, these same ideas serve as the basis for different notions of representation found in cognitive science. In fact, much of what has been written about mental representation over the last thirty years can be viewed as an elaboration on Pierce’s notions of icons, indices and symbols (Ramsey 2007, 22).

Peirce’s triadic conception is obviously just Bechtel’s (1998) model or Danto’s Cartesian triad. Recently, Williams and Colling are explicit: We follow Peirce and a long tradition of subsequent authors in assuming that representation is essentially a triadic relation that exists between: (1) a representational vehicle or set of vehicles; (2) the target of the representation; and (3) the system that uses or interprets the former to coordinate its behaviour with the latter (Williams and Colling 2018, 1946).

These endorsements provide independent confirmation of the source of fundamental problems in philosophy and cognitive science. The irreducibly triadic nature of the sign relation is the recurrent theme among theories of mental representation, but von Eckardt does not see this as evidence of a chronic malaise. In this regard, it is telling that von Eckardt (1993, 32) uses Kosslyn’s work on mental imagery as a prime example of research in cognitive science. In this, too, she is undoubtedly correct, saying “Kosslyn’s work is often regarded as a paradigmatic example of research in the field.” While this seems justified as a sociological generalization, as we will see, the remark takes on a particular significance in light of Pylyshyn’s (1981, 2003) trenchant critiques of the pictorial theory as guilty of the traditional homunculus error. Nevertheless, Williams and Colling (2018, 1946) avow “We join a growing chorus of voices in advancing... an understanding of cognitive representation as iconic” in the sense that representations work because they resemble their objects. However, this view of ideas has long been regarded as untenable. In his Principles, Berkeley famously argued against any supposed resemblance between a mental representation and its object: But say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without the mind, yet there may be things like them whereof they are copies or resemblances, which things exist without the mind, in an unthinking substance. I answer, an idea can be like nothing but an idea; a colour or figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure. If we look but ever so little into our thoughts, we shall find it impossible for us to conceive a likeness except only between our ideas (Berkeley 1734, 27).

24

Chapter One

Nevertheless, theorists today have taken up this challenge as posed by Nelson Goodman’s (1972) famous critique of resemblance as the mechanism of representation. These defences of “Similarity After Goodman” (Decock and Deuven 2011) argue that resemblance may be rescued when understood as an isomorphism. However, whether or not such an objective account of similarity may be formulated so as to be “safe again” for the study of mental representation as Isaac (2013, 704) hopes, such an account cannot exonerate those that are guilty of the seductive error. Thus, Kosslyn’s influential “paradigm,” the subject of Chapter 5, is an iconic, pictorial conception of representation which has been charged with committing “the most ubiquitous and damaging conceptual confusion” (Pylyshyn 1981, 18), namely, confusing the properties of objects with properties of their representations. However, it is no mere mistake and, as we will see, it is not confined to the imagery literature. And it is hardly new. It is just Place’s (1956) diagnosis of the resistance to materialism in theories of consciousness—the Phenomenological Fallacy which is the subject of Chapter 2. Responding to Malebranche in exactly the same terms as Pylyshyn, “Arnauld suggested that we must distinguish the properties of things from properties of their representations” (Schmaltz 2000, 73). As Gaukroger (2017, 114) points out, Arnauld denied that in perception we are aware of a proxy that intervenes between the observer and the object. Arnauld was complaining about Malebranche’s seventeenth century version of Kosslyn’s television screen model and the tripartite conception of ideas as mental entities rather than acts. Arnauld (1683, 66) explains “To say that our ideas... represent to us the things that we conceive and that they are their images, is to say something completely different from saying that pictures represent their originals and are the images of them.” He says to Malebranche “You are not happy with this distinction. Too bad for you” (Schmalz 2000, 73). And too bad for much philosophy and cognitive science today which is committed to a tripartite conception through a notion of intermediary representation which depends on an intelligent Spectator. INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL Symptomatic of traditional tripartite accounts, Bechtel’s (1998) modern account crucially fails to distinguish internal and external representations. Importantly, Bechtel’s conception in this regard is not idiosyncratic, but reflects an almost universal conception in cognitive science. For a significant example, we see this view expressed by Allan Newell who was among founders of AI with Herbert Simon, with whom he enunciated the ‘Physical Symbol System Hypothesis.’4 Newell explained the foundational idea as follows:



Dangerous Meditations 25

The argument is very simple: We see humans using symbols all the time. They use symbol systems like books, they use fish as a symbol for Christianity, so there is a whole range of symbolic activity, and that clearly appears to be essential to the exercise of mind (Newell 1986, 33).

This is a revealing explanation of the symbolic “paradigm” for cognitive science. The examples chosen to illustrate internal mental symbols are precisely the wrong kind to explain what is “essential to the exercise of mind.” Within AI, there has been an independent debate about the classical symbolic “logicist’ view, according to which an abstract formal system gets its meaning from the intended interpretations of the theorist, the designer (Nilsson 1987, 1991). Significantly for our theme throughout, others5 have argued that AI mistakenly adopts a theory of beliefs from logic which is misguided in its conception of the way in which a system gets to relate to the external world in virtue of “observer attribution.”6 Moreover, along these lines as we will see in Chapter 6, Newell’s explanation helps us to understand why Searle’s (1980a) notorious Chinese Room thought-experiment has been so persuasive and so persistent as a critique of AI. Searle correctly captured the conception of symbols universally assumed to be appropriate for computational modeling of the mind in AI and more broadly in cognitive science. As Egan (2018, 248) points out, theories of representation must be naturalistic in a way that “would guarantee that the theory makes no illicit appeal to the very phenomenon—meaning—that it is supposed to explain.” Nevertheless, although the distinction between “original” and “derived” intentionality is commonplace, the assimilation of external and internal representations is, for the most part, unquestioned and implicit—the seductive illusion at the heart of thinking about the mind. For example, choosing almost at random, we see the editors of an anthology on meaning make the usual sweeping generalization. They write by way of introduction “Meaning is everywhere—in our thoughts, in our words, in our actions, in the world” (Campbell, O’Rourke & Shier 2000, 1). Here we see the explicit assimilation of internal and external representations taken to constitute the domain of explananda. As Hopkins (1998, 2) recognizes, the analogies with external symbols such as pictures or words can be more or less subtle. Nevertheless, he admits “even the most sophisticated treatments tend to draw their inspiration from pictures.” Nearly four hundred years ago, Arnauld might be addressing our own theorists: … what has thrown the question of ideas into confusion is the attempt to explain the way in which objects are represented by our ideas by analogy with corporeal things, but there can be no real comparison between bodies and minds on this question (Arnauld 1683, 67).

26

Chapter One

As we will see, Arnauld’s complaint exactly prefigures Pylyshyn’s (1981) criticism of the most common and most serious error in the imagery literature today, namely the idea that images might be depictive or picture-like. The pattern of recurrence is just what we would expect when the special, underlying nature of the error is appreciated. Reliance on the theorist’s intelligence will arise when the phenomena of interest involve a faculty that may be employed in a direct, intuitive manner like comprehending an utterance in one’s native language or looking at a picture. In view of these problems persisting today, we will see that Putnam (1994/1999) returns to Reid’s critique of Hume’s Ideas, rejecting representations as interface between mind and world. Despite Fodor’s (2003) disparagement, this is not the rejection of mental representation as such or a revival of Behaviourism. As Arnauld (1683, 65) explains, “I take the idea of an object and the perception of that object to be the same thing.” As if replying to Fodor, he adds, “I am not denying that there are representations or representative modalities.” Strawson (2006a, 201) draws attention to Arnauld’s “beautifully clear exposition” which he describes as giving “the sense in which it is correct to be a direct realist” – that is, the sense in which “what you now see is a book, and not in any sense a mental intermediary, a representation of a book.” In the same vein, Copenhaver (2004, 62) argues that Reid does not hold the absurd “miracle” view, for she argues that perception may be direct but causally mediated. It is important to recognize that the kind of mediation of concern to Arnauld, Reid and Putnam is not causal mediation (Copenhaver 2004, 72) but rather a conception of representations that require an intelligent observer. The persistence of a tripartite conception means that classical puzzles reemerge today in a revealing new guise we will examine in Chapter 9. It has evidently not been remarked in the contemporary literature, that the modern puzzle of misrepresentation (Dretske 1986, Egan 2014, 2018) is just the notorious Argument from Illusion in support of empiricists’ ‘Ideas’ or ‘sense-data’ which was precisely anticipated by Malebranche.7 Echoing Malebranche, Fodor (2000a, 21) asks how he can be in an unmediated relation to non-existent objects, just as Malebranche (1712, 217) cites “things that do not exist, and that even have never existed” such as a golden mountain. Malebranche’s conclusion, like Fodor’s, is that we must be in a direct relation with something else, that is, an idea, sense datum or representation. This conception of mental states as intermediary objects of perception constitutes the tripartite Cartesian Theater model that we will see in different guises in the following chapters. Notable among these, the modern controversy concerning Disjunctivism to be examined in Chapter 12 is an unacknowledged revival of the Argument from Illusion and the idea that we don’t perceive objects in the world directly but only our own experiences—the ubiquitous idea of a Spectator.



Dangerous Meditations 27

NOTES 1.  See Doyle et al. eds. (2019). 2.  Here, I follow Nadler (1986, 166) in seeing Arnauld as Reid’s “ally in his campaign against the theory of ideas.” 3.  See Nadler (1989, 34, 118, 126), van Cleve (2015, 474). 4.  See Newell and Simon (1976). 5. E.g. Woods (1987), Brian C. Smith (1987), Rosenschein (1985), Birnbaum (1991, 62). 6.  See Hadley (1989, 1995), Brian C. Smith (1991). 7.  See Nadler (1992b, 85).

Chapter Two

Illusionism and The Phenomenological Fallacy

Introspection is unreliable, unnatural and a route to insanity. Immanuel Kant (1798)

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE The subjective experience of phenomenal consciousness is taken to be the paradigmatic manifestation of the notorious homunculus error for which Dennett (1991) coined the term “Cartesian Theater” fallacy. According to this criticism, the conviction that consciousness cannot be explained physically is an intuitively compelling mistake. In this chapter and the next then, we may consider how the fallacy is alleged to arise. Towards this end, it is important to clarify and modify Dennett’s celebrated account which has become perhaps the definitive contemporary analysis but I suggest that it embodies a common misconception. Of particular significance, the correct account of the Cartesian Theater error will permit us to see the hidden commonality with other recalcitrant philosophical controversies. It is of considerable interest that, contrary to the received view, Descartes himself was not guilty of the fallacy for which he has been blamed by generations of teachers and scholars. The question has more than historical, scholarly significance. In an exquisite irony, it is Descartes who exposes the real illusion of the Cartesian Theater. In his physiological writings neglected by philosophers Descartes not only articulated correctly how the homunculus and Theater pseudo-explanation arises, but explained how it is avoided by the abstract encoding of information in the nervous system. Even in the canonical “philosophical” texts, discussing the “substantial union” and in his reply to 29

30

Chapter Two

Arnauld (CSM 2, 160), Descartes gives a strikingly explicit disavowal of “an inner agent who sits in the control room and does all the clever work” (Dennett 2013, 91). Descartes says “I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship” (CSM 2, 56). Thus, repudiating Ryle’s (1949a) famous characterisation of a “ghost in the machine,” Descartes says that he thought he took sufficient care to prevent anyone from inferring that man was merely a spirit that made use of a body. Of course, this conception of a pilot in a vessel is the traditional target for criticism and it is Dennett’s (2013, 91) characterisation of the error. As Descartes clearly understood, the homunculus error is more subtle. These explicit remarks in Descartes’ most well-known texts have evidently been ignored since they are inconsistent with the traditional caricature of Descartes’ doctrine. Descartes’ treatise on vision, the Dioptrics, provides an insightful, essentially correct, analysis of the encoding of signals in the nervous system which serves as a corrective to the widely shared misconception. As we will see in Chapter 10, despite the dominant view that Descartes’ scientific works are obsolete and of interest only to “our forgotten ancestors” (Koyré 1954), Descartes’ physiological theories are exemplary models of how the homunculus must be avoided in practice. WHO WATCHES THE SCREEN? On Dennett’s (2013, 91) analysis, the problem arises for “Any theory that posit... a central homunculus,” that is, an intelligent inner agent. Dennett (2011) illustrates this conception in engaging presentations with a clip from the movie Men in Black. A robot is opened to reveal a little person who is the inner intelligent receiver of information and controller of behaviour. Dennett suggests that such an arrangement is possible in principle, but just wrong as a matter of fact about how we work. However, the mistake would not be so seductive if it were so obvious and this formulation permits theorists who make the mistake to proclaim their innocence. For example, Kosslyn (1983, 25) addresses the problem of “who watches the screen” and says “We know for a fact that computers work without little men inside their heads.” However, a computer program does not avoid the notorious question-begging unless it is actually a working model of the phenomenon in which the “loan on intelligence” has been fully repaid. Indeed, we will see that the problem is familiar in AI research as the error of “Wishful Mnemonics” (McDermott 1981) which is the illusion that a computer program works only because the programmer, the external Spectator, can see the solution. Thus, Kosslyn’s protest that there is no homunculus within his model is justified but, in keeping with the common misconception, he is looking in the wrong place. That is, the error arises



Illusionism and The Phenomenological Fallacy 31

not from what is hidden inside the model but rather from what is unnoticed outside, that is, ourselves as intelligent “readers” or perceivers. As Descartes explains, the problem arises from postulating internal representations like external ones such as pictures which require eyes to see them. The homunculus problem arises not from something included but from something that is omitted in the sense that a model may be incomplete and can’t work unless an intelligent agent is added to the system. The key insight is that the “clever work” is being done by the theorist. It is ironic that Descartes’ (CSM 1, 167) account of the problem was essentially U.T. Place’s characterisation of the “Phenomenological Fallacy” in his landmark manifesto for materialism, an explicit exposé of the Spectator error: … the mistake of supposing that when the subject describes his experience, when he describes how things look, sound, smell, taste, or feel to him, he is describing the literal properties of objects and events on a peculiar sort of internal cinema or television screen, usually referred to in the modern psychological literature as the ‘phenomenal field’ (Place 1956, 49).

Dennett (2016, 70) reminds us that his campaign against the Cartesian Theater was anticipated by Place but we see that Place does not argue for the “illusion of phenomenality,” the denial of phenomenal consciousness which Strawson (2019, 10) calls Dennett’s “Very Large Mistake.” Frankish (2016, 12) makes the same misattribution suggesting that Place “denied phenomenal properties.” On the contrary, the strength of Place’s account is his insight that whatever subjects say about their own subjective experience is compatible with whatever the scientist may say. This is precisely the point which Strawson (2021, 231) has insisted upon in arguing for “real Materialism” which “doesn’t have the consequence that ordinary people are wrong about what conscious experiences are.” When the aetiology of the Theater error is properly understood as arising from the unwitting contribution of the theorist, it becomes clear that it may take different forms in different domains. For example, Chomsky (1962, 528) remarks that a grammar may produce the illusion of explanatory completeness, but in fact have “serious limitations so far as linguistic science is concerned” because the success of the grammar depends on being “paired with an intelligent and comprehending reader.” This is a kind of cheating by the theorist who is tacitly doing the work of the theory—precisely Descartes’ insight and the central theme of this book. Chomsky suggests that the reliance on the reader’s intelligence is so commonplace that it may be easily overlooked. Indeed, it is difficult to notice, somewhat like looking for one’s spectacles while wearing them. That is, the reliance on the theorist’s intelligence arises in those special cases when the psychological faculty to be explained is one that we can use

32

Chapter Two

intuitively to understand the theory, such as language or vision. In such cases, the operation of our perceptual systems is automatic and “mandatory” in Fodor’s (1983) sense that we can’t help understanding utterances or seeing objects. By contrast, our theories about the non-mental world are not prone to the risk that we will understand them in a special, inappropriate sense as meaningful rather than as explanatory. THE EXTERNAL SPECTATOR In light of the foregoing analysis, we may consider the significance of an apparently obscure or irrelevant feature of one of Descartes’ anatomical illustrations. The illicit reliance on the intelligence of an external spectator appears to be captured in Descartes’ illustration of the eye in his Dioptrics (CSM 1, 171) which includes a little man looking at the back of the retina. While the bearded figure may be an irrelevant ornament, I suggest that the illustration is plausibly understood as capturing the idea that a representation appears to be a picture only for an intelligent, external observer.1 The little man is outside the system looking at the retina, just like us. Indeed, the modern pictorial theory of imagery posits “depictive” representations on the retina and also on the visual cortex of the brain. Descartes’ illustration is a caricature of Kosslyn’s (1983) television screen metaphor (Figure 2.1). In view of Descartes’ (CSM 1, 165, 167) detailed discussion of abstract encoding by the nervous system and the real source of the homunculus error, his illustration of an external Spectator is an apt emblem for this book. In his New Theory of Vision, Berkeley captured the insight into the error exactly as illustrated by Descartes: … what greatly contributes to make us mistake in this matter is that when we think of the pictures in the fund of the eye, we imagine ourselves looking on the fund of another’s eye, or another looking on the fund of our own eye, and beholding the pictures painted thereon (Berkeley 1709, §116).

ILLUSIONS AS STAGE MAGIC Dennett (2016, 65, 72) realizes that his efforts have failed to persuade his critics. He writes, “the persuasive imagery of the Cartesian Theater keeps coming back to haunt us—laypeople and scientists alike” (1991, 107). However, I suggest that Dennett’s own account is evidently a source of the ongoing controversy—his diagnosis of the illusion and consequently his diagnosis of his critics. Dennett (2005, 22) acknowledges that he had under-

Figure 2.1.  Retinal image. Descartes, René 1637. La Dioptrique. p. 116. Œuvres de Descartes. (1966). Vol. 6, Edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. Paris: J. Vrin.

34

Chapter Two

estimated the “potency of the visceral resistance” but says that “it is simply a mistake” (Dennett 2001, 3). However, the very persistence and potency of the visceral resistance suggest that it is not simply a mistake, nor is it plausibly regarded as “supported by tradition and nothing else” (2005, 16)—the same diagnosis by Rorty (1979) of the “unfortunate mistake” of an inner observer. Rather, it is evident from the complaints by Dennett’s critics that the motivation is a deeper one whose aetiology we may understand. As Kant (1781, 386) put it, these are not mere errors “in which a bungler might be entangled” but rather, a “natural and unavoidable illusion.” Dennett (2016, 65) gives grounds for his critics’ harsh responses because, like Frankish (2016), he says he wants to discount the “illusion of phenomenality” by analogy with the effect of stage illusionists who “specialize in provoking false but passionately held beliefs in things that they seemed to see but didn’t see” (Dennett 2016, 72; emphasis added). However, the analogy is misleading in a revealing way precisely because, after all, in a literal sense, the victims of stage magic do see what they imagine they see. It’s just that they don’t know how to explain it. What they see appears to be contrary to any conceivable explanation. Indeed, by contrast with Dennett’s way of putting it, we often say in such cases that we can’t believe our own eyes. The analogy backfires because it is in keeping with Dennett’s apparent denial of phenomenal experience, as his critics charge. The so-called “illusions” of stage magic are more like the deceptive appearances in mirages and bent sticks in water, often mistakenly assimilated to genuine perceptual or cognitive illusions.2 Frankish (2016, 18), too, suggests that the “illusion” of phenomenality is analogous to the sleight-of-hand in a stage magician’s conjuring trick, or like the misleading appearance of the “real” Penrose Triangle (Gregory 1968) when seen from a certain point (Figure. 2.2). However, just like mirages and bent sticks in water, these cases are not perceptual or cognitive illusions but deceptive appearances. In this respect, real stage performers are quite different from Mandrake the Magician, the comic character who creates actual hallucinations. In the case of stage magic, like mirages and the “real” Penrose Triangle, it is not the mind but the world or the illusionist that deceives us. By contrast, in the case of genuine perceptual illusions such as the Müller-Lyer lines, in a certain sense, we deceive ourselves. Like short-sightedness, the causes of blurriness are in us and not in the world. The difference is significant since the Cartesian Theater error is better understood as a kind of self-deception, less like stage magic and more like genuine perceptual and cognitive illusions familiar in psychology text-books. Above all, it is significant that this analysis does not deny the phenomenology or reality of the subjective experience that Dennett’s critics insist upon.



Illusionism and The Phenomenological Fallacy 35

Figure 2.2.  Penrose Triangle. Permission received from author K. Frankish and also JCS in email Monday 23 January, 2023 [Graham Horswell, Managing Editor, Imprint Academic: .

ATOMS AND THE VOID The qualitative character of this subjective experience is the basis for Thomas Nagel’s (1974, 437) famous remark “Consciousness is what makes the mindbody problem really intractable.” He adds, “It is useless to base the defense of materialism on any analysis of mental phenomena that fails to deal explicitly with their subjective character.” Nagel is referring to the so-called “Hard Problem” according to which the subjective, phenomenal aspect of consciousness appears to be fundamentally inexplicable by any materialist or physicalist account. Thus, despite its apparent virtues from a broadly explanatory scientific point of view, Materialism has had to confront influential challenges arising from introspective, first-person “problem intuitions” articulated in Chalmers’ (1996) Conceivability Argument and Jackson’s (1982) Knowledge Argument. These arguments purport to demonstrate that even a complete physical science must leave consciousness unexplained. This puzzle of an emergent consciousness has been described as The Astonishing Hypothesis (Crick 1994) that “boggles the human mind” when we try to get an “imaginative grip on the supposed move from the non-experiential to the experiential” (Strawson 2006a, 15). The idea is captured evocatively by McGinn’s (1989) question “How can technicolour phenomenology arise from soggy grey matter?” In the 17th Century, Robert Boyle wrote in the same terms, asking how “this seemingly rude lump of soft matter” that looks “almost like so much custard” can be responsible for the “strange things performed partly in it, and partly by the animal spirits that it produces.”3 Fodor (2002) captures this source of puzzlement succinctly saying, “details aside, Lucretius had things about right. What there really is is

36

Chapter Two

atoms-and-the-void, and there’s really nothing else.” The “Hard Problem” is to explain how these purely physical processes give rise to subjective experience, the problem of bridging the so-called “explanatory gap” (Levine 1983, 2001). THE DEEPEST WOO-WOO The mind-boggling puzzlement must be acknowledged but it can be plausibly shown to arise from a certain kind of error. Along the lines of Place’s diagnosis, Danto (1978) suggested that the implausibility of materialism turns on a failure to appreciate the fundamental distinction between what a thought is and what a thought is of. It’s the same mistake by pictorial theories of imagery that draw conclusions about what a mental representation is from what it is about. In this way, the puzzle of consciousness arises specifically from an “understanding of ourselves” (Nagel 2012, 23) and the intelligibility of “obvious” facts seemingly denied by materialism. Strawson asks “How could anybody ever have been led to do something so silly as to deny the existence of consciousness, the only general thing we know for certain to exist?” Strawson (2019, 29) suggests that we still lack a satisfactory explanation of “The Denial” and “how these mistakes could have been made.” Towards answering this question, we note that the compelling intuitions are given clear expression by Strawson (2006, 2019) and Searle (1992) in response to Dennett’s (1991, 2016, 2017a) apparent denial of subjective phenomenality. Dennett’s “Strong Illusionism” invites the scorn of these critics since Strawson (2006, 2008, 8) holds materialist philosophers to be guilty of “the silliest view ever held by any human being,” no less. He construes the Lucretian world-view of Dennett and others as a grievous error, “the strangest thing that has ever happened in the whole history of human thought” and “the deepest woo-woo of the human mind” (Strawson 2006b, 5,6). Searle, too, ridicules materialists such as Dennett who are said to deny the most obvious reality of their own experience. He parodies Dennett’s (1991) title Consciousness Explained as Consciousness Denied. Searle (1997, 99) says Dennett “denies the existence of the data.” Materialists such as Armstrong (1968, 1980) and Dennett “pretend to think that consciousness exists, but in fact they end up denying its existence” (Searle 1992, 7). Searle (2002, 3, 246, 247) charges materialists with making “stunning mistakes” and “saying things that are obviously false.” He writes acidly “I regard Dennett’s denial of the very existence of consciousness not as a new discovery or even as a serious possibility but rather as a form of “intellectual pathology” (1997, 112). There is, indeed, such a pathology—Cotard’s Syndrome—whose



Illusionism and The Phenomenological Fallacy 37

sufferers profess to deny their own existence. Cotard aptly described the delusion in 1880 as le délire de negation. In similar terms Strawson (2019) refers to the preposterous “affliction of philosophers” in their “race to folly.” Indeed, if Strawson and Searle are right, Dennett has managed an achievement that Descartes showed to be impossible, denying his own consciousness. Dennett’s failure to be convincing is quite unlike the usual disagreements in which philosophers fail to persuade each other. I suggest that the harsh responses of his critics are not merely stylistic, rhetorical excess, but an important clue to the source of the conflicting viewpoints. We need to answer Strawson’s (2019, 29) question asking how anybody could deny the only thing we know for certain. Of course, the most famous expression of this certainty despite attempted denial is Descartes’ Cogito argument which involves precisely the kind of “problem report” cited by Chalmers (2018, 12) who echoes the Meditations asserting “I can’t see how consciousness could be physical.” Accordingly, in Chapter 4 I suggest that, unsurprisingly, the two meta-problems are the same. That is, explaining why the problem of consciousness is so hard is the same problem as explaining why Descartes’ Cogito has been so elusive. Specifically, I will suggest that, since Descartes’ puzzlement is our own, an appreciation of the logic of the Cogito shows how to reconcile the private certainty of conscious experience with a naturalistic materialism, or how to reconcile Strawson and Searle with Dennett. THE ARMSTRONG GAMBIT The entire edifice of a materialist natural science is supposed to be challenged by the “facts” about ourselves known in the single case of our own introspections. Nagel (2012, 3) considers that conscious experience requires us to re-consider “our understanding of the entire cosmos and its history” on the grounds that “even the most fully developed physics” (2012, 14) cannot “offer a plausible picture of how we fit into the world” (2012, 25). Chalmers (1996, xi), too, considers consciousness to be “the largest outstanding obstacle in our quest for a scientific understanding of the universe” and, indeed, the “irreducibly subjective character” of appearances threatens to “unravel the entire naturalistic world picture” (Nagel 2012, 35). However, these are extravagant conclusions to draw from a problem that might permit a more modest solution in view of the status of the crucial facts as first-person, introspective intuitions. This special “privileged access” is, of course, what Descartes (CSM 2, 22,3) had in mind in his Meditations saying “I can achieve an easier and more evident perception of my own mind than of anything else.” Indeed, we will see that the logic of Descartes’ Cogito explains its incorrigible certainty

38

Chapter Two

but also why it has no metaphysical or ontological consequences. Despite the undoubted limitations of our current scientific knowledge emphasized by Chomsky (2009), Stoljar (2006) and Strawson (2019), it remains reasonable to wonder about the status and credentials of introspective experience as grounds for doubting the adequacy of what we currently have good reason to believe about the world. That is, even if we no longer have a clear notion of matter since Newton, as Chomsky (2009) points out, our indubitable introspections are not good grounds for thinking that minds are an intractable mystery that must await a future unification of mind and matter. In this vein, Dennett (2001) has mocked Chalmers’ pretensions to revolutionizing modern science from the armchair by proving a priori a metaphysical fact that forces a revolution in the sciences. Unlike historical cases of “Hard” problems and explanatory “gaps” (Chomsky 2009) that resisted reduction to available scientific understanding, the idea that the private certainty of conscious experience has such consequences inevitably recalls David Hume’s remarks in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our own favour does indeed present it on all occasions. (Hume 1779/1991, 200)

In this context, too, there are grounds to share Hume’s conclusion that “sound philosophy ought carefully to guard against so natural an illusion.” The private certainty of conscious experience has always been the source of resistance to materialism even among advocates in its heyday during the 1960s. For example, Nagel (1965) explained that he had “always found physicalism extremely repellent” even though at that time he believed that the thesis is true. Dennett (2005, 128) reports the same response to his materialism: “But Dan, your view is so counterintuitive!” He replies “No kidding. That’s the whole point.” In other words, ironically, the very implausibility of a certain doctrine may be strong evidence in its favour since, on an appropriate model, it is just what we would expect if the doctrine were true! I will refer to this general approach to the mind-body problem as the “Armstrong Gambit.” David Armstrong (1973a, 190) suggested that the case for materialism would be greatly strengthened by an independently plausible materialist account of why the doctrine seems introspectively implausible. Such an account would address the demand by Strawson and Nagel (1974, 437), namely, “If physicalism is to be defended, the phenomenological features must themselves be given a physical account.”



Illusionism and The Phenomenological Fallacy 39

INVESTIGATIONAL ASYMMETRY Indeed, along these lines, Chalmers’ (2018, 20) formulation of the “metaproblem” suggests “It may help to think of building a robot” which perceives the world and acts on it. Certain mechanisms monitoring its own states might generate something like the key subjective intuitions. We would have a representational explanation that allows us to explain the crucial intuitions in terms of internal states or models that represent the subject itself with certain properties (Chalmers 2018, 16). Indeed, just such an account of introspective ‘mind-body perplexities’ was proposed by Gunderson (1970). He suggested that any physical perceiving or scanning device must have an inherent anomaly in relation to itself. This “investigational asymmetry” means it could not include itself in the complete inventory of other physical things in the world—the source of the ontologically benign dualist intuitions or characteristic mind-body perplexity. The same point was made by Wittgenstein (1922) in his Tractatus §5.632 where he remarks “The subject does not belong to the world; rather it is a limit of the world.” Strawson (2017, 1) construes this remark in an implausibly literal sense. Reading Wittgenstein’s words as “allegation of mystery” Strawson says “This gets the world and the subject wrong. As a thinking human subject of experience one is wholly in the world, a product of evolution by natural selection.” Of course. However, Strawson appears to miss the point of Wittgenstein’s figurative remark which is cited in Gunderson’s (1970) explanation of ‘Asymmetries and Mind-Body Perplexities.’ Gunderson illustrates his analysis with Wittgenstein’s analogy of the “My Eyes Problem” which is that “really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is being seen by an eye” (Tractatus §5.5633). Far from being an “allegation of mystery,” this explains the logic and banality of the idea that we seem not to belong in the world. The insight is confirmed with Gunderson’s second analogy of the periscope which can’t locate itself in its own cross-hairs. Strawson’s misreading of Wittgenstein is significant because it is consistent with neglecting the relevance of the first-person status of phenomenal experience and appealing instead to the properties of physical “stuff.” Indeed, Strawson (2006a, 216) approvingly quotes Desmond Clarke (2003), but Clarke explains that Descartes’ dualism arose from the gap between his science and “the descriptions of our mental lives that we formulate from the first-person perspective of our own thinking.” It is precisely in this first-person framework that Gunderson offers his analogy of the “self-scanning scanner” which suggests an empirical account of the sort Chalmers (2018, 10) envisages that provides “mechanisms that underlie our self-models” and our “problem reports.” Chalmers (2018, 20) cites Hofstadter’s (2007) “strange loops” taken to generate “a sort of illusionism

40

Chapter Two

based on self-models and self-reference.” This answer to the meta-problem of consciousness would involve a physical or functional account capturing how the problem intuitions arise (Chalmers 2018, 16). Here, as in mathematics and generative linguistics, the intuitions are not being denied but taken to constitute the data to be explained by an objective theory of sub-personal, tacit knowledge in Chomsky’s (1965) sense. I take this to be the strength of such a “weak” illusionist approach which explains how the reality of personal phenomenology is created. Indeed, along these lines, according to Chalmers’ (2018, 9) own earlier view, “almost any intelligent machine would say that it is conscious and would be puzzled about consciousness.” Nevertheless, today Chalmers rejects such a solution to the Hard Problem on the grounds that he now believes consciousness is real. However, for the reasons just indicated, the reality of consciousness is not being denied on this kind of account and my suggestion is that Chalmers was right the first time. An intelligent computer would conclude that it’s not one. That is, a sophisticated AI program would be a dualist. It would require more sophistication for it to become a materialist. OTHER MINDS: BLADE RUNNER This insight about computers and the deep implausibility of materialism is dramatized in Ridley Scott’s futuristic movie Blade Runner. The hero, Deckard, is a bounty hunter whose job is to terminate rogue humanoid robots, the so-called ‘Replicants’ which are indistinguishable from humans except for responses on a subtle psychological test. In a touching scene, Deckard’s lover learns that all her childhood memories have been artificially programmed and, therefore, she is herself a product of the robot engineering corporation she works for. The fact that she finds the discovery painful captures a sentiment we recognize. The woman’s reaction is just our own discomfort with materialism. After learning of her own status, the woman asks Deckard whether he had ever taken the diagnostic test himself. He doesn’t answer, but the question lingers. At the end of the movie, just as Deckard prepares to escape with his Replicant lover from their pursuers, a clue informs him that his dreams are also known to others in the engineering corporation. He, and we the viewers, come to realize that he must be a Replicant too. He reflects momentarily on this revelation but escapes to live happily ever after with his Replicant girlfriend. And why not? Of course, if materialism is correct, their situation is our own. The movie poses precisely the same questions in the philosophical literature today. Specifically, the movie suggests an answer to Levine’s “open question”:



Illusionism and The Phenomenological Fallacy 41

Suppose we are confronted with an alien species or an advanced robot. We know everything there is to know about its internal workings. It turns out that its functional organization is, down to a fairly low level of implementation, very much like our own, though the physical mechanisms are different. Now we ask, is it conscious? And, if so, is what it is like for this creature to see red the same as what it is like for us? (Levine 2007, 148)

Levine (2007, 149) suggests that the question remains open since “we haven’t a clue how to go about determining” the fact. Indeed, this question is at the heart of the immense literature on consciousness concerning the apparently intractable puzzle of phenomenal experience. However, Levine’s agnosticism about whether another kind of creature might be conscious is misleading. It’s clear from the vast literature that we don’t feel that Levine’s question about aliens or robots arises in the same way for human beings. But, of course, we are in exactly the same situation regarding the key intuitions in relation to other people as we are to other creatures or machines. That is, we have no more access to the inner lives of other people than we do to the inner lives of aliens or robots. On all accounts, the special evidence of phenomenal experience is only available in the first-person, introspective case. As Strawson (2019, 13) explains, the felt intrinsic qualitative character of experience is private “in the entirely straightforward sense that it is directly known only to the creature that has it when it has it.” For example, Chalmers (1996, 101,2) says “My knowledge of consciousness in the first instance, comes from my own case, not from any external observation. It is my first-person experience of consciousness that forces the problem on me.” THE CONCEIVABILITY OF ZOMBIES If we take seriously this essentially first-person, subjective status of the key evidence, the symmetry in our relation to robots, aliens and other people invites the question: Why don’t we extend the same courtesy to them that we extend to other human beings? Chalmers’ (1996) argument for the conceivability of Zombies—beings physically identical to ourselves but lacking phenomenal consciousness—simply invites the question of how we know that other normal human beings have the subjective, phenomenal states that we only know in our own introspection. That is, how do we know that everyone else is not a Zombie? It’s no answer to protest that other human beings are just like ourselves in every physical respect because that’s precisely the assumption about Zombies. This way of framing the problem is the traditional “Problem of Other Minds” that has become unfashionable since the 1960s. However, the issue has been revived by Avramides (2001) and is central to

42

Chapter Two

the argument in this chapter. Indeed, I will suggest that the most fundamental puzzle of consciousness is not the mind–body problem as such but rather the problem of other minds, that is, the predicament described by Gunderson (1970) as an “investigational asymmetry” which is the source of our compelling mind-body intuitions. The fundamental divide is not between mind and matter but between my mind and everything else. The conceivability of Zombies has become one of the principal grounds for challenging materialism.4 We seem able to imagine soggy grey matter without technicolour phenomenology. This intuition is the essence of Chalmers’ (1996) Conceivability Argument which proposes that some beings might be physically identical to humans but lacking consciousness. In the philosophical jargon, there is a modal inference from conceivability to metaphysical possibility (Chalmers 1996, 2002). Chalmers asks, in our own case, “Why do not these processes take place ‘in the dark,’ without any accompanying states of experience?” If Zombies are conceivable, then physicalism must be false. Kirk (2005, 6) argues that “zombies are not even conceivable in any useful sense” and Stalnaker (2007, 488), too, denies that we can really conceive of a zombie world on the grounds that our conception might be based on ignorant or mistaken empirical assumptions. However, misconceptions are still conceptions whose structure we might understand. It seems difficult to deny the widely shared intuitions that constitute the problem. It is undeniable that we are capable of imagining something when we are imagining a zombie world physically identical to our own except for the absence of consciousness. Lycan (2007, 476,7) acknowledges, “To be blunt, I believe that zombie worlds are perfectly conceivable, and not in any deflated sense.” As Kirk (2005, 7) says, “the zombie idea reflects misconceptions which must be exposed if we are to understand the nature of phenomenal consciousness.” In this regard, it is worth remarking upon the ubiquitous metaphors which are intended to capture the key intuition. The idea that physical processes might occur “in the dark” is suggestive only because it relies on imagining that we are external observers looking at the mental processes and can’t see anything. Kirk (2005, 3) reports Iris Murdoch’s apt description of what we suppose when we imagine a zombie as a being for which “all is silent and dark within.” The same image is in Levine’s (2006, 197) question: How, with the causal materials at hand, do we turn the lights on? These metaphors are not irrelevant figures of speech but rather they are revealing expressions of Place’s (1956) Phenomenological Fallacy according to which we are Spectators of a screen in the theater, albeit in this case with the lights out and the projector off. In this way, the metaphor absurdly suggests that we might be able to imagine what it’s like for it not to be like anything. The conceivability of Zombies is said to follow from the fact that truths about consciousness “do not just fall out of the facts about the structure and



Illusionism and The Phenomenological Fallacy 43

functioning of neural processes” (Chalmers 1997, 13). That is, the truth of subjective experience is not deducible by a priori reasoning from the objective physical facts (Chalmers 2007, 168). Despite the persuasiveness of this argument, Loar (1999) asks how it has managed to break out of the circle of purely conceptual truths. More fundamentally however, the failure of deducibility follows trivially from the logical difference between first-person, essentially indexical propositions (Perry 1979) and third-person truths about physical facts, the “view from nowhere” (Nagel 1986). There is a crucial ambiguity in referring to the “truths” of subjective experience according to which we may mean our own, first-person phenomenology or someone else’s subjective experience. However, the failure of deducibility is only in relation to the first-person, introspective case since, as Dennett (1991) has argued, “heterophenomenology” in the case of others’ experience is not problematic in the same way. This was the essence of Wittgenstein’s (1953) “private language” argument in his Philosophical Investigations §244-271 according to which first-person statements of pain, for example, are merely evincing of pain behaviour like saying “ouch” and, therefore, not properly descriptive propositions at all. We see the relevance of Wittgenstein’s remarks to Chalmers’ metaphor at §302: “If one has to imagine someone else’s pain on the model of one’s own, this is none too easy a thing to do: for I have to imagine pain which I do not feel on the model of the pain which I do feel.” Chalmers’ Conceivability Argument invites us to conceive the opposite case in which I have to imagine “what it’s like” when it’s not like anything at all. In Chalmers’ (1996, 95) paradoxical conception, “There will be no phenomenal feel. There is nothing it is like to be a zombie.” Of course, this is anomalous because we may ask: How could we know? Indeed, Chalmers even concedes that a zombie must share our first-person intuitions. Chalmers (1996, 101) acknowledges that “Our grounds for belief in consciousness derive solely from our own experience of it.” Strictly speaking this means that we only have grounds for believing in consciousness in our own case. Wittgenstein (1958, 53) recognized that the problem arises from a tacit assumption that someone else’s thought is imagined as “an object, say, in his head, or in him.” He says the case is analogous to that “when one couldn’t know whether the other man had a gold tooth in his mouth because he had his mouth shut?” Wittgenstein explains: The idea is that the same object may be before his eyes and mine, but that I can’t stick my head into his (or my mind into his, which comes to the same) so that the real and immediate object of his vision becomes the real and immediate object of my vision too. (Wittgenstein 1958, 61).

We are reminded of Descartes’ little bearded Spectator of another person’s retina and Berkeley’s description that “we imagine ourselves looking on the

44

Chapter Two

fund of another’s eye.” In the same vein, Locke (1689, 389) reflects on qualia and the conceivability of inverted spectra which he says “could never be known: because one Man’s Mind could not pass into another Man’s Body, to perceive, what Appearances were produced by those Organs.” The compelling idea is seen in the note by a young medical intern who wrote the following entry in the hospital clinic log-book: “The patient presented complaining of ringing in the ears; upon examination, no ringing was heard.” DENNETT AS EVIL DEMON Place’s idea that we imagine ourselves to be spectators of an internal screen is a version of Rosenthal’s (2005) Higher Order Thought (HOT) analysis of consciousness. On this diagnosis, a mental state’s being conscious consists simply in its being the intentional content of a higher-order thought. On this account, phenomenality is not an illusion, the Very Large Mistake seemingly endorsed by Dennett. However, Dennett’s position is unclear because he equivocates between denying phenomenal experience and denying implausible explanatory theories of phenomenal experience. I will suggest that Dennett’s position may be charitably and more plausibly re-constructed on the latter conception as “Weak Illusionism” which does not deny that phenomenal consciousness exists but only that some of our metaphysical and explanatory intuitions are false (Chalmers’ 2018, 43). Dennett explicitly addressed the charge of denialism in his Consciousness Explained (1991, 45) where he parodied critics who say “Dennett doesn’t think there are any pains or aromas or daydreams.” More recently, in response to the same charge, Dennett (2015, 1) complains “In a better world, the principle of charity would set in and they would realize that I probably had something less daft in mind.” Nevertheless, with some justice Strawson (2019, 33) continues to include Dennett among philosophers who deny the existence of consciousness while also “denying that he is a Denier.” Dennett (1995) invites just this “daft” attribution in places where he refers to the intrinsic, felt content of subjective states, asking “How could anyone deny that!? Just watch.” We saw that Dennett endorses “Strong Illusionism” which denies the undeniable. Furthermore, to explain his critics’ obduracy and the target of his Illusionism, Dennett (2016, 67) denies what he calls philosophers’ “most undeniable intuitions about consciousness,” namely, their seemingly unshakeable certainty: “I am assured by some philosophers that their intuition here is invulnerable bedrock, an insight so obvious and undeniable that no argument could make it tremble, let alone shatter it” (2013, 312). Presumably unintended, this is an almost verbatim re-statement of Descartes’ invulnerable



Illusionism and The Phenomenological Fallacy 45

bedrock, the indubitability that withstands efforts of the arch-illusionist, the malin génie “who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me” (CSM 2, 17). Dennett (2016, 67) suggests that we might even eliminate the very “appearance” of phenomenality as an illusion since “You can’t just declare, as a first principle, that this is impossible.” Of course, it is exactly as a first principle that Descartes declared that it is impossible to deny phenomenality and that he must accept the certainty of the Cogito despite “the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics” (CSM 1, 127). In such exchanges between Dennett and his critics, we see a re-enactment of the Meditations with Dennett playing the Evil Demon. Echoing Descartes, Searle says phenomenality can’t be a mistake because “If it seems to me exactly as if I am having conscious experiences, then I am having conscious experiences.” Searle (1997, 112) rejects Illusionism on the grounds that you can’t disprove the reality of conscious experience because “where consciousness is concerned the existence of the appearance is the reality.” Chalmers (2018), too, rejects Illusionism because he believes consciousness is real. However, it is possible to hold that consciousness is real in the fullest appropriate sense and also to be an Illusionist in the ‘weak’ sense. Loar (1990, 608) explains “we can have it both ways,” since the “raw intuition” of phenomenal experience need not be denied, but such an epistemic or conceptual phenomenon ought not to have metaphysical consequences. Place (1956, 50) made the same point, noting that, once we rid ourselves of the phenomenological fallacy, “we realize that there is nothing that the introspecting subject says about his consciousness which is inconsistent with anything the physiologist might want to say about the brain processes.” On this view, it is possible to be what Strawson (2021) calls a “real realist” about experiential what-it’s-likeness by taking consciousness to be a special kind of introspective mental state. This is not a denialism or eliminativism. On Place’s account, it is correct to say with Strawson that phenomenal experience “certainly exists” but there is no longer any puzzle in principle about explaining its material existence or its evolutionary emergence any more than there is about explaining language, vision or any other complex cognitive function. WEAK ILLUSIONISM These matters are illuminated by considering Dennett’s (2013, 312) significantly different formulations in which he suggests that the intuitions that “must be abandoned” are not those concerning phenomenal experiences but our theoretical judgments or explanatory claims. Dennett’s references to “impoverished imagination” and to deep convictions overturned in

46

Chapter Two

scientific revolutions are not appropriate for first person phenomenal experience. Rather, this kind of “illusionism” is apt to characterize certain familiar errors or misconceptions. For example, Dennett cites the naïve conviction that the earth stands still from which we learn that appearances can be deceiving. Dennett (2005, 23) places confidence in an open-minded scientific rationality that will eventually overcome susceptibility to such intuitions that he predicts will pass in time. Dennett (2005, 23) says “We’ve seen this happen before” as with resistance to Copernicanism. However, the geocentric convictions being overturned in that case are not the appearances themselves but only our explanation of them. Contrary to Dennett’s suggestion, there is even less reason to expect the intuitions of phenomenal experience to “pass in time.” The comparison with discarded scientific beliefs suggests that Dennett misses the nature and force of the recalcitrant intuitions concerning consciousness. Even in Dennett’s own example, it’s clear that the illusion that the sun rises and sets persists after we learn the truth. Likewise, nobody has stopped suffering from the Müller-Lyer illusion after measuring the lines. Homilies on the history of science will not persuade anyone that they are mistaken about their own consciousness. Accordingly, instead of denying the undeniable, the intuitions that must be abandoned are our theoretical intuitions and Dennett’s position is better re-formulated as “Weak Illusionism” according to which phenomenal consciousness exists but some of our metaphysical and explanatory intuitions are “illusions.” Indeed, in this vein Dennett (1991, 96) acknowledges that, although we are not authoritative about what is happening in us, we are authoritative about what seems to be happening, “and we are giving you total, dictatorial authority over the account of how it seems to you about what it is like to be you.” Dennett’s (1991, 98) “heterophenomenology” provides “a neutral portrayal of exactly what it is like to be that subject.” Dennett (1991, 96) insists that consciousness is not being denied on this account because the subjective first-person point of view is “granted constitutive authority” so long as “you avoid presumptuous theorizing about the causes or the metaphysical status of the items you report.” This is, indeed, the Weak Illusionist position of Place and others that I have been recommending. Accordingly, Dennett asks “What more could you want?” As Dennett implies, this should end the debate by giving Searle and Strawson exactly what they demand. However, as we will see presently, the problem is that critics do indeed want more, but it is something no theory can give. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that, despite these formulations, the complaint of denialism still has some force. What Dennett gives with one hand he takes away with the other. Dennett (2017b) says “the subjectivity of experience is real” and “it is not that consciousness doesn’t exist but that



Illusionism and The Phenomenological Fallacy 47

it isn’t what you probably think it is.” That is, instead of saying “Xs don’t exist!” we should say “Xs are real; they just aren’t what you think they are” (2018, 221). Of course, in this manner we might properly say “it’s not that electrons don’t exist but they just aren’t what you think they are, that is, little charged particles in orbit around the nucleus.” However, in such cases it must be acknowledged that the accusation of denialism is justified. After all, one can also properly say electrons, as J.J. Thomson originally conceived them in 1897, don’t exist. In the same way, following Dennett’s formula, we might say “witches aren’t what you think they are (that is, women with evil magic powers)” but this is precisely to say witches don’t exist. The issue is partly terminological and turns on how essential we consider the properties in question. Dennett and his critics are talking past one another. Following Place (1956) and Loar (1990, 608), we can satisfy Searle and Strawson by fully acknowledging the reality of first-person phenomenal experience which is exactly what we think it is, and at the same time hold that this is compatible with materialism. In this way, the Weak Illusionist response recalls Bertrand Russell’s quip about the reality of free will in the light of determinism: It’s not that you don’t make real choices, it’s just that your choices are determined. Likewise, it’s not that you don’t really have subjective experiences, it’s just that they are physical processes. NOTES 1.  There appears to be no explicit discussion of this feature of the illustration by Descartes or commentators. I am indebted to Stephen Gaukroger and Dominique Raynaud for insightful remarks on this issue. 2.  See Gregory (1997), van Cleve (2015, 78). 3.  The Christian Virtuoso 1772 quoted in Sutton (1998, 119). 4.  See Levine (2001, 79), Yablo (1999, 455).

Chapter Three

What It’s Like: Conscious Experience Itself

A PINCH AND A SHARP KICK Along the lines of the previous chapter, the reality of phenomenal experience and the anti-physicalist intuition may be accepted and it may be acknowledged that there is indeed an epistemic gap between the physical and phenomenal but there is no ontological gap. In this chapter, then, we may consider the nature and source of this epistemic gap. A form of Materialism taking this approach is the Phenomenal Concept Strategy1 according to which the explanatory gap arises from the special ways in which we conceive of our own phenomenal states. In the spirit of the Armstrong Gambit, this approach involves “a purely psychological explanation of the fact that we cannot see a priori that a certain phenomenal concept and a certain physical concept are co-referential” (Díaz-León 2010, 937). However, the normal model for establishing external reference seems unable to serve for inner reference in the same way. Chalmers (2004, 276) suggests “Something unusual is going on here” and, like Stoljar (2005, 471), argues that the strategy fails to answer the challenge posed by the Conceivability Argument and Knowledge Argument. Without entering further into the subtleties of this issue, I suggest that we have a more plausible account of why mind and body should seem distinct to us, even if they are not. Such an account is not far to seek if we attend closely to the precise source of complaint we have noted among critics such as Chalmers, Strawson and Searle. In this regard, it is instructive to look at Papineau’s (2002) approach. Although subsequently abandoned, he had supposed that the dualist intuition arises because phenomenal concepts involve the actual occurrence of the qualitative experience they refer to. Papineau (2007, 3) had suggested that any use of a phenomenal concept will require that the experience itself in 49

50

Chapter Three

some form be actually present. That is, a simultaneous, actually occurring instance of the phenomenal experience is somehow used to think about that very experience. Of course, this account is implausible because it seems clear that the thought of excruciating pain doesn’t hurt at all. And what about the concept of infinity? Indeed, as Papineau himself later points out, it is possible to think that I am not now having a particular kind of experience, but this would be impossible if any exercise of a phenomenal concept depends on the actual presence of the experience itself. Nevertheless, I suggest that Papineau’s original account points to an essential feature of the puzzle – the insight that conscious experience itself is somehow the source of the intuitive puzzlement. My suggestion is that it is not the case that a qualitative experience of “what it’s like” is actually evoked in thinking about it but rather that there is a compelling but misguided expectation that it should be evoked. The familiar, spurious complaint is precisely that materialist theories fail to elicit the relevant experience. For example, Searle (1992, 12) asks incredulously, “How, for example, would one go about refuting the [materialists’] view that consciousness does not exist? Should I pinch its adherents to remind them that they are conscious? Should I pinch myself and report the results in the Journal of Philosophy?” (1992, 8). Strawson makes exactly the same revealing illustration: If someone asks what conscious experience is, you say “Look, you know what is from your own case” (If you want, you can add “Here’s an example,” and give them a sharp kick). When it comes to experience, there’s a rock-bottom sense in we’re directly and fully acquainted with it just in having it. For the having is the knowing (Strawson 2019, 12).

The traditional complaint against any materialist theory is that it leaves out these crucial phenomenal features of subjective experience. As we will note presently, this is the moral of Jackson’s (1982) famous story about Mary in his “Knowledge Argument.” The failure of this expectation is taken to be the fatal flaw of materialist theories just as the failure of an analogous expectation is taken to be the flaw of theories in other domains. Precisely parallel objections will be seen in Chapter 7 to arise concerning meaning in the philosophy of language. Philosophers complain that formal theories like generative grammars “leave out” the essential, understanding or interpretative meaning. In a sense they are right. It seems clear that the special properties of actual phenomenal experience have always been emphasized by critics of materialism such as Searle, Nagel, Chalmers and Strawson. Indeed, Dennett (2005, 44) cites Levine’s (1994) explicit insistence “that conscious experiences themselves, not merely our verbal judgments about them, are the primary data to which a theory must



What It’s Like 51

answer.” As we will note presently, this captures the source of concern for Searle and others, but Dennett (2001, 3) brushes it aside too quickly. I suggested earlier that Dennett fails to confront the precise nature of the worry that motivates critics—namely, their justified if unremarkable view that there can be no bridge between first person subjectivity as such and natural science, “the view from nowhere.” In this sense, we can acknowledge Nagel’s (1974) point that “every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective physical theory will abandon that point of view.” Nagel is correct in asserting “This gap is logically unbridgeable” (1979, 189), as Chalmers (1996) also argues, but it has no ontological or metaphysical significance as a challenge to materialism. We see the supposed role of actual phenomenal experience in the reference to an “explanatory gap” generally credited to Joseph Levine: As I now look at my red diskette case, I’m having a visual experience that is reddish in character. Light of a particular composition is bouncing off the diskette case and stimulating my retina in a particular way. That retinal stimulation now causes further impulses down the optic nerve, eventually causing various neural events in the visual cortex. Where in all of this can we see the events that explain my having a reddish experience? (Levine 1983, 2001, 76)

It is remarkable that this recent, typical articulation of the source of puzzlement is an almost verbatim, presumably unwitting, rehearsal of Sherrington’s (1942) famous mystification when contemplating his own subjective sensations. These intuitions concerning qualia today were plainly formulated in Sherrington’s Gifford Lectures and were cited by Place (1956) as the target of his diagnosis of the Phenomenological Fallacy. Today Searle (1997, 99), too, echoes Sherrington almost verbatim. He enumerates various facts about the sequence of neuronal events from receptors to cortex but adds “A few hundred milliseconds after you pinched your skin, a second sort of thing happened, one that you know about without professional assistance. You felt a pain.” Like Sherrington, Searle suggests that understanding the physical causes of the pain does not explain the actual subjective, qualitative feeling. In an obvious sense he is right. At the risk of tedium, it is important to see the repeated articulations of the underlying concern. Before Levine (1983), the conception of an “explanatory gap” was precisely stated by Wittgenstein in his Logical Investigations: The feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain process: how come that this plays no role in reflections of ordinary life? This idea of a difference in kind is accompanied by slight giddiness – which occurs when we are doing logical tricks. (The same giddiness attacks us when dealing with certain theorems in set theory.) When does this feeling occur in the present case?

52

Chapter Three

It is when I for example, turn my attention in a particular way on to my own consciousness and, astonished, say to myself: “THIS is supposed to be produced by a process in the brain!” – as it were clutching my forehead. – But what can it mean to speak of “turning my attention on to my own consciousness”? (Wittgenstein 1953 §412)

In parentheses here, we may note Wittgenstein’s allusion to certain “logical tricks” and theorems in set theory is not explained, but he may have had in mind the well-known paradoxes of self-reference which I will suggest are, indeed, relevant to understanding the “giddiness” of turning one’s attention on to one’s own consciousness. Of course, this was precisely Descartes’ exercise in the Meditations and in Chapter 4 I argue that Descartes’ Cogito self-reflection has the logical structure of diagonal arguments such as the Russell’s Paradox in set theory and the Liar Paradox, the structure of our own mind-body perplexity. Like Searle, Perry (2001, 4), too, gives an almost verbatim rehearsal of Wittgenstein, expressing the same sense of “looking inward” or “turning my attention on to my own consciousness.” These expressions of puzzlement suggest that the difficulty seems to be reconciling actual felt experience with knowledge of its physical causes. This is exactly Jackson’s (1982, 1986) puzzle of monochrome Mary who knows all the relevant science that appears to leave out “what it’s like” to have a subjective experience. On this diagnosis of the puzzlement we can understand why Dennett’s critics insist that any materialist theory must leave out something essential, namely, the way that qualia feel. Indeed, his critics are right, notwithstanding Dennett’s acknowledgement that the subjective first-person point of view is “granted constitutive authority” in his third-person heterophenomenology. As we saw with Searle’s complaint about a materialist account of pain, the epistemic gap is not between different kinds of concepts, but between physical explanations and actual subjective, felt experience. Clearly recognizing the peculiar nature of such demands, Kirk (1991, 19) protests that providing “an actual experience of the right sort... [is] something no theory could supply” and Rorty (1979, 29), too, remarks that it is absurd to complain that “being told how the atoms of the bat’s brain are laid out will not help one feel like a bat.” Of course, this is just Nagel’s (1974) complaint and the preoccupation of a philosophical industry devoted to what Jackson’s Mary can never know from her exhaustive scientific knowledge. Rorty adds, “Understanding about the physiology of pain does not help us feel pain either, but why should we expect it to, any more than understanding aerodynamics will help us fly?” A review of Searle’s (1992) book The Mystery of Consciousness in the Wall Street Journal aptly jokes that the evidence of pinching one’s self is “the only thing that might detract from the pleasure of his book.”2 Kirk (1991, 18)



What It’s Like 53

draws attention to the crucial ambiguity of the demand that a theory “fully explains” conscious experience. The demand is that an “explanatory theory must itself enable us to grasp any of the concepts which characterize experience.” However, the notion of “grasp” here is unusual and problematic. The demand appears to be that the theory explaining consciousness should confer those experiences themselves. As we have seen, Searle (2004, 2) says “I have to begin by appealing to your experiences” and he invites us to compare subjective experience itself such as a pinch with theoretical propositions. Chalmers, too, is quite explicit about the source of the alleged shortcomings of any possible scientific theory saying “There are reasons why no purely physical theory will ever give you consciousness. It’ll always be an objective theory of objective functions. None of that ever gives you subjective experience” (in O’Leary 2023; emphasis added). Indeed, it must be acknowledged that no third-person heterophenomenological scientific account can satisfy this demand—the effect of actually pinching one’s self. As Kirk points out, it is merely an equivocation to protest that the theory “does not explain” the subjective features of conscious mental states. MARY SEES RED Jackson’s (1982) famous ‘Knowledge Argument’ is essentially the same appeal to the persuasive force of actual experience. Jackson proposes that Mary, a scientist who knows all the physical facts, might be confined in a blackand-white room and would, therefore, not know what it’s like to see red until released from the room. In that case, there is an apparent “fact” about human colour experience that is not among the physical facts in a complete scientific account and, therefore, physicalism is false. Malebranche (1712/1997, 634) had formulated the same idea writing, “If a man had never eaten a melon, or seen red or blue, he would consult this alleged idea of his soul in vain.” Locke (1689/1975, 424), too, challenged those who think actual phenomenal experience might be produced by words or in any way other than by the appropriate sensation: “He that thinks otherwise, let him try if any Words can give him the taste of a Pineapple, and make him have the true Idea of the Relish of that celebrated delicious fruit.” Dennett’s (2007, 21) response to this argument is interesting because it implicitly concedes Jackson’s central point and, therefore, shares the error just indicated. Dennett argues that our own intellectual limitations make it impossible to imagine what it might be like if we really were able to comprehend vastly more science including the entire theory relevant to perceiving red. He suggests Mary or a robotic replica, RoboMary, might use her advanced scientific

54

Chapter Three

knowledge “to put herself into just such a dispositional state” that is the same state that a perceptual state would normally cause. Dennett (2005, 128) concludes, “But now she can know just what it is like to see a red tomato.” This story is supposed to refute the Knowledge Argument by demonstrating that RoboMary can a priori deduce the phenomenology of what it’s like to see red from the scientific truths she knows. However, far from refuting the Knowledge Argument, Dennett implicitly confirms its force. Dennett, or perhaps RoboMary, is cheating. By contriving a way to put herself into a state that provides the actual phenomenal experience, Mary has undoubtedly obtained the relevant so-called “knowledge” or ability, but this is just Searle’s device of pinching himself. RoboMary has not deduced the “knowledge” in the relevant sense from the scientific knowledge but rather she has generated the very experience of seeing red. The voluminous literature on the Knowledge Argument testifies to the seductiveness of the appeal to actual experience. Crane (2019, 16) takes the Argument to identify “a particularly important” form of “propositional or factual knowledge.” He suggests that “The precise nature of that knowledge is a matter for further epistemological investigation” (2019, 31), but this seems unwarranted because Mary is assumed to know all propositional, factual knowledge and the nature of the “knowledge” in question is not mysterious for the reasons Searle suggested. Following decades of controversy, Lycan (2003, 384) lamented the endless publication of articles on the Knowledge Argument. Nevertheless, twenty years later with the trend unabated, an anthology is devoted to the “enduring significance” of the argument. Indeed, the editor (Coleman 2019, 3) takes its virtues to be “characteristic of the very greatest arguments in the history of philosophy” such as Descartes’ Cogito and Anselm’s ontological argument. However, a less exalted view may be appropriate. It seems clear from the foregoing discussion that Papineau (2007) was on the right track in suggesting that actually occurring experience itself is in some way central to the puzzle of thinking about consciousness. I have suggested that the puzzlement arises from mistakenly expecting a certain feeling to be elicited by a description or theory. We will see that the same expectation is disappointed by explanatory theories in other domains. Philosophers complain that formal theories of linguistics fail to provide a speaker’s intuitive understanding of meaning. Soames (1992, 208) explains “we expect a theory of meaning to tell us what sentences mean.” Searle (1980) makes the analogous complaint that computational symbols fail to provide understanding, just as Kosslyn charges that non-pictorial theories of imagery leave out the experiential, visual reality. However, we noted that Danto (1978) suggested that the apparent implausibility of such theories turns on a failure to appreciate that the theory in each case “has to sound implausible when based upon what we phenomenologi-



What It’s Like 55

cally encounter when we typically perceive or think” (Danto 1973, 411). In each case we might ask why would we expect the contents of our thoughts or experiences to reveal anything about their material (or immaterial) causes? PANPSYCHISM: THEY LAUGHED AT GALILEO TOO McGinn (1993, 157) captures the intuition: “We don’t really yet understand, scientifically or philosophically, by what means or mechanism bunches of particles contrived to generate something so apparently different from themselves.” A revealing attempt to solve this puzzle has been the proposal that the bunches of particles are not so different from the key phenomenon after all. Perhaps they share some minimal, fractional part of the consciousness of the aggregate they constitute. This panpsychism is the idea that, if consciousness appears to be nowhere, then it must be everywhere. Strawson (2006a) proposes that the only way to bridge “the most fundamental divide in nature” is for there to be nothing that is “non-experiential,” that is, “the basic physical constituents of the universe have mental [and in particular experiential] properties’” (Strawson 2006c, 189). Strawson is led to this view on the undeniable grounds that “there is experiential being in reality” and his rejection of any “radical emergence” thesis. That is, experiential reality cannot emerge from wholly non-experiential reality because “nature doesn’t make radical ontological/qualitative jumps, of the sort that seems required if experience is to emerge from stuff that is in its basic nature wholly non-experiential” (Strawson 2017, 5). On this view, there is no radical emergence because physical stuff itself shares the fundamental experiential properties. However, the problem of radical emergence and qualitative jumps in nature is avoided if the irreducible feature of reality or experiential being is not a property of the fundamental stuff of the world. The idea of “the most fundamental divide in nature” is crucially ambiguous and the problem only arises if this divide is understood to be between mind and matter in general. However, as we have seen, the problem and motivation for panpsychism doesn’t arise if the fundamental divide is understood to be between my own mind and everything else. In fact, strictly speaking, it is only this latter conception of the “fundamental divide” that is warranted on the crucial facts, namely, the firstperson, subjective nature of the relevant phenomena. On all accounts, the experiential evidence at stake is the data of introspection. Nagel (1986, 7,8), too, suggests “The subjectivity of consciousness is an irreducible feature of reality” and he concludes, therefore, “it must occupy as fundamental a place in any credible world view as matter, energy, space, time, and numbers.” Again, however, we have seen that the idea of an “irreducible feature of reality” must

56

Chapter Three

be properly understood as a first-person, introspective avowal which doesn’t require the most extravagant and otherwise unmotivated proposals about the independent, external physical world of matter, energy, space or time. Nevertheless, Chalmers (1996, 126), too, sees his “naturalistic dualism” as postulating “fundamental features of the world” just like space-time, mass-energy, charge, spin, and so on. With subtle caveats, and having full appreciation of its apparent absurdity, Chalmers concludes that even a thermostat must be conscious. In something of an understatement, Van Cleve (1990) describes such claims as “astonishing” but Strawson (2006c 271) relies on the fact that “we are profoundly ignorant of the nature of the physical... a claim massively backed by physics.” From this Ignorance thesis, Strawson (2019, 13) concludes that it is a “Very Large Mistake” to think that “we know enough about what physical stuff is to have good reason to think that physical goings-on in the brain can’t be conscious goings-on.” Like Strawson, Goff (2017) relies on the fact that “physical science doesn’t tell us what matter is” in its intrinsic nature, “in and of itself.” Goff argues that the only thing we know for certain is that “at least some material things have experience,” namely brains. He concludes that “the most elegant, simple, sensible option” is that the rest of nature is also conscious. “Panpsychism is crazy. But it is also highly likely to be true.” However, the same argument might be used with equal force for other properties of matter: At least some material things have photosynthesis, namely plants, therefore “the most elegant, simple, sensible option” is that the rest of nature also has photosynthesis. Goff candidly acknowledges “The main objection made to panpsychism is that it is ‘crazy’ and ‘just obviously wrong’” but he draws attention to the familiar cases in history where widely accepted scientific theories were first regarded as crazy and contrary to common sense, such as relativity theory and quantum physics. This is the appeal to what Arthur Koestler (1972, 110) called “a negative affinity” in defense of parapsychology. In light of the truly crazy claims of modern science, “the weird concepts of one provide an excuse for the weirdness of the other.” According to this “negative sort of rapprochement” (Koestler 1972, 11) we are to conclude that “the unthinkable phenomena of ESP appear somewhat less preposterous in the light of the unthinkable propositions of physics.” It’s a version of the familiar argument from the fact that “they laughed at Galileo.” However, this superficially seductive argument is entirely without force since it serves equally in favour of any theory that has nothing to recommend it besides being crazy. Strawson’s (2021, 231) focus on the properties of the fundamental physical stuff is misleading because a “full recognition of the reality of experience” may be obtained in an entirely different way. The undeniable fact that “we are profoundly ignorant of the nature of the physical” (2021, 271) is irrelevant if



What It’s Like 57

the reality of conscious experience is explained as the product and paradox of introspective thinking. Indeed, the conclusion that follows from Descartes’ Cogito argument in the following chapter is that the undeniable reality of subjective experience arises from the mechanisms or logic of first-person introspective or “Higher Order” thought. In other words, subjective experience is not a property of physical stuff. We will consider a more plausible account of “real materialism” which is essentially the insight of Gunderson’s (1970) ‘Asymmetries and Mind-Body Perplexities’ and Rosenthal’s (2005) Higher Order Thought (HOT) account. JUST EGGS HATCHING? To understand the illicit appeal of panpsychism, it is irresistible to borrow the epigram used by Brook and Stainton (2000, 90) for their chapter on materialism. They quote Jack Handey’s quip “I hope some animal never bores a hole in my head and lays its eggs in my brain, because later you might think you’re having a good idea but it’s just eggs hatching.” The joke turns on the insight of Danto and Place, highlighting the absurdity of expecting that the contents of our thoughts must reveal properties of their underlying physical embodiment. For all we can know through introspection, our thoughts might just be eggs hatching. Thus, Place (1956, 49) remarks “when we describe the after-image as green, we are not saying that there is something, the afterimage, which is green.” Of course, nobody thinks that the brain is green or that the idea of a cat is furry. However, as we will see, the patent absurdity of the proposition in the case of some properties does not preclude theorists embracing it in other contexts, and we may ask why we would be tempted to make such a mistake. Millikan (1991a, 440) notes that most philosophers nowadays understand the motivations behind this error, and why they are not supposed to make it, but it persists in the work of contemporary philosophers who are aware of the danger. Harman (1990, 31), too, says that the arguments for qualia “can be defused by distinguishing properties of the object of experience from properties of the experience of an object.” Indeed, Lycan (1987, 17) cites the beguiling mistake of thinking of pains and phenomenal individuals such as sense-data as objects. These words might have been taken from Arnauld’s reproach to Malebranche and Reid’s response to Hume. Indeed, it is Pylyshyn’s (2003) persistent criticism of theories of imagery. Place (1956, 49) noted that the “fairly simple logical mistake” is “unfortunately all too frequently made by psychologists and physiologists and not infrequently in the past by philosophers themselves.” Not just in the past.

58

Chapter Three

Handey’s joke dramatizes the key “problem intuition” and the irrelevance of panpsychism as a solution to the puzzles of consciousness. Clearly, it is no consolation for Handey even if his insects are conscious after hatching. Panpsychism fails to explain how a person as subject of experience might be conscious just because his constituent atoms or insects might be. It is for essentially the same reason that the resort to quantum effects in microtubules by Hameroff and Penrose (1996) is a misguided explanation of consciousness since it fails to even address the source of a person’s subjective experience. Thus, as we have seen, Strawson (2006c, 187) starts from the “rock solid” intuition that “there is experiential being in reality,” but it is misleading to describe the intuition as implying anything about the fundamental physical stuff of the universe. In assuming that experiential being must be everywhere Strawson is looking in the wrong place. The rock solid intuition is about myself and, therefore, experiential being is only inherent in a very special way from a particular perspective in a particular part of the universe. In other words, we are not denying the “rock solid” intuition that there is “experiential being in reality” in recognizing that this reality is essentially a fact of introspection, that is, a first-person percept. This reality is captured in Nagel’s (1974) identification of the “unbridgeable gap” between subjective and objective as a matter of “point of view.” In this way, “Full recognition of the reality of experience” (Strawson 2006b, 4) does not require raising questions about the nature of the fundamental physical constituents of the universe. In particular, the question of “emergence” is avoided as irrelevant. To say there is experiential being “in reality” is simply a way of asserting with Descartes the undeniable facts, the introspective intuitions about our own conscious experience that have no ontological, scientific or metaphysical consequences. MINDING YOUR PS AND QS For these reasons, like other philosophers, Chalmers obscures the weakness of anti-materialist or pro-panpsychism arguments because he assimilates the puzzle of phenomenal concepts to problems arising generally for theoretical concepts such as H2O. Chalmers writes of Q as “an arbitrary truth about phenomenal consciousness” such as “the truth that somebody is phenomenally conscious” (2007, 168; emphasis added). In other words, on this account Q is not treated as essentially a first-person, perspectival proposition. Chalmers suggests there is a gap between knowledge of physical facts P and knowledge of Q. However, to speak of “our conception of Q” is ambiguous between a first-person reading and a third-person reading. For the same reason it is revealing that Chalmers (2002, 192) suggests that a strong argument for link-



What It’s Like 59

ing conceivability and possibility is the fact that the link “holds elsewhere.” However, along the lines I have been suggesting, it is obvious that the link between conceivability and possibility does not arise in the same way for minds as it does “elsewhere” for water or other things. We can see the same conflation in Stalnaker’s (2002, 399) anomalous question ‘What is it Like to be a Zombie?’ He answers: “it is something like being H2O without being water.” However, imagining that water is not H2O is quite different from the Zombie case. There is nothing it is like being H2O in the relevant sense even when it is water. These are glaring failures to respect the introspective character of what it’s like. These examples are not isolated instances and it is significant that the same equivocation is the standard expository device. Thus, Coleman (2019, 2) gives an exposition of the issues by stating the premises and conclusion of the Argument in terms of “things to know about people,” the crucial conflation on which it depends. Loar (1990, 597) is perfectly clear, saying “Phenomenal concepts are formed ‘from one’s own case” and “derive their reference from a first-person perspective” producing an “illusory metaphysical intuition.” Shoemaker (1997, 503), too, explains “an essential part of the philosophical task is to give an account of mind which makes intelligible the perspective mental subjects have on their own mental lives. Rorty (1979, 29) asks “Why should an epistemic distinction reflect an ontological distinction? Why should the epistemic privilege we all have of being incorrigible about how things seem to us reflect a distinction between two realms of being?” The same important point was made succinctly by physicist P.W. Bridgman in a little anthology familiar to students over half a century ago: The fundamental and inescapable dichotomy is not between brain and machine or between brain and mind, but between myself and all else (Bridgman 1960, 91).

Of course, as Clarke (2003) notes, this is Descartes’ Cogito insight concerning the “explanatory gap” to be examined in the following chapter. The foregoing discussion shows how Avramides’ (2001) revival of the puzzle of “Other Minds” is of special importance. This problem was a distinct conundrum at the forefront of debate in the 1950s but has entirely disappeared as philosophical fashions have changed. Perhaps alone in addressing the problem today, Avramides (2001, xi) says she has felt “embarrassed to be working on this topic, because it was so unfashionable.” Nevertheless, my suggestion is that the embarrassment is not hers. The shift in philosophical interest has meant losing sight of the fact that the ‘Hard Problem’ of phenomenal consciousness just is essentially the classical Problem of Other Minds. The arguments we have seen and the analysis of Descartes’ Cogito we will consider in Chapter 4 support Avramides’ (2001, 3) view that “there are deep mistakes involved in taking reflection on one’s own mind as one’s starting point for thinking about

60

Chapter Three

the mind more generally.” She says “Because of these mistakes, the problem one encounters about other minds may look to be insoluble.” In the spirit of Wittgenstein’s remarks we noted, Avramides (2001, 8) explains, “I come by my concept of mind by reflection on, or experience of, my own mind.” She says “from this starting point … it is not at all clear that it is possible to conceive of others like myself.” Above all, my suggestion has been that this difficulty about what we can conceive about ourselves and others does not require a radical challenge to “our understanding of the entire cosmos and its history” (Nagel, 2012, 3). The mind-body problem arising from phenomenal consciousness boils down to the question: How can we know about other minds when we are intimately, incorrigibly acquainted only with our own? In this sense, I have suggested that there is something right about the anti-materialist insistence on the obduracy of subjective experience to reduction. But the data in question are inner, private self-representations that have a perspectival nature. However, in the framework in which “our” conception of P and Q is understood according to the objective “view from nowhere” (Nagel 1986), there is no principled difficulty in deducing the facts of mental states or brain states from the facts of physics along the lines of Dennett’s heterophenomenology. In Chalmers’ (2007, 169) misleading account, before Mary’s release, she is described as failing to know “a truth about what it is like for ordinary people to see red things.” However, after release from her black-and-white room, strictly speaking Mary doesn’t learn what it is like for “ordinary people” but only for herself. REDUCTION OR UNIFICATION? Chalmers characterizes the gap between knowledge of Q and physical facts P, just as we would have spoken of a gap between “our conception of M (mass) and our conception of E (energy)” until Einstein showed how they are connected. Indeed, if the first-person status of the relevant phenomena as an introspective perplexity is neglected, it is natural to consider the mind-body problem in the light of similar “explanatory gaps” in the history of science. For example, Paul Churchland (1998, 138) points out that Berkeley rejected the identification of sound with compression of air waves and Goethe rejected the identification of light with particles. These cases of an explanatory gap seem analogous to the Hard Problem because certain phenomena appeared irreducible to theories available at a given time. The moral of the story seems to be that we should not rule out the future prospect of a scientific reduction of mind to brain. In the same framework, Chomsky (2009) draws a different lesson from the history of “explanatory gaps” and analogous “Hard Problems.”



