STICH ........................................................................................................
AND HIS CRITICS
PHILOSOPHERS AND THEIR CRITICS General Editor: Ernest Lepore Philosophy is an interactive enterprise. Much of it is carried out in dialogue as theories and ideas are presented and subsequently refined in the crucible of close scrutiny. The purpose of this series is to reconstruct this vital interplay among thinkers. Each book consists of a temporary assessment of an important living philosopher’s work. A collection of essays written by an interdisciplinary group of critics addressing the substantial theses of the philosopher’s corpus opens each volume. In the last section, the philosopher responds to his or her critics, clarifies crucial points of the discussion, or updates his or her doctrines. 1 Dretske and His Critics Edited by Brian McLaughlin 2 John Searle and His Critics Edited by Ernest Lepore and Robert van Gulick 3 Meaning in Mind: Fodor and His Critics Edited by Barry Loewer and Georges Rey 4 Dennett and His Critics Edited by Bo Dahlbom 5 Danto and His Critics Edited by Mark Rollins 6 Perspectives on Quine Edited by Robert B. Barrett and Roger F. Gibson 7 The Churchlands and Their Critics Edited by Robert N. McCauley 8 Singer and His Critics Edited by Dale Jamieson 9 Rorty and His Critcs Edited by Robert B. Brandom 10 Chomsky and His Critics Edited by Louise M. Antony and Norbert Hornstein 11
Dworkin and His Critics Edited by Justine Burley
12
McDowell and His Critics Edited by Cynthia Macdonald and Graham Macdonald
13
Ernest Sosa and His Critics Edited by John Greco
14
Stich and His Critics Edited by Dominic Murphy and Michael Bishop
STICH ........................................................................................................
AND HIS CRITICS
Edited by Dominic Murphy and Michael Bishop
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
This edition first published 2009 © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ , United Kingdom Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ , UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ , UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. The right of Dominic Murphy and Michael Bishop to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stich and his critics / edited by Dominic Murphy and Michael Bishop. p. cm. — (Philosophers and their critics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-1207-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4051-1206-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Stich, Stephen P. I. Murphy, Dominic. II. Bishop, Michael A. B945.S7554S75 2009 191—dc22 2008026761 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Set in 10/12.5pt Ehrhardt by Graphicraft Ltd, Hong Kong Printed in Malaysia by Vivar Printing Sdn Bhd 01 2009
Contents
Notes on Contributors Introduction dominic murphy and michael bishop 1 Is There a Role for Representational Content in Scientific Psychology? frances egan
vii 1
14
2 Representationalism Reconsidered peter godfrey-smith
30
3 On Determining What There Isn’t michael devitt
46
4 Eliminativism and the Theory of Reference frank jackson
62
5 Why Isn’t Stich an ElimiNativist? fiona cowie
74
6 A Defense of the Use of Intuitions in Philosophy ernest sosa 7 Reflections on Cognitive and Epistemic Diversity: Can a Stich in Time Save Quine? michael bishop 8 Simulation Theory and Cognitive Neuroscience alvin goldman
101
113
137
contents
vi
9 The Triumph of a Reasonable Man: Stich, Mindreading, and Nativism kim sterelny
152
10 Against Moral Nativism jesse j. prinz
167
11
Replies stephen stich
190
List of Publications by Stephen Stich
253
Index
265
Notes on Contributors
Editors Dominic Murphy is Senior Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Science at The University of Sydney. He works in philosophy of psychology, biology, and neuroscience. He is the author of Psychiatry in the Scientific Image (2006). Michael Bishop is Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. His principal research areas are epistemology and philosophy of science. He is the author, with J. D. Trout, of Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment (2005).
Contributors Fiona Cowie is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The California Institute of Technology. She works at the interface of philosophy and the sciences of the mind, and she is the author of What’s Within (1998). Michael Devitt is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He has published many books and articles in the philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics. His most recent book is Ignorance of Language (2006). Frances Egan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her recent work concentrates on the role of representational content in computational models of cognitive capacities. She also has research interests in the theory of vision and in computational neuroscience. Peter Godfrey-Smith is Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. He works mainly in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind. He is the author of Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (1996).
viii
notes on contributors
Alvin Goldman is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. His principal research areas are epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. His most recent book is Simulating Minds (2006). Frank Jackson is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The Australian National University. He also holds appointments at Princeton and La Trobe Universities. He is the author of From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis (1998). He was awarded the Order of Australia in 2006. Jesse J. Prinz is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He has research interests in cognitive science, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of language, moral psychology, and esthetics. His is the author of The Emotional Construction of Morals (2007). Ernest Sosa is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He has published in many areas of epistemology. His most recent book is A Virtue Epistemology (2007). Kim Sterelny is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University in Wellington, and in the Philosophy Program at The Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra. He is the author of Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition (Blackwell, 2003) and, with James Maclaurin, of What is Biodiversity? (2008). Stephen Stich is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. He has written extensively on issues in cognitive science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemology, moral theory, and philosophical methodology. In 2007, he received the Jean Nicod Prize sponsored by the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and in 2008 he was the first recipient of the American Philosophical Association’s Gittler Award for outstanding scholarly contribution to the philosophy of the social sciences.
introduction
1
Introduction
Since the late 1960s, Stephen Stich has produced a substantial body of philosophical work that is remarkable for its range and power. With clarity and verve, Stich has defended positions and arguments that are bracing and often contrary to conventional philosophical wisdom. He has tackled an astonishingly diverse set of philosophical topics – most notably, linguistics and innateness, mental content and eliminativism, pragmatism and epistemology, moral psychology, genetic engineering, the nature of “mindreading” (how we ascribe mental states to ourselves and others), experimental philosophy, and issues of philosophical method. Two further aspects of Stich’s body of work are noteworthy. His writing sets a standard of lucidity and clarity of exposition that is too rarely met in philosophy today. What’s more, philosophy for Stich is a genuinely collaborative activity. His first publication (1968) was jointly authored, and since then he has collaborated with almost 40 different people – and counting! The Stich oeuvre might appear to be a menagerie of disparate topics lacking any clear guiding philosophical theory or organizing principle. But perhaps the best way to frame Stich’s work over the years is in terms of the assumption that philosophical problems are best understood as arising naturally out of the sciences. If we want to know about the nature of mind, morality, language or culture, we should pay close attention to what the sciences tell us about mind, morality, language or culture. Of course, Stich’s research testifies to the idea that solutions to philosophical problems cannot simply be “read off” the science. Stich (sometimes together with his collaborators) has offered a number of well-known arguments for thinking that certain specific argument-types commonly employed by philosophers are unlikely to be fruitful (Weinberg, Nichols and Stich 2001; Mallon, Machery, Nichols and Stich, forthcoming). But given the bold naturalism implicit in Stich’s philosophy, some might be surprised to discover that Stich has never offered a positive, general account of his philosophical method. This should not really be surprising, however. Why would we expect a naturalist to engage in a priori reflections about the nature of philosophy? (Indeed, it is ironic how much commentary on philosophical naturalism comes from deep in the anti-naturalistic armchair.) In Stich’s writings, we see a philosopher tackling important problems using an extraordinarily diverse range of considerations and techniques culled from philosophy and the sciences. This kind of
2
dominic murphy and michael bishop
methodological opportunism is precisely what we should expect from a naturalist who understands that in philosophy, as in science, we can have good reasons for thinking that certain methods are ineffective but we can’t always know what methods will be successful until after we try them out. The clear-headed naturalist understands the futility of trying to identify a priori the correct philosophical methods with any high degree of precision. The articles in this volume represent most of the major themes Stich has addressed over the course of his career. So perhaps the best way to introduce those themes is to give a brief synopsis of these articles and Stich’s replies to them. In From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science (FP), Stich explored the relationship between our commonsense, “folk” accounts of human behavior, which appeal liberally to representational states like beliefs and desires, and the accounts of human behavior to be found in cognitive science. He argued that the “manifest image” and the “scientific image” of the human mind clash rather dramatically. Stich went on to argue for eliminativism – the view that these representational states do not exist. A central feature of Stich’s arguments for eliminativism was his Protagorean account of how we ascribe content to folk psychological states: When I ascribe to you the belief that snow is white, I am saying that you are in a belief state that is similar to the belief state that would normally underwrite my assertion that snow is white (1983: 88). Stich argued that this view of content ascription implies that the representational states of folk psychology are dogged by various forms of vagueness, context-sensitivity, and observer-relativity. And as a result, the folk psychological concept of belief “ought not to play any significant role in a science aimed at explaining human cognition and behavior . . . [and] despite appearances to the contrary, [it] does not play a role in the best and most sophisticated theories put forward by contemporary cognitive scientists” (1983: 5). Both Frances Egan and Peter Godfrey-Smith aim to explore the issue of where things stand today – what role do representational states play in contemporary cognitive science? Egan begins her article by noting that while Stich argued for eliminativism in FP in 1983, sixteen years later, in Deconstructing the Mind (DM) (1999), Stich is more guarded. In DM, Stich is prepared to concede that intentional categories might have a useful scientific role to play. Egan thinks that they do, and defends her claim by showing how intentional categories play important roles in two broad areas of cognitive science. The first set of examples derives from computational cognitive psychology. While such theories individuate cognitive systems in terms of their abstract computational roles, it is only by appealing to semantic, intentional categories that we can explain how those roles hook up with the environment. For example, while we can individuate a cognitive system purely in terms of its intrinsic mathematical properties, the only way to account for the fact that it is the visual system is by characterizing it as having certain intentional properties. The very context-sensitivity of intentional ascription, says Egan, is what allows us to understand a system in terms of its environment, since two systems that share a computational characterization might have evolved in different environments to do different jobs. While computational psychology must appeal to semantic states, it does not make use of folk psychological states like beliefs and desires. Egan argues that these folk psychological states do play a role in other areas of psychology, notably developmental and social psychology.