What It’s Like 61

He points out that in most such cases, the explanatory gap was eventually overcome not by inter-theoretic reduction to the basic science but by unification when the basic discipline changed in a way that could accommodate the recalcitrant phenomena. Chomsky (2009, 171) shows that an “explanatory gap” arose in trying to conceive of gravity in relation to the materialist science of the seventeenth century. He observes “the absurd notion of action at a distance is as inconceivable as the idea that ‘mental states are states of the brain.’” Like our perplexity concerning the mind, “Newton was unable to form a conception of how the simplest phenomena of nature could arise in matter.” Thus, Chomsky compares this puzzlement with Nagel’s (1995, 106) discussion of the fact that “we are still unable to form a conception of how consciousness arises in matter, even if we are certain that it does.” For Chomsky, the lesson of history is that we cannot anticipate future developments in science that may come to explain what appears inconceivable today, not by reduction but by unification of formerly incompatible phenomena. The reduction of mind to matter became pointless after the eclipse of the “mechanical philosophy” and the collapse of any meaningful notion of body, or matter, or physical. For this reason, Chomsky explains the traditional mind-body problem became unformulable. Chomsky (2009, 186) points to the lesson to be learned: “Dalton disregarded the explanatory gap between chemistry and physics by ignoring the underlying physics.” Chomsky recommends the same approach for study of mental phenomena today. Like Dalton and postNewtonian physicists, we should disregard the explanatory gap as “one of the many problems of unification that arise in the sciences,” a symptom of our current and perhaps even permanent ignorance about matters that might even transcend the limitations of human cognitive capacity. Chomsky’s insight from the history of science is important as far as it goes but it remains within the usual framing of the problem as a scientific, explanatory one. In particular, the conception of the problem arising from “current and perhaps even permanent ignorance” is to miss the source of the philosophical puzzle as it has been posed by Nagel, Jackson, Chalmers and others. In the same vein, Stoljar (2006, vii) argues that the source of the problem of consciousness is ignorance and he has sought to capture “the sense that we are missing something.” However, despite our ignorance about most phenomena including language, perception, decision-making and emotions, there is no comparable philosophical conviction of irremediable, in principle intractability that would survive even a complete understanding of the physical universe. This special problem of consciousness is, therefore, likely to arise from a source other than mere ignorance. Indeed, Stoljar (2006, vi) recognizes “if the problem were conceptual, it presumably would persist even if ignorance of the kind I am interested in were taken away.” However, this

62

Chapter Three

is precisely the premise of Jackson’s puzzle. Lycan (2003, 384) says of Mary “we may even suppose that she becomes omniscient, period” and, therefore, with her new experience of red outside the room “she has acquired information that is—by hypothesis—outside the whole domain of science,” a fact that “eludes the whole of science.” Stoljar’s suggestion that we are missing something is simply to ignore the crucial premise that defines the problem about Mary. Chalmers (1996, 101) leaves no doubt about the irrelevance of scientific ignorance since he says “Even if we knew every last detail about the physics of the universe,” we would still not be able to infer the existence of consciousness. I think it is essential to acknowledge this scientific omniscience if we are to properly address the underlying source of puzzlement. For example, Nagel (2012, 14), too, declares “even the most fully developed physics” would leave the source of perplexity untouched. Nagel points out, “no description or analysis of the objective nervous system, however complete, will ever by itself imply anything which is not objective.” (1979, 188; emphasis added). He says “physics is bound to leave undescribed the irreducibly subjective character of conscious mental processes.” Chalmers (1996, 124), too, suggests “experience is fundamentally different from any physical feature.” Stoljar’s proposal that we are missing something through ignorance is simply to avoid the problem. The arguments from history and ignorance are misleading about the explanatory framework in which the problem is posed. In particular, it deserves emphasis that, Chomsky (2009, 184) takes “the traditional mindbody problem” to include the wide range of psychological phenomena as part of the broad question of “how mental aspects of the world, including direct experience, related to the brain.” In this framing Chomsky (2009, 185) includes consciousness with language and vision when he refers to the “theory of mind” which “can be pursued in many ways, like other branches of science, with an eye to eventual unification.” However, as throughout, I am concerned to distinguish the specific perplexity of consciousness from all other problems to which Chomsky (2009, 188) has assimilated it when speaking of “fairly clear parallels to contemporary discussion of language and mind.” Chomsky (2009, 183) cites Jackson’s Knowledge Argument but takes Mary’s failure to deduce phenomenal experience from physical theory only to show “that humanly-constructed physics has limits, or that Mary did not know all of physics.” However, this is to contradict the assumption by Jackson and others we have noted that Mary is omniscient about science and to miss the character of the puzzlement. Chomsky (2009, 191) recommends the attitude of Priestley who “was not troubled by qualms arising from ignorance,” but we have seen that the concern has a different source in the case of subjective, phenomenal experience. The concern is unlike other cases of



What It’s Like 63

explanatory gaps like Newton’s puzzle about gravity. By assimilating the mind-body problem to such scientific problems, Chomsky fails to recognize it as essentially a perplexity of self-reflection rather than scientific explanation. Chomsky cites Nagel’s puzzlement as comparable to Newton’s but Nagel explains it as arising specifically from the fact that, we can picture the relation between water and H2O from the “outside” but we have to imagine subjectivity “from the inside.” Nevertheless, in one place, Chomsky (2007, 6) appears to depart from his usual formulations and acknowledges “What is now called ‘the mind-body problem’ is quite different. It is not part of normal science. The new version is based on the distinction between the first-person and the third-person perspective.” This is, indeed, to reframe the problem in a way which makes it quite different from the one usually assumed to be appropriate. This alternative involves a specifiable kind of first-person paradox or cognitive illusion along the lines I have suggested and, therefore, the gap in this case is not the scientific, explanatory one with which Chomsky has assimilated it elsewhere. Rather, it is the gap between myself and everything else in the world, a first-person perspectival puzzlement, which doesn’t arise for language, vision or other cognitive phenomena. To be sure, Nagel (1986, 177) couches his doubts about materialism in the usual explanatory idiom, but he is quite explicit that “every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view (1986, 167). I have suggested that there is a sense in which Nagel is right, though not because of any ignorance or deep scientific mystery. Like the concerns of Strawson and Goff about the intrinsic nature of physical matter, the scientific issues of reduction, unification and ignorance are irrelevant to Rorty’s insight that, even if we did understand all about the physiology of pain, it would not help us feel pain. In the same vein Kirk (1991) remarked that we should not expect even the complete theory to provide the subjective feeling. THE CARTESIAN THEATER AS HIGHER ORDER THOUGHT Once the mind-body problem is seen as a perplexity arising from self-reflection rather than a scientific problem arising from ignorance, we can recognize a plausible model of its source. The Phenomenological Fallacy is the illusion that subjective experiences are seen or felt as if on an internal screen in the Cartesian Theater. This is a conception of mental states as those to which one is attending as a Spectator and therefore states “one is conscious of, not merely states through which one is conscious of objects” (Levine 2006, 175). This is just Rosenthal’s (2005) Higher Order theory (HOT), an empirical

64

Chapter Three

hypothesis about what it is for mental states to be conscious. Rosenthal (2000, 231) proposes that phenomenal consciousness or experience is constituted by higher-order thought (HOT) whose intentional contents are a first-order sensation. The key idea of the HOT hypothesis is that a mental, sensory state is conscious only if one is conscious of that state. On this account, we may dissolve the intuitive force of the explanatory gap by showing how conscious mental states can be explained in terms of mental states that are not conscious (Rosenthal 2005, 42). This tactic works because the puzzling gulf between consciousness and physical reality does not arise in the case of nonconscious mental states. These may be explained in terms of neural events that are not mental at all. Along the lines of Armstrong’s Gambit, Rosenthal’s (2005, vii) project seeks to “defuse the challenge consciousness seems to pose for materialism” by showing how our compelling pre-theoretic intuitions are just what the theory predicts. QUALIA-CREATION Rosenthal’s theory has been characterized as “wild and weird” by critics who complain that resorting to mental states that are not themselves consciously aware cannot explain the essential phenomenon. For this reason, some “inner sensing” accounts postulate states that are themselves conscious or qualitative and, therefore, appear to “light up” (Rosenthal 2004, 19). Thus, the key question to be answered by higher-order theories is how a state becomes conscious, not by virtue of any intrinsic properties, but only due to the addition of a meta-state directed at it. Van Gulick (2006, 14) asks: “How can the addition of a merely relational element make a state into one that there is something that it’s like to be in?” “Why should two co-occurring mental states result in qualia?” That is, how could the mere addition of a higher-order representation bring a sensory or phenomenal quality into being? This common objection has been derisively termed “the problem of the rock” (Gennaro 2004, 6): Thinking about a rock does not make it conscious and, therefore, we might question whether thinking about a lower order mental state can make it conscious. Lycan (2004, 95) has referred to this objection dismissively as among the “bad and ignorant criticisms” of HO theories based on concern about “Qualia-Creation.” Besides threatening an infinite regress, these criticisms miss the point of HO analyses that purport to explain away the key intuition concerning such inner illumination. By invoking the very recalcitrant intuitions being defused, such critics beg the question. Consciousness is different from rocks since, we ascribe the property of being conscious to states of a



What It’s Like 65

person who can be awake and mentally responsive to sensory stimuli, unlike a rock, as Rosenthal (2000) points out. The “problem of the rock” arises from the inescapable idea that the mental state in question must have some intrinsic illuminating property. However, HO theories conceive the phenomenon in an entirely different way according to which the higher-order thought doesn’t confer any special new properties on the lower mental state. Rather, being conscious is constituted simply by being a sensation or thought that is the intentional object of another thought. That is, having a HOT does not cause qualitative consciousness to occur but, rather, having a higher-order thought constitutes “what it’s like.” The great explanatory virtue of the HOT account is that it offers a demystifying account of consciousness by reducing it to the more tractable problem of intentionality. Qualia are reduced to contents. The greatest mystery of the universe is reduced to a merely difficult problem of cognitive science. ONLY PHILOSOPHERS ARE CONSCIOUS! Woodruff Smith (2005, 94) notes that higher-order theories have always faced the apparent difficulty that “phenomenologically, we do not experience a second act of introspective observation of the original mental act” in which we are aware of perceiving or thinking about the act in addition to the original act. But Rosenthal’s account accommodates this evidence of introspection by supposing that the second-order thought is not itself conscious unless it is in turn the object of a further, higher-order thought. According to the ‘two state solution’ it is only when one becomes aware of a state by having the requisite higher order thought about it that there is anything “it is like.” Rosenthal is committed to the existence of nonconscious states that have sensory qualities, such as nonconscious headaches, visual experiences, and so on. The transition from such states that are unconscious to those that are conscious does not involve adding qualia to the state but rather becoming aware of qualitative properties that the lower-order state already has,3 that is, appearing to be a Spectator of one’s own sensations. It is worth noting that in just this way Descartes, too, distinguishes mere sensation from the reflective awareness of it, along the lines of higher-order and self-representational approaches4: … my view is that animals do not see as we do when we are aware that we see, but only as we do when our mind is elsewhere. In such a case the images of external objects are depicted on our retinas, and perhaps the impressions they make in the optic nerves cause our limbs to make various movements, although

66

Chapter Three

we are quite unaware of them. In such a case we too move just like automatons … (CSMK 3, 61,2)

Descartes locates the distinctively human mind in the act of reflective selfawareness and not in mere qualitative sensation. It is in the peculiar moment of self-reflection, when our mind is not elsewhere as in the normal state, that we discover, or perhaps create, consciousness in the philosophers’ special sense. This was Blackmore’s (2016) insight that it is, paradoxically, only when looking into consciousness that we discover what it’s like. This is presumably the point of Fodor’s (1998b, 73) quip “I try never to think about consciousness.” In Descartes’ words, “the mind, when engaged in private meditation, can experience its own thinking” (CSM 2, 247), the exercise of the Cogito to be examined in the following Chapter. By contrast, the normal state in which we mostly live our lives is the one we share with animals and even automata. We may regard ‘phenomenal consciousness’ as a ‘meta-representational’ state we have only when we think about it in the characteristically philosophical mode. It follows that a condition that permits being described in terms of what it’s like is not a natural state of people or other animals but a highly contrived artefact of self-conscious reflection prompted by the question itself. Armstrong (1968, 95) shares Kant’s conception of introspection as the operation of “inner sense” by which “we become aware of current happenings in our own mind.” Thus, he takes consciousness to be “simply awareness of our own state of mind.” By contrast with such awareness, Armstrong’s (1968, 93; 1980) frequently cited illustration of the long-distance driver makes the relevant distinction. As we have all experienced, the driver has no recollection of long stretches of the journey but must be credited with being conscious in some important, primary sense. As in the driver’s case, “To be qualitative, a property need not always occur consciously; it must simply be able to occur consciously” (Rosenthal 2005, 177; 2022; emphasis added). For Rosenthal, a first-order mental state of sensation is not an experience. Since it’s not conscious, there’s no experience as such. Only when there is a HOT do we get experience. When a conscious experience itself, a HOT, becomes the intentional content of other thoughts, we have the special case of third-order, introspective awareness. In view of the complex mental states involved, Van Gulick (2006, 13) criticizes Higher Order Theories on the grounds that metaintentional states are too fancy to apply to organisms we ordinarily regard as being conscious such as animals and children. However, other philosophers simply “bite the bullet” and deny that small children and animals have conscious states. For example, Dennett says: Not wanting to stir up more resistance than necessary to my view, I have on occasion strategically soft-pedaled my claims, allowing animals to be heterophe-



What It’s Like 67

nomenological subjects (of sorts) thanks to their capacity to inform experimenters (if not tell them), but now, my thinking clarified by Rosenthal’s, I want to recant that boundary-blurring and re-emphasize the differences ... (Dennett 2022)

Rosenthal (2019, 195) notes, “Apart from an academic or other special context, people do not describe their conscious states as being conscious.” That is, people “do not say such proto-theoretical things spontaneously, as they report being in pain or seeing or hearing something.” In the same vein, Wittgenstein explicitly refers to the introspective episode as “the state of a philosopher’s attention” when thinking about the self. Wittgenstein’s remarks referring to his giddiness hint at such a view saying that the feeling of the gulf between mind and body “does not come into the considerations of our ordinary life.” Wittgenstein’s “gulf” and Levine’s (1983) “explanatory gap” seem to be intimately connected to those occasions in which “I am attending to my consciousness” which Wittgenstein correctly says “is ordinarily not the case” (1953 §417). Indeed, Chalmers (2018, 13) acknowledges that in relying on the crucial problem intuitions “I could perhaps be accused of focusing on the intuitions of philosophers, and of a subclass of philosophers at that.” Indeed, paradoxically, on the higher-order view of third-order introspective states we may go even further than Dennett to deny that anyone other than philosophers is ever conscious! GLIMPSES The importance of the analysis I have been recommending is that it gives “mysterians,” panpsychists and anti-materialists what they want by fully acknowledging that physical theories must indeed “leave out” the incorrigible, qualitative, subjective side of mental life (Levine 1994, 121). If we don’t require that a satisfactory theory of subjective experience must actually confer experience, then we may appreciate that a pinch or the look of red is not some kind of truth that might be included in a complete explanation of the world. As Quine (1966a, 214) put it, “Consciousness still retains a place, as a state of a physical object, if … we construe consciousness as a faculty of responding to one’s own responses,”—the insight of Rosenthal’s higher-order theory. This is to vindicate Dennett’s heterophenomenology and to capture the thread connecting chapters of the book. Quine (1960, 1) remarked “Entification begins at arm’s length; the points of condensation in the primordial conceptual scheme are things glimpsed, not glimpses.” To paraphrase Quine, we are observers of things in the world, not Spectators of our own mental states in the Cartesian Theater.

68

Chapter Three

NOTES 1.  Generally credited to Loar (1990). See Papineau (2002), Stoljar (2005), Balog (2009), Levin (2007). 2.  Jim Holt, Wall Street Journal cited on Amazon. 3.  See Van Gulick (2006, 15). 4.  See Kriegel and Williford eds., (2006).

Chapter Four

Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Diagonal Deduction

Je n’en veux plus! Le fameux cogito m’embête.1 G. Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet (1880)

DEAD RIGHT AND VERY MUCH ALIVE There is perhaps no text in philosophy that is more studied by students and scholars than Descartes’ Meditations and, as Cottingham (1992a, 1) says, Cogito ergo sum is “the most celebrated philosophical dictum of all time.” In this chapter, then, it is appropriate to consider Descartes’ argument and the dualism for which he is notorious. We saw that Strawson and other panpsychists appeal to the properties of physical “stuff” to explain the certainty of conscious experience, but Descartes’ Cogito argument offers a better explanation. Indeed, we saw that Strawson (2006a, 216) approvingly quotes Desmond Clarke (2003) who explains that Descartes was concerned with the gap between his science of matter in motion and “the descriptions of our mental lives that we formulate from the first-person perspective of our own thinking.” As I will set out in this chapter, the logic of Descartes’ reasoning in the Cogito is precisely the first-person perspective of our own thinking which captures the famous certainty and the reason for the apparent gap between physical science and consciousness. We noted earlier Papineau’s (2002, 4) concern with this intuition of mindbrain distinctness for which he says we need “therapy.” This is the ‘Armstrong Gambit’ which takes the intuitive implausibility of materialism to be the best evidence in its favour. It’s just what we would expect if materialism were true, given certain specifiable mechanisms. I will suggest that the logic of the 69

70

Chapter Four

Figure 4.1.  “I’ll be damned. It says, ‘Cogito, ergo sum!’” The New Yorker: Mischa Richter (Nov. 1, 1958).

Cogito shows in this way precisely how a materialist account can provide what Papineau suggests we need “to explain why materialism should seem so obviously false, if it is true.” In other words, the Cogito argument provides an insight into our contemporary controversies concerning consciousness by providing an answer to Chalmers’ (2018, 6) “meta-problem”—that is, by explaining “why we think that there is a problem” concerning consciousness. In responding to this ad hominem approach Chalmers has made a significant concession: This extremely interesting strategy is perhaps the most attractive option for a physicalist to take in responding to the problem of consciousness. If it succeeded, the strategy would respect both the reality of consciousness and the epistemic intuitions that generate the puzzle of consciousness while explaining why these phenomena are entirely compatible with physicalism (Chalmers 2007, 168).

In just this way, Descartes helps us appreciate the source of the Cartesian Theater illusion. Thus, Woodruff Smith (2000) is correct to observe “There



Cogito, Ergo Sum

71

is something dead right, and very much alive, about the cogito.” Specifically, I will suggest that, since Descartes’ puzzlement is our own, an appreciation of the logic of the Cogito shows how to reconcile the private certainty of conscious experience with a naturalistic materialism. Hence, this chapter is a foray into the remarkable scholarly struggles to understand the most famous dictum of all time – an illustration of the relevance of “antiquarian” studies to solving contemporary philosophical problems. That is, I suggest that explaining why the problem of consciousness is so hard is the same problem as explaining why Descartes’ Cogito has been so elusive. Indeed, the greatest puzzle of the Cogito is why it should still be a puzzle. Prima facie, it is difficult to believe that the Cogito should present us with greater difficulty than the ‘measurement problem’ in quantum physics or Fermat’s exactly contemporaneous Last Theorem. Fermat’s problem has been solved, while the three-word Cogito conundrum remains a perplexing mystery. Any fully satisfactory account of the Cogito will have to reveal the reasons for its extraordinary recalcitrance. Indeed, Markie (1992, 141) has noted the puzzle of the Cogito is compounded because Descartes’ account of how he gains his certainty not only “turns out to be one of the most confusing aspects of his philosophy,” but, on the other hand, ironically, Descartes claims that his insight is “so simple and natural that it might have occurred to any writer” (CSMK 3, 159). Thus, it is clear that Hintikka’s (1962, 3) original complaint still stands: “We still do not seem to have any way of expressing [Descartes’] alleged insight in terms which would be general and precise enough to enable us to judge its validity or its relevance to the consequences he claimed to draw from it.” The Cogito emerges among Descartes’ few philosophical writings and there is the risk Cottingham (2008, 5,6) warns against – the tendency to see aspects of his writings as abstracted, discrete intellectual puzzles, “grist for the specialized mills of today’s fragmented analytic academy.” Indeed, Descartes himself discouraged the excessive attention that these questions have received in the Analytical tradition. In a 1648 letter to Burman, Descartes said “you should not devote so much effort to the Meditations and to metaphysical questions, or give them elaborate treatment in commentaries and the like” (CSMK 3, 346). In keeping with this advice, Gaukroger (2002, 83) suggests that the Cogito is a cul-de-sac that has received undeserved attention. He says “The cogito offers nothing causal or explanatory, it does not show us anything.” However, after centuries of “elaborate treatment in commentaries and the like,” Descartes’ dismissive remarks only add to our puzzlement. The Cogito is, after all, a challenge that has defied leading thinkers and, for that very reason, its persistence is interesting as much for what it reveals about philosophy today as for what it obscures about Descartes. Accordingly, I have not followed Cottingham’s (2005, vii) path which

72

Chapter Four

avoids engagement “with the massive and ever-growing corpus of secondary literature on Descartes.” The lack of an uncontroversial solution to the Cogito puzzle may be evidence of its intrinsic intellectual depth, but it may also be due to a different, peculiar kind of elusiveness – the puzzlement of a paradox. Just as Zeno’s paradoxes and their anomalous conclusions do not render them unworthy of intellectual interest, so Descartes’ Cogito presents a puzzle that we would like to understand. In the same way, the Liar Paradox appears as childish quibble but is at the heart of the deepest philosophical problems about the nature of language. As Barwise and Etchemendy (1987, 4) remark, “On first encounter, it’s hard not to consider assertions of this sort as jokes, hardly matters of serious intellectual inquiry.” However, “The significance of a paradox is never the paradox itself, but what it is a symptom of.” Indeed, I argue that the Cogito turns out to be a member of a family of notorious paradoxes and, thereby, a symptom of deeper issues having more general interest. In this case, the comparison is no mere analogy for I propose a novel account showing the Cogito to be a variant of the Liar – one of the family of so-called “diagonal constructions” seen in Russell’s Paradox, Cantor’s Theorem, the Halting Problem and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems. The ‘diagonal deduction’ (Slezak 1983, 2010) is a textually faithful reconstruction of Descartes’ reasoning which captures the intuitive source of his dualism and his certainty, and has the virtue of revealing why the Cogito has been so elusive while, at the same time, how it is also “so simple and natural that it might have occurred to any writer.” When revealed, despite its textual and philosophical virtues, this account is perhaps disappointing in the way that a magic trick is disappointing when explained. Nevertheless, even if the sleight-of-hand seems obvious in retrospect, the puzzlement is real and tells us something important about ourselves and the discipline. In developing these claims, this chapter offers a significant revision of the traditional picture of Descartes’ doctrines when these are placed in their appropriate context. As we will see in Chapter 10, there is much more to Descartes than the three Latin words for which he is best known. There is a growing recognition that Cartesian scholarship in the Analytic tradition has misunderstood Descartes even in those texts to which philosophical attention has been exclusively devoted. Specifically, the Meditations and Discourse look markedly different when they are seen in the light of Descartes’ scientific and mathematical writings. In particular, we will see presently the relevance of Descartes’ remarks on the mathematical Methods of Analysis and Synthesis for the interminable debate about whether the Cogito is an inference or intuition. This question is resolved in a way which captures key features of the Cogito insight.



Cogito, Ergo Sum

73

Moreover, the revised understanding of the Cogito has a significance beyond the exegetical issues involved by illuminating the independent philosophical controversies about consciousness. We will see that Richter’s New Yorker cartoon captures a key insight—the idea that a sufficiently intelligent computer would conclude that it’s not one. That is, a computer could significantly utter “Cogito ergo sum” as a genuine avowal of the subjective awareness, indeed intuitive certainty, of a conscious mind. Of course, the apparent paradox in this claim arises from the fact that Descartes’ argument is the classical statement of dualism, whereas the computer is the paradigm for the materialist conception of mind—the machine without any ghost. The resolution of this apparent paradox turns on a proper understanding of the logical status and character of the Cogito and may be summarized by my suggestion that a sufficiently sophisticated computer would be a dualist. The intuition is a predictable consequence of specific information processing features of the system—the underlying logic of the Cogito. The natural approach among philosophers has been to focus on Descartes’ claims for his existence and his commitment to the soul as a distinct entity, res cogitans. However, Clarke poses a question that is surprising in light of the traditional portrait. He asks: Was Descartes really a dualist? Clarke (2003, 258) answers “Yes and no.” Frankfurt, too, challenges the usual view: … Descartes is no more interested in the fact that he exists than he is interested in the facts which he considers in the First Meditation – for instance, that he is seated by a fire, wearing a dressing gown, and so on … For his fundamental concern is not with the empirical question of what the facts are but with the epistemological and metaphysical question of how to attain certainty. … When he considers the belief in his own existence, his aim is not to establish its truth value but to reveal its indubitability (Frankfurt 2008, 145).

Indeed, Descartes claimed absolute certainty for his insight, but Peacocke (2012) says it is not “obviously desirable” that this certainty should be accounted for by an exegetical analysis. Typical of much Cartesian scholarship, Peacocke (2012, 122) admits “I am not supplying everything Descartes wanted on the epistemic side” because “I am not sure absolute indubitability can be secured from the resources I am deploying.” I suggest that this means Peacocke has failed to understand Descartes properly. We will see that the difficulty of according literal meaning and making sense of Descartes’ claims has led many commentators to simply discount his words. However, in this case, as Frankfurt notes, the indubitability of Descartes’ insight is central to his thought. The “diagonal” analysis will show that Descartes’ indubitability can be vindicated as we should require on textual and philosophical grounds. For the same reasons Searle and Strawson (2008, 7) insist that our subjective experience “is

74

Chapter Four

more certain than the existence of anything else.” That is, although Peacocke denies both, indubitability and the first-person are essentially connected. As Nagel (2012, 23) notes, the incorrigible features of consciousness arise specifically from an “understanding of ourselves” just as Descartes’s insight concerns “the human mind, when directed towards itself” (CSM 2, 7). Descartes asserts the certainty of the Cogito despite “the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics” (CSM 1, 127). Any reconstruction of the Cogito must capture this insight and towards this end my analysis supports Clarke’s (2003, 248) corrective to the usual stereotype. Specifically, Descartes’ dualism and his ‘real distinction’ of mind and body may be best understood in conceptual, epistemic, rather than ontological terms, contrary to the most widespread efforts to make sense of it. For example, as we will see, in his acclaimed article, Hintikka (1962) tries to capture the apparent ontological import of Descartes’ Cogito with an existentially quantified formula. However, this “view from nowhere” in Nagel’s (1986) phrase cannot be reconciled with the epistemological and introspective, first-person status of his argument. In particular, Descartes insists that his insight concerns “our own experience” and “that awareness or internal testimony which everyone experiences within himself” (CSM 2, 148). Descartes warns that only those should read his book “who are able and willing to meditate seriously with me” (CSM 2, 8). Of course, any author might say the same thing but, for the reasons we have seen, Descartes’ autobiographical idiom is not merely a stylistic device. Rather, it is essential for conveying his peculiar insight – by inducing it in his readers. It is in this sense that the Meditations offer, in Frankfurt’s (2008, 15) words, “not so much a theory to be understood as an exercise to be practised.” In this respect the antiquarian interest in the mind-body problem is essentially different from a scholarly, historical interest in other philosophical problems. For example, Curley (1986) acknowledges that there is a clear sense in which modern philosophers will have a clearer, deeper grasp of issues concerning causality than Hume. However, the problems of mind and consciousness are different in the sense that we have no better understanding of the key subjective phenomena today than Descartes had. That is, the special interest of the Cogito for modern philosophy is that Descartes’ perplexity about the mind is our own. Getting Descartes wrong suggests that we have not only failed to understand the texts but we have failed to understand ourselves and the source of the mind-body problem. The perennial debate about Descartes’ famous dictum is, therefore, not only a scholarly exercise, but also a case-study of philosophical puzzlement about consciousness. Though distinct from the problem of qualia and the Phenomenological Fallacy, the dualist intuitions in this case appear to be a fundamental obstacle to materialism – Ryle’s (1949a) “systematic elusive-



Cogito, Ergo Sum

75

ness” of the self. Moreover, I suggest that, just as qualia may be demystified in terms of Rosenthal’s (2005) reductive, representationalist ‘Higher Order Thought’ (HOT) account, so also the puzzlement about the self as expressed in Descartes’ Cogito argument can be explained in the same framework as “the human mind, when directed towards itself” (CSM 2, 7) and “the knowledge which I have of myself” (CSM 2, 247). Rosenthal’s account captures the way that the consciousness of a mental state is constituted by its being the intentional content of another, higher-order or meta-psychological state. In just these terms, Descartes refers to his “internal awareness” (CSM 2, 285) and says “the mind, when engaged in private meditation, can experience its own thinking” (CSM 2, 247) and in the Meditations he says “I will converse with myself and scrutinize myself more deeply” in order to achieve “a more intimate knowledge of myself” (CSM 2, 24). In the same way, predictably, modern philosophers with no particular interest in Descartes are unwittingly rehearsing his meditations in their contemporary theories of mind and consciousness. A proper understanding of Descartes’ Cogito, then, provides a diagnosis of these intuitive sources of resistance to materialism we saw in the previous chapters. The logic of the Cogito is the logic of the “Hard Problem” and the so-called “explanatory gap” (Levine 1983, 2001), the intuition that the mind can’t be a physical object like others in the world. The vast modern literature on consciousness is, as we might expect, rehearsing Descartes’ own meditations. As we have seen, Chalmers’ (2018, 12) “problem report” asserts “I can’t see how consciousness could be physical” which is, of course, precisely Descartes’ expression of the Cogito. MEDITATE SERIOUSLY WITH ME I argued in the previous chapters that the fundamental intuitive divide is not between mind and body as such, but between my own mind and everything else. This is the significance of Avramides’ (2004) analysis and it is in this vein that Clarke (2003) points out that for Descartes the “explanatory gap” is between the physics of the time and the conception of mental life “that we formulate from the first person perspective of our own thinking.” Descartes explains the source of his insight: … the only way we can learn such things is by ourselves: what convinces us of them is simply our own experience or awareness – that awareness or internal testimony which everyone experiences within himself when he ponders on such matters. (CSM 2, 418)

Chapter Four

76

Even where this character of the Cogito has been acknowledged,2 its logical significance has not been accommodated in the attempts to represent its inferential form. More surprising, however, the first-person, indexical features of the argument are frequently overlooked or explicitly denied. As we have noted, Peacocke (2012, 111) offers a “canonical form” for the Cogito argument but says “I am rejecting any view under which the content of the consciousness that forms the basis for the Cogito must itself have a first-personal content.” Peacocke’s rejection of the indubitability of Descartes’ insight and also its essential first-person status are connected mistakes. Peacocke is not alone. Steinberg’s New Yorker cartoon in Figure 4.2 expresses the same thought. It’s not clear how many readers appreciated the erudite joke but, for the reasons just noted, Steinberg’s cartoon is a parody of much philosophy of mind and Cartesian scholarship. The Latin in the thought-balloon means “I think, therefore Descartes exists,” subverting Descartes’ dictum to infer the existence of someone else from one’s own thoughts. Woodruff Smith (2000, 236) rightly said that any appraisal today of the logic of the cogito should begin with Hintikka’s (1962) study. Accordingly, I pay particular attention to Hintikka’s analysis because of its celebrity and because it provides an illuminating case of the failure to capture Descartes’

Figure 4.2. The New Yorker: Saul Steinberg (Dec. 22, 1962). ARS/Copyright Agency, 2022.



Cogito, Ergo Sum

77

insight. Thus, as in the Steinberg cartoon, Hintikka (1962, 13) assimilates Descartes’ key insight to a second-person or third-person proposition since he suggests “The transition from ‘public’ speech-acts to ‘private’ thought-acts … does not affect the essential features of their logic.” Hintikka (1962, 19) explicitly denies the logical significance of the first-person since he sees ‘cogito’ and the process of doubt as being of secondary importance, inessential to the logical force of the argument. For him the “sole basis of this inference” (Hintikka 1963, 489) resides in the existential or pragmatic inconsistency of denying ‘sum.’ Frankfurt (2008, 125), too, takes Descartes’ indubitability to concern sum.” On this analysis, the ‘performance’ essential to the Cogito is like telling someone else that one does not exist (1962, 12). Hintikka (1962, 18) says “It is very misleading ... to appeal to introspection in explaining the meaning of the Cogito.” He explains “nobody can make his hearer believe that he does not exist by telling him so” (1962, 13). To be sure, there is a self-defeating paradox in responding to a knock on one’s door by saying “There’s nobody at home.” Thus, Hintikka explains: The reason why Descartes’s attempt to think that he does not exist necessarily fails is for a logician exactly the same as the reason why his attempt to tell one of his contemporaries that Descartes did not exist would have been bound to fail as soon as the hearer realised who the speaker was (Hintikka1962, 13).

The references to a “hearer” clearly reveal that Hintikka fails to notice the crucial difference between the position of the hearer and that of Descartes himself in relation to the argument of the Cogito. Descartes’ inference of existence from thought was presumably not intended to convince us – that is, anybody else – that Descartes exists. Rather, the argument establishes the indubitability of Descartes’ existence for himself. The avowals of someone else could be part of my dream or the deception of the Evil Demon. By assimilating the logic of the Cogito argument to the force it has for a hearer, Hintikka simply includes it among all the contingent, empirical, sensory propositions Descartes is able to doubt and, thereby, an implausible candidate for the profound insight and “eternal truth” Descartes thought it to be (CSM 1, 209). Above all, it is impossible to reconcile Hintikka’s account with Descartes’ insistence we have noted that his insight concerns “our own experience” and “that awareness or internal testimony which everyone experiences within himself” (CSM 2, 148). As we saw earlier, for Descartes, the connection between thought and existence is a necessary truth having the certainty of mathematical proofs. In the Regulae, Descartes explicitly notes “there are many instances of things which are necessarily conjoined, even though most people count them as contingent, failing to notice the relation between them” (CSM 1, 46). Among his examples is the proposition “I understand, therefore I have a mind

78

Chapter Four

distinct from my body.” Apart from its philosophical shortcomings, identifying the force of the Cogito with the realization of a second person or hearer is to simply ignore Descartes’ repeated emphasis on “that awareness or internal testimony” of subjective experience. In a later article, Hintikka (1996, 7) makes a significant shift from his original acclaimed analysis we have just seen. In this subsequent discussion, Hintikka now recognizes the importance of the first-person, conceding that “Descartes is not for nothing formulating his insight in first-person terms ... As soon as you try to reformulate the cogito in third-person terms, you will see its plausibility disappear” (Hintikka 1996, 13). Nevertheless, Hintikka also says “I do not see any reason to retract or even to qualify anything in my original paper.” However, these later remarks cannot be reconciled with his earlier views which had flatly denied the relevance of introspection and the first-person. In his final publication, referring to my diagonal analysis (Slezak 1983), Hintikka (2013) acknowledges those who “who have emphasized the role of introspection and introspective awareness in Descartes” and who “have been up to something important.”3 THE MOST DEBATED QUESTION A central preoccupation of the scholarly literature has been the effort to understand the elusive logical structure of the Cogito – the puzzle of whether Cogito ergo sum is a logical inference, an intuition or something else, perhaps a “performance” as Hintikka (1962) suggested. Notwithstanding Hintikka’s seminal contribution, over a decade later Cottingham (1976) described the question of “Inference or Performance?” as “Perhaps the most debated question.” Descartes insists that his insight is both a logical deduction and also a flash of intuitive insight. However, the inability to locate a plausible inference has led some to discount his words and to conclude that the Cogito may not be an inference at all but only an “intuition.” Thus, Sarkar (2003, x) offers what he takes to be “novel and fairly conclusive reasons” why the Cogito cannot be construed as an inference after all. That is, he asserts “the discovery of the cogito can only be an intuition not a deduction” (2003, 201). Of course, these need not be mutually exclusive, as others have noted but, in the absence of a plausible inference, there has been no account of how Descartes’ claims concerning intuition and inference may be reconciled. We will see presently that the diagonal analysis, reveals why it must be both a logical inference and also an intuition, the characteristic feature of mathematical reasoning. We have noted ubiquitous remarks in which Descartes’ leaves no doubt about his conception of “the judgements which each of us must make within himself” (CSM 2, 272). Hintikka ignores these crucial indications of Descartes’ method and the character of his reasoning because his analysis



Cogito, Ergo Sum

79

relegates thought and the process of doubt to an inessential stage-setting role for the “performance” rather than accommodating them as integral to the argument itself. Nevertheless, we will see presently how the process of thought and doubt embody the crucial intuitive and logical features of the Cogito insight. For Descartes, the connection between thought and existence is a necessary truth having the certainty of mathematical proofs. In the Dedication to his Meditations, Descartes says of his arguments that “they amount to demonstrative proofs”: … I would now venture to put them forward as very certain and evident demonstrations. I will add that these proofs are of such a kind that I reckon they leave no room for the possibility that the human mind will ever discover better ones. (CSM 2, 4)

And again, Descartes (CSM 2, 5) leaves no doubt, saying “I regard the proofs as quite certain and evident” and “the proofs I employ here are in my view as certain and evident as the proofs of geometry, if not more so.” Of all philosophers, Descartes is unlikely to have been mistaken about referring to a logical, mathematical inference. However, the mystery has persisted because available logical reconstructions have the significant fault of being, at best, singularly unremarkable inferences, hardly worthy of a great mind and unlikely to be the profound insight that Descartes himself felt it to be. THERAPY NOT THEORIES Before turning directly to Descartes’ argument, it is helpful to recall relevant philosophical issues we considered in the previous chapters. Nagel (1965) took it as a datum of subjective experience that materialism has a deep, intuitive implausibility that is independent of its overwhelming systematic merits as a scientific, philosophical thesis. Nagel was concerned to account for the psychological fact that he had “always found physicalism extremely repellent” even though, at that time, he believed that the thesis is true. Although he is not concerned with Descartes at all, it is striking that Nagel’s (1965) expression of his own introspective abhorrence of materialism inevitably recites the reasoning of the Cogito almost verbatim. Nagel attributes the repugnance of materialism to the fact that he has a subjectivity that he is unable to predicate of any physical object. Nagel says: This leads naturally to the conclusion that I, the subject of my mental states, am something else – perhaps a mental substance (Nagel 1965, 112).

80

Chapter Four

Or, in Descartes’ words, Sum res cogitans. It is hardly surprising that the deep intuitive repugnance of materialism should be the expression of Descartes’ argument for dualism. INDUBITABILITY Descartes’ claim for the absolute certainty of his insight has received considerable attention but it is frequently remarked that he never says explicitly what makes the Cogito indubitable.4 This permits the reaction we noted by Peacocke (2012, 122) who rejects the claim and, therefore, the need to account for it. However, the suggestion that Descartes is never explicit about what makes the Cogito indubitable fails to recognize the relevance of key texts where the reasoning is perfectly explicit. In order to appreciate the argument properly, it is important to notice the significance of Descartes’ somewhat enigmatic emphasis on the fact that his certainty arises from his doubt: You cannot deny that you have such doubts; rather it is certain that you have them, so certain in fact that you cannot doubt your doubting. Therefore it is also true that you who are doubting exist; this is so true that you can no longer have any doubts about it (CSM 2, 27).

Descartes explains that his certainty regarding his existence is derived from the fact that “you cannot doubt your doubting.” Perhaps the air of paradox has led to missing the significance of Descartes’ (CSM 2, 418) similar remark “my certainty related to myself and my doubting.” However, as we will see presently, when taken literally, such remarks are the key to the reconstruction of Descartes’ reasoning as a formal self-reference or diagonalization. Commentators have failed to accommodate these central aspects of Descartes’ argument. Besheer (2009) considers Descartes’ doubting in the context of his natural philosophy but does not address the indubitability that Descartes claims to be his significant discovery. Equally surprising, Cunning (2007, 130) remarks that Descartes’ insistence on the indubitability of his existence presents “an intractable problem of interpretation” in the light of passages that suggest his existence is “just as dubitable as anything else.” This is a curious reading of Descartes’ unshakable certainty of his existence precisely by contrast with the dubitability of everything else. Such accounts simply ignore the familiar fact that, despite the demon’s unlimited powers of deception, Descartes claims to have found an “eternal truth” (CSM 1, 209) by means of “very certain and evident demonstrations … of such a kind that I reckon they leave no room for the possibility that the human mind will ever discover better ones” (CSM 2, 4). Remarkably, Cunning does not even consider the rel-



Cogito, Ergo Sum

81

evance of the Cogito argument universally taken to be the locus of Descartes’ indubitability. The well-known text actually cited by Cunning in the Third Meditation expresses Descartes’ certainty even in the face of an omnipotent deceiver, for “he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something” (CSM 2, 25). Of course, this is the same expression of his certainty in the Second Meditation despite the efforts of the malin génie. Whatever may be the difficulties of making sense of Descartes’ views, there can be no question of his firm commitment to the indubitability of his Cogito insight because it withstands even the science-fiction fantasy of the deceiving demon. Curley (2006, 43), too, raises questions about the status and the validity of Descartes’ grounds for doubt and what he refers to as the “skeptical hypothesis.” Curley (2006, 47) complains that the claim that an omnipotent demon might be deceiving us is unsupported and Descartes’ argument “does not vindicate his overall defense of knowledge.” However, these concerns miss the point and the force of Descartes’ argument. The story of the deceiving demon is not a hypothesis that needs support because it is a thought-experiment and extravagant fiction designed to explore the consequences of the most extreme doubt in order to see what, if anything, might survive. This is not a defense of knowledge or an answer to skepticism. In light of the scholarly disarray among available accounts illustrated here, some commentators conclude that there is no coherent account to be reconstructed of Descartes’ view regarding the dubitability of his existence (Cunning 2007, 112). Alternatively, of course, it may be that available accounts have missed some key insight. PURE ONTOLOGY For example, Almog (2005) says “The ur-problem I find in Descartes is one of pure ontology.” In the same vein, Hintikka (1962) tried to capture the apparent ontological import of Descartes’ Cogito with an existentially quantified formula. Hintikka’s acclaimed reconstruction of the inference purportedly involved in the Cogito is a modus ponens with the following suppressed conditional premise: [Ba ⊃ ∃ x (x=a)] (i.e., if I think, then I exist) However, this approach cannot be reconciled with the epistemological and introspective, first-person status of Descartes’ argument we have seen. Williams (1978, 92) pointed out that Hintikka’s formula has nothing specially to do with thinking or with the first-person and, as he insists, the Cogito does have something peculiarly connected with both of these. In fact, as we have

82

Chapter Four

noted, in his “performative” account of denying sum, Hintikka denies the relevance of both thinking and the first person to the special features of the Cogito. Thus, contrary to the usual approach, if we place the epistemic, conceptual issues at the centre of our analysis, the pieces of the traditional puzzle fall into place. Specifically, Descartes’ dualism and his ‘real distinction’ of mind and body may be best understood in conceptual, rather than ontological terms, contrary to the most widespread efforts to make sense of it. THE FORMAL AND THE PHENOMENAL In the face of such analyses, we may turn to the diagonal reconstruction which makes sense of Descartes’ otherwise incomprehensible words. I suggested that the Cogito puzzle may be due to a peculiar kind of elusiveness. The exegetical problem has not been widely seen in these terms but a suggestion along these lines was made by the logician Yehoshua Bar-Hillel: ... this phenomenon [of indexicality] is ... a major cause of many philosophical pseudo-problems and pseudo-theses; and, in the confusion it creates when not fully understood, is partly responsible for the otherwise almost incomprehensible veneration in which the Cartesian Cogito is held (Bar-Hillel 1970, 199).

Bar-Hillel did not explain his cryptic comment, but the diagonal account captures precisely how the mystery of the Cogito may be seen to arise from indexicality as an instance of familiar paradoxes of self-reference. Two of the most well-known topics in the philosophical curriculum, the Cogito and the Liar, turn out to be one and the same. Indeed, as if stating a riddle, Descartes says that he came to know with certainty as soon as he began to doubt. The riddle is clarified once we understand the structure of the reasoning which permits giving Descartes’ words a literal meaning. The reason for the cooccurrence of certainty and doubt is that the doubting process generates the certainty which is, moreover, about the doubt itself. Descartes says clearly that his doubt was brought home to him in a way that made him “certain of it” – that is, certain of his doubt. However, Descartes explains, “my certainty did not relate to the same objects” as his doubts. Specifically, doubt concerning the external world sufficed to produce certainty about himself and his doubt. Commentators may have been misled by the superficial appearance of selfcontradiction. To be sure, in the absence of an account which can make sense of it, to say that one is certain of doubt recalls Oscar Wilde’s self-refuting irony: “I can resist everything except temptation.” However, the diagonal account permits us to take Descartes literally and sensibly.



Cogito, Ergo Sum

83

Towards appreciating this, it is important to notice that the universal assumption has been that the Cogito is an argument understood narrowly as consisting of the premise, cogito, and the conclusion sum (Gallois 2000). However, this focus on the dictum itself has led to neglecting the wider context that contains the inference of interest. Consequently, it is generally thought that no inference is explicitly spelled out in the Meditations. For example, Gallois (2000, 364) suggests that the following famous passage is the one “that comes closest to deserving the title ‘Cogito’. But I was persuaded that there was nothing in all the world, that there was no heaven, no earth, that there were no minds, nor any bodies: was I not then likewise persuaded that I did not exist? Not at all; of a surety I myself did exist since I persuaded myself of something [or merely because I thought of something]. But there is some deceiver or other, very powerful and very cunning, who ever employs his ingenuity in deceiving me. Then without doubt I exist also if he deceives me, and let him deceive me as much as he will, he can never cause me to be nothing so long as I think I am something. So that after having reflected well and carefully examined all things, we must come to the definite conclusion that this proposition: I am, I exist, is necessarily true every time I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it. (CSM 2, 16, 17).

Indeed, the dictum itself, cogito ergo sum, does not appear here. Nevertheless, this is not the same as there being no identifiable inference. If we stick closely to Descartes’ words in what amounts to little more than a paraphrase of his Meditations argument, we may see its logical structure in a way that produces a sense of déjà vu. Above all, we will see how Descartes’ certainty is revealed, as he says in the Third Meditation, by “the natural light” from “the fact that I am doubting” (CSM 2, 27). THE DIAGONAL DEDUCTION Descartes (CSMK 3, 12) recommends, “order is what is needed: all the thoughts that can come into the human mind must be arranged in an order like the natural order of the numbers.” Thus, Descartes’ systematic doubt may be represented as successive propositions that are subject to denial – that is, the contemplation of their falsity. This may be represented as entertaining substitution instances of the formula (x), which is Ayer’s (1953) propositional function “I doubt that p.” Consider: (x) I doubt (p) where (p) may be any of Descartes’ beliefs as given in the following list:

84

Chapter Four

(a) Grass is green. (b) Roses are red. (c) Snow is white. Etc. Ayer suggests that among possible substitutions, “p” might be “I think” but he does not consider the case in which “p” might be “I doubt.” This is closer to Descartes’ intention as indicated by his remark that his certainty follows from his doubt and specifically concerns his doubt. For example, in the Third Meditation Descartes says that the “natural light” reveals to him “that from the fact that I am doubting it follows that I exist” (CSM 2, 27). In this regard, the diagonal account is more faithful to the text, revealing precisely why indubitability follows as a matter of ineluctable logic from the reasoning. Accordingly, Descartes’ doubt can be represented in an obvious way by simply enumerating each of the propositions in turn: (x1) I doubt (a) (x2) I doubt (b) (x3) I doubt (c) Etc. Clearly, a possible substitution for (p) may be (x) itself. That is, among the things to which this successive doubt can be applied is the doubt represented by the proposition (x) itself. In that case, when p = x we can construct the following proposition: (x*) I doubt (x*) This sentence precisely captures the seeming paradox in Descartes’ remark that he gained certainty as soon as he began to doubt. The conundrum is clarified by the foregoing sequence of propositions which permit us to appreciate the reason that “my doubt applied only to things which existed outside me, whereas my certainty related to myself and my doubting.” In particular, we can understand why certainty concerns doubting since he cannot doubt that he doubts. For Descartes, “Anything which admits of the slightest doubt I will set aside just as if I had found it to be wholly false” (CSM 2, 16). Attempting to doubt (x*) means considering it to be false. In turn, since (x*) asserts ‘I doubt (x*)’, its falsity means that I don’t doubt (x*) or, in other words, (x*) is indubitable. (x*) seems to be a proposition which is immune from doubt. This form of reasoning is now presumably familiar. (x*) says of itself that it is doubtful and has obvious similarities with the Liar sentence that says of itself that it is false. While the foregoing reconstruction is hardly more than a restatement of Descartes’ words in the Meditations, it also reveals the close



Cogito, Ergo Sum

85

structural similarity to the Liar paradox and other ‘diagonal’ or Cantorian self-referential arguments. In one form the Liar is commonly represented as a sentence that denies its own truth as follows: (n) (n) is false Now we can appreciate Descartes’ riddle. If we wanted to explain the meaning of proposition (x*), we could hardly do better than his remarks from The Search After Truth in which he says “I am doubting” because “I cannot doubt that” (CSM 2, 415). Thus, our analysis articulates Descartes’ insight that the very attempt to doubt everything turns out to be self-defeating. As soon as you showed me what little certainty we can have in the existence of things which we can know only by means of the senses, I began to doubt them. This was enough to bring my doubt home to me and to make me certain of it. Thus I can state that as soon as I began to doubt, I began to have knowledge which was certain. But my doubt and my certainty did not relate to the same objects: my doubt applied only to things which existed outside me, whereas my certainty related to myself and my doubting. (CSM 2, 418)

On available interpretations, these remarks remain anomalous whereas on the present account they are accorded a literal sense. The paradox is assimilated to a familiar form of inference, the “diagonal heuristic,” which is notorious for just such peculiarities. Thus, the Liar sentence says of itself that it is untrue, the Gödel sentence says of itself that it is unprovable and the Cogito sentence, that is, (x*), says of itself that it is doubtful. CURIOUSLY MOMENTARY AFFAIR Descartes invariably states his insight with some kind of temporal qualification to the effect that his indubitable first principle emerged, “while I was trying thus to think everything false.” For example, Descartes says “I am, I exist—that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking” (CSM 2, 18; emphasis added). Again, “someone who wishes to doubt everything cannot, for all that, doubt that he exists while he is doubting” (CSM 1, 184; emphasis added). Hintikka (1962, 127) takes such remarks to show that the Cogito insight is a “curiously momentary affair.” However, by denying the first-person, introspective character of Descartes’ insight, Hintikka has misconstrued the significance of these “temporal” features of the Cogito. After all, being momentary is not a unique feature of the Cogito insight, for it is presumably a property of any thought or insight whatever. Descartes’ reference to “momentariness” is not, properly speaking, temporal but rather

86

Chapter Four

indicates a logical feature of the insight—namely, its self-referential character or indexicality. Thus, Descartes says explicitly “it is a contradiction to suppose that what thinks does not, at the very time when it is thinking, exist” (CSM 1, 195), just as we may express the Liar sentence in temporal terms as “The sentence I am now uttering is false.” Or, as we say, the sentence is both true and false at the same time. INVESTIGATIONAL ASYMMETRIES The indubitability of the Cogito is the obverse of the intuitive repugnance of materialism. Not surprisingly, Descartes’ reasoning is recapitulated in philosophers’ independent arguments. We saw that Nagel (1965) attributes the repugnance of materialism to the subjectivity that he is unable to predicate of any physical object. More specifically, Nagel (1965, 114) states the problem in terms in terms of an exhaustive description of the physical world which must necessarily leave out “the fact that I am the subject of these experiences; this body is my body; the subject of my world is this person, Thomas Nagel.” This way of stating the problem is reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s remarks in the Tractatus (§5.633) we noted earlier that “nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.” This was the sense in which he meant “The subject does not belong to the world; rather it is a limit of the world” (Tractatus §5.632). In Nagel’s (1986) later apostasy from materialism, he gives a rich articulation of these same intuitions that have come to outweigh the systematic considerations in favour of materialism. In his avowals we see a precise expression Descartes’ reasoning. Nagel (1986, 6) explains that the recalcitrance of subjectivity to any objective understanding requires the recognition that such an objective account “cannot by itself provide a complete picture of the world, or a complete stance toward it.” Here we see a precise statement of the same intuition that Gunderson (1970) reconstructs as the introspective source of perplexity about one’s self in relation to the rest of the world. While acknowledging the force of the intuition, Gunderson shows how it can arise for any appropriately organized system of representation. Significantly, Gunderson is not concerned with Descartes at all, but only with the intuitive implausibility of materialism, the introspective perplexities that give rise to the modern mind-body problem. Specifically, he is concerned with precisely Nagel’s intuition, that is, the “final persuasiveness physicalism lacks which can be traced to the conceptual hardship each person faces when trying to imagine himself being completely accounted for by any such [physical] dissection, dismantling, or inspection” (Gunderson 1970, 274). The important question Gunderson asks is: “If a thoroughgoing physicalism



Cogito, Ergo Sum

87

… is true, why should it even seem so difficult for me to view my mind or self as an item wholly in the world?” This is a concern with the aetiology of the mind-body problem. Gunderson (1970, 278,9) explains, “what must be overcome is a natural resistance to viewing one’s own mind or self as something which can be wholly investigated in a way in which other people and things can be imagined as being wholly investigated by one’s own mind or self.” We saw that this was the insight of Avramides (2001). Gunderson refers to this as the ‘Investigational Asymmetries Problem’ and he suggests a mechanism, that is, a materialist account, which would actually produce the illusions or perplexities that constitute the mind-body puzzle. As we noted in Chapter 2, Gunderson gives suggestive analogies to illustrate his point, such as the inherent impossibility of a periscope to locate itself on its own crosshairs or the inherent impossibility of the eye to see itself directly. However, the point is that this kind of impossibility is ontologically benign in the sense that it does not entail any inadequacy of materialism, explanatory gap or dualism, any more than the asymmetry entails a dualism of periscopes or eyes. MATHEMATICAL INTIMATIONS: MEINE GEDANKENWELT This ontology-free analysis might appear to be an unlikely candidate for reconstructing Descartes’ Cogito argument which has been conceived as leading to his dualism. Of special interest is Wittgenstein’s suggestive analogy between the resulting puzzlement and the giddiness from performing a logical sleight-of-hand or from thinking of certain theorems in set theory. These cryptic remarks are not explained further but it seems likely that Wittgenstein has in mind the notorious self-referential paradoxes in the foundations of settheory. Significantly, Dedekind (1888) formulated his mathematical notion of infinity in terms of meine Gedankenwelt – ‘the totality S of all things which can be objects of my thought’ and he frames his proof in terms of the idea that, if s is an element of S, the idea s* that s can be an object of thought, is itself and element of S.5 The notion of reflexiveness is employed by Dedekind explicitly this way in relation to ideas. Thus, a reflexive class is one that is similar to a proper part of itself. The relevance of these ideas to our interest in representations and thought is seen in an illustration by Royce (1900) who cites the work of Cantor and Dedekind in his discussion of self-representative systems. He gives the illustration of a map of England, contained within England itself. Royce notes “But the mathematical objects are by no means the most philosophically interesting of the instances of our concept. For, next, we have the Self … And, indeed, if the Self is anything final at all, it is certainly in its complete expression … a self-representative system.” Royce

88

Chapter Four

(1900, 513) remarks further “Dedekind’s really very profound use of meine Gedankenwelt as his typical instance of the infinite, also suggests the interesting relation between the concept of the Self and that of the mere mathematical form called the number series …” LEVELS AND HIGHER ORDER THOUGHTS The inability of Gunderson’s scanner to insert its own complete description on its World List is suggestive of Cantor’s diagonal proof and the well-known limitations on formal systems such as Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. These formal notions can perhaps be regarded as abstract schemata for the higher order reasoning implicit in reflection on one’s own mind and its attendant perplexities—the introspective puzzle of the ‘systematic elusiveness’ of the self. On Gunderson’s model, the self eludes an exhaustive inventory of the world, however the same model can give rise to Descartes’ certainty of the self. There is a rich literature on the Liar and related paradoxes which we cannot explore here. My purpose is only to indicate the formal parallels with questions of thought and the mind. For example, Perlis (2006) offers speculations about self-reference in natural language, AI and consciousness, and Priest (1995) explores a wide range of related matters, concurring with Russell’s view that the paradoxes of self-reference all belong to a single family. Priest (1995, 155) observes, “There does seem to be something similar going on in all the paradoxes, though pinning down what this is, is notoriously difficult.” Fortunately, there is no need for us to grapple with this question and the various attempts to deal with the Liar Paradox, among others. My concern is simply to add Descartes’ Cogito to the inventory of paradoxes that appear to have the same structure. Suggestive connections between the Liar Paradox and conscious awareness may be seen in the diagnosis and treatment favoured by Russell and Tarski.6 Burman draws attention to the need to postulate a hierarchy of thoughts that is analogous to the levels of language and truth predicates proposed to deal with the Paradox of the Liar. Descartes’ suggests that “nothing can exist in the mind... of which it is not aware” (CSM 2, 171). In response, Burman asks: But how can it be aware, since to be aware is itself a thought? In order to have the thought that you are aware, you must move on to another thought; if you do this, you can no longer be thinking of the thing you were thinking a moment ago. It follows that you cannot be aware that you are thinking, but only that you were thinking. (CSMK 3, 335).



Cogito, Ergo Sum

89

Regarding this hierarchical strategy, Kripke (1975, 695) notes philosophers have been suspicious on the grounds that “our language contains just one word ‘true’, not a sequence of distinct phrases , applying to sentences of higher and higher levels.” Similarly, Descartes’ response to Burman questions whether the reflective resort to levels is problematic: It is correct that to be aware is to think and to reflect on one’s thought. But it is false that his reflection cannot occur while the previous thought is still there. This is because, as we have already seen, the soul is capable of thinking more than one thing at the same time, and of continuing with a particular thought which it has. It has the power to reflect on its thoughts as often as it likes, and to be aware of its thought in this way (CSMK 3, 335).

The exchange is striking in its evocation of Rosenthal’s (2005) Higher Order Thought (HOT) analysis which resorts to a hierarchy of levels to capture our intuitions concerning consciousness. Descartes frequently speaks of the importance of directing our attention upon the contents of our thoughts, and he explicitly defines thought “to include everything that is within us in such a way that we are immediately aware of it.” Similarly, ‘idea’ is defined reflexively “to mean the form of any given thought, immediate perception of which makes me aware of the thought” (CSM 2, 113). The issue between Descartes and Burman is exactly the issue disputed by contemporary philosophers (e.g. Kriegel 2009) who hold that the higher order content is internal to each conscious state rather than being a distinct meta-state. Pereplyotchik (2015, 436) defends Rosenthal’s HOT account of distinct states against such views according to which conscious states are “unified composites that fuse lower-order and higher-order contents.” Rosenthal (2022, 109) draws attention to Armstrong’s (1968, 107) rejection of this unified view on the basis of a “scanning” metaphor according to which awareness of our own mental states involves the scanning by a mechanism of its own internal states. On such a model, “there must be an absolute distinction between the scanner and the scanned,” the issue disputed by Burman and Descartes. As I will note presently, Cantorian diagonalization provides a natural formalization of the apparent transcendence of the mind. INTUITION AND INFERENCE I suggested that the philosophical dispute about whether the Cogito is intuition or inference can be settled, as we would wish, in a way that is both philosophically plausible and exegetically elegant. It is possible to provide a textually faithful analysis that permits seeing the Cogito as both inference and intuition because it may be seen as an exercise in the mathematical method

90

Chapter Four

of Analysis. In this way, above all, as Feldman (1973) requires, the Diagonal account permits crediting Descartes with a worthy insight. First, it is worth returning briefly to the struggle of scholars to accommodate Descartes’ seemingly contrary attitudes to his insight. A satisfactory solution to the problem of the Cogito should reconcile Descartes’ claim that the Cogito is a certain inference with his claim that it is “not the work of your reasoning” but an intuitive kind of knowledge, “something that your mind sees, feels and handles” (CSMK 3, 331). Hintikka’s approach to this apparent conflict in Descartes’ texts is to suggest that he was simply confused about the two interpretations of the Cogito. Thus, Hintikka (1962, 17) refers to “Descartes’s vacillation in expressing it in that he sometimes speaks of the Cogito as an inference and sometimes as a realization of the intuitive self-evidence of its latter half.” Sarkar (2003, x), too, sees an inherent contradiction in Descartes’ reports of his own insight, since “In effect, Descartes is saying both that the cogito is an argument (reading the ‘therefore’ as a conclusion indicator) and that it is not.” Accordingly, Sarkar adopts the desperate exegetical tactic of discounting Descartes’ remarks that cannot fit his preferred analysis. In extenuation, he says, “There is simply no interpretation of Descartes that will not fail to explain at least some of the text. One might as well try to square the circle.” Accordingly, he explains, “I have attempted to do the next best thing, to provide an interpretation that will save as much as possible of what is profound and interesting in Descartes” (Sarkar 2003, x). In other words, Sarkar must dismiss half of Descartes’ explanations of his own insight. More charitable is Kenny’s (1968, 55) conciliatory view “that what is from one point of view intuited is from another point of view deduced.” Indeed, speaking of both modo per intuitum and modo per deductionem Descartes’ remarks in the Regulae support Kenny’s view: … those propositions which are immediately inferred from first principles can be said to be known in one respect through intuition, and in another respect through deduction. (CSM I, 15)

However, on its own this hardly helps resolve the seeming contradiction that has led commentators to discard Descartes’ remarks. Kenny’s view is not supported by any independent analysis that demonstrates exactly how the two characterizations of the Cogito are, in fact, justified. METHOD OF ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS Of particular importance for understanding the Cogito as both inference and intuition are neglected passages that are not directly concerned with the Cogito



Cogito, Ergo Sum

91

as such but give indications of Descartes’ metaphysical method – the method of ‘Analysis.’7 Evidently neglected by commentators, Descartes (CSM 2, 111) says plainly, “I have used in my Meditations only analysis.” Accordingly, the considerable independent literature concerning Analysis and Synthesis provides a litmus test for any account of the Cogito by providing the framework within which the issues of inference and intuition must be understood.8 Apart from its other virtues, by showing how the Meditations conform with the mathematical method of Analysis, the ‘diagonal’ account reveals how Descartes has, indeed, provided “perfectly exact demonstrations” that are, at the same time, the deliverances of intuition or the “light of reason.” The origins of the Analysis/Synthesis distinction are mathematical and, as Gaukroger (1980, 99) notes, “Descartes wants to construe the procedures for dealing with non-mathematical problems in terms of those for dealing with mathematical ones.”9 In a letter to Huygens in 1635, Descartes wrote “one sees more people capable of introducing philosophical conjectures into mathematics than those who can introduce the certainty and force of mathematical proofs into matters of philosophy” (Adam and Tannery eds. 1969, i. 331-332).10 The complementary roles of intuition and inference are, of course, familiar from mathematical reasoning and, of all philosophers, Descartes is likely to have appreciated these matters most clearly. For example, it is a familiar feature of mathematical learning that explains why Descartes should say of the method of Analysis, just as he says of the Cogito, “if the reader care to follow it … he understands the matter no less perfectly and makes it as much his own as if he had himself discovered it” (CSM 2, 111). Analysis is a method of mathematical discovery and not of proof,11 explicitly described as such by Descartes as his path to the insight of the Cogito. In the Regulae Descartes discusses “all the actions of the intellect by means of which we are able to arrive at a knowledge of things” and it is significant for our concern here that Descartes refers specifically to intuition and deduction (CSM 1, 14).12 Thus, it is in Descartes’ texts concerning mathematical reasoning we can see how intuition and deduction are complementary, a fact that is well known to mathematicians. TACIT KNOWLEDGE Today it is a familiar feature of cognition in domains such as perception, language and mathematical reasoning that perceptual judgments or subjective intuitions are underpinned by sub-personal information processing or computational mechanisms. It is in this way that Descartes’ physiological theories bear on the Cogito and provide perhaps the clearest confirmation of the conception I have been attributing to him. Specifically, the complementary roles of intuition and inference are perfectly explicit in his explanation of vision.

92

Chapter Four

Figure 4.3.  Blind man using parallax. Descartes, René, 1692. L’Homme. Fig. 15, p. 160. Œuvres de Descartes. (1996). Vol. 11, Edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery: Paris: J. Vrin.

In his Optics, Descartes explains stereoscopic perception as based on parallax calculations using cues from the orientation of the eyes and their distance from each other as baseline (Figure 4.3). Of course, these calculations are not proposed as being undertaken consciously, but rather as unconscious or tacit knowledge precisely in Chomsky’s (1965) sense. In just this way, Descartes writes of our judgment of distance which involves an intuitive perception which has an underlying mathematical cause: And this is done by a mental act which, though only a very simple act of the imagination, involves a kind of reasoning quite similar to that used by surveyors when they measure inaccessible places by means of two vantage points. (CSM 1, 170)

Although not generally invoked to illuminate the Cogito, the Regulae is striking in its relevance. Thus, in Rule Nine Descartes refers to his account of “the two operations of our intellect, intuition and deduction, on which we must … exclusively rely in our acquisition of knowledge” and suggests “We can best learn how mental intuition is to be employed by comparing it with ordinary vision” (CSM 1, 33). Again, we see the conception of a judgment, a simple intuition or act of imagination “without logic, or rule, or a formula,” implicitly containing such formal reasoning used by a mathematician. Even in the absence of any account of the logical inference involved in the Cogito, we can see that there is no need to attribute inconsistency to Descartes’ regarding intuition and inference. This illustration from the Optics is a clear indication of Descartes’ understanding of ‘tacit knowledge’ in its contemporary sense.



Cogito, Ergo Sum

93

Indeed, Cottingham’s commentary on Descartes’ view of logical inference in the Cogito leads him to the same conclusion concerning the differing status of knowledge claims. Without reference to Chomsky’s methodological distinctions, Cottingham articulates the crucial features of ‘tacit knowledge’ even to the extent of illustrating his point with the example of grammar. As Cottingham points out, in saying that someone knows, Descartes is aware of a crucial ambiguity between explicit and implicit “knowledge.” Cottingham (1976, xxiv) says this ambiguity is illustrated in saying “He knows the principles of English grammar.” Thus, in light of these distinctions, Descartes’ clarification in reply to Burman speaks for itself. He explains “it does not follow that I am always expressly and explicitly aware” of the priority of a logical principle. “This is because I am attending only to what I experience inside myself – for example, ‘I think therefore I am’: I do not pay attention in the same way to the general notion” (Cottingham 1976, 4). In line with our own conclusions, Cottingham suggests that the question of whether the Cogito is intuition or inference itself is misleading since the alternatives are not mutually exclusive. Available accounts of the Cogito have failed to accommodate the direct relevance of these matters, despite Descartes’ explicit comment on the two varieties of demonstration (CSM 2, 110). Descartes adds that “it is analysis which is the best and truest method of instruction, and it was this method alone which I employed in my Meditations” (CSM 2, 111). Accordingly, we may suppose that the explicit, intuitive insight available to anyone corresponds with the discovery by Analysis whereas its formal reconstruction as a logical inference corresponds with Synthesis “that the ancient geometers usually employed.” These clarifications help us to understand Descartes’ remarks in which he explains that he does not use the formal geometrical method of proof by Synthesis in his Meditations, since “this method is not as satisfying as the method of Analysis, nor does it engage the minds of those who are eager to learn, since it does not show how the thing in question was discovered” (CSM 2, 111). This is, indeed, just as the Liar Paradox amply demonstrates: It is in the nature of self-referential paradoxes to generate just such conundrums – easily thought of or understood intuitively by anyone, yet keeping philosophers puzzled for centuries. This was, of course, Markie’s paradox noted earlier. A satisfactory account of Descartes’ Cogito must show it to be (i) an insight of absolute certainty which is so simple and natural that it might have occurred to anyone, and yet (ii) so elusive as to have evaded philosophers for centuries. These two conditions of adequacy on a solution are met when we resolve the apparent conflict between seeing the Cogito as inference and as intuition: Our account shows the Cogito insight to be an intuitive, introspective reflection on one’s own thoughts and readily occurring to anyone, but at the same time having an elusive logical structure that is implicit

94

Chapter Four

in the intuition. The diagonal account shows how the intuition of conscious reflection can be explained by an implicit logical schema. Markie’s paradox is resolved by precise analogy with Chomsky’s generative linguistics where the intuitions of grammaticality or ambiguity, for example, are accessible to everyone, while the formal mathematical analysis of their underlying structure is an elusive intellectual problem. That is, by contrast with the logical reconstruction of “reflective knowledge,” the testimony of intuition is available to everyone, “stated and worked out not by means of logic, or a rule or pattern of argument, but simply by the light of reason and good sense” (CSM 2, 415). The Cogito insight as such does not need elaborate treatment once it is seen how it could have been made by anyone who is “able and willing to meditate seriously with me” (CSM 2, 8). However, the insight itself is not the same as a proper analysis of its nature and force – a logical reconstruction by means of “a long series of definitions, postulates, axioms, theorems and problems” (CSM 2, 111). Of such a formal reconstruction Descartes aptly says “all that must be left to him who is going to be a professor” since this involves logic

Figure 4.4.  “’Cogito, ergo sum’ is all very well for you, but what about me?” The New Yorker: James Stevenson (May 3, 1969).



Cogito, Ergo Sum

95

and other difficult matters not necessary for obtaining the intuitive insight itself. Today, just such an analysis should be more readily appreciated in the light of the methodology of Chomsky’s (1965) generative linguistics which provides a formal, mathematical model of ‘tacit knowledge’ based on the speaker’s naïve intuitions. The linguist’s grammar shows precisely how the formal and the intuitive are complementary aspects of linguistic knowledge just as Descartes speaks of his insight being obtained “by that internal awareness which always precedes reflective knowledge” (CSM 2, 285). That is, the diagonal analysis of the Cogito appears to capture, not just Descartes’ texts, but our own compelling mind-body intuitions. In particular, this analysis of the Cogito shows how materialism need not deny the phenomena of subjective experience but shows exactly how Descartes’ argument explains the basis for Strawson’s (2008, 7) insistence that this subjectivity “is more certain than the existence of anything else.” In this spirit, the diagonal reconstruction of the Cogito captures Clarke’s (2003) insight that Descartes’ dualism reflected the gap between physics and “the first person perspective of our own thinking.” The same insight illuminates Avramides (2001, 3) warning about the “deep mistakes involved in taking reflection on one’s own mind as one’s starting point for thinking about the mind more generally.” NOTES   1.  I’m sick of it! The famous Cogito annoys me.   2.  See Beck (1965, 37).   3.  In a footnote to his last publication, Hintikka (2013) gives credit for his modified view to an article whose author he couldn’t recall. In an email Hintikka (April 2014) confirmed that the article was my own (Slezak 1983). For acknowledgment of Hintikka’s indebtedness, see X. Kieft, (2015).   4.  See Gallois (2000, 366).   5.  See Suppes (1972).   6.  See Parsons (1974/1984).   7.  See Tweyman ed. (1993, 8); Gaukroger (1989).   8.  See papers in Tweyman ed., (1993). See also Beck (1952); Lakatos Vol. 2, (1978); Hintikka and Remes (1974).   9.  See also Gaukroger, (2002, 59) on Descartes’ concern to apply mathematical methods elsewhere. The study of logic in the seventeenth century covered not only deductively valid forms of inference but also, much more importantly, what can be called the ‘logic of discovery’ (Gaukroger 1989, 7). 10.  My translation. 11.  See Lakatos (1978, 73) and Hintikka and Remes (1974, 7). 12. The general relevance of the Regulae for understanding Descartes’ application of mathematical thinking to philosophical problems such as the Cogito has been argued by Beck (1952, 7, 273).

Chapter Five

The Mind’s Eye: Visual Imagery

… if men had been born blind philosophy would be more perfect, because it would lack many false assumptions that have been taken from the sense of sight. Galileo Galilei (1610)

HOTTEST TOPIC When people are asked how many windows are in their living room, or what shape are Mickey Mouse’s ears, they invariably report finding the answer by visualizing the objects and inspecting their image. That is, they report the irresistible introspective impression of “looking” at their mental image “with the mind’s eye.” This subjective experience appears to be supported by famous theories and laboratory experiments in what has been widely regarded as a paradigm of cognitive science. However, this work has also been described as a paradigm of pervasive error, perhaps the most literal case of adopting the viewpoint of a Spectator in the Cartesian Theater. Among the conceptual errors exposed in Ryle’s (1949a) classic The Concept of Mind, he explains, “imaging occurs, but images are not seen” and, expressing the theme of this book, he says when a person is imaging “he is not being a spectator.” The “Imagery Debate” was characterised in its heyday as “one of the hottest topics” in cognitive science following upon what Block (1981, 1) described as “a truly spectacular body of experiments” concerning so called “mental rotation”1 and “mental scanning” of images.2 These celebrated experiments were taken to show that imagery was to be explained more or less as introspection suggests—a kind of internal seeing having precise parallels with external visual perception. In particular, the experiments appear to 97

98

Chapter Five

suggest that the medium or mental representations underlying visual imagery must have properties or a “format” that is essentially pictorial in the sense that they are supposed to hold a relation of resemblance to their referents in the manner of pictures. For example, Finke (1989) observes “People often wonder why mental images resemble the things they depict.”3 In the same vein, Tye (1988, 498) says “a mental image of my mother’s face, say, certainly looks to me like a picture of my mother’s face” (emphasis added). von Eckardt (1993, 32) describes Kosslyn’s pictorial account of mental imagery as an exemplar of cognitive science research and Rollins (1989, xiii), too, notes a widely shared view that “the matter has become a kind of crucible to defining cognitive science as a science.” Indeed, I suggest that these characterizations are correct from a sociological point of view reflecting a widely shared consensus. However, the pictorial theory has been persistently charged with committing “the most ubiquitous and damaging conceptual confusion” (Pylyshyn 1981, 18) and I will suggest that it may be seen as a template for the variants of the Spectator illusion. The intense controversies in psychology and philosophy have abated but it is instructive to ask “What happened to the imagery debate?” We will see that recent confident assertions that the “so-called” debate has been settled (Pearson 2019) are unfounded despite the suggestion that empirical findings have resolved the issues (Pearson and Kosslyn 2015). Earlier, by appealing to neurological evidence, Kosslyn (1994, 377) claimed to have clinched the case in favour of the pictorial account and declared “the ‘imagery debates’ are for all intents and purposes settled.” However, he adds the jibe (1994, 409) “Let me qualify this: I fully expect philosophers to continue to debate the matter; after all, that is their business.” In the same vein Kosslyn, Thompson and Ganis (2006, 20) argue “that the imagery debate should now be settled as much as any debate in science is ever settled,” although not everyone is persuaded since “Even today, there are those who argue that the world is flat.” Despite these ad hominem remarks against benighted philosophers, in this chapter I suggest it is rather as Wittgenstein (1953, §xiv) said: “In psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion.” MENTAL ROTATION Accordingly, turning to the decades-long debate, it’s appropriate to examine the famous experiments that gave rise to the resurgence of interest in visual imagery among psychologists and philosophers. The modern revival was stimulated by famous “mental rotation” experiments by Shepard and Metzler (1971) in which subjects were asked whether the paired shapes below represent the same object and their response times were measured. In one case the



The Mind’s Eye 99

Figure 5.1.  Mental rotation stimulus. Reproduction by Barbara Tversky (2004) (permission obtained February 20, 2023). Based on Shepard & Metzler (1971).

shapes are rotated in the plane of the page, whereas in another case the shapes are represented as if rotated in three dimensions (Figure 5.1). Remarkably, subjects responded with reaction times that are a linear function of the angle between the two shapes. That is, people take longer to tell whether the shapes are the same in precise proportion to the angle by which they are rotated from each other. The same linear correlation of reaction times is found for 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional rotations. These results are surprising if the mental processes involve computation with symbols according to the conception of cognition which is the foundational doctrine of cognitive science. The computations should not take significantly different times with different values for the relevant variables. If mental rotation takes longer when the angle is larger, it suggests that internal representations are of a continuous or analog nature rather than discrete symbolic computations. Specifically, representations are assumed to be spatial and picture-like rather than language-like. Kosslyn (1983, 39) explains, the data “validate the introspection that objects in images seem to rotate by passing through intermediate positions along a trajectory.” MENTAL SCANNING The same conclusions have been drawn from Kosslyn’s “mental scanning” experiments in which subjects were asked to memorise a small map of an island. Kosslyn’s subjects were instructed to focus on one particular location and to “look” for a second one by picturing a black spot moving as fast as possible from the first point to the second, and they were to push a button when the spot reached the goal. The data were again strikingly distributed close to a straight line showing the correlation of reaction time with distance

100

Chapter Five

scanned in memory. Undeniably such elegant data are more often seen in the natural sciences. The graphs look like the famous evidence of the Big Bang— Hubble’s 1929 Law correlating the distance of galaxies and their red-shift recession velocities. Kosslyn’s (1983, 46) hypothesis is: “If a constant amount of time is required to scan each additional distance across a two-dimensional display in an image, this would be good evidence that distance per se is embodied in the representation” (emphasis added). As before, it is suggested that computation of a formula in a symbolic ‘language of thought’ should not take longer just because the variables have different values. Accordingly, Kosslyn, and Ganis (2006, 15) defend The Case for Mental Imagery arguing precisely in these terms that “there is good evidence that the brain depicts representations literally, using space on the cortex to represent space in the world” (emphasis added). Kosslyn (1994, 85) suggests: “If certain properties of the world ... are embodied by properties of our brains, many problems may be solved relatively easily.” RAINBOW COLOURED SOUL For decades, Pylyshyn (1973, 2007) has been arguing that the experimental data need not be understood as revealing properties of the brain since, as Descartes had pointed out, all that is needed is that the relevant properties are encoded. Indeed, there has been a long tradition of such criticism since, as Spinoza (1677, 11) wrote, “a circle is different from the idea of a circle. The idea of a circle is not something having a circumference and a centre, as a circle has; nor is the idea of a body that body itself.” One Cartesian critic of Malebranche, Régis, pointed out that our perceptions can represent infinity, for example, without being themselves infinite. Arnauld, too, on behalf of Régis, suggested that we must simply distinguish the properties of things from properties of their representations, that is properties in essendo from properties in repraesentando (Schmaltz 2000, 73). Malebranche was unwilling to accept the distinction, embracing the idea of a rainbow-coloured soul: You even make a fool of yourself before certain Cartesians if you say that the soul actually becomes blue, red, or yellow, and that the soul is painted with the colors of the rainbow when looking at it (Malebranche 1674, 634).

Nearly a century after Malebranche, Reid (1785, 26) echoes earlier critiques. Speaking of sensations such as the smell of a rose he says “It has no similitude to any thing else, so as to admit of a comparison ... It is evidently ridiculous, to ascribe to it figure, colour, extension, or any other quality of bodies.” Similarly,



The Mind’s Eye 101

Reid (1813, 56) asks “If a man runs his head with violence against a pillar, I appeal to him, whether the pain he feels resembles the hardness of the stone.” PYLYSHYN’S CRITIQUE: TACIT KNOWLEDGE The modern controversy has turned on exactly the same arguments. Only the terminology has changed. That is, as Pearson (2019) recently claims, the pictorial theory proposes that inherent features of brain themselves explain the experimental data. In order to avoid the well-known difficulties when such claims are taken too literally, the properties of images are often said to be “quasi-pictorial” (Kosslyn et al. 2006, 38). By contrast, Pylyshyn gave a clear characterization of his alternative ‘Tacit Knowledge’ hypothesis: … I have argued that the reason I imagine things happening more or less the way that they actually do happen in the world is not because my brain or my cognitive endowments are structured to somehow correspond to nature but simply because I know how things generally happen - because I have been told, or have induced, what some of the general principles are. In other words, I have a tacit physical theory which is good enough to predict most ordinary everyday natural events correctly most of the time (Pylyshyn 1981, 41).

On this account the experimental data are not to be explained by properties of the brain. Rather, the evidence reflects what the subject believes about the phenomena and, therefore, what they expect to see. It is important to understand that Pylyshyn (2003, 334) adopts a modest default position, namely, that “in the absence of evidence to the contrary we shall assume that all thoughts use the same format” whatever that may be. Besides avoiding the error of attributing the data of reaction times to biologically fixed features of the brain, the “tacit knowledge” theory is agnostic about the mechanisms that are responsible for imagery phenomena. PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY? The merits of the tacit knowledge theory may be judged in light of criticisms to which it has been subjected. We noted that tacit knowledge is characterized as an internalized, naïve “physical theory” involving beliefs concerning “geometry and dynamics” (Pylyshyn 1981, 38). The following conceptions are among the ways that this view has been misunderstood. (1) Tacit knowledge is not a “philosophical” theory.4 (2) Tacit knowledge is not subjects’ knowledge about their own perception and behaviour.5 (3) Tacit knowledge does

102

Chapter Five

not fail to provide “firm grounds for making empirical predictions.”6 (4) Tacit knowledge is not a “no imagery” theory.7 (5) Tacit knowledge is not a knowledge of psychology laboratory experiments.8 (6) Tacit knowledge is not “non-visual.”9 (7) Tacit knowledge is not knowledge of the visual system in the brain.10 (8) Tacit knowledge is not a non-mechanistic theory.11 (9) The pictorial theory is not supported by the fact that brain areas active during imagery are shared by cortical visual areas.12 (10) Experimental control subjects who perform tasks without using imagery have no bearing on the pictorial format claim.13 WISHFUL MNEMONICS We see that the fundamental complaints against the picture theory have been simply avoided rather than answered. The litany of misunderstandings suggests that, far from being firmly established as Kosslyn (1994) and Pearson (2019) have suggested, this “paradigm” of cognitive science supports Wittgenstein’s (1953, §xiv) jaundiced remark we noted. Accordingly, before turning to experiments that provide a litmus test of the pictorial theory, we may consider conceptual confusions that have plagued the imagery debate. In particular, Pylyshyn explains that the Grand Illusion arises when we experience “seeing an image with the mind’s eye” and assume that “we are actually inspecting a mental state.” Of course, this is the idea of being a Spectator in the Cartesian Theater. Kosslyn (1983, 25) explicitly addresses the problem of “who watches the screen” and offers the following “general solution to the problem of the homunculus.” Since formal rules guide the processing of information, Kosslyn explains that we know computers work without little men inside. Triumphantly, he exclaims “Goodbye Homunculus!” Faced with the persistent criticism, Pinker (1984, 38), too, says “This is simply not a problem under the computational theory of mind” because “images may be construed as data structures” that may be accessed by mechanistic operations. Kosslyn, Pinker, Smith & Schwartz (1979, 574) cite Dennett’s (1978b, 124) important clarification according to which a computational model can discharge the “loan on intelligence” in virtue of being decomposable into successively less intelligent sub-components. Accordingly, the psychologists respond with evident annoyance to the repeated charge against their theory: Once and for all, the ‘homunculus problem’ is simply not a problem. We thought this would be obvious given that the theory is realized in a computer program, but it seems necessary to address this complaint again. (Kosslyn, Pinker, Smith & Schwartz 1979, 574)



The Mind’s Eye 103

Figure 5.2.  Imagery subsystems. Stephen Kosslyn (1989). Permission obtained by email Dec. 15, 2022.

The exasperated response shows that they have failed to understand the basis of the criticism. Dennett’s (1978a) hierarchy of successively more stupid homunculi is only guaranteed to repay the loan on intelligence in a fully working system. Instead, Kosslyn, Sokolov and Chen (1989) offer an information processing model (Figure 5.2) which is a profusion of inter-connected boxes and arrows, but this cannot be considered a working model of the imagery system. In keeping with Dennett’s account, each of the boxes represents a less intelligent homunculus which would in turn be decomposed until there is no longer any question-begging “loan” on intelligence. However, these are promissory notes that remain to be honoured. The specific problem in this case arises with the box labeled “attention window” inside the “visual buffer.” These are suggestive labels for the “mind’s eye” which uses the same higher visual apparatus as perception to view the image on a screen. Of course, this is the locus of the traditional problem, namely, an internal representation conceived as a picture that requires an intelligent spectator who can interpret the image. Suggestively labelled boxes in a schematic model are a trap that has been well known among AI researchers themselves and parodied as the error of “Wishful Mnemonics” by McDermott (1981, 160). This is the illusion “that because you can see your way through a problem space, your program can: the ‘wishful control structure’ problem.” This corresponds precisely with the Spectator trap we have noted in other domains as in the case of grammars that

104

Chapter Five

appear to work only when paired with a competent reader (Chomsky 1962). McDermott explains that the analogous problem arises for a computer model. A major source of simple-mindedness in AI programs is the use of mnemonics like “UNDERSTAND” or “GOAL” to refer to programs and data structures. … If … [the researcher] calls the main loop of his program “UNDERSTAND,” he is (until proven innocent) merely begging the question. He may mislead a lot of people, most prominently himself, and enrage a lot of others. What he should do instead is refer to this main loop as “G0034,” and see if he can convince himself or anyone else that G0034 implements some part of understanding (McDermott 1981, 144).

WHERE THE LITTLE MAN ACTUALLY SITS Kosslyn makes a telling response to my suggestion that it is possible to cheat in the traditional way even with an information processing model: … according to Slezak (2002a), having a running computer simulation of a theory does not allow one to reject the possibility that the theory relies on a homunculus. This is an interesting claim, but we would love to see where the little man actually sits in the computer simulations of imagery” (Kosslyn, Thompson and Ganis 2006, 40, 41).

Kosslyn protests that they have not actually included any intelligent agent among the boxes and arrows and, of course, he is right. But he is looking in the wrong place in keeping with the common misconception. In the same vein, Rorty (1979, 235) has joked that it’s no advance to replace the little man in the head with a little machine in the head but this reinforces the usual misconception, that is, Dennett’s (2013, 91) formulation according to which the problem arises for “Any theory that posits … a central homunculus.” Pictorial theories illustrate that the homunculus error is more subtle. The error arises not from what is hidden inside the model but rather from overlooking the absence of an inner agent needed to make the model work. As the “wishful mnemonics” of Kosslyn’s model indicate, the theory may be incomplete and rely on the unnoticed contribution of the theorist, the Spectator, who can understand the representations. Descartes understood that the explanatory burden arises because a picture can only function “as if there were yet other eyes within our brain with which we could perceive it.” (CSM 1, 1985, 167). Indeed, in effect Kosslyn (1994, 336) concedes Descartes’ point because he invokes the apparatus of higher vision to “see” the uninterpreted picture on the visual buffer.



The Mind’s Eye 105

RESEMBLANCE Modern pictorial theories of visual imagery explicitly adopt resemblance as the key explanatory concept. In some sense the structure of representations seems to mirror the structure of items they represent. However, there has been controversy about how similarity or resemblance might play a role in mental representation. Egan (2022) cites Berkeley’s (1734/1999) criticism of resemblance we noted earlier and says “it is hard to even make sense of such an idea.” Meyering (1997) points out that resemblance cannot be analyzed without circularity. Indeed, Goodman (1976, 3) famously wrote that this view persists in most accounts of representation but “more error could hardly be compressed in so short a formula.” Goodman (1972, 437) described the notion of similarity as “a pretender, an imposter, a quack.” Van Fraassen (2008, 11) concurs and points to the kind of aetiological question posed throughout this book. He suggests that there must be a reason that the idea of resemblance is taken to be crucial to representation and “is so persistently seductive.” The traditional idea is that two objects are similar just in case they share at least one property. However, Goodman noted that this conception is useless because any two objects share at least one property and, in this sense, everything is similar to everything else. Among other problems, resemblance is symmetric but representation is not. For example, a portrait might resemble someone but that person doesn’t resemble the portrait. Accordingly, “resemblance in any degree is no sufficient condition for representation.” Indeed, Isaac (2013, 692) warns that if Goodman is right, “there would be no hope for a non-circular analysis of mental representation.” Nevertheless, a large body of work explores the idea of resemblance understood as structural correspondence or isomorphism.14 However, we need not pursue these efforts further here since their undoubted interest is not central to the theme I wish to develop. That is, even if there are “philosophically responsible” accounts which can make similarity “safe again” (Isaac 2013, 695), this does not diminish the interest and significance of those, like pictorial theories, that have fallen into the notorious trap. Thus, Descartes (CSM 1, 165) gives the clearest criticism of resemblance as a property of mental representations in his Dioptrics. He explains that we must avoid the philosophers’ common assumption that “in order to have sensory perceptions the soul must contemplate certain images transmitted by objects to the brain” or that “the mind must be stimulated, by little pictures formed in our head.” Instead, we must “note that the problem is to know simply how they can enable the soul to have sensory perceptions of all the various qualities of the objects to which they correspond—not to know how they can resemble these objects.” In other words, Descartes argues that

106

Chapter Five

mental representations function by encoding the relevant information abstractly and not by resemblance which is inherently in the eye of the beholder. We have noted modern efforts to explain ‘Similarity after Goodman’ in just this manner by Decock & Douven (2011), Morgan (2014) and Shea (2018) inter alia, and we will return to Descartes’ extraordinary anticipation of this modern conception of abstract symbolic encoding in the nervous system. As Bitbol-Hespériès (2000, 369) points out, “Descartes’ strong insistence on the function of the optic nerves in the explanation of the sense of sight... enables him to refute the Aristotelian theory of a resemblance between our sensory perception and the things that produce them.” This is a remarkable anticipation of Pylyshyn’s (1973, 2001, 2003a) critique of the regress and pseudoexplanation by the modern pictorial theory. Thus, Pylyshyn (2007, 5) explains that “similarity is the wrong sort of relation to bridge the gap between the world and its representation (many things are similar to but do not refer to one another, and many things, such as words, refer without bearing any similarity).” The modern, abstract concept of information is the key to understanding why similarity is unnecessary to explain mental representation. Instead of similarity, representation only needs appropriate information, perhaps along the lines of second-order properties articulated by theorists we have noted (Pylyshyn 2007, 3). In exactly the same terms, Descartes wrote in his Optics of 1637, “our mind can be stimulated by many things other than images – by signs and words, for example, which in no way resemble the things they signify.” Although neglected by philosophers, Descartes’ physiological texts precisely anticipate Pylyshyn’s remarks. Readers today may appreciate the freshness and relevance of Descartes’ insight: We must take care not to assume—as our philosophers commonly do—that in order to have sensory perceptions the soul must contemplate certain images transmitted by objects to the brain; or at any rate we must conceive the nature of these images in any entirely different manner from that of the philosophers. For since their conception of the images is confined to the requirement that they should resemble to objects they represent, the philosophers cannot possibly show us how the images can be formed by the objects, or how they can be received by the external sense organs and transmitted by the nerves to the brain. Their sole reason for positing such images was that they saw how easily a picture can stimulate our mind to conceive the objects depicted in it, and so it seemed to them that, in the same way, the mind must be stimulated, by little pictures formed in our head... (CSM 1, 167).

Of particular interest, Descartes explains how the homunculus error arises. ...we must not think that it is by means of this resemblance that the picture causes our sensory perception of these objects – as if there were yet other eyes



The Mind’s Eye 107

within our brain with which we could perceive it. Instead we must hold that it is the movements composing this picture which, acting directly upon our soul in so far as it is united to our body, are ordained by nature to make it have such sensations (CSM 1, 167).

Descartes basically got it right notwithstanding erroneous attributions by historians and philosophers. For example, Tye (1991, 4) neglects Descartes’ relevant scientific writings and cites the standard “philosophical” texts of the Meditations to conclude “Descartes, like Aristotle, holds that percepts (and mental images) copy objects in the external world.” Earlier, too, Tye (1988, 497) had included Descartes among those who hold “that mental images copy or resemble what they represent.” However, on the contrary, for Descartes ideas are images only in the sense that they are representational and not because they are pictorial.15 FURRY REPRESENTATIONS? As we will see in Chapter 10, Descartes’ insight into neural coding removes the temptation to posit resemblance as the mechanism of representation. The idea of resemblance is the notion that representations share properties with their referents and we noted the claim that spatial properties of the brain are postulated to explain experiences of space. A symptom of the misconception is reflected in terms that refer to “mental scanning” or “mental rotation” rather than “mental representations” of scanning or rotation. Nigel Thomas (1989) has made the important point that pictorial object assumptions are built into the word “image” itself, prejudicing the very formulation of the problem, making it difficult to express and conceive criticisms that do not seem to deny the empirical phenomena themselves. Indeed, in the same vein, evidently forgotten by psychologists, F.C. Bartlett’s (1932) theory of schemata in his classic Remembering was a reaction to theories of “fixed, lifeless and fragmentary traces” or images which are merely “reduplicative,” capable only of being re-excited. Reminiscent of Arnauld’s rejection of “superfluous entities” and his view “that idea and perception are the same thing,” Bartlett (1932, 215) wishes to substitute a cognitive process for objects which are pictorial or “reduplicative traces.” A similar Arnauldian account is seen more recently in so-called ‘adverbial’ views according to which “having a visual experience is a matter of sensing in a certain manner rather than sensing a peculiar immaterial object” (Tye 1984, 196). And Hume’s contemporary critic Thomas Reid held such a theory in opposition to the doctrine of Ideas as objects. Reid made the telling objection that, even if depictive representations seem plausible, the parallel argument for other properties of the brain seems less compelling:

108

Chapter Five

As to objects of sight, I understand what is meant by an image of their figure in the brain: but how shall we conceive an image of their colour where there is absolute darkness: And as to all other objects of sense, except figure and colour, I am unable to conceive what is meant by an image of them. Let any man say, what he means by an image of heat and cold, an image of hardness or softness, an image of sound, of smell, or taste. The word image, when applied to these objects of sense, has absolutely no meaning (Reid 1813, 109).

Following Descartes, Arnauld suggested that we must distinguish the properties of things from properties of their representations (Schmaltz 2000, 73) since “there can be no real comparison between bodies and minds on this question” (Arnauld, 1683, 67). Like Pylyshyn (1981, 18), Descartes and Arnauld recognized that it is enough that the mind should adequately represent the properties of the world and does not have to share them. The temptation to make this conflation is evident in Aristotle and the Scholastics.16 Despite appearing to be too gross an error, confusing the properties of representations with properties of the objects they represent is a temptation in understanding the “presence of an object in the mind.” This terminology is anachronistic today but it remains apt for modern theories. No matter how obviously mistaken it may be in some cases, the doctrine seems irresistible in others. In Edelman’s (1998) concern with the latest theories of perception he points out that nobody thinks that a mental representation of a cat is furry. Significantly, we are reminded of U.T. Place’s (1956, 49) warning that, regardless of phenomenology, there is no green brain state when having a green afterimage. Edelman states the central problem of perception today echoing the entire tradition of Early Modern writers on ‘ideas.’ Edelman says “Advanced perceptual systems are faced with the problem of securing a principled (ideally, veridical) relationship between the world and its internal representation.” Edelman’s bold new solution “is a call for the representation of similarity instead of representation by similarity.” As we have seen, this might have been taken verbatim from Descartes’ Dioptrique (CSM 1, 165). Indeed, the point had been made in almost the same words earlier by Aquinas who wrote “All that is required between cognizer and cognized is a likeness in terms of representation, not a likeness in terms of an agreement in nature” (quoted in Pasnau 1997, 108). Pylyshyn charges this fallacy against pictorial theories of imagery because the consciously available contents of visual images are no more likely to reveal underlying brain mechanisms than the myriad other things we are capable of thinking about. Like Reid, Pylyshyn (2003b) assumes that the underlying ‘format’ of visual representations is unlikely to be pictorial partly because the same reasoning would require a multitude of formats to correspond with every possible kind of perceptual knowledge. Are auditory,



The Mind’s Eye 109

tactile, and olfactory thoughts explained by corresponding neural properties as Pearson and Kosslyn (2015) suggest? Dennett (2015, 2), too, has observed by analogy with depictive images it is unlikely that a little band in the head strikes up when we recall a tune. If it were not for the Spectator illusion, why should spatial properties of the brain seem more likely than being hard, tuneful, green, or furry? PHENOMENOLOGICAL FALLACY AGAIN With its television screen metaphor, the pictorial theory of visual imagery is evidently just the Phenomenological Fallacy, another manifestation of the Spectator in the Cartesian Theater. Smart’s (1959) sequel to Place’s (1956) paper addresses this temptation, explaining that having a coloured after-image is to have an experience that is similar to the experience of seeing an external object, but this tells us nothing about the underlying physical process. Independently, Pylyshyn (2007, 125) makes the same diagnosis, rejecting “the assumption that because the experience of having a mental image is very much like the experience of seeing something, entertaining an image must also involve seeing something.” Rorty wondered about the reasons that have made the “Eye of the Mind” a model for knowledge and he asked “why this ocular metaphor seized the imagination of the founders of Western thought.” He concludes

Figure 5.3.  “Thinking of Him” Roy Lichtenstein (1963). The Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/Copyright Agency, 2022.

110

Chapter Five

... it is fruitless to ask whether the Greek language, or Greek economic conditions, or the idle fancy of some nameless pre-Socratic, is responsible for viewing this sort of knowledge as looking at something (rather than, say, rubbing up against it, or crushing it underfoot, or having sexual intercourse with it) (Rorty 1979, 38).

However, Rorty doesn’t consider the more likely deeper causes of the underlying intuition – the illusion of being a Spectator of our own mental representations. The irresistible tendency to attribute the properties of external representations to internal ones may be illustrated in the familiar device of comic book cartoons. Another person’s visual images are most naturally conceived as if they are a picture we can see (Figure 5.3). The same compelling idea is captured in the fiction of “hypnotic telepathic projection.” In the comic book stories, Mandrake the Magician projects someone’s visual memories onto an external screen (Figure 5.4). These are variations of Descartes’ Dioptrics illustration of the little man looking at someone else’s retina. The intuitive appeal of the device is clear and it takes some effort to resist the idea that we should conceive of internal mental representations as if we can see them. This temptation is revealed in Kosslyn’s resort to neuroscience in an effort to resolve the Imagery Debate in favour of pictorialism. In face of the impasse over the experimental data, Kosslyn (1994) turned from psychology to neurophysiology. For example, a monkey may be given a visual stimulus like a dart-board to look at.17

Figure 5.4.  Hypnotic telepathic projection. Mandrake the Magician (2017). King Features Syndicate, Inc.

The Mind’s Eye 111



Subsequently, if the brain tissue is treated in a certain way, a likeness of the dartboard can be revealed “etched” on the cortex. Kosslyn has hailed these results as decisive proof of the pictorial thesis. Topographically organized regions of cortex or ‘retinotopic mapping’ are said to “support depictive representations,” that is, pictures in some sense. Of course, it is undeniable that the spatial layout or map on the cortex is a picture – but only for us, the external Spectators, not for the monkey. Remarkably, these experimental results were precisely anticipated by another Harvard psychologist thirty years before: At some point the organism must do more than create duplicates ... The need for something beyond and quite different from copying is not widely understood. Suppose someone were to coat the occipital lobes of the brain with a special photographic emulsion which, when developed, yielded a reasonable copy of a current visual stimulus. In many quarters this would be regarded as a triumph in the physiology of vision. Yet nothing could be more disastrous... (Skinner 1963, 285).

Although Skinner’s behaviourist remedy is no longer attractive, Dennett (1978c, 53) has shown that he was acutely sensitive to the source of homunculus pseudo-explanations. Indeed, Skinner echoes Descartes’ concern about positing pictures adding, “for we should have to start all over again and ask how the organism sees a picture in its occipital cortex.”

Figure 5.5.  Square and diamond. Author’s reproduction.

Chapter Five

112

UNINTERPRETED DISPLAYS Skinner’s question points to Fodor’s (1975, 180) insight that pictures are insufficiently abstract to be the vehicles of mental representation. For example, a picture of John with a bulging tummy corresponds to John’s being fat, but it also corresponds to John’s being tall and to John’s being pregnant, since he would look the same in all these cases. Famous studies18 reveal that chess experts’ memory of a chess board in mid-game is not merely a pictorial representation of the physical, spatial arrangement of pieces. Rather, the mental “image” represents highly abstract relations among the pieces on the board. We can appreciate these points with Rock’s (1973) illustration of the intuitive, perceptual difference between two shapes that are geometrically identical, but differently oriented. Indeed, we can turn our head so that the diamond figure will have the same orientation on the retina as the square, but it will still look like a diamond (Figure 5.5). This simple example presents an insurmountable obstacle to any depictive theory for the obvious reason that the axis of orientation is not a physical or visible, picturable feature. The qualitative phenomenology of the diamond as a percept is ineffably different from the square in ways that cannot be attributed to depictive, spatial properties. The apparent top and bottom of the figure in each case is a highly abstract feature that would not be conveyed by the physical transduction of the stimulus. Such cases suggest that mental imagery has abstract features that are not available for inspection as uninterpreted, geometrical properties of a depictive, spatial display.19 Nevertheless, on the pictorial account, a mental image is conceived to be just such an uninterpreted display or “surrogate percept.” The poverty of a pictorial image and our contribution as intelligent spectators may be dramatized in well-known children’s puzzles

Figure 5.6.  “Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch” by Frank Zappa, record cover. Cover art by Roger Price



The Mind’s Eye 113

known as “droodles” that have received serious psychological investigation.20 Meaningless lines become significant when accompanied by an explanation, thereby demonstrating the essential contribution of the “reader’s intelligence” when the picture is “understood.” In the philosophical literature Hanson (1962) used these figures to illustrate the way that “there is more to seeing than meets the eyeball” and that seeing is “theory-laden.” In the same vein, we may consider the record cover of rock musician Frank Zappa (Figure 5.6). Otherwise apparently meaningless, the picture becomes meaningful with the accompanying caption: “Ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch.” Such droodles answer Wittgenstein’s (1953) often-cited question: What gives life to a sign that by itself seems dead? The answer is “us” and indicates the reason that such uninterpreted pictures cannot serve as mental representations. Pylyshyn explains that the Grand Illusion arises in this way when we seem to experience “seeing an image with the mind’s eye” and assume that “we are actually inspecting a mental state.” CRUCIAL EXPERIMENT I noted Ryle’s (1949a) remark made long before the flourishing of imagery research that images are not seen, and a person imaging is not being a spectator. Nevertheless, embracing this Spectator conception, pictorial theories hold that the “depictive” representations in a “visual buffer” are supposed to have the function of permitting re-inspection by the higher visual apparatus. Finke (1989, 129) argues that the possibility of reinterpreting mental images “is strictly an empirical question.” Indeed, this question of reinterpretation has provided the opportunity for an experimental approach to breaking the long deadlock in the Imagery Debate. Despite confident pronouncements we noted that the imagery debate “should now be settled” (Kosslyn, Thompson and Ganis 2006, 20), the modern controversy persisted for decades partly due to a failure to appreciate that the evidence of reaction-time experiments could provide no added weight to the pictorial case in principle since these results were equally explained by Pylyshyn’s competing tacit knowledge theory. Although this rival has been gratuitously dismissed as “philosophical,” it is simply an alternative explanation of the data that makes the same predictions, just as the competing theories of Ptolemy and Copernicus were competing explanations of the same astronomical observations. Accordingly, just as Galileo recognized the need for a new kind of evidence, similarly in the imagery debate, instead of more reaction-time data, what was needed was a “crucial experiment” on which the competing theories would give opposite predictions.

114

Chapter Five

On the one hand, then, to appreciate the crucial features of the pictorial account to be tested, we may recall that an image is conceived to be an uninterpreted display or “surrogate percept” which is interpreted as if it were perceptual input using the same mechanisms used in perception itself. In particular, the essential function of imagery is taken to be the ability to reinterpret images, allowing people to “detect some pattern or property in a remembered scene that they did not encode explicitly when they saw the scene initially” (Pinker and Finke 1980, 246). Thus, Kosslyn (1987, 149) explains “one purpose of imagery is to ‘recognize’ properties of imaged objects.” Similarly, “Once an image is formed, the pattern can be ‘inspected’ using the ventral and dorsal systems just as they are used in perception” (Kosslyn, 1988, 259). Specifically, imagery makes use of the “same sorts of classificatory procedures used in classifying sensory input during vision” (Kosslyn, 1980, 32) and an image is “reprocessed as if it were perceptual input (e.g., the shape could be recategorized), thereby accomplishing the purposes of imagery that parallel those of perception” (Kosslyn 1987, 155). Thompson et al. (2008, 1024) clearly state the way that rival theories of imagery make different predictions that can test the analogy with perception because we may “look more carefully” at an imagined shape and “classify that part appropriately.” They state categorically, “If objects in visual mental images are like objects we perceive in this regard, people should be able to identify properties in mental images that initially were not noticed.” As they rightly note, “The issue of whether mental images can be reexamined in order to extract properties that were previously unnoticed bears directly on the so-called imagery debate” (Thompson et al. 2008, 1025). That is, the prediction of the pictorial theory is that “it should be possible to ‘look again’ at an image, extracting shapes or spatial relations from it – even if those shapes or relations had not been considered explicitly in the past.” Kosslyn (1987, 149), too, has been perfectly explicit about the function of imagery, explaining that, in order to discover some aspect of a remembered pattern, “one may ‘recognize’ parts and properties of imaged objects that had not been previously considered.” On the other hand, from his earliest critiques, Pylyshyn had anticipated that the strong expectations of “equivalence” between imagery and perception were unlikely to be met and he offered clear predictions that followed from a conception of imagery as an inherently cognitive, belief-laden abstract representation of ‘tacit knowledge’: ... the construction of an internal description from stored knowledge can hardly be divorced from its interpretation. While some reinterpretation is certainly possible, it surely is more like the derivation of new entailments from stored knowledge than like the discovery of new aspects of an environment by the usual visual means. Discovering even moderately novel readings from a mental image... have been shown to be exceedingly difficult (Pylyshyn 1978, 37).

The Mind’s Eye 115



Figure 5.7.  Imagery experiment stimuli. From Peter Slezak (1992)

The impasse on reaction time data might be broken with experiments that could test these rival predictions with an imagery task whose success is directly dependent upon the operation of the postulated re-interpretation abilities. Unlike experiments providing equivocal reaction time data, a perceptual recognition task may be devised on which success or failure is unambiguous. Such an ‘all-or-none’ perceptual apprehension task is the key feature of experiments that I conducted to test competing predictions concerning the inspection and re-interpretation of images (Slezak 1992, 2002a). The stimulus materials were designed to have two distinct interpretations which are highly orientation specific. Thus, the figures are recognizable as a certain object in one orientation, but it is generally not noticed that they are interpretable as an entirely different object when rotated by 90 degrees. The shapes have the important feature that the alternative interpretations are readily obtained by rotation under perceptual conditions. It is important that the task of reinterpretation can be readily accomplished in this way during perception because this makes the conditions for re-construal under imagery conditions as favourable as possible. Thus, for example, amid other distractor figures, the right-most shape in Figure 5.7 is recognized as a duckling. However, upon rotating the figure by 90 degrees under perceptual conditions, subjects immediately notice, with frequent expressions of surprise and delight, the alternative interpretation, a rabbit. In the imagery condition, the stimulus figure was removed from view after 10 seconds and the subject was asked to imagine rotating it by 90 degrees in a clockwise direction. When the subject confirmed that the figure

Figure 5.8.  Orientation dependent figure: Duckling vs. Rabbit. From Peter Slezak (1992)

116

Chapter Five

was being imagined in this rotated position, they were asked if it could be interpreted as anything else from this viewpoint. In view of the fact that mental rotation has been hailed as one of the most well-established abilities of visual imagery,21 the direct expectation of the pictorial theory is that the same effect should be obtainable under ideal imagery conditions. That is, it would be expected that subjects could rotate their image and discover the alternative construal by inspection from their rotated image. Of course, the tacit knowledge alternative account takes images to be abstract, intrinsically interpreted conceptual representations and would predict that such reinterpretation would be difficult or impossible for subjects to perform on their rotated images. Indeed, no subjects were able to reinterpret their image on such stimuli. Typical of the predicted difficulty of reconstrual was the reaction of subjects when pressed to reinterpret their rotated image of the duckling. Just as we would expect on Pylyshyn’s account according to which the “image” is intrinsically bound to its interpretation, many subjects would volunteer the response that it is a “duckling on its back”! Pylyshyn (2003a, 349) remarks that these experiments provide “The clearest source of evidence” he is aware of “that bears on the question of whether imagery can be reconstrued.” Of course, philosophers know from Duhem and Quine that there is no such thing as a “crucial experiment” but these results appear to be a dramatic and unequivocal demonstration that we are unable to inspect and reinterpret our own images and that our powerful introspective impression of seeing with the “mind’s eye” is a seductive illusion. As Pylyshyn (2003a, 3) remarks, “we should not be surprised to find that our scientific theories will look quite different from how we might imagine them when we try to be faithful to how vision seems to us from the inside.” He notes “the contents of our conscious experience are... insidious, because they lead us to believe that we can see directly into our own minds and observe the causes of our cognitive processes” (2003, xi). Of course, this is precisely the Spectator illusion. POST-SCRIPT: THINKING IN LANGUAGE Pylyshyn’s remarks obviously apply to other respects in which we might believe we can see directly into our own minds. For example, notwithstanding our introspections, if imagery cannot plausibly be in pictures, then thoughts cannot be in language, and for the same reasons. As a post-script, it is worth noting an independent theory of cognitive science which is, in fact, merely the pictorial theory of imagery transposed to a different medium and, therefore, another case study of the Spectator trap we have seen.22 Carruthers (1998, 2002) defends the idea that we think in natural language – the idea that



The Mind’s Eye 117

“we think by talking to ourselves in inner speech.” This is a rival to Fodor’s (1975) computational ‘language of thought’ (LOT) account – the idea of an inner symbolic vehicle of representation. If no longer fashionable, it’s clear that the idea that we think in language has considerable intuitive, introspective persuasiveness. Indeed, Davidson (1975) and McDowell (1994) take the thesis to be overwhelmingly obvious or even necessarily, conceptually true. However, Ryle (1968, 13) says “I want to deny that it even makes sense to ask, in the general case, what special sort or sorts of things we think in.” It is significant that he mentions among equally problematical cases those in which we claim to see things in our mind’s eye, taking this to involve mental pictures of some kind. In case there were any doubt about the parallels, Curruthers (1998, 97) explicitly models his own theory on Kosslyn’s account of imagery. Just as we seem to see pictures, so Carruthers (1996, 229) says “we seem to hear the meaning of the utterance” which is “just as if I had heard that sentence uttered aloud.” On this account, we are supposed to read our inner speech as if it were externally uttered or represented. However, sentences of a natural language just like pictures require interpretation. Apart from other difficulties, this account faces the difficulty that such inner sentences might be ambiguous, permitting more than one interpretation by the language system. In that case, we would not know what we are thinking. Of course, inner sentences, like pictures are only meaningful to the theorist. NOTES   1.  See Shepard and Metzler (1971).   2.  See Kosslyn, Pinker, Smith & Schwartz (1979).   3.  Cited by Pylyshyn (2003a, 329).   4.  See Kosslyn (1994), Finke, Pinker and Farah (1989).   5.  See Kosslyn et al. (2006, 21).   6.  See Kosslyn et al. (2002, 198), (2003 110); Thompson et al. (2008)   7.  See Kosslyn (1980, 30).   8.  See Kosslyn (1983, 81), Kosslyn et al. (2006, 69).   9.  See Farah (1988, 307). 10.  See Farah (1988, 314); Kosslyn et al (2006, 101). 11.  See Kosslyn et al. (2006, 175). 12.  See Farah (1988, 307). 13.  See Kosslyn (1981, 81; 1983, 59). 14.  See Decock and Deuven (2011), O’Brien and Opie (2004), Morgan (2014), Isaac (2013), Gladziejewski and Milkowski (2017), Milkowski (2023). 15.  See De Rosa (2010, 11). 16.  See Yolton (1996, 1). 17.  See Tootell et al. (1982).

118

Chapter Five

18.  See Chase and Simon (1973), de Groot (1978). 19.  See Rock (1973, 16). 20.  See Bower, Karlin and Dueck (1975). 21.  See Shepard and Metzler (1971). 22.  See Slezak (2002b,c).

Chapter Six

In the Chinese Room: Life Without Meaning1

STRONG AI The cartoon (Figure 6.1) accompanying a debate between Searle and the Churchlands in the Scientific American (January 1990) is particularly apt for the subject of this chapter, Searle’s (1980a) famous Chinese Room Argument. In common with other puzzles considered here, a striking feature of Searle’s Argument is its obduracy and persistence. After several decades, the editors of a volume devoted to the Chinese Room conundrum say “It may well... be contemporary philosophy’s best-known argument” (Preston and Bishop 2002, 2). They explain that it is “the best-developed and most pointed threat to a core component of cognitive science... If sound, it undermines the official self-image of artificial intelligence.” However, on the contrary, I will argue that there could be no clearer embrace of the Cartesian Theater error. Searle is concerned to refute the orthodox cognitive science conception of the mind as a symbolic, computational system. The Argument purports to demonstrate the impossibility of “Strong AI”, that is, the project of producing genuine human-like minds in computers. It is important to note that Searle does not argue for any limitations on AI as such or “Weak AI” regarding its possible capacities or achievements. Searle is concerned only with the possibility of realizing minds with genuine understanding in computational machines. In particular, this is not an argument against materialism. To the question “Could a machine think?” Searle (1980, 422) answers “obviously, yes. We are precisely such machines.” The specific concern arises from the fact that internal symbolic computational states lack genuine content or meaning, being purely syntax without the semantics that must be the basis of human understanding. Of course, beyond the supposed implications for AI, Searle’s famous argument raises fundamental questions about the nature 119

Chapter Six

120

Figure 6.1. Scientific American (Jan. 1990). Permission obtained October 14, 2022.

of semantic content and meaning to be explored in following chapters on the philosophy of language. Significantly, the editors of Searle’s anthology note that the argument turns on an easily understood thought-experiment “which mobilizes readily available intuitions.” Of course, as always, the deliverances of such readily available intuitions may be subject to a diagnosis of their aetiology. In the present case, the intuitions elicited by Searle’s scenario are of interest because I suggest that they are another instance of appeal to the theorist’s own intelligence—in this case, our linguistic or semantic competence. This is the same explanatory trap we have seen in the preceding chapter and, therefore, an independent illustration of Chomsky’s warning about the reliance on pairing the theory with an intelligent reader, the Spectator theorist. After twenty years of controversy Searle (2002, 51) noted that he had responded to more criticisms of his argument than to all the criticisms of all the other controversial theses he had advanced in his life. Moreover, Searle says that the decades-long debate had not shaken his commitment to the fundamental principle on which the Argument rests, namely, that symbolic computation (syntax) cannot be the basis of genuine “intentionality” or meaning (semantics) of the kind human minds embody. Indeed, a remarkable feature of the persistent controversy is the resistance of Searle’s argument to the most informed, sophisticated responses. For example, like Searle’s original respondents, AI researcher Luc Steels (2008) returns to the famous Chinese Room conundrum and confidently asserts “today I believe that sufficient progress has been made in cognitive science and AI so that we can say that the symbol grounding problem has been solved.” However, like Searle’s original respondents we will note presently, Steels simply rehearses the “Robot Reply” which begs the fundamental question. We will see that the reason for this impasse is the failure to confront the force of the key intuition



In the Chinese Room 121

on which Searle’s case rests. An analogy is helpful. Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise is not resolved in the way often suggested by students who give a distance-time graph of relative positions over time. Of course, it’s the correct account of where Achilles overtakes the tortoise but doesn’t address the source of the puzzle. Zeno’s conclusion that Achilles cannot overtake the tortoise must be understood as a reductio ad absurdum of the argument, and the intellectual task has been to expose its fatal flaw. Similarly, I will suggest that Searle’s critics have responded in ways that are correct as far as they go, but they are guaranteed to remain unpersuasive because they do not address the underlying source of the puzzle. As with Zeno’s paradox, the very first step is fatal. PHYSICAL SYMBOL SYSTEM HYPOTHESIS Searle challenges the idea at the very heart of modern cognitive science, namely, that cognition is essentially computation.2 This is the Physical Symbol System hypothesis of Newell and Simon (1976) which they compare with foundational ideas in science such as the cell doctrine in biology and atomism in chemistry. The claim is that “a physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means for general intelligence,” and such a system is independent of the actual medium in which it may be implemented. As Searle (1980, 417) notes in his original article, according to strong AI the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind. Rather, Searle says, on the official account, “the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to understand and have other cognitive states.” Against this view, Searle claims to demonstrate that, no matter how sophisticated or successful, a computer simulation may be, it is not the real thing. In the same way, it is clear that a computer simulation of some other system such as the weather may be very accurate but does not, after all, produce rain or wind. In order to demonstrate that a computer cannot be literally said to understand, Searle proposes a thought-experiment in which he can emulate the orthodox conception of symbolic computation. He demonstrates that, by hand-simulating the instructions of an AI computer program, “a human agent could instantiate the program and still not have the relevant intentionality.” Accordingly, he imagines that he is locked in a room and given Chinese writing which he can’t understand by analogy with the intrinsically meaningless symbols of a computer program. He explains “To me, Chinese writing is just so many meaningless squiggles” (1980, 418). As in the case of a program, Searle can also consult a set of rules for correlating this first set of input Chinese symbols with another set to be the output. In this way Searle can communicate with a Chinese speaker outside the room who cannot

122

Chapter Six

distinguish the input-output behaviour from that of a native speaker. Nevertheless, it’s clear that Searle has no understanding at all. Searle (1980, 419) explains that the point of his thought-experiment is to demonstrate that “such symbol manipulation by itself couldn’t be sufficient for understanding Chinese in any literal sense because the man could write ‘squoggle squoggle’ in response to ‘squiggle squiggle’ without understanding anything in Chinese.” He contrasts this arrangement with the case in which he receives the inputs in English and therefore does understand the symbols. In this latter case, Searle (1997, 185) says that his behaviour arises from genuine understanding “for the simple reason that I am a native speaker of English.” Searle (1980, 418) asks “what is it that I have in the case of the English sentences that I do not have in the case of the Chinese sentences?” The obvious answer is that he knows what the former mean, while he has no idea what the latter mean. By contrast with the English case, in the Chinese case, Searle says “I produce the answers by manipulating uninterpreted formal symbols” and, therefore, essentially like a computer. Searle (2002, 52) summarizes the fundamental insight: “This is why the Chinese Room poses such a problem: I implement the program but I do not understand Chinese.” ... in the Chinese case, unlike the English case, I produce the answers by manipulating uninterpreted formal symbols. As far as the Chinese is concerned, I simply behave like a computer; I perform computational operations on formally specified elements. For the purposes of the Chinese, I am simply an instantiation of the computer program (Searle 1980a, 418).

The persistence of this argument attests to its seductiveness. However, it is crucial to recognize that the explanatory question concerning the nature of intentionality is posed in a certain problematic way. That is, the criterion of genuine understanding or semantic meaning rests on the intuitions that we share with Searle when presented with a text or utterance in our native language. Specifically, the question of the nature of internal mental representations is supposed to be determined by the criterion of whether they can be understood by a competent speaker as if they were external representations. This is evidently equivalent to the assumption that the mentalese Language of Thought is English. Indeed, we see a revealing shift from what Searle says “I do not understand” to what the computer cannot understand. THE ROBOT’S HOMUNCULUS The fundamental premise of Searle’s argument is generally not challenged but we must ask: What is Searle doing as a Spectator inside the system? How can the relevant criterion for judging whether a system has genuine



In the Chinese Room 123

understanding be whether an external observer, the theorist, can use their intelligence to understand the internal states of the system? Of course, the thought experiment depends on the fact that we share Searle’s intuition concerning the difference between Chinese symbols and English. It is particularly noteworthy that Searle’s criterion is identical with that of imagery theorists, namely, whether internal mental representations are intelligible to us just like external ones. Of course, pictures pass this test giving them a spurious plausibility as mental representations whereas computational symbols fail. Searle (1980, 420) imagines himself inside the computer and explains “I am the robot’s homunculus, but unlike the traditional homunculus, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t understand anything except the rules for symbol manipulation.” Clearly, Searle thinks that the homunculus error doesn’t arise in the case when he doesn’t understand the symbols. However, this is to miss the fundamental source of the error which is reliance on the theorist’s intelligence, regardless of whether its objects are meaningful or not. In both cases this is the mistake Descartes’ described as requiring other eyes inside our heads. That is, Searle’s failure to understand the computational symbols doesn’t save him from the fatal error which arises from reliance on the very linguistic, semantic competence which is the phenomenon to be explained. Ironically, and most telling, Searle’s criterion must rule out the very system we know to have genuine semantic meaning and understanding. If we are to apply Searle’s thought experiment and criterion consistently, we must imagine ourselves inside a human brain to judge whether we can understand any mental representations. However, there is nothing in a human brain that can be understood by a Spectator in the way that sentences of English are meaningful to a competent speaker. That is, there can be no doubt that a brain would also appear to operate with “meaningless” squiggles and fail Searle’s test. Searle shows that computational symbols are meaningless in a certain intuitive sense to the theorist, but this is no more problematic than the meaninglessness, in this sense, of action potentials or synaptic activations. The power of the intuition is undeniable, but the question of whether some system can be said to genuinely understand is not the same as the question of whether we as intelligent, external Spectators can understand its representations. It is important to recognize that Searle is not merely making a mistake because the mistake is not just his own. The persistence of the debate about his thought experiment is due to the fact that Searle has captured the conception of symbols widely shared by philosophers and cognitive scientists. In effect, Searle’s argument may be seen, not as a refutation of Strong AI but as a reductio ad absurdum of the orthodox conception of symbols in AI and cognitive science. As we noted, this is the foundational Physical Symbol System thesis of Newell and Simon (1976). It is worth recalling Newell’s (1986, 33) explanation which adduced the ordinary use of external symbols

124

Chapter Six

as in books and other forms of symbolic activity as “essential to the exercise of mind.” However, this is correct only if the exercise of mind is by means of representations intelligible to an external Spectator. THE SYSTEM REPLY For the reasons I have indicated, it is instructive to see how Searle’s argument appears to survive the most significant, competent challenges. For example, among the original responses, the Systems Reply protests that genuine meaning cannot be conceived as being localized in any one component of the machine since it is the entire system as a whole that is responsible for the understanding. That is, “understanding is not being ascribed to the mere individual; rather it is being ascribed to this whole system of which he is a part” (1980, 419). Searle scoffs at this reply on the grounds that it fails entirely to refute his central point. He complains that, according to this reply, “while a person doesn’t understand Chinese, somehow the conjunction of that person and bits of paper might understand Chinese.” Indeed, it seems clear that, although the Systems Reply is insightful and correct as far as it goes, it misses the force of Searle’s critique. That is, even if you count the whole system as relevant, ascribing understanding to the whole system doesn’t alter the indisputable fact that he doesn’t understand the Chinese symbols. We see the real source of the problem in Searle’s response that the Systems Reply is “obviously absurd from the first-person point of view” since we know clearly the distinction between “manipulating symbols in English together with having an understanding of them,” and “manipulating symbols in Chinese with no understanding whatever” (2002, 54; emphasis added). Of course, Searle is obviously right given his criterion—namely, intuitive understanding of internal symbols by an intelligent reader. THE ROBOT REPLY In response to every criticism Searle is able to protest that, whatever the computational arrangements may be, these fail to add anything to his understanding of the computer program. In each case, Searle is able to rely on the inescapable fact that “the man certainly doesn’t understand Chinese.” Thus, the “Robot Reply” seems to capture an essential aspect of genuine intentionality by emphasizing the causal connection of internal symbols with the external world through sensory and motor transducers. For example, decades later Steels (2008) proposes that Searle’s original question is answered because it is possible to build a physically embodied, autonomous AI system with

In the Chinese Room 125



internal symbols that “might potentially be grounded in sensorimotor interaction with the world.” However, this is just the Robot Reply which Searle rebutted in his original article. Searle (1980, 420) replied that the situation is not essentially different with such an embodied, autonomously grounded system since, judged by the criterion of his own understanding, “the robot has no intentional states at all; it is simply moving about as a result of its electrical wiring and its program.” As before, Searle (1980, 420) explains that he is the robot’s homunculus and doesn’t understand the symbols he manipulates. Searle argues “All I do is follow formal instructions about manipulating formal symbols.” As before, Searle assumes that the homunculus error doesn’t arise when he doesn’t understand the symbols. He fails to recognize that the crucial problem arises in both cases from reliance on his own intelligence. However, the debate persists because, despite their apparent force, the replies fail Searle’s test and fail to address this source of the problem. Whether a computer or a person can be said to really understand anything is not the same question as whether Searle, that is we, can understand anything as intuitively intelligible inside the system. He says, in the Chinese case “I understand nothing” whereas in the English case “I understand Everything”, but neither case is relevant to the explanatory question of genuine intentionality. This is exactly the same mistake we noted according to which Carruthers supposes that the language of thought might be English and Kosslyn supposes our imagery is in pictures. It is worth repeating Dennett’s (1977/1978a) apt comment on Fodor’s ‘Language of Thought’ thesis: In a certain sense the symbols in a language of thought have to understand themselves.

Figure 6.2.  “Hopeless” Roy Lichtenstein (1963). The Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/ Copyright Agency, 2022.

126

Chapter Six

As before, we can see that cartoons capture Searle’s intuition, the natural, tacit assumption that we can ascribe mental representations as if we can understand them. Such illustrations rely on the compelling idea that people imagine in pictures or think in language, both of which can be “read off” in thought clouds by a Spectator as if they were external representations. Remarkably, Searle’s conundrum was precisely anticipated by Joseph Glanvill in 1661, responding to the same puzzle arising from Descartes’ abstract, symbolic theory of neural encoding. Glanvill asks “But how is it, and by what Art doth the soul read that such an image or stroke in matter ... signifies such an object? Did we learn such an Alphabet in our Embryostate?” (in Yolton 1984, 28). Glanvill anticipates Searle, suggesting that the “motions of the filaments of nerves” convey the quality of objects by analogy with the way in which a person learns to understand a language, for otherwise “the soul would be like an infant who hears sounds or sees lips move but has no understanding of what the sounds or movements signify, or like an illiterate person who sees letters but ‘knows not what they mean.’” BEWITCHING IMAGE IN NEURAL NETS Seemingly unrelated but raising exactly the same questions, a controversy has raged concerning the difference between classical symbolic and connectionist or neural network architectures for AI. The latter are said to be more “biologically plausible” with no explicit representations having constituent structure.3 Instead of sentence-like discrete symbols, neural nets involve parallel, distributed information processing among nodes connected with varying strengths or weights. The distinctive feature of this alternative architecture is that, although the behaviour of the system may be describable as conforming to regularities, nothing appears to correspond to any internally represented, explicit rules or representations. The controversy surrounding neural nets is interesting here because the question of whether these systems may be said to have internally represented, explicit rules turns essentially on the same Spectator intuition underlying Searle’s Chinese Room Argument and the puzzles of meaning more generally. Critics of connectionist models complain that they lack the explicit, structured symbolic representations of classical computation, but the claim and the distinction between explicit and implicit representation is based on a tacit appeal to intelligibility to an external observer. The apparent absence of structure in a connectionist network is, in fact, an indiscernibility from the point of view of the theorist. Thus, Kirsh (1990, 340) points out that in connectionist systems, “it is becoming increasingly difficult... to track the



In the Chinese Room 127

trajectory of informational states these mechanisms generate.” He argues that we must find some method of tracking these internal states for “otherwise there is no reason to think of them as more than complex causal systems.”4 These remarks recall Devitt’s (2006) view that systems which may behave like representational agents might nevertheless be devoid of internal symbolic or other representations precisely because they are merely “complex causal systems.” The notion of explicitness is characterised as a matter of “directly reading off” information from “visible structures” and the “immediate grasp” of information which is “directly available” or “immediately readable” (Kirsh 1990, 356), but the obvious question is: By whom? Kirsh (1990, 351) is explicit about explicitness. He explains, “what humans are able to see is irrelevant” since there are many informational codes that we cannot read unaided. Indeed, Kirsh diagnoses the problem as arising from the “bewitching image” of a word printed on a page. As we have seen, this is a key insight into the Spectator error that has plagued theorising about mental representation—an illusion of explanatory adequacy derived from tacit dependence on our own interpretative abilities. Typical of a vast literature,5 van Gelder (1992, 180) explains the difficulty in neural nets where the complexity of “high dimensional space” is such that it “defies scrutiny by means of our native imaginative abilities.”6 Smolensky (1988, 20) explains that in the case of a certain connectionist model, “It’s as though the model had those laws written down inside it” but he adds the curious qualification “But it doesn’t really.” That is, he says the system is “not really satisfying the hard rules at all.” This distinction between rules that are taken to be “real” and those that are not is significant because it has been a persistent source of controversy in cognitive science for the reason noted in Kirsh’s remarks. Speaking of generative grammar and using a telling Spectator metaphor, Devitt (2006, 51) suggests “If we could look into the brain and simply “see” if there were representations of this and that, as we can look in a book and see if there are representations ... then that would of course settle the matter.” Clearly relying on the same criterion, Pinker and Prince (1988, 76) note that in neural nets, instead of “explicit” representations, we have weighted connections and activation levels among which “one cannot easily point to rules, algorithms, expressions, and the like.” In these analyses, we see that the justification for attributing structure is whether it is apparent to the theorist. On the same basis, in an influential article Ramsey, Stich and Garon (1991, 209) make the astonishing suggestion that, if neural nets are a correct model, then our common-sense views about mental life are false. “In many connectionist networks it is not possible to localize propositional representation beyond the input layer” and, therefore, they conclude we don’t have beliefs and desires at all! By contrast, the relative advantage of classical symbolic models is that “it

128

Chapter Six

is an easy matter to locate a functionally distinct part of the model encoding each proposition or state of affairs represented by the system.” Again, we may ask: By whom? Undoubtedly, the difficulty of identifying representations in a neural net is “a real inconvenience to the connectionist model builder” (1991, 209) but, as Cummins’ (1996, 102) warns, “Internal representations are not exploited by being understood” by the programmer. SEMANTICS AS THEOLOGY It is significant that Cummins’ remark is essentially the lesson we have learned from Searle’s Chinese Room and it is expressed in almost the same words we noted in other contexts by Fodor, McDermott and Chomsky who warn against the unnoticed reliance on the theorist’s understanding. Although Searle’s Chinese Room Argument has generated an independent cottage industry, his thought-experiment helps us see that the same issues are at the heart of the more general concern with meaning and the semantics of mental representations. Turning to the more general issue, we may address the question of how our mental concepts connect with the external world. Thus, Paul Horwich (1998, 1) begins his book with the question ‘What is meaning?’ and suggests that it is “one of the most urgent of philosophical questions.” Quine (1961, 47) noted that “Pending a satisfactory explanation of the notion of meaning, linguists in semantic fields are in the situation of not knowing what they are talking about.” The obduracy of the problem of meaning is prima facie surprising in view of the apparent simplicity of the phenomenon. Cummins (1996, 1) describes the problem as just that of saying “in some illuminating way, what it is for something in the mind to represent something.” However, Stalnaker (1991, 229) says “There is little agreement about how to do semantics, or even about the questions that define the subject of semantics.” The burgeoning literature attests to the fact that there is a consensus, at least, on Fodor’s (1985b, 28) judgment that “of the semanticity of mental representations we have, as things now stand, no adequate account.” These lamentations are significant because of their ubiquity and their uniformity among leading theorists. The difficulty of semantics is paradoxical in view of the apparent simplicity of how symbols “reach out and touch someone.” However, Brian C. Smith (1987, 215) says “It should be admitted that how this all works... remains an almost total mystery.” Higginbotham (1992, 3) says “The chief problem about semantics comes at the beginning. What is the theory of meaning a theory of?” By contrast with other sciences such as physics or biology, Devitt (1996, 55) notes “It is far from clear what counts as meaning that needs explaining.” Quine (1951, 92) remarked “The theory of meaning... strikes me as in a comparable state to theology.”



In the Chinese Room 129

DEAD OR ALIVE Dummett (1978, 131) refers to the transparency of meaning to a speaker. Indeed, whereas problems at the forefront of modern physics require arcane formalisms and a background of abstruse knowledge, the mystery of representation is given by the following kindergarten figure: Price (2011, 3) resorts to just such illustrations in a child’s puzzle book to explain the philosophical problem of semantics by matching picture stickers to drawings of a complex world scene. Prima facie, it is difficult to imagine that such children’s illustrations could pose an intellectual problem that is among the most challenging in modern science. As Chomsky (1995, 57) suggests, the source of the problem may be certain non-naturalist assumptions concerning mind and language that arise from a deeply compelling but illegitimate picture, a residue of commonsense that hampers our understanding of ourselves. The puzzle of meaning is posed by Wittgenstein’s (1953, 432) frequently cited question in the Investigations: What gives life to every sign that “by itself seems dead?” Evans and McDowell refer to the “phenomenological fact” that “we see or hear their life in the signs.” Wittgenstein (1953, 214) asks again “What would you be missing if you did not experience the meaning of a word?” This distinctive, intuitive experience of meaningfulness is central to untangling the puzzles of semantics. In the chapter on visual imagery we saw that meaningless figures suddenly come to “life” as phenomenologically significant when accompanied by an explanation, thereby demonstrating the essential contribution of the “reader’s intelligence” when the picture is “understood.” In the same way, we may dramatize Wittgenstein’s question about what gives life to “inert ink marks” by contrasting the illustration of an English word in Figure 6.3 with the case of a Chinese character in Figure 6.4. Of course, for monolingual English speakers, this choice of symbol evokes Searle’s (1980a) Chinese Room Argument. In considering what is missing and what gives life to such “dead” symbols, it is worth indicating the ubiquity of this Wittgensteinian question in the philosophical literature. In their

Figure 6.3.  “Cat” and picture of cat. Image created by author.

130

Chapter Six

Figure 6.4.  Chinese symbol and picture of cat. Image created by author.

introduction to a volume on semantics, Campbell, O’Rourke and Shier (2002) distinguish linguistic representations from mere “alphabet soup”: (1) Scalia is a textualist (2) cliasa si a xttlstisuae.

Hinzen (2006, ix) poses the puzzle of how “words arrange themselves in a way that they seem meaningful to us” and begins his book with a sequence of expressions in which he says “the fog gradually clears” as we move from one line to the next: y;jdf[39r”#a-9875JKVxsclsjdli7@@ sruo fo dlrow siht ni gninaem si ereht ours of world this in meaning is there there is meaning in this world of ours

The intuitive force of these examples is clear. The difference between live symbols and dead ones is a function of our intuitive, perceptual experience arising from some internal cognitive processes. Indeed, in the well-known clinical case of Déjerine’s Syndrome, traumatic brain injury may cause “pure word blindness” or “pure alexia” in which English text may suddenly become unintelligible “dead” squiggles for a literate English speaker, sometimes without the loss of writing or agraphia. Despite evidence of this kind, instead of seeking purely internal mechanisms, Horwich (1998, 1) offers a different explanation. He asks: “How is it possible for those intrinsically inert inkmarks (or some associated state of the brain) to reach out into the world and latch on to a definite portion of reality?” He cites Wittgenstein’s question as usual and suggests that the puzzle arises from our imagining “weird entities somehow attached to what would otherwise be ‘dead’ noises.” Whatever this may mean, it is noteworthy that Horwich assimilates external “inert ink marks” and “some associated state of the brain” as posing the fundamental puzzle, eliciting the usual intuition. In view of Chomsky’s concern about the



In the Chinese Room 131

baleful residue of commonsense, it is significant that Horwich (1998, vii) declares his own approach is “not to rectify our naive view of meaning, but to vindicate it.” IDEALISTIC SOLIPSISM The near-universal conception of the problem of meaning in these terms explains the widespread misattribution to Chomsky of hostility towards semantics since he rejects the idea that symbols “reach out into the world and latch on to a portion of reality.” Instead, he sees word-thing relations as “mythical” by contrast with the question of how the person’s internal mental representations enter into cognitive mechanisms such as perception (1996, 23). Indeed, as we will see in a following chapter on naming, Chomsky rejects this “philosophical” conception of mind-world relations, although semantic issues have always been an intrinsic part of Chomsky’s explanatory enterprise broadly conceived as an internalist, computational project concerned with what is ‘in the head’ and, therefore, excluding notions of reference and truth. Among philosophers at least, this approach to meaning has few contemporary supporters, as McGilvray (1998, 226) has noted. Nevertheless, Pietroski (2003) has argued in support of Chomsky’s approach that “semantics is concerned with ‘internalist’ features of linguistic expressions.” On this view, a semantic theory properly conceived “will not itself associate sentences with truth conditions.” In this sense, generative linguistics has always been concerned with the central problem of semantics, though, as we will see in later chapters, this is inconsistent with much that goes under the name in philosophy today (Chomsky 2003, 287).7 A notable exception is the work of “inferentialists” such as Brandom (1994, 2000) who shares Chomsky’s internalist conception of the reference of linguistic expressions “in terms of their use” in “a new kind of conceptual role semantics.”8 Brandom (1994, 93) recognizes that this is a minority approach to semantics “that takes inference rather than representation as its master concept.” Brandom (1994, 70) draws attention to two different senses of “represents,” the “intensional” and “extensional” sense: In the former sense of representing, a belief may have a content in the sense of purporting to be “about” something, regardless of whether it exists or corresponds to anything in the world. In the latter sense, the term “represent” is “reserved for the sense in which one can represent only what in fact exists.” Brandom explains that thinking of any one of the alternative notions as the unique “reference relation” is to be “bewitched” by superficial linguistic forms or idioms:

132

Chapter Six

... talk about referring and referents provides no reason whatever to conclude that some one of these could be singled out as the reference relation – that unique semantically significant word-world relation in virtue of which the nonexpression is the referent of the expression (Brandom 1994, 325).

Inferentialist, conceptual role, internalist approaches have always encountered a certain kind of criticism. Reminiscent of Searle’s Chinese Room argument, philosophers9 have objected to the formalisms of generative linguistics on the grounds that they merely translate expressions into a symbolic language (Katz and Fodor 1963) just like “inert ink marks,” without providing any understanding of their meaning in the intuitive, interpretative sense. However, Chomsky (2000a, 73) has characterized this demand of philosophers’ conception of semantics as a kind of illusion. His purely internalist inquiry is independent of whether there is an external world at all. Of course, this way of putting the point elicits a predictable response, as Fodor (2007a, 6-7) explains, “I’m not at all sure that I understand how Chomsky views semantics” since he says it appears to be in effect “a sort of idealism about meaning: all our ideas are about ideas.” For the same reasons, Fodor (2008, 53) is critical of inferential-role semantics “according to which the content of an expression is entirely constituted by its role in inferences.” He attributes this sort of account to Chomsky, glossing it as holding “neither words nor concepts refer to anything.” Fodor remarks “I don’t understand how a semantics can avoid lapsing into idealistic solipsism unless it recognizes some sort of symbol-world relation.” We see the same charge of Berkeleyan idealism in the incredulity of an interviewer who asks Chomsky whether he rejects “mind-independent entities.” Chomsky (2002, 44) replies, “No... I mean, there certainly are mind-independent entities—I’m sitting in one.” Sharing Fodor’s puzzlement, the interviewer persists, asking “So, certainly you’re not saying that our words don’t pick out objects in some way, right?” However, Chomsky answers, Yeah, I am saying that. I’m saying we pick out objects; we use words to pick out objects... . Every aspect of this process can be studied. But it’s not going to lead you, as far as I know, to a relation... between an internal object and a mindindependent thing (Chomsky 2002, 42, 43).

Egan (2014, 119) is also critical of Chomsky’s (1995) non-relational view of “representation without represented objects” that she considers “problematic at best (and possibly incoherent).” Egan acknowledges “Chomsky is right that such notions as misrepresentation, error, and mistake are not part of the computational theory proper” and that “there is something right” about Chomsky’s (1995, 55) view that representation talk is purely informal gloss.



In the Chinese Room 133

However, she doesn’t accept that such normative talk is dispensable (2014, 130). Egan (2014, 129) acknowledges that “The normative elements are there from the beginning” but suggests that “there is no reason why science should not aim to explain the features of our experience that interest us” even if this does reflect “our parochial interests.” However, the problem is not that these normative features are merely parochial or “do not go very deep” but rather that they cannot in principle provide the desired objective, naturalistic account of intrinsic intentionality, that is, how mental states have their content essentially. I have been suggesting that a commitment to normative conceptions such as misrepresentation appears to be a commitment to the theorist’s ineliminable role. Chomsky (2003) contrasts his internalist approach to semantics (which he prefers to call ‘syntax’) with referential approaches that seek some kind of language-world mapping. Referring to the claims of orthodox semantics that rely on the intuitive appeal to meaning, Chomsky (2003, 289) says sarcastically “If we are satisfied with this result, we can avoid the hard problems of the study of meaning, reference and language use generally.” Chomsky is referring to the unnoticed reliance on the crucial contribution of the theorist’s own intelligence. By way of clarification, Chomsky (2002, 43) says “Words don’t refer... people refer; it’s an act.” He notes that the view “is not a new observation” (2000b, 24) alluding to P.F. Strawson’s (1952, 216) exposé of the “myth of the logically proper name” conceived as one whose meaning would be identical with a single object, independent of contextual conditions. Strawson (1952, 216) holds that the myth is part of the “illusion that formal logic was an adequate instrument for the dissection of ordinary speech.” Strawson (1950, 326) wrote “Referring is not something an expression does; it is something that someone can use an expression to do.” Along the same lines, in the following chapters I will argue that, contrary to commonsense intuitions and the widely held “referentialist” view of proper names among philosophers, neither inert ink marks nor brain states can “reach out into the world and latch on to a definite portion of reality.” Rather, as theorists we make the connection imaginatively as if we were Spectators. NOTES 1.  The pun is from Katz (1990, 197). 2.  See Pylyshyn (1984). 3.  See Fodor & Pylyshyn (1988), Fodor & McLaughlin (1990). 4.  Cummins (1991, 1996), Kirsh (1990) and McDermott (1981) are among the few to draw attention to the nature of the problem.

134

Chapter Six

5.  E.g. Pinker and Mehler eds. (1988), Horgan and Tienson eds. (1991), Ramsey, Stich and Rumelhart eds., (1991). 6.  Waksan and Bechtel (1997) on models of Elman (1990, 1991). 7.  See also Glanzberg (2021, 416). 8.  I am indebted to Michael Slezak for drawing my attention to deep affinities between the linguistic literature on internalism and the largely distinct philosophical literature on expressivism and pragmatism. Arising from the work of Sellars (1956/1997), the same issues and overlapping analyses have been discussed by his contemporary champion Brandom (1994, 1997) and others: Price (2011), Pereplyotchik & Barnbaum (2020), O’Shea (2021). 9.  E.g. Evans and McDowell (1976), David Lewis (1972), Dummett (1975, 130).

Chapter Seven

Meaning: Interpretation or Explanation?

Whaddaya mean ‘whaddaya mean?’? Bob Fisher (1970)1

APPEAL TO MEANING In the previous chapter we saw that, although the question of meaning is “one of the most urgent of philosophical questions” (Horwich 1998, 1), there is no consensus concerning how to do semantics or even what a theory of meaning is about (Higginbotham 1992, 3). However, we saw that Wittgenstein’s question about what gives life to a sign is clarified when we recognize that external symbols get their meaning by virtue of being intelligible to an interpreter and are, therefore, inappropriate as a model for internal representations which must “interpret themselves” (Dennett 1977). Chomsky (1975, 21) has emphasized that understanding meaning in this intuitive sense must not be confused with the explanatory study of meaning. In other words, comprehension by using our perceptual faculties is not the same as understanding in the explanatory sense through systematic inquiry. It is for this reason that Chomsky recommends studying language from the point of view of a scientific Martian who is not a speaker of any human language. This suggestion corresponds with Pylyshyn’s (2003a, xii) advice in the domain of vision to make our subject matter “strange” in the sense that we don’t rely on our relevant competence and the seductive illusion of intelligibility and meaningfulness. In practice, the difficulty of taking Pylyshyn’s advice is due to the fact that the operation of perceptual systems is “mandatory” (Fodor 1983, 53) in the sense that we can’t help understanding an utterance in a language we know, just 135

136

Chapter Seven

as we can’t help seeing visual input as objects in three-dimensional space. Just as we might focus our attention on the purely acoustic/phonetic properties of linguistic input, artists must learn to attend to the sensory properties of the visual stimulus because the automatic, reflexive nature of the perceptual process creates the difficulty of interest here—the seductive intuition of intelligibility and the Spectator illusion at the heart of mainstream philosophy of language. ALL THE SEMANTICS THERE IS Davidson has been responsible for what is undoubtedly the most influential theory of linguistic meaning in the Analytical tradition of philosophy. Cummins (2002) remarks that since the publication of Davidson’s (1967) influential paper ‘Truth and Meaning,’ “truth-conditional semantics has been pretty much all the semantics there is.” Pietroski’s (2018) recent book subtitled Semantics Without Truth Values presents an alternative to Davidson’s account and has been described as a “a radical and provocative” challenge to “the most powerful tradition of natural language semantics” (Ramchand 2020, 251).2 Accordingly, Pietroski’s account provides indirect support for my analysis of the fatal flaws in truth-conditional semantics as a significant manifestation of the Spectator error. These flaws are suggested in Dummett’s (2007, 367) remark: “I confess that reading defences of truth-conditional theories of meaning often produces on me the same sensation as listening to a conjurer’s patter.” Despite important differences, Davidson’s “radical interpretation” and Quine’s equally influential “radical translation” are alike in relevant respects.3 Davidson (1983, 231) describes himself as “Quine’s faithful student” and acknowledges his debt saying “I have accepted what I think is essentially Quine’s picture of the problem of interpretation” which is “one of the few real breakthroughs in the study of language” (Davidson 1974, 317). Indeed, Heinämaa (2016, 573) includes Davidson among Carnap, Ayer, Russell and Sellars as founders of the “core” of twentieth-century Analytic philosophy characterized as building on the “model of science.” Accordingly, it is perhaps surprising to discover that the doctrines of Davidson and Quine are the defining themes of hermeneutical Continental philosophy. Besides the general significance of this insight, it bears directly on my general theme concerning the pervasive illusions that beset theorising about the mind. The dominance of the Davidson-Quine approach to semantics among Analytic philosophers must be confronted with the fact that it appears to be incompatible with the explanatory “model of science” and approach of generative linguistics. For example, despite claiming to share with linguists the project of seeking prin-



Meaning 137

ciples comparable to natural laws, Davidson (2006, 1056) says that the kind of understanding provided by his account cannot be reduced to a branch of the natural sciences. Whereas Chomsky identifies his project as typical of ‘Galilean’ inquiry, Davidson and Quine contrast their kind of inquiry with natural sciences such as physics or biology. In view of such inconsistencies, my concern in this chapter is to draw out the crucial differences and to assess the proper character and role of the Davidson-Quine approach to semantics of natural language. I will suggest that, despite the many assertions of conformity with the canons of scientific inquiry, there is a fundamental incompatibility between the projects of Davidson and Chomsky. Indeed, Quine and Davidson confirm that their stance is illuminated by a long-standing dispute in the social sciences which has turned on the difference between scientific explanation and interpretative comprehension. CO-WORKERS: HAVING QUINE AND CHOMSKY TOO Davidson and Quine make explicit commitment to the usual standards of scientific evidence, confirmation and explanation, even professing to engage in a shared enterprise with Chomsky. Davidson (1970, 56) says “we can think of linguists and analytic philosophers as co-workers” since his constructions are taken to have “the form and function of natural laws” and his theory shares the goals of “describing, explaining, understanding, and predicting a basic aspect of verbal behavior” (1990, 313). Soames (2008/2009, 227) describes the optimism that met Davidson’s program promising to reconcile philosophical theories of meaning with “the emerging science of linguistics—giving us everything we could reasonably want from a notion of meaning.” Soames explains, “The idea, in short, was that one can have Quine and Chomsky too.” Indeed, Quine describes his approach to semantics as being “in the empirical spirit of natural science.” Quine (1975, 91) professes a commitment to the ordinary canons of scientific inquiry, saying “Let us then recognize that the semantical study of language is worth pursuing with all the scruples of the natural sciences.” Soames (2003, 227) characterizes Quine’s (1960) Word and Object as seeking “to articulate a scientifically acceptable account of language” by contrast with ordinary notions of meaning that are illegitimate prescientific notions. “Like all scientific theories, translation theories are tested against observational data.” In the same spirit, Higginbotham (1999, 671) describes Davidson’s contributions as “major instruments in clearing the way for a scientific and philosophical project... of attempting to account systematically for the combinatorial semantic properties of given human languages.” He says further, “I am supposing that semantic theory aspires to be a theory

138

Chapter Seven

of semantic competence in the sense of that notion derived from Chomsky.” Larson and Segal (1995), too, construe truth conditional theory as the empirical science of human competence in Chomsky’s psychological sense. Indeed, despite expressing contrary views to be noted presently, Davidson (1967, 30) explicitly assimilates his project with Chomsky’s, referring to “contemporary linguists” whose goal of general theory “cannot easily be seen to be different” and, therefore, “If either party is successful, there must be a meeting.” Davidson (1967, 24) sees his Tarski-style theory as an empirical one whose “ambition is to account for the working of a natural language.” He explains: “Like any theory, it may be tested by comparing some of its consequences with the facts.” Davidson (1990, 313) takes his theory to be essentially like any other explanatory science: He says that the question of confirming propositions of his theory “is a kind of question that arises with respect to many theories, both in the physical sciences and in psychology.” Thus, Lycan (1986, 3) defends Davidson’s approach to semantics “as a branch of scientific psychology” since “For the most part, semanticists conceive of themselves as scientists attempting to discover real empirical facts about particular natural languages... rigorously tested against unquestionably empirical data” (1986, 207). Despite this widespread commitment to a common enterprise, I suggest that it is impossible to reconcile the assertions of scientific orthodoxy with the philosophical project. The failure to recognize the incompatibility has disguised the “interpretative” nature of semantics as a variant of the Spectator illusion. The tension may be seen where Davidson (1999, 252) asserts the irrelevance, if not inconsistency, of his enterprise with scientific inquiry. Despite the ecumenical remarks we have noted professing a shared enterprise and goals with contemporary linguists, Davidson (2006, 1056) says, “The implications of my approach to language for psychology are remote at best” and “We understand others, but we cannot reduce this understanding to a branch of the natural sciences.” Davidson (1967, 25) explains that, on his conception, semantic theory is a “language used and understood by the characterizer” of the object language—the project that Lepore and Ludwig (2005, 225) describe as “interpreting the speech of another.” Davidson (1995, 14) says “People are as publicly observable as anything else in nature, but the entities we use to construct a picture of someone else’s thoughts must be our own sentences, as understood by us” (emphasis added). Of course, this remark recalls cartoon thought-clouds we have seen as in Figure 6.2 which are precisely “a picture of someone else’s thoughts” rendered as “our own sentences, as understood by us.” Less perspicuously, Platts explains, The aim thus becomes that of finding a theory of linguistic behaviour which, in the light of all we believe about the speaker, issues, for each of his linguistic actions, in plausible propositional attitude-ascriptions to him, and which makes



Meaning 139

his having expressed those attitudes in his actions in the contexts in which those actions were in fact performed intelligible (Platts 1980, 5).

McGinn offers a similar opaque characterisation: To specify a method of radical interpretation is to specify an ordered sequence of inferential steps which take us from evidence available in advance of interpretation to a total set of psychological and semantic ascriptions to the subject of interpretation (McGinn 1986, 357).

In plain English, we seek to understand what people say! Crucially, Davidson makes appeal to “understanding others” which he takes to be quite different from the scientific, explanatory sense of understanding: Chomsky apparently sees me as trying to understand and explain the same phenomena as he is, and therefore as proposing competing hypotheses. This seems altogether wrong. I want to know what it is about propositional thought – our beliefs, desires, intentions and speech—that makes it intelligible to others (Davidson 1995, 13, 14; emphasis added).

SOMEWHERE ON THE SPECTRUM The contrasting senses of understanding and intelligibility are central to the issues at stake. To clarify these, we need to understand why, in a less collaborative spirit, Davidson (2006, 1056) acknowledges “the project of fully naturalizing our understanding of other minds... is doomed.” Elsewhere, too, Davidson (1993, 83) explains “there may be a fundamental difference between how we come to know what others mean and think and how we come to know, if we do, how the blood circulates or planets are formed.” As Hutto and Satne (2017, 128) note, many of Davidson’s central claims on this matter are “hard to square with the more naturalistic strands of his thinking.” In particular, they point to Davidson’s claim that the way we come to master language and thought cannot be understood or explained “from the outside,” that is, by adopting the perspective and resources of empirical science. Evans and McDowell (1976, vi), too, see no basis for compromise, arguing that the virtues of Davidson’s conception may be understood in light of the supposedly fatal flaws of a Chomskyan approach. Towards rapprochement, Barry C. Smith (1992, 111) makes a crucial clarification and compromise by drawing attention to the distinction between interpretative and explanatory stances in the theory of meaning. Smith suggests that each of these approaches has offered only a partial and, therefore, “distorted view of key aspects of linguistic phenomena.” In particular, he says

140

Chapter Seven

Chomsky’s approach “is a far cry from the philosophical project of constructing a theory of meaning” and asks: “how are the two projects meant to be reconciled?” (1992, 133). Optimistically, Smith proposes that a satisfactory account would accommodate insights from both philosophers and linguists since “no philosophical account of linguistic understanding can afford to ignore either.” For Smith (1992, 111), a satisfactory answer to the question of reconciliation “is to be found somewhere on a spectrum” along which lie distinctive stances. However, the faith that the stances may be reconciled in this way seems misplaced in light of the incommensurability between the philosophical and the linguistic projects. Indeed, as we will see presently, this fundamental methodological difference has been a notorious source of controversy in the philosophy of the social sciences though it has not figured in discussions of semantics in Analytic philosophy. In this regard, it is symptomatic that philosophers’ avowals of scientific virtue and common purpose are not reciprocated by Chomsky (1992, 107) who sees “persistent misunderstanding of the empirical issues.” The claims to be engaged in a shared inquiry must be contrasted with Chomsky’s (2000b, 39) dismissive attitude, characterizing the philosophical enterprise as “perverse” and “off the wall” (Chomsky 2012, 26). He suggests “Virtually every aspect of the study of language and mind seems to... involve unjustified non-naturalist assumptions” (1995, 57). Specifically, in light of the conceptions we have noted, we can understand the significance of Chomsky’s (1992, 107) reference to philosophers’ “utterly wrongheaded” reliance on commonsense intuitions about meaning which merely gives the illusion of an explanation. The recognition of incompatibility is reciprocated by Evans and McDowell (1976, 9) who are dismissive of the Chomskyan approach, saying that it “serves only to enable us to conceal from ourselves our utter incapacity to do what we ought to be doing.” In a revealing remark they explain “This whole conception is objectionable” because “What we ought to be doing is stating what the sentences of the language mean, stating something such that, if someone knew it, he would be able to speak and understand the language” (1976, ix). Of course, we are reminded of the demand we have seen by Searle, Chalmers, Strawson and others that a theory of pain should hurt. THE ESSENTIAL DIVIDE We may appreciate the source of conflicting attitudes to meaning by observing a curious, unnoticed feature of the philosophical enterprise. Although Davidson and Quine are among the foremost founders of the post-Positivist, Analytic tradition in the spirit of scientific inquiry, their doctrines are the



Meaning 141

essential themes of Continental philosophy which Heinämaa (2016) associates with poetry and religion. Indeed, Bowie (2016, 51), like Malpas (1992, 3), cites Davidson on the same side as Heidegger in the “essential divide” between contemporary approaches. The inclusion of Davidson on the Continental side is recognition of the affinity of his doctrines with the hermeneutic tradition. For example, Ramberg (1989, 139) discusses the parallel of Davidson’s notions of linguistic communication and radical interpretation with Gadamer’s (2004) conception of the “hermeneutical task.” Glock (1993, 196), too, makes the observation that “There is a striking parallel here between Quine and Davidson on the one hand, and the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer and Apel on the other.” In the same vein, Leonardi and Santambrogio (1995, 2) note “Of all analytic philosophers, we feel that Quine is closest to the themes, if not the methods and attitudes, of Continental philosophy.” They add that it is surprising that so few have realized this closeness.4 Malpas (2011, xxi) notes the narrow conception of Davidson’s work among Analytic philosophers who have ignored these parallels with Gadamer.5 Indeed, for a notable example, the landmark two-volume study of Davidson’s truth theoretic semantics by Lepore and Ludwig (2005, 2007) does not hint at the essentially hermeneutic nature of the project of ‘Radical Interpretation.’ In another typical case, Khatchirian (2018) recently offers ‘A Reconsideration of Davidson’s Program’ in the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy but makes no mention of the relevance of these conceptions. Seen from the standpoint of the hermeneutic tradition, we may better appreciate the grounds for Chomsky’s (1992, 100,1) comment that philosophers’ conception of linguistic research bears no resemblance to the work of actual linguists. Davidson (1995, 13) argues that a theory of meaning should be such that “if an interpreter knew it to be true of a speaker, the interpreter could understand what the speaker said.” Elsewhere, Davidson (1990, 312) explains that his theory of truth for a speaker “is a theory of meaning in this sense that explicit knowledge of the theory would suffice for understanding the utterances of that speaker.” Contrary to Chomsky’s (1975, 21) precept that the appeal to meaning should be distinguished from study of meaning, Davidson (1973, 71) describes his theory as “couched in a natural language.” Of course, being couched in a natural language is not ipso facto problematic. Freud’s Traumdeutung undoubtedly has many problems, but being couched in German is not one of them. However, Davidson (1993, 81) says “a radical interpreter already has a language, and a set of concepts that more or less match those of the interpretee.” Clearly, nothing in natural science corresponds with this requirement. Davidson (1995, 15) is concerned with the problem of “when one mind tries to understand another” or “the correct interpretation of one person’s speech by another” (1990, 314). Having a language and concepts that

142

Chapter Seven

match those of the interpretee is not comparable with whatever the physicist brings to her research, unless she talks to her planets and particles—or, rather, unless they talk back. In the latter case she would understand the world in a special sense of this term. However, we don’t understand physics as a native speaker of calculus. BOLD PROPOSAL TO GIVE MEANING Davidson recognizes there is a potential difficulty here. He addresses the “Anxiety that we are enmeshed in the intensional” arising from the evident circularity in using the words “means that” as filling between a sentence and its description ‘s means that p’. However, Davidson (1967, 24) says the particular virtue of his approach is that it makes no use of meanings, whether of sentences or of words. Davidson proposes to avoid circularity by providing for every sentence in the language under study, a matching sentence that “in some way” may be said to give the meaning of the sentence. Davidson’s (1967, 23) “bold” proposal to “give the meaning of a sentence” involves using the sentence s itself in the metalanguage of the theory. We replace ‘s means that p’ with: (T)  s is T if and only if p. In this way Davidson (1967, 24) gives “necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of every sentence” which he claims is a way of giving the meaning of a sentence and thereby “to understand the language.” The idea is that the formula (T) is a sentence expressed in a theoretical metalanguage understood by the theorist. This formula mentions or quotes the sentence s on the left and uses the sentence itself on the right. (T*)  “Snow is white” is T if and only if snow is white. Stroud (2017, 129) explains that “you cannot say what an expression means … without using that very expression or others with the same meaning to say what the expression or the person means.” That is, “you must use some words whose meaning you yourself understand” (2017, 137). Lepore and Ludwig (2007) explain key features of Davidson’s “interpretive” truth theory referring to “the illumination” for a particular language that “presupposes grasp of another language, the metalanguage, in which the theory is given.” Chomsky’s concern about this reliance on the theorist’s own semantic competence is not among the grounds for complaint cited by critics of Davidson’s program.6 Nevertheless, it is clear that Davidson’s conception is captured in



Meaning 143

Chomsky’s (1962) early reference to theories that depend upon being paired with an intelligent reader. Davidson (1973, 71) is explicit, explaining “The inevitable goal of semantic theory is a theory of a natural language couched in a natural language (the same or another).” If the enterprise is understood to be an explanatory one in the usual scientific sense, this is a remarkably explicit endorsement of the familiar, fatal error. In particular, Chomsky’s favourite Martian is precluded from Davidson’s project. The difficulty has not been entirely unnoticed. Dummett (2006, 51) remarks, “Truth conditional theories of meaning and of content are irredeemably circular” and Kemp (2012, 10) observes, “The bottom line is that the intuition or semantical judgement of the interpreter cannot be removed from the loop, and thus the theory fails to measure up to the standards of impersonal science.” Kemp (2012, 12) describes Davidson’s “non-naturalist standpoint” as “an unscientific if intuitive standpoint” and a pragmatic account which “relies ineliminably on an inarticulate human skill or art” (2012, 143). A FULLY FORMED INTERPRETER Lycan (1986, 27) notes that Davidson’s approach may give the appearance of vacuity but “the suspicion of triviality will evaporate” and we may recognize that T-sentences are “highly substantive” if we consider a truth definition for German that is written in English: (1) ‘Der Schnee ist weiss’ is true iff snow is white. However, these attempts to deflect the threat of triviality only serve to confirm the more fundamental problem. Even when triviality is avoided because the disquoted object expression is in a foreign language, the deeper problem arises from the very fact that the theoretical metalanguage means something to us. The undoubted informativeness of a translation, that is, the dependence on the competence of what Smith (1998, 422) calls “A fully formed interpreter,” is precisely the problem from the point of view of scientific explanation. It is instructive to consider Foster’s (1976) famous objection which has been taken to be one of the “most serious principled obstacles” to carrying out Davidson’s project (Lepore and Ludwig 2005, 113). The complaint is that one could know a truth theory for a language and know that it is such a theory and still not understand the language. “Knowledge of these theorems is not sufficient to understand” the language in question (Soames 2008, 230; emphasis added). The alleged problem is “We could know what the axioms were without knowing what they meant” (Lepore and Ludwig 2005, 114;

144

Chapter Seven

emphasis added). Soames (2010, 38) has argued that the “crippling defect” of Davidson’s semantics can’t be solved by turning it into a psychological theory, and attributing it to speakers since “this psycholinguistic fantasy” has no empirical support and, in any case “fails to address the basic justificatory problem” because it fails to meet the essential requirement of semantic theory. Even a correct account of cognitive processing would be inadequate because “The job of a theory of meaning is to tell us what sentences, and other expressions, mean” (2010, 39; emphasis added). The criticism is important for bringing into relief the special demand that semantic theories “give” the meaning or “tell us” what expressions mean. Soames explains that the theory must provide interpretations of sentences, rather than simply further things that themselves require interpretation (2010, 41). This cause for concern is of interest here because the shortcomings of Davidson’s project are taken to be its failure to achieve the interpretative goals of a semantic theory which are not themselves brought into question. That is, Foster’s Objection shares Davidson’s assumption that a theory should itself be sufficient to enable a user to understand the language in question. Decades of failure to meet this requirement and thereby accomplish “the job of a theory of meaning,” leads Soames (2010, 42) to conclude that the justificatory problem can’t be solved. “Davidsonian theories of truth conditions can’t be theories of meaning, because the semantic information they provide is too impoverished.” That is, Davidson’s theories and various attempted repairs fail to provide “understanding” or “tell us” what expressions mean – a familiar complaint about theories of mind we have seen which fail to provide the actual experience of “what it’s like.” BEHAVIOURISM? Besides pointing to departures from the canons of naturalistic, scientific inquiry, Chomsky (1995, 57) says “one would want to ask why such ideas appear so compelling.” This is the diagnostic question I have been concerned with throughout. In the era of cognitive science, it is anomalous to find Quine and Davidson restricting the data of linguistics strictly to observable behaviour. Chomsky (1992, 105,6) remarks that no linguist, or other scientist, would limit their inquiry in this way by confining their data “in accordance with behaviorist dogma.”7 However, to answer Chomsky’s diagnostic question, it helps to recognize that the philosophical project has a significantly different purpose to explanatory, scientific inquiry. Thus, Lepore and Ludwig (2006, 14) explain that the theme linking Quine and Davidson “is the idea that because language is by its nature an instrument for communication, meaning must be accessible from the public standpoint” (emphasis added). As far as



Meaning 145

it goes, referring to the comprehension of speech, this is unexceptionable. Davidson (1990, 314) writes of his concern with “the correct interpretation of one person’s speech by another.” There is no model of scientific explanation for which this could be an appropriate characterisation, but these remarks are perfectly apt when confined to an interpretative exercise. In this sense, we can concede “meaning” in a special sense, that is, what is supposed to be communicated, is dependent, partly at least, on what is available in observable behaviour. In fact, Davidson (1990, 314) goes further to say that meaning is “entirely” determined by observable behaviour, but as we will note presently this may be qualified without undermining Davidson’s essential project. Thus, where Davidson says that “meanings are decipherable” it is clear that he does not mean “scientifically explainable” and, in this strained sense, we may acknowledge the truism that “public availability is a constitutive aspect of language” qua communicative behaviour. From this standpoint, we may acknowledge Davidson’s (1995, 13) point, the mere truism that “our understanding of what speakers mean by what they say is partly based, directly or indirectly, on what we can learn or pick up from perceiving what they do.” It appears that what may appear to be dogmatic behaviourist assumptions and “arbitrary stipulations” from the point of view of explanatory scientific procedure, are merely platitudinous from the point of view of a different interpretative translation enterprise. Gareth Evans’ (1975) aphorism is apt: “A translation is one thing, a theory of meaning another.” In the “torrent of publications” (Kirk 2004) on Quine or Davidson there has been practically no acknowledgement of these differences. Thus, with some justice Davidson denies the charge of behaviourism and says there is “a failure to appreciate a difference in fundamental aims and interests.” Davidson’s behaviourist strictures have a rationale quite different from Skinner’s and intrinsically connected to the interpretative conception of the semantic inquiry. From this point of view, we may agree with Davidson (1995, 15) that, as far as the available evidence is concerned, “things are different when one mind tries to understand another” and we may appreciate the reason given by Lepore and Ludwig (2007, 9) for the dependence of semantic theory on an intelligible metalanguage: “This should not come as a surprise. For there is no question of a standpoint for understanding meaning that is outside of language altogether.” Taken as a statement about comprehension from the point of view of a speaker, this is a platitude but Evans and McDowell (1976, ix) take the principle as grounds for rejecting a scientific, generative approach from the Martian’s point of view that is precisely “outside of language altogether.” Typical of the failure to distinguish scientific explanation from the interpretative project, Glock (2003, 225) makes a revealing elision in characterizing

146

Chapter Seven

the disagreement between Quine and Chomsky. Glock notes that Chomsky has been critical of Quine’s “double standard” or methodological dualism that sees indeterminacy in language as additional to the normal underdetermination of theory by evidence. Glock (2003, 225) says that according to Chomsky, “translation and physics are on a par” [emphasis added]. But for Chomsky it is not translation but linguistics as explanatory science that he takes to be on a par with physics. This is not to deny the empirical nature of translation or its reliance on evidence, hypothesis and confirmation, but only that “translation is one thing, a theory of meaning another.” POSITIVISMUSSTREIT: A FASHION AND A BORE It is remarkable and illuminating to notice that a long-standing, central dispute in the social sciences has turned on exactly the same issues. The difference between a scientific, explanatory understanding and interpretative comprehension is captured in the distinction between erklären and verstehen, that is, the distinction between Explanation and Understanding, the title of von Wright’s (1971) book on the subject. The methodology dispute— Methodenstreit or Positivismusstreit (Positivism dispute)—has been at the forefront of controversy in the social sciences, even to the extent that Popper (1972, 185) remarked decades ago that it “has long been a fashion, and has become a bore.” Popper was discussing the specific problem of understanding meaningful action in the humanities. Significantly for our interest here, Popper writes: Almost all the great students of this problem – I will mention only Dilthey and Collingwood – hold that the humanities differ radically from the natural sciences, and that the most outstanding difference lies in this: that the central task of the humanities is to understand, in a sense in which we can understand men but not nature (Popper 1972, 183).