introduction
3
The basic move Stich makes in reply to Egan is to note that philosophers have distinguished a number of different notions of representation (Cummins 1989; Ramsey 2007). In FP, Stich argued that the notion of representation underlying folk psychology would play no role in a mature cognitive science – where he took that notion of representation to be vague, context-sensitive, and observer-relative. In replying to Egan, Stich argues that the notion of representation underlying computational cognitive psychology is not this folk notion. It has none of the idiosyncrasies of the folk notion – instead, it is “determined by the distal properties tracked by [the mechanism’s] internal states” (p. 22). With respect to Egan’s second set of examples, Stich grants that the folk psychological notions of representation are appealed to in some thriving areas of social psychology (although Stich has some misgivings about Egan’s particular examples). But he is wary of supposing that these areas of psychology presuppose a single, folk psychological notion of representation, much less the notion he described in FP. Some of the sources of Stich’s wariness become apparent in his response to Peter Godfrey-Smith. Godfrey-Smith begins by noting that “cognitive science makes free use of concepts of representation, knowledge, reasoning, and so on” (p. 31). And yet philosophers have not succeeded in showing how an organism’s representational states can be explained in terms of its physical or biological states. Godfrey-Smith suggests that the reason for this is that the cognitive sciences may advert to systems that are representational in a wide variety of different ways: “A physical system can acquire a well-motivated semantic description by a variety of ‘paths’ ” (p. 32). A central kind of representation is the basic representational model (BRM), a notion derived from model-based conceptions of understanding discussed in recent philosophy of science. Godfrey-Smith discusses a paradigm example of BRM, one in which a “reader mechanism” takes one thing, M, to be a guide to another thing, W. The representation M (say, a street map) is used by a reader mechanism (the map reader) to be a guide to W (say, the location of the bus station). To be guided, the reader mechanism will often exploit some kind of resemblance between M and W – but the BRM allows for many different kinds of resemblance. “All the quirkiness, vagueness, and context-sensitivity of the notion of ‘resemblance’ are supposed to be in play here.” Models can be “unclear, indefinite, and changeable” about how and to what degree they resemble the target (p. 33). Stich largely agrees with the general thrust of Godfrey-Smith’s views about representation, although he reserves judgment on many particulars. For example, Stich’s Protagorean account of how we ascribe content to folk psychological states implies that those states are riddled with vagueness, context-sensitivity, and observer-relativity. So Godfrey-Smith can be seen as largely confirming Stich’s views about the theoretical disorderliness of representation. Stich grants, however, that Godfrey-Smith might be right that Stich’s arguments for eliminativism were perhaps too pessimistic about the ability of cognitive scientists to productively employ the messy and unwieldy explanatory category of representation. Michael Devitt and Frank Jackson consider a line of argument that appears in Deconstructing the Mind (DM 1996). There, Stich casts a skeptical eye on the central argument he had proposed for eliminativism:
4
dominic murphy and michael bishop
1 Beliefs (and propositional attitudes generally) are the central posits of folk psychology. 2 Folk psychology is a seriously mistaken theory. 3 Therefore, beliefs (and propositional attitudes generally) do not exist. This argument requires an extra premise, namely, that the central posits of seriously mistaken theories do not exist. In defending eliminativism, Stich had assumed this tacit premise was warranted on the basis of a description theory of reference, according to which a theoretical term (like ‘belief ’) refers to whatever is picked out by the descriptions the theory associates with that term. If, as Stich argued, folk psychology is seriously mistaken, then the descriptions associated with its central posits do not pick out anything. And so those central posits do not exist. William Lycan (1988) responded by rejecting the description theory of reference in favor of a causal theory of reference. Such theories hold that reference is some sort of causal relation between the uses of a term (like ‘belief’) and some thing or type of thing in the world. A distinctive feature of causal theories is that they allow for the possibility that theoretical terms can successfully refer even though they are embedded in deeply mistaken theories (e.g., early theories of the atom). So if we assume a causal theory of reference, then even if Stich was right that folk psychology is seriously mistaken, it is still possible for its central terms, like ‘belief’, to successfully pick out something in the world. Lycan’s argument woke Stich from his “dogmatic slumbers.” In DM, Stich does not attack Lycan’s argument head-on by defending a description theory of reference. Rather, Stich notes that a debate about ontology (Are there beliefs?) has turned into a debate about language (How do theoretical terms refer?). Stich argues that it is a mistake to turn issues about ontology into issues about reference. “What exactly are the facts that a theory of reference is supposed to capture?” Stich asks (DM: 6). He offers two possible answers. First, it might aim to capture some “folk theory” of reference – our commonsense views about the link how words pick out things in the world. Or second, the “protoscience” project holds that the goal of a theory of reference is “to characterize a word– world mapping that will be useful in one or another empirical