Habermas (1988, 2) cites Popper among the guilty parties in the dispute in which “Neither analytic philosophy of science nor philosophical hermeneutics takes any notice of the other” with the result that “The mutually uncomprehending coexistence... troubles the rigid self-consciousness of neither of the two parties.” An exception among Analytical philosophers, Winch’s (1958) influential book developed the hermeneutic views of Weber and Wittgenstein to suggest that there is, indeed, a radical difference between the social sciences and the natural sciences. Winch (1958, 115) anticipated Davidson’s arguments we have seen: “We might well be able to make predictions of great accuracy in this way [by following certain formulae] and still not



Meaning 147

be able to claim any real understanding of what those people were doing.” Winch (1958, 133) supported a tradition in the social sciences that sees human behaviour as sui generis and not tractable to natural science explanations in terms of causes, laws and abstract formalisms. In particular, he says “It is like applying one’s knowledge of a language in order to understand a conversation rather than like applying one’s knowledge of the laws of mechanics to understand the workings of a watch.” For Winch language figures only as an illustration of a more general point but it anticipates Davidson’s interpretative conception of semantics. Of course, ironically, at that moment Chomsky’s (1957) landmark Syntactic Structures had only just been published and had not yet become an influential illustration of the ‘Positivist’ approach. In retrospect, it is significant that von Wright referred to the hermeneutical method of the Geisteswissenschaften as concerned with the “intentionalistic or, as one could perhaps also call it, semantic dimension of understanding.” Moreover, the term ‘Galilean’ was used by von Wright for the project of erklären, just as Chomsky has independently uses the term to describe the method of his own explanatory enterprise. The relevance of these disputes in philosophy of social sciences has been almost completely unnoticed by Analytical philosophers but in their later writings Davidson (2005, 251) and Quine (1990, 1995, 2000) make explicit acknowledgment of the connection. Davidson welcomes the “remarkable rapprochement” between the traditions while also recognizing that the perception of a great philosophical divide “is perhaps stronger within my country than it is in Europe.” We see the affinity of Davidson-Quine semantics with the Continental tradition in Davidson’s (1999, 59) account of the source of his views. He explains, “An emphasis on empathy emerged” according to which “we translate a native’s observation sentence by imagining what we would say if we were placed as he is when he utters the sentence.” Like Davidson, Quine (1990, 158) also acknowledges the aptness of comparisons with the social sciences: “The folk psychology involved [in translation] is very much a matter of empathy, and does connect with the hermeneutic line of Dilthey and others.” Elsewhere, too, Quine confirms the parallel of his own project with the Verstehen approach of the social sciences: The radical translator’s basic method is empathy, a gift of human nature. He projects himself imaginatively into what he sees to be the native’s situation, and considers what he, the translator, would be apt to say (Quine 1995, 348).

Quine explains “Empathy guides translation,” leaving no doubt about the hermeneutic diagnosis of his doctrines. Quine writes: One could scarcely miss the central role that I ascribe to empathy, both in translation and in language learning. Radical translation begins with it in Word and

148

Chapter Seven

Object: the linguist pictures himself in the native’s place at the outset, in guessing at an observation sentence. The word “empathy” does not occur there, but it does in my later writings (Quine 2000, 418).

Indeed, in Word and Object, Quine (1960, 219) wrote “we project ourselves into what, from his remarks and other indications, we imagine the speaker’s state of mind to have been.” Harman (1990, 145) is among the few to note that Quine’s “emphasis on translation makes him more akin to a theorist of Das Verstehen than to a strict positivist.” Harman (1993, 120) makes the radical methodological divide explicit: “Das Verstehen is needed. Dilthey, Quine and others are right. There are aspects of mental life that cannot be understood from a purely objective scientific point of view.” These remarks signify an unbridgeable gulf between the Davidson-Quine approach and Chomsky’s Galilean view (Føllesdal 1994). In particular, the claim to be “co-workers” in a broadly shared empirical science is incompatible with the hermeneutic conception of the semantic enterprise.8 Indeed, as we have noted, for this reason Evans and McDowell (1976, 9) are dismissive of the Chomskyan approach. Reversing the usual sense of key terms, generative linguistics is described as merely “translational” (meaning formally encoded) rather than “explanatory” (meaning intelligible) since “the most that can be expected of a semantic theory9 is the setting up of translation rules” (1976, viii) between equally meaningless formalisms10 and, therefore, “would leave what is really important out of account.” Lewis (1972/1983, 190) made the same complaint that a theory in an artificial language “Semantic Markerese” is just an algorithm for translation from the object language to the formal symbols. Such a theory “leaves out such central semantic notions as truth and reference” without which we can’t know “the first thing about the meaning.” Lewis says translation into Markerese is a substitute for “real semantics” which would somehow break out of the framework of pure symbols and their combinations to deal with “relations between symbols and the world of non-symbols – that is, with genuinely semantic relations.” We see the familiar equivocation between significantly different senses of the word “know” just as in Jackson’s “Knowledge Argument” concerning qualia. It is not coincidental that we have seen the same complaint of leaving “what is really important out of account” made against materialism and non-pictorial theories of imagery. Harman (1990, 154) explains Quine’s conception that a mere description is not enough to give understanding: “We need to know the use from the inside.” It is irresistible to note once again the precise echo of notorious complaints against materialist theories (Searle 1992, Chalmers 1996) that also fail to give understanding “what it’s like” from the inside.



Meaning 149

ACQUIESCING IN OUR MOTHER TONGUE The indeterminacy of translation has been described as Quine’s best known and most controversial thesis, and few claims have been discussed so often, or refuted so frequently. Quine argued that for a field linguist faced with an alien language, the possibility of empirically equivalent but inconsistent translation manuals means that there is no fact of the matter about meanings which are mythological with no place in natural science. That is, languageneutral meanings identifiable across different languages is an illusion. Hookway (1988, 127) notes that these skeptical, anti-mentalist, anti-intensionalist conclusions imply the overthrow of our commonsense conception of the mind. Katz (1990, 177), too, observes that Quine’s argument threatens to upset our natural view that there is something we mean, and that there is a right and wrong translation into another language. Indeed, worse still, Searle (1987, 233) sees Quine’s argument as leading to conclusions which are refuted by the evidence of one’s own self-knowledge. The indeterminacy thesis seems to have the absurd consequence that there isn’t any difference for me between meaning or referring to a rabbit or rabbit stage. Hookway (1988, 157) makes the crucial distinction between a theory of meaning that should be an explanatory theory and an inquiry that merely records regularities useful in translation. Hookway adds that Quine’s conception of the facts which are relevant to translation and the case for indeterminacy depend on ignoring all of those additional matters relevant to the psychological underpinnings of linguistic behaviour. Hookway suggests that this point seems so obvious and powerful that we may wonder how Quine was convinced by his famous rabbit example. He adds “It is surprising, too, that he has never seriously addressed this challenge.” However, I think that it is possible to recognize the rationale for Quine’s views along the lines we have seen. That is, we may ask why Quine has focused upon translation in order to make his case that no objective sense can be made of meanings. Katz (1990, 178) suggests Quine holds that meanings must be constituted by their translation relations. That is, interlinguistic identity conditions are the only way to individuate meanings and, therefore, no translation, no meanings. Harman (1969, 17) points out that Quine will be proved right if the evidence does not warrant postulation of antecedently existing meaning relations. Of course, the puzzle arises from Quine’s apparent indifference to the force of just this kind of evidence which would support identity conditions on meanings independent of translation. In order to understand Quine, we need to make sense of his view that not even the mentalist posits of psychology or neuroscience can overcome the inherent indeterminacy and the mythology of meanings. Although this position is ultimately untenable, it is worth recognizing that it

150

Chapter Seven

not a naïve, recidivist behaviourism as Chomsky and Searle have suggested. Indeed, Quine (1990, 110) acknowledges that “In psychology one may or may not be a behaviorist.” However, he insists that “in linguistics one has no choice” (1992, 37). Here we must read “linguistics” as “translation.” Indeed, Quine (1990, 110) says “One can wallow in the rankest mentalistic ontology without affecting the indeterminacy of translation.” In the situation of radical translation Quine asserts “What matters is just that linguistic meaning is a function of observable behavior in observable circumstances.” In response to these claims, Chomsky (1992, 100) has noted that philosophers’ conception of “the field linguist” bears no resemblance to “those who actually do linguistic work.” Accordingly, he remarks with mild sarcasm on prescriptions that are “legislated by the philosopher but not followed in practice by the errant scientist.” Specifically, as we have noted, Chomsky (1992, 105,6) points out that no linguist, or other scientist, would limit their inquiry and data according to behaviorist scruples. However, while these criticisms are justified from the point of view of an explanatory enterprise, it seems clear that Quine (1995, 348) conceives of his “field linguist” as engaged in a form of inquiry that is quite different in the ways we have noted. In Word and Object he had noted, “the enterprise of translation” is subject to a certain systematic indeterminacy (1960, ix; emphasis added). On this conception of the “linguist” as translator we can perhaps understand Quine’s (1960, 218) otherwise paradoxical methodological dualism asserting “In general the underlying methodology of the idioms of propositional attitude contrast strikingly with the spirit of objective science at its most representative.” It is here we see the resonance with continental, hermeneutic approaches appropriate for understanding another person. As Quine (1960, 219) says, “we project ourselves into what, from his remarks and other indications, we imagine the speaker’s state of mind to have been.” Quine can be understood as simply observing that the human understanding of other human beings is, as he says “Casting our real selves thus in unreal roles.” Notwithstanding Chomsky’s complaints from the point of view of a ‘Galilean’ science, Quine distinguishes this enterprise from his own: In the strictest scientific spirit we can report all the behavior verbal and otherwise, that may underlie our imputations of propositional attitudes, and we may go on to speculate as we please upon the causes and effects of behavior; but, so long as we do not switch muses, the essentially dramatic idiom of propositional attitudes will find no place (Quine 1960, 219).

Quine’s remarks here suggest that we must understand his enterprise as significantly different from scientific inquiry. Accordingly, when Quine (1992, 38) asserts “There is nothing in linguistic meaning beyond what is to be



Meaning 151

gleaned from overt behavior in observable circumstances” we may correct this to read more plausibly “There is nothing in translation beyond what is to be gleaned from overt behaviour in observable circumstances” unless the translator can bring a brain scanner into the jungle with his pith helmet. Of course, even this charitable reading is too generous since the translator must rely on more than whatever is available in observable behaviour. Nevertheless, the debate concerning these matters has failed to distinguish the project of radical interpretation or translation from explanatory science. For example, Katz (1990, 197) seeks to rescue intentionalism from Quine’s skepticism about meaning by drawing attention to the mistake of assuming that Quine’s radical translation is the same as actual translation. Accordingly, Katz points to the totality of evidence available to the real linguist and how indeterminacy between competing manuals can be eliminated. Like Katz, Fodor and Lepore (1994) argue that “it is prima facie implausible that real translators are ipso facto radical interpreters” because they approach alien languages with powerful theoretical assumptions which include beliefs about cognitive psychology, language learning, linguistic universals, inter alia. However, Quine (1970, 180) rejects appeal to such other considerations such as those of neuroscience because the problem is not one of “hidden facts” that might be uncovered by learning about the brain. He says such inquiries have no place in the translator’s “bag of tricks” (1995, 348) since his project is essentially like that of the “laywoman’s” empathic understanding of her child. In the same way, Davidson (1990, 314) is concerned with the “the correct interpretation of one person’s speech by another” and he notes that this question cannot be answered by the broader kinds of evidence concerning neural mechanisms, brain evolution or language acquisition (Davidson 1995, 14). Quine (1979, 167) says “translators do not supplement their behavioral criteria with neurological criteria, much less with telepathy” and, therefore, he asks how we might justify supposing that one manual conforms better than any other to underlying physical states. “What excuse, in short, for supposing there to be a fact of the matter?” Undeniably, in ordinary circumstances the task of understanding another speaker cannot avail herself of the scientist’s “bag of tricks.” Or, to put the point differently, the laywoman’s understanding of her child is not explanatory science. However, the predicament of a translator is not the predicament of the theoretical linguist. Of course, Quine’s constraints on his inquiry invite the question of how limitations on the hermeneutical project of translation can warrant this skepticism about the objective reality of meaning. In particular, as Chomsky notes, the limitations on translation do not exhaust the empirical considerations relevant to Quine’s radical claim about the non-existence of meanings or the claim that there is no fact of the matter concerning translation.

152

Chapter Seven

While it is clearly untenable to suggest that behavioural evidence is “the only evidence we can build on in our study of man” (Føllesdal 1990), the very disparate kinds of inquiry suggest that perhaps we can have Chomsky and Quine after all. Quine (1970, 179) explains “As always in radical translation, the starting point is the equating of observation sentences of the two languages” but we can only clarify the meaning of a term such as ‘rabbit’ relative to some background language. If we press the question of reference, we thereby launch a regress “and we need the background language to regress into.” Quine (1969, 46) says the regress terminates because “radical translation begins at home.” He says, “in practice we end the regress of background languages, in discussions of reference, by acquiescing in our mother tongue and taking its words at face value” (Quine 1969, 49). In light of this conception, we may appreciate the grounds for Chomsky’s (1992, 100,1) contrast between philosophers’ conception of linguistic research and the work of actual linguists. Chomsky (2003, 293) characterises the Davidson-Quine interpretative inquiry as one in which “we are choosing to content ourselves with informal talk” that would not answer the questions of interest to the scientist, “though as subjects of inquiry we understand this talk very well, just as bees understand the waggle dance; no help to von Frisch.” That is, philosophers have adopted the viewpoint of the bee, the stance we see in different guises in other domains. NOTES   1.  Personal remark by a friend in conversation.   2.  See also Collins (2020) and Pereplyotchik (2020).   3.  See Glock (1993, 196).  4. Devitt (1991, 1996, 67) notes that the interpretative task is not central to semantics when seen from what he calls his own “factual” perspective. Macdonald and Pettit (1981, 56) do not regard the affinities as problematic and, on the contrary, they endorse a “humanistic as distinct from a scientistic construal of the understanding available in the study of human beings.”   5.  Exceptions include passing mention by Harman (1990), Devitt (1991), Macdonald and Pettit (1981), Baldwin (2006).   6.  See for example Stich (1976), Kölbel (2001).   7.  Chomsky (2021, 586) notes that Quine (1960) adopted the Skinnerian paradigm in his Word and Object, though seems to have tacitly abandoned key elements in later writing.   8.  See Harman (1990), Kemp (2012), Baldwin (2006).   9.  Katz and Fodor (1963), cited in Evans and McDowell (1976). 10. See in Lepore (1981). The term “translational semantics” does not refer to translation into an intelligible natural language understood by the theorist.

Chapter Eight

Proper Names: The Omniscient Observer

A proposition may be thought and again it may be true; let us never confuse these two things. Gottlob Frege (1884).

INTRODUCTION: NATURAL INTUITION Bach (1987, 1) remarks “One might have thought the everyday phenomenon of referring to an individual by name to be something less than a mystery, but the debate on proper names keeps spreading and the epidemic of theories goes unabated.” Indeed, the apparently simple phenomenon of naming has been a central puzzle in the philosophy of language. The 1970s “referentialist turn” (Bianchi 2012, 79) is widely taken to have “ushered in a new era in philosophy” (Soames 2005, 1). Specifically, a conception of direct reference, “American referential realism” (Perry 2012, 4) is seen as having created a “revolution against Frege” and the “demise” of the earlier description theory of proper names (Wettstein 2004, 3, 66). Almog (2005, 493) writes that the “uprising” against Frege’s doctrines “spread like fire” based on the work of Kripke, Donnellan, Putnam and Kaplan. The revolution involved a shift from an internalist, descriptive, psychological conception of proper names to an externalist concern with how the world really is. Among recent advocates of referentialism, McKinsey (2020, 1) says “Like many others, I endorse DR [Direct Reference]. There in fact seems to have been a consensus among philosophers of language for the past four decades or so that DR is true.” In fact, even among philosophers who share a referentialist view there is significant dissent from the Direct Reference doctrine, but I will suggest that they share a familiar, deeply problematic conception. 153

154

Chapter Eight

In Soames’ (2005, 8) formulation of the referentialist idea, “the meaning of any word or phrase should be just what it represents, or stands for. In short, the meaning of an expression is the thing it refers to.” This view is essentially a revival of J.S. Mill’s (1843) doctrine that proper names have no meaning other than their denotation or reference and belongs to “a surprisingly monolithic externalist orthodoxy” about mental content (Mendola 2008, 8).1 Evidently forgotten in this revolution have been famous critiques of referentialism that help to recognize that the revived doctrine embraces a version of the Spectator illusion we see in different forms throughout this book. Indeed, Rorty (1979, 293) captures the “hopeless” quest for a theory of reference as the demand “for some transcendental standpoint outside our present set of representations from which we can inspect the relations between those representations and their object.” Referentialism is widely regarded as having refuted the Russell-Frege conception that the reference of a word “is grounded in the mind’s grasp of the item in question.” Tye (2009, 81) writes of “the demise” of such earlier descriptivist theories and Jackson (2010, 10) observes “It is still conventional wisdom that the description theory of proper names is false.” Indeed, this rival internalist, descriptive account of proper names is now widely thought to be, not just mistaken, but absurd and contrary to deeply felt intuitions.2 Devitt (2022, 409) suggests that Kripke’s famous thought-experiments yield the “very powerful” intuition that “a speaker’s use of a name designates an object despite the speaker’s ignorance or error about the object.” Devitt considers the ‘Ignorance and Error’ argument against “any description theory of any term” to be “as close to a ‘knock down’ argument as can be found in philosophy” and regarding the intuitions Devitt says “so far as I know, no philosopher has rejected them.” This is undoubtedly an oversight since we will see that a few of the foremost philosophers such as Brandom (2000), Price (2011), Searle (1969, 1983), Stalnaker (2003) and Dummett (1973) have rejected the key intuitions. Nevertheless, as throughout the book, these deeply felt intuitions are the subject of interest here and, in support of the few dissenting voices, I will suggest that the overwhelming consensus among philosophers is based on a familiar, seductive trap. In this regard, significantly, Kripke acknowledges that he was led to his influential view that proper names are rigid designators by his “natural intuition.” Kripke (1972, 42) wrote: “I think it is very heavy evidence in favour of anything, myself. I really don’t know, in a way, what more conclusive evidence one can have about anything, ultimately speaking.” Of course, far from being conclusive, this just invites the obvious questions concerning the source and notorious unreliability of intuitions. As Hintikka (1999, 133) notes, in contrast to linguists, philosophers’ intuitions are not introspective data that bear on the psychological faculty to



Proper Names 155

be explained. Rather, philosophers’ intuitions are taken to bear on “the truths about which this faculty is supposed to provide knowledge.” For such reasons, Hintikka (1999, 127) even suggests that Kripke’s reliance on intuitions is “apt to give intuitions a bad name.” Thus, Farkas (2003b) characterizes the “deeply rooted” externalist intuitions as “baffling” and a “vexatious problem” and, with Boghossian (1998, 273) we may ask why philosophers feel that the “intuitive responses to a certain kind of thought-experiment appear to leave them little choice.” Of course, we also have “little choice” about seeing the Müller-Lyer lines as different. Thus, towards answering Boghossian’s question we will look at Kripke’s famous thought experiments and I will suggest that the intuition is yet another example of the theorist tacitly, indeed sometimes explicitly, adopting the vantage point of an external, omniscient Spectator. Adopting this vantage point will explain why, as McKinsey (2020, 3) suggests, the referentialist doctrine appears so obvious that it “could reasonably be taken as a piece of common sense.” However, contrary to the consensus on this common sense, Chomsky (2013, 42) argues that “the referentialist doctrine is radically false: there are no expressions that pick out objects or things that are mind-independent.” The idea of a relation between a name and a mind-independent object is untenable since “natural language has no semantics in the sense of relations between symbols and mind-independent entities. Rather, it has syntax (symbol manipulation) and pragmatics (modes of use of language)” (2013, 44). These are internal systems used to talk or think about aspects of the world, the act of denoting which is different from the supposed mind-world relation of denotation. Indeed, in view of the consensus among philosophers, it is significant that Pietroski (2003) suggests “despite a considerable literature, no one has shown that names do bear any interesting and theoretically tractable relation to their bearers.” If Pietroski is correct, we need an explanation of how so many philosophers have been so misguided. The consensus on Kripkean intuitions is especially interesting in light of Rorty’s (1979, 292) observation that “reference” is a “term of art” and, therefore, “not something we have intuitions about.” Chomsky (2012, 26), too, says that notions such as “denotation” and “reference” are theoretical inventions analogous to “angular velocity” or “tensors” and, therefore, we can have no intuitions about such questions.3 If this is correct, it is all the more remarkable that there is in fact such wide agreement among philosophers on certain crucial intuitions. We need a diagnosis of why Kripke’s views of naming are “as close to uncontroversial as any interesting views in analytic philosophy” (Hughes 2004, vii).

156

Chapter Eight

THE OMNISCIENT OBSERVER OF HISTORY Towards pursuing a diagnosis, it is worth being reminded of recent history. Despite the “direct-reference mania” (Salmon 1986, 82), it is salutary to recall that Ryle (1949b, 69) had characterised earlier versions of the current orthodoxy as the “grotesque” mistake of conceiving proper names to be visible, audible external things attached to other visible things. Kripke’s doctrine of “rigid designators” is a revival of the Millian notion that Ryle had mocked as the “Fido”– Fido theory which conceived proper names to be observable objects attached in an indirect but familiar way to other observable objects. More recently, Fodor (2004) ventured to wonder whether something has gone “awfully wrong” in the mainstream philosophical orthodoxy and Chomsky (2002, 43) reminds us of P.F. Strawson’s (1952, 216) exposé of the “myth of the logically proper name” conceived as one whose meaning would be identical with a single object, independent of contextual conditions. As we noted earlier, in Strawson’s (1950, 326) paper ‘On Referring’ he wrote that referring is not something an expression does. Rather, referring is something that a person can use an expression to do. Indeed, if it were not obscured by the intuitions promoted in professional philosophy, the very idea that “inert ink marks” or mental tokens “reach out into the world and latch on to a definite portion of reality” would appear implausible. Chomsky (2012, 28) describes the key intuition as “the trap that assumes that there is a reference relation.” Like the diagnosis of Ryle and Brandom (1994), Rorty’s (1979) analysis of this trap is particularly interesting from the point of view the central thesis throughout the book. He explains that the persuasiveness of famous puzzle cases concerning someone in the supposed reference relation arises only because “we know something they don’t.” This is an apt description of the external Spectator, captured in a literary context by Vargas Llosa’s (1975) metaphor of the invisible narrador-filósofo omnisciente whose knowledge is the source of philosophers’ intuitions. Indeed, in case there were any doubt about the aptness of this metaphor, remarkably, among the founders of the “Referentialist Turn,” Donnellan (1974/2012) explicitly invokes the “omniscient observer of history” as a heuristic device according to which the semantics of ordinary language may only be given from the “outside.” Though it has evidently been overlooked or regarded as an unproblematic metaphor, I suggest that this is not an innocent figure of speech. Indeed, like other metaphors frequently deployed in semantics, it provides an insight into the source of the intuition underlying the referentialist doctrine in philosophy – the theorist’s unwitting reliance on knowledge concerning the supposed relation between the name and its object in the external world. Almog (2014, 28) describes



Proper Names 157

the underlying idea as “elementary schoolchildren stuff” according to which a speaker may not even know the actual referent of a name, a merely epistemological question, but nevertheless, “metaphysically, on a given occasion of historical use, all is metaphysically determined.” This is opaque circumlocution for the theorist’s tacitly assumed omniscience, undoubtedly the source of elementary schoolchildren intuitions about reference. Since there is no known connection between names and their objects, it is ironic that Donnellan (1974, 100) argues that the appeal to identifying descriptions arises only because philosophers cannot see otherwise “how there could be an appropriate relation” that would “pick out” the referent of a proper name. Accordingly, he suggests “What the historical explanation does, then, is to provide the relationship between the use of a referring expression and the referent.” In order to avoid misunderstanding, Donnellan (1974, 99) points out that “the history to which the historical explanation theory alludes is not the history of the use of a name.” This is significant because we will see that the development of Kripke’s theory by Devitt is just such an account of the causal history of the use of a name through its “grounding” and transmission or “borrowing.” For Donnellan, however, it is not this kind of history that is important. Rather, he explains that history itself indicates the supposed connection between a referring expression and its object. Bianchi and Bonanini (2014, 176) point out that Donnellan and Kripke “deemed different histories” to be relevant and that this has had important consequences for how they understand proper names. In particular, Bianchi and Bonanini note that there is no room in Donnellan’s historical explanation theory for “reference borrowing” which is the fundamental idea we will see in Kripke and Devitt. For Kripke “it is not how the speaker thinks he got the reference, but the actual chain of communication, which is relevant” (1972, 300; 1980, 93). That is, Kripke (1972, 301; 1980, 95) is concerned with “the history of how the name reached one” and it is by following such a history that one gets to the reference. On the other hand, for Donnellan (1974, 96), we search for an individual “historically related to his use of the name” such that “an omniscient observer of history would see an individual.” This idea is recognizable as the Spectator conception we see in other guises. In a revealing articulation of these intuitions, Wettstein explains the apparent “magic” of reference. As if to confirm Ryle’s diagnosis of observable objects attached to other observable objects, he invites us to inspect the symbolic vehicles of reference. Abstract the name from its environment in our practice. Then stare at a name, and then at its referent, and keeping [sic] looking back and forth. The

158

Chapter Eight

connection between these two pieces of nature, that one is about the other, can seem dazzling (Wettstein 2004, 111).

This is a remarkably explicit revelation of the source of the intuition regarding the mysterious naming relation taken to justify the current philosophical orthodoxy, a conception of our role as omniscient Spectator who sees the supposed connection between a name and its bearer, regardless of a speaker’s knowledge. The key intuitions are supported by a conception of the philosophical project that Soames (1989, 183) explains: “The job of semantics is to specify the principles by which sentences represent the world.” This is generally understood in a seemingly innocent view of reference that Devitt (1981, xii) characterizes as the “age-old question about how language ‘hooks onto’ the world.” McGinn (2015, 1), too, asks “how does language manage to hook up with reality?” The metaphor is ubiquitous to capture the way terms are supposed to “pick out” objects in the world though their exact meaning or mechanism remains obscure. Almog (2014, 20) asks “How on earth. . . does a name [such as ‘Aristotle’] ‘reach out’?” He explains opaquely “The object loaded into the symbol makes it a loaded name carrying Aristotle” in which reference is “ferried back” (2014, 25). Whatever this may mean, the referentialist doctrine takes the mind-world link to be an objective fact. Rorty (1979, 289) explains the idea is that “if the world reaches up and hooks language in factual (e.g., causal) relationships, then we shall always be ‘in touch with the world,’ whereas in the old Fregean view we are in danger of losing the world, or may never have hooked onto it in the first place.” For this reason, the “radical suggestion” of direct reference theorists is to reject the idea that the speaker’s internal mental, cognitive state is relevant. In Putnam’s (1975b) slogan, “meanings just ain’t in the head.” That is, reference is supposed to be “cognitively unmediated” (Wettstein 2004, 13). Wettstein caricatures the Fregean notion as the supposedly absurd idea of a “cognitive fix” according to which reference involves the speaker’s psychological state to distinguish the object in question from everything else in the universe. By contrast, Kripke’s doctrine of “rigid designators” takes names to “pick out” the same individual in any possible world regardless of any mental representation or description that may apply. In the usual example, Aristotle was in fact the teacher of Alexander, and the name “Aristotle” must refer to that particular ancient philosopher even if the description “the teacher of Alexander” refers to someone else. Therefore, names cannot be disguised descriptions.4



Proper Names 159

MOVEMENT OF THE SOUL, SPOOKINESS AND THE COGNITIVE FIX Responding to the referentialist idea, Searle (1969, 93) suggests, “It is misleading, if not downright false, to construe the facts which one must possess in order to refer as always facts about the object referred to, for that suggests that they are facts about some independently identified object.”5 This is not to deny the existence of the external world, the “danger of losing the world,” as critics of internalism have suggested. Chomsky’s view has met the same misunderstanding. He has characterized internalist inquiry as independent of whether there is an external world at all. As we noted, this formulation provokes Fodor’s (2007b, 6) suggestion that Chomsky’s view is “a sort of idealism about meaning.” However, to deny the reference relation is not to deny the existence of the relata. Fodor’s criticism is misguided and question-begging since it rests on the very assumption that naming and reference involve an objective relation between the mind and things in the world. Searle argues that if an expression has no descriptive content, “then there could be no way of establishing a connection between the expression and the object.” He asks “What makes this expression refer to that object?” Direct reference theories answer this question in a way that Devitt (1989, 2012, 211) has recognized as magical, and Jeshion (2006, 33), too, refers to a “whiff of a kind of mysticism.” Indeed, Wettstein (2004, 61) advocates the magical idea of “linguistic contact without cognitive contact” and rejects a “thought-oriented” approach to Fregean senses or “modes of presentation” as “a misleading characterization of our mental lives” (2004, 139). Wettstein even repudiates “the contents of thought” taken to “reside in the mind, in the head.” However, like Jeshion, Stalnaker (2003, 178), too, suggests that the only alternative to descriptive accounts seems to be “some kind of obscurantist intentional magic” and Searle (1969, 87) remarks that without description, our ability to mean or intend a particular object seems like a “movement of the soul.” Indeed, such referential intuitions are suggestive of widely held misconceptions concerning visual perception that is thought to involve emanations reaching out from the eyes – the so-called “extramission theory” maintained by early Greek philosophers. Winer et al. (2002) report evidence that belief in extramission remains widespread, deeply ingrained and resistant to educational efforts. I don’t mean to suggest that such theories are literally believed by philosophers, but the idea is very suggestive of our powerful common sense intuitions about the mysterious way that words are supposed to “reach out” and “hook onto” their objects. Searle’s caricature of reference as a “movement of the soul” is especially apt for Donnellan’s conception of “picking out” the intended object via the fiction of an omniscient

160

Chapter Eight

observer. We recall this externalist temptation in Fodor’s (2000b, 4) remark that referring to a chair is like seeing one because “both processes have got chairs on the far end” and chairs are “things in the world.” On the contrary, of course, not everything we refer to such as Santa Claus is a thing “in the world.” Seeing a chair is generally caused by a chair whereas referring to a chair is not. Accordingly, there is nothing at the “far end” of the referring relation except in the mind of Donellan’s omniscient philosopher-narrator, the Spectator of history who can trace the extramission of Putnam’s (1981, 51) “noetic rays” from the name to its supposed bearer. It is instructive to see how Searle’s caricature of theories proposing a “movement of the soul” is also apt for Wettstein’s (2004) account. Wettstein suggests “We should abandon the Fregean explanatory project” on grounds that he takes to be empirical rather than merely “philosophical.” In particular, Wettstein (2004, 77) argues that the requirement of a “cognitive fix” for reference has never been proposed on the basis of empirical considerations but was “the product of philosophical thinking about what must be the case.” These criticisms are acutely ironic in view of the non-empirical, intuition-based, indeed occult, nature of the supposed “direct reference” relation. Indeed, reversing the locus of mystery Wettstein (2004, 112) like Devitt (1990b, 101) goes so far as to suggest “there is something magical at work” in the “thought-oriented” view. Of course, this attribution only makes sense from the question-begging assumption that there is, after all, an objective mind-world connection that pure thought must be unable to explain. Thus, Wettstein (2004, 111) seeks to turn the tables by gratuitously characterizing the cognitive approach as if it were looking “beyond the natural world, to Fregean senses in a third realm.” On this view, Fregean senses are supposed to “posit nonnatural relations” which are an “unanalysable” kind of “spookiness” that is “like positing a god” (2004, 105) and lacking genuine explanatory force. In Wettstein’s view (2004, 100), naturalistic inquiry should eschew a notion like Frege’s sense as “a purely spiritual substance” like “the soul of a word.” However, apart from having no basis in Frege’s writing, this is a bizarre portrayal of the commonplace theoretical practice of positing mental representations which is hardly anomalous from the point of view of naturalist inquiry today. These dismissive characterizations are reminiscent of J.B. Watson’s (1912) attitudes towards mentalist explanation as spiritual, just as Wettstein reverses the status and force of rival positions. If there is admittedly little known about the details of internal cognitive mechanisms responsible for language abilities such as naming, they are surely the most, perhaps only, empirically plausible candidates for an explanation in this context. To be sure, Wettstein offers an alternative kind of inquiry, namely, the study of public language use and social practice but it is hardly a plausible, or



Proper Names 161

the only, empirical option. He admits “I realize that I’m not supplying what the Fregean is seeking” (2004, 110), and adds the revealing judgment “But there is nothing more to tell” besides the description of public, social practice. MODES OF PRESENTATION AND COGNITIVE INFORMATIVENESS Citing Wittgenstein, Wettstein (2004, 95) repudiates standard mentalist explanations and suggests that “linguistic significance is not explained by associated representations.” However, internal representations are understood here by Wettstein (2004, 107) as mental images, “where these in turn are thought of as something like mental photographs” that “stand in need of interpretation.” To be sure, conceiving of internal representations on the model of external photographs is problematic as we have seen, but there are, after all, other, more plausible accounts. That is, rejecting mental representations altogether is hardly justified on the grounds that pictorial images are a bad idea. It is telling that Wettstein (2004, 142) says we don’t really need to render the phenomenon of referring intelligible since “it’s intelligible, unproblematic, on the face of it.” Indeed, the phenomenon is intelligible “on the face of it” to us as speakers using the very abilities we seek to explain. That is, intuitively, naming seems unproblematically direct. This is an unwitting admission, indeed a parody, of the fatal flaw of theorizing to which I have been drawing attention. Wettstein’s strategy is advertised as having the virtues of being empirical rather than philosophical, but it is a principled avoidance of any explanation. Indeed, Wettstein (2004, 108) even suggests “perhaps the very attempt to explain is out of place.” He suggests that “no explanation of the fundamental ability in simpler or more primitive terms is available or appropriate” and we should resist “the temptation to invent a mythology of symbolism or psychology.” Of course, this policy is to abandon explanatory science altogether and, it is on this basis that Wettstein (2004, 139) concludes Frege’s sense/reference distinction is a “paradigmatic example” of “pseudo-explanation” and “a misleading characterization of our mental lives.” That is, contrary to commonsense and everything we know about thought and language, Wettstein (2004, 140) repudiates a conception of reference as “supervenient on the mind’s apprehension” and he rejects the “traditional, individualistic, thought-oriented approach” involving “conceptual mediation.” Instead, Wettstein (2004, 168) is led to the conclusion that “I can talk and think about [someone] . . . because I am a member of a linguistic community that has a name for him.” This kind of sociological externalism rejects Fregean senses as “a misleading characterization of our mental lives”

162

Chapter Eight

(2004, 139) but in fact Frege’s conception of senses as modes of presentation captures the familiar difference in cognitive informativeness between sentences such as “a = b” and “a = a”. For example, it is informative to be told that Hesperus is Phosphorus but it is a trivial, necessary truth that Hesperus is Hesperus. It is not a “misleading characterization of our mental lives” to recognize that it is informative to reveal that Superman is Clark Kent but not news that Superman is Superman. Given Wettstein’s repudiation of any “thought-oriented” approach, he is faced with a deep mystery about how such different descriptions might be informative and he asks, “If modes of presentation will not serve as cognitive differentiators, what will?” Biting the bullet, he answers “My idea is that nothing will, and nothing should.” (2004, 139). That we feel puzzled about the informativeness of “Hesperus is Phosphorus” is a tribute to the power and influence of traditional, Cartesian-inspired ways of thinking about language … My strategy is dissolution of the puzzle (Wettstein 2004, 139).

Fodor (1986, 1) remarked upon such philosophical cures for which there is no adequate disease: “Apparently the rule is: if aspirin doesn’t work, try cutting off your head.” To paraphrase Wettstein, we have been misled by a traditional Cartesian prejudice into thinking that the mind is relevant to our thoughts! We are supposed to accept that the difference in informativeness between Frege’s cases is a mere prejudice and artifact of mystical Cartesian indoctrination. Frege gives a clear geometrical illustration of senses as descriptive modes of presentation that we will note presently. However, taking up Wettstein’s own parallel between reference and perception, we can illustrate Frege’s conception with the well-known figure of the Rubin Vase (Figure 8.1). Encountering the Rubin figure on two different occasions, someone might not recognize it as the same picture, seeing it as a vase at one time and as two faces at another. In this case we may pose Wettstein’s (2004, 141) Fregean puzzle: “How one can be in touch with the same thing twice over without knowing this fact?” The answer is obvious and the analogy with Frege’s Hesperus/Phosphorus case is clear. Just like learning that Hesperus is Phosphorus, or that Clark Kent is Superman, it is cognitively informative to be told or shown that “The vase is the same figure as the two faces” for exactly the reasons Frege appreciated – namely, the recognition of different senses or modes of presentation of the same object. Wettstein’s strategy of “dissolution” which rejects modes of presentation “outright” as the basis for “cognitive differentiation” is a curious, indeed incomprehensible, conclusion to draw. Even if we don’t understand the underlying mechanisms, there can be no serious doubt that some internal, mental, cognitive process must account for the perceptual phenomena, just as Frege understood. It is absurd to



Proper Names 163

Figure 8.1.  Rubin vase. Image created by author.

suppose that “nothing will, and nothing should” explain such phenomena, or that membership of social community is relevant. Although Wettstein’s approach may be dismissed as a combination of externalism and mysticism, it highlights an underlying conception of naming and reference that is widely shared. In particular, we will see that the contrast of Wettstein’s account with Devitt’s naturalistic approach is instructive. Devitt rejects the mystery-mongering of direct reference theories but his naturalistic, causal/historical development of Kripke’s “picture” is fatally flawed because it is motivated by the same underlying intuitions. EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY Notwithstanding the consensus among philosophers, the intuitive evidence on which semantic theories have relied has been brought into question by apparent cultural variation in the relevant judgements.6 Stich (2009, 232) concludes that a great deal of previous philosophy “belongs in the rubbish bin.” In the same vein, Segal (2004, 340) complains of a failure of anthropological, psychological caution since both Putnam and Kripke “mistakenly think that their intuitions are ‘ours’, that they are representative of those of all sensible, reflective humans.” Machery et al. (2004, B7) conclude that it is “wildly implausible that the semantic intuitions of the narrow cross-section of humanity who are Western academic philosophers are a more reliable indicator of the correct theory of reference. . . than the differing semantic intuitions of other cultural or linguistic groups” (2004, B9).

164

Chapter Eight

However, even if the empirical evidence were entirely beyond reasonable doubt as Stich (2009, 232) has insisted, it is no help to be told that someone else doesn’t share your intuitions or puzzlement. If I am the only one who is guilty of confirmation bias or base-rate neglect, I need diagnosis and a cure, a lesson in inductive reasoning, not anthropology. Who cares what the Maya or Kalahari people think? Their failure to be puzzled doesn’t help resolve our problems, even if they are parochial to Western departments of Analytic philosophy. On the other hand, even if Jennifer Nagel (2012) is right and the intuitions of interest were universally shared, their credentials and reliability are not thereby established. Dummett (1973, 125) notes that the reliance on intuition in such cases does not guarantee that there is a clear notion. Hales (2012) makes an extended argument for construing rational intuition as a mental faculty closely analogous to perception.7 But, of course, this just invites the obvious question about systematic biases and perceptual illusions. EXPERTISE DEFENCE: UNDERGRADUATES & UNWASHED MASSES Devitt (2011a, 24) and Williamson (2011) have responded to the troubling data of experimental philosophy with the “expertise defence,” agreeing with Hales (2012, 199) that “it is the expert intuitions of professionally trained philosophers that have epistemic merit, not the uninformed reactions of the unwashed masses.” They think that experimental philosophers have tested the wrong subjects since the intuitions of ordinary folk are unreliable. Devitt (2011b, 427) says “The intuitions we need are ones from people with some expertise in these matters, presumably metaphysicians and other philosophers.” Concurring, Williamson says philosophers need not suspend their current research to investigate their own competence just because “undergraduates untrained in philosophy are bad at conducting thought experiments.” However, this ‘expertise defence’ is to no avail against the criticism that philosophers’ expert judgment is particularly prone to error precisely because of professional training. Indeed, in his Tractatus Wittgenstein (1922) complained about the conceptual confusions that have constituted the entire history of philosophy. Even if this is an exaggeration, G.E. Moore (1942, 14) remarked that philosophers’ preoccupations with pseudo-problems are not prompted by the world or sciences. In the same spirit, challenging the authority of philosophers’ expertise, Thomas Reid (1785, 15) observed “It is genius, and not the want of it, that adulterates philosophy, and fills it with error and false theory.” Devitt (2011a, 21) acknowledges that expert bias is a hazard, but he points out that it is an “inescapable risk” of all scientific theorizing. Indeed, there is



Proper Names 165

no higher court of appeal than our best scientific conjectures. However, this defence is not available here because philosophers’ intuitions about reference do not constitute our best scientific theories and, in fact, they appear contrary to the best scientific considerations. Indeed, the very appeal to philosophers’ intuitions is quite contrary to the practice of scientific theorizing. Thus, at the forefront of highly developed sciences such as relativity theory or quantum physics, even the most powerful intuitions are ignored in favour of highly counter-intuitive theoretical considerations. In such cases, the expert’s attitude towards intuition is captured in an aphorism often attributed to Richard Feynman, “shut up and calculate.”8 It has been clear at least since Galileo’s 1632 critique of philosophers’ intuitions that the “expertise defence” has little to recommend it. By analogy with the methods of perceptual psychology and generative linguistics, philosophers’ intuitions may be regarded as data for a theory of ‘tacit knowledge’ or ‘competence’ (or, in this case, incompetence). As in the case of visual or cognitive illusions, we don’t deny the force of the intuitions, but seek an account of the way they arise from underlying mechanisms. MODAL TIE TO TRUTH: WHO IS IN THE KNOW? The case for intuitions is hardly enhanced by Almog’s (2014, 26) explanation that “the way to a rethinking” of “semantics as a science” lies in the observations by Kripke and others that are “obvious” and “simple” concerning the reference relation. Like other illusions, their intuitive obviousness is a characteristic feature of their systematic error. Bealer (1998, 201) goes so far as to argue that intuitions have a “strong modal tie to the truth” which he suggests “is a philosophical (conceptual) thesis not open to empirical confirmation or refutation” and, moreover, the defense of it is “philosophical, ultimately resting on intuitions.” Bealer’s view is a clue to the problematic source of the underlying idea. We see confirmation of Searle’s (1983, 230) insight that these intuitions arise from adopting a “God’s eye view” from which “we think we can see what Ralph’s real beliefs are even if he can’t.” This is, of course, precisely the imaginative basis for the semantics of names as seen by Donnellan’s “omniscient observer,” the ubiquitous external Spectator and narrador-filósofo. It is illuminating to notice that the same intuitions may be seen in a certain “theory of mind” in a different domain. In the famous “Sally-Anne” false belief task (Wimmer & Perner 1983),9 a three-year-old child is shown candy in one box A in the presence of another person, Jones. When Jones leaves the room, the candy is seen by the child being moved to a second box B, and the child is asked where Jones will look for the candy when he returns. The

166

Chapter Eight

child answers Box B. That is, their ascription of beliefs to others is based on the child’s own knowledge of the truth rather than on the other person’s justified beliefs. Significantly for our interest here, this phenomenon is known as the “reality bias” or “curse of knowledge.”10 As we will see presently, that’s exactly the formula or template for generating Kripke’s famous puzzle cases based on “Ignorance or Error.” Soames (1989, 183) is quite explicit about embracing this omniscient conception explaining, “Semantic theories do not state that which a speaker knows in virtue of which he or she is semantically competent.” In Chapter 11 we will see the notorious Gettier Problem arises from the same intuition, that is, the theorist’s knowledge of how the world really is. Pinker (2014) notes the propensity, saying “Now we laugh at the 3-year-old, but we do the same thing.” Burge (1988) uses a revealing metaphor to capture the philosophers’ analogous standpoint: “We take up a perspective on ourselves from the outside.” Crane (1996, 292) suggests that central to untangling the intuitions concerning externalism is the question of who is “in the know.” Indeed, this diagnosis of the key intuition is endorsed by Almog (2014, 409) using Donnellan’s metaphor. On this conception, “the semantics of the market-place language may only be given from the ‘outside’, by the omniscient observer of history.” That is, “the semantical rules describe our language ‘from above’ and are not cognitively accessible meanings” (Almog 2014, 411). Kaplan (2012, 156) too, describes the vantage point of the theorist as “description from above” which is an understanding “in which one surveys another’s thought” as in the Sally-Anne case from a point of view “independent of whether the subject’s thought corresponds to reality.” The metaphors “outside” and “above” are not explained and evidently not seen as problematic, but I suggest that, like Donnellan’s appeal to the omniscient observer of history, these are not an innocent façon de parler. Our own role and our own knowledge qua theorist create the illusion “that the world itself can, as it were, fix the meanings of some of our words” (Crane 1996, 292). This characterization captures the ubiquitous idea we have seen that a subject’s mind is linked somehow directly with its objects in the world. EMPTY NAMES: THE WORLD GONE WRONG The supposition of a mind-world link appears to be challenged by the revealing case of “empty names.” Inevitably on the referentialist conception, Donnellan (1974, 81) confronts what he describes as “one of the major puzzles” for a theory of reference: “How can one say something about what does not exist?”11 Regarding such empty names, Kripke (2013, 4), too, says “No problem has seemed to represent a more perplexing philosophical conundrum.”



Proper Names 167

McKinsey (2020, 27) gives detailed analysis of sentences such as the following which may be regarded as posing a problem for a Direct Reference theory: Santa Claus exists. Zeus is the most powerful of the Greek gods. Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant detective. Vulcan is a planet.

McKinsey (2020, 90) explains that some direct realists hold that sentences like these do not in fact express any true or false propositions. He suggests that even if a sentence containing an empty name has semantic content, there is no good reason to think that this content would be something that is true or false. He suggests that sentences as above have no truth value but, in any case, such uses of names are relatively rare and unusual. However, on the contrary, it is clear that the use of empty names is far from rare and unusual. Apart from most children’s stories, religious fables, novels and movies, it is well-known that most of our previously well-confirmed scientific theories have turned out to be false. It is likely that our current theoretical posits will turn out just to be like phlogiston, caloric and the luminiferous ether, that is, to be designated by what we now know to be “empty names.” The usual example is Leverrier’s posit of a planet Vulcan which turned out to be wrong. However, this case is not essentially different from Leverrier’s postulate of Neptune which turned out to be correct and should have no relevance to the philosophy of language. It is clear from such cases that the very question of empty names can only arise from the perspective of someone who has independent knowledge of the truth. However, the non-existence of Santa Claus, Sherlock Holmes or the planet Vulcan are factual matters about the world that have no bearing on the competent use of the names by someone who may not know the truth. If someone were not already in the thrall of this intuitively seductive picture, the puzzle of empty names could hardly be taken seriously. In acquiring a competent use of names, people may not know, and may never learn, that some of their names are empty. Far from being unusual as McKinsey suggests, most children have grown up, and entire civilizations have flourished, referring to things that do not exist. It is obvious that, whatever may have been their other difficulties, they were not suffering from linguistic problems. Donnellan suggests if a child says, “Santa Claus will come tonight,” the child cannot have spoken the truth, and therefore the child has “not even expressed a proposition.” Few parents are likely to share this view. Nevertheless, Donnellan explains that in such cases “the history of our use of the name, a history with which we may not be familiar, does not end in the right way.” That is, known only to the theorist, it ends with a false story rather than an actual relationship with the relevant object. In this kind of account, there is a

168

Chapter Eight

symptomatic neglect of the most obvious fact to which Reimer (2001, 504) draws attention, “It is, after all, language—and not reality—that we are interested in analyzing when we try to understand the workings of empty names.” Braun’s (1993) idea that there is some defect in sentences with empty names in being “gappy” is a desperate and revealing gambit.12 The gappiness is in the world, not in language. The idea of gappy sentences recalls the error identified by Arnauld, Reid, Place and Pylyshyn we have noted where the properties of the external world like colour, furriness or spatial extent are ascribed to our mental representations. In this case, ironically, it is the “property” of “gappiness” or non-existence that is attributed to our thoughts. It’s the same mistake. The pseudo-problem of empty names recalls Fodor’s remark on the hapless frog that snaps at the experimenter’s BB rather than a fly. Egan (2014, 127; 2018, 248) suggests that a representational theory should capture the idea that this constitutes a misrepresentation, but the frog is not to blame. As Fodor says, “it is not the frog but the world that has gone wrong.”13 Elbourne (2011, 22) expresses an apt methodological principle, namely “when the nonexistence of Santa Claus poses a problem for your theory, it is time to look for a new theory.” KRIPKE’S PIERRE AND LONDRES The foregoing discussion permits us to see the source of widely shared intuitions elicited by Kripke’s famous thought experiments. Thus, Kripke’s (1979) “Puzzle About Belief” has generated a considerable literature suggesting that it remains the case, as he says, “No answer has yet been given.” Not knowing that Londres and London are the same city, Pierre believes that ‘Londres est jolie’ but denies ‘London is pretty.’ It appears that we must ascribe a contradiction to Pierre, though he is a perfectly rational person. Kripke (1979, 156) regards the puzzle as comparable to the Liar Paradox, a diagnosis endorsed by Salmon (1986, 236).14 However, its formulation depends inherently on knowledge of the facts available only to the theorist and not the person whose beliefs are being characterized. Kripke says “I know of no answer” to the question “Does Pierre, or does he not, believe that London is pretty.” However, the indeterminacy of Pierre’s belief about London is not like the contradictory state of Schrödinger’s cat or the quantum wave/particle duality. With Fodor (2008, 76) we may wonder why the question is thought to have a definite answer when phrased that way or why it matters. In the same way, we might ask whether Lois Lane loves Clark Kent. Did Oedipus love his mother? “No answer has yet been given,” but we understand why. In the same way, the question concerning Pierre’s belief about London involves



Proper Names 169

thought ascription de re or about the thing itself, using our own reference. The intuition that we can be induced to share is simply that we can ascribe such beliefs from our own perspective, as the narrador-filósofo omnisciente, independently of the beliefs of the subject in question. As Brandom (1994, 574) remarks, “Individual speakers are not omniscient about the commitments they undertake by their use of various expressions.” But we theorists are. Of course, “omniscient” is not meant literally. The idea is only that the ascriber or “narrator” knows things unknown to the subject of the ascription. This is quite different from de dicto contexts that specify how things are represented by the person to whom the belief is ascribed. Brandom (2000, 170) explains that two readings can be associated with propositional attitude ascriptions: “Ascriptions de dicto attribute belief in a dictum or saying, while ascriptions de re attribute belief about some res or thing.” In the same vein, Searle (1983, 208) rejects the very idea of a class of irreducibly de re beliefs understood as relations between believers and objects. All beliefs are de dicto. In philosophers’ jargon, “the content specifications must take account of the difference in discursive perspective between the ascriber and the target of the ascription” in view of the fact that “conceptual contents are essentially expressively perspectival” (Brandom 1994, 590).15 Or, as any ten-year old understands, Lois Lane doesn’t know what we know. Searle (1983, 217) notes that the distinction we can make between the de re report of Ralph’s belief and the de dicto report “is not a distinction that Ralph can make.” That is, de re reports are simply those that “commit the reporter to the existence of objects that the propositional attitudes are about.” Of course, the “reporter” in these thought experiments is the omniscient philosopher-narrator. Searle explains: By adopting a God’s eye view we think we can see what Ralph’s real beliefs are even if he can’t. But what we forget when we try to construct a belief that is not entirely in Ralph’s head is that we have only constructed it in our head (Searle 1983, 230).

Brandom (1994, 579) points out that, in ascribing propositional attitudes, the locutions we ordinarily use in everyday life to express what we are thinking about are de re locutions. However, he (2000, 170) warns that the distinction between de dicto and de re readings is a distinction between ways of ascribing beliefs and not between kinds of belief. In other such cases discussed extensively in the philosophical literature, if Jones sincerely says “Cicero was bald and Tully was not,” we might conclude that Jones irrationally believes a contradiction since Cicero is identical with Tully. However, as Frege (1918) already recognized, as in the case of Kripke’s Pierre, attributing irrationality is absurd since the contradiction is not in the subject but in ourselves. It cannot be characterized in terms of actual mental states of the person in question.

170

Chapter Eight

A rational person will recognize the contradiction if they are informed of the identity known to the theorist-narrator. Kripke (1979, 883) suggests that the failure of substitutivity for co-designative names in such belief contexts “remains a mystery,” but the obvious solution is indicated by Kripke himself. Kripke (1979, 142) writes: “The contradiction would no longer be in Jones’s beliefs but in our own.” It is difficult to understand why he suggests that “we are in a ‘paradoxical’ area where it is unclear what has gone wrong.” Kripke (1972) had himself made the relevant distinction between semantic reference and speaker’s reference, and he is rehearsing Quine’s (1966b) famous illustration in which perspectival ambiguity generates the intuitions. Consider Quine’s sentences: 1. Ralph believes that the man in the brown hat is a spy. 2. Ralph does not believe that the man seen at the beach is a spy.

Just as Kripke asks “Can we say of this city London, that Pierre thinks it is beautiful?” so Quine asks “Can we say of this man (Bernard J. Ortcutt, to give him a name) that Ralph believes him to be a spy?” Like Kripke, Quine notes that we appear to find ourselves ascribing a contradiction but of course Ralph does not know that the men are one and the same. The truth-making fact is known only to us and so is the apparent contradiction. ERROR AND IGNORANCE. GÖDEL AND SCHMIDT We see the same intuitions in Kripke’s famous arguments from “ignorance and error” which depend essentially on what we know that is unknown to the person in question. Thus, the argument suggests that someone “will fail to refer to Einstein” if they believe of Einstein only that he was a physicist, because the descriptive content fails to “pick Einstein out” from innumerable other physicists. However, it is clear that the very idea of “picking out” and the idea of such a “failure” to refer depend on our knowledge that there are other physicists perhaps unknown to the speaker. Similarly, it is said that a speaker might believe that Einstein was inventor of the atomic bomb but, consequently, “refer” not to Einstein but to Oppenheimer who did in fact invent the atomic bomb. The sense in which these uses of names may be said to be “failures” to “refer” is to characterise them in terms of our own knowledge of the truth-making facts, that is, in terms of an alternative description we believe to be true. As Brandom notes, it is common in ordinary talk to make such de re characterisation of someone’s beliefs, using locutions expressed from the vantage point of “one” who knows the truth. The received view of names depending on this point of view is supposed to refute the descriptive



Proper Names 171

theory but, as different styles of ascription, the two are not in conflict. That is, the possibility of de re ascriptions does not refute a descriptive explanation of naming as an account of the speaker’s internal psychological representations. Thus, in Kripke’s (1972) fiction, we suppose that someone called Schmidt is the real discoverer of the famous Incompleteness Proof for which Gödel has claimed credit. In this circumstance, Kripke suggests the name “Gödel” must still refer to Gödel and not Schmidt, even if the only thing the speaker knows about the name is the description “Discoverer of the Incompleteness Theorem.” The idea is that speakers might be ignorant or mistaken about the actual satisfier of a definite description, but the name must still refer to its bearer. However, it is difficult to see how such cases of error or ignorance could count against the description theory of naming since a speaker who doesn’t know the truth simply relies on a description that happens to be false. The intuition elicited by Kripke’s story depends entirely on the fact that we rely on a different, new description associated with the name ‘Gödel’—that is, “the man who didn’t discover the incompleteness of arithmetic, killed Schmidt and took the credit.” That is, we rely on being “in the know” (Crane 1996) about facts that are not available to the subjects whose naming competence we are supposed to explain. Thus, we may ask: How could the truth about Gödel’s crime and plagiarism be relevant to explaining naming competence on the part of a subject who doesn’t know? Unless internal mental processes are denied explanatory relevance altogether, the use of the name by the speaker is obviously tied to the original description. That is, our de re intuition about what someone else must be referring to when using the name “Gödel” has no bearing on an explanatory theory if the project is concerned with “the natural science of semantics in general” (Almog 2014, 17). That is, Kripke’s story has no bearing on whether proper names are mentally represented as descriptions16 most plausibly understood in Searle’s (1983) broad sense to include all relevant internal, intentional states not necessarily expressible in words. Whether naming ability is best explained in this way is a matter of cognitive science or psycholinguistics that is not illuminated by facts only available to an omniscient observer. The point is expressed in Fodor’s (1980, 253) comment that philosophers’ externalist semantic notions aren’t psychological categories. He explains, “It is, to put the point starkly, the heart of externalism that semantics isn’t part of psychology.” This means that the content of your thoughts ascribed from an externalist perspective “does not supervene on your mental processes” (Fodor 1994, 38). In a more realistic case, if Francis Bacon is found to have been the real author of Hamlet, this description universally associated with the name ‘Shakespeare’ is not thereby shown to be a mistaken account of everyone’s naming competence as a matter of psychology.

172

Chapter Eight

SEMANTIC REFERENCE AND SPEAKER’S REFERENCE Thus, Farkas (2003b) has plausibly argued that “external features are important only if they are incorporated into the internal cognitive or experiential perspective of cognizers.” Schantz (2004) too, says “As far as psychological explanation is concerned, what counts is how the world is internally represented as being, not how the world really is.” On the alternative conception, Donnellan notes “the historical explanation as seen by our omniscient observer may pick out an individual as the referent of the name “Socrates” even though that individual is not correctly described by the speaker’s attempt at identification.” That is “we search not for an individual who might best fit the speaker’s descriptions of the individual to whom he takes himself to be referring. . .but rather for an individual historically related to his use of the name “Socrates” on this occasion.” In light of these considerations, we may understand the irony in Devitt’s (1990b, 101) charge of mystery-mongering against Searle for denying an objective connection between a name and its referent. Devitt suggests that Searle “ascribes a magical power to the mind, an intrinsic power that is sufficient to relate the mind to particular things external to it.” However, Searle’s claim is precisely to deny that there is any such relation of the mind to particular things in the world except in the imagination of the theorist. If Searle is right, it is the referential conception that ascribes magical powers to the mind precisely because it assumes an occult mind-world connection like the emanations of extramission or Putnam’s noetic rays. Indeed, for just such reasons, Chomsky (1992) views the whole field of philosophical semantics as “utterly wrongheaded” by virtue of its non-naturalist assumptions. Speaking of the referentialist doctrine, Chomsky (2013, 44) says “natural language has no semantics in the sense of relations between symbols and mind-independent entities.” We will see presently that Devitt (2015) attempts to rescue this spooky action-at-a-distance17 by a naturalistic explanation in terms of Kripke’s causal/historical “picture.” However, I will argue that this simply disguises the same occult assumptions behind a naturalistic façade. WHO IS IN THE KNOW? I have been suggesting that Crane’s (1996) emphasis on who is “in the know” is central to untangling puzzles concerning externalism and naming. The invisibility of our own role creates the illusion that it is the relational fact about how the world really is that determines the thought or belief in question. The puzzle of Putnam’s (1975b) Twin Earth arises in this way. In this famous



Proper Names 173

thought-experiment, we are to imagine an atom-for-atom replica world, Twin Earth, where the only difference is that the clear liquid in rivers and lakes is XYZ rather than H2O. Putnam argued that Twin Oscar who is identical in his internal psychological and neurological states with Oscar, must nevertheless have a different belief when he thinks about “water” since he is thinking about XYZ and not H2O. Crane (1996, 293) captures the source of the puzzle along familiar lines noting, “the Twin Earth cases are meant to demonstrate that the world itself can, as it were, fix the meanings of some of our words.” The externalist conception is captured in exactly the same terms by Fodor (1988a, 20). It is the view that “what you are thinking depends on what world you’re in.” Of course, what world you’re in may only be known to the omniscient philosopher-narrator. This characterization captures the clairvoyant conception of meanings we have seen according to which thoughts are supposed to be connected directly with their objects in the world. Thus, Putnam (1975b, 226) explains that, even before the chemical structure of water was known, the extension of the term “water” was just as much H2O on Earth. Indeed, perhaps no human being ever learns the truth. On this account, the meaning of “water” depends on facts unknown to anyone. However, the central question is whether these circumstances are plausible grounds for concluding that Oscar1 and Oscar2 understand the term “water” differently even though they are in identical, internal psychological states (Putnam 1975b, 223). DEVITT’S FULL BLOWN NATURALISTIC THEORY Despite Kripke’s revolution, Bianchi (2011) laments “it must be admitted that even today, forty years later, we do not possess a fully blown theory built on this picture.” In response, Devitt (2015, 108) complains that Bianchi neglects the fact that he has proposed “just such a theory” which is a “naturalistic development of Kripke’s picture” that avoids both the fatal shortcomings of the magical “direct reference” accounts and also the “far too intellectualized” Cartesian view. According to Devitt’s causal, historical chain theory, the mental representation of a particular object is such because “a designating-chain grounded in that object brought it about.” He acknowledges that his theory “certainly leaves a lot unexplained,” but predicts that any future adjustments of psycholinguistics will confirm the “reality of designating or denoting chains.” To be sure, Devitt’s (1989, 2012) account has naturalistic pretensions by contrast with “direct reference” theory.18 However, I will suggest it is on these very scientific, explanatory criteria that Devitt’s causal account is empty if taken to explain our naming competence or “ability to designate” as claimed. At best, the causal-chain account is a trivial answer to a different

174

Chapter Eight

question – that is, why we conventionally use certain names. More interestingly, despite its naturalistic ambitions, the historical/causal chain account falls into the same trap as its rivals – the illusion of Donnellan’s omniscient observer of history. Ironically, Devitt deplores the “intuition mongering” that is rife in semantics but his account rests on the same flawed intuitions we have seen. Indeed, Devitt (1989, 206) admits that his views “have the same sources as the views of direct reference philosophers” and, therefore, in the end, he doesn’t manage to extricate himself from the fundamental problem of construing the semantic project as “explaining how names [are] related to the world” (1989, 211). Whereas Wettstein denied that there is anything to explain concerning Frege’s example of the difference in meaning between “a = a” and “a = b,” Devitt (2012) acknowledges that the difference “is about as powerful a semantic intuition as we have.” In this regard, he accepts that “Frege was right in thinking that a name had a sense” (1989, 211), and that a name’s “sense” is its mode of “presenting” its bearer but, like Wettstein, Devitt holds Frege was wrong in thinking that a mode is descriptive or cognitive. Instead, Devitt develops Kripke’s (1972, 91) idea that it is a causal chain rather than any description which determines reference. In keeping with the usual referentialist conception, Devitt seeks to explain “what ties the ability to the object” but he is not only critical of direct reference theories for, like Wettstein, he also rejects Frege’s account as “far too intellectualized.”19 For Devitt, the answer is nothing epistemic or intellectual but rather “a designating-chain” emanating from, or grounded in, that object. He claims to partially vindicate Frege’s idea of sense as “mode of presentation” but his version of Frege’s insight diverges significantly from Frege’s own conception. We will see presently that, despite giving a seemingly naturalistic alternative in terms of causal designating chains, Devitt’s account rests on the tacit assumption of the omniscient observer. REVISITING AND REVISING FREGE Accordingly, before turning directly to Devitt’s analysis, we may briefly revisit Frege’s (1892) classic discussion ‘On Sense and Reference.’ My suggestion is that, although widely repudiated, Frege’s conception of “differing cognitive value” deserves to be taken seriously and literally in terms of a descriptive or conceptual representation, that is, an avowedly internalist, psychological interpretation along the lines of Cummins’ (2000) account of capacities. Indeed, Moravcsik (1981, 105) argues “Frege and Chomsky share a view of cognitive psychology” and “Chomsky’s competence-performance



Proper Names 175

distinction is already implicit in Frege.” Frege’s well-known rejection of a “psychological” understanding of sense is to be understood as a rejection of individual “performance” factors but shares Chomsky’s concern with abstract characterizations under idealization. These are to be distinguished from an “idea” which is a “wholly subjective,” idiosyncratic mental representation. By contrast, for Frege, “sense” is an abstraction from individual thoughts identified with “the mode of presentation of that which is designated” determining “the thought expressed” and, thereby, “actual knowledge.” In these explicitly cognitive terms, Frege speaks of “grasping a sense” when we understand a word, and it is clear that we may take this in an uncontroversial psychological sense as inner mental processing. In this vein, Dummett (1973, 94) glosses “cognitive value” as “information content.” Frege takes sense to be an ingredient of meaning “where meaning is that which a man knows when he understands a word” (Dummett 1973, 95). Despite being widely scorned in the wake of the Kripkean revolution, Frege’s conception of sense and mode of presentation is perfectly plausible, understood as idealized internal, intellectual or conceptual processes. Above all, nothing in Frege’s account suggests the kind of mysterious spiritual posits that Wettstein and Devitt characterize pejoratively as “Cartesian.” Frege’s geometrical illustration of a mode of presentation clearly refutes these misplaced criticisms. Frege writes of “different designations for the same point” in a diagram by means of the names “point of intersection of a and b,” and “point of intersection of b and c.” Frege (1892, 57) takes these descriptions to “indicate the mode of presentation” in each case, thereby explaining why a statement of identity such as Hesperus = Phosphorus “contains actual knowledge.” Above all, Frege’s geometrical illustration makes it clear that the mode of presentation “point of intersection of a and b” is a description that we understand in the perfectly ordinary way—a matter of internal psychological, conceptual representation, though of a more abstract idealized kind than an individual’s idiosyncratic “idea.” As we saw earlier even if the psychological mechanism is not understood in any detail, the kind of answer is obvious, and the analogy of the Rubin Vase with Frege’s Hesperus/Phosphorus example is clear. It is cognitively informative to be told that one object is identical with another for exactly the reasons Frege appreciated—namely, the different senses or modes of presentation understood as psychological information processing. Aside from Frege exegesis, following Baumann’s (2010) arguments for the descriptive contents of proper names we may appreciate that the descriptive, cognitive information encoded in proper names need not be expressed in the form of a definite description—the main target of Kripke’s critique.

176

Chapter Eight

NAMING ABILITY On Devitt’s account, “competence with the name is simply an ability with it that is gained in a grounding or reference borrowing” through the chain of causal links (Devitt & Sterelny 1999, 67). It is far from clear exactly what processes are supposed to be involved in “grounding” or “borrowing” reference, but presumably it is something like hearing a name used by other people. This explanation is undoubtedly an answer to a certain kind of question, but not a theory of naming ability or competence as claimed, except in an idiosyncratically re-defined, misleading sense. It is not the ability as such that is gained on such baptismal occasions, nor at the end of a causal transmission chain. Learning the name ‘Aristotle’ in a philosophy class by such token “reference borrowing” cannot plausibly be a case of acquiring the ability to use the name. Rather a pre-existing ability is used to add a new name to one’s repertoire. By analogy, when a football is passed to a player, he doesn’t gain the ability to score a goal, though there is an obvious sense in which one can say that he couldn’t have kicked the goal unless the ball was passed to him. At best, this is a play on words. Indeed, Kripke (1980, 78) acknowledges that descriptivism is true in the case of initial reference “fixing” baptisms for those “who initially give an object its name” (1980, 59). However, it seems clear that normal acquisition of names in reference “borrowing” must be essentially the same. That is, every case of reference “borrowing” must be a matter of conveying some descriptive content in the mind of each speaker who uses the name. Granting the undoubted fact of a historical chain of naming practices, without the intellectual, cognitive capacity of an individual to use a name descriptively, the claimed “borrowing” remains utterly mysterious. Kripke (2011, 136) suggests that “a learner acquires a name from the community by determining to use it with the same reference as does the community.” However, we must ask how a name could be intended to have the “same reference” when it is passed from one person to another? It seems evident that acquiring a bare name token on its own could not play this role without some descriptive information being conveyed as well. The idea of such stimuli as causes is a notorious Behaviourist illusion as we will note presently. We see its absurdity in the summary by Raatikainen (2020, 77) who explains on this view “it is not necessary for a subsequent language user to know what the description is in order to successfully make a reference using the expression.” However, the idea that someone might successfully make reference by merely using a bare name token without any accompanying descriptive knowledge brings into clear relief the illusion of the omniscient spectator theorist. As Raatikainen explains “In some cases, only the experts know the relevant description, and in other cases, the description is lost in history, and



Proper Names 177

nobody presently knows it.” The underlying conception of “successfully referring” here is very revealing. On this account, I might “successfully refer” to someone using a name I have heard but without the slightest knowledge of any other relevant fact. Indeed, Wettstein (1986, 193) recognizes that “advocates of this approach have never provided an account of what exactly the semantic function of the historical chain is.” More emphatically, like Searle (1983, 244), Dummett (1973, 148) remarks on the irrelevance of a chain of communication to our understanding of language or our competence in the actual practice of naming. The causal theory captures the idea of the historical origins of a name and why we conventionally use it in referring to someone but the historical-causal chain leading back to a baptismal event utterly fails to explain how a particular individual acquires the competent use of a name. We noted that Donnellan emphasized that “the history to which the historical explanation theory alludes is not the history of the use of a name” and, in particular, he says “Nor, I think, should the theory be construed as holding that the historical connections end with some original “dubbing” of the referent.” Evidently, Donnellan sees that the supposed mind-world relation is not captured by the Devitt/Kripke historical-causal chain of “borrowings.” For the same reason Searle (1983, 232) suggests “The causal theory would be better described as the external causal chain of communication theory.” Although Devitt claims his account to be “theoretically motivated,” the causal history of reference “borrowing” is irrelevant to the way that each individual must acquire the intellectual wherewithal to use a name. Devitt claims that his “naturalistic” causal account achieves as good an explanation as we can reasonably expect given currently available knowledge. However, on the contrary, I will suggest that Devitt’s account is empty for familiar reasons. It is fair to say that we know very little about the human naming ability but it is clear that the causal historical explanation leaves out the most important factors that are undoubtedly involved. Devitt (1996, 172) rejects internal psychological accounts because he suggests naming competence “does not require any knowledge about the sense” or overly “intellectualized” intentional “knowledge that” regarding senses or designation.20 However, the relevant descriptive knowledge is not about the sense but constitutes it. That is, the description is not about the sense but about the supposed bearer of a name. Devitt says “Cartesian access to meanings” has been undermined by the Direct Reference revolution and is “almost entirely unsupported.” However, this “Cartesianism” is a straw-man and seriously misleading when applied to a broadly Fregean account since “intellectualized” self-conscious propositional knowledge “that” something is the case can hardly exhaust the explanatory resources of internalist, psychological theories. It is uncontroversial that most, emphatically naturalistic,

178

Chapter Eight

explanations in good standing throughout psychology posit internal processes that are not “knowledge that” in this special self-conscious intentional “Cartesian” sense. The most plausible account of Fregean senses as “modes of presentation” is a familiar cognitive science story about the internal mental representations and processes that subserve our capacities for language, vision or other kinds of competence. As Cummins (2000, 122) points out, the primary phenomena of psychology are just such capacities which are best understood as a kind of complex dispositional property whose explanation Marr (1982) called the “computational problem.” THEFT OVER HONEST TOIL By contrast with such standard cognitive science explanations, the emptiness of the Devitt/Kripke causal-historical account is evident in Devitt’s attempt to make it do the work of a psychological theory by terminological sleight-ofhand which has all the advantages that Bertrand Russell (1919, 71) described as “theft over honest toil.” That is, although Devitt (1989, 211) repudiates an internal, cognitive explanation, it is the one that his own theory implicitly relies upon and insinuates, as suggested in his emphasis on paradigmatically psychological “abilities to designate,” “mental representation,” “cognitive values” (1989, 211), “grasping” (Devitt & Sterelny 1999, 67), “competence with a name” (1999, 69) and “ability gained” (1999, 68). In Devitt’s use of the term, even the “cognitive fix” that establishes reference is supposed to be an external causal influence. Thus, there is nothing cognitive in Devitt’s version of “cognitive values” since his version of Frege’s “mode of presentation” transposes it into an external, causal chain. Of course, Devitt is free to re-define the special Fregean terms such as “mode of presentation” as he chooses, but he uses “cognitive value” in the way we might speak of a “criminal lawyer” when we don’t really mean it. In a revealing example, empty names serve as a litmus test. Devitt & Sterelny (1999, 67) want to explain empty names with an external, causal account by suggesting that in such cases “the sense is the property of purporting to designate an object by such a link.” How external links in a causal chain might conceivably “purport” to refer is not explained but it is clear that the idea implicitly relies on the theorist’s own intention to designate something. In Chomsky’s (1959, 31) words, this device is as simple as it is empty. It is just descriptivism in disguise.21 As Chomsky remarked of such explanations, identifying an external cause in this way has “lost all objectivity” since it is “no longer part of the outside physical world” and “disguises a complete retreat” to internal posits based on the theorist’s knowledge of the relevant external facts.



Proper Names 179

PSYCHOLOGICAL AUSTERITY: LIGHTENING THE EPISTEMIC BURDEN Thus, instead of descriptive, cognitive factors, on Devitt’s (1989, 211) account a name’s meaning is “a non Fregean sense explained in terms of a causal network.” Along these lines, he seeks to explain “competence with a name” and “grasping its sense” in what he terms “a psychologically austere way” (Devitt & Sterelny 1999, 67). To be fair, Devitt does not repudiate mental causes altogether but there is no reason for thinking that psychological “austerity” is a virtue when we seek to explain language or any other complex mental ability. Nevertheless, a name is alleged to be “largely external to the mind and beyond the ken of the ordinary speaker” (Devitt & Sterelny 1999, 89). On this conception, naming ability arises not in virtue of internal, psychological factors but rather “in virtue of being linked appropriately into the causal network.” Indeed, Devitt says that on his account “The connection between names and identifying beliefs is cut” and, therefore, “The epistemic burden is lightened” (Devitt & Sterelny 1999, 69). However, we might similarly “lighten the epistemic burden” with a theory of vision or any other mental competence at the cost of having no explanation. Indeed, Devitt’s “austerity” is familiar. The appeal to facts “external to the mind” is the same explanatory tactic Chomsky (1959) had famously criticized in Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. In particular, like Devitt’s re-purposed psychological terms we have noted, Skinner’s use of terms such as “stimulus control” disguised the mentalist assumptions on which they implicitly relied. Departing from Frege’s cognitive conception, Devitt proposes that the causal theory can “emulate the description theory” in accounting for both sense and reference of a name (Devitt & Sterelny 1999, 67,8). External causal chains are Devitt’s naturalistic substitute for the magical noetic rays of direct reference theories and also for Frege’s notion of sense understood cognitively as a “mode of presentation.” But we may ask: Why emulate a plausible psychological theory with a notoriously implausible externalist one? To be sure, Devitt is not a card-carrying Behaviourist and the criticism may appear unfair on the grounds that Devitt (1989, 222) explicitly accepts that “explanation must frequently involve the mind.” Indeed, Devitt (2015) says that the ability to use a name is only “partly explained by a causal connection to an object” where the linguistic competence itself will be explained by psycholinguistics. However, merely admitting a role for the mind is not a sufficient plea of innocence against Chomsky’s indictment. The fundamental vulnerability of Devitt’s approach is not a commitment to Behaviourist dogma as such but only to its externalism and its “austerity.” Devitt downplays psychological factors while admitting “Very little is known” about the

180

Chapter Eight

psycholinguistic matters underlying naming ability. However, Devitt suggests that this ignorance does not impugn his picture and “should not be of much concern to a theory of names.” In other words, the explanatory burden is confidently placed mainly on external causes which give the illusion of explanation, as we have seen, by disguising the tacit supposition of inner mental causes.22 Devitt claims that “one has an object in mind in virtue of a causal connection between one’s state of mind and the object” (1974, 188). However, as N.R. Hanson (1962) memorably remarked, “there is more to seeing than meets the eye-ball.” Chomsky’s (1959) famous exposé of Skinner’s resort to external stimuli showed that the word “cause” has lost all objectivity in this usage. That is, causes are no longer part of the outside physical world; they are implicitly “driven back into the organism” in the sense that they involve tacit assumptions about internal processes and representations. In this way, Chomsky’s criticism of stimulus control applies to Devitt’s historical/ causal account of naming. We can only identify the supposed cause when we hear the name. In other words, while professing psychological austerity, we are implicitly relying on suppositions about internal mental events in identifying the relevant external causes. Chomsky’s remarks are precisely apt for Devitt’s claims of a lightened epistemic burden. We have seen that, Devitt claims just like Skinner “to have demonstrated that the contribution of the speaker is quite trivial and elementary, and that precise prediction of verbal behavior involves only specification of the few external factors” (Chomsky 1959, 28). Above all, Chomsky notes that “speculative attempts to discuss linguistic behavior in these terms alone omit from consideration factors of fundamental importance that are, no doubt, amenable to scientific study, although their specific character cannot at present be precisely formulated.” The magnitude of the failure of this attempt to account for verbal behavior serves as a kind of measure of the importance of the factors omitted from consideration, and an indication of how little is really known about this remarkably complex phenomenon (Chomsky 1959, 28).

CAUSAL NETWORKS: BAPTISM, BAR STOOL OR BIG BANG? Remarkably, Chomsky’s (1959) review of Skinner explicitly addressed the problem of naming long before the Kripke revolution. He illustrated the use of proper names by someone who has never been stimulated by the corresponding objects. These are taken to be examples of external causal control of the kind Devitt proposes, but Chomsky remarks that they “merely add to the general mystification.”23 It is striking to notice how precisely and presciently Chomsky’s (1959) remarks apply to Devitt’s account. Devitt (1974, 191)



Proper Names 181

writes: one can “borrow” the “ability to have something in mind” because there can be a causal link of the required kind “even though the speaker has had no direct experience of the object.” The causal connection is understood as “running through others back to speakers who did experience the object.” As if responding to Devitt, Chomsky had written: Thus a proper noun is held to be a response ‘under the control of a specific person or thing’ (as controlling stimulus). I have often used the words Eisenhower and Moscow, which I presume are proper nouns if anything is, but have never been ‘stimulated’ by the corresponding objects. How can this fact be made compatible with this definition? Suppose that I use the name of a friend who is not present. Is this an instance of a proper noun under the control of the friend as stimulus? (Chomsky 1959, 32)

Above all, the talk of causal chains simply “disguises a complete retreat to mentalistic psychology.” On this conception, instead of internal, psychological factors, naming “ability” is supposed to exist “in virtue of being linked appropriately into the causal network” (Devitt & Sterelny 1999, 89). Accordingly, we are prompted to ask Searle’s (1969, 93) question: How is such a link supposed to establish a connection between a name and its object if the name has no descriptive content? Searle (1983, 249) remarks on the littlenoticed consequence of the Kripkean causal-historical picture that it sets no constraints at all on what the name might turn out to refer to. That is, how do we know where the causal chain traced backwards from my use of a name stops? Searle (1983, 249) says “it might turn out that by ‘Aristotle’ I am referring to a bar stool in Joe’s Pizza Place in Hoboken in 1957 if that is what the causal chain happened to lead to.” In the same vein, Føllesdal recounts giving a talk in Oxford about Gareth Evans’ causal theory of reference, the view that a name refers to the object which is the main cause of the information connected with the name. Alfred Ayer, who was in the audience, said in the discussion that if Evans’ theory were true, the reference of most of Ayer’s names would be his nurse. She was the main source of the information he connected with these names (Føllesdal 1999, 145).