discipline such as linguistics, cognitive psychology, or the history of science” (DM: 6). Stich thinks neither project is likely to succeed. The folk theory project isn’t appropriate because there is no reason to believe that our “folk theory” of reference, in all its details, is true. And the proto-science project is suspect because it is unlikely that any area of science really employs a word–world reference-like relation in its explanations and, even if scientific explanations do appeal to such relations, there is no reason to think that every area of science will employ the same unique word–world relation (DM: 44–5). A natural objection to this line of argument is this: How are we to resolve difficult ontological issues except by appealing to theories of reference? Suppose those things we call ‘cats’ are really robots and not mammals (Putnam 1970, 1975). What would be the right thing to say – that cats exist but they aren’t what we thought they were or that cats don’t exist? Stich suggests a number of ways such hard cases might be handled without benefit of a theory of reference: some hard cases might simply remain unresolved because no one is interested in whether the posit exists; other cases might be resolved via implicit previous agreements about what conditions would have to obtain in order for a posit to
introduction
5
exist; still others might be decided by social and political factors internal to the relevant science, or by broader social and political factors (DM: 65–71). Michael Devitt agrees with much of this. He agrees that it is a mistake to resolve ontological problems by appeal to theories about language. Philosophers “should adopt the slogan, ‘put metaphysics first’ ” (p. 48). Devitt also agrees that the folk theory project is a non-starter because there is no reason to think the folk are right about the nature of reference. But Devitt argues that Stich’s arguments concerning the proto-science project are too “gloomy.” Devitt distinguishes two components of the proto-science project. The first involves characterizing the reference relation. There is no reason to be gloomy about this task. Our folk intuitions permit us to (fallibly) identify uncontroversial examples of reference and then we construct a theory about “what is common and peculiar to” reference (p. 49). The resulting theory can lead us to revise our original intuitions. The second component of the proto-science project is showing how reference is scientifically useful. Once again, Devitt argues that Stich’s discussion of this issue is too gloomy. The science of linguistics includes semantics and “prima facie, semantics does have a role for reference because the most popular theories of meaning are truth-referential.” And so “the meaning of the sentence ‘Bush is deceitful’ is largely explained by the sentence’s being true iff there is something that ‘Bush’ designates and ‘deceitful’ applies to. So, the meaning of the sentence is partly explained in terms of two referential relations, designation and application” (p. 53). Stich carefully teases apart the various issues on which he and Devitt agree and disagree – expanding and revising his original argument in subtle ways. The main point of contention concerns the prospects for constructing a theory that identifies “what is common and peculiar to” reference. Stich raises a number of objections. For example, he asks us to consider the Twin Earth and Godel/Schmitt intuitions that are standard in the reference literature (Putnam 1975; Kripke 1972). Either such intuitions will be included in the store of uncontroversial evidence that is to be used to decide between theories of reference or they will not. If they are not included, then the evidence will be too feeble to decide between competing theories. If they are included, Stich argues that these identifying judgments are not “uncontroversial” because people in different cultures seem to have systematically different reference intuitions about these crucial cases (Machery et al. 2004). Unlike Devitt, Frank Jackson agrees with Stich that the proto-science project is hopeless. Jackson argues that “the best policy is to be easy-going about what counts as representation” in the sciences (p. 65). The representation relations of interest to evolutionary biologists are bound to be different from those that are of interest to weather forecasters. To privilege one of these relations as the reference relation smacks of “dogma.” But Jackson does think that “there had better be” a special reference relation that is relevant to ontological questions – that is relevant to whether atoms, species, aether, or beliefs exist (p. 67). The crucial step in Jackson’s solution to Stich’s challenge is here: Our thoughts have (reasonably) determinate contents which we can report using sentences. Anyone who denies this cannot allow that they know what this paper, or indeed any paper . . . is about . . . We use sentences to pass on what we think and to find out what
6
dominic murphy and michael bishop others think, and we often do so successfully. It follows that the word–world relations which we have just noted are properly counted as cases of reference are very often determinate (or determinate enough) and known. (p. 70)