The point of these parodies may be spelled out more precisely to reveal the problems with Devitt’s account and specifically how it tacitly invokes the omniscient observer of history. Thus, Mackie (1980, 34) noted “what is said to be caused. . . is not just an event, but an event-in-a-certain-field.” However, not everything that is part of the assumed field of events will be considered as a relevant cause and this attitude must be seen as “reflecting some conversational or other purpose of the speaker.” The pragmatic aspect of identifying

182

Chapter Eight

Figure 8.2.  Bayes causal net. Author’s reproduction, based on Gopnik & Schulz (2007).

cause and effect is also articulated by van Fraassen (1980, 123) who refers to the scientific picture of the world as “a net of interconnected events, related to each other in a complex but orderly way.” This is the framework in which we must understand Devitt’s appeal to a “nonFregean sense” and how causal links could possibly serve the explanatory purpose that Devitt claims for them. Woodward notes there is no reason to think that single events can be identified univocally with cause-and-effect events in a causal claim because the underlying causal structure is complex: Often, the events related in a singular-causal claim will correspond to what, from the perspective of the underlying scientific framework, are complex, spatially and temporally distributed, gerrymandered and unnatural-looking congeries of events falling under many different laws (Woodward 2003, 169).

Nevertheless, as we have seen, Devitt and Sterelny (1999, 67) explain “competence with the name is simply an ability with it that is gained in a grounding or reference borrowing” through the chain of causal links. The framework for understanding such reasoning has been developed in a recent explosive literature of “the Causal Revolution” (Pearl and Mackenzie, 2019). Causal Bayes nets are represented in diagrams—”directed acyclic graphs”24 (Figure 8.2) in which the nodes represent events and the arrows represent causal links between them. Such causal diagrams help to visualize the scientific picture of the world as a net of interconnected events, and its bearing on Devitt’s causal theory of naming ability.



Proper Names 183

Specifically, such diagrams permit us to address Searle’s question also asked by Fodor (2008): Which link in the causal chain is the cause? First, it is clear that there is no unique answer. Further, the difficulty of answering this question arises from the context-dependence of why-questions and the relevance of “concerns brought from outside” (van Fraassen 1980, 124).25 Such outside concerns are relevant “even if we ask specifically for an ‘efficient cause,’ [and] for how far back in the chain we should look?” In other words, the salient feature picked out as ‘the cause’ in that complex process, is salient to a given person because of his orientation, his interests, and various other peculiarities in the way he approaches or comes to know the problem – contextual factors. (van Fraassen 1980, 125)

Woodward, too, asks “why suppose... that the underlying scientific framework posits single events to be identified with the cause-and-effect events in the original causal claim?” This analysis supports my suggestion about the role of the theorist’s tacit knowledge in identifying a supposed external cause. Even in the simplest networks with a few causal links as in the previous diagram it is impossible to draw univocal conclusions about causal connections.26 A modest, realistic causal network helps to dramatize the role of retrospective selectivity in choosing a “cause” by Donnellan’s omniscient observer of history. In particular, we see that Devitt’s idea of reference “grounding” reflects our capacity to survey the causal network to pick out a salient node. For example, the following model (Figure 8.3) encodes medical knowledge of a cardiac system. We might ask: What is the cause of blood pressure at node 5? Is it anaphylaxis at node 19, or pulmonary embolus at node 21? It is clear that on the Kripke-Devitt historical-causal chain account of naming, we choose the dubbing of Aristotle rather than Searle’s bar stool or the Big Bang27 not because one is the cause of our “ability.” Rather, we have a

Figure 8.3. Causal network. Author’s reproduction, based on diagram in Beinlich et al (1989).

184

Chapter Eight

pragmatic interest and prior knowledge which governs our backward tracing of the path through the causal network. Despite its naturalistic, scientific pretensions, the Kripke-Devitt appeal to a causal chain simply disguises the tacit operation of Donnellan’s omniscient observer whose role is precisely to survey history to identify the relevant grounding event. It is worth recalling that this insight is hardly new. Searle (1983, 245) remarked that “the sequence of features characterized by an external observer are not what secures reference.” Dummett (1973, 148), too, remarks on the irrelevance of a chain of communication to our understanding of language or our competence in the actual practice of naming. From the point of view of my theme throughout, Dummett’s conclusion is noteworthy in drawing attention to the need “to invoke the conception of a being whose powers of observation or mental capacities transcended ours in a given respect”: The analogy which we implicitly rely on is with a hypothetical observer not subject to the restrictions to which we ourselves are subject. … we tacitly appeal to the notion of an observer who is able to survey the whole infinite domain within a finite time (Dummett 1973, 119).

NOTES   1.  See also Farkas (2003a,b), Segal (2004), Wikforss (2008), Boghossian (1998), Egan (1999).   2.  See McGilvray (2012, 209), Price (2011, 25, 304).   3.  See also Chomsky (2000b, 148).  4.  See also Hughes (2004, vii).   5.  See also Stalnaker (2003,185).  6. See Weinberg, Nichols & Stich (2001), Machery, Mallon, Nichols & Stich (2004), Segal (2004).   7.  See also Sosa (2007, 101).   8.  See Mermin (2004, 10), (1989, 9)   9.  See also Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith (1985). 10.  See Helming, Strickland and Jacob (2016). 11.  See Braun (1993), Reimer (2001). 12.  See Piccinini and Scott (2010). 13.  Quoted in Ruth Millikan (1991b, 161). 14. Salmon (1986/1991, 236) endorses Kripke’s “sound methodology” quoting Tarski’s classic discussion of the Liar antinomy and its intellectual challenge. 15.  See also Richard (2011, 228). 16.  See Bauman (2010, 177). 17.  Einstein’s famous term for quantum entanglement. 18.  Almog (2014, 17) also professes to be pursuing semantics as a natural science. 19.  Devitt’s use of the characterization “Cartesian” differs from Wettstein’s.



Proper Names 185

20.  It is significant that Devitt (2006) makes the same spurious claim about the nature of “tacit knowledge” of a grammar in Chomsky’s generative approach. See Slezak (2009). 21.  See Barker, (2006, 16). 22.  Devitt’s position is reflected also in his view that takes “linguistic reality” to reside in external tokens rather than types. See Devitt (2006) and criticism by Barry C. Smith (2006). 23.  A version of the same pseudo-explanation is Almog’s (2014, 19) “natural historical referential semantics” that explains how “loaded names” are to be understood as “fully determined” by the “metaphysical-historical” links to the causal source (2014, 70). 24.  See Woodward (2003), Sloman (2005), Glymour (2001), Lambrozo (2010), Pearl (2000), Gopnik & Schulz (2007). 25.  See also van Fraassen (1977, 149). 26.  See Woodward (2012). 27.  See Fodor (2008, 206).

Chapter Nine

The Theory of Ideas: Fodor’s Guilty Passions

The theory of ideas, like the Trojan horse, had a specious appearance both of innocence and beauty; but if those philosophers had known that it carried in its belly death and destruction to all science and common sense, they would not have broken down their walls to give it admittance. Thomas Reid (1785)

DISARRAY AND CHAOS In his book Representation Reconsidered, Ramsey (2007, xi) notes that it has become a cliché to say that the most important explanatory posit today in cognitive research is the concept of representation. Similarly, in a recent anthology devoted to the question What Are Mental Representations? the editors (Smortchkova et al. 2020) point out, that since the demise of behaviourism in the 1950s the notion of mental representation has played a crucial role throughout the sciences of the mind including psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience. However, they express surprise that there is so little agreement among philosophers about what constitutes a mental representation. Ramsey refers to the “disarray” and “chaos” about how we should think about mental representation. This disarray is not new and it not only among philosophers. Decades ago, the psychologist Palmer (1978, 259) writing on ‘Fundamental Aspects of Cognitive Representation’ remarked “Anyone who has attempted to read the literature related to cognitive representation quickly becomes confused – and with good reason. The field is obtuse, poorly defined, and embarrassingly disorganized.” After enumerating a dozen distinct conceptions Palmer adds “These are not characteristics of a scientific field with a deep understanding of its problem, 187

188

Chapter Nine

much less its solution.” The situation hadn’t improved when Stich (1992, 243) noted that theories of mental representation “are very fashionable these days” amid a “dizzying range” of competing theories. Most recently, Egan (2020, 37) points to the proliferation of theories noting that there is still “no widely accepted naturalistic foundation for representational content” (2020, 31) and she poses the problem of what is it for an internal state or structure to function as a representation (2020, 36). Evidently, we still have no good reply to Stich (1992) who asked “What question is a theory of mental representation supposed to answer?” In attempting to answer Stich it is important to recognize that the same debate was raging in the seventeenth century and even earlier among the medieval Scholastics concerning the classical Theory of Ideas. In the present chapter, as throughout, I indicate reasons why attention to the history of philosophy has more than antiquarian interest. If modern theorists are unaware of the long history of their problems, they are unlikely to recognize the essential source of their difficulties. We see the relevance to contemporary issues as Yolton (1984, 1996) explains that Early Modern philosophers were “striving for some way to explain the “conformity or agreement between ideas and objects”—essentially the modern problem of intentionality. The postulate of Ideas is the conclusion drawn from the classical ‘Argument from Illusion’ which Maund (2003, 5) describes as one of the “dominant motifs” in the Western philosophical tradition concerning perception. Indeed, in this chapter and in Chapter 12, we see that the argument remains at the centre of the latest theories of representation in philosophy and cognitive science. Specifically, I will suggest that a conception of cognitive content allowing for misrepresentation (Egan 2014, 2018) cannot satisfy the requirement for a purely objective or “naturalized” account. I will indicate that, remarkably, the classical argument is disguised and transposed into a contemporary theoretical puzzle but is essentially the same as the reasoning that motivated Malebranche, Locke, Hume and other Early Modern advocates of the Theory of Ideas. Accordingly, it is worth recalling Curley’s (1986, 46) question about the Argument from Illusion: He asks: Why has the fallacious argument had such a strong appeal to so many people over such a long period of time? An answer is suggested by the fact that the Theory of Ideas represents thinking as contemplating or viewing an object and is a manifestation of the Spectator in the Cartesian Theater. THE ‘PHILOSOPHICK TOPICK’ OF IDEAS The problem for the Theory of Ideas was how to explain cognitive access to the world given the intervening representations in a tripartite scheme. It



The Theory of Ideas 189

is significant that the disarray among theories today prevailed among Early Modern philosophers. Reid (1813, 228) remarks “philosophers, notwithstanding their unanimity as to the existence of ideas, hardly agree in any one thing else concerning them.” Yolton (1996, 43) mentions the anonymous author of a pamphlet written in 1705 titled Philosophick Essay Concerning Ideas who says “There is hardly any Topick we shall meet with that the Learned have differ’d more about than that of Ideas.” The author laments, . . . like Men blundering in the dark, they feel after them to find them; some catch at them under one Appearance, some under another. . . So that one would think there must needs be a very great Intricacy in that which has given Rise, not only to such a Variety but also such a Contradiction of Opinions. (quoted in Yolton, 1956, 96)

In his seminal analyses of contemporary issues, Fodor (2003, 134) credits Descartes with the key insight into representation saying “Descartes got there first.” However, Fodor (2003) has admitted to having harboured something like a “guilty passion” for Hume’s (1739) account in his Treatise which he sees as “the foundational document of cognitive science” (2003, 134). Fodor explains that the Treatise “made explicit, for the first time, the project of constructing an empirical psychology on the basis of a representational theory of the mind; in effect, on the basis of the Theory of Ideas.” Indeed, Fodor (2003, 8) sees the classical Theory of Ideas as essentially “interchangeable” with the modern ‘Representational Theory of the Mind’ (RTM). Both articulate a “familiar galaxy of claims” about propositional attitudes, their properties, relations and processes. Accordingly, Fodor proposes that “thinking seriously about our theory of mind in relation to Hume’s might help with the project” (2003, 2). However, the received doctrine of representation today is not vindicated simply because it was anticipated by Hume. In this chapter I suggest that history may shed a different light upon Hume and, therefore, also upon contemporary theories. Taking history seriously, it is important to appreciate that what Fodor calls Hume’s “Cartesianism” is an ambiguous reference. Hume’s account is actually Malebranche’s notoriously problematic version of la pensée cartésienne and not that of his rival Arnauld or that of Descartes himself who shared precisely the doctrines that Fodor is opposing. Indeed, the problem of mental representation is a dramatic illustration of why history of philosophy is “worth bothering with” and why “it is a mistake to be too preoccupied with our contemporaries” (Curley 1986, 37). Seeking to remedy this preoccupation, the exercise of this chapter is especially opportune at a time when there has been a revival of interest among historians of philosophy in figures such as Malebranche and Reid after decades of neglect. Nadler (1992a, 73) notes that it is both “strange and not a little embarrassing” that the

190

Chapter Nine

Malebranche-Arnauld debate which was a cause célèbre in the seventeenth century should remain largely ignored or misunderstood by philosophers and historians alike today. This is all the more so for cognitive scientists who are not only re-inventing the same theories but rehearsing the same notorious mistakes. Of course, if seventeenth century philosophers anticipated both the problems as well as solutions seen in cognitive science today, then it is clear that these have nothing to do with the modern theoretical framework of computational or other representational models as generally assumed. In particular, it is significant that Hume’s conception of Ideas is indebted to Malebranche (1712) who explicitly invoked a visual Spectator model. To be sure, Malebranche’s theory of ‘ideas’ as the “vision of all things in the mind of God” seems foreign to modern conceptions. However, when we distil the key notions from the theology, Malebranche holds a view familiar then and now, saying “I mean nothing other than the immediate object, or the object closest to the mind, when it perceives something.” And Arnauld’s (1683) critique of Malebranche anticipates modern “adverbial” attacks on representational theories. Fodor (2003, 11) approvingly quotes Stroud (1977, 225) who explains Hume’s conception of having an idea is “fundamentally a matter of contemplating or viewing [a mental] object.” That is, according to Hume, “the very things we perceive are perceptions, in the sense of specifically mental items, and not physical objects” (Bricke 1980, 7). In his Enquiry Hume (1777, 152) explains that the “universal and primary opinion” of all people that we see something external to our mind “is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception.” The mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with objects. The supposition of such a connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning. (Hume 1777, 153.)

Similarly, in his Treatise, Hume writes: We may observe, that ‘tis universally allow’d by philosophers, and is besides pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas, and that external objects become known to us only by those perceptions they occasion (Hume 1739, 49).

Yolton (1956, 103) records that an early critic of the Theory of Ideas in the seventeenth century recognized that cognition was “made to consist in a triadic relation involving the knowing mind, the object or referent, and the ideas by means of which the mind came to know things.” Of course, as we



The Theory of Ideas 191

saw in Chapter 1, this is the schema for “the dangerous meditations” with which Danto (1989) suggests modern philosophy began. The centuries-long persistence of controversy is an indication of a compelling source of perplexity—the idea of a so-called “veil of perception” according to which we do not have direct awareness of objects in the external world but only through being perceptually aware of other intervening entities such as “images,” “ideas,” or “sense-data.”1 In modern philosophy, the sense-datum theory of perception as “indirect realism” is defended by Robinson (1994) in “a fairly traditional form.” The Spectator conception is evident in a frequently cited review in which McRae (1965) suggests that Ideas make their appearance in Descartes as immediately present objects for looking at or “contemplating.” Although Descartes himself was not guilty of this Spectator error as we will see in Chapter 10, McRae notes that according to the Theory of Ideas “all knowing reduces to seeing,” . . . and that seeing (however intellectual it may be) is the sole operation of which the understanding is capable. It is of secondary importance for their conceptions of what knowing is whether these immediate objects or ideas are in the brain, in the mind, or in God (McRae 1965, 179).

Indeed, the idea that knowing is to be modelled on seeing—the “ocular metaphor” was characterized by Rorty (1979, 60, 146) as “the original sin of epistemology.” Taking history seriously, then, requires going beyond Fodor’s avowedly partisan advocacy for Hume. Specifically, the general neglect of philosophers such as Malebranche, Arnauld and Reid today reflects the dominance of views long regarded as fatally flawed. TABLES AND CHAIRS Yolton (1984, 6) notes that the burning question among philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was that of “objects present to the mind”—precisely the question of “concept possession” central to Fodor’s (2003) Hume Variations and his earlier Concepts (1998a). Nevertheless, Fodor (2003, 157) suggests that in the intervening period since Hume the theory of ideas “seems to have made some modest progress” while acknowledging that it is, “to be sure, more modest than some have advertised.” We may judge the degree of progress by considering a humorous remark of Fodor’s that backfires in a revealing way. In a report on the state and prospects of interdisciplinary cognitive science, Fodor (1985a) mocked philosophers for their absurd worries such as Berkeley’s idealism and the “fear that there is something fundamentally unsound about tables and chairs.” Nevertheless, he

192

Chapter Nine

optimistically contrasted such “mere” philosophical worries with ones that occasionally turn out to be “real,” as in the case of the representational character of cognition. Triumphantly, Fodor points to the fact that today, unlike other traditional concerns, this puzzle is no longer just a philosophers’ preoccupation because its solution has become important for progress in several disciplines of cognitive science. However, there is an acute, unintended irony in Fodor’s contrast. The problem of representation in cognitive science today is, in fact, identical with the classical worry about tables and chairs. Cognitive scientists have simply rediscovered the very same conundrums that have kept philosophers busy since Descartes. The traditional philosophical anxiety has been transposed into “methodological solipsism” (Fodor 1980), the emptiness of “narrow” syntax and the fear that semantics is not part of psychology because intentionality can’t be naturalized. We see a revealing clue to this commonality in Jackendoff’s (1992, 161) facetious question about symbolic, computational representations: In view of the ‘narrow’ syntactic character of computational symbols, Jackendoff asks “Why, if our understanding has no direct access to the real world, aren’t we always bumping into things?” Jackendoff’s satire is just Searle’s (1980a) Chinese Room conundrum and evocative of Samuel Johnson’s famous retort to Berkeley’s “ingenious sophistry.” Kicking a stone, he said “I refute it thus.” In both cases, bumping into things is taken to answer theories which appear to entail a disconnection of the mind and the world. The parallel between Jackendoff and Johnson is no accident. Their paradox is also charged against Malebranche, who Nadler (1992b, 7) says “is often portrayed by his critics as enclosing the mind in a ‘palace of ideas,’ forever cut off from any kind of cognitive or perceptual contact with the material world.” Of course, this was Berkeley’s reductio ad absurdum of the Theory of Ideas and modern theories of mental representation are seen as posing exactly the same puzzle. Philosophy and cognitive science have simply rediscovered the traditional anxiety about tables and chairs. ARGUMENT FROM ILLUSION Indeed, sufficient confirmation of these parallels is the fact that classical puzzles re-emerge in a new guise. Remarkably, in an unwitting reinvention, we see the venerable Argument from Illusion arise for modern causal theories of representational content (Dretske 1986, Fodor 1987). The classical problem is hidden in modern conceptions of representation which include the widely accepted constraint on accounts of content noted by Egan (2014, 2020, 28) namely, “The account should allow for the possibility that the posited states can misrepresent.” The modern puzzle is that if an idea represents whatever



The Theory of Ideas 193

caused it, then for that very reason misrepresentation seems impossible. A shrew-caused mouse idea must represent a shrew not a mouse. It has evidently been unnoticed that this puzzle of misrepresentation is a version of the ‘Argument from Illusion’ in support of Empiricists’ ‘Ideas’ or ‘sense-data’ and was famously articulated by Malebranche.2 Pyle (2003, 7-8) explains that, according to Malebranche, God’s idea of X is the archetype according to which X was created and, therefore, it is impossible for it to misrepresent X. It follows that, if my ideas are the ‘Vision in God’ then my ideas must represent the properties of the things themselves. Thus, according to the modern account, if ideas are caused directly by external objects, we can’t have misrepresentations (that is, illusions), whereas according to the classical account, the fact that we have illusions (that is, misrepresentations) means that our ideas can’t be directly caused by external objects. These are equivalent contrapositives. The inferences are as follows: 1. Fodor and Dretske Cause/correlation → No illusion (ie no misrepresentation) 2. Malebranche and Locke Illusion → No cause/correlation TO STROLL ABOUT THE HEAVENS Fodor’s commitment to Malebranche’s Vision is reflected in his appeal to exactly the same argument for mediating objects of perception: Echoing the Empiricists’ “representative” view of Ideas, Fodor (2000a, 21) asks how he could think about his Granny if he is in New York and she is in Ohio. Similarly, he asks “How can I be in an unmediated relation to Ebbets Field (alas long since demolished); or to my erstwhile dentist, who passed away a year ago in August?” The rhetorical force of Fodor’s question relies upon the remoteness or non-existence of things we are supposed to be in a relation to. Malebranche, too, remarked, … it often happens that we perceive things that do not exist, and that even have never existed – thus our mind often has real ideas of things that have never existed. When, for example, a man imagines a golden mountain, it is absolutely necessary that the idea of this mountain really be present to his mind (Malebranche 1712, 217).

Malebranche’s conclusion like Fodor’s is that we must be in a direct relation with something else, namely, our image, idea, sense-datum or

194

Chapter Nine

representation. The parallels are worth noting further. Thus, in a famous passage Malebranche wrote: I think everyone agrees that we do not perceive objects external to us by themselves. We see the sun, the stars and an infinity of objects external to us; and it is not likely that the soul should leave the body to stroll about the heavens, as it were, in order to behold all these objects (Malebranche 1712, 217).

In the same vein Fodor writes: It is, to repeat, puzzling how thought could mediate between behavior and the world. ... The trouble isn’t – anyhow, it isn’t solely – thinking that thoughts are somehow immaterial. It’s rather that thoughts need to be in more places than seems possible if they’re to do the job that they’re assigned to. They have to be, as it were, ‘out there’ so that things in the world can interact with them, but they also have to be, as it were, ‘in here’ so that they can proximally cause behavior. ... it’s hard to see how anything could be both (Fodor 1994, 83).

Of course, Fodor is speaking figuratively, but so was Malebranche. Pyle (2003, 49) notes that in reply to Arnauld, Malebranche describes the idea of the soul strolling about the heavens as “a sort of joke.” Allowing for Fodor’s license too, he articulates just what Yolton (1984, 200) has characterized as the pervasive theme of “presence to the mind” with its accompanying principle acknowledged by Reid (1813, 218) “That nothing can act immediately where it is not.” This principle embodies the puzzle about how the mental can relate to the physical (Yolton 2000, xi). It is the same puzzle we have seen concerning the reference of proper names in Chapter 8. Jaegwon Kim (1998, 29) notes that this very problem of mental causation “has been one of the main preoccupations in the philosophy of mind over the past two decades” and hastily dismisses Descartes who “hemmed and hawed, and was ultimately unable to produce an effective response” to the question. Likewise, Kim suggests that Leibniz and Malebranche “chose to abandon mental causation in favor of substantival dualism.” However, as Fodor recognized, it is not dualism that these philosophers see as the solution to the fundamental problem of “presence to the mind.” Like Fodor and modern Disjunctivists we will meet in Chapter 12, Malebranche was motivated by his concern to avoid skepticism and to guarantee the truth of our ideas. It is salutary to notice that Scholastics, Cartesians and Empiricists were all seeking to explain how ‘ideas’ succeed in representing objects in the external world (Yolton 1984, 1996, 2000). In a different idiom, these are essentially the motivations of modern philosophers for whom the veridicality, that is, “semantic evaluability,” “truth guaranteeing” “indefeasible warrant” of mental representations is their essential property.



The Theory of Ideas 195

LES DEUX CARTÉSIENS If the interest and relevance of Malebranche’s theory today is surprising, this is because its theological framing and overtones of mysticism have, in Jolley’s (1990, 201) words, “so effectively concealed the seventeenth-century debate from the view of contemporary philosophers.” I have suggested that, when we transpose the theological idiom into our own, we can see that Malebranche’s account of ideas is essentially Fodor’s (2003) intuitively compelling account of concepts as mental particulars or objects in the mind. Malebranche held a tri-partite ‘veil’3 conception of ideas understood as mental objects intervening between the mind and the world and his conception was drawn from features of sense perception4—the notorious “vision of all things in the mind of God.” Malebranche’s problematic doctrine was criticized in a pamphlet written by John Locke (1823) in which the editor offered this ‘Advertisement to the Reader’: Locke “shows it to be a very groundless notion” and “he looked upon it to be an opinion that would not spread but was like to die of itself, or at least to do no great harm.” However, this assessment is acutely ironic. I have been suggesting that, when distilled from its theological elements, the same “groundless notion” is just the received view of mental representation in philosophy and psychology today. Far from dying of itself, Malebranche’s Vision of All Things in God (minus God) is implicit in Fodor’s Humean conception of representations in cognitive science—in Fodor’s (1998a, 7) formula, “mental particulars with causal powers and susceptible of semantic evaluation.” As Schneider (2011, 7) notes, Fodor’s writings have become “part of the graduate and undergraduate canon in philosophy of mind” and Fodor’s program “is for the most part the philosophical face” of the computational theory of mind (CTM). In view of Fodor’s advocacy of Hume as the founding father of cognitive science, it is significant that Hume’s debt to Malebranche’s Search After Truth was so profound that, “if Hume were a modern academic, he would not escape the charge of plagiarism” (Buckle 2001, 191). Lennon (1997, xxii) points out that Hume’s debt to Malebranche is even greater than that of his illustrious predecessor in British Empiricism, Berkeley. Indeed, Hume recommends to his readers “I desire of you, if you have Liezure, to read once over La Recherche de la Verité of Pere Malebranche.”5 Lennon remarks that Hume’s theory of causation is Malebranche’s ‘occasionalism’ minus God, and we may say that Hume’s theory of ideas is Malebranche’s Vision in God without God. Although neglected and underestimated by modern Analytic philosophers, it is not without reason that Malebranche was characterised by a seventeenth century author, as we might say of Fodor too, En un mot, c’est le plus séduisant cartésien que je connaisse—that is, the most seductive Cartesian that I know.

196

Chapter Nine

As the title of Moreau’s (1999) book indicates, Malebranche and Arnauld were, despite their differences, first and foremost Deux Cartésiens. But rival claimants to the succession could advance different theories on the basis of what they found in Descartes himself (Jolley 1990, 6). Arnauld saw his own ‘direct perception’ view as faithful to Descartes (Nadler 1989, 34), who in turn confirms that it was Arnauld who “has entered further than anyone else into the sense of what I have written.” These differences between Malebranche and Arnauld were noted perceptively by Reid who remarks “It is strange, indeed, that the two most eminent disciples of Des Cartes, and his contemporaries, should differ so essentially with regard to his doctrine concerning ideas” (Reid 1813, 208). Indeed, Descartes and Arnauld shared the very “pragmatism” and ‘direct realism’ that Fodor (2003, 73) sees as “the defining catastrophe” in recent philosophy of mind. In Fodor’s idiosyncratic usage, “pragmatism” is the idea that a person’s abilities such as recognitional and classificatory capacities determine the nature of concepts. As Gaukroger (1990, 1) has noted, Malebranche’s Search After Truth was “the most influential philosophical treatise of the second half of the seventeenth century, eclipsed only at the end of that century by Locke’s Essay.” Leibniz held Malebranche in higher philosophical esteem than Locke, and Malebranche’s doctrines were at the center of the famous controversy with Arnauld, whose treatise On True and False Ideas (1683) was a reply to Malebranche. Indeed, this debate was not only a major événement intellectuel of its time, as Moreau (1999) has described it, but one whose echoes may be heard throughout the subsequent centuries of speculation about the mind. Moreau’s study in French attests to its importance as an intellectual cause célèbre in the seventeenth century. Above all, Moreau (1999, 16) expresses irritation at the view which has been widely held, especially among “nos contemporains anglo-saxons,” that this affair is at base nothing other than one of opposing temperaments— ”Arnauld-la-teigne” against “Malebranche-le-grognon”—that is, Arnauldthe-nuisance against Malebranche-the-grouch. In fact, numerous great figures of the time became embroiled in the debate such as Leibniz who followed it closely.6 Nadler writes that, following the first round with Arnauld’s critique of Malebranche, For the next decade, until Arnauld’s death in 1694, these two men engaged in a public debate that attracted the attention of intellectual circles throughout Europe. Sides were taken in articles, reviews and letters in the foremost journals of the day, and the issues were debated by others as hotly as they were by the primary combatants themselves. . . it remains. . . one of the most interesting episodes in seventeenth-century intellectual history (Nadler 1989, 2).



The Theory of Ideas 197

Nadler adds that the debate is indispensable for understanding the central philosophical issues of the period but I suggest that the debate is indispensable for understanding the central philosophical issues today. The dispute arose from divergent interpretations of a single, crucial passage of Descartes’ Third Meditation in which he distinguishes between two ways of describing ideas, the réalité formelle and réalité objective, essentially the modern contrast between narrow and wide semantic content. The passage is remarkable because Descartes’ distinction is recognizable as that between the competing conceptions of meaning that remain at the focus of intense philosophical controversy. The “formal reality” of ideas doesn’t permit individuation of thoughts by their referents and for this reason gives rise to the familiar Twin Earth or Frege puzzles. Of this conception Descartes writes “In so far as the ideas are considered simply as modes of thought, there is no recognizable inequality among them: they all appear to come from within me in the same fashion” (CSM 2, 27–8). In this case, “The nature of an idea is such that of itself it requires no formal reality except what it derives from my thought of which it is a mode” (CSM 2, 28). That is, “formal reality” of an idea is a purely internal modification of the mind and, in this sense, having no representational content or external reference. Descartes contrasts this conception of the formal reality of ideas with their “objective reality” in virtue of which they differ from each other. He explains, “But in so far as different ideas represent different things, it is clear that they differ widely” (CSM 2, 27–8). He explains “it is also true that the idea of heat, or of a stone, cannot exist in me unless it is put there by some cause which contains at least as much reality as I conceive to be in the heat or in the stone.” In other words, Descartes says, “in order for a given idea to contain such and such objective reality, it must surely derive it from some cause which contains at least as much reality as there is objective reality in the idea.” (CSM 2, 28) In this regard, the view of seventeenth century philosopher Antoine Le Grand (1620–1699) is also quite remarkable in its faithfulness to contemporary conceptions. Le Grand argues that ideas have a double aspect, precisely anticipating the current ‘two component’ view. Block (1986, 93) explains that there is a conceptual role component or “narrow” meaning that is entirely “in the head” and an external component that has to do with the relations between the representations and their referents in the world. Three hundred years earlier Le Grand writes: . . . in the Idea or notion of a Thing two things are to be consider’d: First, That it is a Modus inherent in the Mind, from whence it proceeds: The other, That it shews or represents something. The former of these proceeds from the Mind, as

198

Chapter Nine

its effective Principle; the latter from the Object or thing apprehended, as from its Exemplary cause. (in Watson 1987, 93)

The modern puzzle is how to reconcile internal causal processes with their external reference and to determine what is the “glue” that holds them together. Fodor (2007a) says “How to understand the metaphysics of representation, is among the deepest and most hotly debated of current philosophical issues.” Semantics poses “one of the Great Metaphysical Problems,” namely that of finding a place for meaning in the natural order (Fodor 1989, 409). In exactly the same terms Yolton (1996, 28) explains the classical puzzle concerned the “startling distinction” between causing and meaning which are, the two different relations between perceivers and the world, corresponding precisely to the distinction in several of the writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is worth noting that today Huw Price (2011, 20) makes an identical distinction between two “nodes” or “conceptual attractors” in a pragmatic or ‘expressivist’ philosophical framework largely independent of cognitive science: “One node puts the system-world link on the front foot. . . .The other node gives priority to the internal cognitive role of a representation.” MENTAL PARTICULARS AS BILLIARD BALLS? Despite, or rather because of, its theological idiom, we can recognize that Malebranche’s theory has the same intuitive motivation as the modern doctrines just noted. To be sure, most commentators, like Arnauld, have ridiculed Malebranche’s notion that when we see objects in the world we are really seeing God. It is revealing that Fodor (2000a) makes the same parody of his own representative theory saying that it leads “either to the view that ‘strictly speaking’ nobody ever saw a piano, or to the view that ‘strictly speaking’ pianos are mental.” As Jolley (1990) notes, Malebranche’s doctrine has been regarded as a paradigm of obscurity and mysticism, but the verdict is unfair since it is recognizable as essentially the received view in modern philosophy and cognitive science. The problem of “objects present to the mind” is Fodor’s (2003) question of “concept possession.” Fodor (1998a, 3) takes it to be a truism that “If concept tokens are mental particulars, then having a concept is being in a relation to a mental particular.” However, such talk of “possession conditions” and relations to “mental particulars” suggests an object account of concepts. These are metaphors with misleading connotations when we are concerned with states of the mindbrain. Colloquially, we may also speak of “having a headache,” or “having patience,” but talk of “possession conditions” and relations to “mental particulars” in such cases is not obviously as appropriate as for coins in one’s



The Theory of Ideas 199

pocket. For example, having a headache is more like having indigestion or being sunburnt than owning something. By contrast, having gallstones is undeniably object possession but a poor model for psychological states. Less figuratively, the question is whether we should adopt a Malebranche-Hume object theory or an Arnauld-Reid process, act theory. Fodor (2003, 135) says, “it remains fully plausible that cognitive processes are constituted by causal interactions among mental representations, that is, among semantically evaluable mental particulars.” Translated, the idea of mental particulars endowed with “causal powers” (Fodor 1998a, 7) means an ‘atomistic’ account of concepts, of which he says, “To be sure, on this view, we’re not after all so far from billiard balls” (2003, 137). Fodor adds, “Either that, or we really are entirely in the dark.” Indeed, there are ample grounds to wonder about the degree of current illumination. Moreover, the prevailing mental object conception of representation today is contrary to the trend discernible in the seventeenth century. Yolton (2000) points out that among the main philosophical figures there was a gradual shift from an ontological language of “presence to the mind” to an epistemic presence. Reverting to an ontological view today, propositional attitudes have been explicated by means of Schiffer’s (1981) inner box containment metaphor. Of course, in case anyone had doubts, Fodor (1998a, 8) makes it clear that talk of “belief boxes” is a little joke that can be translated into harmless functional terms. However, even when stripped of its whimsical features, the metaphor is by no means so innocent as generally assumed. The object relational language is a symptom of an intuitively plausible picture that encourages Fodor’s ontological analysis, giving priority to questions of what concepts are as opposed to the “catastrophic” question of how they might be known. On this view, believing is a relation to things believed and accordingly Schiffer (1987, 7) asks “What are these ‘things believed?” He explains that a relational theorist holds that belief content entails some entity “whose properties determine the complete content of that belief.” With his billiard ball analogy Fodor is true to his Empiricist progenitors even to the extent of this metaphor. Locke’s (1689/1975) project in his Essay is “self-consciously modeled on the corpuscularian theory of matter” (Jolley 1999, 39). Thus, it is no accident that Reid (1785, 22) describes Hume’s Ideas as being “like Epicurus’s atoms” that “dance about in emptiness.” Yolton (1984, 148) has noted that Hume, like Berkeley, “took seriously the notion that our ideas or perceptions are objects,” a view which is, moreover, “pretty obvious of itself.” By contrast, Arnauld’s view is that ‘dog’ is not a mental object but rather a kind of know-how or capacity constituted by the ability to discriminate dogs from cats, inter alia. This kind of act-theory is an alternative precisely in Fodor’s sense in which “capacities aren’t kinds of things.” However, Fodor

200

Chapter Nine

(2003, 73,4) sees this as “the defining catastrophe of analytic philosophy of language and philosophy of mind in the last half of the twentieth century.” Fodor (1998a, 3) is critical of “pragmatists” and dispositionalists who hold that having a concept is a matter of what you are able to do as a kind of ‘know how’ since Fodor (2003, 20) says “epistemic capacities don’t constitute concepts, but merely presuppose them.” That is, Fodor (1998a, 2) insists that explaining having a concept is dependent on first explaining what a concept is. The explanation of concept possession should be parasitic on the explanation of concept individuation (Fodor 1998a, 2). Fodor prefers “an ontology of mental particulars” because he complains “capacities aren’t kinds of things; a fortiori, they aren’t kinds of mental things” (Fodor 1998a, 3). Of course, in general, “understanding what a thing is, is invariably prior to understanding how we know what it is” (Fodor 1988a, 5) but this principle does not apply as well to forms of knowledge as it does to billiard balls. Arguably, it is exactly in the case of mental concepts and other psychological phenomena that we must reverse the usual order and epistemic questions must take precedence. For example, famously Chomsky insists that a grammar has no other reality than the “tacit knowledge” or “competence” of a speaker-hearer. Here the question of “what a thing is” and talk of “possession conditions” or “having a language” collapse into the question of “how we know what it is.” A grammar is constituted by being a form of knowledge and how we know it counts as an answer to the question of what it is.7 In response to Hume, Reid (1813, 159) made exactly the same point that “to have a thought” is just “to think of a thing.” Likewise, as if to answer Fodor, he says “to believe a thing and to have a belief of it; to see a thing and have a sight of it; to conceive a thing, and to have a conception, notion, or idea of it, are phrases perfectly synonymous.” The foregoing remarks have a Rylean flavour and, predictably, Ryle is among the culprits in Fodor’s plot. Fodor (2008, 9) regards Ryle’s (1949a) The Concept of Mind as the locus classicus for “the worst idea that philosophy ever had.” Fodor (2003, 24) suggests that “Mid-century philosophy of mind consisted largely of confusing these issues by endorsing pragmatism as a remedy for dualism.” However, this analysis is to misread Ryle in a revealing manner. Ryle had a better reason for endorsing “pragmatism.” For Ryle, dualism is a consequence of holding certain mistaken views about our mental life and not identical with these views. Thus, Ryle’s criticism of the “intellectualist legend” and the distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’ are not primarily concerned with dualism as such. For Ryle pragmatism was primarily a remedy for certain spurious views about our mental life, certain doctrines that may lead to dualism, but may equally lead to bad theories within a purely naturalistic framework. Ryle urged caution about reifying mental events and volitions as if these are distinct entities, as we might na-



The Theory of Ideas 201

ively think. The ‘myth of volitions’ refers to exactly the kind of hypostatization we are concerned with more generally regarding ‘mental particulars.’ Responding to a conception of such mental objects, Ryle (1949a, 35) has a section titled ‘In my head’ and asks “Why is this felt to be an appropriate and expressive metaphor?” In the same vein, Ryle anticipates Pylyshyn’s (1973, 2003a) polemic against pictorial theories and argues that “imaging occurs, but images are not seen” (1949a, 247). Significantly, expressing my theme throughout, Ryle said that someone imagining a scene “is not being a spectator of resemblance . . . but he is resembling a spectator” (1949a, 248). SEMANTIC EVALUABILITY Cummins (2002/2010, 160) has argued for a Rylean pragmatic account of concepts on the grounds that the conception of mental symbols as objects commits one to the view “that representations of cows don’t tell you anything about cows.” However, Fodor conceives of mental particulars as objects in order to explain how thoughts manage to preserve truth (Fodor 1998a, 10). Fodor says the semantic evaluability of mental states is “the most important fact we know about minds; no doubt it’s why God bothered to give us any” (1994, 9). The theological joke captures Fodor’s secular version of the “Vision of all things in God.” That is, for “God” read “some sort of nomic connection between mental representations and things in the world” (2003, 110). Fodor (1998a, 8) holds it’s not their resemblance that enables Ideas to represent whatever they are ideas of, but rather the mysterious “nomic connection” between mental representations and their referents. That is, the idea of a dog doesn’t look like a dog, but represents dogs because of some law-like regularity correlating them. On such an externalist account, mental content doesn’t appear to supervene on mental processes and, therefore, as Fodor (1994 38) acknowledges, perhaps “semantics isn’t part of psychology” because truth, reference and other semantic notions aren’t psychological categories (1980, 253). Indeed, Fodor (1984, 32) fears that intentional content “will prove permanently recalcitrant to integration in the natural order” since semantic properties will fail to supervene upon physical properties. Fodor finds a purely internalist, conceptual role account of meaning inadequate for the same reason that Malebranche finds the Cartesian conception wanting. Like Malebranche, Fodor needs to explain how thoughts can “track the world.” An essential aspect of the referentialist conception is that concepts have some “locking relation” with their objects in the world. Putnam’s Twin Earth fantasy, too, rests on the intuition that the truth about the world is relevant to meaning, rather than what is only ‘in the head.’ Malebranche would

202

Chapter Nine

have agreed and it is again no accident that Putnam speaks metaphorically of such doctrines as implicitly depending on an omniscient ‘God’s Eye’ view. We see the aptness of Malebranche’s view in relation to modern theories where Pyle (2003, 51) explains that for Malebranche ideas cannot be modes of my soul, or as we would say, internal features of my mind/brain. Rather, he says for Malebranche “The problem of intentionality. . . demands a supernatural solution.” As we have noted Fodor, (1989, 409), in turn, acknowledges this difficulty facing naturalization of intentionality arising from the fact that semantics appears to transcend explanatory science as “one of the Great Metaphysical Problems” namely, finding the “place for meaning in the natural order.” Malebranche’s supernatural version of truth-conditional externalism provides an analogous solution. On the other side, criticism by his contemporary Foucher seems appropriate, taking the theory “to be a spurious expression of piety” not suited to the philosophical, that is, scientific, enterprise (Watson 1987, 57). For Malebranche, “In the final analysis, all knowledge is revelation, and attention to a problem. . . is just a form of prayer. Illumination always comes from without” (Pyle 2003, 56). Taken with some literary license, the characterization is apt for modern externalist theories. As we have seen in relation to philosophers’ referential intuitions about naming, Malebranche’s supernatural answer is not essentially different from the “movement of the soul” charged against contemporary theories by Searle (1969, 87) or the “whiff of a kind of mysticism” (Jeshion 2006, 33) and “some kind of obscurantist intentional magic” (Stalnaker 2003, 178). The seventeenth century dispute is recognizable as the contemporary externalist response to purely internalist “narrow” conceptions and also the modern response of Disjunctivists to the same puzzle we will encounter in Chapter 12. Pyle explains: Descartes generally writes as if he thinks of ideas as merely modes of our own souls – this is certainly how Arnauld, like most second-generation Cartesians, reads him. But if this were the case, Malebranche argues, there would be no justification for inferring ‘X is F’ from ‘My idea of X represents it as F,’ and hence no escape from veil-of-ideas skepticism (Pyle 2003, 7-8).

ARNAULD’S ACT-THEORY Arnauld insists that enclosing the mind in a “palace of ideas” is an absurd conclusion arising from a false analogy between ‘being present to the mind’ in the sense of thinking or conceiving, on the one hand, and being present to the eyes in seeing, the Spectator conception, on the other hand. Of course, this is the mistaken assimilation of internal and external representations we have



The Theory of Ideas 203

noted in theories of imagery. Anticipating Rorty’s (1979) critique of the “ocular metaphor,” Arnauld argues that philosophers have tried to explain how we think—mental vision or la vue spirituelle—by analogy with optical vision or true seeing with the eye—la vue corporelle. Nadler (1989) oddly chooses to put scare quotes around the terms referring to the physiological processes of corporeal vision, that is, with the eyes, as opposed to what he calls “true seeing” by the mind. This is to reverse the appropriate characterisations, since it is obviously seeing with the eyes which is the literal case of true seeing, whereas mental vision is the problematic metaphorical or analogical use of the terms deserving scare quotes. Arnauld correctly insists “One must not base one’s reasoning about the mental act of perception or observations on beliefs about the physiological processes which constitute bodily ‘seeing’” (Nadler 1989, 93). Thus, Arnauld proposes a direct perception account against Malebranche’s indirect, object-mediated theory. For Arnauld, ideas are not distinct entities but just those very activities of the mind which are essentially representative per se. Our mind is “capable of knowing bodies immediately, that is, without representative entities distinct from perceptions” (in Nadler 1989, 97). Nadler (1989, 93) attributes Arnauld’s distinction between mental seeing and bodily vision to a strict Cartesian dualism. However, he has a more plausible reason. Arnauld, like Descartes, avoids the problems inherent in representative ideas as intervening apprehended entities, not because he shares Descartes’ dualism, but because he has a better theory of perceptual and intellectual activity—namely, in terms of mental processes which are themselves inherently representational. This is to avoid the Spectator in the Theater by avoiding a conception of ideas which require an intelligence to contemplate them. This conception is entirely independent of dualism which Nadler thinks is the reason Arnauld “rules out any such analogies” between mental and corporeal (true) vision. Arnauld’s view is more subtle. The analogy is ruled out because Arnauld, like Reid responding to Hume, conceives mental activity as itself essentially representative and thereby dispenses with ideas conceived as surrogate objects or pictures to be observed by the mind’s eye: “I do not see any need for this alleged ‘representative entity’ in order to know any object, be it present or absent.” (in Nadler, 1989, 96). Arnauld (1683, 67) points to the error of attempting “to explain the way in which objects are represented by our ideas by analogy with corporeal things, but there can be no real comparison between bodies and minds on this question.”

204

Chapter Nine

KNOWLEDGE AS REVELATION Fodor’s account mirrors that of Malebranche in seeking to go beyond the ‘modifications of the soul’ that correspond to the purely internal relations between thoughts. On the modern Representational Theory of Mind, content is not to be explained by any such internalist “pragmatic” Cartesian-Arnauldian account. Rather, for Fodor, semantic content is constituted exhaustively by what he refers to as “symbol-world relations,” but he candidly points to the puzzling difficulties: If externalism is right about semantics, then intentional properties are essentially extrinsic; they depend not on relations between thoughts, but on relations between thoughts and the world. Fodor (1994, 14) notes “it is, to put it mildly, obscure how a thing could satisfy the conditions for having its external relations simply in virtue of having the internal relations that it does. It’s as though one’s having ears should somehow guarantee that one has siblings.” Fodor’s puzzle of psychosemantics and “methodological solipsism” is just Malebranche’s concern that, if ideas were simply modifications of our soul with only formal reality, we seem unable to explain that “we clearly conceive that the extension we see is something distinct from ourselves. . . and perceive distinctly that this sun is something distinct from us” (Malebranche 1712). For Malebranche, only representative ideas have “objective reality” because they are guaranteed to be true by virtue of being in the mind of God whereas all Descartes’ ideas have the same ontological status or “formal reality” as mental events, pure modes of the human mind or modifications of mental substance8—”narrow content,” as we would say today. Fodor confronts the same difficulties. The concern with semantic evaluability of mental representations is the modern guise of Early Modern concern with the “veridicality” of ‘ideas.’ Fodor (1998a, 10) asserts “The essential problem in this area is to explain how thinking manages reliably to preserve truth.” This externalist intuition today is just the secular guise of ‘Vision in God’ which blocks skepticism “by licensing inferences from the properties of things-as-represented by their ideas to the properties of the things themselves” (Pyle 2003, 7-8). EPISTEMIC INTIMACY OR POSTMODERN IDEALISM? The foregoing discussion indicates why Fodor (2000b, 4) thinks that internalism risks being “a familiar sort of postmodern Idealism” denying the independent reality of the external world. Fodor’s conception of nomic mindworld relations is seen in the so-called de re ascription of thoughts which are taken to be essentially about their objects. Strictly speaking, there are no such



The Theory of Ideas 205

things as “de re thoughts” or “descriptive thoughts.” There are only de re ascriptions, since, whatever thoughts may be, they are so regardless of how they may be ascribed. However, ascribing a de re thought about an object is often taken to involve attributing some special cognitive relation to it, referred to as “rapport,” “direct cognitive contact,” or “epistemic intimacy.” But Bach (1987, 12) asks, “picturesque phrases aside, just what is this special relation?” He suggests “If we can even speak of a relation in the latter case, it is surely not a real (or natural) relation” since “the fact that the thought is of that object does not require any connection between thought and object.” For just such reasons, Putnam (1981, 130) suggests the notion of a “metaphysical” or “transcendental” match between our representation and the world in itself is nonsense. Recognizing the implications of such alternatives to the current orthodoxy, Fodor (2000b, 3) remarks “if the Chomsky/Turing picture of the mental is even roughly right” then “a lot of currently received philosophical psychology and philosophy of language is in jeopardy.” FOOL OR MADMAN? For the same reason, if Hume’s Theory of Ideas is essentially “interchangeable” with the modern Representational Theory of the Mind (Fodor 2003, 8), Reid’s critique of Hume has direct bearing on contemporary theories. Wolterstorff (2001, ix) judges Reid to be second only to Kant among great philosophers of the eighteenth century who has almost disappeared from the canon of Western philosophy because his philosophy has been trivialized and misunderstood. Indeed, in his account of Hume, Fodor (2003) relegates Reid to dismissive footnotes, but Wolterstorff (2001, 87) considers Reid to have successfully refuted Hume. He suggests that Reid’s critique of the Empiricist doctrine of Ideas was decisive despite the doctrine holding a powerful grip on philosophical imagination for many philosophers, then and now. Lehrer (1989, 7) and Strawson (1990) agree, considering Reid’s criticisms of Hume to be correct. It follows that Reid’s critique of Hume has dire implications for the field today for reasons that Wolterstorff notes: … central elements of the pattern of thought against which he tirelessly polemicized – the Way of Ideas, he called it – have been so deeply etched into our minds that we find it difficult even to grasp alternatives, let alone find them plausible (Wolterstorff 2001, 1).

van Cleve (2004, 101) points out that, then as now, Reid was almost alone among the great philosophers in seeking to uphold a Direct Realist theory of perception and an “adverbial” view against the representative theory of

206

Chapter Nine

ideas. Searle (2015), too, says Direct Realism “is denied by just about every famous philosopher who writes on this subject” and he defends the view today against the dominant idea that internal experiences are themselves objects of perception. Searle sees the Representative view as “the central mistake of modern epistemology.” Indeed, he suggests that it is “the single greatest disaster” in philosophy today based on what he terms the “Bad Argument” in various forms, essentially the “Argument from Illusion.” However, it is significant that the same hyperbole is used for precisely the opposite view by Fodor (2000a) who dismisses Direct Realism in philosophy of mind. In this modern re-enactment, then, Searle and Putnam (1994/1999) defend this view today, just as the debate among Cartesians “moved between an indirectness of knowledge. . . and a strong direct realism” (Yolton 1984, 6). Editors of the Cambridge Companion to Reid9 note Reid’s disappearance from the philosophical canon. They say he made “no appearance in the story that philosophers in the last century have told—and continue to tell—about the development of early modern philosophy.” Strawson (1990) remarks that Reid is forgotten, in spite of being the “unacknowledged father and astonishing anticipator” of correct views in modern psychology. On Strawson’s diagnosis, notable among the reasons for this neglect is the fact that Reid was “fantastically level-headed” and avoided the “perennially attractive” and “extravagant” doctrines which dominate the philosophical literature. Thomas Nagel (1986, 12) remarked “There is a persistent temptation to turn philosophy into something less difficult and more shallow than it is.” However, on the contrary, Reid suggests that the persistent temptation is precisely the reverse, that is, to make philosophy more difficult than it is. Thus, Reid speaks of the “remarkable conflict between two contradictory opinions”—on one side are “all the vulgar, who are unpractised in philosophical researches” and on the other side are “all the philosophers ancient and modern” who hold the representational view. He confesses “In this division, to my great humiliation, I find myself classed with the vulgar” (1813, 221). Speaking of the still fashionable representational account, Reid (1813, 228) says: “I cannot help thinking, that the whole history of philosophy has never furnished an instance of an opinion so unanimously entertained by philosophers upon so slight grounds.” Reid believed that philosophers went astray by flouting the principles of naïve common sense. In particular Reid argued that Hume’s “way of ideas” had made philosophy a “ridiculous figure in the eyes of sensible men” (1813, 231). Reid (1813, 158) draws attention to the differing popular and philosophical conceptions of Ideas. “In the popular meaning, to have an idea of any thing, signifies nothing more than to think of it.” In other words, “To think of a thing, and to have a thought of it. . . are phrases perfectly synonymous.” This is to be contrasted with the meaning of the word “idea” which



The Theory of Ideas 207

Reid says is “peculiar to philosophers and grounded upon a philosophical theory, which the vulgar never think of.” This is the representative conception which “has been a common opinion among philosophers, as far back as we can trace philosophy.” Reid (1785, 37) thinks that the doctrine is so contrary to common sense that to hold it “is not to act the philosopher, but the fool or the madman.” MIRACLE THEORY Putnam (1994/1999) defends Reid’s critique of representations conceived as an interface between mind and world, the classical source of discomfort about the ‘veil of ideas.’ However, Fodor rejects Reid’s alternative idea of a direct connection and mocks Putnam’s remark that our cognitive powers “reach all the way to the [distal] objects themselves.” Fodor says “I haven’t got the slightest idea what that means, and I rather doubt that Putnam has either.” Fodor’s only discussion of Reid’s view is a cavalier footnote (2003, 50) but he jokingly concedes that “direct realists aren’t as bad as they sound” (2003, 51). However, even allowing for his jocular exaggerations, Fodor evidently overlooks the specific nature of Putnam’s concern about representations as “interface” between mind and world. Putnam (1994/1999) is explicit in seeking “to distinguish carefully between the activity of “representation” (as something in which we engage) and the idea of a “representation” as an interface between ourselves and what we think about. This is Reid’s view and Putnam emphasizes that he is not “giving up on the whole idea of representation” by giving up the quite different idea of representation as an interface. Nevertheless, Fodor (2000a) says bluntly “In fact, there is no direct realist theory of perception (or of anything else that’s mental)” because this view flies in the face of the success of modern psychology. Fodor suggests if it were not for the notion of mental representation, “much of what the mind does would be miraculous.” Accordingly, he says that the only alternative to the representational theory of mind is the “miracle theory of mind.” Putnam and Reid are grouped with Gibson and McDowell among those who are alleged to “reject RTM [representational theory of mind] entirely” in the sense that they hold “perception isn’t mediated by mental representations.” With this charge we see that Fodor goes too far. Copenhaver (2004) notes that the disagreement over whether Reid is a direct realist turns on whether we understand the doctrine as the claim that there are no entities mediating perception—the view that Fodor foists on Reid disparagingly as the miracle theory. However, Copenhaver (2004, 62) argues that Reid does not hold such an absurd view, for she notes that perception may be direct but still mediated. This is

208

Chapter Nine

essentially Fodor’s own position illustrated in his joke that long-distance telephone conversations with his wife are “direct” though mediated in all sorts of ways. He says “still, it is my wife that I talk to.” Reid (1813, 161) would agree. As if to answer Fodor, Copenhaver says, “The challenge, then, is to locate a version of direct realism that does not require perception to remain unmediated.” For example, Sellars’ (1956/1997) appears to meet this challenge by holding that causal mediation is not the same as epistemic mediation. On this view, sensations mediate causally, but not epistemically, between the world and conceptual thought. Above all, in light of Fodor’s mockery, it is important to appreciate that “causal mediation is not the sort to which Reid’s direct realism is opposed” (Copenhaver 2004, 72). As Copenhaver notes, this conception of direct realism is useful not only for understanding Reid, but for understanding problems and disputes concerning contemporary theories of perception and representation too. Thus, Fodor appears to miss the more subtle views (not to mention explicit texts) that do not deny representation as such but only a certain notoriously problematic conception of mental objects. We saw that, in the same way, Arnauld does not reject ideas as such but only Malebranche’s conception of them as objects intervening between thought and the world. To count ideas as thought-acts is not to invoke miracles but only an intelligible process. Greco (1995, 283), too, notes explicitly, “it is clear that Reid does not deny the existence of ideas if ideas are thought of as operations or acts of thought. Rather, Reid objects only to ideas as mental entities distinct from any operation or act.” Arnauld (1683, 66), too, was perfectly explicit: “I am not denying that there are representations or representative modalities, since I believe it is clear to whoever reflects on what occurs in his mind that all our perceptions are essentially representative modalities.” To clinch the argument for representationalism, Fodor invokes Marr’s (1982) famous computational explanation of vision. However, the theoretical apparatus of differential equations, zero crossings and other mathematical formalisms are not the widely individuated, semantically evaluable mental atoms that Fodor’s theory requires.10 Marr is undoubtedly a counter-example to any theory that would deny representations altogether—Fodor’s ‘miracle theory’ straw-man. But citing Marr fails to address the concern with representational ‘object’ theories articulated by Putnam, following Reid and Arnauld. Indeed, we will see in Chapter 10 that Marr’s theory is perhaps the very paradigm of Cartesian, internalist computational, non-intentional representations. Chomsky cites Marr for exactly this reason against critics of his own internalist formalisms.11 Fodor’s animadversions against “miraculous” alternatives are inappropriate since the “direct” theories of Reid or Arnauld are also “indirect” in Fodor’s uncontroversial sense, namely, in positing some



The Theory of Ideas 209

internal, causal processes which are responsible for, and in this sense ‘mediate,’ perception, belief and action. Neither Putnam nor Reid would dissent from Fodor’s analysis. Despite Fodor’s crusade and “all-out war” against what he misleadingly calls “pragmatic” accounts, Schneider (2011, 163) argues that Fodor’s own theory is itself a pragmatic account in the sense just noted because the very symbols of Fodor’s Language of Thought (LOT) must themselves “be individuated by what they do, that is, by the role they play in one’s cognitive economy.” Schneider (2011, 160) explains that Fodor’s attack on “pragmatism” has become “part and parcel of the mainstream LOT.” However, it is here that we see where the debate seems to have become derailed. It is emphatically not the “mediation” of causal processes in all sorts of ways that constitutes the potential problem for representational theories. The problem arises only from some of the ways that the mediating causal processes may be conceived. For example, it is not their mediation as such that makes pictures problematic as internal representations subserving vision or imagery. Pylyshyn’s (2003a) complaint against pictures in the head is not that they are in the head, but that they are pictures. Copenhaver (2004, 72) explains, “causal mediation is not the sort to which Reid’s direct realism is opposed.” If we acknowledge Fodor’s point that mediating representations are indispensable and constitute ‘direct’ perception of the world, it remains that not all conceptions of mediating representations are free of inherent, fatal flaws. MAKING MANKIND YAHOOS Remarkably, Pasnau (1997) shows that the key issues of interest today were already fully elucidated in the later middle-ages when Aquinas sought to give a representational theory much like Fodor’s that was met with the direct realism of critics such as Olivi and Ockham. Along the lines we have just noted, Pasnau acknowledges that Aquinas may be interpreted as holding what he terms the “sophisticated” theory that avoids the problems raised by his critics. Thus, Pasnau explains the parallels: On the sophisticated theory of species … species may be intermediaries between our cognitive faculties and the external world, but they will be only causal intermediaries. Species will not themselves be the objects of cognition, because they play their role at an entirely subcognitive level. There will be no grounds, on the sophisticated theory, for saying that human beings apprehend the external world indirectly. This is because according to the sophisticated theory, there is no more direct way in which we can apprehend the world (Pasnau 1997, 195).

210

Chapter Nine

This is, of course, just Fodor’s own view as we have seen in his joke about talking to his wife “directly” via long distance telephone. Ironically, Pasnau adds to the foregoing passage “The sophisticated defender of species is a direct realist” among whom we may include Fodor, notwithstanding his repudiation of the doctrine and ridicule of Reid. As Pasnau (1997, 199) explains in defending Aquinas, “no more immediate apprehension is possible than through species, and so that kind of mediation should not be taken to show that the external world is perceived indirectly.” Although Fodor insists on the indispensability of causal intermediaries between object and idea, Reid’s concern is not with mediating representations as such but only with imagistic representations which mirror their objects in the world. As if responding directly to Fodor, Pasnau says: Surely, any modern direct-realist theory of perception will allow causal intermediaries between object and percipient: no one would dream of denying the title of direct realism to a theory of perception merely because it tolerates causal intermediaries. (Pasnau 1997, 300)

NEUROSIS TO BE EXCISED In light of the foregoing analysis, Wolterstorff (2001, 133) asks “But if that’s right, what’s the big argument about?” Philosophers have been evidently talking past one another then and now. I have been suggesting that the longstanding controversy about representations arises from the compelling intuition of a Spectator contemplating the ‘veil of ideas,’ the “image of the Eye of the Mind” (Rorty 1979, 94). This is the sense in which Putnam (1994/1999, 41) argues for the “needlessness and the unintelligibility of a picture that imposes an interface between ourselves and the world” which he says is the disastrous idea that has haunted Western philosophy since the seventeenth century. This is the reason Reid (1813, 229) says that “ideas do not make any of the operations of the mind to be better understood.” Van Cleve explains that Ideas are of no use in explaining intentionality or mental content because such explanations themselves inevitably presuppose intentionality. That is, . . . ideas can represent objects for us only if the ideas are interpreted (like the symbols in a book) as standing for the objects, but that presupposes precisely the ability of the interpreter to have the object in mind (Van Cleve 2004, 104).

Of course, as we have seen, this is aptly termed “Hume’s Problem” by Dennett (1978b, 122), arising from Ideas or mental representations conceived on the model of external symbols and, therefore, requiring an interpreter. Millikan’s diagnosis is particularly apt:



The Theory of Ideas 211

The error to be eradicated … certainly is not that of positing intermediaries. Postulation of intermediaries of some kind is essential to understanding perception and thought. The error is that of projecting, without argument, chosen properties of what is visaged or conceived onto these intermediaries, and vice versa. The error is equally that of taking this sharing of properties to constitute an explanation of mental representing (Millikan 1991a, 442).

Millikan is among philosophers who think that the problem arises because philosophers are victims of what Maund (2003, 166) calls the “beguiling” sense-datum fallacy. As in the case of positing pictorial images, the error involves conflating properties expressed in the content of experience, with intrinsic properties of its substrate. That is, Millikan (1991a, 439) is concerned to expose the “mingling of the intentional contents of a representation with attributes of the vehicle of representation.” It is important to recall that this is exactly the “Phenomenological Fallacy” identified by U.T. Place (1956) underlying intuitive objections to materialism and it is also Pylyshyn’s (2003a) diagnosis of the fatal error of pictorial theories of imagery. Millikan notes that, philosophers are supposed to avoid the conflation of the contents of representations with properties of their vehicle, but she warns “The possible forms of this confusion are numerous, however, and some are vanishingly subtle.” Indeed, she makes the significant observation that the confusion persists in the work of contemporary philosophers who are “explicitly aware of the danger.” Of particular interest is the recognition by Millikan, like Ryle, that the error is a version of the notorious homunculus fallacy properly understood. Accordingly, Millikan (1991a, 439) seeks the “unconscious roots of the neurosis to be excised.” She identifies these as including the impulse to take imagery or “visaging” as like having pictures in the mind and the propensity to construe pictures to be literally like what they picture. Millikan (1991a, 442) makes the crucial point that the reasoning responsible for the classical sense-datum theory can survive the contemporary turn from what is supposed to be phenomenally given, “substituting neural representations for phenomenal ones.” In other words, modern theories of cognitive science are not immune from the error for, as Millikan (1991a, 442) notes, the errors “also survive turning from perception to cognition, a mode generally thought of as very unpicturelike.” An eighteenth century author made the same diagnosis of the problem: ... in considering the Mind, some men do not sufficiently abstract their Thoughts from Matter, but make use of such Terms as can properly relate to Matter only, and apply them to the Mind in the same Sense as they are spoken of Matter, such as Images and Signatures, Marks, and Impressions, Characters and Notes of Things, and Seeds of Thoughts and Knowledge. (in Yolton 1956, 96)

212

Chapter Nine

This is, in fact, a re-statement of Arnauld’s orthodox Cartesian view which insists that mental representations cannot be properly characterised in terms taken too directly from those apt for our external, material representations— the modern problem of ‘original’ versus ‘derived’ intentionality. We may wonder at the fact that Millikan must recite warnings that philosophers since Descartes and Arnauld have made in identical terms. She observes that it is from these impulses that emerges the irresistible theory that “items appearing before the mind. . . have the properties that they represent.” Millikan (1991a, 440) remarks “Most philosophers nowadays have undergone analysis so that they explicitly understand the unconscious motivations behind this error, and why they are not supposed to make it.” Reid (1785, 21) makes similar reflections on philosophers who would adopt such a mistake. Reid (1785, 15) says, “It is genius, and not the want of it, that adulterates philosophy, and fills it with error and false theory.” In his Dedication, too, Reid acknowledges: The subject has been canvassed by men of very great penetration and genius: for who does not acknowledge Des Cartes, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, to be such? (Reid 1785, 3)

On the one hand, Reid thinks that Hume’s doctrine of ideas is so contrary to common sense that to hold it “is not to act the philosopher, but the fool or the madman.” Such philosophy is justly ridiculous, even to those who cannot detect the fallacy of it. It can have no other tendency, than to shew the acuteness of the sophist, at the expence of disgracing reason and human nature, and making mankind Yahoos (Reid 1785, 37).

On the other hand, Reid has to admit “This might have been said without any apology before the Treatise of human nature appeared in the world” (Reid 1785, 32). Now, Reid must reconcile the absurdity of the ‘ideal system’ with Hume’s advocacy of it: However, since the author above mentioned, who is undoubtedly one of the most acute metaphysicians that this or any age hath produced, … his opinion, however contrary to the common apprehensions of mankind, deserves respect. (Reid 1785, 33)

The situation today is precisely analogous since Fodor is also “undoubtedly one of the most acute metaphysicians,” just as he acknowledges that “Putnam is one of our best philosophers, and he is terrifyingly smart.” In that case, Fodor is puzzled about how Putnam could abandon “the best—not to say



The Theory of Ideas 213

the only—way we know to theorise about the mind.” But the puzzlement is mutual and we need to reconcile contemporary philosophers “of very great penetration and genius.” Towards this end, we must acknowledge that Fodor (1998a, 17) has been quite explicit in saying that entertaining or grasping a concept “doesn’t, of course, mean thinking about” the concept, and he recognizes that a regress of interpreters would arise if ideas themselves require being interpreted, “But since they don’t, the problem doesn’t arise” (2003, 109). Thus, as we should expect, Fodor is aware of the dangers of the Spectator error. It is significant that Fodor’s position in this regard seems identical to that of Aquinas who was fully aware of the need to reject ‘species’ or mental representations as themselves the objects of cognition.12 Indeed, Reid acknowledges the same ambivalence and tension in Locke’s use of the notion ‘idea.’ Reid (1813, 160) asks “Whether it was Mr. Locke’s opinion that ideas are the only objects of thought” or “Whether it is not possible for men to think of things which are not ideas in the mind?” Reid acknowledges that “To this question it is not easy to give a direct answer.” Despite the ample evidence we have seen of commitment to the view that “the mind perceives nothing but its own ideas,” Reid charitably concedes, On the other hand, I am persuaded that Mr. Locke would have acknowledged, that we may think of Alexander the Great, or of the planet Jupiter, and of numberless things, which he would have owned are not ideas in the mind, but objects which exist independent of the mind that thinks of them (Reid 1813, 161).

In the same spirit, we must recognize that Fodor, too, would acknowledge that we may think of numberless things which he would own are not ideas in the mind. Indeed, we noted that he mocks the representative theory which seems to lead to the view that pianos are mental. In describing Aquinas, Pasnau (1997, 198) captures Fodor’s position too saying “One might explain perception in terms of the apprehension of a mental object without insisting that this means we perceive the external world indirectly,” but he notes that it’s not obvious how to manage the “balancing act” and how to avoid falling into representationalism. Pasnau’s (1997, 220) analysis applies equally to Fodor when he says despite his protestations Aquinas could not avoid treating “species” as internal objects that we “apprehend in order to have knowledge of the external world.” Aquinas’s “official” view, like Fodor’s is that “species are not the things cognized but things in virtue of which we cognize” (Pasnau 1997, 198). However, Pasnau explains: Although he [Aquinas] rejects representationalism, and denies that species are (ordinarily) the objects of cognition, at the same time he takes species to mediate cognition, not just causally but psychologically. For Aquinas, in other words, species themselves are in some sense the objects of apprehension (Pasnau 1997, 197).

214

Chapter Nine

Fodor evidently tries to perform the same balancing act. Sympathetic critics have acknowledged that Fodor’s formulations “may suggest, to the incautious reader, that the only things which really bear content” are “persons, as contrasted with sub-personal systems or agents” (Stainton and Viger 2000, 140). However, even a cautious reader might be excused for reading Fodor in this way, when he rejects the alternative “pragmatist” view because it “doesn’t appear to require any understanding on the part of the subject” (2004b, 100; emphasis added). Fodor asks how “you can draw and assess inferences in a language of which you understand not a word?” (2004b, 101; emphasis added)—not coincidentally sounding like Searle (1980) in the Chinese Room and implicating the subject as interpreter within the system. However, the language in which we conduct our cognitive processes is presumably not one which we understand in the usual sense of this term. This is the sense in which, following Hume, thinking is conceived as contemplating or viewing a mental object as Spectator in the Cartesian Theater. NOTES   1.  See Silins (2011), Siegel & Silins (2015).

  2.  See Nadler (1992b, 85).   3.  See Nadler (1989, 34, 118, 126 fn.36).   4.  See Cook (1994, 74).   5.  Quoted in Buckle (2001, 136).   6.  See Nadler (1989, 5).   7.  See Devitt (2006), Slezak (1981, 2009), Pereplyotchik (2017).   8.  See Nadler (1992b, 34).   9.  See Cuneo & van Woudenberg (2004, 1). 10.  See Egan (1992), (1994), (1995), (2003), (2009). 11.  See Slezak (2009). 12.  See Pasnau (1997, 195).

Chapter Ten

Descartes’ Neurocomputational Philosophy

We have seen that Descartes was not guilty of the Cartesian Theater error for which he has traditionally been blamed and, indeed, he provided the most insightful analysis of the source of the notorious homunculus pseudoexplanation. Descartes is the hero of the story but, as Strawson (2006a, 201) points out, the “real Descartes” is not the ‘Descartes’ of present-day nonhistorical philosophy in the Analytic tradition. In particular, Descartes’ scientific work has been “effectively quarantined” from Descartes’ “philosophy” and most Anglophone writers on Descartes’ epistemology have been unlikely to be even aware of it (Gaukroger 2016, 63). Nevertheless, in the wake of the cognitive revolution the intellectual climate is more conducive to appreciating Descartes as a practising scientist rather than as a philosopher. In a provocative contrast with the conventional picture Clarke offers an alternative portrait: I interpret the extant writings of Descartes as the output of a practising scientist who, somewhat unfortunately, wrote a few short and relatively unimportant philosophical essays (Clarke 1982, 2).

Ouch! Of course, the extant writings of Descartes comprise eleven volumes in the standard Adam and Tannery collection of which the Meditations and Discourse are a small fraction. The Discourse has always been compulsory reading for students as part of the canon in Western philosophy but, as Clarke (2006, 144) points out, it is almost impossible to understand taken out of its original context in which it was a preface to three scientific works on optics, meteorology and geometry. Another distinguished historian of science I.B. Cohen (1972) observed that Descartes’ Traité de l’Homme – part of his ambitious Le Monde – had not been fully translated into English before 1972, and the then-standard two-volume collection of Haldane and Ross (1970) did not 215

216

Chapter Ten

include any portion of it. This neglect of Descartes’ science has led to the overestimation of traditional puzzles and the severely jaundiced reading of his ‘natural philosophy.’ There is a growing recognition that Cartesian scholarship in the Analytic tradition has misunderstood Descartes even in these texts to which philosophical scholarship and pedagogy has been exclusively devoted. Specifically, as we saw in Chapter 4, even the most famous doctrines of the Meditations concerning the Cogito look markedly different when they are seen in the light of Descartes’ entire corpus. Steven Nadler (1996, 104) has remarked “Hopefully, the days when Anglo-American Cartesian scholarship could consist in numerous books on the Meditations alone and an endless stream of papers on the Cartesian circle or the cogito are over.” There is little evidence that Nadler’s hopes have been realized and, paradoxically, for that very reason I suggested that the persistence of the narrow intellectual puzzles is interesting as much for what it reveals about philosophy today as for what it obscures about Descartes. In this chapter, looking beyond the canonical “philosophical” texts, I will suggest that Patricia Churchland’s term “neurophilosophy” could hardly be more apt for Descartes’ enterprise, as he takes on a new relevance to contemporary cognitive science, and vice-versa. Fodor (2003) thinks that Hume deserves to be better appreciated today as a psychologist rather than as a philosopher in the traditional sense but, unlike Descartes, Hume remained firmly in the armchair. Indeed, as we will see, Paul Churchland’s (1989) title A Neurocomputational Perspective is quite apt to describe the extraordinary innovations of Descartes’ conception of the mind. Clarke (2003, 2006) has been important in correcting the distorted picture of Descartes prevailing in the Analytic tradition but even Clarke (2003, 8,9) is perhaps ungenerous in characterizing Descartes’ anatomy and neurophysiology as “rather primitive by our standards.” Clarke suggests Cartesian science is very different from current theories. However, I will show that, even by our standards, Descartes’ explanations of the brain are extraordinarily insightful and not essentially different from current models. Indeed, Descartes deserves credit for his influential role in exposing the pseudo-explanations of scholastic theories which appealed to various question-begging qualities, powers, faculties and substantial forms. Descartes says that proponents of “substantial forms” admit that they are occult: “If they say that some action results from a substantial form, that is the same as saying that it results from something that they do not understand; which explains nothing” (quoted in Clarke 2003, 21). Descartes’ scathing judgment is that “what is obscure is explained by what is more obscure” and, therefore, the ignorance of these scholars is “vain and pedantic.” This critique has become familiar today through Dennett’s (1991, 63) exposition of the emptiness of virtus dormitiva accounts, parodied by Molière’s doctor in Le Malade imagi-



Descartes’ Neurocomputational Philosophy 217

naire. Such accounts are empty because they purport to explain some phenomenon simply by attributing a quality which is named after the very effect to be explained. Thus, the effect of opium is explained by attributing to it a “sleep-making” power. In view of Dennett’s popularisation of the allusion to Molière as well as Descartes’ supposed culpability for the error, it is acutely ironic that Molière’s caricature was actually borrowed from Descartes (see Clarke 2003, 22), and later writers competed with each other to construct persuasive examples of this insight (Clarke 2006, 117). Upon hearing of Galileo’s troubles in 1633, Descartes suppressed his work Le Monde in view of his own heretical doctrines. However, Clarke (2006, 124) observes that endorsing Copernican astronomy was a minor problem compared to the radicalism of Descartes’ views about human knowledge and scientific explanation. In particular, as just noted, Descartes developed a revolutionary novelty concerning explanation by contrast with scholastic approaches. Perhaps most scandalous was his view of “the extent to which human and animal behaviour could be explained without any of the ‘souls’ on which philosophers traditionally relied.” Indeed, on Clarke’s (2003, 9) account, contrary to the usual depiction, Descartes took “a first rather bold step in the direction of removing souls completely from explanations of human behaviour” because they are merely non-explanatory re-descriptions of the phenomena to be explained. Descartes retains the human soul as a mere residual, token concession to scholastic substantial forms and as “merely a marker, a stop-gap measure, which indicates where an extremely ambitious Cartesian theory of the mind encounters apparently insurmountable obstacles” (Clarke 2003, 10). LIVING AND SPARKLING TEXTS Of course, it is usual to lament the fact that Analytic philosophy is “not only unhistorical but anti-historical, and hostile to textual commentary” (Sorell 2005, 1). Wilson (1999, 459) challenges the justice of such aspersions “as a fairly bum rap” in the light of the significant historical scholarship by Analytic philosophers but the contrary evidence speaks for itself. Historians’ recent portraits of the most cited, most taught and most famous Early Modern figure are unrecognizable to Analytic philosophers trained on the canonical texts and vast secondary literature of their own discipline. For example, in light of philosophical tradition and the centrality of Descartes, it is astonishing that, in his book Descartes’s Theory of Mind Clarke (2003) has no index entry to “cogito,” “doubt” or “indubitability.” These omissions are incomprehensible to any well-educated student of philosophy. Nothing could

218

Chapter Ten

more clearly illustrate the narrowness and distortions of the Analytical tradition than remarks of Alexandre Koyré (1954) in his introduction to the nowsuperseded Anscombe and Geach translations. Koyré (1954, vii) reflected on the centuries of progress that separate us from Descartes—”long enough to throw back into the dead past most of the subjects and some of the problems that stirred the minds of our forgotten ancestors.” Among subjects to be discarded as obsolete, Koyré suggests, are the scientific texts of the Discourse including large parts of his Dioptrics. “And yet,” he adds by contrast, when reading the Meditations or Discourse, nobody “will feel that he is dealing with dead texts. On the contrary: they are still living and sparkling.” Koyré is characteristically appreciative of philosophical questions that remain “permanently alive” even after centuries, for they are “immensely difficult to grasp” and, therefore, permanently important and “modern.” However, this emphasis and reverence are misplaced. Descartes himself encourages a less reverential attitude to problems that philosophers have been almost exclusively preoccupied with. As we have noted, in a remark to Burman in 1648 regarding the Meditations, he recommends not paying too much effort to the Meditations and to metaphysical questions: Still less should one do what some try to do, and dig more deeply into those questions than the author did: he has dealt with them all quite deeply enough. It is sufficient to have grasped them once in a general way, and then to remember the conclusion. (CSMK 3, 346)

EVERY MISTAKE IT WAS POSSIBLE TO MAKE In a new preface to the re-published Demons, Dreamers and Madmen, Frankfurt (2008) reflects on the naïve blunders attributed to Descartes in his purely ‘philosophical’ writing. Indeed, as I will indicate, across the spectrum of his writings there is a pervasive, extremely jaundiced reading of his words. Descartes is charged with implausible views and absurd errors that are more likely to be those of his critics. For example, Cottingham (1992b, 242) has characterized a crucial argument by Descartes as “one of the most notorious nonsequiturs in the history of philosophy,” no less. Hintikka’s (1962) celebrated analysis of Descartes’ cogito argument rests on attributing blunders and misunderstandings that one would hesitate ascribing even to a lesser philosopher on the grounds of charity alone. Similarly, Sarkar (2003) discounts Descartes’ explicit texts which contradict his analysis. The tendency is not limited to Descartes’ ‘philosophical’ writings and historians, too, make uncharitable interpretations which reflect the scholars’ own unargued theoretical prejudices. In this chapter I show that much Carte-



Descartes’ Neurocomputational Philosophy 219

sian scholarship confirms Wilson’s (1999, 460) remark that “even the most dedicated and distinguished historical scholars may well be influenced by distorting ‘preconceptions’ and personal agendas – interpretive, apologetic, or critical.” Ironically, central among these distorting preconceptions is the commentator’s own commitment to the Cartesian Theater illusion, while it is Descartes who argues for a thoroughgoing reductionism to explain phenomena in purely mechanical terms as a function of the size, shape and motion of material particles. UPSIDE DOWN AND BACK-TO-FRONT We see a revealing misunderstanding arising from the Spectator illusion. We have all been surprised and puzzled upon first learning in biology class that the picture projected onto the retina by the lens in the eye is upside-down and back-to-front. Our mystification was shared by Kepler who admitted that he “dutifully tortured” himself over the inversion and reversal of the retinal image, but he was unable to solve the problem and avoided it by relegating it to somebody else’s business. He wrote “the armament of opticians does not take them beyond this first opaque wall encountered within the eye [i.e. the retina]” (in Lindberg 1976, 203). Pylyshyn (2007, 3) uses the example of inverted and mirror-reversed images on the retina to explain that the perplexity for early theorists was intractable. Kepler was unable to extricate himself from the medieval tradition and the optical framework in which vision was understood. Pylyshyn (2007, 3) points out that the problem “left a generation of brilliant mathematicians and thinkers completely stymied” and he suggests that the puzzle disappeared only once the modern concept of abstract information became available, since the relevant information about the external world may be carried regardless of the orientation of the retinal image. Pylyshyn suggests that the abstract concept of information “did not fully come along until the twentieth century.” However, remarkably, Descartes already had the key insight and was able to go beyond Kepler’s limitation to the retina. Perhaps inspired by his idea of representing plane geometry symbolically as algebra in his “Cartesian Coordinate” system, Descartes gave an account of abstract information in the nervous system. This was an essentially correct account of the way that the nerve filaments encode and transmit the impinging effects of the external world (Figure 10.1). Descartes’ analogy of the blind man’s stick clearly captures the idea of abstract information encoding and transmission: For instance, when our blind man touches bodies with his stick, they certainly do not transmit anything to him except in so far as they cause his stick to move in different ways according to the different qualities in them, thus likewise

220

Chapter Ten

setting in motion the nerves in his hand. . . This is what occasions his soul to have sensory perception of just as many different qualities in these bodies as there are differences in the movements caused by them in his brain. (CSM 1, 166)

In Passions of the Soul Descartes writes: And I explained in the Dioptrique how all the objects of vision are communicated to us in this way alone: … they locally move the little filaments of the optic nerves at the back of our eyes and then the parts of the brain these nerves come from—I said that they move them in as many different ways as there are diversities they make us see in things, and that it is not the movements occurring in the eye, but those occurring in the brain, that immediately represent those objects to the soul (Descartes 1649, 26).

Although Descartes does not make the analogy explicit, the transposition and encoding of geometrical figures by abstract symbolic magnitudes is exactly the insight of his physiology as well as his mathematics. Indeed, it is essentially the mathematical conception of isomorphism developed recently to explain structural representation and, thereby, to avoid the notorious difficulties with resemblance that Descartes clearly appreciated.1 Of course, Descartes’ idea of encoded representations is the foundational principle of the modern Physical Symbol System Hypothesis enunciated by Newell and Simon (1976). The sufficiency of physical symbols to realize psychological computations is precisely Descartes’ insight. Kirkebøen (1998) makes the apt comparison of Descartes’ work with Marr’s (1982) computational theory,

Figure 10.1.  Nerve filaments from eyes to pineal gland. Descartes, René, 1692. L’Homme. Fig. 29, p. 177. Œuvres de Descartes (1996). Vol. 11, Edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. Paris: J. Vrin. Originally published in his Tractatus de homine (Paris, 1664).



Descartes’ Neurocomputational Philosophy 221

capturing the “logical analysis” of a problem. It is understandable that historians may fail to appreciate these matters, but Descartes’ much-derided account of stereo vision as an unconscious geometrical calculation has the same status as the Marr/Chomsky “competence” or computation-level theory. In this sense, Descartes’ account of a parallax calculation is a “mathematical existence proof” of the “appropriateness and adequacy” of an abstract mapping sufficient for constructing a three-dimensional image from the retinal information. Descartes solves the mystery of how purely mechanical movements can explain experience in a world with only the property of extension in bodies. Kirkebøen remarks “No better answer than this has been given since Descartes.” These historical matters invite a further crucial question. We may ask why an inverted “image” on the retina should be puzzling in the first place. Why should it even seem problematic that the retinal image is upside down? Of course, it should be clear that the judgment of being inverted is relative to us as external observers and, therefore, the perplexity arises only because we can irrelevantly look at the retinal image and notice its orientation relative to our own frame of reference, even though this has no bearing on its function in representing the external world. Indeed, this was the moral of Stratton’s (1896) famous experiments with reversing spectacles in which subjects adapted to an “upside down” world after a period of initial disorientation. In his Dioptrics Descartes (1637/1965, 105) explains “you must not be surprised that the objects can be seen in their true position even though the picture they imprint upon the eye is inverted: for this is just like our blind man’s being able to sense the object B, which is to his right, by means of his left hand, and the object D, which is to his left, by means of his right hand at one and the same time.” Lindberg’s (1976, 200) history of theories of vision ends with Kepler and with a revealing anomaly. He notes “It is perhaps unfortunate that Kepler presented no drawing to illustrate his overall scheme.” Nevertheless, he suggests “a figure from Descartes’s La dioptrique (published thirty-three years later) will adequately reveal what Kepler had in mind.” This is the illustration we saw in Chapter 2 showing the retina viewed by an external spectator, the little bearded man. However, Lindberg’s use of Descartes’ figure is extremely misleading because Descartes’ views differ from Kepler’s in the most crucial respects. In particular, the text of La dioptrique gives a clear solution to the puzzle of the retinal image and an explanation of the related homunculus error. The illustration captures Descartes’ insight that the retinal image appears inverted only to an external Spectator. In other words, Descartes’ made the leap of imagination that eluded Kepler. Lindberg (1976, 207) acknowledges that Kepler himself remained firmly

222

Chapter Ten

within the medieval framework and, therefore, Lindberg “strenuously” objects to scholars who view Kepler “as a revolutionary figure who transformed visual theory by ‘mechanizing’ it.” However, Lindberg neglects to give Descartes credit for being just such a revolutionary figure for making a radical break with scholastic conceptions. Contrary to the stereotype, Descartes transformed the theory of vision and the mind by “mechanizing” it in a rigorous manner, as Clarke (2003) has shown. Thus, Lindberg’s use of Descartes’ figure to illustrate Kepler’s view would only be appropriate if it is taken to caricature the assumptions implicit in Kepler’s account and still widespread. The picture is perhaps best understood in this way as representing the Spectator as extraneous to the function of optical images. Kepler could not resolve the apparent difficulty because he shared the “implicit assumption that the image or species in the eye is seen rather than interpreted” (Lindberg 1976, 203). As we noted earlier, this insight into the puzzle of the inverted retinal image is given clearly in Berkeley’s (1709) New Theory of Vision where he explains that the mistake arises because when we think of the pictures on the retina “we imagine ourselves looking on the fund of another’s eye.” We saw in Chapter 5 that this vantage point of an external observer remains the implicit basis for theories positing depictive imagery representations. The pictorial theory reflects the temptation to conceive mental representations as if we were external to them. Descartes (CSM 1, 166) explains “the problem is to know simply how they can enable to soul to have sensory perceptions of all the various qualities of the objects to which they correspond—not to know how they can resemble these objects.” It is a remarkable comment on the seductiveness and persistence of the Spectator illusion that today Pylyshyn (2007, 5) must restate this critique of modern theories that fall into the same trap. Unknowingly echoing Descartes almost verbatim, Pylyshyn explains “similarity is the wrong sort of relation to bridge the gap between the world and its representation (many things are similar to but do not refer to one another, and many things, such as words, refer without bearing any similarity).” Descartes wrote “our mind can be stimulated by many things other than images—by signs and words, for example, which in no way resemble the things they signify.” DISTORTING PRECONCEPTIONS Wilson (1999) remarks that historical scholars may be influenced by distorting preconceptions and unargued theoretical prejudices. Thus, for example, we will see the seductiveness of the Spectator illusion where, despite the texts and the inherent explanatory force of Descartes’ explanation, Wolf-Devine



Descartes’ Neurocomputational Philosophy 223

(1993) and Watson (1987) turn Descartes’ views on their head insisting he is committed to a conception of resemblance that he explicitly denies. Watson judges Descartes’ entire enterprise to be a failure because he does not explain how ideas represent. Of course, this is rather unfair since we still cannot explain how ideas represent. Similarly, despite Descartes’ extensive experimental research, Hall (1972) dismisses Descartes “speculative” account as the “disastrous” consequence of his “incautious dependence on reason divorced from adequate observation.” These are uncharitable, unfounded attributions which suggest that we can’t draw uncritically on the history of philosophy to diagnose the ills of contemporary philosophy. The comprehension of earlier thinkers is inescapably mediated by the historian’s own theoretical preconceptions. The situation is not unlike biblical exegesis in which a committed believer “is bound to read the gospels in a particular manner” (Vermes 1983). Understanding Descartes requires appreciating the technical content of his ideas and not just his words. As Curley (1986, 35) notes, it is not enough to know what a historical figure said, “but knowing what he meant by what he said.” This is not a matter of how to translate the French or Latin into English. To understand Descartes’ scientific works requires more than the historian’s professional skills since it requires a deep appreciation of scientific matters in physics or physiology, among others. I will show that accusations of Descartes’ egregious errors arise from the historians’ own misconceptions. In particular, Descartes’ rigorous mechanical reductionism remains unpalatable today and this prejudice can be seen to influence the ways in which Descartes’ science is misunderstood. One critic says that Descartes’ mechanical reduction of bodily functions “led him to make almost every mistake it was possible to make.”2 His speculations are said to be “uncontrolled,” “speculative” and “disastrous.” Descartes’ neurological doctrines have been dismissed as “quaint” “unconstrained” conjectures involving the postulation of “physiology’s most embarrassing object”3 and an “incautious dependence on reason divorced from adequate observation.” His proposals are said to be “almost pure science fiction.” However, on the contrary, Descartes’ physiological theories are based on his own original anatomical research, remarkable for their sophistication and correct in their essentials. But even where he turned out to be “wrong,” Descartes’ views are deeply insightful and hardly deserve such dismissiveness. OVER-INTELLECTUALIZING PERCEPTION? If the reduction of mental phenomena to known properties of matter was heretical for Descartes’ contemporaries, it remains controversial today. Thus,

224

Chapter Ten

Wolf-Devine complains “there is something unsatisfying” about invoking purely mechanical explanations of our visual capacities. This happens, and then that happens, . . . and then we see. There is an abrupt jump from some sort of complex description of the condition of our nerves and brain to our conscious experience. An explanation should, after all, make the phenomenon explained more intelligible (Wolf-Devine 2000a, 520).

The complaint is an almost verbatim re-statement of concerns we saw earlier from Sherrington, Levine and Searle concerning materialist theories of consciousness. It is the same complaint we saw in Chapter 7 by Davidson and Lewis who protest that formal theories of semantics don’t make the phenomenon intelligible. But we may ask “intelligible” in what sense? And to whom? Of course, implicit in the demand is the requirement that explanations should be intuitively comprehensible to the theorist, the unifying thread among the various problems concerned with mental representations. Here we see the same criterion being used to judge the merits of Descartes’ theories. By complaining that Descartes’ explanation fails to make the phenomena “more intelligible” Wolf-Devine relies on the ubiquitous equivocation between seeking intuitive, interpretative or hermeneutic understanding and ‘Galilean’ explanation. Based on these familiar philosophical preconceptions, Wolf-Devine (2000a, 506) interprets Descartes contrary to his explicit remarks and despite the virtue of his proposed mechanisms. Despite his radical reduction to pure mechanism, Descartes’ theory of vision is charged with being “imperfectly mechanistic” because his explanations are alleged to “exist side by side with an inner homunculus.” Although she acknowledges that Descartes is aware of the dangers of the little man “gazing at the retinal image,” nevertheless Wolf-Devine (2000a, 509) still attributes the error to Descartes ironically on the grounds of her own view that “the retinal image clearly does bear a resemblance to the objects depicted in it, and it retains this resemblance as it is transmitted inward to the seat of the soul at the pineal gland.” It is clear that such an egregious misrepresentation of Descartes arises from the historian’s own philosophical conviction that no purely mechanical account could work in principle to explain the intelligibility of an image. As we have seen, Descartes could hardly have been more explicit in repudiating resemblance as a property of the images transmitted to the pineal gland. Moreover, it is not just his disavowals that justify acquitting him of the error, since his conception of abstract symbolic encoding obviates the need for an intelligent observer. As Freud (1895) said of his own neurological model, “The thing was now really a machine that would soon go by itself.”4 In the Dioptrics (1637 CSM, 1) and Passions (1649, Article 12, 13) Descartes describes how objects cause perceptions “in the same way in which, when we



Descartes’ Neurocomputational Philosophy 225

pull one end of a cord, we make the other move.” In the illustration of the eye from his Dioptrics we see the little filaments just like cords emerging from their sheaths, joining the retina to the pineal gland. There could be no clearer explanation of Descartes’ mechanical conception, just as he had compared perception to the transmission of signals in a blind man’s stick. At this level, to use Dennett’s (1978b, 124) felicitous expression, the “loan on intelligence” has been discharged. Wolf-Devine (1993, 55) acknowledges Descartes’ disavowals, but wants to pin the homunculus mistake on him anyway on the grounds that he allegedly had to “struggle” with his commitment to the idea that we see our own retinal images. In support of this attribution, she says Descartes’ inner tension is evident where he admits “the objects we look at imprint quite perfect ones [images] in the bottoms of our eyes.” On the contrary, however, this sentence only asserts the obvious point that, despite having pictures on our retina which are visible to an external spectator, we cannot posit them further downstream in the nervous system. There is no more evidence of struggle or ambivalence in citing retinal pictures for Descartes than there is for theorists today given the same familiar facts. Nevertheless, Wolf-Devine (1993, 55) writes, “The resembling images are thus almost an embarrassment to him, but this does not prevent him from relying on them in his explanation of vision.” However, the embarrassment is not Descartes’. This attribution is entirely unwarranted on explanatory grounds and cannot be supported by anything in the texts. Nadler (1992b, 46) remarks that no follower of Descartes in the seventeenth century held a resemblance view of representation, and he credits this position to their shared commitment to Descartes’ ontological dualism. However, Descartes had a better reason. We have seen that Descartes gave an entirely different and essentially correct explanation of the fatal flaw of resemblance as an account of representation. This has nothing to do with dualism or with the fact that “there is no likeness whatsoever between mind and matter” as Nadler suggests. As Descartes makes clear in his Dioptrics, despite positing the anatomical convergence of nerve filaments in the pineal gland, he did not subscribe to the conception of an observer in the ‘Theater’ because he avoided positing representations which would require the homunculus. It is worth seeing further examples of this misreading of Descartes for the light it sheds on the issues of interest here. Wolf-Devine (1993, 67) sees Descartes as “generally ambivalent about the role of judgment in the Dioptrics” and suggests that “Descartes is increasingly driven to have recourse to another quite different model—the homunculus model” involving an “inner judge.” This is sheer invention, but the grounds for this attribution to Descartes are important to appreciate in view of its contemporary resonance. Descartes’

226

Chapter Ten

error is alleged to lie in his “supposition that certain perceptual abilities (such as monocular distance perception) require actual reasoning and judgment on the part of the mind” (Wolf-Devine 1993, 67). It is striking that precisely the same issues are raised by the mathematical formalisms of Chomsky’s generative grammars—the question of the “psychological reality” of abstract competence models. Chomsky coined the word “cognize” in order to avoid the misleading intentional connotations of “know” and the supposed paradox in attributing unconscious or tacit knowledge of formal rules and representations. In a revealing parallel, Wolf-Devine (2000a, 513) draws attention to Descartes’ use of the verbs savoir and connaître to suggest that Descartes may be guilty of “a hopeless over-intellectualisation of perception” thereby raising exactly the objection that has dogged Chomsky and has resisted his tireless efforts to rebut it.5 Wolf-Devine seeks to distinguish Descartes’ claim that we “know” the distance of an object by “natural geometry” from the claim that “we actually use geometry”—a claim she suggests “would cause all sorts of problems.” The complaint precisely echoes the misreading by Chomsky’s critics such as Devitt (2006b) and is unintentionally high praise for Descartes, confirming that his theories anticipated modern computational, functionalist theories of cognition. Wolf-Devine’s critique rests on failing to appreciate the sufficiency of Descartes’ explanation and failing to appreciate the status of “competence” models—that is, abstract formal accounts of cognition also exemplified in Marr’s (1982) model of the visual system. As we noted earlier, in his Dioptrics Descartes (CSM 1, 170) explains how our eyes might exploit a “natural geometry” or trigonometric reasoning using parallax by analogy with a blind man using two sticks. On the one hand, there is “a very simple act of the imagination” or, as we would say, an intuitive judgment. On the other hand, Descartes explains that this involves the kind of mathematical reasoning “quite similar to that used by surveyors” or, as we would say, the formal “competence” model of “tacit knowledge.” Wolf-Devine attributes an over-intellectualized judgment to Descartes’ reasoning despite the adequacy of such calculation without additional mental agency. For this reason, it is acutely ironic that Wolf-Devine (2000a, 511) cites this particular passage to suggests that “The homunculus model is most prominent” and “Descartes begins to drift in the direction of an inner homunculus” by virtue of his analogy of the blind man’s use of two sticks. On the contrary, it is just in this analogy that Descartes most clearly demonstrates the dispensability of an inner agent to make the geometrical reasoning using information from the two canes. It is astonishing that Descartes’ explanation is precisely the kind that Marr (1982) gives, for example, to explain perceptual detection of edges by calculating the second differential of texture gradients or “zero-crossings.” In the same way, Hatfield (1992, 357) sees Descartes



Descartes’ Neurocomputational Philosophy 227

here as straightforwardly ascribing distance perception “to the direct effect of a brain state on the soul, unmediated by judgment.” Hatfield describes this as “a purely psychophysical account of distance perception, in which the idea of distance is caused by a brain state without judgmental mediation” representing the triumph of Descartes’ attempt to mechanize the workings of the corporeal soul. That is, we can recognize Descartes’ explanation as the familiar account of sub-personal computations commonplace in neuroscience today. It is telling that Wolf-Devine offers no argument or evidence for the charge against Descartes besides simply quoting the passages in which he explains the simple mathematics involved. She clearly thinks that the passages speak for themselves in condemning Descartes, but they do so only given a reader’s commitment to the very conceptions at the root of the problem. Thus, to take a different example, Descartes suggests that objective size estimation involves a judgment based on our knowledge of distance and the retinal image or apparent size of an object. It is to miss the brilliance of Descartes’ insight to overlook the mathematical sufficiency of this mechanism to compute the size of remote objects. Of course, whether or not the brain does, in fact, use such methods is beside the point in recognizing the merits of Descartes’ account. Wolf-Devine clearly assumes that any talk of tacit reasoning must invoke the rational soul. Predictably, she sees difficulties for Descartes in explaining animals’ visual perception, for they have no soul and, therefore, presumably, no such reasoning. She says that “if we suppose that a wholly mechanistic explanation could be given for animals’ visual spatial perception, then it would seem unnecessary to postulate judgment in the human case”—exactly Descartes’ point! That is, the supposed dilemma for Descartes and his alleged equivocation are fabrications and artefacts of assuming the “intellectualizing” of calculations involved in tacit knowledge. Based only on her own philosophical prejudices, Wolf-Devine (2000a, 516) writes “I am inclined. . . to think that Descartes might be hesitant to eliminate completely the element of judgment from his account of human perception.” She wonders “Just how far he wants to go in mechanizing the various processes that occur in the bodysoul composite is not entirely clear.” On the contrary, despite the limitations he recognized regarding the “creativity” of language, it is perfectly clear that Descartes wants to go all the way. COGNITIVE RABBIT OUT OF MATERIAL HAT Wolf-Devine’s commitment to certain philosophical preconceptions is clear where she seeks to draw lessons for modern cognitive science. Posing a theoretical rather than a purely exegetical question, she asks

228

Chapter Ten

To what extent is it legitimate to speak of my mind doing things of which I am not and cannot possibly be aware? Does doing this not introduce some sort of homunculus? Does Descartes successfully avoid a homunculus. . .? (WolfDevine 2000b, 562)

On the same grounds we might ask: Does Chomsky successfully avoid a homunculus? Does Marr successfully avoid a homunculus? Do theories of modern neuroscience avoid a homunculus? The legitimacy of speaking of my mind doing things of which I am not aware is not open to serious question today. On Wolf-Devine’s criterion, most of cognitive science today must also introduce “some sort of homunculus” simply by virtue of positing subpersonal computations or reasoning. Indeed, not surprisingly, Wolf-Devine explicitly rejects the very cogency of such accounts today. Referring to contemporary theorists who talk of “subpersonal processing at a preconscious level,” Wolf-Devine (2000b, 563) is doubtful that they “are or will be able to explain what is going on in a way that avoids postulating a homunculus.” Of course, this means that Descartes’ theories are no worse off that our best theories today. She says: “I do not think this [mechanical explanation] will work, and have doubts generally about attempts to pull a cognitive rabbit out of a material hat” (2000b, 563). Here, then, we see clearly what has been motivating the interpretation of Descartes, namely, Wolf-Devine’s conviction that a naturalistic cognitive science is impossible. Of course, as we have seen, Wolf-Devine is not alone in this faith. She invokes familiar, widely shared prejudices concerning the “explanatory gap” between conscious, phenomenal awareness and any materialist account. Echoing Sherrington and Searle, she suggests that “The question, of course, that thrusts itself upon the philosopher who has followed the elaborate mechanisms all the way to the pineal gland is How does all this generate something as unlike it as our ideas or sensations?” However, even if the “Hard problem” of consciousness remains an eternal mystery, this has no obvious bearing on the science of vision or the virtues of Descartes’ explanations. After all, Zombies can judge visual size and distance. Wolf-Devine (1993, 62) remarks: “Descartes’ answers on this point in the optical writings are rather crudely materialistic and disappointingly naïve” and she writes of Descartes’ unfortunate “zeal” that led him into “unfounded and erroneous physiological speculations” (1993, 64). Approvingly, Wolf-Devine (1993, 42) cites one critic who says that Descartes’ attempts to reduce bodily functions to easily imaginable mechanical motions led him to make “almost every mistake it was possible to make.” Poor Descartes.



Descartes’ Neurocomputational Philosophy 229

DESCARTES’ DEDUCTIVE BLINDNESS Turning to another historian, we see that the introductory essay in T.S. Hall’s (1972) landmark translation of Traité de L’Homme provides another example of scholarship distorted by philosophical preconceptions. Hall notes that Descartes makes very few references to earlier authors but Hall fails to see this as avoiding the tradition of scholastic mysteries. Instead, on the contrary, Hall suggests their influence is hidden but still discernible throughout. Hall (1972, xxxii) detects a “residual adherence to certain traditional errors” about animal spirits and the working of the heart. However, the situation is exactly the reverse. Of course, in hindsight we know that Descartes was mistaken about the workings of the heart by “ebullition” and he rejected William Harvey’s account based on muscular contractions that today we know to be correct. Descartes postulated a known kind of internal heating of the blood causing it to expand. Nevertheless, the lesson from Kuhn (1962) is that the wisdom of hindsight is inappropriate for judging the merits of Descartes’ reasoning. Hall rehearses a common view of Descartes as making wild speculations that are insufficiently founded on empirical evidence. Hall (1972, xxvii) remarks “Unfortunately for his reputation as a physiologist, he applied his broad assumptions with a kind of deductive blindness, a disregard for verification.” In view of Descartes’ original physiological research these criticisms are egregiously unfair. And again, Hall (1972, 80 fn. 127) says “From one point of view, these “explanations” seem gratuitous – the fatal consequence of Descartes’s rationalistic, deductive procedures.” Of course, there is no doubt about the speculative nature of Descartes’ theories, but the question is whether they were more speculative and gratuitous or showing more “disregard for verification” than Harvey’s theories. The charge that Descartes’ speculations are insufficiently constrained by experiment is especially inappropriate. A contrary picture is given by Bitbol-Hespèriès (2000, 352) who notes that it is, moreover, a mistake to dismiss Descartes as an amateur in these matters. From 1629 when Descartes became interested in medicine his extensive reading and experiments led to correspondence with qualified physicians including Harvey himself. Above all, in 1630 Descartes was performing dissections in Amsterdam when he wrote to Mersenne that he was studying chemistry and anatomy simultaneously and “every day I learn something that I cannot find in any book”—details he says that are unmentioned by Vesalius and others “which I have observed myself while dissecting various animals” (AT i, 137 quoted in Bitbol-Hespèriès 2000, 353).

230

Chapter Ten

SOULLESS PHYSIOLOGY Indeed, it is clear that it was Harvey and not Descartes whose theory of the heart was the more speculative and unconstrained by evidence. Theories that turn out to be correct may be no less speculative than those that turn out to be false. Descartes’ “ebullition” theory of heat in the heart must be seen in the context of Descartes’ overall project of Le Monde and his radical corpuscular reductionism as an explanatory framework. Descartes’ unwillingness to accept Harvey’s account of the action of the heart was based on his concern to avoid ascribing the inexplicable vis pulsifica or pulsating force that Harvey required. Descartes’ rationale is clearly the concern we have noted about scholastic pseudo-explanations of the kind parodied by Molière—the sleepinducing powers of opium. Descartes required some intelligible cause of the heart’s movement that could be explained in the same mechanical terms he sought for everything else in the body and in the world. Thus, Descartes says that Harvey’s explanation is more mysterious than the phenomenon it is invoked to explain.6 It is relevant that we see the same speculations by Descartes going beyond direct observation in his theory of magnetism which also sought to explain the phenomenon in terms of microcorpuscular matter in motion. While appearing quaint by our standards today, the mechanisms devised by Descartes are ingenious and characteristic of creative scientific theorizing. With his overarching reductionist approach, Descartes aims to explain magnetism using the same mechanical principles he has used to explain everything else. He explains that magnets have “no qualities so occult, nor effects of sympathy and antipathy so marvellous as to render them inexplicable by the principles of magnitude, size, position, and motion” (Gaukroger 2002, 175). Descartes’ radical mechanical reductionism remains intuitively implausible today. As Sutton (1998, 239) has shown, associationism, distributed memories, just like animal spirits all seem to leave out the “central integrator guy.” As we have seen, a pervasive concern about theories of mind is the familiar worry: “Who will decode the babble?” The same philosophical worry frames much Cartesian scholarship. On Hall’s own account Descartes initiated the most rigorous and scrupulous reduction of mind to matter in motion. The “soulless physiology” championed by Descartes reserved only the infinite creativity of language, thought and the will as the domain of the immaterial soul. For the rest of physiology, as Hall (1972, 114) acknowledges, Descartes says that the soul is dispensable. Descartes writes, “we will have no more reason to think that it is our soul which produces in it the movements which we know by experience are not controlled by our will than we have reason to think that there is a soul in a clock which makes it tell the time” (CSM 1,



Descartes’ Neurocomputational Philosophy 231

315). Descartes appreciated the resistance to accepting this picture, writing: “It is true that we may find it hard to believe that the mere disposition of the bodily organs is sufficient to produce in us all the movements which are in no way determined by our thought” (CSM 1, 315). Evidently, Descartes’ reductionist conception is still a radical one and its repugnance explains the misunderstanding and uncharitability towards his theories. Sutton (1998, 49) reports views in the same vein according to which animal spirits were judged to be “physiology’s most embarrassing object[s]” and “dubious entities.” However, on the contrary, despite the connotations of the name, animal spirits were supposed to be nothing more than a type of subtle matter or small particles similar to the matter found in flames (CSM 1, 100). RESEMBLANCE AGAIN Finally, historian Watson (1987, viii) makes a devastating assessment of Descartes’ project, arguing that Cartesian epistemology is a sham, and that “the breakdown of Cartesian metaphysics” is due to his dependence on the idea of resemblance. Watson (1995, xiii) acknowledges that Descartes denies resemblance is necessary for representation but claims to show that he depends on resemblance after all. However, this criticism depends on defining “resemblance” so broadly as to include any theory whatever, no matter how abstract or formal. Watson even deems Churchland’s (1989) highly abstract mathematical vector spaces to be a variety of resemblance and, therefore, Descartes’ analogous mathematized encodings are also counted as resemblances by Watson. By foisting resemblance onto Descartes, Watson (1995, 46) can make the usual charge that “Descartes posits a theater in the mind,” among other confusions. Watson misses Descartes’ insight that neural agitations constitute our perceptual discriminations. Purely causal mechanisms of differentiated encodings achieve the “discharging” of intelligent homunculi, as Dennett (1978) explained. Like other uncharitable assessments we have seen, Watson (1987, ix) suggests “In the end, reason fails Descartes” but it is revealing that it is Watson (1995, 107) who sees the need for a Spectator: “The question of who or what takes cognizance of this resemblance or representation is, of course, as difficult to contemporary philosophers as it is for Cartesians.” NOTES 1.  E.g. Isaac (2013), Morgan (2014), Gladziejewski and Milkowski (2017), Shea (2018).

232

Chapter Ten

2.  Quoted in Wolf-Devine (1993, 42). 3.  Quoted in Sutton (1998, 49). 4.  Correspondence with Fliess October 20, 1895, in Masson ed. (1985). 5.  See Slezak (1981), (2009); Pereplyotchik (2017). 6.  Quoted in Bitbol-Hespériès (2000, 364).

Chapter Eleven

What is Knowledge? The Gettier Problem

EPISTEMOLOGICAL UPHEAVAL The Gettier Problem is a notorious, persistent controversy in modern philosophy concerned with the fundamental question of epistemology, namely: What is knowledge? The longstanding, classical conception of knowledge as justified, true belief (JTB) was seemingly overturned by Gettier’s (1963) short paper described as causing an “epistemological upheaval” which single-handedly revolutionized the discipline. Hetherington (2019, 2) explains “Gettier initiated what swiftly became a powerfully influential and wide-reaching wave of epistemological inquiry.” Two recent anthologies1 and Hetherington’s (2016) book-length treatment attest to the persistence of the Problem. Hetherington (2019, 1) writes of the momentous, “explosive” end of a philosophical era and, in keeping with the usual breathless hype, Borges et al. (2017, vii) suggest that, although epistemology had made very little progress in two thousand years, the Gettier paper “sparked the deepest, most extensive revision of any philosophical field since our ancient sources laid down the foundations of philosophical inquiry.” Indeed, with something of an overstatement they say “The Gettier Problem is to epistemology what the Michelson-Morley Experiment was to physics” (Borges et al. 2017, vi). Fifty years of rigorous discussion is seen by Hazlett (2015) as evidence of philosophical progress but, on the contrary, I suggest that decades of inconclusive debate suggest a less flattering view. Like other persistent controversies considered here, there are grounds for thinking something is amiss. Already fifty years ago David Armstrong (1973b, 153) wrote of the “truly alarming and ever-increasing series of papers” in which the philosophical literature on the problem reaches “the extremes of futile complexity” (Lycan 2006, 150). Nevertheless, a philosophical industry devoted to this puzzle continues to 233

234

Chapter Eleven

flourish. Borges et al. (2017, viii) explain that the Gettier Problem remains at the centre of the “renewed discipline we often refer to as ‘post-Gettier epistemology.’” Addressing the question of why the “Gettier industry” persists, Lycan (2006, 148) recognizes the need for explaining why the “Gettier project” is widely regarded as “unfruitful, idle, pointless” and the source of “disenchantment spilled over into scorn.” However, despite the “bad press” Lycan thinks the Gettier Problem does not deserve the widespread opprobrium it has received. He suggests “So far as has been shown” there is nothing particularly wrong with it. This is the challenge I take up in this chapter—showing what is wrong with the Gettier Problem. Prima facie, the scholastic complexities of the literature suggest that some fundamental insight has been missed. Typical of the other philosophical problems considered here, the Gettier Problem is of interest because, as Chudnoff (2019, 177) and Brown (2017, 191) point out, Gettier’s paper is standardly considered to be a paradigm example of philosophical methodology involving intuitive judgments that are exhibited also notably in works such as Kripke’s (1980) Naming and Necessity. Indeed, beyond sharing the methodology involving intuitions, I show that the Gettier puzzle is generated by the very same intuitions we have seen motivating unrelated problems—the fallacy of the Spectator or “omniscient” narrator. For example, in Chapter 8 we noted the consensus among philosophers that proper names refer to their objects as understood from the point of view of one who knows the truth and not from the point of view of the speaker’s beliefs. This was the basis for Donnellan’s metaphor of the “omniscient observer,” actually the philosopher-narrator. Remarkably, the Gettier problem arises in the same way by ascribing belief to a person from the vantage point of one who knows a crucial truth that is unknown to the person. Here too philosophers are analogous to three-year-olds in the “Sally-Anne” false belief task in which their ascription of belief is based on knowing the truth rather than on the person’s justified beliefs. EPISTEMIC LUCK In Chisholm’s (1966) version of the Problem, a person sees a sheep-like bush and acquires a belief “There is a sheep in the field.” This belief is not only justified by the evidence, it is also true because, unknown to the believer, there happens to be a sheep elsewhere in the field. In this case, the classical tripartite criteria for knowledge are met, but the belief does not appear to qualify as knowledge. We feel intuitively that the person cannot be properly regarded as having knowledge of the fact in question, despite holding a justified, true belief. As Kirkham (1984, 501) notes, in Gettier cases the epistemic agent is



What is Knowledge? 235

not regarded as having knowledge because the usual conditions are met “only by dumb luck,” that is, by some means we intuitively regard as disqualification. Madison (2011, 48) points out “There is always some odd way that the justified belief is made true, in that the belief would have been false, but for some strange twist of good luck.”2 The kind of luck involved is referred to as “veritic epistemic luck” and it is widely accepted that genuine knowledge is incompatible with such luck—the “anti-luck platitude.” Pritchard (2015, 94) suggests that Gettier situations raise a challenge, the “anti-luck problem,” regarding the conditions that must be imposed on knowledge in order to exclude such luck. Stone (2013) suggests “We might try to avoid Gettier cases, therefore, by adding a general ‘anti-luck’ codicil to the ‘tripartite account’ of knowledge,” but this seems like merely legislating Gettier cases out of order. Indeed, philosophers have fruitlessly sought ways to revise the JTB account by adding various conditions that might close the gap between knowledge and justified true belief. Rather than trying to patch up the classical account, Hetherington (2012, 229) argued that “the Gettier problem was always a confusion.” Indeed, he says “It is a widespread illusion” (2012, 228) and “It is time to shake off the grip” it has had on philosophers. Nevertheless, evidently unable to shake it off himself, Hetherington (2019, ix) confesses “the Gettier problem remains with me” and he returned to the Problem with a different analysis, accepting a modified traditional JTB account (Hetherington 2016). I suggest that Hetherington was right the first time. I want to develop his earlier insight that, given a Gettiered belief, “it is impossible for the belief in question not to be true” though, of course, ordinarily the belief might not be true. What does this mean? Hetherington (2012, 227) explains, “People reacting in the standard way to Gettier cases are being infallibilists without realising this about themselves.” Of course, this analysis acquires a special significance in view of our theme throughout. This characterisation of reactions to Gettier cases is to describe them as assuming omniscience, accepting “justification that rules out any possibility of error” (2016, 142). Although Hetherington has abandoned this analysis, I will suggest that his new attempt to save the traditional account by qualifying the justification requirement entails a commitment to the very illusions, confusion and implicit “infallibilism” he had earlier identified. Given a widespread consensus on the “anti-luck platitude,” we may ask what exactly good luck means in this context. Pritchard (2007, 278) notes that, despite the shared intuitions, there has been no analysis of “what it precisely means to say that knowledge is incompatible with luck.” However, I suggest that this difficulty is exaggerated since the undoubted subtleties of Pritchard’s analysis are not relevant to the key intuition—the illusion that we are infallibilists without realising this about ourselves. It is perfectly clear that

236

Chapter Eleven

the judgment of veritic epistemic luck rests simply on appeal to independent knowledge of a relevant truth not known to the believer. Zagzebski (1994, 69) provides the general rule for generating Gettier cases: Start with a belief strongly justified, but unluckily false. Add a further lucky feature of the situation which makes the belief accidentally true after all. Zagzebski says “The situation might be described as one element of luck counteracting another.” In such cases, justified, true belief will never be sufficient for knowledge as long as there is some independence between truth and the other grounds for knowledge. Thus, Zagzebski (1994, 69) concludes that “Gettier cases will never go away.” However, we may note the obvious unstated feature of the problem, namely, that the formula for generating Gettier cases implicitly depends on the theorist knowing something that is unknown to the subject. Of course, we have seen this before. It is Searle’s (1983, 230) diagnosis of referential theories of proper names, the same “error and ignorance” at the heart of Kripke’s examples taken to refute descriptive accounts. Hetherington’s illusion of “infallibilism” is actually the philosopher-narrator’s “omniscience.” Indeed, Booth (2014, 637) goes so far as to endorse the thesis that to qualify as knowledge, belief must be infallible. Although inherent in the conception of epistemic luck, the tacit assumption of the theorist’s omniscience has not been generally recognized. Pritchard’s extensive, analyses of veritic luck make no mention of the philosopher-narrator’s essential role evidently because, as Hetherington suggests, we don’t realise this about ourselves. In framing the Gettier stories, our own role is invisible for the reason Chomsky (1962, 528) remarked in a different context: “Reliance on the reader’s intelligence is so commonplace that its significance may be easily overlooked.” The truth-making fact is known to the narrator and the problem can only be formulated from the point of view of someone who knows “what world you’re in”—Fodor’s (1998a, 20) phrase for the externalist individuation of belief contents, the God’s eye view. The same idea is formulated by Brandom (2009, 157) in his account of ‘Why truth is not important in philosophy.’ He says it’s a “fundamental mistake” to think that beliefs must have “a certain metaphysically weighty property: being true.” Specifically citing the JTB analysis of knowledge, Brandom emphasizes that the “truth condition on knowledge” amounts to the fact that “I must myself endorse the belief” in question—in other words, the essential, tacit role of the philosopher-narrator. These analyses support Rorty’s (1995, 297) pragmatist, deflationist view that does not recognize truth as a norm distinct from justification. On this view, not even an infinite amount of justification could approach truth considered as a relation between language and the world. The inescapability of error means the possibility of “epistemic luck” and Gettier problems can only be avoided if truth and justification might correspond perfectly. However, Floridi (2004,



What is Knowledge? 237

76) argues that the Gettier Problem is demonstrably unsolvable because “T [truth] and J [justification] cannot be assumed to be pre-coordinated a priori.” The key insight has been made in a passing remark by Baz (2012, 329) buried in a suggestive footnote. He observes that philosophers have in general failed to appreciate the difference between typical philosophical thought experiments and actual cases of everyday thinking. Baz says, by contrast with real life examples of belief, in Gettier puzzles we, the readers, already know the truth of the subject’s belief “on the basis of an assurance that in earthly matters only God could provide.” Of course, this is our theme throughout and Kirkham (1984, 508), too, noted that all Gettier counter-examples put the reader in the position of an “ideal observer who knows all the relevant facts”—evidently the reason that Gettier problems are inescapable, as Zagzebski’s (1994, 65, 73) notes. She says that theories of justification aim only to put the believer in the best position for getting the truth, but this must leave open the possibility for error and, therefore, veritic luck. As we will see presently, this is hardly a startling conclusion about knowledge claims if we reflect upon our most warranted beliefs in science. Of course, the knowledge claims of ordinary life and science are fallible just as we have always understood. In other words, for mere mortals there can only be more or less justified belief. With the recognition that justification is always less than truth, we see that Gettier situations are cases in which the world conspires to make a proposition true or false for reasons which are entirely independent of a person’s grounds for believing it. In this regard, apparently unremarked in the literature, Gettier cases are structurally identical with cases we have seen of naming error, misrepresentation and Putnam’s (1975b) Twin Earth scenario because the truth or falsity of the mental representation, that is, the state of the world, may be varied independently of the agent’s internal belief-fixing mechanisms. The moral of Putnam’s story is that identical mental states can count as different beliefs if the external world is varied. In the same way, the subject in Chisholm’s (1966) example who believes that there is a sheep in his field will have the same internal belief state change from true to false if the sheep wanders out of the field. For the same reasons, Fodor’s example of misrepresentation in the case of a shrew-generated mouse belief is precisely analogous to Gettier’s bush-generated sheep belief—epistemic bad luck in the former case and epistemic good luck in the latter. Seen in this more general framework, Gettier puzzles recall Kripke’s cases in which a descriptive belief is said to “fail” through “error or ignorance.” Like Fodor’s unfortunate frog striking at a BB, they are cases of epistemic bad luck. Just as the frog is not to blame for getting it “wrong” so the Gettiered subject deserves no credit for getting it right. Accordingly,

238

Chapter Eleven

it is interesting to notice that Fodor’s (1994, 50) comment about the semantics of mental representations applies to Gettier too: He says we need broad, externally individuated content “to make sense of the fact that thoughts have the truth conditions that they do.” However, as we saw, Fodor (1994, 38) says externalism takes semantics not to be part of psychology because the content of our thoughts does not supervene on our mental processes. In the Gettier case, too, the contents of the agent’s thoughts construed transparently as true, do not supervene on their mental processes which are merely internally justified beliefs. EXPLANATION OR JUSTIFICATION It is a peculiarity of the Gettier Problem that the fundamental question ‘What is knowledge?’ is discussed in a vast literature without attention to our best understanding of belief, justification and truth, that is, real life knowledge claims in the history and philosophy of science. The Gettier literature is concerned exclusively with everyday mundane beliefs such as Chisholm’s sheep example, and this bears on the conception of the problem and the range of solutions contemplated. However, by drawing examples from the scientific enterprise, my analysis provides support for Zagzebski’s (2001, 236) point that epistemology is stultified if knowledge is conceived narrowly as propositional knowledge and scepticism dominates inquiry. This focus precludes consideration of other epistemic states or the nature of understanding. We see presently that realistic Gettier cases in the history of science lead independently to Zagzebski’s conclusion—namely, the need to shift epistemological attention from propositional knowledge and justification to understanding and explanation as a “cognitive grasp” of reality, an “act of intellectual virtue” having “internalist conditions for success.” This positive analysis of knowledge serves to reframe the Gettier Problem and supports my diagnosis of the intuitive source of the persistent puzzlement. REAL LIFE GETTIER CASES: WHIG HISTORY In the spirit of Baz’s contrast between real life beliefs and typical philosophical thought experiments, we can see instructive analogs of Gettier cases in the history of science. It is here that we see the basis for Zagzebski’s (2001) view, which is otherwise self-evident, that justification can only give favourable conditions for a believer to attain the truth. In the history of science, our wisdom of hindsight is analogous to the Gettier-narrator’s knowledge of the



What is Knowledge? 239

truth. For example, in his 1628 De Motu Cordis, William Harvey is given credit for discovering the circulation of the blood through the pumping action of the heart. However, he proposed an occult mechanism, the spontaneous contraction of heart muscles which was right for the wrong reasons, a case of justified, true belief through “veritic epistemic luck.” As we noted earlier, in his Discourse, Descartes disagreed with Harvey and proposed a kind of heat without light or “ebullition” which causes contractions and expansions by a known, intelligible process consistent with a mechanical corpuscularism. Descartes turned out to be wrong and we ignore his better explanation because we know the truth today—a reliance on our hindsight or “omniscience” which is the key to Gettier cases. SAVING GETTIER Hetherington (2016, 34) suggests that, we could retain the idea that justification is all that is needed besides true belief to qualify as knowledge. He suggests that Gettier cases arise only because of the believer’s lack of awareness of the particular circumstances that makes it a Gettier case. Thus, Hetherington (2016, 223) argues that an appropriately “enriched” justification of the agent’s belief “includes awareness of circumstances that would otherwise preclude the justified true belief being knowledge.” Hetherington’s solution is to ensure that a Gettier case would become rectified once the believer absorbs into his evidence an awareness of what would otherwise create the Gettier circumstances. That is, the subject would know about the circumstance that makes their belief true by sheer good luck. However, this “solution” is illusory and leads to incoherence because it seeks to incorporate the philosopher’s omniscience into the agent’s beliefs. For example, in Chisholm’s example, we might suppose that the Gettier situation would not arise if the epistemic agent knows about the truth-making sheep. However, this doesn’t change his mistaken belief about the bush. On the other hand, if the agent’s justification must include awareness of all the relevant Gettier circumstances, Chisholm’s subject would have to believe that the bush is a sheep and, at the same time, that it is not a sheep at all, but a false belief true by dumb luck. Hetherington acknowledges that his advice provides no independent criterion for deciding which aspects of the world, in a given case, we need to be aware of if we are to have knowledge. However, this is not merely a practical problem since Hetherington wants the believer to hold their actual beliefs while also sharing the theorist’s omniscience. For example, William Harvey could have avoided being “Gettiered” only by knowing the true causes of the heart’s muscular contractions. As if responding directly to Hetherington,

240

Chapter Eleven

Rorty (1995, 283) says, “But there can be no such thing as an ‘ideal audience’ before whom justification would be sufficient to ensure truth.” Hetherington’s “solution” highlights the interest of the Gettier Problem for our theme throughout. The Problem simply disguises the theorist’s tacit reliance on adopting the standpoint of omniscience, since there can be no humanly possible way for an epistemic agent to know the circumstances relevant to avoid being “Gettiered.” In other words, as Rorty (1995, 281) explains, assessment of truth and assessment of justification are the same activity when we are deciding what to believe because we cannot bypass justification to confine our attention independently to truth. THE PHILOSOPHICAL URGE Of course, the idea that our beliefs are open to the possibility of error is hardly a new insight but the Gettier Problem illustrates the intuition of omniscience on which it rests. Given this compelling intuition, it is perhaps not surprising that the contrast between fallible knowledge and omniscience has been central to the independent literature about realism in the philosophy of science. Significantly, Putnam’s (1981, 49) diagnosis of metaphysical realism is that it adopts a “God’s Eye point of view.” Similarly, Rorty (1979, 178), questions the legitimacy of the very question posed by the realism issue. He asks whether, once we understand why various beliefs have been adopted or discarded, there is something called “the relation of knowledge to reality” left over to be understood. Rorty (1979, 179) suggests that the urge to say that assertions must “correspond” to something apart from what people are saying has some claim to be called the philosophical urge. This is evidently the urge motivating the Gettier Problem—the quixotic pursuit of a characterization of knowledge that avoids the fallibility of justification and epistemic luck. It follows that we should adopt Zagzebski’s (2001) recommendation to shift epistemological attention from narrowly conceived propositional knowledge and justification to understanding and explanation as a “cognitive grasp” of reality. In this regard, the history of science demonstrates that we cannot avoid epistemic luck. Indeed, in the debates about realism the “pessimistic meta-induction” (Laudan 1981) relies on the ubiquity of epistemic bad luck – cases from which we conclude that our best theories, that is, our most justified beliefs, turn out to have been mistaken. The familiar list of theories about caloric, phlogiston, crystalline spheres and the luminiferous ether all exemplify justified beliefs later judged to be false. However, it is only from the God’s Eye point of view, that we can pose the central question about realism concerning our current best theories. By not adopting such a standpoint,



What is Knowledge? 241

Psillos (1999) defends realism with an account of theory acceptance, degrees of belief, confirmation and evidential support—the usual considerations for justified belief and inference to the best explanation. These considerations do not answer the metaphysical question of realism but rather avoid it along the lines of Rorty’s conception of justification, somewhat in the manner of G.E. Moore (1925) holding up his hands or Samuel Johnson’s kicking a stone to refute Berkeley’s idealism. With such answers Psillos confirms the virtues of a “second naiveté” or realism of the ordinary person (Putnam 1994, 4) and avoids “recoiling into metaphysical fantasy.” That is, there can be no further meaningful question about the truth or ‘reality’ of theoretical posits besides the question of whether the theory is well confirmed and justified in the usual ways. ILLUSIONS OR EPISTEMIC BAD LUCK? Familiar mundane examples of epistemic bad luck illustrate the temptation for reliance on the theorist’s knowledge when making belief ascriptions. We noted a ubiquitous error among psychologists and philosophers in talk of illusions. According to a widespread practice, A.J. Ayer (1940) argues for sense-data using examples of “illusions” such as the bent-stick in water and mirages. Similarly, in his discussion of the Argument from Illusion van Cleve (2015, 73) gives the example of a sheet of paper viewed under red lights which appears pinkish. The psychologist Gregory (1997) uses the same example to illustrate illusory perception. However, these appearances are veridical percepts and cannot serve as premise for the classical argument about sense-data as the direct objects of perception. Ditto for the usual examples of a mirage or bent stick in water. Such cases are “illusions” only in the colloquial sense that we are deceived about the true state of the world. Contrary to the widespread conflation, these are unlike perceptual or cognitive illusions such as hallucinations. The real-world truth in such cases is irrelevant to understanding the mechanisms of perception or cognition. Bent sticks in water and mirages are cases of epistemic bad luck. The inclusion of these cases with genuine psychological illusions reveals the seductiveness of the assumption of omniscience – our knowledge of the truth. We see the mistake again in van Cleve’s (2015, 78) reference to Russell’s “insidious time-lag” argument as a challenge to direct realism. The sun we see now is inferred from our visual experience but it might have burned out and ceased to exist in the eight minutes it has taken for its light to reach our eyes. Thus, we might conclude that we cannot identify the physical sun with what we see. Significantly, van Cleve (2015, 79) assimilates “arguments from burned-out stars. . . and hallucinated daggers.” However, for the reasons I have indicated, the disappearing sun is crucially

242

Chapter Eleven

different from a hallucinated dagger since the light from the sun involves an objective physical process. By contrast, in the case of Müller-Lyer lines, for example, the mind is somehow distorting reality. Seeing the sun or white paper under red light, like seeing a bent stick in water is an “illusion” in quite a different sense because it is not a result of any internal psychological trick of the mind or fact of phenomenology. Rather, these are cases in which someone is deceived about the world in ways known only to an “omniscient” narrator. If the sun disappears during the time it takes light to reach our eyes, it’s just bad luck in more ways than one. The analogy with Gettier cases is precise. If Chisholm’s (1966) sheep wanders out of the field, just like the sun exploding, a person’s justified true belief will change to a justified false belief. This circumstance known only to a Spectator telling the story should hold no interest to psychology or epistemology. NOTES 1.  See Borges et. al. eds. (2017), Hetherington ed. (2019). 2.  See Pritchard (2004, 2005, 2007), Madison (2011), Hetherington (2005).

Chapter Twelve

Disjunctivism: The Argument from Illusion (Again)

HOLY GRAIL OF EPISTEMOLOGY In this chapter we consider a hot topic in modern philosophy which illustrates the “melancholy” theme of the book captured in B.F. Skinner’s (1963) aphorism “Seeing does not imply something seen.” Contemporary Disjunctivism, initially proposed by Hinton (1967), is a theory of perception which is recently described as being “at the forefront of contemporary analytic philosophy” (Doyle et al., 2019, 1). Pritchard’s (2012) book Epistemological Disjunctivism begins by considering the puzzle of distinguishing between genuine, veridical perception and hallucination. Of course, this is just the notorious Argument from Illusion which was at the heart of controversies among Early Modern philosophers. We encountered the argument in Malebranche’s Vision of All Things In God, the conception of ideas as “fundamentally a matter of contemplating or viewing [a mental] object” (Stroud 1977, 225). The Argument is central to Searle’s (2015) book Seeing Things as They Are in which he notes that there is now a huge literature on the problem. Searle (2015, 80) describes the doctrine as “The Bad Argument,” an ongoing mistake about perceptual experience which is the “greatest disaster” in philosophy today. Indeed, I suggested that the argument is implicit in modern theories of representation and misrepresentation. We saw that Fodor, following Hume following Malebranche, conceives thinking as viewing a mental object, another manifestation of the Spectator in the Cartesian Theater. The contemporary debate concerning Disjunctivism, like the classical one, concerns the extent to which “the existence of illusion and hallucination impose constraints on the account we give of our perception of the world” (Soteriou 2016, 1). Central to the Disjunctivist theory is its rejection of the very source 243

244

Chapter Twelve

of the puzzle, namely, the claim that veridical perception and illusion or hallucination have the same nature. Pritchard (2012, 1) suggests that the “radical import” of Disjunctivism today lies in the promise of providing “the holy grail of epistemology” by explaining how our beliefs can bear an “essential connection to the worldly facts that these beliefs are ostensibly about” and thereby resolving the longstanding impasse between externalism and internalism. Accordingly, Byrne and Logue (2009) suggest that the philosophy of perception is enjoying a resurgence “enlivened by fresh positions and arguments.” In fact, however, a cursory look at excellent surveys by Robinson (1994) or Maund (2003) reveals that the current arguments are far from fresh even in our own time. Indeed, Pasnau (2017, 79) points out that the same argument can be found in the work of medieval philosophers and even in antiquity. He notes that the specific Disjunctive approach to perception became established in scholastic thought by Duns Scotus (1266–1308) in the thirteenth century. Pritchard’s “radical” project promises to explain how our beliefs can bear an essential connection to the world. Of course, this was the classical puzzle we have seen concerning objects “present to the mind” (Yolton 1984, 6). Scholastics, Cartesians and Empiricists were all seeking to explain how ‘ideas’ succeed in representing objects in the external world. From Pasnau’s (2017, 81) account we recognize Pritchard’s “radical” solution as the innovation by Duns Scotus to treat cognition disjunctively in the sense of having two different kinds of operation. One involves an intermediary representation when we do not grasp the object directly, and the other involves grasping the thing as it is in itself. In the same way, according to leading defenders of Disjunctivism,1 in paradigm cases of perceptual knowledge the beliefs in question are said to be “truth-guaranteeing.” Other locutions such as “indefeasible warrant,” “revealing the world,” and “falsity-inconsistent” imply that the belief must be veridical, to use the old-fashioned word. In this way, Pritchard (2012, 2) proposes “a very direct connection” between our beliefs and the “worldly” facts which these beliefs concern. The claim is that genuine perception involves being in a “factive” mental state of knowing which can only obtain when one is truly perceiving the world, and it cannot obtain when one is hallucinating. The motivating idea is that our perceptual experiences appear to be the same in the good case and the bad case. There is supposed to be a “Highest Common Factor” (McDowell 1998, 386) which is “what is available to experience in the deceptive and the non-deceptive cases alike.” This is acknowledged to be the premise for the traditional Argument from Illusion, generally seen as leading to the “veil of perception” and to scepticism, the worry that knowledge of the ‘external world’ is never possible, even in the good case.2



Disjunctivism 245

Of course, this was Berkeley’s notorious conclusion from Locke’s representative Theory of Ideas. However, in Pritchard’s (2012, 17–18) view today, Disjunctivism provides a response to skepticism by respecting common sense realism about the external world and, therefore, rejecting the assumption that perception and illusion are cognitively the same. There is no consensus on the Disjunctivist doctrine but the common view is that there are, after all, certain features of veridical perceptions that are not shared by hallucinations. In particular, both McDowell and Pritchard accept that in paradigmatic cases of perceptual knowledge, one is in a position to provide a reason that guarantees the truth of the belief. In response to the same view of Duns Scotus, Olivi (1248–1298) argued for Direct Realism since intermediary species “would veil the thing and impede its being attended to in itself as if present.” Indeed, Olivi anticipates Arnauld’s reply to Malebranche and Reid’s response to Hume we have seen. Rather than treating mental representations as distinct from an act of cognition, Olivi proposed identifying the two (Pasnau and Juhana 2021). On his view, an act of cognition itself represents the object that is perceived. As Pasnau notes, in our own time this view has been reinvented as the “adverbial” theory of thought and perception. Tye (1984, 196) explains, on this view a visual experience involves “sensing in a certain manner” rather than apprehending a peculiar immaterial object. We have seen that Early Modern philosophers were concerned with the same contrast between an indirectness of knowledge and a direct realism where the object known was, in some way, itself present to the mind (Yolton 1984, 6). A SENSE OF PERSISTENCE In view of this neglected history, it is useful to reflect on the significance of the revival of Disjunctivism. In particular, I suggest that this debate poses a challenge to Garber’s (2005, 132, 145) view that history of philosophy doesn’t have direct importance to the analytical philosopher or provide the keys to solving contemporary problems. We noted Quine’s (1985) widely held view that the history of philosophy is not useful to students of philosophy for the same reason that students of physics don’t need to read Galileo. Indeed, Harman (in Sorell 2005, 44) and Stoljar (2017) argue that historical writers were concerned with problems that are different from those faced by philosophers today, and Scriven (in Curley 1986, 37) holds that if we are concerned with truth in philosophy rather than “antiquarian curiosity” we want “the most up-to-date answers.” However, these views must be confronted with the astonishing degree to which hotly debated questions such as Disjunctivism today and “the most up-to-date

246

Chapter Twelve

answers” are exactly those central to the entire tradition of philosophy since Aquinas, as Pasnau (2017) and Yolton (1984, 1996) have shown. In other words, the problems of modern philosophy are quite unlike the problems of physics and this fact suggests an answer to the question: Why is the history of philosophy worth bothering with? As in other cases we have seen, if Pritchard channels Duns Scotus, then it seems clear that the modern disputes cannot turn on issues they take themselves to be concerned with “enlivened by fresh positions and arguments.” Sorell (2005, 52) acknowledges the pattern of recurrence but says only that history gives “a sense of persistence” of philosophical problems and an appreciation of their “depth.” However, history can deliver a different verdict. I have argued that the pattern of recurrence deserves attention because it is a symptom of a chronic malaise. Along these lines, I have been suggesting an answer to Wolterstorff’s (2001, 87) question asking how a fatally flawed theory can continue to hold a powerful grip on the imagination of philosophers. Curley (1986, 46) asks this question specifically about the Argument from Illusion revived in Disjunctivism. Cottingham (2005, 39) suggests “whatever is true of past ages...is likely to be true of our own present age” since the persuasiveness of arguments is “underpinned by latent cultural presuppositions.” However, the latent presuppositions need not be merely cultural or “shaped by our past” as he suggests. Nor are the perennial puzzles merely due to the bewitchment of language—as Kenny (2005, 17), like Rorty (1979, 38), seems to accept. The case presented here suggests that the powerful grip of flawed arguments is more likely to arise from inherent features of human cognition, the ‘biases and heuristics’ of philosophical thought. Searle (2015, 4) acknowledges that the Bad Argument from Illusion had been refuted by Austin, but this just invites his question “Why write a book about perception?” Indeed, his book is little more than a rehearsal of the well-worn arguments of earlier philosophers and this pattern is just the “melancholy” fact that Austin (1962) himself cited. We are rehearsing Berkeley’s “ingenious sophistry” and the dilemma of distinguishing between veridical and illusory Ideas. Indeed, Pritchard’s (2012) book begins with this contrast but the most remarkable feature of the book is its bland rehearsal of the classical problem with no hint of its historical or even its modern context. This approach is less likely to avoid the “tangles, confusions, and obscurities” of the past as Quine recommends and more likely to repeat them. The earliest reference in Pritchard’s bibliography is to Hinton (1967). Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia is not mentioned. Such an omission would not ordinarily merit comment, but Putnam (1994, 11) shares the widely held view that Austin’s book represents the most powerful defense of “natural realism” in the history of philosophy, although it is among “the most unjustly neglected classics



Disjunctivism 247

of analytic philosophy” (1994, 25). To be sure, Maund (2003, 94) argues that Austin’s demolition of the Argument from Illusion is overrated and that Putnam’s analysis is flawed in various ways. Nevertheless, whatever the merits of these criticisms, they would deserve serious attention as part of the extensive modern literature canvassed by Maund and Robinson. Pritchard’s approach confirms Putnam’s (1994, 3) lament that “each ‘new wave’ of philosophers has simply ignored the insights of the previous wave in the course of advancing its own.” Putnam acknowledges that there have been new insights but at the same time he observes that “there has been an unprecedented forgetting of the insights of previous centuries and millennia.” THE DISTINGUISHABILITY PROBLEM The classical Argument holds that the good case of veridical perception and the bad case of illusion are indistinguishable and, therefore, should be given the same analysis in terms of intermediate, direct objects of perception or sense data. In this way, Searle describes the Bad Argument as leading to the mistake of “supposing that we never directly perceive objects and states of affairs in the world but directly perceive only our subjective experiences” or phenomenal intermediaries. Rorty (1979, 60) was centrally concerned with this ‘veil of ideas’ conception which he says was the “‘idea’ idea (blandly presupposed by Hume)” and “the one Reid despairingly protested against.” Of course, as we saw in Chapter 9, Reid was preceded by Arnauld who also despairingly protested against the same conception among his contemporaries. Far from providing “the holy grail of epistemology,” Searle points out that, despite its long history, Disjunctivism and the Representative view remain “the central mistake of modern epistemology” and the “single greatest disaster” in philosophy today. We have seen that the modern problem for epistemic internalism was anticipated by Descartes’ conception of the réalité formelle of representational ideas in the Third Meditation. Ideas considered “simply as modes of thought” are indistinguishable since “they all appear to come from within me in the same fashion”—essentially Pritchard’s (2012, 21) “distinguishability problem.” In this case, an idea is a purely internal modification of the mind having no representational content or external reference. By contrast, epistemic externalism claims that there is a very direct connection between our beliefs and the relevant ‘worldly’ facts—Descartes’ réalité objective of ideas in virtue of which they differ from each other.3 According to Disjunctivism, perceptual knowledge is supposed to be “paradigmatically constituted by a true belief” but Pritchard acknowledges it is not clear how some perceptual

248

Chapter Twelve

beliefs can be “factive” while introspectively indistinguishable beliefs are illusory. This “distinguishability problem” is evidently Berkeley’s familiar concern about Locke’s Ideas. Martin (2009) explains that no veridical experience of the same kind as an illusion could occur unless the appropriate object existed but, echoing Berkeley, Searle asks “How does he know?” Of course, Pritchard recognizes the inherent difficulty in the claim of distinguishability, candidly admitting “there is something mysterious—bordering on the magical—about the view that makes it seem just too good to be true.” Indeed, we are reminded of similar language used to criticize direct reference in the philosophy of language. Stalnaker (2003, 178) spoke of “obscurantist intentional magic,” Jeshion (2006, 33) referred to a “whiff of a kind of mysticism” and Searle (1969, 87) suggested the conceptions suggest “a movement of the soul.” In the present context, referring to the doctrine of “distinguishability” as a “stunning claim,” Searle points out that the idea that illusions can have the same phenomenological content as veridical experience is not an empirical hypothesis. Rather, it is a stipulation of the thought experiment. The same point is made by Maund (2003, 96) who notes that all that is needed is the claim that it is possible to have illusory experiences that are qualitatively identical to veridical experiences.4 Searle’s mockery is apt: When Descartes postulated the possibility of an evil demon, he had not done a lot of empirical studies of evil demons and found that they had the capacity to produce hallucinations that are the same as veridical experience (Searle’s 2015, 167).

Crucially, Searle (2015, 171) asks: Why would anyone want to insist that veridical and hallucinatory experience must be different in the absence of any grounds and contrary to the stipulation of the thought experiment? He suggests that Disjunctivists decide for unspecified “philosophical reasons” to treat true and illusory beliefs as radically different. Without the distinction, we appear forced to deny Naïve Realism, but this is merely a statement of the Disjunctivist doctrine. As throughout the book, we may press further to examine these unspecified “philosophical reasons.” That is, we may ask why Disjunctivists insist that some of our sensory experiences are presentations of an objective, independent reality.5 It is not difficult to see that this insistence has a familiar, unstated motivation revealed in the locutions we have noted. GETTIERED BELIEFS (AGAIN) Speaking of beliefs which have “essential connection to the worldly facts,” and experiences that are “paradigmatically constituted by a true belief” is a commitment to “a certain mind-world relation” (Fodor 1995, 1) and recalls



Disjunctivism 249

Bealer’s (1998, 202) claim that intuitions have a “strong modal tie to the truth.” We are reminded of Foucher’s criticism of Malebranche for confusing matters of faith with matters of reason and taking all knowledge to be revelation (Pike 2003, 9). Similarly, after having considered the Gettier Problem, we may have a sense of déjà vu. We saw the same assumption about true belief involving Gettier situations and proper names which depend on a tacit appeal to the philosopher’s “omniscience.” The comparison with Gettier cases is no accident as we see in a typical discussion. According to Pritchard (2012, 1–4), the Disjunctivist approach to perceptual knowledge involves the integration of both internalist and externalist components in a hybrid account. On the one hand, internalist theories require that knowledge is grounded on “reflectively accessible” rational support or justification. However, as we have noted, such internalism “struggles” to show how our ‘worldly’ beliefs can bear any “essential connection” to the world. On the other hand, therefore, externalist theories require that knowledge be grounded on “truth-conducive processes of belief formation” (Doyle et al., 2019, 3). In other words, justification for a claim that p is not sufficient for knowing that p. Accordingly, on the hybrid account, knowing that p involves both a justification and also something further, namely, that the belief that p is true (McDowell 1998, 400). To qualify as knowledge, a belief should be both justified and true. As we have seen, this formula is familiar to any student of Analytic philosophy. McDowell (1998, 403) argues that the problem arises from the fact that hybrid conceptions of knowledge allow for accidentally true beliefs to count as knowledge. Of course, this is just a restatement of the notorious Gettier Problem involving “veritic luck” as we saw in Chapter 11. Indeed, Pritchard (2019, 44) makes the parallel with beliefs that are easy to “Gettierize” saying that there can be true beliefs that are “fully attributable to the subject’s manifestation of cognitive agency while nonetheless being only luckily true.” He notes the relevance of Gettier also in a passing footnote in his book (2012, 57) but declines to pursue it on the grounds that “it will take us too far afield” from paradigmatic perceptual knowledge. In the light of our discussion of Gettier, the significance of the parallel is seen in McDowell’s response to the problem. In the usual jargon, McDowell (1998, 386–387) explains an experience might be a mere appearance but in other cases it might be “the fact that such-and such is the case making itself perceptually manifest to someone.” In plain English, justification somehow guarantees the truth of beliefs, an externalist condition that “one’s belief be not only justified, but true” (Doyle ed. 2019, 6). McDowell gives no indication of the means for guaranteeing that the truth is made “perceptually manifest,” but it should be clear that this condition implicitly entails the “omniscience” of the philosopher-narrator.

250

Chapter Twelve

RELATIVE PLAUSIBILITY These problems concerning perception have an intimate connection with independent problems in the philosophy of science which illuminate the philosophical puzzles we have been considering. In both cases the problem is how to make the “essential connection” of our representations with the world they purport to be about. Analogous to the question regarding perception, Papineau (1996, 1) explains the leading concern of the philosophy of science is the question “whether we are justified in believing scientific theories, and what attitude we should take to them if we can’t.” Faced with this question concerning our best scientific theories, an appropriate response would be, in any given case, to rehearse the evidence and other explanatory considerations on which the theory in question is based. What else would satisfy a worry about whether we are justified in believing a certain theory? But of course, this response appears to miss the challenge of metaphysical anti-realism in the way that Samuel Johnson’s kicking a stone fails to answer Berkeley’s “ingenious sophistry.” Similarly, G.E. Moore’s (1925) famous “refutation” of idealism consists of reciting a long list of commonplace beliefs and truisms such as the certainty that we have a body and that the earth has existed for very many years. In this vein, Moore famously gestures with his own hands to prove that there is an external world. This defence of the common-sense view of the world has been regarded as a masterpiece of Analytic philosophy but it has also been received with bafflement. Lycan (2001, 39) suggests many philosophers have rejected Moore’s argument because it obviously begs the question against idealism “pretty crassly.” However, such rejections miss the point of the crass question-begging. Lycan seeks to rescue Moore’s argument from this charge by construing it as urging the relative plausibility of ordinary common-sense views over the extravagant metaphysical doctrines. Lycan (2001, 39) says “He is only modestly inviting a plausibility comparison.” However, on the contrary, I suggest that Moore’s argument is undeniably, indeed deliberately, question-begging, but not merely or naïvely so. It is hard to believe that Moore didn’t understand its apparent inadequacy. Indeed, Moore’s appeal to naïve common-sense reminds us of Reid’s admission that he finds himself “classed with the vulgar” who are “unpractised in philosophical researches.” The failure to appreciate the significance of Moore’s argument here is of a piece with the critical reaction to Moore’s (1942, 14) remark that philosophical problems only occurred to him from what other philosophers have said and not from the world or the sciences. Crane (2015, 83) reports that this remark has been taken to indicate Moore’s “superficiality” since “real” philosophers “just think philosophically and don’t need the stimulation of other writers.” This



Disjunctivism 251

self-serving interpretation of Moore attributes an unlikely naïveté to him and misses the implied criticism, namely, that philosophical problems are misconceived, indeed absurd. In the present case concerning idealism, Moore’s point has been missed precisely because his argument is intended to be blatantly question-begging in order to reveal an important feature of the philosophical problem, namely its extravagant nonsense. Contrary to Lycan’s analysis of Moore as arguing for the relative plausibility of ordinary common-sense views, even the greatest possible degree of plausibility cuts no ice with the anti-realist metaphysician. An early commentator on Moore answers Lycan. Alice Ambrose (1942, 401), pointed out that any attempt at a “proof” against the skeptic which appeals to the usual kinds of plausible empirical evidence will be unacceptable to the skeptic. The skeptic’s peculiar philosophical claim is not just that we don’t know certain things because the evidence is insufficient or unavailable in the ordinary ways. Moore’s peculiar argument makes sense when we recognize that the entire realism—anti-realism debate is misconceived and cannot be addressed by the normal plausibility arguments as Lycan proposes. Ambrose (1942, 405) asks “Can one ‘point out an external object’ as one can any kind of thing?” The claim that external objects exist does not come into question in the way the existence of a particular hidden treasure does. In other words, Moore’s attempted proof of “There is an external object” is not at all analogous to “There is a coin in the plate” (Ambrose 1942, 410). She says that the great importance of Moore’s reply is to make one feel as the ordinary person feels, as though there is something ridiculous about the problem (Ambrose 1942, 416). As Lazerowitz (1942, 373) also noted, Moore “calls attention to facts which make important philosophical views look ridiculous.” Joining Reid with the vulgar, it is in this spirit that Moore’s “Defence of Common Sense” justifies his remark about the source of philosophical problems prompted by what other philosophers have said. They are pseudo-problems. RECOILING INTO METAPHYSICAL FANTASY For the same reason, Psillos’ (1999) defence of scientific realism may seem to miss the point of the peculiar philosophical puzzle. By giving an elaborate account of theory acceptance, degrees of belief, confirmation, evidential support and other rational considerations, his defence of realism seems irrelevant to the global metaphysical question as it pertains to our science as such as distinct from the truth of particular theories. Psillos can be best understood with Moore as making the case that there can be no further meaningful question about the ‘reality’ of theoretical posits besides the question of whether the

252

Chapter Twelve

theory is well confirmed and warranted by the usual considerations of rational scientific virtue. Accordingly, it is no answer to assert the relative implausibility of metaphysical doctrines since their apparent force is derived from other considerations. It is in this sense that Psillos’ argument and Moore’s “proof” have an obvious affinity with Johnson’s kicking a stone which is also egregiously question-begging. The key insight is that such responses are, in a certain sense, the only possible answer. Or, as Rorty (1991, 52) says, they are not arguing against the anti-realist’s answers but against their questions. In the spirit of Wittgenstein’s remark that a serious philosophical work could consist entirely of jokes,6 we see the same response to the problem of realism by another author. In reply to the question “What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists?” Woody Allen replies “In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.” Of course, this is Moore’s common-sense position to which philosophy returns according to Putnam (1994) in the form of a “second naïveté.” We see the significance of these question-begging responses in Putnam’s remark that the “natural realist account” is not an alternative metaphysical account but rather it is recognizing the “needlessness and the unintelligibility of a picture that imposes an interface between ourselves and the world.” He says it is important to find “a way to do justice to our sense that knowledge claims are responsible to reality without recoiling into metaphysical fantasy.” Like Moore’s defence of realism, Putnam’s “cultivated” or “second naiveté” is essentially the view of the “ordinary person in the street” that the world exists and we have direct knowledge of it through our perceptions as well as through our scientific theories. In particular, Putnam’s diagnosis indicates the parallel between the distinct puzzles of perceptual and scientific realism. He remarks that the difficulty in seeing how our minds can be in genuine contact with the “external” world is due largely to the “disastrous idea that has haunted Western philosophy since the seventeenth century,” namely, “the idea that perception involves an interface between the mind and the ‘external’ objects we perceive.” In the spirit of Olivi, Arnauld and Reid, Putnam (1994, 10) says “We don’t perceive visual experiences, we have them.” The same point in the scientific case is expressed by Planck responding to Ernst Mach’s instrumentalism. Planck (1970, 26) says that the great scientists Copernicus, Kepler and Newton did not speak about their “world-picture” but rather they spoke about “the world” or about “Nature” itself. The same response to Mach’s anti-realist philosophy of science was given in striking terms by V. I. Lenin: The philosophy of Mach, the scientist, is to science, what the kiss of Judas is to Christ. Mach betrays science into the hands of fideism by ultimately deserting to the camp of idealism (Lenin 1909, 302).



Disjunctivism 253

It is interesting to note that, sounding exactly like Reid, Lenin (1909, 31) remarked “For every scientist, who is not led astray by professorial philosophy. . . sensation is nothing but a direct connection of the mind with the external world.” Not least, Lenin recognized the source of the puzzles in the idea of a Spectator and the “veil of perception:” “The sophistry of idealist philosophy consists in that it takes sensation not as a connection of the mind with the outer world but as a screen, as a wall which separates the mind from the outer world” (Lenin 1909, 31).

Earlier, we noted Rorty’s (1979, 178) challenge to the very idea of metaphysical anti-realism and the conception of some “relation of knowledge to reality” over and above the grounds for justifying beliefs. Psillos’ defence of realism is precisely, as Rorty says, an account of why various beliefs are adopted according to the usual criteria of scientific virtue and constitutes what Fine (1984) refers to as the “natural ontological attitude” or NOA. He explains that we may not be able to avoid yearning for a comforting grip on reality but this is to chase a phantom since we can do no more than follow ordinary scientific practice. In view of our overall theme, Fine offers a significant diagnosis of the spurious yearning of the realist who “tries to stand outside the arena watching the ongoing game, and then tries to judge (from this external point of view) what the point is.” He suggests that the realist is deluded in this conception of standing outside the arena, that is, outside reality. Realism involves a commitment to an unverifiable correspondence with the world. For example, Fine asks “what stance could we take that would enable us to judge what the theory of electrons is about, other than agreeing it is about electrons?” It is in this sense that, like Brandom (2009), Rorty (1999, 32) has argued that “there is little to be said about truth,” and recommends that philosophers should explicitly and self-consciously confine themselves to justification, to what Dewey called ‘warranted assertability.’ THE SCANDAL OF PHILOSOPHY I have suggested, contrary to Lycan’s analysis, if metaphysical claims about reality were merely implausible, they could be assessed on the weight of evidence as substantive scientific claims. By contrast, however, the kind of external support that realism requires is a “God’s Eye point of view” (Putnam 1981, 49). He says that such a notion of “transcendental match between our representation and the world in itself is nonsense” (1981, 134). Indeed, before discovering his “second naiveté,” Putnam’s (1975a, 73) earlier argument for

254

Chapter Twelve

realism held it to be the only philosophy that doesn’t make the success of science a miracle. However, the “no miracles” argument has been criticized as relying on the very inference to the best explanation, like Lycan’s plausibility argument, that is part of the scientific framework being challenged. That is, the question concerning the success of science itself as a whole is crucially different from the question about the merits of individual theories. The global question of an “unobservable reality behind phenomena” (Psillos 1999, xx), that is, behind our scientific or perceptual representations as such, is a spurious one. The problem with the global metaphysical question may be loosely illustrated by Bertrand Russell’s analogous argument: Each man has a mother; therefore, Mankind has a mother. In a footnote in his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant (1781, 34) considered it a scandal of philosophy that the skeptic about the external world had never been successfully refuted. On the other hand, Heidegger’s (1962) response was that the “scandal of philosophy” is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again. In the same spirit, Rorty (1998, 47) expresses impatience with “British and U.S. philosophers’ continued attention to issues about realism and antirealism” and, like Lenin on professorial philosophy, says that he hopes “they will, sooner or later, stop trying to sucker freshman into taking an interest in the Problem of the External World.” Rudolf Carnap (1950) made the same analysis as those just noted, distinguishing external questions from internal questions. The latter are ordinary empirical, scientific matters concerning the existence of entities that may be postulated in statements such as “There is a white paper on my desk,” or “electrons exist.” Carnap (1950, 206) says “The concept of reality occurring in these internal questions is an empirical scientific non-metaphysical concept” and such questions are to be contrasted with external questions “concerning the existence or reality of the system of entities as a whole.” From these [scientific, empirical] questions we must distinguish the external question of the reality of the thing world itself. In contrast to the former questions, this question is raised neither by the man in the street nor by scientists, but only by philosophers. . . . But the thesis of the reality of the thing world cannot be among these [scientific] statements, because it cannot be formulated in the thing language or, it seems, in any other language. (Carnap 1950, 207)

Such external statements correspond with the God’s Eye view noted by other philosophers, and in these cases Carnap says “There is no assertion.” A statement concerning the reality of the entire system of entities is “a pseudostatement without cognitive content.” Indeed, Rorty makes the same point, arguing that since there is no God’s Eye perspective, there is no truth, only



Disjunctivism 255

justified belief. Of course, this was the lesson of the Gettier Problem and is just the contrast between the unattainable claims of metaphysical realism and the “warranted assertability” of ordinary knowledge claims and scientific theories. By means of his question-begging rehearsal of common-sense truisms, Moore’s apparent “superficiality” is just like Rorty’s (1991, 52) distinguishing himself from skeptics “not by arguing against their answers but against their questions.” For Rorty, like Carnap, the very question of “the relation of science to reality” is unclear, and so the skepticism arising from such a conception cannot be answered in the ordinary manner by adducing plausible evidence. If it were a matter of the comparative force of evidence, the realism debate might have been resolved long ago. Pointing to tables and chairs, like kicking a rock or displaying one’s hands does not address the skeptical claims as such, but implicitly poses the question: What else can one do? The illusion of the philosopher’s “omniscience” has been referred to by several writers such as Searle (1983, 230) and Putnam (1981, 49). This vantage point is inherent in the conception of an interface between the mind and the world because it assumes that we can look at our mental representations or scientific theories and compare them to the external world. In other words, as we saw in earlier chapters, the Spectator in the Cartesian Theater is actually the theorist, that is, ourselves, imagining that we can make the mind/ world comparison to judge the reference or resemblance of ideas. This is the basis for the intuition of metaphysical realists and Disjunctivists that the world can make itself “manifest” as an “essential connection” to the world. NOTES 1.  See Doyle et al., (2019, 1). 2.  See Schönbaumsfeld (2019, 113). 3.  See Moreau (2000, 93). 4.  Goldhaber (2021) points out that empirical research in perceptual psychology does not have implications for the truth or falsity of disjunctivism. 5.  See Byrne & Logue (2009, 272). 6. “Wittgenstein once said that a serious and good philosophical work could be written that would consist entirely of jokes (without being facetious).” Norman Malcolm (1984, 27).

Chapter Thirteen

Newcomb’s Problem: Demons, Deceivers, and Liars

TWO BOXES OR ONE? A children’s riddle asks: “What has black and white stripes, looks like a horse and has six legs?” The answer is “A zebra. I lied about the legs.” My suggestion in this final chapter is that Newcomb’s Problem (Nozick 1969) which has stumped philosophers for decades has something of this character. Despite considerable effort and ingenuity there is no consensus on a satisfactory solution. After fifty years of inconclusive discussion, Newcomb’s Problem is generally seen as exposing inadequacies of the current standard theory of rational choice, but I suggest that misleading assumptions built into the very statement of the Problem have diverted attention from the real difficulty, a surprising variant of the Spectator error. As we see presently, the thought-experiment describes a decision problem in which the most plausible normative principles give conflicting recommendations. As Nozick’s original presentation showed, both answers appear to have impeccable credentials as recommendations for the rational choice. The contradiction suggests that something must be amiss in our understanding of decision making. That is, Newcomb’s Problem appears to reveal anomalies in our tacit principles of decision-making of the kind exposed in the tradition of psychological research on ‘heuristics and biases’ following Tversky and Kahneman (1974). In this case Newcomb’s Problem would be an addition to the list of famous “paradoxes” of rationality such as those of Allais (1953) and Ellsberg (1961). These are part of a significant body of evidence suggesting that in decision-making under uncertainty and risk our intuitive judgements violate fundamental principles of optimal behaviour. Indeed, the intellectual gravity of the puzzle is seen in Resnik’s (1987, 111) remark that “this paradox has shaken decision theory to its foundations.” In 257

258

Chapter Thirteen

the same vein Campbell (1985, 3) says “Quite simply, these paradoxes. . . cast in doubt our understanding of rationality.” Jeffrey (1983, 23) declares that Newcomb’s Problem is a rock on which Bayesianism must founder. Despite a vast literature of great technical subtlety and complexity, no clear solution has emerged. Returning to the problem he presented nearly thirty years before, Nozick (1993, 43) observed that the controversy continues unabated and judged that “No resolution has been completely convincing.” The situation is unchanged today. Introducing his recent anthology on the Problem, Ahmed (2018, 14) concludes that after 50 years of debate, neither the “simple question” of what to do, nor the larger question of the best account of practical rationality show any sign of resolution. For his part, Nozick (1993, 41) remained within the standard framework and aimed to “formulate a broadened decision theory to handle and encompass this problem adequately.” In its standard formulation, the infuriating problem involves a choice between two alternatives: Of two boxes A and B, you may choose either to take Box B only, or you may choose to take both boxes A and B. Box A contains $1,000. Box B contains either a million dollars or nothing depending on the prediction of the demon who places the money there. If the demon predicts you will choose only Box B, then he will place the million dollars in it. If he predicts that you will choose both boxes, he will leave Box B empty. This predictor is known from previous experience to be extremely reliable, making correct predictions 95 percent of the time. He makes his prediction, and depending on what he predicts about your choice, either places the million dollars in Box B or not. He departs and can no longer influence the outcome, and then you make your choice. One box or two? Given the high reliability of the demon’s predictions, the principle of subjective expected utility recommends taking only box B since there is almost certainty of winning a million dollars. However, since the demon either places the money or not prior to your choice and can no longer influence the situation, the principle of dominance recommends taking both boxes since you will be $1,000 better off regardless of what the demon has done. There is no point leaving a certain gain of $1,000 when it cannot influence the outcome of the choice. What do you choose? Following Nozick’s original, engaging exposition, Newcomb’s Problem has been invariably presented in this way as a choice for the reader to deliberate about. Nozick writes: Suppose a being in whose power to predict your choices you have enormous confidence. … You know that this being has often correctly predicted your choices in the past … You have a choice between two actions … You know that many persons like yourself, philosophy … teachers and students, etc., have gone through this experiment (Nozick 1969, 114).