The reference relation that is relevant to any ontological claim (e.g., there are electrons) is the one that captures the content of the relevant belief (e.g., the belief that there are electrons). Of course, this leaves open the possibility of purely verbal “no fault” disagreements – disagreements about, for example, whether some plant is a shrub or a tree (p. 72). But the important point, for Jackson, is that this account of reference legitimately grounds all manner of non-trivial ontological arguments, including Stich’s argument for the nonexistence of propositional attitudes. The original problem arose for Stich because philosophers seem to resolve ontological issues (Are there beliefs?) by appeal to semantic issues (What does “belief ’ refer to?). Stich’s challenge is that philosophers who formulate theories of reference seem to be embarked on one of two projects, and on neither project does it make sense to say that a theory of reference can help to resolve ontological disputes. According to Stich, Jackson’s solution to this problem merely moves the bump in the rug to another place. “To oversimplify a bit, on Jackson’s account, the reference of terms in natural language is determined by the reference of thoughts.” But “if one accepts Jackson’s general view of the relation between language and thought, then there is no need to say or write anything at all in posing the eliminativists’ argument. One could simply run through the argument in thought.” And since Jackson hasn’t told us anything about how thoughts refer, Stich thinks the original problem about the validity of the eliminativists’ argument still remains (p. 201). Having worried about the difficulties involved in the concept of representation, we can now move on to worry about a different concept, innateness. In her paper, Fiona Cowie points out that the concept “innate” looks like the sort of concept that a philosopher like Stich might at one time have wanted to throw out of cognitive science altogether. It seems like a vague, contested concept, the many uses of which have little in common. So Cowie, noting Stich’s skepticism about reference and representation, wonders why he isn’t equally skeptical, or eliminativist, about innateness. Cowie makes a spirited defense of the utility of messy concepts. Appealing to some fascinating episodes in the history of science, Cowie argues that inquiry cannot proceed without some concepts. In the absence of better, more precise concepts, we must struggle onwards, in a spirit of what she calls vulgar pragmatism, with the ones we’ve got. We may know that our concepts are imperfect, but the option of throwing everything out and starting again, in a kind of philosophical Jacobinism, is not viable. Much twentieth-century philosophy of science assumed that what we want is a much more precise language in which scientific claims could be stated transparently. If Cowie is right – and Stich largely agrees with her – that seems thoroughly wrongheaded, since some vagueness is both inescapable and perhaps even desirable. Messy, vague concepts might promote fruitful inquiry, since concepts defined too tightly, as Peirce suggested, would lock us into the current theories that define the concepts, and make us unable to adapt our concepts to new evidence. Progress would grind to a halt if our language was so precise that we had to rejig it every time we found out something surprising.
introduction
7
Questions about the right way for inquiry to proceed raise issues in epistemology, where Stephen Stich has made important and provocative contributions. These can be divided into two coherent but clearly separable parts. The critical part is skeptical about whether the methods of analytic epistemology can deliver correct epistemological principles or theories. The positive part is a defense of pragmatism. The critical side of Stich’s epistemology saw its most sophisticated development in a paper he co-authored with Jonathan Weinberg and Shaun Nichols (WNS 2001). WNS dub the analytic philosopher’s method for testing and developing epistemological theories “Intuition Driven Romanticism.” It involves three features: (1) It takes epistemic intuitions (spontaneous judgments about the epistemic properties of cases) as inputs; (2) it produces epistemic claims or principles as output; and (3) the output is a function of the input – in the sense that significantly different inputs would yield significantly different outputs (432). WNS then proceed to conduct a number of empirical studies which suggest that there are significant and systematic differences in the epistemic concepts and judgments people in different cultures employ in evaluating cognition. In a typical study, WNS found that when given a Gettier-style example, a large majority of Western subjects gave the answer sanctioned by analytic epistemologists (“only believes”) but a majority of East Asians and a majority of subjects from India gave the opposite answer (“really knows”) (443). If these results are true, WNS conclude that the proponent of Intuition Driven Romanticism faces an unpalatable dilemma: they must either argue that these intuitive differences . . . would not lead to different normative conclusions, or they must bite the bullet and argue that divergent normative claims are genuinely normative, and thus that the sorts of doxastic states that ought to be pursued by relatively rich and well-educated people are significantly different from the sorts of doxastic states that poor and less well educated folks should seek. (447–8)
Ernest Sosa calls into question the assumptions behind this criticism of analytic epistemology. According to Sosa, “the individual philosopher has intuitive access to data such as the Gettier examples, and can take these data into account in assessing criteria of rightness. Once he shares his thoughts with others, the philosopher may encounter apparent disagreement” (p. 105). Sosa offers three specific reasons for thinking that the disagreements discovered by WNS are merely apparent – they do not signal any deep disagreements about the nature and conditions of knowledge. First, subjects from different cultures might flesh out the thumbnail descriptions of (e.g., Gettier) cases differently. And so the different responses might be the result of different understandings of the case rather than different concepts of knowledge. Second, the disagreement might be an artifact of subjects not being given more choices. Rather than being offered the choices “Really Knows” or “Only Believes,” subjects might have been offered the choice of “Can’t Tell.” And third, the disagreement might be merely verbal – different subjects might simply mean different things by ‘knowledge’. But even if these considerations fully explain the cultural diversity, one might worry that Intuition Driven Romanticism cannot deliver a theory that carries out the Normative Project, which “attempts to establish norms to guide our epistemic efforts. Some of these norms may be explicitly
8
dominic murphy and michael bishop
regulative, specifying which ways of going about the quest for knowledge should be pursued and which should not” (WNS: 430). Sosa argues that theories of knowledge and justification are not in the business of telling us what beliefs we ought to form or sustain. Some beliefs might concern such insignificant matters that regardless of whether they count as knowledge or are highly justified, we ought not believe them: “One should not be forming any opinion, positive or negative, on that question. One has better things to do with one’s time, even if we restrict ourselves to properly epistemic concerns” (p. 110). And so there is no reason to postulate any deep cross-cultural epistemic disagreements. Different cultures might evaluate beliefs according to different epistemic standards, and this disagreement is no more problematic than one person rating a car with respect to speed and another rating it with respect to gas mileage. Stich agrees with Sosa that the empirical findings have not established cross-cultural epistemic diversity “beyond a reasonable doubt” – although we might note that this is a standard that is seldom met in philosophy. With respect to the three specific objections to WNS’s empirical findings, Stich admits the first two (subjects understand the cases differently, and there might be greater agreement with a “Can’t Tell” option) are genuine possibilities which could be tested empirically. But with respect to the third possibility (the disagreement may be merely verbal), Stich argues that we need a theory of content that grounds the claim that people in different cultures might mean different things by the term ‘knowledge’. To see this, suppose two people from different cultures fully understand the non-epistemic facts concerning Smith’s belief that p and still disagree about whether that belief is an instance of knowledge. Some philosophers defend a theory of content that implies that there can be no genuine disagreement here – there can only be the application of different concepts (Jackson 1998; Pollock and Cruz 1999). But Sosa agrees with Stich that it is possible that two people might have a genuine disagreement about epistemic intuitions, e.g., a disagreement about the nature and conditions of knowledge. Stich argues that the implications of such disagreements for philosophy are radical. “For 2,500 years, philosophers have been relying on appeals to intuition. But the plausibility of this entire tradition rests on an unsubstantiated, and until recently unacknowledged, empirical hypothesis – the hypothesis that the philosophical intuitions of people in different cultural groups do not disagree.” If this empirical hypothesis turns out to be false, then a lot of philosophy “belongs in the rubbish bin” (p. 232). Finally, Stich suggests that much of his debate with Sosa might rest on a fundamental disagreement about what epistemology is supposed to do. Stich wants an epistemological theory that has a robust prescriptive or recommendatory function – a theory that gives us guidance about how to lead our cognitive lives. Sosa wants epistemological theories that tell us about the nature and grounds of knowledge, justification, and other epistemic categories; he doubts that these categories provide any useful guidance about how we ought (epistemically) to lead our cognitive lives. So even if people have the same epistemic intuitions and even if those intuitions give us direct access to the nature and conditions of knowledge, it would still not be reasonable to appeal to those intuitions in constructing an epistemological theory with real prescriptive bite. On that point, it would appear, Stich and Sosa agree. Michael Bishop offers a generally sympathetic sketch of the development of Stich’s epistemological thought. According to Bishop’s narrative, Stich’s epistemological
introduction
9
arguments drive us to the Quinean conclusion that genuinely normative epistemological theories spring not from a priori reflections on our intuitions but from the findings of empirical science. Bishop embraces this methodological result, but he balks at Stich’s pragmatism. On this view, “one system of cognitive mechanisms is preferable to another if, in using it, we are more likely to achieve those things that we intrinsically value” (1990: 24). Stich argues that pragmatism leads directly to relativism – the idea that the cognitive evaluation of a set of reasoning strategies will be highly sensitive to facts about the person (or group) using those strategies – for two reasons. First, there are likely to be significant differences in what different people intrinsically value, and so we should expect a pragmatic view to recommend quite different cognitive systems to different people (Stich 1990: 136). And second, a set of reasoning strategies that yields the best expected consequences in one environment might not do so in a different environment (Stich 1990: 136–40). The core of Bishop’s argument against Stich assumes two empirical hypotheses: (1) Our epistemic practices – the way we are naturally disposed to evaluate ways of forming beliefs – is implicitly reliabilist (truth-linked); (2) It would be very difficult, and perhaps practically impossible, for us to replace our reliabilist practices with purely pragmatic ones. These empirical suppositions would give us pragmatic reasons to adopt a reliabilist approach to cognitive evaluation. This is especially so if we want a theory that has a robust prescriptive function – that helps guide our cognitive endeavors. In reply, Stich grants that if