Newcomb’s Problem 259

The standard framing of the puzzle in this way has not been seen as problematic. For example, Bermudez (2018, 19) explains typically “you are faced with a Predictor . . .” However, posing the puzzle in this way as a choice requiring deliberation on the part of the reader introduces a subtle, unnoticed difficulty. It is to seduce the reader into the role of decisionmaker rather than theorist. Thus, we see that Nozick makes what he describes as an “unusual suggestion.” It might be a good idea for the reader to stop reading this paper at the end of this section … mull over the problem for a while (several hours, days) and then return. It is not that I claim to solve the problem, and do not want you to miss the joy of puzzling over an unsolved problem. It is that I want you to understand my thrashing about (Nozick 1969, 117).

Indeed, the thrashing about has been characteristic of the literature ever since. Nozick reports that he had put the problem to friends and students with the following result: To almost everyone it is perfectly clear and obvious what should be done. The difficulty is that these people seem to divide almost evenly on the problem, with people thinking that the opposing half is just being silly (Nozick 1969, 117).

We see the same division among academic experts. Bourget and Chalmers (2014, 2022) report regular surveys of professional philosophers who give essentially the same result. In the most recent survey, about thirty percent were one-boxers and about forty percent were two-boxers. In other words, scholars embrace a solution to the choice problem but are divided on which is the right one and the literature has been devoted to arguments defending the preferred choice against its rival. Nevertheless, in this chapter I will suggest that the predicament of the decision-maker is not the same as the explanatory problem for the philosopher. That is, philosophers have agonized over the choice but its paradoxical conditions are not mandatory constraints for the theorist. In this way, the extensive literature has accepted assumptions insinuated in the formulation of the problem, just like information about six legs in the children’s riddle. In other words, we see that that the source of the persistent puzzle is the theorist’s adoption of the standpoint of the subject and the failure to notice the tacit reliance on “an intelligent and comprehending reader”—in this case, an intelligent and comprehending decision-maker. As in other cases we have seen, “the reader is, of course, not at all aware of what he has done or how he has done it” (Chomsky 1962).

260

Chapter Thirteen

GOOFBALL CASE As David Lewis (1979) remarked, some have simply dismissed Newcomb’s Problem as a “goofball” case unworthy of serious attention. On this view, the puzzle created by a science-fictional thought-experiment might be ignored. However, parallels have been noted with real-life decision problems such as common cause or ‘medical Newcomb’ cases. Ahmed (2018, 4) explains that Newcomb’s Problem is not just an interesting intellectual exercise because its abstract structure “seems to apply to cases that really do, or easily could, arise in real life.” He concludes “despite its typically science fictional presentation” Newcomb’s Problem is a realistic choice problem which may be very widespread. Accordingly, the philosophical effort has been mainly devoted to reconciling the scenario of a predicting demon with some plausible causal structure. Nevertheless, I will suggest that these real-life analogs have been crucially misleading by diverting attention from essential features of the science-fiction. Neglecting the precise character and implications of the Predictor’s fictional power has led to missing its role in generating the perplexity and its recalcitrance. Specifically, I challenge the most widely held assumption that Newcomb’s Problem may be given a coherent description consistent with some causal account and, therefore, realized in some way as a meaningful decision. That is, I suggest that Newcomb’s Problem is worthy of attention precisely because it is a “goofball” case of a certain special, indeed familiar, kind. As we noted in earlier chapters, some “goofball” cases like Zeno’s paradoxes force us to seek the flaw in reasoning that leads to an unacceptable conclusion. Newcomb’s Problem has not been approached in this way, since the philosophical task has been conceived as that of reconciling the fictional scenario with some plausible causal structure.1 However, I suggest that the choice involving the predictor is not merely implausible or fantastic in a science-fiction sense, but incoherent in a strictly logical sense. Happily, therefore, we need not draw the usual conclusion that the Problem has shaken decision theory to its foundations and cast in doubt our understanding of rationality. Decision theory is safe because the cognitive illusions are confined to the “biases and heuristics” of philosophers’ reasoning. UNDERDETERMINATION, OBSCURITIES AND AGNOSTICISM The failure of efforts to find a causally plausible account of the Newcomb story have led some to conclude only that the problem is under-determined or too obscure to permit univocal solution. Thus, McKay (2004) concludes



Newcomb’s Problem 261

“the right choice depends on extra information about the actions of the predictor not given in standard descriptions of the case.” Levi (1975, 161) also blames under-specification of the choice for the perplexity of the problem. Levi regards the conditions of choice as “too indeterminate to render a verdict between the two options considered.” He suggests that “the details given in standard formulations of the Newcomb problem are too sparse to yield a definite solution according to Bayesian standards” (1982, 337). For this reason, Levi (1975, 164) suggests it is understandable that there should be a radical division of opinion on what to do in view of the “obscurities” in Nozick’s presentation. Accordingly, he declines to be classified as either a “one-boxer” or a “two-boxer” on the grounds of agnosticism. However, this response is symptomatic of difficulties that lie elsewhere. Whereas Levi sees the choice problem as obscure, ill-defined or underspecified, on the contrary, I will show that it is perfectly clear, fully specified but formally paradoxical. It is in this broad sense that my account involving disguised self-reference (Slezak 2006) has an affinity with Sorensen’s (1987) “instability,” Priest’s (2002) “rational dilemma” and Maitzen and Wilson’s (2003) “hidden regress” according to which the problem is ill-formed or incoherent in some way. Belatedly joining the few no-boxers, along these lines Richard Jeffrey (2004) renounced his earlier position that accepted Newcomb’s problem as a genuine decision problem. Jeffrey (2004, 113) suggests cryptically “Newcomb problems are like Escher’s famous staircase on which an unbroken ascent takes you back where you started.” He adds that we know there can be no such thing, though we see no local flaw in the puzzle. Jeffrey did not explain his suggestive remark further but his analogy is apt for a puzzle whose logical features can be precisely articulated. THE SHADOWY PREDICTOR It is illuminating to sketch various manoeuvres by which philosophers have sought to escape from Newcomb’s version of Escher’s staircase. It is stipulated that there is no backward causation and, therefore, one’s choice cannot influence the Predictor’s prior decision. However, in view of the predictor’s success, the central perplexing feature of Newcomb’s Problem is the apparent link between one’s choice and the previously determined contents of the second box. Faced with this inexplicable connection, Gibbard and Harper (1978) adopt a causal approach, Causal Decision Theory (CDT), and propose simply ignoring the apparent link. They recommend the ‘two-box’ solution as rational despite being forced to admit that you will fare worse in choosing it. They explain:

262

Chapter Thirteen

We take the moral of the paradox to be something else: If someone is very good at predicting behavior and rewards predicted irrationality richly, then irrationality will be richly rewarded. (Gibbard and Harper 1978, 369)

However, if “irrationality,” so-called, is richly and consistently rewarded, it must be rational to act in such ways. What principle of rationality would recommend a course of action for every decision in life even if it were known to reliably result in a worse outcome? In the same vein, Burgess (2004) suggests that the greater monetary reward is not necessarily the most desirable. Although this may be a wise precept in life, in the present context, the goal of maximizing monetary gain is a defining condition of Newcomb’s Problem and rejecting it is just refusing to engage with the puzzle. In the same way, refusing to accept checkmate is not a legitimate move in the game of chess. Nevertheless, Lewis (1981b) made a similar response to the taunt: ‘If you’re so smart, why ain’cha rich?’ Unconvincingly, Lewis (1981b, 377) says that riches are reserved for the irrational, and that the irrationality of one-boxers is richly “pre-rewarded.” These arguments may be seen as rehearsing Nozick’s original amusing scenario, merely repeating one position loudly and slowly to opponents. The peculiarity of the apparent link between one’s choice and the previously determined contents of the second box has been the motivation for distinguishing evidential decision theory (EDT) from causal decision theory (CDT) which discounts such spurious connections. Indeed, the very formulation of these two theoretical approaches was motivated by Nozick’s original discussion. The mysterious acausal link prompted Jeffrey’s (1983, 25) earlier characterization of the problem as “a secular, sci-fi successor to the problems of predestination.” Gärdenfors (1988, 337) states the predicament we are taken to confront: “Newcomb’s problem shows that causal independence may occur without probabilistic independence.” However, we need to ask what exactly the phrase “may occur” means in the context of the Problem. McKay (2004, 187) suggests that attention to the predictor “has not yet identified the right question” which must concern the causal influence of one’s choice on the predictor’s decision. However, this is a futile approach since backwards causation is ruled out by stipulation. Of course, McKay is undoubtedly right about the psychological pull of the one-box choice which is intuitively attractive due to “implicit causal reasoning” (2004, 189) about the “shadowy figure of the predictor.” However, for the theorist the “right question” is not whether the choice has “a causal influence on the predictor’s decision” as McKay (2004, 187) suggests. McKay acknowledges that backwards causation is impossible, but she says the reliability of the predictor is so extraordinary “that it undermines your belief that your choice can have no causal influence on the action of the predictor” and even “challenges the



Newcomb’s Problem 263

conviction that the action of the predictor is genuinely in the past” (2004, 188). It is important to notice that reference to “your” belief and conviction does not distinguish between you the decision-maker and you the theorist. In particular, the belief that the choice has no causal influence on actions of the predictor is not open to sceptical doubts since it is a defining stipulation of the Problem. On the other hand, faced with the predictor’s reliability, she says you could come to believe that “there is some cleverly arranged cheating going on” (2004, 188). Indeed, as subjects confronted with the decisionproblem we would be desperate to find some such plausible basis for the phenomenon. However, as philosophers, contrary to the universal assumption, we are under no obligation to find a plausible explanation for a sciencefiction story. That is, the science-fictional nature of the problem frees, indeed precludes, us from wondering about how such a predictor could possibly accomplish his success. PHYSICALLY PLAUSIBLE REALIZATIONS? If Jeffrey’s analogy with Escher’s staircase is apt, there can be no realization of Newcomb’s Problem with a plausible causal structure as commonly assumed. Nevertheless, Schmidt (1998) has been among those concerned to rebut the suggestion that Newcomb’s Problem is ‘incredible’ or cannot occur and seeks to “prevent this beautiful paradox from being classified as physical nonsense” by providing a “physically plausible way in which it can be realized in a classical universe” (1998, 68). Schmidt (1998, 67) claims to show that without causal paradox the player’s choice “influences whether or not, in the past, the predictor put a million pounds into the second box.” Schmidt (1998, 82) holds that Newcomb’s Problem “actually involves backward causation” but he relies on an equivocation on the notion of causation to establish his central claim. Despite his talk of singular event causation, it is clear that this is irrelevant to his concerns which are misleadingly couched in the language of causation but are only about an agent’s subjective impressions. Thus, Schmidt explains that he will not “embark on the enterprise of constructing a general account of causation of my own.” Instead, he restricts himself to the “admittedly rather extraordinary” circumstances in which “we would have the intuition that we can, by an action in the present, influence an event in the past: i.e. that there is backward causation in that particular case” (Schmidt 1998, 69; original emphasis). Of course, this is not backward causation at all. The psychological predicament of the decision maker and his subjective impressions concerning backward causation constitute the problem and not the solution to the puzzle. It becomes evident that the sense

Chapter Thirteen

264

of backward causation that Schmidt claims is merely whether or not there is considered to be backward causation “as a “matter of personal judgement.” His obscure talk of “anthropically oriented causal description” (1998, 82) and asserting “that for our ordinary human purposes, there is backward causation” (1998, 77) is simply a way of saying, on the contrary, that there only appears to be backward causation as a matter of the agent’s subjective impressions and intuitions. This is just an empty re-statement of the intuitive source of the puzzle. Schmidt’s discussion adds nothing to our understanding of the problem, but it reflects universal failure to distinguish the perplexity of the decision-maker from the theoretical problem facing the philosopher. BAD NEWS AND GOOD CHOICES Eells (1982) shares the view we noted earlier by Ahmed (2018), namely, that “At first sight, it seems that there may be important differences between the decision situations of Newcomb’s paradox and those of other, less fantastic, Newcomb situations” but Eells (1982, 192) concludes “I do not think that these are really important differences.” Accordingly, given these analogies, Eells suggests that your choice and the Predictor’s action are independent but are correlated because they have a common cause. For example, “medical” Newcomb problems are ones in which two independent events such as smoking and lung cancer have a common cause (Figure 13.1). In such a case (Fisher 1959), smoking is not itself a cause of cancer but merely a manifestation of a personality trait or desire caused by a gene which also predisposes one to cancer. Smoking is then merely a symptom or indication of bad news that one has the deadly cancer gene, but not itself causally relevant to contracting the disease. The decision to smoke is similar to choosing two boxes in Newcomb’s Problem. One

Figure 13.1.  Common cause of smoking and cancer. Image created by author.



Newcomb’s Problem 265

knows that smoking cannot cause cancer, just as choosing both boxes does not cause the opaque Box B to be empty. The temptation to avoid smoking in order to avoid the disease is plainly irrational since foregoing the pleasure of smoking in no way affects the prior genetic facts. For the same reason causal decision theory (CDT) recommends taking both boxes. To formalize such reasoning, following Meek and Glymour (1994), Hitchcock (2016, 1175) recommends embracing a causal decision metatheory when engaging with a decision problem. That is, we may use graphical causal models to make explicit our assumptions and our questions. Stern (2018) develops this approach using Bayes Causal Nets2 or directed acyclic graphs (DAG) that capture the causal features of Newcomb’s Problem the subject has reason to believe. Stern explains that he does not propose to solve Newcomb’s Problem but only to diagnose it by showing how the competing intuitions depend on the way the choice should be represented. Employing the formal apparatus for reasoning about causal graphs, in the same vein as Eells, Stern suggests “we should search for some common cause:” It is plausible that there is some fact that both informs the predictor’s prediction and causes the subject’s action. For example, the subject’s brain states prior to acting may influence both the predictor’s prediction and the subject’s action (Stern 2018, 204).

We see here the widely accepted view that Newcomb’s Problem is most plausibly understood as a variant of the ‘common cause’ hypothesis. Relying on such analyses, David Lewis (1981, 5) thinks that noncausal or evidential decision theory (EDT) gives the wrong answer because “It commends an irrational policy of managing the news so as to get good news about matters which you have no control over.” Expected utility considerations appear to dictate the impotent manipulation of the cause by trying to suppress its symptoms. Lewis (1981, 8) argues that “To decline the good lest it bring bad news is to play the ostrich” and “The trouble with noncausal decision theory is that it commends the ostrich as rational.” However, Lewis’s case rests crucially on the claim that the news in medical Newcomb cases concerns “matters which you have no control over.” That is, a policy of managing the news “does not at all tend to prevent the evil” since, as he says, “there’s nothing you can do about it now” (1981, 8). Of course, this claim is based on assuming realistically that the only influence you can have now is a causal one and is to simply ignore a crucial feature of the sciencefiction. However, in this respect the medical cases are not strictly analogous to Newcomb’s science-fiction and are crucially misleading. The problematic link between the agent’s decision and the demon’s prediction has no parallel in the real-life medical case and it is for this reason that CDT theorists such as

266

Chapter Thirteen

Gibbard and Harper are forced to concede that their kind of “rationality” produces the worse outcome. The position of Eells (1982, 210) and Ahmed (2018) that there is no essential difference between common cause cases and Newcomb’s Problem is, typically and ironically, to ignore a fictional constraint on the grounds that it couldn’t be real. However, there can be no grounds for insisting on a plausible causal structure for a science-fiction story, and the persistent effort to do so has been largely to blame for the neglect of the underlying conceptual source of the puzzlement created by Newcomb’s problem. TAKING SCIENCE FICTION SERIOUSLY We may examine Eells’ revealing grounds for not taking key features of the science-fiction seriously. He writes: It seems that if the agent is rationally to have enormous confidence in the accuracy of the predictor. . . then the agent must believe that there is a causal explanation for his success, though he may not know what that explanation is, and neither may the predictor. Indeed, it seems presupposed by much of our inductive reasoning that a high statistical correlation has a causal explanation. (Eells 1982, 210-11; emphasis added.)

Up to this point, we see that Eells presents the predicament and reasoning of the agent in making sense of the decision problem according to the canons of inductive, causal reasoning. However, it is significant and typical that Eells slips from consideration of “what the agent must believe” to the perspective of the theorist in the immediately following remarks. He continues: The only kind of causal explanation of the predictor’s success that I can think of that is consistent with the set-up of Newcomb’s paradox is one that invokes a common cause ... Indeed, ... that is the only possibility, since the predictions do not cause the acts and the acts do not cause the predictions. ... Also, it seems that on any plausible account of any kind of successful prediction, the causal structure must be of this form. (Eells 1982, 210-11; emphasis added after first.)

Now Eells, like Stern, offers the common cause analysis as the only plausible account. In doing so, they are clearly conflating the agent’s perspective with that of the theorist seeking to explain the conflict among decision principles. This collapse of the two perspectives has the effect of imposing irrelevant constraints on the theorist who need not, after all, be bound by those of the science-fiction story. Above all, there can be no requirement that an analysis must conform with a plausible causal structure such as Eells’ illustration of weather prediction in the following remarks:



Newcomb’s Problem 267

A successful predictor must have—consciously or unconsciously—a method, in the sense that the predictions are based on observations, conscious or unconscious. And if we look far enough back in the causal chain culminating in the relevant observations, we must be able to find factors that are causally relevant to the event predicted. It is easy to see that this is the causal structure involved in weather prediction, for example (Eells’ 1982, 210-11).

However, the science-fictional nature of the problem should prohibit us from appealing to such comparisons with the weather to explain how the predictor could possibly accomplish his success. All such speculation must be irrelevant to Newcomb’s Problem. While Eells is surely correct in his remark that, on any plausible account, the structure must be of the form of common causes, the point is precisely that we are not required to seek a plausible account for a fantastic fictional story. The effort to do so has not merely involved inventions that go beyond the story’s specifications, but has also, consequently, diverted attention from the actual specific source of the puzzlement generated by the science-fiction. For example, McKay (2004, 188) is explicit suggesting “The right way to approach the Newcomb problem is to attempt to work out the underlying causal structure, just as the causalists prescribe.” My suggestion is that this has been a crucial mis-step. In the same vein, Eells’ analogy with our reasoning in weather prediction is a telling effort to make the puzzle comprehensible on the model of less fantastic situations. Towards this end, significantly, we saw that Eells confesses that the common cause structure is the only kind of causal explanation of the predictor’s success that he can think of. However, solving Newcomb’s problem may be achieved not only by showing how it may be reconciled with some plausible causal structure, but also by revealing exactly why it can’t and, thereby, the source of its paradox. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA Similarly revealing is Burgess’ (2004, 262) suggestion that we consider the problem on the basis “that you are the subject of predictions”—an invitation to consider the philosophical problem from the point of view of the deciding agent. For Burgess, this stance is adopted “simply for ease of exposition,” but the standard resort to the first person is not an innocent expository device. Burgess (2004, 2012) suggests that as decision-maker you are presently in a position to influence the contents of the boxes because “Practically all those who fail to use the problem to become rich are simply ill-prepared” (2004, 284,5). However, since the statistical pattern of the Predictor’s success is a stipulation of the problem, there can be no question of getting rich by

268

Chapter Thirteen

switching commitments in order to trick the predictor. This suggestion recalls the famous story told by W. Somerset Maugham: A servant is frightened when encountering Death in the market place of Baghdad and, taking the master’s horse, flees to Samarra. Recounting the meeting to the master, Death says: “I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.” Despite Burgess’s attempted switcheroo, Newcomb’s Demon, like Death, must be assumed to act on the basis of the truth about your final choice and not merely an irrelevant precursor to it. Nevertheless, Burgess supposes that the Predictor may be imagined as “an extremely technologically advanced fellow” who relies on a brainscan to make his prediction and thinks he can outsmart the Predictor. Burgess (2004, 283) follows Eells’ (1982) analysis of the common cause structure taking Newcomb’s problem to be “a distinctive kind of common cause problem in that you are presently in a position to influence the nature of the common cause.” He suggests “all you have to do to influence it appropriately is to make a commitment to one-boxing”—a strategy unavailable in the ‘medical’ cases because in those “the common cause is something genetic and thus effectively immutable.” We may understand Burgess’s strategy from a revealing remark in which he supposes that we might distinguish the commitment to one-boxing from the actual choice itself, thereby contriving a means to avoid the Predictor’s mysterious powers. Burgess divides the deliberation process into two stages—first, “the point at which the predictor gains the information used as the basis of his predictions” (2004, 279) by means of a brain-scan, and second, when Burgess alleges “the evidence unequivocally supports twoboxing as the rational option.” However, this attempt to split the commitment from the actual choice is a futile attempt to outwit the Predictor in a way that is ruled out by the specifications of the problem. The Predictor cannot be assumed to base his prediction on the wrong or irrelevant, earlier diagnostic brainstate. Clearly, this must be ruled out since, ex hypothesi, as a reliable predictor, the demon will anticipate such a sneaky strategy. In his original article introducing the problem, Nozick (1969, 114) made no mention of brain scans but only “One might tell a science-fiction story about a being from another planet, with an advanced technology and science.” He adds “One might tell a longer story, but all this leads you to believe that almost certainly this being’s prediction about your choice in the situation. . . will be correct.” That is, the story of the brain scan has been introduced as a purely illustrative device to dramatize the Predictor’s abilities. His method of predicting choices is not specified and is not an essential part of the Problem or relevant to the source of its special puzzlement. Nozick (1969, 132) says only “The being gathers his data on the basis of which he makes his prediction.” Thus, we might imagine that the Predictor uses a crystal ball to foretell future



Newcomb’s Problem 269

states of the physical world and, therefore, does not rely on any monitoring of the subject’s brain at all. The problem is unchanged, but precludes any strategy for influencing the prediction. SCHRÖDINGER’S CASH? Undoubtedly the silliest, and at the same time perhaps most revealing, analysis of Newcomb’s problem is the one proposed in a popular book which appeals to a mix of faddish ‘New Age’ Eastern mysticism and quantum physics. Wolf (1981) suggests that your reward of a million dollars by choosing the single closed box is not caused by the Demon’s omnipotence or clairvoyance, since “It only appears that way to our Western preconditioned minds.” Rather, he appeals to Heisenberg uncertainty, quantum theoretic superposition of states and observer effects: ... the million dollars is in paradox-land where it is in the box and not in the box at the same time. Your act of observation creates the choices – money there or money not there, according to whichever you choose. It is your act of observation that resolves the paradox. Choosing both boxes creates box R empty. Choosing box R creates it one million dollars fuller (Wolf 1981, 150).

Like Schrödinger’s cat which is both dead and alive, the money is in a superposition of quantum states, being both in the box and not in the box until you make your choice, whereupon the wave function collapses and voilà! Inevitably, we are inclined to react with amusement at this “solution” since the idea of invoking quantum effects in a fictional story is obviously absurd.3 However, it has not been noticed that invoking classical causation is equally absurd. The natural, scornful reaction to the invocation of quantum physics reflects a failure to recognize the symmetry between invoking quantum physics and invoking classical causation in conventional approaches. We don’t feel the need to invoke a plausible physical mechanism to explain why Wile E. Coyote doesn’t fall after running off a cliff until he notices. Eells’ attempt to give a plausible causal account and McKay’s resort to unknown “causal structure” are just as pointless as Wolf’s appeal to quantum effects. Both approaches are gratuitous inventions just as it would be pointless to speculate about how Cinderella’s carriage turns into a pumpkin.

Chapter Thirteen

270

NEWCOMB’S PROBLEM AS TWIN PRISONER’S DILEMMA Wolf’s (1981) analysis is, in a certain sense, the most illuminating of all. The anomalous link between one’s choice and the contents of the box is captured in his gratuitous resort to correlation without causation. Ironically, Wolf’s appeal to an observer-induced effect draws attention to the crucial peculiarity of the uncaused correlation in Newcomb’s Problem. As we will see presently, the act of choice itself does, in a certain precisely specifiable sense, create the state of box B. Not through quantum effects but through logic. This feature of the puzzle may be appreciated by recasting Newcomb’s problem in a way that reveals its formally paradoxical character. Lewis (1979) recognized that there is a formal isomorphism between Prisoner’s Dilemma and Newcomb’s Problem. That is, the problem may be reproduced as a two-person game in which the outcome of your choices depends on what the other player chooses. Of particular interest is the case in which the players are considered to be duplicates or ‘twins’ who are assumed to be identical. The strategic or normal form representation of the game (Table 13.1) shows your payoffs (your choices in rows, twin’s choices in columns). In this game you are confronted with a decision that is formally identical with Newcomb’s Problem, assuming that the other player is an almost identical replica of yourself. To preserve the parallel, we assume that the doppelgänger is only very likely to make a choice identical with your own. Accordingly, maximizing expected utility requires that you choose one box, since your twin will almost certainly make the same choice and you get one million dollars. Obviously, this is identical with the case in which Newcomb’s demon predicts your choice and places the million dollars in the box. If you choose both boxes according to the dominance principle, your twin will almost certainly make the same choice and you will both receive only $1,000, just as if the demon accurately predicts your choice. Your hope of gaining $1,000 plus one million is the hope of choosing both boxes while your counterpart chooses only one, just as in the case of the predictor wrongly predicting your choice. Table 13.1.  Twin Prisoners’ Dilemma decision matrix

2 Boxes

1 Box

2 Boxes

1 Box

$1,000 + 0

$1,000 + $1 Million

0

$1 Million



Newcomb’s Problem 271

Figure 13.2. Twin Prisoners’ Dilemma game tree. Image created by author.

There is a striking consequence for Newcomb’s problem to be drawn from Lewis’ insight. In Twin Prisoners’ Dilemma our own choices are replicated by the other player by analogy with the Demon’s predictions. Since the other player is a mirror-image of one’s self, the fiction of the predictor in the original Newcomb’s Problem is a way of contriving a Prisoner’s Dilemma against one’s self. The other player is actually one’s self mediated or reflected by the imaginary Demon. We see that appeal to extra information to reconcile the Problem with some possible physical realization is a diversion from this hidden self-referentiality. Newcomb’s demon is simply a device for externalizing and reflecting one’s own decisions. As decision-maker you are, in effect, trying to predict your own choice. This hidden circularity facing the decision-maker may be illuminated differently by considering its formulation as a standard game-tree or extensive form (Figure 13.2). In this representation we may assume that the Demon makes his decision following the agent’s choice, though without knowing what the agent’s move was. This makes no material difference to the problem, but permits representing its logic more clearly. Thus, as agent we are to choose either one box or two, whereupon the Demon makes his move, not knowing what we have decided, basing his own action on his reliable knowledge of our behaviour as in the usual formulation. As we contemplate our best move at the leftmost node, we consider the next level in this game tree representing the Demon’s decision, which is actually a representation of the very same node of the tree that we currently occupy. That is, the branches from the second level nodes are copies of the first node branches, since they represent the Demon’s imagined reflection on our decision at the first node. As we deliberate, using this decision tree, we represent the Demon’s deliberations as representing our own. The

272

Chapter Thirteen

self-referentiality is disguised by the usual formulations. From the diagram, we readily see the circularity implicit in Newcomb’s problem. DELIBERATION CROWDS OUT PREDICTION There is an evident problem arising when a deliberating agent adopts the posture of a Spectator concerning their own performances. In such cases, the agent cannot adopt a predictive or explanatory attitude towards their own choices at the very time that deliberation is taking place. Levi (1997, 81) says the agent cannot coherently assign unconditional probabilities to hypotheses as to what he will do for “Deliberation crowds out prediction,” or as Schick (1979, 243) puts it, “logic alone rules out our knowing the whole truth about ourselves.” Levi (1997, 32) remarks that prediction is precluded only for someone predicting his own rational choice in the current context of deliberation. Notoriously, intractable puzzles arise when deliberations attempt to accommodate prior determination or fore-knowledge of the choice itself (Popper 1950). Neither Levi nor Schick appear to offer this analysis of self-referential paradox specifically as a diagnosis of Newcomb’s problem. However, this analysis reveals the source of the Problem’s peculiar obduracy and corresponds with ‘rational dilemmas’ in which one is required to do the impossible. For such pathologies “Ex hypothesi, rationality gives no guidance on the matter” (Priest 2002, 15). NEWCOMB’S MALIN GÉNIE As we contemplate our best move, we consider the Demon’s decision, which is actually based on this very choice we are deliberating about. In doing so, we are, in effect, representing the Demon’s deliberations as representing our own. The hypothesis of such a demon requires us to conceive that he is contemplating our current reasoning. By representing the fiction of the Demon predictor, we represent our own representations. We see the vicious circularity, the self-reference implicit in Newcomb’s problem by which you are, in effect, attempting to predict your own choice. The puzzle arises through the effort to represent the demon’s reasoning, which in turn represents our own. Of course, the puzzle arises in this way for the decision-maker faced with the choice which is not the situation of the philosopher theorist. The foregoing analyses suggest that the puzzle has important affinities with notorious self-referential paradoxes such as the Liar. In the same vein, Maitzen and Wilson (2003, 155, 160) make a significant but misleading analogy. They suggest that the puzzlement of Newcomb’s Problem arises from an

Newcomb’s Problem 273



infinitely long, infinitely complex proposition that is incomprehensible and, therefore, “no one can understand the circumstances presupposed in the problem.” They suggest that “something can look comprehensible without being so” as in their illustration of the Liar paradox. Their analogy with the Liar is closer than they appear to think, but the moral to be drawn from it is quite different. Maitzen and Wilson (2003, 159) suggest that “the classical Liar sentence makes trouble only because people mistakenly take it to mean something.” They explain that “Every constituent of the sentence is comprehensible, but, arguably, the sentence itself is not.” On the contrary, however, the classical problem of the Liar arises precisely because the sentence is perfectly meaningful and appears to be both true and false. The paradox with its contradictory truth values would not arise if the Liar sentence were meaningless. Maitzen and Wilson miss the precise way in which the Liar paradox does indeed illuminate Newcomb’s problem when the analogy is properly understood. When the self-referential nature of the agent’s deliberations is noticed, it becomes clear that the situation is analogous to the family of related conundrums arising from ungrounded propositions (Herzberger 1970) including diagonalizations such as the Liar Paradox. These features of the problem may be seen in a puzzle by Skyrms (1982) that eliminates the complexities of the conflict between expected utility and dominance principles of decision-making. In this case, the choice that secures the reward depends on the prediction of a ‘mean demon.’ Given a choice between two boxes, if the mean demon expects you to choose box X, he will put the money in box Y and vice-versa. You should choose the opposite of whatever the mean demon thinks you will choose. If the mean demon is reliable, this means that you should choose the opposite of whatever you would choose! The best choice is whatever you decide not to do. The relevant propositional attitudes are given as follows: (1) The mean demon predicts whatever I choose. (2) I choose the opposite of whatever the mean demon predicts. Therefore, (3) I choose the opposite of whatever I choose. Skyrms’ mean demon is evidently another guise of Descartes’ malin génie as we saw in Chapter 4. Just as Descartes’ demon thwarts our knowledge, so Skyrms’ demon thwarts our decisions – and for analogous reasons. Your vacillation between choices is precisely parallel with the familiar alternation of truth values in the Liar paradox where the sentence is successively both true and false, each one leading directly or indirectly to its opposite. Thus, the familiar Liar sentence may be given as:

274

Chapter Thirteen

(p) It is not the case that (p) Contradiction can arise not only directly from a sentence that asserts its own falsehood, but indirectly as in the following pair of sentences: (q) Sentence (r) is true. (r) Sentence (q) is false. Neither of these sentences is meaningless or paradoxical, but together they generate a contradiction—the ‘deferred’ Liar. By contrast with Skyrms’ mean demon, Newcomb’s Predictor is not “mean” in the exactly same way but the Problem has the same structure of such indirect or deferred paradox in which the self-reference is mediated by intervening steps. The fictional predicting demon serves as an intermediary to externalise what is, in fact, a loop in one’s attempt to second-guess one’s self. This is analogous to the way in which the ungrounded sentences as in the Liar Paradox can be extended via intermediary agents whose beliefs extend the loop and thereby avoid a direct self-reference and contradiction in the manner of sentences (q) and (r) above. In Newcomb’s case too, the self-referential nature of the puzzle is obscured by the supposition of an intermediary predictor-demon, though it only extends the loop and does not essentially alter the self-referring nature of the decision problem. EXPERIMENTALLY REALIZING THE PREDICTOR To confirm my analysis, I propose an empirically realizable arrangement that precisely reproduces the choice situation of the agent in Newcomb’s Problem. We saw that Schmidt (1998) describes his proposal as a “strange but possible story” but his tiny sub-particle, super-predicting “dwarf” creatures whose scientific knowledge is millennia ahead of our own is surely questionable on the grounds of plausibility. However, the essential features of Schmidt’s story, like that of Burgess, involving a brain-scan can be re-cast in a form that is realizable in practice and tested in an actual experimental set-up with available techniques employing well-known facts of neuroscience. An experiment permits confirming the foregoing suggestions about the structure of the problem. Libet’s (1985) work on the subjective delay of consciousness of intention and the so-called “readiness potential” or “preparatory response” provides a means for a laboratory simulation of Newcomb’s Problem. We may obtain precise, reliable predictions of a subject’s actions from the prior state of their brain in a way that does not depend on any utopian neuroscience. EEG recordings from scalp electrodes show that the

Figure 13.3. The New Yorker: Saul Steinberg (June 30, 1962). ARS/Copyright Agency, 2022.

276

Chapter Thirteen

instant of a subject’s conscious decision is between 350 and 400 milliseconds later than the onset of cerebral electrical activity that is the substrate of the voluntary action. These “readiness potentials” show that voluntary actions are preceded by unconscious neural activity and, as Dennett (1991, 163) puts it, “your consciousness lags behind the brain processes that actually control your body.” These data are not particularly surprising despite the seeming paradox for our naïve notions of free-will. However, my concern here is with the opportunity these phenomena provide for generating a laboratory experiment in which a subject may be confronted with a precise simulation of Newcomb’s decision problem. It is a trivial matter to connect the scalp electrodes to a computer screen in such a way that detection of the readiness potential would be a reliable prediction of the subject’s choice and would cause a million dollars or nothing to be placed in the opaque box – before the subject consciously “makes the decision.” Since this would happen in the milliseconds prior to the subject’s conscious decision, it would be a prediction by the computer of the subject’s choice. It is clear that this experimental arrangement is a precise parallel to standard accounts of Newcomb’s Predictor relying on a brain-scan or other such suppositions. The electrodes rely on neurological activity to predict the subject’s decision, and the money is either placed in the opaque box or not according to the usual rule. In every relevant respect, this arrangement would reproduce Newcomb’s Problem from the subject’s point of view while making perfectly clear the source of the puzzle along the lines we have seen. The decision-maker is unwittingly playing the game against himself. CHEATING THE SUBJECT AND ELIMINATING THE DEMON Finally, the technical difficulties of exploiting the readiness potential may be avoided altogether without altering the inherent logic of the scenario. The same analysis may be more conveniently and more convincingly demonstrated by a modification of the experiment that dispenses with the experimental methods altogether while preserving the essential features. This time, the computer simulation of the Demon’s prediction and box contents may be arranged so that a touch-screen or push-button registers the subject’s choice. However, an illusion of predicting the choice may be created by having the computer-simulated ‘demon’ place the money in the opaque box (or not) at the instant after the subject indicates his choice, but before the contents of the box are revealed. In other words, the subject’s actual choice is used to give the appearance of having been predicted. In any case, strictly speaking, in determining the contents of Box B, there is no essential difference between pre-diction and post-diction here. Although



Newcomb’s Problem 277

cheating in an obvious sense, the subjective impression on the chooser would be identical with the case of genuine prediction by means of a brain scan. It should be clear that there is no essential difference from Newcomb’s original problem, but in this case its logical structure is now completely transparent: Although the subject does not know it, their deliberations are plainly attempting to incorporate the outcome of their own current decision into the very deliberations themselves, thereby unwittingly violating the precept of Schick and Levi. Above all, we see that the puzzle for the decision-maker is not the same as the problem for the philosopher. We tacitly accept the conditions of the problem which need not be constraints on the theorist’s analysis. We deliberate about the agent’s choice and thereby collapse the distinction between theorist and subject in a way that is analogous to other examples of the Spectator in the Cartesian Theater. From this standpoint, mental images are seen, meanings are understood and choices are made by the theorist rather than explained by the theory. NOTES 1.  See Eells (1982), Schmidt (1998), Burgess (2004, 2012), McKay (2004), Levi (1975) 2.  See Pearl (2009), Spirtes, Glymour & Scheines (2000). 3. See also Ahmed and Caulton (2014) who argue that that Causal Decision Theory (CDT) faces a serious challenge from quantum mechanics. Cavalcanti (2010) makes a similar argument. Koberinski, Dunlap and Harper (2019) respond that quantum theory does not provide grounds for favouring Evidential Decision Theory EDT over CDT.

Conclusion

To lose one parent. . . may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. Oscar Wilde (1894)

Finally, we may draw the threads together by reflecting upon the themes of the book and what the diverse problems in foregoing chapters have in common. I have argued that long-standing controversies in various domains of philosophy and psychology share a seductive error in different guises. If their connections seemed unlikely at the outset, they may appear obvious in retrospect. Moreover, the diagnosis in one domain gains support by discovering that the same analysis applies independently in other unrelated domains. The most popular doctrine in each case appears to be a variation on the theme of the Spectator in the Cartesian Theater. Adapting Oscar Wilde, it is tempting to say that to make one such mistake may be regarded as a misfortune but to make several looks like carelessness. I have argued that the metaphor of the Spectator when properly understood captures our tendency to rely on certain intuitive cognitive or perceptual faculties when theorising about them. For example, pictures and sentences are taken to be models of thought just as we identify the reference of names in an intuitive rather than explanatory sense. In such cases, the theory gives the illusion of success because the theorist is unwittingly doing an essential part of the work. In other cases, a theory may give the illusion of explanatory failure for the same reason. Thus, materialist theories of mind, internalist accounts of meaning and computational symbols are considered to be inappropriate because they are not intelligible to us in the same way. In such cases, theories are said to “leave out” a crucial feature that would provide an intuitive understanding of “what it’s 279

280

Conclusion

like.” We have seen that a theory of meaning is thought inadequate because it can’t be intuitively understood, just as a theory of pain is thought to be inadequate because it doesn’t hurt. In other words, the conflation of the theorist with their subject means that theories are judged according to whether they are intelligible rather than whether they are explanatory. The seductiveness of this mistake arises, for example, because we can’t help understanding utterances in our own language or seeing pictures as meaningful perceptual objects. Warning against this comprehensibility, Fodor’s (2007c) remark serves as the motto of the book “The question is not what is obvious to the theorist; the question is what follows from the theory.” With this insight, we recognize the relevance of other metaphors including the Omniscient Observer of history and the God’s Eye viewpoint. In the referentialist account of proper names, as in the Gettier Problem, what is obvious to the theorist takes the form of knowledge of a truth not available to the subject, an assumption of “omniscience.” I suggested that these are variations of the “false belief” task of Wimmer and Perner (1983) in which the child’s ascription of beliefs to someone is based on the child’s own knowledge of the truth rather than on the other person’s justified beliefs. As Pinker (2014) says, we are all prone to this “reality bias” or “curse of knowledge.” In Newcomb’s Problem, what is obvious to the theorist takes the form of conditions on an agent’s choice that are needlessly accepted by the theorist. In such cases, philosophers make a mistake that children grow out of by the age of four. In view of the strong “pull of subjective experience,” Pylyshyn (2007, 124) recommends that we adopt a counter-intuitive stance to avoid the seduction of intelligibility and meaningfulness. That is, we “objectify” the phenomena, “making them strange” in order to study them scientifically. This is to adopt the stance of Chomsky’s Martian scientist and it was the point of Chomsky’s quip that taking the perspective of the bee is no help to the entomologist. We are reminded of Wittgenstein’s question about what gives life to a symbol that otherwise seems dead. The answer is our own intelligence, and we are invited to withdraw our own contribution that gives life to symbols. It was in this spirit we noted Galileo’s remark that philosophy would be more perfect if people had been born blind, because we might have avoided many false assumptions taken from the sense of sight. It was the same sentiment expressed in Fodor’s joke that he tries never to think about consciousness. This must be understood with Wittgenstein (1953) and Avramides (2001) as not thinking about consciousness from the first-person point of view. Of course, this is precisely the insight of Dennett’s “heterophenomenology.” Remote from the problems of philosophy, the writer Vargas Llosa (1975, 221) explains the “surreptitious” literary device of the omniscient narrator through which a fictitious reality appears natural to the reader. The naturalness



Conclusion 281

and invisibility of this device in literature is characteristic of its seductiveness in philosophy as well. “Instead of passing judgment directly, the author does so from his invisible standpoint, deviously.” Thus, we hear words rather than meaningless sounds and we see objects rather than patches of light, just as we know the truth about Ortcutt, that Londres is London and that Gödel plagiarized Schmidt. That is, we know the connection between a name and its bearer regardless of a speaker’s ignorance or error and, in the same way, we know that there is a sheep in the field despite the farmer’s lucky mistake. Fodor’s warning about what is obvious to the theorist, helps us to recognize the common error in various theories whose formulation depends on the theorist’s competence under investigation. This is the key to recognizing that the Theater error must be understood quite differently from the way it has been widely characterized. Indeed, we have seen that, contrary to the entrenched tradition, Descartes was not guilty of the fallacy for, as he explained, it arises, not as the actual supposition of an inner “little man,” but as the failure to notice that we fulfil the need for such an intelligence. It is Descartes, after all, who helps us to see how theories of mind are to be pursued without invoking question-begging pseudo-explanations, the various guises of the Spectator in the Cartesian Theater.

References

Ahmed, A. 2018. ed., Newcomb’s Problem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ahmed, A., & Caulton, A. 2014. Causal decision theory and EPR correlations. Synthese, 191,18, 4315–4352. Allais, M. 1953. Le comportement de l’homme rationnel devant le risque, Econometrica, 21: 50–546. Almog, J. 2005. Replies. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 70, 3, 71–730. Almog, J. 2014. Referential Mechanics: Direct Reference and the Foundations of Semantics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ambrose, A. 1942. Moore’s “Proof of an External World”, in Schilpp, P.A. ed. 1942. The Philosophy of G.E. Moore, Library of Living Philosophers Volume IV. Chicago: Northwestern University Press. Armstrong, D.M. 1968. A Materialist Theory of the Mind, London: Routledge. Armstrong, D. 1973a. Epistemological Foundations for a Materialist Theory of the Mind, Philosophy of Science, 40, 17–93, Armstrong, D.M. 1973b. Belief, Truth and Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Armstrong, D.M. 1980. The Nature of Mind and Other Essays. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Arnauld, A. 1683/1990. On True and False Ideas, Translated with Introductory Essay by Stephen Gaukroger, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Austin, J.L. 1962. Sense and Sensibilia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Avramides, A. 2001. Other Minds, London: Routledge. Ayer, A.J. 1940. The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge. London: Macmillan. Ayer, A.J. 1953. Cogito, Ergo Sum, Analysis 14, 2, 2–31. Bach, K. 1987. Thought & Reference, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Baldwin, T. 2006. Philosophy of Language in the Twentieth Century, in E. Lepore & B.C. Smith eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 6–99. 283

284

References

Balog, K. 2009. Phenomenal Concepts, in B.P. McLaughlin, A. Beckermann and S. Walter eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bar-Hillel, Y., 1970. Indexical Expressions, in Aspects of Language. The Magnes Press, Jerusalem. Barker, S. 2006. Wettstein’s Prism, Philosophical Books, 47, 1, 1–24. Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., Frith, U. 1985. Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind?” Cognition 21, 3–46. Bartlett, F.C. 1932. Remembering: a study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barwise, J. and Etchemendy, J. 1987. The Liar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baumann, P. 2010. Kripke’s Critique of Descriptivism Revisited, Pincipios, 17, 27, 16–201. Baz, A. 2012. Must Philosophers Rely on Intuitions, The Journal of Philosophy, 109, 4, 31–337. Bealer, G. 1998. Intuition and the Autonomy of Philosophy, in M.R. DePaul and W.M. Ramsey eds., Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Bechtel. W. 1998, Representations and Cognitive Explanations: Assessing the Dynamicists’ Challenge in Cognitive Science, Cognitive Science 22, 3 29–318. Beck, L.J. 1952. The Method of Descartes: A Study of the Regulae, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Beinlich, I.A., Suermondt, H.J., Chavez, R.M., and Cooper, G.F. 1989. The ALARM Monitoring System: A Case Study With Two Probabilistic Inference Techniques for Belief Networks, Proceedings of the Second European Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. London. Berkeley, G. 1709/2009. An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision. In D. Clarke ed. Berkeley: Philosophical Writings. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, –66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berkeley, G. 1734/1999. Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues, Howard Robinson ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bermudez, J.L. 2018. Does Newcomb’s Problem Actually Exist? In A. Ahmed ed., Newcomb’s Problem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Besheer, K. 2009. Descartes’ Doubts: Physiology and the First Meditation, The Philosophical Forum, 40, 5–97. Bianchi, A. 2011. Reference and Descriptions, in M. Sbisà, J. Östman, J. Vershueren eds., Philosophical Perspectives for Pragmatics, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bianchi, A. 2012. Two Ways of Being a (Direct) Referentialist, in J. Almog & P. Leonardi, Having in Mind: The Philosophy of Keith Donnellan, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bianchi, A. 2020. Reference and Causal Chains. In A Bianchi ed. Language and Reality from a Naturalistic Perspective: Themes from Michael Devitt, Philosophical Studies Series 142, Springer, 12–136. Bianchi, A. and Bonanini, A. 2014. Is there room for reference borrowing in Donnellan’s historical explanation theory? Linguistics and Philosophy 37, 17–203.



References 285

Bickhard, M. 2009. The Interactivist Model, Synthese 166, 54–591. Birnbaum, L. 1991. Rigor Mortis: A Response to Nilsson’s ‘Logic and Artificial Intelligence’. Artificial Intelligence, 47, 5–77. Bitbol-Hespériès, A. 2000. Cartesian physiology, in S. Gaukroger, J. Schuster and J. Sutton eds., Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, London: Routledge, 34–382. Blackburn, S. 1984. Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Blackmore, S. 2016. Delusions of Consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23,11–12, 52–64. Block, N. 1981. Introduction: What is the issue? In N. Block ed., Imagery. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Block, N. 1986. Advertisement for a Semantics for Psychology, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, 61–678, University of Minnesotta Press. Reprinted in S. Stich and T.A. Warfield eds., Mental Representation: A Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994, 8–141. Boghossian, P. 1998. What the Externalist Can Know A Priori, in C. Wright, B.C. Smith & C. Macdonald eds., Knowing Our Own Minds, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Booth, A.R. 2014. The Gettier Illusion, the Tripartite Analysis, and the Divorce Thesis, Erkenntnis 79, 62–638. Borges, R., de Almeida, C., and Klein, P.D. eds., 2017. Explaining Knowledge: New Essays on the Gettier Problem. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bourget, D. and Chalmers, D.J. 2014. What Do Philosophers Believe? Philosophical Studies 170, 46–500. Bourget, D. and Chalmers, D.J. 2022. Philosophers on Philosophy: The 2020 PhilPapers Survey, forthcoming Philosophers’ Imprint. https://philarchive.org/archive/ BOUPOP-3 Bower, G.H., Karlin, M.B. & Dueck, A. 1975. Comprehension and Memory for Pictures, Memory & Cognition, 3, 2, 21–220. Bowie, Andrew. 2016. “Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy: The Art of Understanding.” In The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics, edited by Niall Keane and Chris Lawn, 45 – 53. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell. Brandom, R. 1994. Making It Explicit, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Brandom, R. 1997. Study Guide to Sellars’ Empiricism & the Philosophy of Mind, Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. Brandom, R. 2000. Articulating Reasons, Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Brandom, R. 2009. Why Truth Is Not Important in Philosophy, in his Reason in Philosophy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Braun, D. 1993. Empty Names, Nous, 27, pp. 44–69. Bricke, J. 1980. Hume’s Philosophy of Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bridgman, P. 1960. Some Comments on Dimensions of Mind, in S. Hook ed. Dimensions of Mind, New York: Collier Books, 9–92. Brook, A. and Stainton, R.J. 2000. Knowledge and Mind: A Philosophical Introduction, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

286

References

Brown, J. 2017. The Gettier Case and Intuition. In R. Borges, C. de Almeida and P.D. Klein eds., Explaining Knowledge: New Essays on the Gettier Problem. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19–212. Buckle, S. 2001. Hume’s Enlightenment Tract, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burge, T. 1988. Individualism and Self-Knowledge, The Journal of Philosophy, 85, 64–63. Burge, T. 2012. Referring De Re, in J. Almog & P. Leonardi eds., Having in Mind: The Philosophy of Keith Donnellan, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burgess, S. 2004. “The Newcomb Problem: An Unqualified Resolution, Synthese, 138, 26–287. Burgess, S. 2012. Newcomb’s Problem and its Conditional Evidence: A common cause of confusion, Synthese, 184, 31–339. Byrne, A and Logue, H, eds. 2009. Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Campbell, J. K., O’Rourke, M. and Shier, D. eds. 2002. Meaning and Truth: Investigations in Philosophical Semantics, New York: Seven Bridges Press. Campbell, R. 1985. Background for the Uninitiated, in R. Campbell & L. Sowden eds., Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation. Vancouver. The University of British Columbia Press. Capuano, A. 2012. The Ground Zero of Semantics, in J. Almog and P. Leonardi eds., Having in Mind: The Philosophy of Keith Donnellan, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carnap, R. 1950. Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 4, 2–40; reprinted in Supplement to Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic, Second edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956. Carruthers, P. 1996. Language, Thought and Consciousness: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carruthers, P. 1998. Thinking in Language? Evolution and a Modularist Possibility, in P. Carruthers and J. Boucher eds., Language and Thought: Interdisciplinary Themes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carruthers, P. 2002. The Cognitive Functions of Language, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 65–726. Cavalcanti, E. G. 2010. Causation, decision theory, and Bell’s theorem: A quantum analogue of the Newcomb problem. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 61, 3, 56–597. Chalmers, D. 1996. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chalmers, D. 1997. Moving Forward on the Problem of Consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4, 1, –46. Chalmers, D. 2002. Does Conceivability Entail Possibility? In T. Gendler and J. Hawthorne eds., Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 14–200.



References 287

Chalmers, D. 2004. Phenomenal Concepts and the Knowledge Argument, in P. Ludlow, Y. Nagasawa and D. Stoljar eds., There’s Something About Mary, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Chalmers, D. 2007. Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap, in T. Alter and S. Walter eds., Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chalmers, D. 2018. The Meta-Problem of Consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25, –10, –61. Chase, W.G. and Simon, H.A. 1973. Perception in Chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4, 5–81. Chisholm, R.M. 1966. Theory of Knowledge. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Chomsky, N. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Chomsky, N. 1959. Review of Verbal Behavior by B.F. Skinner, Language 35, 2–58. Chomsky, N. 1962. Explanatory Models in Linguistics, in E. Nagel. P. Suppes & A. Tarski, eds., Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Stanford University Press, 52–550. Chomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1966. Cartesian Linguistics. New York: Harper & Row; Reprinted Third edition, J. McGilvray ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Chomsky, N. 1975. The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. New York: Plenum/ Chicago University Press. Chomsky, N. 1992. Language and Interpretation: Philosophical Reflections and Empirical Inquiry, in J. Earman, ed., Inference, Explanation, and Other Frustrations, Berkeley: University of California Press, 9–128. Chomsky, N. 1995. Language and Nature, Mind, 104, 413, –61. Chomsky, N. 1996. Power and Prospects: Reflections on Human Nature and the Social Order, Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Chomsky, N. 2000a. The Architecture of Language, edited by N. Mukherji, B.N. Patnaik, R.K. Agnihotri, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chomsky, N. 2000b. New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, N. 2002. An Interview with Noam Chomsky, The Harvard Review of Philosophy, vol. x. Chomsky, N. 2003. Replies in L.M. Antony and N. Hornstein eds., Chomsky and his Critics, Oxford: Blackwell, 25–325. Chomsky, N. 2007. Biolinguistic Explorations: Design, Development, Evolution, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 15 (1), –21. Chomsky, N. 2009. The Mysteries of Nature: How Deeply Hidden? The Journal of Philosophy, 106, 4, 16–200. Chomsky, N. 2012. The Science of Language, J. McGilvray ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, N. 2013. Notes on denotation and denoting. In I. Caponigro and C. Cecchetto eds., From Grammar to Meaning: The Spontaneous Logicality of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3–45.

288

References

Chomsky, N. 2021. Reflections, in A Companion to Chomsky, First Edition. Edited by Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal, and Georges Rey. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Chudnoff, E. 2019. Intuition in the Gettier Problem, in S. Hetherington ed., The Gettier Problem, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 17–198. Churchland, P. 1998. The Rediscovery of Light, in Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland, On the Contrary, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Churchland, Paul 1989. A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Clarke, D. M. 1982. Descartes’ Philosophy of Science, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Clarke, D.M. 2003. Descartes’s Theory of Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cohen, I.B. 1972. Foreword, René Descartes, Treatise of Man, translation and commentary by T.S. Hall, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Coleman, S. 2019. The Enduring Significance of Jackson’s Argument, in S. Coleman ed., The Knowledge Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Collins J. 2020. Conjoining meanings without losing our heads. Mind & Language. 35:224–236. Cook, M. 1994. Malebranche and Arnauld: The Argument for Ideas, E.J. Kremer ed., The Great Arnauld and Some of His Philosophical Correspondents, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Copenhaver, R. 2004. A Realism for Reid: Mediated But Direct, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 12, 1, 6–74. Cottingham, J. 1976. Translator. Descartes’ Conversation with Burman Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cottingham, J. 1992a. “Introduction” The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cottingham, J. 1992b. Cartesian dualism: theology, metaphysics, and science, in J. Cottingham ed., The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cottingham, J. 2005. Why Should Analytic Philosophers Do History of Philosophy, in T. Sorell and G.A.J. Rogers eds., Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cottingham, J. 2008. Cartesian Reflections, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cottingham, J. ed. 1992. The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crane, T. 1996. All the Difference in the World, in A. Pessin & S. Goldberg eds., The Twin Earth Chronicles, New York: M.E Sharpe. Crane, T. 2015. Understanding the Question: Philosophy and its History, in E. Fischer and J. Collins eds., Experimental Philosophy, Rationalism and Naturalism: Rethinking Philosophical Method, New York: Routledge, 7–84. Crane, T. 2019. The Knowledge Argument is an Argument about Knowledge, in S. Coleman ed., The Knowledge Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crane, Tim and Craig French. 2021. The Problem of Perception, Edward N. Zalta ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.



References 289

Crick, F. 1994. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, London: Simon & Schuster. Cummins, R. 1991. The Role of Representation in Connectionist Explanations of Cognitive Capacities, W. Ramsey, S. Stich & D. Rumelhart eds., Philosophy and Connectionist Theory, Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Cummins, R. 1996. Representations, Targets and Attitudes. Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT Press. Cummins, R. 2000. “How Does It Work?” versus “What Are the Laws?”: Two Conceptions of Psychological Explanation, in F. Keil and R. Wilson eds., Explanation and Cognition, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cummins, R. 2002/2010. Truth and Meaning, J.K. Campbell, M.O’Rourke and D. Shier eds., Meaning and Truth: Investigations in Philosophical Semantics, New York: Seven Bridges Press; reprinted in his The World in the Head, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 15–173. Cuneo, T. and van Woudenberg, R., eds., The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cunning, D. 2007. Descartes on the Dubitability of the Existence of Self, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LXXIV, 1, 11–131 Curley, E.M. 1986. Dialogues with the Dead, Synthese 67, 1, 3–49. Curley, E.M. 2006. The Cogito and the Foundations of Knowledge, in S. Gaukroger ed., The Blackwell Guide to Descartes’ Meditations. Wiley-Blackwell, 3–47. Danto, A.C. 1973. Representational Properties and Mind-Body Identity, The Review of Metaphysics, 26, 3, 40–411. Danto, A.C. 1978. The Representational Character of Ideas and the Problem of the External World, in M. Hooker ed., Descartes: Critical and Interpretative Essays. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Danto, A.C. 1989. Connections to the World: The Basic Concepts of Philosophy, New York: Harper & Row. Davidson, D. 1967. Truth and Meaning, reprinted in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, 1–36. Davidson, D. 1970. Semantics for Natural Languages, reprinted in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001, 5–64. Davidson, D. 1973. In Defence of Convention T, reprinted in Inquiries Into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, 6–75. Davidson, D. 1974. Belief and the Basis of Meaning, Synthese 27, 30–323. Davidson, D. 1975. Thought and Talk. In S. Guttenplan ed., Mind and Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press, –23. Davidson, D. 1983. A coherence theory of truth and knowledge, reprinted in The Essential Davidson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 22–241. Davidson, D. 1990. The Structure and Content of Truth, The Journal of Philosophy, 87, 6, 27–328. Davidson, D. 1993. Reply to Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore, in Ralf Stoecker ed., Reflecting Davidson, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 7–84. Davidson, D. 1995. Could There be a Science of Rationality? International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 3, 1, –16.

290

References

Davidson, D. 1999. Intellectual Biography, in L.E. Hahn ed. The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Library of Living Philosophers v. 27. Chicago: Open Court. Davidson, D. 2005. Truth, Language and History, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davidson, D. 2006. The Perils and Pleasures of Interpretation, in E. LePore and B.C. Smith eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Decock, L. & Douven, I. 2011. Similarity After Goodman, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2, 61–75. De Groot, A.D. 1978. Thought and Choice in Chess, Second edition. The Hague: Mouton. Dennett, D.C. 1977/1978a. Critical Notice, The Language of Thought. Mind, 86, 342; reprinted as A Cure for the Common Code in Brainstorms, Montgomery, Vermont: Bradford Books, 9–108. Dennett, D.C. 1978a. Brainstorms, Montgomery, Vermont: Bradford Books reprinted: Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Dennett, D.C. 1978b. Artificial Intelligence as Philosophy and as Psychology, in Brainstorms, Montgomery, Vermont: Bradford Books, 10–126. Dennett, D.C. 1978c. Skinner Skinned, in Brainstorms, Montgomery, Vermont: Bradford Books, 5–70. Dennett, D.C. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Dennett, D.C. 1995. The Mystery of Consciousness: An Exchange, The New York Review of Books, December 21. Dennett, D.C. 2001. The Fantasy of First-Person Science, online paper: http://ase. tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/chalmersdeb3dft.htm Dennett, D.C. 2005. Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/MIT Press. Dennett, D.C. 2007. What RoboMary Knows, in T. Alter and S. Walter eds., Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dennett, D.C. 2011. My Brain Made Me Do It’ Max Weber Lecture, European University Institute Badia Fiesolana I – 50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI). Dennett, D.C. 2013. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. London: Penguin Books. Dennett, D.C. 2015. Why and How Does Consciousness Seem the Way it Seems? in T. Metzinger and J.M. Windt eds., Open MIND. Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. Dennett, D.C. 2016. Illusionism as the Obvious Default Theory of Consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23, 1–12, 6–72. Dennett, D.C. 2017a. From Bacteria to Bach and Back, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Dennett, D.C. 2017b. Papineau vs Dennett: A Philosophical Dispute, TLS, August 2. Dennett, D.C. 2019. Welcome to Strong Illusionism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 26, 9–10, 48–58. Dennett, D. 2022. A challenge: Can self-monitoring be achieved without consciousness? In Josh Weisberg ed., Qualitative Consciousness: Themes From the Philosophy of David Rosenthal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



References 291

De Rosa, R. 2010. Descartes and the Puzzle of Sensory Representation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Descartes, R. [AT] 1969. Oeuvres de Descartes, Adam, C. and Tannery, P. eds. 2nd. Edition. (11 vols.) Paris:Vrin. Descartes, R. [CSM] 1985. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Volumes 1 & 2. Transl. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Descartes, R. [CSMK] 1991. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Volume 3. Transl. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch and A. Kenny. Volume 3. The Correspondence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Descartes, R. 1637/1965. Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry and Meteorology, Trans. P.J. Olscamp, New York: Bobbs-Merrill. Descartes, R. 1649/1989. The Passions of the Soul, translated by S.H. Voss, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Descartes, R. 1662/1972. Treatise of Man. Translation and commentary by T.S. Hall, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Devitt, M. 1974. Singular terms. Journal of Philosophy 71, 183–205. Devitt, M. 1981. Designation, New York: Columbia University Press. Devitt, M. 1989. Against Direct Reference, in P.A. French, T.E. Uehling, H.K. Wettstein eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy 14, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Devitt, M. 1990a. On Removing Puzzles About Belief Ascription, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 71, 3, 16–81. Devitt, M. 1990b. Meanings Just Ain’t in the Head, in G. Boolos ed., Meaning and Method: Essays in Honor of Hilary Putnam, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 7–104. Devitt, M. 1991. Realism and Truth, Second Edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Devitt, M. 1996. Coming to Our Senses: A Naturalistic Program for Semantic Localism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Devitt, M. 2006. Ignorance of Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Devitt, M. 2011a. Experimental Semantics, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 82, 2, 41–435. Devitt, M. 2011b. Wither Experimental Semantics? Theoria, 72, –36. Devitt, M. 2012. Still Against Direct Reference, R. Schantz ed., Prospects for Meaning, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Devitt, M. 2015. Should Proper Names Still Seem So Problematic, in A. Bianchi ed., On Reference, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Devitt, M. 2022. Reflections on Naming and Necessity, Theoria 88, 406–433. Devitt, M., and Porot, N. 2018. The Reference of Proper Names: Testing Usage and Intuitions. Cognitive Science 42, 155–1585. Devitt, M. and Sterelny, K. 1999. Language and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Blackwell. Díaz-León, E. 2010. Can Phenomenal Concepts Explain the Epistemic Gap? Mind, 119, 476, 933-951.

292

References

Donnellan, K.S. 1974/2012. Speaking of Nothing, The Philosophical Review, 83, 1, –31; reprinted in J. Almog and P. Leonardi eds., Essays on Reference, Language, and Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Doyle, Casey, Milburn, Joe and Pritchard, Duncan Eds., 2019. New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism, London: Routledge. Dretske, F. 1986. Misrepresentation. In R.J. Bogdan ed., Belief: Form, Content and Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reprinted in S. Stich & T. Warfield eds., Mental Representation. Oxford: Blackwell 1994, 157–173. Dummett, M. 1973. Frege: Philosophy of Language, New York: Harper & Row. Dummett, M. 1975. What is a Theory of Meaning? in S. Guttenplan ed., Mind and Language, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 9–138; reprinted in his The Seas of Language, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Dummett. M. 1978. Frege’s Distinction Between Sense and Reference, Truth and Other Enigmas, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Dummett, M. 2006. Thought and Reality, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dummett, M. 2007. Reply to John McDowell, in R.E. Auxier and L.E. Hahn eds. The Philosophy of Michael Dummett, Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. 31, Chicago: Open Court. Edelman, S. 1998. Representation is Representation of Similarities, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21, 44–498. Eells, E. 1982. Rational Decision and Causality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Egan, F. 1992. Individualism, Computation and Perceptual Content, Mind, 101, 403, 44–459. Egan, F. 1994. Individualism and Vision Theory, Analysis, 54, 4, 25–264. Egan, F. 1999. In Defence of Narrow Mindedness, Mind & Language, 14, 2, 17–194. Egan, F. 2003. Naturalistic Inquiry: Where Does Mental Representation Fit, in L. M. Antony and N. Hornstein eds., Chomsky and His Critics, Oxford: Blackwell. Egan, F. 2009. Is There a Role for Representational Content in Scientific Psychology? in D. Murphy and M. Bishop eds., Stich and His Critics, Oxford: Blackwell. Egan, F. 2014. How to think about mental content, Philosophical Studies, 170 11–135. Egan, F. 2018. The nature and function of content in computational models, in Mark Sprevak & Matteo Colombo eds., The Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind, Routledge, 24–258. Egan, F. 2020. A Deflationary Account of Mental Representation, in J. Smortchkova, K. Dołęga, K., and T. Schlicht, eds. What Are Mental Representations? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Egan, F. 2022. Deflating Mental Representation: Jean Nicod Lecture. Boston, MA: MIT Press. Elbourne, P. 2011. Meaning: A Slim Guide to Semantics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ellsberg, D. 1961. Risk, ambiguity and the Savage axioms, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 75: 64–669. Evans, G. 1975. Identity and Predication, The Journal of Philosophy 72, 13 (17 July), 34–63; reprinted in his Collected Papers. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.



References 293

Evans, G. & McDowell, J. eds. 1976. Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Farah, M.J. 1988. Is Visual Imagery Really Visual? Overlooked Evidence From Neuropsychology. Psychological Review, 95, 3, 30–317. Farkas, K. 2003a. What is Externalism? Philosophical Studies, 112, 18–208. Farkas, K. 2003b. Does Twin Earth Rest on a Mistake? Croatian Journal of Philosophy, III/8, 15–69. Feldman, F. 1973. On the Performatory Interpretation of the Cogito, The Philosophical Review, 82, 3, 34–363. Fine, A. 1984/1996. The Natural Ontological Attitude, in D. Papineau ed. The Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Finke, R.A. 1989. Principles of Mental Imagery. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Finke, R.A., Pinker, S. and Farah, M.J. 1989. Reinterpreting Visual Patterns in Mental Imagery. Cognitive Science, 13, 5–78. Fisher, R.A. 1959. Smoking: The Cancer Controversy. London: Oliver and Boyd. Floridi, L. 2004. On the Logical Unsolvability of the Gettier Problem, Synthese 142, 6–79. Fodor, J.A. 1975. The Language of Thought. New York: Crowell. Fodor, J.A. 1978. Propositional Attitudes. The Monist, 61, 4. Reprinted in Representations: Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science, 1981, Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/MIT Press, 17–203. Fodor, J.A. 1980. Methodological Solipsism Considered as a Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology. Behavioral and Brain Science, 3, 6–109; reprinted in RePresentations, 1981, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 22–253. Fodor, J.A. 1983. The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fodor, J.A. 1984. Semantics Wisconsin Style, Synthese 59, 1984, 23–250; Reprinted in A Theory of Content and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990, 3–49. Fodor, J.A. 1985a. Presentation to the National Science Foundation Workshop on Information and Representation, B.H. Partee, S. Peters and R. Thomason eds., Report of Workshop on Information and Representation, Washington, D.C.: NSF System Development Foundation, 10–117. Fodor, J.A. 1985b. Fodor’s Guide to Mental Representation. Mind, Spring 1985, 5–97. Reprinted in A Theory of Content and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990, –29. Fodor, J.A. 1986. Banish discontent, in J. Butterfield ed., Language, Mind and Logic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fodor, J.A. 1987. Psychosemantics, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Fodor, J.A. 1989. Review Essay: Remnants of Meaning by Stephen Schiffer, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 50, 2, 40–423. Fodor, J.A. 1994. The Elm and the Expert: Mentalese and its Semantics, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fodor, J.A. 1995. Concepts: A Potboiler, Philosophical Issues, 6, –24. Fodor, J.A. 1998a. Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

294

References

Fodor, J.A. 1998b. In Critical Condition: Polemical Essays on Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Fodor, J.A. 2000a. A Science of Tuesdays, London Review of Books, 22, 14, 2–22. Fodor, J.A. 2000b. It’s All in the Mind: Review of Chomsky’s ‘New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind’, TLS, Times Online, June 23. Fodor, J.A. 2002. Don’t Bet the Chicken Coop, London Review of Books, 24, 17, 5. Fodor, J.A. 2003. Hume Variations, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fodor, J.A. 2004. Water’s Water Everywhere, London Review of Books, 26, 2–21, October, 1–19. Fodor, J.A. 2007a. Semantics: an interview with Jerry Fodor. Revista Virtual de Estudios da Linguagem – ReVEL, 5, 8, March, –12. Fodor, J.A. 2007b. Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings. London Review of Books, 29, 20, 1–22. Fodor, J.A. 2008. LOT2: The Language of Thought Revisited, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fodor, J.A. & Lepore, E. 1994. Is Radical Interpretation Possible? Philosophical Perspectives 8: Logic and Language, 10–119; also in Ralf Stoecker ed., Reflecting Davidson, New York: Walter de Gruyter (1993) 5–76. Fodor, J.A. & McLaughlin, B. 1990. Connectionism and the Problem of Systematicity, Cognition, 35, 18–204. Fodor, J.A. & Pylyshyn, Z. 1988. Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture, Cognition, 28, –71. Fisher, R.A. 1959. Smoking: The Cancer Controversy. London: Oliver and Boyd. Føllesdal, D. 1990. Indeterminacy and Mental States, in R.B. Barrett and R.F. Gibson eds. Perspectives on Quine, Oxford: Blackwell, 9–109. Føllesdal, D. 1994. Hermeneutics and the Hypothetico-Deductive Method, in M. Martin and L.C. McIntyre eds., Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Føllesdal, D. 1999. Mind and Meaning, Philosophical Studies, 94, 13–149. Foster, J.A. 1976. Meaning and Truth Theory, in G. Evans and J. McDowell eds., Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Frankfurt, H. 2008. Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen: The Defense of Reason in Descartes’s Meditations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Frankish, K. 2016. Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23, 11–12,11–39. Frege, 1892/1970. On Sense and Reference, in P. Geach and M. Black eds., Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Frege, G. 1884/1980. The Foundations of Arithmetic, J.L. Austin, translator, 2nd revised edition. Chicago: Northwestern University Press. Frege, G. 1918/1956. The Thought: A Logical Inquiry, Mind, 259, 65, 28–311. Freud, S. 1953. Standard Edition of Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. VIII. J. Strachey ed., Hogarth Press, London. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004. Truth and Method, translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Continuum.



References 295

Galilei, Galileo 1610. The Starry Messenger, in Stillman Drake ed., Telescopes, Tides & Tactics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Gallois, A. 2000. The Indubitability of the Cogito, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 81, 36–384. Garber, D. 2005. What’s Philosophical About the History of Philosophy? In T. Sorell and G.A.J. Rogers eds. Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gärdenfors, P. 1988. Causal Decision Theory, P. Gärdenfors and N. Sahlin eds., Decision, Probability and Utility, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Gaukroger, S. 1980. Descartes’ Project for a Mathematical Physics, in S. Gaukroger ed., Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics. Sussex: Harvester Press. Gaukroger, S. 1989. Cartesian Logic: An Essay on Descartes’s Conception of Inference, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gaukroger, S. 1990. The Background to the Problem of Perceptual Cognition, Introduction to A. Arnauld’s, On True and False Ideas, Translated by Stephen Gaukroger, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Gaukroger, S. 1996. Descartes: An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gaukroger, S. 2002. Descartes’ System of Natural Philosophy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gaukroger, S. 2016. L’Homme in English, in D. Antoine-Mahut and S. Gaukroger eds., Descartes’ Treatise on Man and its Reception, Cham: Springer. Gaukroger, S. 2017. Cartesianism and Visual Cognition, in S. Gaukroger and C. Wilson eds, Descartes and Cartesianism: Essays in Honour of Desmond Clarke, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gettier, E.L. 1963. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis, 23, 12–3. Gibbard, A. & W.L. Harper, W.L. 1988. Counterfactuals and Two Kinds of Expected Utility, in P. Gardenfors and N. Sahlin eds., Decision, Probability and Utility, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gładziejewski, P., & Miłkowski, M. 2017. Structural representations: Causally relevant and different from detectors. Biology & Philosophy, 32, 3, 337–355. Glanzberg, M. 2021. Chomsky on Semantics, A Companion to Chomsky, First Edition. Edited by Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal, and Georges Rey. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Glock, H. 1993. The Indispensability of Translation in Quine and Davidson, Philosophical Quarterly, 43, 171, 19–209. Glock, H. 2003. Quine and Davidson on Language, Thought and Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glymour, C. 2001. The Mind’s Arrows: Bayes Nets and Graphical Causal Models in Psychology, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Goff, P. 2017. Panpsychism is crazy, but it’s also most probably true. Aeon, March 1. Goodman, N. 1972. Seven Strictures on Similarity in Problems and Projects, New York: Bobbs-Merrill. Goodman, N. 1976. Languages of Art, Indianapolis, IA: Hackett, 2nd edn.

296

References

Gopnik, A. & Schulz, L. 2007. Causal Learning: Psychology, Philosophy and Computation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Greco, J. 1995. Reid’s Critique of Berkeley & Hume, Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, 55, 2, 27–296. Gregory, R. L. 1968. Perceptual Illusions and Brain Models, Proc. Royal Society B 171, 27–296. Gregory, R.L. 1997. Knowledge in Perception and Illusion, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London B, 352, 112–1128. Gunderson, K. 1970. Asymmetries and Mind-Body Perplexities, in M. Radner and S. Winokur eds., Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 4. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Habermas, J. 1988. On the Logic of the Social Science, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hadley, R.F. 1989. A Default-Oriented Theory of Procedural Semantics, Cognitive Science 13, 10–137. Hadley, R.F. 1995. The “Explicit-Implicit” Distinction, Minds and Machines, 5, 21–242. Haldane, E. S. and Ross, G.R.T. transl. 1970. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Volume 1 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hales, S.D. 2012. The Faculty of Intuition, Analytic Philosophy, 53, 2, 18–207. Hameroff, S.R. and Penrose, R. 1996. Orchestrated Reduction of Quantum Coherence in Brain Microtubules: A Model for Consciousness. In S. R. Hameroff, A.W. Kazzniak and A.C. Scott eds., Toward a Science of Consciousness, Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/MIT Press. Hanson, N.R. 1962. Patterns of Discovery, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harman, G. 1969. An Introduction to Translation and Meaning, in D. Davidson and J. Hintikka eds., Words and Objections: Essays on the Work of W.V. Quine, Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Harman, G. 1990. “Immanent and Transcendent Approaches to Meaning and Mind.” In Perspectives on Quine, edited by Robert Barrett and Roger Gibson. Oxford: Blackwell, 14–157. Reprinted in Gilbert Harman, Reasoning, Meaning, and Mind, 1999. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 26–275. Harman, G. 1993. “Can Science Understand the Mind?” In Conceptions of the Human Mind: Essays in Honor of George A. Miller, edited by G. Harman. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. 11–121. Hatfield, G. 1992. Descartes’ physiology and its relation to his psychology, J. Cottingham ed., The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 33–370. Hazlett, A. 2015. The maturation of the Gettier problem, Philosophical Studies, 172: –6. Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarie and E. Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell. Heinämaa, Sara. 2016. “Hermeneutics and the Analytic-Continental Divide.” In The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics, edited by Niall Keane and Chris Lawn, 57–584. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.



References 297

Helming, K.A., Strickland, B., and Jacob, P. 2016. Solving the Puzzle about Early Belief Ascription, Mind & Language, 31, 4, 43–469. Herzberger, H. 1970. Paradoxes of Grounding in Semantics, Journal of Philosophy, 48, 6, 14–167. Hetherington, S. 2005. Gettier Problems, The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, URL= Hetherington, S. 2012. The Gettier Illusion, Synthese, 188, 2, 21–230. Hetherington, S. 2016. Knowledge and the Gettier Problem, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hetherington, S. 2019. Introduction: Meet the Gettier Problem, in S. Hetherington ed. The Gettier Problem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hetherington, S. ed. 2019. The Gettier Problem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Higginbotham, J. 1992. Truth and Understanding, Philosophical Studies 65, –16. Higginbotham, J. 1999. A Perspective on Truth and Meaning, L.E. Hahn ed., The Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Chicago: Open Court. Hintikka, J. 1962. Cogito Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance? The Philosophical Review 71, –32. Hintikka, J. 1963. Cogito, Ergo Sum as an Inference and a Performance, The Philosophical Review, 72, 4, 48–496. Hintikka, J. 1993. A Discourse on Descartes’ Method in S. Tweyman ed., René Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy in Focus, London: Routledge. Hintikka, J. 1996. Cogito, Ergo Quis Est? Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 1, 195, –21. Hintikka, J. 1999. The Emperor’s New Intuitions, The Journal of Philosophy, 96, 3, March, 12–147. Hintikka, J. 2013. René pense, donc Cartesius existe, X. Kieft ed., Cahiers de philosophy de l’université de Caen No. 50, 10–120. Hintikka, J., Remes, U. 1974. The Method of Analysis Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Hinton, J.M., 1967. Visual Experiences, Mind, 76, April, 217–227. Hinzen 2006. Mind Design and Minimal Syntax, Oxford: Clarendon. Hitchcock, C. 2016. Conditioning, Intervening and Decision, Synthese, 193, 115– 1176. Hookway, C. 1988. Quine. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hopkins, R. 1998. Picture, Image and Experience: A Philosophical Inquiry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horgan, T. & Tienson, J. eds. 1991. Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Horwich, P. 1998. Meaning. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hughes, C. 2004. Kripke: Names, Necessity and Identity, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hume, D. 1739/2000. A Treatise of Human Nature. D.F. Norton and M.J. Norton eds., Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hume, D. 1777/1961. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, L.A. SelbyBigge ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hume, D. 1779/1991. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, S. Tweyman ed., London: Routledge.