these hypotheses were true, they might give him pragmatic reasons to embrace reliabilism. But he notes that Bishop offers no empirical support for these hypotheses; they are merely speculations, and so “the verdict must be that Bishop has failed to make a convincing case for the pragmatic superiority of ” reliabilism (p. 244). One of the more intriguing aspects of Stich’s reply is his discussion of the proper role of intuitions in epistemology. He distinguishes five different, though perhaps overlapping, epistemological projects where one might employ intuitions as evidence. Roughly, these projects are: (1) capturing people’s intuitions by developing a theory that entails them; (2) accounting for the tacit theory or competence underlying people’s intuitions; (3) analyzing people’s epistemic concepts; (4) characterizing the nature and conditions of knowledge, justification, etc.; (5) evaluating and prescribing ways of forming beliefs (pp. 237–8). Stich argues that intuitions are “an entirely appropriate source of evidence in the first three of these projects.” But he argues that the use of intuitions in the last two projects “is much more problematic” (p. 238). The next set of essays in the volume turns from ontology and epistemology to the organization of the human mind. In his defense of eliminativism, Stich made an assumption that was standard in the early-to-mid 1980s: Folk psychology is a theory, known to all normal adults, that consists of nomological generalizations about mental states such as beliefs and desires. But philosophers and psychologists began to wonder whether this was the best way to understand the phenomenon of “mindreading” – the ability to attribute mental states to others, and explain and predict behavior on that basis. The debate looked clear cut: Mindreading was to be explained in terms of a theory of mind (“the theory-theory”) or as a form of simulation, in which the mindreader imaginatively puts herself in another person’s place so she can use her own cognitive and decisionmaking machinery to simulate that person’s mind. As the debate proceeded, things
10
dominic murphy and michael bishop
changed. Many theorists arrived at various sorts of hybrid theory, which employed the theory-theory to explain some aspects of mindreading and the simulation theory to explain other aspects of mindreading. Alvin Goldman (2006) arrived at such a view, as did Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich in Mindreading (2003). But in that book, Nichols and Stich drew a further, more radical conclusion: there is no natural or theoretically significant category of simulation. This is the thesis Alvin Goldman takes issue with in his contribution. Goldman aims to show that mental simulation is “both a natural and theoretically interesting category” that fits comfortably with widespread and progressive forms of explanation in the cognitive sciences, particularly cognitive neuroscience. Citing evidence from clinical, imaging, and single-cell recording studies, Goldman argues that in typical cases, the same brain systems that are active when we are in a mental state or perform an action are also active when we think about that state or action. These results suggest that the category of simulation is unified at the neurological level, even if simulation events have little in common phenomenologically or functionally. Goldman argues that Nichols and Stich have failed to properly appreciate “the full power and merit of the simulation theory” because they neglect cognitive neuroscience as an important source of insight in the investigation of mindreading. Did Mindreading neglect relevant neuroscientific evidence? Stich follows Goldman (2006: 113) in distinguishing between high-level mindreading (“the formation of beliefs about propositional attitudes like beliefs, desires, intentions and decisions”) and low-level mindreading (“the formation of beliefs about sensations, like feelings of pain, and about emotions, like fear, disgust and anger”). Mindreading was explicitly about the former. Since the neuroscientific evidence Goldman cites that was available prior to 2003 (when Mindreading appeared) is directly relevant only to low-level mindreading, Stich argues that he and Nichols did not neglect any relevant neuroscientific evidence. As for the substantive issue – does simulation identify a unified, natural category? – Goldman proposes that mental simulation is a mental process that is executed with the (often unconscious) aim of duplicating or matching another mental process in some respect (2006: 38). The problem with this account, as Stich sees it, is that it too fails to identify a natural category. Consider two cases of mindreading that engage the same cognitive processes and that involve ascribing the same propositional attitudes – the only difference being that the attributions are in one case correct and in the other case incorrect. Stich argues that on Goldman’s view, the former case counts as simulation but not the latter. And that’s because the former case resembles the target process whereas the latter does not. Stich admits that Goldman might argue that the latter case is an episode of simulation because the aim of the executed process was to duplicate the target process. But then Goldman needs to patch his view with a general account of the unconscious aims and purposes that drive simulation and some reason to think that these unconscious aims are typically present, and Stich does not expect such a patch to be forthcoming. Mindreading and nativism, the issues addressed by Cowie and Goldman, come together in Kim Sterelny’s contribution. In Mindreading, Nichols and Stich argue that our mindreading abilities are subserved by an array of systems that employ both theory and simulation; these include perceptual, reasoning, and planning systems that have evolved for other purposes and been co-opted in the service of attributing propositional attitudes.