298

References

Hutto, D. and Satne, G. 2017. “Demystifying Davidson: Radical Interpretation Meets Radical Enactivism.” Argumenta 5, 1, 12–144. Isaac, A.M.C. 2013. Objective Similarity and Mental Representation, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 91, 4, 68–704. Jackendoff, R. 1992. Languages of the Mind, Bradford/MIT Press. Jackson, F. 1982. Epiphenomenal Qualia, Philosophical Quarterly 32, 12–136. Jackson, F. 1986. What Mary Didn’t Know, Journal of Philosophy, 83, 29–295. Jackson, F. 2010. Language, Names and Information, Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Jeffrey, R.C. 1983. The Logic of Decision. 2nd Revised Edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jeffrey, R.C. 2004. Subjective Probability: The Real Thing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jeshion, R. 2006. Reference and Intentionality, Philosophical Books, 47, 1, 2–33. Jolley, N. 1990. The Light of the Soul: Theories of ideas in Leibniz, Malebranche, and Descartes, Oxford: Clarendon. Jolley, N. 1999. Locke: His Philosophical Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Julesz, B. 1971. Foundations of Cyclopean Perception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kant, I. 1781/1997 Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. 1798/2006. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Robert B. Louden translator, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaplan, D. 2012. An Idea of Donnellan, in J. Almog & P. Leonardi eds., Having in Mind: The Philosophy of Keith Donnellan, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Katchirian, Arpy. 2018. Truth, Meaning and Interpretation: A Reconsideration of Davidson’s Program. Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy 6, no. 9, –20. Katz, J.J. 1990. The Metaphysics of Meaning, Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/MIT Press. Katz, J. J. and J. A. Fodor, 1963. “The Structure of a Semantic Theory.” Language 39, 2, 17–210. Kemp, G. 2012. Quine versus Davidson: Truth, Reference and Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kenny, A. 1968. Descartes. A Study of His Philosophy New York: Random House. Kenny, A. 2005. The Philosopher’s History and the History of Philosophy, in T. Sorell and A.J. Robers eds., Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kieft, X. 2015. Peter Slezak, interlocuteur anonyme de Jaakko Hintikka, Bulletin cartésien XLIV, Archives de Philosophie 78, 157–216. Kim, J. 1998. Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation, Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/MIT Press. Kirk, R. 1991. Why shouldn’t we be able to solve the mind-body problem? Analysis, 51, 1, 1–23. Kirk, R. 2004. “Indeterminacy of Translation.” In The Cambridge Companion to Quine, edited by Roger F. Gibson, 15–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



References 299

Kirk, R. 2005. Zombies and Consciousness, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kirkebøen, G. 1998. Descartes’ Psychology of Vision and Cognitive Science: The Optics (1637) in the Light of Marr’s (1982) Vision, Philosophical Psychology, 11, 2, 16–182. Kirkham, R.L. 1984. Does the Gettier Problem Rest on a Mistake? Mind, 93, 372, 50–513. Kirsh, D. 1990. When is Information Explicitly Represented? in P.P. Hanson, ed., Information, Language and Cognition, University of British Columbia Press. Koberinski, A., Dunlap, L. & Harper, W.L. 2019. Do the EPR correlations pose a problem for causal decision theory? Synthese, 196, 371–3722. Koestler, A. 1972. The Roots of Coincidence. London: Hutchinson. Kölbel, M. 2001. Two Dogmas of Davidsonian Semantics, The Journal of Philosophy, 98, 12, 61–635. Kosslyn, S.M. 1980. Image and Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Kosslyn, S.M. 1981. The Medium and the Message in Mental Imagery: A Theory. Psychological Review 88, 4–66. Kosslyn, S.M. 1983. Ghosts in the Mind’s Machine, New York: Norton. Kosslyn, S.M. 1987. Seeing and imagining in the cerebral hemispheres: A computational approach. Psychological Review, 94, 14–175. Kosslyn, S.M. 1988. Imagery in Learning. In Michael S. Gazzaniga ed. Perspectives in Memory Research, Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/MIT Press. Kosslyn, S.M. 1994. Image and Brain: The Resolution of the Imagery Debate, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Kosslyn, S.M., Ganis, G., Thompson, W.L. 2003. Mental Imagery: against the nihilistic hypothesis, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 3, 10–111. Kosslyn, S. M., Thompson, W. I., & Ganis, G. 2006. The case for mental imagery. New York: Oxford University Press. Kosslyn, S.M., Pinker, S., Smith, G.E. & Schwartz, S.P. 1979. On the demystification of mental imagery, The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2, 53–581. Kosslyn, S.M., Sokolov. M.A., and Chen, J.C. 1989. The Lateralization of BRIAN: A Computational Theory and Model of Visual Hemispheric Specialization, in D. Klahr and K. Kotovsky eds., Complex Information Processing: The Impact of Herbert A. Simon, Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. Koyré, A. 1954. Introduction. Descartes: Philosophical Writings. Trans. E. Anscombe and P. Geach. New York: Nelson. Kriegel, U. 2009. Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kriegel, U. and Williford, K. eds., 2006. Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness, Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press. Kripke, S. 1972/1980. Naming and Necessity, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kripke, S. 1975. Outline of a Theory of Truth, The Journal of Philosophy 72: 69–716. Kripke, S. 1977. Speaker’s Reference and Semantic Reference, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2, 25–276. Kripke, S. 1979/2011. A Puzzle About Belief, in A. Margalit ed., Meaning and Use, Dordrecht: Reidel, 23–283; reprinted in S. Kripke, Philosophical Troubles: Collected Papers, Volume 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

300

References

Kripke, S. 2013. Reference and Existence: The John Locke Lectures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kuhn, T.S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakatos, J. 1978. The Method of Analysis-Synthesis, in J. Worrall and G. Currie eds., Imre Lakatos: Mathematics, Science and Epistemology: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lambrozo, T. 2010, Causal-Explanatory Pluralism: How Intentions, Functions and Mechanisms Influence Causal Ascriptions, Cognitive Psychology, 61, 30–332. Larson, R. & Segal, G. 1995. Knowledge of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic Theory, Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/MIT Press. Laudan, L. 1981. A Confutation of Convergent Realism. Philosophy of Science, 48, 1–49. Lazerowitz, M. 1942. Moore’s Paradox, in P.A. Schilpp, ed. The Philosophy of G.E. Moore, Library of Living Philosophers Volume IV. Chicago: Northwestern University Press. Lehrer, K. 1989. Thomas Reid, London: Routledge. Lenin, V.I. 1909/1927. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: Critical Notes Concerning a Reactionary Philosophy. London: Martin Lawrence Ltd. Lennon, T.M. 1997. Introduction to N. Malebranche The Search After Truth. Trans. T.M. Lennon & P.J. Olscamp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leonardi, P. and Santambrogio, M. 1995. Introduction, in P. Leonardi and M. Santambrogio, eds. On Quine: New Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, –6. Lepore, E. 1981. Translational Semantics, Synthese, 48, 12–133. Lepore, E. and Ludwig, K. 2005. Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language and Reality, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lepore, E. and Ludwig, K. 2006. Introduction. E. Lepore and K. Ludwig eds., The Essential Davidson, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lepore, E. and Ludwig, K. 2007. Donald Davidson’s Truth-Theoretic Semantics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levi, I. 1975. Newcomb’s Many Problems, Theory and Decision, 6, 16–175. Levi, I. 1997. The Covenant of Reason: Rationality and the Commitments of Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levin, J. 2007. What Is A Phenomenal Concept? In T. Alter and S. Walter eds., Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levine, J. 1983. Materialism and qualia: the explanatory gap. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 64, 35–61. Levine, J. 1994. Out of the closet: A qualophile confronts qualophobia, Philosophical Topics, 22, 10–126. Levine, J. 2001. Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levine, J. 2006. Conscious Awareness and (Self-)Representation, in U. Kriegel and K. Williford eds., Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness, Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press. 17–197.



References 301

Levine, J. 2007. Phenomenal Concepts and the Materialist Constraint, in T. Alter and S. Walter eds., Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lewis, D. 1972. General Semantics, D. Davidson & G. Harman eds., Semantics of Natural Language, Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 16–218; reprinted in Philosophical Papers. Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, 18–232. Lewis, D. 1979. Prisoner’s Dilemma Is a Newcomb Problem, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 8, 3, 23–240. Lewis, D. 1981. Causal Decision Theory, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 59: –30; Lewis, D. 1981b. Why Ain’cha Rich? Nous, 15 3, 37–380. Libet, B. 1985. Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 8, 52–566. Lindberg, D. C. 1976. Theories of Vision from Al-kindi to Kepler, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Loar, B. 1990/1997. Phenomenal States (revised), in N. Block, O. Flanagan and G. Güzeldere eds., The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Loar, B. 1999. David Chalmers’s The Conscious Mind, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 59, 2, 46–472. Locke, J. 1689/1975. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, P.H. Nidditch ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press. Locke, J. 1823. An Examination of P. Malebranche’s Opinion of Seeing All Things in God. The Works of John Locke, A New Edition, Corrected, In Ten Volumes, Vol. IX. London: Thomas Tegg; reprinted by Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1963. Lycan, W.G. 1986. Logical Form in Natural Language. Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/ MIT Press. Lycan, W.G. 1987. Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Lycan, W.G. 2001. Moore Against the New Skeptics, Philosophical Studies, 103, 3–53. Lycan, W.G. 2003. Perspectival Representation and the Knowledge Argument, in Q. Smith and A. Jokic eds., Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lycan, W.G. 2004. The Superiority of HOP to HOT, in R.J. Gennaro ed., HigherOrder Theories of Consciousness, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lycan, W.G. 2006. On the Gettier Problem Problem, in S. Hetherington ed., Epistemology Futures, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 14–168. Lycan, W.G. 2007. Stalnaker on Zombies, Philosophical Studies, 133, 47–479. Macdonald, G. and Pettit, P. 1981. Semantics and Social Science, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Machery, E., Mallon, R, Nichols, S, Stich, S.P. 2004. Semantics, cross-cultural style, Cognition, 92, B–B12. Mackie, J. 1980. The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation. Oxford: Clarendon.

302

References

Madison, B.J.C. 2011. Combating Anti Anti-Luck Epistemology, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 89:1, 4–58. Maitzen, S. and Wilson G. 2003. Newcomb’s Hidden Regress, Theory and Decision, 54, 15–162. Malcolm, N. 1984. Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press. Malebranche, N. 1712/1997. The Search After Truth, Edited and translated by T.M. Lennon & P.J. Olscamp, Cambridge University Press. Malpas, J. ed. 2011. Dialogues with Davidson: Acting Interpreting, Understanding. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Malpas, Jeff. 1992. Donald Davidson and the Mirror of Meaning. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Markie, P. 1992. The Cogito and its Importance, in J. Cottingham ed., The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 14–173. Marr, D. 1982. Vision. San Francisco: Freeman. Martin, M. 2009. The Reality of Appearances, in A. Byrne, and H. Logue, eds. Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Masson, J.M. ed. 1985. The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 188–1904. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Maund, B. 2003. Perception. Chesham: Acumen. McDermott, D. 1981. Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity, in J. Haugeland ed., Mind Design, Vermont: Bradford Books. McDowell, J., 1994. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. McDowell, John, 1998. Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McGilvray, J. 1998. Meanings Are Syntactically Individuated and Found in the Head, Mind & Language, 13, 2, 22–280. McGilvray, J. 2012. Semantics and How to Do It, Appendix VI, J. McGilvray ed., Noam Chomsky: The Science of Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McGinn, C. 1986. Radical Interpretation and Epistemology, in E. Lepore ed., Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. McGinn, C. 1989. Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem? Mind, 98, 34–66. McGinn, C. 1993. Consciousness and Cosmology: Hyperdualism Ventilated’ in M. Davies and G.W. Humphreys eds. Consciousness, Oxford: Blackwell. McGinn, C. 2015. Philosophy of Language: The Classics Explained, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. McKay, P. 2004. “Newcomb’s problem: the causalists get rich,” Analysis 64, 2, 18–89. McKinsey, M. 2020. Consequences of Reference Failure. New York and London: Routledge. McRae, R. 1965. “Idea” As a Philosophical Term in the Seventeenth Century, Journal of the History of Ideas, 26, 2, 17–190. Meadows, T. 2021. Did Descartes make a Diagonal Argument? Journal of Philosophical Logic, –29.



References 303

Meek, C. and Glymour, C. 1994. Conditioning and Intervening, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 45, 4, 100–1021. Mendola, J. 2008. Anti-Externalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mermin, D. 1989. Physics Today, 42, 4, 9. Mermin, D. 2004. Physics Today, 57, 5, 10. Meyering, T.C. 1997. Representation and Resemblance: A review essay of Richard A. Watson’s ‘Representational Ideas from Plato to Patricia Churchland’, Philosophical Psychology, 10, 2, 22–230. Miłkowski, M. 2023. Correspondence Theory of Semantic Information, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, in press. Mill, J.S. 1843/1956 A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Miller, G.A., 1956. The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information, Psychological Review 63, 8–97. Millikan, R.G. 1991a. Perceptual Content and Fregean Myth, Mind, 100, 4, 43–459. Millikan, R.G. 1991b. Speaking Up for Darwin. In B. Loewer and G. Rey eds. Meaning in Mind. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 15–164. Moore, G.E. 1925. A Defence of Common Sense, in J.H. Muirhead ed., Contemporary British Philosophy, 2nd Series, London: George Allen & Unwin. Moore, G.E., 1942. Autobiography, in P. A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of G.E. Moore. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 3–39. Moravcsik, J.M. 1981. Frege and Chomsky on Thought and Language, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 6, 1, 10–124. Moreau, D. 1999. Deux Cartésiens: La Polémique Entre Antoine Arnauld et Nicolas Malebranche, Paris: Vrin. Moreau, D. 2000. The Malebranche-Arnauld Debate, in S. Nadler ed., The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, A. 2014. Representations gone mental, Synthese, 192, 2, 213–244. Nadler, S. 1986. Reid, Arnauld and the Objects of Perception, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 3, 2, 16–173. Nadler, S. 1989. Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Nadler, S. 1992a. Intentionality in the Arnauld-Malebranche Debate, in Phillip D. Cummins and Guenter Zoeller eds., Minds, Ideas, and Objects: Essays on the Theory of Representation in Modern Philosophy, Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing, 7–84. Nadler, S. 1992b. Malebranche and Ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nadler, S. 1996. Review of Gaukroger ‘Descartes: An Intellectual Biography.’ The Journal of Philosophy, 93, 2 (Feb), 10–104. Nadler, S. ed. 2000. The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nagel, J. 2012. Intuitions and Experiments: A Defense of the Case Method in Epistemology, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 85, 3, 49–527. Nagel, T. 1965. Physicalism, The Philosophical Review, 74, 33–56. Nagel, T. 1974. What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review, 83, 43–450.

304

References

Nagel, T. 1979. Panpsychism. In his Mortal Questions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nagel, T. 1986. The View from Nowhere, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nagel, T. 1995. Why We Are Not Computers, in his Other Minds, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nagel, T. 2012. Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Newell, A, 1986. The Symbol Level and the Knowledge Level. In Z. Pylyshyn and W. Demopoulos eds., Meaning and Cognitive Structure, Norwood, N.J.: Ablex. Newell, A. & Simon, H.A. 1976. Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search. Communications of the ACM, 19, 11–126. Nietzsche, F. 1887/1974. The Gay Science, W. Kaufman trans. Random House, New York. Nilsson, N.J. 1987. Commentary on McDermott. Computational Intelligence, 3, 20–203. Nilsson, N.J., 1991. Logic and artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence 47, 31–56. Nozick, R. 1969, Newcomb’s Problem and Two Principles of Choice. N. Rescher et al. eds. Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Nozick, R. 1993. The Nature of Rationality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, O’Brien, G., & Opie, J. 2004. Notes towards a structuralist theory of mental representation. In H. Clapin, P. Staines, & P. Slezak eds., Representation in mind. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Ogden, C.K. and Richards, I.A. 1923. The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language Upon Thought and the Science of Symbolism, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. O’Leary, D. 2023. I accept dualism but don’t believe in the soul, Mind Matters News, January 1, https://mindmatters.ai/2023/01/philosopher-i-accept-dualism-but-dontbelieve-in-the-soul/. O’Shea, J.R. 2021. What is the myth of the given? Synthese, 199, 1054–10567. Palmer, S.E. 1978. Fundamental Aspects of Cognitive Representation, in E. Rosch and B. Lloyd eds., Cognition and Categorization, Lawrence Erlbaum. Papineau, D. ed. 1996. The Philosophy of Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Papineau, D. 2002. Thinking about Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Papineau, D. 2007. Phenomenal and Perceptual Concepts, in T. Alter and S. Walter eds., Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parsons, C. 1974/1984. The Liar Paradox, Journal of Philosophical Logic, III, 4, 38–412; reprinted in R.L. Martin ed., Recent Essays on Truth and the Liar Paradox, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pasnau, R. 1997. Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pasnau, R. 2017. After Certainty. A History of Our Epistemic Ideals and Illusions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.



References 305

Pasnau, R. and Juhana T. 2021. Peter John Olivi, Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. . Peacocke, C. 2012. Descartes Defended, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary, 86, 1, 10–125. Pearl, J. 2000. Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pearl, J. and Mackenzie, D. 2019. The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect. Penguin Books. Pearson, J. 2019. The human imagination: the cognitive neuroscience of visual mental imagery. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 20, 10, 624–634. Pearson, J. & Kosslyn S.M. 2015. The Heterogeneity of Mental Representation: Ending the Imagery Debate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112, 33, 10089-10092.Pereplyotchik, D. 2015. The Consciousness Paradox: Consciousness, Concepts, and Higher-Order Thoughts, Philosophical Psychology, 28, 3, 43–448. Pereplyotchik, D. 2017. Psychosyntax: The Nature of Grammar and its Place in the Mind, Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Pereplyotchik, D. 2020. Whither Extensions? Mind and Language. 35, 237–250. Pereplyotchik D. & Barnbaum, D. 2020. Sellars and Contemporary Philosophy, London: Routledge. Perlis, D. 2006 Theory and Application of Self-Reference: Logic and Beyond, in T. Bolander, V.F. Hendricks and S. A. Pedersen eds., Self-Reference, Stanford: CSLI Publications. Perry, J. 1979. The Problem of the Essential Indexical. Nous 13,1, –21. Perry, J. 2001. Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Perry, J. 2012, Donnellan at Cornell, in J. Almog & P. Leonardi, Having in Mind: The Philosophy of Keith Donnellan, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Piccinini, G. and Scott, S. 2010. Recovering What Is Said With Empty Names, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 40, 2, 23–274. Pietroski, P.M. 2003. The Character of Natural Language Semantics in A. Barber ed., Epistemology of Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pietroski, P.M. 2018. Conjoining Meanings: Semantics Without Truth Values. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pinker, S. 1984. Visual Cognition: An Introduction, Cognition, 18, –63. Pinker, S. 2014. Interview with Colleen Walsh, Harvard Gazette, May 6. Pinker, S. and Finke, R. 1980. Emergent two-Dimensional Patterns in Images Rotated in Depth, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 6, 2, 24–264. Pinker, S. and Mehler, J. eds., 1988. Connections and Symbols, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Pinker, S. and Prince, A. 1988. On Language and Connectionism: Analysis of a Parallel Distributed Processing Model of Language Acquisition, in S. Pinker and J. Mehler eds. 1988. Connections and Symbols, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

306

References

Place, U.T. 1956. Is Consciousness a Brain Process? British Journal of Psychology, 47, 4–50. Planck, M. 1970. The Unity of the Physical World-Picture in S. Toulmin ed., Physical Reality, New York: Harper & Row. Platts, M. 1980. Ways of Meaning: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Popper, K.R. 1950. “Indeterminism in Quantum Physics and in Classical Physics,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1, 11–33. Popper, K.R. 1972. Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, Oxford: Clarendon. Preston, J. and Bishop M. eds., 2002. Views Into the Chinese Room: New Essays on Searle and Artificial Intelligence. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Price, H. 2011. Naturalism Without Mirrors, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Priest, G. 1993. Another Disguise of the Same Fundamental Problems: Barwise and Etchemendy on the Liar, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 71, 1, 6–69. Priest, G. 1995. Beyond the Limits of Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Priest, G. 2002. Rational dilemmas, Analysis 62, 1–16. Pritchard, D. 2004. Epistemic luck. Journal of Philosophical Research, 29, 19–222. Pritchard, D. 2005. Epistemic Luck. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pritchard, D. 2007. Anti-Luck Epistemology, Synthese, 158, 3, 277–297. Pritchard, D. 2012. Epistemological Disjunctivism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pritchard, D. 2015. Anti-luck epistemology and the Gettier problem. Philosophical Studies, 172, 93–111. Pritchard, D. 2019. Epistemological Disjunctivism and Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology, in C. Doyle, J. Milburn and D. Pritchard eds., New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism, London: Routledge. Psillos, S. 1999. Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth, London: Routledge. Putnam, H. 1975a. What Is Mathematical Truth? Mathematics, Matter and Method: Philosophical Papers, Volume 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 6–78. Putnam, H. 1975b. The Meaning of ‘Meaning’. In, Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 21–271. Putnam, H. 1981. Reason, Truth and History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Putnam, H. 1994/1999. Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry Into the Powers of the Human Mind, The Journal of Philosophy, 41, 9, 44–517; reprinted as The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body and World, New York: Columbia University Press. Pyle, A. 2003. Malebranche. London: Routledge. Pylyshyn, Z. 1973. What the Mind’s Eye Tells the Mind’s Brain: A Critique of Mental Imagery, Psychological Bulletin, 80, 1, –24. Pylyshyn, Z. 1978. Imagery and Artificial Intelligence. In C.W. Savage ed. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. IX. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Pylyshyn, Z. 1981. The Imagery Debate: Analog Media versus Tacit Knowledge. Psychological Review, 88, 1–45.



References 307

Pylyshyn, Z. 1984. Computation and Cognition: Toward a foundation for cognitive science, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Pylyshyn, Z. 2003a. Seeing and Visualizing: It’s Not What You Think. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT. Pylyshyn, Z. 2003b. Return of the mental image: are there really pictures in the brain? Trends in Cognitive Science, 7, 3 March, 11–118. Pylyshyn, Z. 2007. Things and Places: How the Mind Connects with the World, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Quine, W.V. 1951. Semantics and Abstract Objects, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 80, 1, 9–96. Quine, W.V. 1960. Word and Object. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Quine, W.V. 1961. The Problem of Meaning in Linguistics, in From a Logical Point of View. Second Edition. New York: Harper, 4–64. Quine, W.V. 1966a. On Mental Entities. In The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays. New York: Random House, 20–214. Quine, W.V. 1966b. Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes. In The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays. New York: Random House, 18–194. Quine, W.V. 1969. Ontological Relativity & Other Essays, New York: Columbia University Press. Quine, W.V. 1970. On the reasons for indeterminacy of translation, The Journal of Philosophy, 67, 6, 17–183. Quine, W.V. 1975. Mind and Verbal Dispositions, in S. Guttenplan ed. Mind and Language, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 8–95. Quine, W.V. 1979. Facts of the Matter, in R.W. Shahan & C. Swoyer eds., Essays on the Philosophy of W.V. Quine, Hassocks: Harvester Press. Quine, W.V. 1985. The Time of My Life, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Quine, W.V. 1990. Comment on Harman, in Barrett, R.B. and Gibson, R.F. eds., Perspectives on Quine, Oxford: Blackwell. Quine, W.V. 1992. Pursuit of Truth (revised edition), Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Quine, W.V. 1995. Reactions, in P. Leonardi and M. Santambrogio, On Quine: New Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 34–361. Quine, W.V. 2000. Response to Antony, in A. Ornstein and P. Kotatko eds., Knowledge, Language and Logic: Questions for Quine. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 40–430. Raatikainen, P. 2020. Theories of Reference: What was the Question? In A Bianchi ed. Language and Reality from a Naturalistic Perspective: Themes from Michael Devitt, Philosophical Studies Series 142, Springer, 6–104. Rabinowicz, W. 2002. Does Practical Deliberation Crowd Out Self-Prediction? Erkenntnis, 57, 9–122. Ramchand, G. 2020. Truth is dead; long live the truth. Commentary on Conjoining Meanings by Paul Pietroski. Mind & Language. 35, 251–265. Ramberg, Bjorn. 1989. Donald Davidson’s Philosophy of Language: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Ramsey, W. 2007. Representation Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

308

References

Ramsey, W., Sitch, S. & Garon, J. 1991. Connectionism, Eliminativism and Folk Psychology, in W. Ramsey, S. Stich, D. Rumelhart, eds., Philosophy and Connectionist Theory, Erlbaum. Ramsey, W., Stich S., & Rumelhart, D.E. eds., 1991. Philosophy and Connectionist Theory, Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Reid, T. 1785/1997. An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, D.R. Brookes ed., Critical Edition, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Reid, T. 1813/1969. Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man; reproduced with Introduction by B. Brody, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Reimer, M. 2001. The Problem of Empty Names, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 79, 4, 49–506. Resnik, M. 1987. Choices: An Introduction to Decision Theory, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Rey, G. 2003. Intentional Content and a Chomskian Linguistics, A. Barber ed., Epistemology of Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Richard, M. 2011. Kripke’s Puzzle about Belief, in A. Berger ed., Saul Kripke, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robinson, H. 1994. Perception. London: Routledge. Rock, I. 1973. Orientation and Form, New York: Academic Press. Rollins, M. 1989. Mental Imagery: On the limits of cognitive science. New Haven: Yale University Press. Rorty, R. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rorty, R. 1991. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, R. 1995. Is Truth a Goal of Enquiry? Davidson vs Wright. The Philosophical Quarterly, 45, 180, 28–300. Rorty, R. 1997. Introduction to R. Brandom, Study Guide to Sellars’ Empiricism & the Philosophy of Mind, Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. Rorty, R. 1998. Hilary Putnam and the Relativist Menace, in Truth and Progress, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, R. 1999. Truth Without Correspondence to Reality, Philosophy and Social Hope, London: Penguin. Rosenschein, S.J. 1985. Formal Theories of Knowledge in AI and Robotics. New Generation Computing, 3, 34–357. Rosenthal, D.M. 2000. Metacognition and Higher-Order Thoughts, Consciousness and Cognition 9, 231–242. Rosenthal, D.M. 2004. Varieties of Higher Order Theory, in R.J. Gennaro ed., HigherOrder Theories of Consciousness, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Rosenthal, D.M. 2005. Consciousness and Mind, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rosenthal, D.M. 2019. Chalmers’ Meta-Problem, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 26, 9–10, 194–204. Rosenthal, D.M. 2022. Armstrong and Perception, in, Peter R. Anstey and David Braddon-Mitchell eds., Armstrong’s Materialist Theory of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.



References 309

Royce, J. 1900. ‘The One, the Many, and the Infinite’ Supplementary Essay, The World and the Individual: Gifford Lectures First Series; reprinted 1959, Dover, New York. Russell, B. 1919. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin. Russell, B. 1927/1954. The Analysis of Matter, New York: Dover Publications. Russell, B. 1946. A History of Western Philosophy, London: George Allen and Unwin. Ryle, G. 1949a. The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchinson. New edition 2002. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ryle, G. 1949b. Meaning and Necessity, Philosophy, 24, 88, 6–76. Ryle, G. 1968. A puzzling element in the notion of thinking. In P.F. Strawson ed., Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action, Oxford: Oxford University Press, –23. Sagan, C. 1979. Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. New York: Random House. Salmon, N. 1986/1991. Frege’s Puzzle, Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing. Sarkar. H. 2003. Descartes’ Cogito, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schantz, R. ed. 2004. The Externalist Challenge, New York: Walter de Gruyter. Schick, F. 1979. Self-knowledge, Uncertainty, and Choice, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 30, 23–252. Schiffer, S. 1981. Truth and the Theory of Content, in H. Parret and J. Bouveresse eds., Meaning and Understanding. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Schiffer, S. 1987. Remnants of Meaning, Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/MIT Press. Schmaltz, T.M. 2000. Malebranche on Ideas and the Vision in God, in S. Nadler ed., The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, J.H. 1998. “Newcomb’s Paradox Realized with Backward Causation,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 49, 6–87. Schneider, S. 2011. The Language of Thought: A New Philosophical Direction, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Schönbaumsfeld, G. 2019. Was Wittgenstein a Disjunctivist Avant la Lettre? In C. Doyle, J. Milburn and D. Pritchard eds., New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism, London: Routledge. Searle, J. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. 1980a. Minds, Brains and Programs, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 41–424. Searle, J.R. 1983. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J.R. 1987. Indeterminacy, Empiricism, and the First Person, The Journal of Philosophy, 84, 3, 12–147; reprinted in his Consciousness and Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002, 22–250. Searle, J.R. 1992. The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Searle, J.R. 1997. The Mystery of Consciousness, London: Granta Books.

310

References

Searle, J.R. 2002. Twenty-One Years in the Chinese Room, in J. Preston and M. Bishop eds., Views Into the Chinese Room, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Searle, J.R. 2004. Mind: A Brief Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Searle, J.R. 2015. Seeing Things as They Are. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Segal, G.M.A. 2004. Reference, Causal Powers, Externalist Intuitions and Unicorns, in R. Schantz eds., The Externalist Challenge, New York: Walter de Gruyter. Sellars, W. 1956/1997. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1. H. Feigl and M. Scriven eds., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; reprinted with Introduction by R. Rorty, 1997. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shea, N. 2014. Exploitable Isomorphism and Structural Representation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, 114, 12–144. Shepard, R.N. & Metzler, J. 1971. Mental Rotation of Three-Dimensional Objects. Science, 171, 70–703. Sherrington, C. 1942. Man On His Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shoemaker, S. 1997. The First-Person Perspective, in N. Block, O. Flanagan and G. Güzelderer eds., The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 50–515. Siegel, S. & Silins, N., 2015. The Epistemology of Perception. In Mohan Matthen ed., Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception. Oxford University Press. Silins, N., 2011. “Seeing Through the ‘Veil of Perception’, Mind, 120, 329–367. Skinner, B.F. 1963. Behaviorism at Fifty, Science 140, 95–58; reprinted in A.C. Catania & S. Harnad, eds., 1988, The Selection of Behavior: The Operant Behaviorism of B.F. Skinner, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 27–292. Skyrms, B. 1982. Causal Decision Theory, Journal of Philosophy, 79, 11, 68–711. Slezak, M. 2009. The Concept of Cause: A Case for Subjectivism, Master of Philosophy Dissertation, The University of Sydney. Slezak, P. 1981. Language and Psychological Reality, Synthese, 49, 1981, 42–440. Slezak, P. 1983. Descartes’s Diagonal Deduction, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 34, 1–36. Slezak, P. 1992. When Can Images Be Reinterpreted: Non-Chronometric Tests of Pictorialism, Proceedings of 14th Conference of the Society for Cognitive Science. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 12–129. Slezak, P. 2002a. The Imagery Debate: Déjà vu all over again? Commentary on Zenon Pylyshyn, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 2, April, 20–210. Slezak, P. 2002b. Thinking About Thinking: Language, Thought & Introspection. Language and Communication. 22, 35–373. Slezak, P. 2002c. Talking to ourselves: The intelligibility of inner speech, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 6, 69–700. Slezak, P. 2006. ‘Demons, Deceivers and Liars: Newcomb’s Malin Génie’, Theory and Decision, 61, 27–303. Slezak, P. 2009. Linguistic Explanation And ‘Psychological Reality’ Croatian Journal of Philosophy, 9, 25, –21. Slezak, P. 2010. Doubts about Descartes’ Indubitability: The Cogito as Intuition & Inference, Philosophical Forum, 41, 4, 38–412.



References 311

Sloman, S. 2005. Causal Models: How People Think About the World and Its Alternatives, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smart, J.J. C. 1959. Sensations and brain processes, The Philosophical Review, 68, 2, 14–156. Smith, Barry C. 1992. Understanding Language, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 92, 10–41. Smith, Barry C. 1998. On Knowing One’s Own Language, in C. Wright, B.C. Smith, C. Macdonald eds., Knowing Our Own Minds, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 39–428. Smith, Barry C. 2006. Why We Still Need Knowledge of Language, Croatian Journal of Philosophy, 6, 18, 43–456. Smith, Brian C. 1987. The Correspondence Continuum. CSLI Report 8–71. Smith, Brian C. 1991. The Owl and the Electric Encyclopedia, Artificial Intelligence, 47, 25–288. Smolensky, P. 1988. On the Proper Treatment of Connectionism, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11, –74. Smortchkova, J., Dołęga, K., and Schlicht, T. eds. 2020. What Are Mental Representations? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Soames, S. 1989/2009. Semantics and Semantic Competence, in J.E. Tomberlin ed., Philosophical Perspectives 3: Philosophy of Mind and Action Theory, Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing Company, 57–596.; reprinted 2009 in Philosophical Essays, Volume 1, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 18–201. Soames, S. 1992. Truth, Meaning and Understanding, Philosophical Studies, 65, 1–35; reprinted in Philosophical Essays, Volume 1, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 20–224. Soames, S. 2003. Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 2: The Age of Meaning, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Soames, S. 2005. Reference and Description: The Case Against Two-Dimensionalism, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Soames, S. 2008/2009. Truth and Meaning in Perspective, in P. French ed., Truth and Its Deformities: Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. XXXII; reprinted in Philosophical Essays, Volume 1, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009, 22–247. Soames, S. 2010. What Is Meaning, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sorell, T. 2005. On Saying No to History of Philosophy, in T. Sorell and G.A.J. Rogers eds., Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sorensen, R.A. 1987. Anti-expertise, Instability, and Rational Choice, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 65, 3, 30–315. Sosa, E. 2007. Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Intuition, Philosophical Studies, 132, pp. 9–107. Soteriou, M. 2016. Disjunctivism. London: Routledge. Spinoza, B. 1677/1958. On the Improvement of the Understanding. In John Wild ed., Spinoza Selections, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Spirtes, P. Glymour, C. and Scheines, R. 2000. Causation, Prediction and Search, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Stainton, R. J. and Viger, C. 2000. Review Essay of Jerry A. Fodor, Concepts, Synthese, 123, 13–151.

312

References

Stalknaker, R. 2002. What is it like to be a zombie? In T.S. Gendler and J. Hawthorne, Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stalnaker, R. 1991. How to do Semantics for the Language of Thought. B. Loewer and G. Rey eds., Meaning in Mind, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Stalnaker, R. 2003. Ways A World Might Be, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stalnaker, R. 2007. Responses. Philosophical Studies. 133, 3, 48–491. Steels, L. 2008. The symbol grounding problem has been solved, so what’s next? de Vega, Manuel, Arthur Glenberg, and Arthur Graesser, eds., Symbols and Embodiment: Debates on Meaning and Cognition, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stern, R. 2018. Diagnosing Newcomb’s Problem with Causal Graphs, in A. Ahmed ed. Newcomb’s Problem, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 20–220. Stich, S. 1976. Davidson’s Semantic Program, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 6, 2, June, 20–227. Stich, S., 1992. What is a theory of representation? Mind 101, 402. 243–261. Stich, S. 2009. Replies. In D. Murphy and M. Bishop eds., Stich And His Critics, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Stoljar, D. 2005. Physicalism and Phenomenal Concepts, Mind and Language, 20, 46–94. Stoljar, D. 2006. Ignorance and Imagination: The Epistemic Origin of the Problem of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stoljar, D. 2017. Philosophical Progress: In Defence of a Reasonable Optimism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stone, J. 2013. ‘Unlucky’ Gettier Cases, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 94, 42–430. Stratton G.M. 1896. Some preliminary experiments on vision without inversion of the retinal image, Psychological Review 3, 61–617. Strawson, G. 1990. What’s So Good About Reid? London Review of Books, February 22: 1–16. Strawson, G. 2006a. Consciousness and its Place in Nature, Exeter: Imprint Academic. Strawson, G. 2006b. Realistic Monism: Why physicalism entails panpsychism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13,10–11, 3–31. Strawson, G 2006c. Panpsychism? Reply to Commentators with a Celebration of Descartes, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13, No. 10–11, 184–280. Strawson, G. 2008. Real Materialism and Other Essays, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Strawson, G. 2017. The Subject of Experience, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strawson, G. 2019. A hundred years of consciousness: A long training in absurdity. Estudios de Filosofia, 59, –43. Strawson, G. 2021. Oh! You Materialist. Journal of Consciousness Studies, –10, 22–49. Strawson, P.F. 1950. On Referring, Mind, 59, 32–344. Strawson, P.F. 1952. Introduction to Logical Theory, London: Methuen & Co. Stroud, B. 1977. Hume. London: Routledge. Stroud, Barry. 2017. “Davidson and Wittgenstein on Meaning and Understanding.” In Wittgenstein and Davidson on Language, Thought and Action, edited by Claudine Verheggen, 12–138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



References 313

Sutton, J. 1998. Philosophy and Memory Traces: Descartes to Connectionism Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Targ, R. and Puthoff, H.E. 1977. Mind Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability, New York: Delacorte Press. Thomas, N.J.T. 1989. Experience and Theory as Determinants of Attitudes toward Mental Representation: The Case of Knight Dunlap and the Vanishing Images of J.B. Watson. The American Journal of Psychology, 102, 39–412. Thompson, W.L., Kosslyn, S.M., Hoffman, M.S. and van der Kooij, K. 2008. Inspecting visual mental images: Can people “see” implicit properties as easily in imagery and perception? Memory and Cognition, 36, 5, 102–1032. Tootell, R.B.H., Silverman, M.S., Switkes, E. and De Valois, R.L., 1982. Deoxyglucose Analysis of Retinotopic Organization in Primate Striate Cortex, Science, 218, 26, 90–904. Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. 1974, Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Science, 185, 112–1131. Tye, M. 1984. The Adverbial Approach to Visual Experience, The Philosophical Review, 93, 2, April, 19–225. Tye, M. 1988. The Picture Theory of Mental Images, The Philosophical Review, 97, 4, 49–520. Tye, M. 1991. The Imagery Debate, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Tye, M. 2009. Consciousness Revisited: Materialism Without Phenomenal Concepts, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Van Cleve, J. 1990. Mind-Dust or Magic? Panpsychism Versus Emergence, in J.E. Tomberlin ed., Philosophical Perspectives 4: Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind, Altascadero: Ridgeview Publishing Company. Van Cleve, J. 2004. Reid’s Theory of Perception, in T. Cuneo and R. van Woudenberg eds., The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van Cleve, J. 2015. Problems from Reid, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Fraassen, B.C. 1977. The Pragmatics of Explanation, American Philosophical Quarterly, 14, 2, pp. 14–149. Van Fraassen, B.C. 1980. The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Van Fraassen, B.C. 2008. Scientific Representation, New York: Oxford University Press. Van Gelder, T. 1992. Making Conceptual Space, S. David ed., Connectionism: Theory and Practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Gulick, R. 2006. Mirror Mirror – Is That All? In U. Kriegel and K. Williford eds., Self-Representational Approaches to Cognition, Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/ MIT Press. Vargas Llosa, M. 1975. La Orgia Perpetua. Transl. Helen Lane, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. Von Eckardt, B. 1993. What Is Cognitive Science, Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/MIT Press. Von Wright, G.H. 1971. Explanation and Understanding, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

314

References

Waskan, J. & Bechtel, W. 1997. Directions in Connectionist Research: Tractable Computations Without Syntactically Structured Representations, Metaphilosophy, 28, 1&2, 3–62. Watson, R.A. 1987. The Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Watson, R.A. 1995. Representational Ideas: From Plato to Patricia Churchland, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Weinberg, J.M. Nichols, S. and Stich, S. 2001. Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions, Philosophical Topics, 29, 1&2, 42–460. Wettstein, H. 1986. Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake? The Journal of Philosophy, 83, 4, pp. 18–209. Wettstein, H. 2004. The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wikforss, A. 2008. Semantic Externalism and Psychological Externalism, Philosophy Compass, 3/1, 15–181. Williams, B. 1978. Descartes: The Project of Pure Inquiry, Harmondsworth: Penguin. William, D. and Colling, L. 2018. From symbols to icons: The return of resemblance in the cognitive science revolution, Synthese 195, 194–1967. Williamson, T. 2011. Philosophical Expertise and the Burden of Proof, Metaphilosophy, 42, 3, 21–229. Wilson, M.D. 1999. History of Philosophy in Philosophy Today; and the Case of the Sensible Qualities, in Ideas and Mechanisms: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wimmer, H. and Perner, J. 1983. Beliefs About Beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children’s understanding of deception. Cognition, 13, 10–28. Winch, P. 1958. The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Winer, G.A., Cottrell, J.E., Gregg, V., Fournier, J.S. & Bica, L.A., 2002. Fundamentally Misunderstanding Visual Perception: Adults’ Belief in Visual Emissions, American Psychologist, 57, 6/7, 41–424. Wittgenstein, L. 1922. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Blackwell Publishing. Wittgenstein, L. 1958. The Blue and Brown Books, New York: Harper & Row. Wolf-Devine, C. 1993. Descartes on Seeing: Epistemology and Visual Perception, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Wolf-Devine, C. 2000a. Descartes’ theory of visual spatial perception, in S. Gaukroger, J. Schuster, J. Sutton, eds., (2000) Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, London: Routledge, 50–523. Wolf-Devine, C. 2000b. The role of inner objects in perception, in S. Gaukroger, J. Schuster, J. Sutton, eds., (2000) Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, London: Routledge, 55–568. Wolf, F.A.: 1981, Taking the Quantum Leap, Harper & Row. New York.



References 315

Wolterstorff, N. 2001, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Woodruff Smith, D. 2000. The Cogito circa AD 2000, Inquiry 36, 22–54. Woodruff Smith, D. 2005. Consciousness with Reflexive Content, in D. Woodruff Smith and A.L. Thomasson eds, Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 9–114. Woods, W.A. 1987. Don’t blame the tools. Computational Intelligence, 3, 22–237. Woodward, J. 2003. Making Things Happen, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Woodward, J. 2012. Causation: Interactions Between Philosophical Theories and Psychological Research, Philosophy of Science, 79, 96–972. Yablo, S. 1999. Concepts and Consciousness, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 59, 2, 45–463. Yolton, J.W. 1956. Locke and the Way of Ideas. Reprinted 1993, Bristol: Thoemmes Press. Yolton, J.W. 1984. Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Yolton, J.W. 1996. Perception and Reality: A History from Descartes to Kant, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Yolton, J.W. 2000. Realism and Appearances. Cambridge University Press. Zagzebski, L. 1994. The Inescapability of Gettier Problems, Philosophical Quarterly 44/174: 65–73. Zagzebski, L. 2001. Recovering Understanding, in M. Steup ed., Knowledge, Truth and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Index

Achilles and the Tortoise, 121 act theory, 21, 199, 202–3 adverbialism, 10 agnosticism, 261 Ahmed, A., 258, 260, 264, 266 AI, 24–25; internal symbols and, 124– 25; neural nets, 126–28; Strong, 7, 119–21, 123; symbols in, 123; Weak, 119; Wishful Mnemonics error in, 30 algebra, 219 Allen, Woody, 252 Almog, J., 81, 153, 156, 158, 165–66 Ambrose, Alice, 251 Analytical philosophy, vii, ix, 13, 71, 215, 217; Fodor on, 200; linguistics and, 136, 137; scientific inquiry and, 140; social sciences and, 147; Winch and, 146 anti-luck platitude, 235 anti-realism, 251, 252, 254 Apel, 141 Argument from Illusion, viii, 12, 17, 26, 241; Disjunctivism and, 243, 244, 246, 247; Searle on, 206, 243, 246, 248; Theory of Ideas and, 188, 192–93 Aristotle, 107, 158, 176; representation and, 108 Armstrong, David, 5, 38, 66, 233

Armstrong Gambit, 37–38, 49, 64, 69 Arnauld, Antoine, viii–ix, 9–10, 168, 189, 194, 198; act theory and, 21–22, 199, 202–3; direct realism and, 21, 26, 196; dualism and, 203; representation and, 24, 25, 107, 108 The Astonishing Hypothesis, 35 “Asymmetries and Mind-Body Perplexities” (Gunderson), 39, 57 attention window, 103 Austin, J. L., 12, 246–47 Avramides, A., 41, 59–60, 75, 87, 95, 280 awareness: conscious, 88; internal, 14, 74, 75, 77, 78; reflective, 65–66; of state of mind, 66; subjective, 73 Ayer, A. J., 83–84, 241 Bach, K., 153, 206 Bacon, Francis, 171 Bad Argument, 12, 17, 206, 243, 246, 247 Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua, 82 Bartlett, F. C., 107 basic cognitive episode, 17–19, 18 Bayes Causal Nets, 182, 265 Bayes networks, 182, 182 Baz, A., 237, 238 Bealer, G., 165, 249 317

318

Index

Bechtel, William, 19, 20, 23, 24 behaviourism, 26, 111, 144–46, 150, 176, 179 belief boxes, 199 belief formation, 249 Berkeley, G., 195, 250; distinguishability problem and, 248; idealism of, 191, 241; representation and, 23; resemblance and, 105; sound and, 60; on Spectator error, 32, 43; Theory of Ideas and, 191, 192, 245, 246; vision and, 222 Bermudez, J. L., 259 Bianchi, A., 8, 153, 157, 173 Bickhard, M., 7 Bitbol-Hespériès, A., 106, 229 Blackburn, S., 19 Blade Runner (film), 40–41 Block, N., 97, 197 Boghossian, P., 155 Bourget, D., 259 Boyle, Robert, 35 Brandom, R., 154, 156, 169–70; Myth of the Given and, 18; on reference relations, 131–32; on truth condition on knowledge, 236 Braun, D., 168 Bricke, J., 11, 190 Bridgman, P. W., 59 Brook, A., 57 Buckle, S., 195 Burgess, S., 262, 267, 268, 274

The Case for Mental Imagery (Kosslyn, Thompson, and Ganis), 100 causal decision metatheory, 265 Causal Decision Theory (CDT), 261–62, 265 causal independence, 262 causal mediation, 26, 208–10 causal networks, 180–84, 182, 183 causal theory, 177–79, 182 causal theory of reference, 181 CDT. See Causal Decision Theory chain of communication, 177 Chalmers, David, 43, 58, 67, 70, 148, 259; Armstrong gambit and, 37–38; Conceivability Argument, 42; Illusionism and, 45; meta-problem and, 39–40; panpsychism and, 56 Chinese Room thought-experiment, 7, 25, 119, 129, 132, 192; neural nets and, 126–28; Physical Symbol System Hypothesis and, 121–22; Robot Reply, 120, 124–26; semantics as theology and, 128; System Reply, 124 Chisholm, R. M., 234, 237–39, 242 Chomsky, Noam, 4, 7, 129, 147, 148, 280; behaviourism and, 144, 150; Devitt and, 180–81; externalism and, 178; Frege and, 174–75; generative linguistics, 94, 95; on grammar, 31; internalism and, 159; internalist features of linguistic expressions and, 131–33; on limitations of current science, 38; on linguistic research, Campbell, J., 25, 130, 258 150, 152; on meaning, 135, 141; Cantor’s Theorem, 72 mind-body problem and, 60–63; on Capuano, A., 19 philosophical enterprise, 140, 141; Carnap, Rudolf, 254, 255 Quine and, 137–39, 146, 152; on Carruthers, P., 116–17 rediscovery of themes and mistakes, Cartesian Coordinate system, 219 14; on reliance on theorist, viii, 3, Cartesian Linguistics (Chomsky), 14 128, 142, 143; on scientific inquiry, Cartesian Theater, vii, viii, 1, 2, 5, 6, 144, 150; semantics and, 131, 172; 281; Dennett criticism of, 29, 31, Skinner and, 179, 180; on Spectator 32; as higher order thought, 63–64; theorist, 120; tacit knowledge and, inner agent and, 20–21; source of, 70; 40, 92; on Theater error source, 2; tripartite model of, 26 translation and, 146, 151



Index 319

Churchland, Patricia, 216 Churchland, Paul, 60, 119, 216 Clarke, Desmond, 39, 69, 73, 216, 217 classification: capacities for, 196; imagery and, 114 van Cleve, J., 20, 56, 205, 210, 241 Cogito argument, viii, 13–14, 37, 54, 69–71, 73–75; analysis and synthesis methods and, 90–91; as “curiously momentary affair,” 85–86; diagonal construction and, 82; diagonal deduction and, 83–85; explanatory gap and, 75; first-person and, 76; indubitability of, 80–81; intuition and inference dispute, 89–90; as Liar Paradox variant, 72; logical structure of, 78–79; as modus ponens, 81; public to private transition and, 77; second-person and, 77–78; tacit knowledge and, 91–95; temporal features of, 85–86 cognition, miracle theory of, 20, 21, 26 cognitive differentiation, 162 cognitive fix, 159–61, 178 cognitive illusions, 34, 241 cognitive informativeness, 161–63 cognitive representation, 187 cognitive science, 192, 198; Descartes relevance to modern, 12; tripartite model in, 22, 23 Cohen, I.B., 215 colour, experience of, 53 common cause hypothesis, 265 competence models, 226 computational symbols, 123 computational theory of mind (CTM), 195 computer intelligence, 7 computer simulations, homunculus and, 104 Conceivability Argument, 35, 42, 49 concept individuation, 200 The Concept of Mind (Ryle), 97, 200 concept possession, 198, 200 Concepts (Fodor), 191

conceptual attractors, 198 conceptual mediation, 161 connectionist models, 126–28 conscious awareness, Liar Paradox and, 88 conscious experiences, 50–51 consciousness, 52, 274, 276; denial of existence of, 36; Hard Problem of, 7, 35–36, 40, 59, 60; ignorance and problem of, 61; materialism and, 24, 35, 38; meta-problem of, 39–40; Nagel on, 35; panpsychism and, 6, 55–57; phenomenal, 29, 31, 46, 58, 59 Consciousness Denied (Searle), 36 Consciousness Explained (Dennett), 36, 44 contents: externalist individuation of belief, 236; truth conditional theories of, 143 Continental philosophy, vii, 141, 147 Copenhaver, R., 26, 207, 208 Cotard’s Syndrome, 36–37 Cottingham, J., 93 Crane, T., 15, 54, 171–73, 250 Crick, F., 35 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 254 CTM. See computational theory of mind Cummins, Robert, 10, 128, 136 Cunning, D., 80–81, 83 Curley, E. M., 17 curse of knowledge, 166 DAG. See directed acyclic graphs Danto, Arthur, 17, 18, 20, 23, 191; on materialism, 36 Davidson, Donald, 7, 136–41, 143–48, 151 dead symbols, 129, 130 decision problems, 261, 264 Decock, L., 24, 106 Dedekind, 87–88 “Defence of Common Sense” (Moore), 251 Déjerine’s Syndrome, 130

320

Index

deliberation, 272 Demons, Dreamers and Madmen (Frankfurt), 218 De Motu Cordis (Harvey), 239 Dennett, Daniel, ix, 1, 5, 210, 280; Cartesian Theater and, 29, 31, 32; on conscious experiences, 50–52; as evil demon, 44–45; homunculus error and, 29, 30, 104; on illusions, 34; Knowledge Argument and, 54; Strong Illusionism and, 36 depictive representations, 113 de re thoughts, 205 Descartes, René, viii, 1, 4, 33, 37, 69–78, 197; analysis and synthesis methods and, 91; deductive blindness, 229; diagonal deduction and, 83–85; dualism and, 203; explanatory gap and, 75; external spectator and, 32; heart and, 229; on homunculus error, 30, 106–7; indubitability of Cogito, 80–81; inner agent and, 30; intuition and inference dispute and, 90; mechanical reductionism of, 230–31; modern philosophers and relevance of, 12–14; ontology and, 81–82; perception and, 223–27; physiological works, 13; on proofs, 79; reflective self-awareness and, 66; representation and, 107–8; resemblance and, 105–7; as scientist, 215–17, 222–23; selfreflection and, 65–66; on stereo vision, 221 Descartes’s Theory of Mind (Clarke), 217 description theories, 153, 154 Deuven, I., 24, 106 Deux Cartésiens, 195–98 Devitt, Michael, 127–28, 154, 158, 163– 64, 172–74, 177–79; causal networks and, 180–84 Dewey, J., 253 diagonal argument, 14, 90; analysis methods and, 91 diagonal constructions, 72, 82, 95

diagonal deduction, 72, 73, 83–85 diagonal heuristic, 85 Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Hume), 38 Diaz-Leon, 49 Dioptrics (Descartes), 30, 32, 33, 110, 218, 220–21, 224–26; mental representations and, 105, 108 directed acyclic graphs (DAG), 182, 265 direct perception, 196 Direct Realism, 10, 11, 205–10, 245 Direct Reference doctrine, 153, 156, 177 direct reference relation, 160 direct reference theory, 173–74 Discourse (Descartes), 72, 215, 218, 239 Disjunctivism, 12, 17, 194, 243–49, 255 distinguishability problem, 247–48 Donnellan, K. S., 8, 234; empty names and, 167; on history and names, 172, 177; omniscient observer of history and, 156–57, 159, 165, 166, 172, 174, 183–84 doubt, 217; certainty about, 82; certainty arising from, 80; diagonal deduction and, 83–85; about materialism, 63; process of, 77, 79; skeptical hypothesis and, 81 Doyle, J., 243, 249 Dretske, F., 26, 192 dualism, 73, 74, 194, 200; Arnauld and, 203 Dummett, M., 8, 154, 164, 175, 177, 184; on cognitive value, 175; on transparency of meaning to speaker, 129; on truth-conditional theories of meaning, 136, 143 Duns Scotus, 244–46 von Eckardt, B., 22, 23 Edelman, S., 108 EDT. See evidential decision theory Eells, E., 264–69 Egan, F., 132–33, 192 Einstein, A., 170 Ellsberg, D., 257



empathy, 147 Empiricists, 193, 195, 199, 205 empty names, 166–68 Enquiry (Hume), 190 epistemic burden, 179–80 epistemic capacities, 200 epistemic distinction, 59 epistemic intimacy, 204–5 epistemic luck, 234–42 Epistemological Disjunctivism (Pritchard), 243 epistemological upheaval, 233–34 epistemology, 238, 247; Disjunctivism and, 243–45 Essay (Locke), 17, 199 Eternal Recurrence, ix Evans, Gareth, 145, 181 evidential decision theory (EDT), 262, 265 Evil Demon, 5, 44–45, 77, 248 experience: of colour, 53; illusory, 248; introspective, 38; perceptual, 244; of phenomenal consciousness, 29; subjective, 67, 280; veridical, 248 experimental philosophy, 163–64 expertise defense, 164–65 Explanation and Understanding (von Wright), 146 explanatory gap, 36, 38, 59–61, 63–64, 67, 75, 228; conscious mental states and, 64; Phenomenal Concept Strategy and, 49; phenomenal experience and, 49 expressivist frameworks, 198 externalism, 238, 244 externalist individuation of belief contents, 236 externalist perspective, viii, 160, 161, 166, 202, 236 external representations, 24–26 external spectator, 32, 156 extramission theory, 159 Eye of the Mind, 109, 210 false belief task, 8, 165, 234, 280

Index 321

Farkas, K., 155, 172 Fermat, Pierre, 71 Feynman, Richard, 165 Fido theory, 156 Fine, A., 253 first person: experience of consciousness, 41, 280; Hintikka and, 77–78, 81–82, 85; introspective avowal, 56; introspective intuitions, 37, 41; introspective thought, 57; perplexity, 6; perspective, 58–59, 63, 69, 75, 95; phenomenal experience, 43, 46–47; problem intuitions, 35; status, 39, 41, 60, 74, 76; subjectivity, 51, 52, 55 Fisher, R. A., 135 Flaubert, G., 69 Floridi, L., 9, 236 Fodor, J. A., viii, 3, 8, 26, 159–60, 162, 214; Aquinas and, 213; causal chain and, 183; on Chomsky and semantics, 132; concept possession and, 191, 198; on consciousness, 66, 280; Direct Realism and, 206–10; empty names and, 168; externalism and, 171, 173; on externalist individuation of belief contents, 236; on Hume, 216; Hume and, 189–91, 195; indeterminacy about belief and, 168; on internalism, 204; language of thought and, 2, 117, 125, 209; Malebranche and, 193–94; on metaphysics of representation, 198; pragmatism attacked by, 209; Reid and, 205, 207, 209; representation in cognitive science and, 192, 195; representative theory and, 213; RTM and, 189; on semantic evaluability of mental states, 201; on semantics and representations, 128, 199; Spectator error and, 213; Theory of Ideas and, 10–11, 189–91 Føllesdal, D., 148, 152, 181 formal reality of idea, 197, 204 Foster, J. A., 143–44 Frankfurt, H., 73–74, 77, 218

322

Frankish, K., 31, 34, 35 Frege, Gottlob, 153, 154, 160–62, 174– 75, 178, 197 Freud, Sigmund, 15, 141, 224 fully formed interpreter, 143–44 “Fundamental Aspects of Cognitive Representation” (Palmer), 187

Index

Gunderson, K., 39, 57, 86–88

H2O, 58–59 Habermas, J., 146 Hales, S. D., 164 Hall, T. S., 229 Halting Problem, 72 Handey, Jack, 57, 58 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 141 Hanson, N. R., 180 Galilean Inquiry, 137, 147, 150 Hard Problem of consciousness, 7, Galileo Galilei, 97, 113, 217 35–36, 40, 59, 60 Gallois, A., 83 Harman, G., 57, 148, 152, 245 Ganis, G., 100 Harper, W. L., 261, 262, 266 gappiness, 168 Harvey, William, 229, 230, 239 Garber, D., 13, 245 Hazlett, A., 233 Gärdenfors, P., 262 heart, theories of, 229, 230 Gaukroger, S., 12, 24, 47, 71, 91, 196, Heidegger, 141 215 Heinämaa, Sara, 136, 141 Geisteswissenschaften, 147 Heisenberg uncertainty, 269 generative grammar, 127, 226 hermeneutic tradition, 141, 147 generative linguistics, 94, 95, 131 heterophenomenology, 43, 46, 52, 60, Gettier, E. L., 233–34, 239 66–67, 280 Gettier Problem, 8–9, 15, 166, 233, Hetherington, S., 9, 233, 235–36, 239 248–49, 255, 280; epistemic luck Higginbotham, J., 128, 135, 137 and, 234–38; explanation and, 238; higher-order representation, 64 justification and, 238; philosophical higher-order theories (HO theories), 64, urge and, 240–41 65, 67 ghost in the machine, 1–3, 29–30 Higher Order Thought (HOT), 14, 44, Gibbard, A., 261, 262, 266 57, 63–66, 75; levels and, 87–88 Gide, André, 1, 13 Hintikka, J., 76–78, 81, 82, 85, 90, 154, Glanvill, Joseph, 126 155, 218 Glock, H., 141, 145–46 Hinton, 243, 246 Glymour, C., 265 Hinzen, 130 Gödel, 170–71 historical explanation theory, 157, 177, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, 72, 178 88, 171 Hitchcock, C., 265 God’s Eye point of view, viii, 3, 202, homunculus, vii, 1, 20–21, 29, 102, 236, 240, 253, 254, 280 104, 228; Descartes on, 30, 106–7; Goethe, 60 resemblance and, 106–7; Searle and, Goff, P., 6, 56, 63 122–24 Goodman, Nelson, 23; on representation, Hookway, C., 149 105 Horwich, Paul, 128 grammar, 31; generative, 127, 226; HOT. See Higher Order Thought reality of, 200 HO theories. See higher-order theories Gregory, R, 34, 241 Hughes, C., 155



Index 323

Hume, David, 10, 11, 38, 107, 189, 190, 205, 216; Malebranche and, 195 Hume’s Problem, 2, 210 Hume Variations (Fodor), 191 hypnotic telepathic projection, 110, 110 idealism, 20, 191, 250; internalism as, 204; postmodern, 204–5 ideal system, 212 ideas: Malebranche and, 17, 204; representative theory of, 205–6; as thought-acts, 208; veil of, 210. See also Theory of Ideas ignorance, problem of consciousness and, 61 Ignorance and Error argument, 154 Ignorance or Error puzzle cases, 166 Ignorance thesis, 56 Illusionism: Chalmers and, 45; Dennett and, 45–46 illusions, 38, 242; cognitive, 34; perceptual, 34, 241; of phenomenality, 34; as stage magic, 32, 34 illusory experiences, 248 illusory perception, 241 Imagery Debate, 97, 110, 113, 114 imagery subsystems, 103, 103 Incompleteness Proof, 171 indeterminacy thesis, 149, 150 indirect realism, 191 individuation, 200 indubitability, 80–81 inentionalism, 151 infallibilism, 235, 236 inference, 89–90, 93 inferentialism, 131, 132 information processing model, 103, 104 inner agent: Cartesian Theater and, 20–21; Descartes and, 30 Inner Eye, 3 inner observer, 34 intentionality, 202 interface: picture as, 210; representation as, 22, 26, 207 interlinguistic identity conditions, 149

internal awareness, 14, 74, 75, 77, 78 internalism, 131, 132, 159, 204, 244, 249 internal representations, 24–26; as mental images, 161 internal symbols, AI and, 124–25 interpretative translation, 145 interpreter, 141; fully formed, 143–44 introspection, 66 introspective experience, 38 intuition, 89–90, 249; expertise and, 165 Investigational Asymmetries Problem, 86–87 Isaac, A. M. C., 24, 105 isomorphism, 105 Jackendoff, R., 192 Jackson, F., 9, 35, 50, 52–53, 61, 62, 148, 154 Jeffrey, Richard, 258, 261–63 Jeshion, R., 159, 202, 248 Johnson, Samuel, 192, 241, 250, 252 Jolley, N., 196, 198, 199 JTB. See justified, true belief justification, 238; knowledge and, 249; theories of, 237 justified, true belief (JTB), 233, 235 Kahneman, D., 257 Kant, Immanuel, 11, 29, 34, 66, 205, 254 Kaplan, D., 153, 166 Katz, J. J., 149, 151 Kenny, A., 90, 246 Kepler, 219, 221, 222 Khatchirian, Arpy, 141 Kirk, R., 42, 52 Kirkebøen, G., 220–21 Kirkham, R. L., 9, 234, 237 Kirsh, D., 126–27 knowledge: epistemic luck and, 235; epistemology and, 238; fallibility of, 237; justification and, 249; as justified, true belief, 233; perceptual, 244; propositional, 238; reflective, 94; as revelation, 202, 204; Searle on,

324

Index

54; tacit, 40, 91–95, 101–2, 113, 114, 116, 200, 226 Knowledge Argument, 35, 49, 50, 53, 54, 62, 148 Koestler, Arthur, 56 Kosslyn, S. M., 23, 24, 30, 102; homunculus and, 104; imagery debate and, 114; mental rotation and, 99; mental scanning experiments, 99–100; pictorial theory, 6–7, 20, 98 Koyré, Alexandre, 218 Kripke, Saul, 165, 168–71, 176; causal networks and, 180, 181, 183–84; chain of communication and, 157; on empty names, 166; intuitions and, 154, 155; proper names and, 8, 154; rigid designators doctrine, 8, 154, 156, 158 Kuhn, T. S., 229 language: semantical study of, 137; thinking in, 116–17 language-neutral meaning, 149 language of thought (LOT), 117, 122, 125, 209 Larson, R., 138 Laudan, L., 6, 240 Lazerowitz, M., 251 Le Grande, Antoine, 197 Lehrer, K., 11, 205 Leibniz, 194, 196 Lenin, V. I., 252–53 Lennon, T. M., 195 Lepore, E., 138, 141–45, 151 levels, HOT and, 87–88 Levi, I., 261, 272, 277 Levine, Joseph, 40–41, 51, 67, 224 Lewis, David, 260, 265, 271 The Liar, 14 Liar Paradox, 52, 93, 168, 273; Cogito argument as variant of, 72; conscious awareness and, 88 Libet, B., 274 life, signs and, 129 Lindberg, D., 221, 222

linguistic expressions, internalist features of, 131–33 linguistics: analytical philosophy and, 136, 137; generative, 94, 95, 131 live symbols, 129, 130 Llosa, Vargas, 7 Loar, B., 43, 45, 47, 59 Locke, John, 3, 17, 195, 199, 213 logical inference, 93 Logical Investigations (Wittgenstein), 51–52 LOT. See language of thought Ludwig, K., 138, 141–45 Lycan, W. G., 57, 62, 64, 143, 253, 254; on Gettier Problem, 234; Knowledge Argument and, 54; relative plausibility and, 250, 251; on semantics, 138 Mach, Ernst, 252 Machery, E., 163 Mackenzie, D., 182 Mackie, J., 181 Madison, B. J. C., 235 Maitzen, S., 261, 272–73 Le Malade imaginaire (Molière), 216–17 Malebranche, Nicolas, viii–ix, 9–11, 24, 243; ideas and, 17, 204; intentionality and, 202; rainbow-coloured soul and, 100; representationalism and, 21–22, 26; Theory of Ideas and, 189–96, 198 Malebranche-Arnauld debate, viii, 10, 189–90, 196 Mandrake the Magician (comic book series), 110, 110 Markie, P., 93, 94 Marr, D., 208, 220–21 materialism, 5, 74; consciousness and, 24, 35, 38; criticisms of, 36–37; Danto on, 36; Phenomenal Concept Strategy, 49; Place and, 31; Searle on, 50, 52; subjective experience and, 79; subjectivity and, 86 Maugham, W. Somerset, 268 Maund, B., 188, 211, 244, 247–48



Index 325

McDermott, D., 103–4 McGilvray, J., 131 McGinn, C., 35, 55, 139, 158 McKay, P., 260, 262, 267, 269 McKinsey, M., 153, 155, 167 meaning, 142–43; appeal to, 135–36; language-neutral, 149; observable behavior and, 145; puzzle of, 129; translation and, 145; transparency of, 129; truth and, 136; truth conditional theories of, 143 The Meaning of Meaning (Ogden and Richards), 19 mechanical reductionism, 230 mediation, 28, 209, 210 Meditations (Descartes), ix, 1, 13, 69, 215–16, 218; Analysis and, 93; analysis methods and, 91; Chalmers and, 37; demonstrative proofs and, 79; Dennett and, 5, 45; Descartes’ scientific and mathematical writings and, 72, 107; as exercise, 74; inference and, 83; internal awareness and, 75; Liar and, 84; self-reflection and, 52 Meek, C., 265 meine Gedankenwelt, 87–88 mental causation, 194 mental imagery, 23, 97–98, 109, 112, 277; crucial experiment for, 113–16; internal representations as, 161; perception and, 114, 115 mental objects, 199 mental particulars, 198–201 mental representation, 12, 107–9, 112, 187–88, 210, 213, 237; causal interactions and, 199 mental rotation, 97, 98–99, 99, 115–16 mental scanning, 97, 99–100 mental states, semantic evaluability of, 201 meta-intentional states, 66 metalanguage, 143 metaphors, 3–4 metaphysical fantasy, 251–53

metaphysical realism, 240 metaphysics, of representation, 198 meta-problems, of consciousness, 39–40 Methodenstreit, 146 Method of Analysis and Synthesis, 72, 90–91 Metzler, J., 98 Meyering, T. C., 105 Mill, J. S., 154 Miller, G. A., vii Millikan, Ruth, 210–12 mind-body problem, 35, 42, 86–87; Chomsky and, 60–63 mind’s eye, 6, 97, 116, 117; Grand Illusion and, 102, 113; labels for, 103 mind-world connection, 8, 159–60; nomic, 204 miracle theory of cognition, 20, 21, 26 miracle theory of mind, 207–9 mirages, 34, 241 Mirror of Nature, 3 modes of presentation, 159, 161–63, 178 Molière, 216–17, 230 Le Monde (Descartes), 215, 217, 230 monochrome Mary puzzle, 52, 61–62 Moore, G. E., 9, 15, 164, 241, 250–52, 255 Moravcsik, J. M., 174 Moreau, D., 196 Morgan, A., 106 movement of the soul, 159–61, 202 Müller-Lyer lines, 34, 46, 155, 242 Murdoch, Iris, 42 The Mystery of Consciousness (Searle), 52 Myth of the Given, 18 Nadler, Steven, 196–97, 203, 216, 225 Nagel, Jennifer, 164 Nagel, Thomas, 51, 55, 61–63, 74, 206; on conscious experience, 37; on Hard Problem of Consciousness, 35; investigational asymmetries and, 86; on physicalism, 38, 79 Naïve Realism, 248

326

Index

names, 159; causal theory and, 177, 182; empty, 166–68; proper, 133, 153, 154 naming ability, 176–78 el narrador-filósofo, 7–9 narrow content, 10, 197, 204 natural intuition, 153–55 naturalistic theory, 173–74 natural language, semantic theory and, 143 natural ontological attitude (NOA), 253 natural realism, 246, 252 nerve filaments , 4, 13, 126, 219–20, 220, 225 neural coding, 107, 126 neural nets, 126–28; Spectator error and, 126 A Neurocomputational Perspective (Churchland, Paul), 216 neurophilosophy, 216 Newcomb’s Problem, 7, 257, 258, 267; causal decision metatheory and, 265; CDT and, 261–62; cheating subject and eliminating demon, 276–77; EDT and, 262; experimentally realizing predictor, 274, 276; as goofball case, 260; malin génie and, 272–74; physically plausible realizations and, 263–64; quantum physics and, 269; as twin prisoner’s dilemma, 270–72; undetermination and, 260–61 Newell, A., 22, 24–25, 123, 220 Newell, Allan, 24, 25, 220 New Theory of Vision (Berkeley), 32, 222 Nietzsche, Friedrich, ix Nilsson, N. J., 25 NOA. See natural ontological attitude noetic rays, 8, 160, 172 nomic mind-world relations, 204 Nozick, R., 257–59, 261–62, 268 objective reality, 197 object theory, 21, 199 observer attribution, 25 ocular metaphor, 203

Ogden, C. K., 19 Olivi, Peter John, 245, 252 Omniscient Narrator fallacy, 15 Omniscient Observer, 3 omniscient observer of history, 156–58, 183 “On Referring” (Strawson), 156 “On Sense and Reference” (Frege), 174–75 ontological argument, 54 ontological distinction, 59 ontology, Descartes and, 81–82 On True and False Ideas (Arnauld), 196 Oppenheimer, 170 Optics (Descartes), 92 O’Rourke, M. O., 25, 130 other minds problem, 41, 42, 59 Palmer, S. E., 187 panpsychism, 6, 55–58 Papineau, D., 49–50, 69–70, 250 paradoxes of self-reference, 52 parallax, 92, 221 parapsychology, 56 Pasnau, Robert, 3–4, 209, 210, 213, 244 Passions of the Soul (Descartes), 220 Peacocke, C., 73–74, 76 Pearl, J., 182 Pearson J., 98, 101 Pearson J. and Kosslyn, S. M., 109 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 22, 23 Penrose Triangle, 34, 35 perception, 12, 213, 223–27; direct, 196; Direct Realism and, 205; illusory, 241; imagery and, 114, 115; veil of, 191, 244, 253 perceptual apprehension task, 115 perceptual experiences, 244 perceptual illusions, 34, 241 perceptual knowledge, 244 Pereplyotchik, D., 89 Perlis, D., 88 Perner, J., 8, 165, 280 Perry, J., 43, 52, 153



Index 327

phenomenal concepts, 49–50, 59; zombies and, 42 Phenomenal Concept Strategy, 49 phenomenal consciousness, 31, 58; Hard Problem of, 59; as metarepresentational state, 66; mindbody problem and, 60; subjective experience of, 29; Weak Illusionism and, 46 phenomenal experience, 50 phenomenality: illusion of, 34; Searle on, 45 Phenomenological Fallacy, 5–7, 9, 31, 42, 51, 63, 74, 109–11, 211 Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein), 43, 129 Philosophick Essay Concerning Ideas, 189 physicalism, 79; mind-body problem and, 86–87 Physical Symbol System Hypothesis, 24, 121–23, 220 pictorial theory, 6–7, 98, 102, 105, 110, 211, 222; representation and, 108; tripartite model and, 20 Pietroski, Paul, 131, 136, 155 Pinker, S., 102, 114, 127, 166, 280 Place, Ullin, 5, 6, 24, 108, 168, 211; on Phenomenological Fallacy, 31 Planck, Max, 252 Platts, M., 138–39 Popper, K., 146 Positivism, 146–47 Positivismusstreit, 146–48 possession, 198–200 possession conditions, 198 postmodern Idealism, 204–5 pragmatism, 200, 214; Fodor attack on, 209 preparatory response, 274 Price, Huw, 8, 129, 198 Priest, G., 88 Principles (Berkeley), 23 Prisoner’s Dilemma, 270–72, 271 Pritchard, D., 235, 236, 243–47, 249

private language argument, 43 private thought-acts, 77 problem of consciousness, ignorance as source of, 61 Problem of Other Minds, 41, 42 problem of the rock, 64–65 proper names, 133, 153, 154 propositional knowledge, 238 Psillos, S., 241, 251–54 psychological austerity, 179–80 public speech-acts, 77 Putnam, H., viii, 253, 255; Fodor on, 212; Maund on, 247; on metaphysical realism, 240; natural realism and, 246, 252; noetic rays, 8, 160, 172; on picture as interface, 210; Pritchard and, 247; representations as interface and, 22, 26, 207; Twin Earth, 172–73, 197, 201, 237 “Puzzle About Belief” (Kripke), 168 Pyle, A., 193, 194, 202, 204 Pylyshyn, Zenon, 57, 100, 135, 168, 211, 222, 280; imagery debate and, 114, 116; pictorial theory and, 23, 106, 108; tacit knowledge and, 101, 113, 114, 116 qualia, 75 Qualia-Creation, 64–65 quantum theoretic superposition, 269 Quine, W. V., 12, 136, 137, 140, 141, 144–52; on consciousness, 67; on semantics as theology, 128 Raatikainen, P., 176 Radical Interpretation, 141 radical translation, 147–48 rainbow-coloured soul, 100–101 Ramberg, Bjorn, 141 Ramsey, W., 22, 23, 187 readiness potential, 274, 276 realism, 255; debate over, 251, 253, 254; indirect, 191; metaphysical, 240; naïve, 248; natural, 246, 252 reality bias, 166

328

Index

reduction, 60–63 reductionism, 230 reference, 159; borrowing, 176, 177; causal theory of, 181; cognitive fix and, 160, 178; direct, 160; grounding, 183; naming ability and, 176; semantic, 172; speaker’s, 172 referentialism, 133, 156, 158; description theories of, 153, 154 reflective awareness, 65–66 reflective knowledge, 94 reflective self-awareness, 66 refutation of idealism, 250 Regulae (Descartes), 77, 90–92 Reid, Thomas, 10–12, 164, 250, 251, 253; disappearance from philosophical canon of, 206; Fodor on, 207–9; gappy sentences and, 168; representations and, 20, 26, 107, 108, 210; on theory of ideas, 187, 189, 196, 199, 205, 212, 213 Reimer, M., 168 relative plausibility, 250–51 Remembering (Bartlett), 107 replicants, 40 representation, 18, 19, 107–9, 210; cognitive, 187; depictive, 113; dyadic conception of, 20; encoded, 220; higher-order, 64; as interface, 22; internal and external, 24–26; as mediating between mind and world, 10; metaphysics of, 198; resemblance and, 225; triadic schema of, 20–21. See also mental representation Representational Theory of Mind (RTM), 189, 204; criticisms of, 207 Representation Reconsidered (Ramsey), 187 representations: depictive, 113; external, 24–26 representative theory of ideas, 205–6 resemblance, 105–7, 225, 231 Resnik, M., 257 retinotopic mapping, 111 revelation, knowledge as, 202, 204

Rey, Georges, 10 Richards, I. A., 19 rigid designators doctrine, 8, 156, 158 Robot Reply, 120, 124–26 Rock, I., 112 Rorty, Richard, 3, 34, 52, 59; justification and, 236, 240; ocular metaphor critique, 203; phenomenological fallacy and, 109– 10; realism and, 252–55; reference and, 154, 155; referentialism and, 158 Rosenthal, David, 9, 57, 63–64, 67, 75, 89 RTM. See Representational Theory of Mind Rubin Vase, 162, 163, 175 Rule Nine, 92 Russell, Bertrand, 4, 47, 88, 154, 178, 254 Russell’s Paradox, 52, 72 Ryle, G., 97, 200–201, 211 Sally-Anne false belief task, 8, 165–66, 234 Salmon, N., 156, 168 schemata theory, 107 Schick, F., 272, 277 Schiffer, S., 199 Schmalz, T. M., 24, 100, 108 Schmidt, J. H., 263–64, 274 Schneider, S., 195, 209 Scholastics, 188, 194 Schrödinger’s cat, 269 Scientific American (magazine), 119 Scientific Revolution, 4 scientific theorizing, 164–65 Scott, Ridley, 40 Search After Truth (Malebranche), 195, 196 The Search After Truth (Descartes), 85 Searle, John, 51, 53, 255; Argument from Illusion and, 206, 243, 246, 248; on beliefs, 165, 169; causal chain and, 177, 181, 183; chain of communication and, 177; Chinese



Index 329

Room thought experiment, 7, 25, 128, 129, 132; Devitt and, 172; Direct Realism and, 11, 206; distinguishability problem and, 247; God’s eye view and, 165, 169; homunculus and, 122–24; on Illusionism, 45; on knowledge, 54; on materialism, 50, 52, 224; materialism and, 36–37; on phenomenality, 45; on physical symbol system hypothesis, 121–22; Quine and, 149; referentialism and, 159–60, 172, 184, 236; on Representative view, 11; Robot Reply and, 120, 124–26; on Spectator error, 12, 17; Strong AI and, 7, 119–21; System Reply and, 124 Seeing Things as They Are (Searle), 11, 243 Segal, G., 138, 163 self-reference, 82, 85, 261 self-reflection, 65–66 Sellars, W., 18, 136, 208 semantic evaluability, 201–2 semantic reference, 172 semantics, 136–38, 148; Chomsky and, 131, 172; interpretation and, 143–44; natural language and, 143; as theology, 128; truth theoretic, 141 Semantics Without Truth Values (Pietroski), 136 semiotic theory, 22 Semiotic Triad, 19 Semiotic Triangle, 19 Sense and Sensibilia (Austin), 12, 246 sense-data, 11, 20, 191, 193, 211 senses, as modes of presentation, 161–62 set theory, 52 Shea, N., 106 Shepard, R. N., 98 Sherrington, C., 51 Shier, D., 25, 130 Shoemaker, S., 59 signs, life and, 129 similarity, 105 Simon, Herbert, 22, 24–25, 123, 220

skeptical hypothesis, 81 skepticism, 151, 238, 244, 245 Skinner, B. F., 111, 145, 179, 180, 243 Skyrms, B., 273–74 Slezak, P., 72, 78, 104, 115, 261 Smith, Barry C., 139–40 Smith, Brian C., 128 Soames, S., 54, 137, 144, 154, 158 social sciences, 147 Sorensen, R. A., 261 Sorrell, 246 Soteriou, 243 speaker’s reference, 172 Spectator error, vii, 4, 6–11, 219, 222, 279, 281; Berkeley on, 32, 43; Chomsky on, 120; Fodor and, 213; neural nets and, 126; omniscient observer of history and, 156–58; Phenomenological Fallacy and, 31; proper names and, 154; referentialism and, 154; Searle on, 12, 17; Theory of Ideas and, 191 Spinoza, B., 100 spookiness, 159–61 stage magic, illusions as, 32, 34 Stalnaker, R., 42, 59, 128, 154, 159, 202, 248 Steels, Luc, 19, 120 Stern, R., 265, 266 Stich, S., 163–64, 188 stimulus control, 179, 180 Stoljar, D., 61–62 strange loops, 39 Strawson, G., ix, 4–6, 11, 31, 50, 215; on denial of consciousness, 36–37; Ignorance thesis, 56; panpsychism and, 55, 56; on Reid, 206; Wittgenstein and, 39 Strawson, P. F., 133, 156 Strong AI, 7, 119–21, 123 Strong Illusionism, 5, 6, 36, 44 Stroud, Barry, 11, 142, 190, 243 structural correspondence, 105 subjective awareness, 73

330

Index

subjective experience, 67, 280; materialism and, 79 subjective impressions, 263 subjectivity, materialism and, 86 surrogate percept, 114 Sutton, J., 230–31 symbolic computation, 121 symbols: in AI, 123; dead, 129, 130; internal, 124–25; live, 129, 130. See also Physical Symbol System Hypothesis Syntactic Structures (Chomsky), 147 Systems Reply, 124 tacit knowledge, 40, 91–95, 113, 114, 116, 226; philosophical theory and, 101–2; Pylyshyn and, 101; reality of grammar and, 200 television screen metaphor, 24, 31, 32, 109 tertium quid, 20–22 theology, semantics as, 128 Theory of Ideas, 10, 11, 188, 190, 191, 205 theory of mind, 62, 165; computational, 195; miracle, 207–9; representational, 189, 204, 207 thinking, in language, 116–17 Third Meditation (Descartes), 10, 83, 84, 197 Thomas, Nigel, 107 Thompson, W. L., 114 Thomson, J. J., 47 thought-acts, 208 Tractatus (Wittgenstein), ix, 39, 86, 164 Traité de l’Homme (Descartes), 215, 229 translation, 151; empathy and, 147; indeterminacy of, 149, 150; informativeness of, 143; interpretative, 145; meaning and, 145; radical, 147–48 translation theories, 137 transparency, of meaning, 129 Traumdeutung (Freud), 141 Treatise (Hume), 190

triadic schema, 20–21 tripartite model, 17–19, 18, 26; in cognitive science, 22, 23; pictorial theory and, 20 true seeing, 203 truth: justification and, 237; meaning and, 136 “Truth and Meaning” (Davidson), 136 truth conditional theories, 143 truth theoretic semantics, 141 Turing, Alan, 4 Tversky, A., 257 Twin Earth puzzle, 172–73, 197, 201, 237 Twin Prisoner’s Dilemma, 270–72, 271 Tye, M., 98, 107, 154, 245 under-specification, 260–61 undetermination, 260–61 unification, 60–63 uninterpreted displays, 112–14 Van Cleve, J., 20, 56, 205, 210, 241 van Fraassen, B. C., 105, 182, 183 van Gelder, T., 127 Van Gulick, R., 64, 66 veil of ideas, 210 veil of perception, 191, 244, 253 Verbal Behavior (Skinner), 179 veridical experiences, 248 veritic epistemic luck, 235, 239 veritic luck, 249 Verstehen approach, 147, 148 virtus dormitiva, 216 vision, 91–92, 221, 222 Vision (Malebranche), 193, 194 Vision of All Things in God, viii, 243 visual buffer, 6, 103, 113 visual imagery, 105 visual spatial perception, 227 Von Eckardt, B., 6, 20, 22, 23, 98 von Wright, G. H., 146 warranted assertability, 253 Watson, J. B., 160, 231



Index 331

Weak AI, 119 Weak Illusionism, 44, 45–47 Weber, Max, 146 Wettstein, H., 157–63, 174, 177 what-it’s-like, 43, 45, 50, 52–54, 59–60, 65–66, 144, 148, 279–80 wide content, 10, 197 Wilde, Oscar, 82, 279 Williams, D., 23 Williamson, T., 164 Wilson, G., 261, 272–73 Wimmer, H., 8, 165, 280 Winch, P., 146–47 Wishful Mnemonics, 30, 102–4 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, ix, 86, 146, 164, 252, 280; explanatory gap and, 51–52, 67; on introspective episode, 67; investigational asymmetry and,

39; private language argument, 43; on puzzle of meaning, 129, 130 Wolf, F. A., 269, 270 Wolf-Devine, C., 222, 224–28 Wolterstorff, N., 11–13, 205, 210, 246 Woodruff Smith, D., 65, 70, 76 Woodward, J., 182, 183 Word and Object (Quine), 137, 148, 150 von Wright, G. H., 146–47 Yolton, J. W., 189–91, 194, 198–99 Zagzebski, L., 236, 238, 240 Zappa, Frank, 112, 113 Zeno’s paradox, 121, 260 Zombies, 59, 228; conceivability of, 41–44; phenomenal consciousness and, 42

About the Author

Peter Slezak is Honorary Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He obtained his PhD from Columbia University, New York. His teaching and research cover philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and cognitive science, history and philosophy of science, social studies of science, the work of Descartes and the Galileo Affair. He is editor of the Elsevier series Perspectives on Cognitive Science.

333