introduction
11
Nichols and Stich studiously avoided taking a position on whether any part of these mindreading cognitive systems is innate. But Sterelny argues that their hybrid model significantly weakens the case for nativism. The two forms of nativism Sterelny considers are both supported by variants of the same argument. Mindreading, like language, develops in nearly all humans (a) early, (b) independent of most forms of learning deficit, and (c) regardless of cultural variation and informational input from the environment. Therefore, some significant aspect of the cognitive machinery responsible for mindreading cannot be learned, and so must be innate. Concept nativism holds that intentional concepts, such as belief and desire, are innate. This is because intentional concepts refer to unobservable, inner states of a subject. And since our mindreading abilities are early and robust, these concepts must not be learned but innate. Sterelny argues that the hybrid model coheres naturally with a non-nativism about intentional concepts. On the hybrid model, mindreading is not explained entirely in terms of theoretical knowledge – simulation-type processes do some of the mindreading work. And so our standard cognitive endowment might not come with built-in intentional concepts. These might be the result of learning. The second form of nativism Sterelny considers is informational nativism, which holds that the information that we need for mindreading is innate. On the hybrid model, the modules on which early mindreading draws are shallow perceptual systems without a rich database. Sterelny argues that as our mindreading abilities develop and become more sophisticated, the information recruited for mindreading is provided by one’s cultural “scaffolding” and especially one’s linguistic environment. With respect to concept nativism, Stich grants that Sterelny’s account of how we acquire intentional concepts might be true. But much is still obscure: What are concepts? What is the mechanism Sterelny thinks is responsible for producing our intentional concepts? And how are we to distinguish which concept acquisition mechanisms are nativist (and don’t involve learning) and which are empiricist (and do involve learning)? Too much is still in darkness for Stich to renounce his studied neutrality. As for informational nativism, Stich agrees that Sterelny is right: After about the age of three, familiar processes of learning are all we need to explain the increased sophistication of our mindreading abilities. But Stich is skeptical that anyone – or at least anyone “worth refuting” – holds the informational nativist view that Sterelny attacks. The papers in this volume cover much of Stich’s work over the last 25 years, and with Jesse Prinz’s contribution we arrive at one of Stich’s most recent concerns, moral psychology. Prinz criticizes a number of nativist views about moral psychology, including a view about the nature of norms defended by Sripada and Stich (2006). A norm, for Sripada and Stich, “is a rule or principle that specifies actions which are required, permissible or forbidden independently of any legal or social institution” (281). There are norms in all cultures, and although there are certain classes of norms that are found in all cultures (most societies have norms against killing and incest, and norms that foster sharing and cooperation), the specific content of norms exhibit great variability in different groups (282–4). What’s more, norms often permit specific kinds of exceptions (284). Sripada and Stich propose an account of the psychological mechanisms subserving norms. They posit “two closely linked innate mechanisms, one responsible for norm
12
dominic murphy and michael bishop
acquisition, the other for norm implementation” (289). Prinz argues that morality is an “accident” – a by-product of the existence of cognitive systems that have evolved for purposes other than norm acquisition. While there are many routes to the acquisition of norms, specifically moral norms are just a species of more general norms enforced by emotions of disapproval. Prinz grants that the universal tendency for humans to develop the emotion-backed norms he identifies with moral norms is the result of our biological endowment. However, he does not count that as a species of moral nativism. That’s because no part of the biological endowment that is responsible for the acquisition of our moral norms is specifically adapted for acquiring moral norms. Stich’s response does not address the nativism issue in any detail. Rather, he focuses on a difficulty in Prinz’s paper that he thinks is endemic to a lot of recent empirically informed work in moral psychology. Stich wants to know: What is an empirically informed theory about the psychological underpinnings of morality trying to do? In particular, what makes a theory of norms (or rules or judgments) a theory of moral norms (or moral rules or moral judgments)? One possibility is that which norms count as moral norms are determined by our concepts or intuitions about moral norms. Another possibility assumes that moral norms constitute a natural kind and the theory is aiming to provide an account of that natural kind. The problem, according to Stich, is that there is no guarantee that either project can succeed. What’s more, Stich thinks that Prinz’s theory fails on both of these projects – and he suggests that Prinz’s theory is not alone in this regard. With respect to the first project, there are norms that count as moral norms according to Prinz’s theory (i.e., violations of norms of about eating, ritual behavior, and the disposal of corpses can trigger strong emotions of disapproval) which are intuitively not moral norms. And with respect to the second project, Prinz’s theory does not seem to capture a natural kind. Prinz takes moral norms to be “accidents” whose causes and content can vary dramatically across cultures, and “[a]ccidents don’t make good natural kinds” (p. 225). Stich is calling on those who are committed to putting some real psychology into moral psychology to reflect on what exactly they want their theory to do. For the record, Stich thinks that the view of norms he and Sripada defend escapes this worry. That’s because they argue that norms – but not moral norms – are a natural kind of social science.
References Cummins, R. (1989) Meaning and Mental Representation. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Goldman, A. (2006) Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading. New York: Oxford University Press. Jackson, F. (1998) From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kripke, S. (1972) “Naming and Necessity,” in D. Davidson and G. Harman (eds.), Semantics of Natural Language, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel, pp. 253–355. Lycan, W. (1988) Judgement and Justification, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Machery, E., Mallon, R., Nichols, S. and Stich, S. (2004) “Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style.” Cognition 92: B1–B12.
introduction
13
Mallon, R., Machery, E., Nichols, S. and Stich, S. (forthcoming) “Against Arguments from Reference,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Nichols, S. and Stich, S. (2003) Mindreading: An Integrated Account of Pretence, Self-Awareness, and Understanding Other Minds, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pollock, J. and Cruz, J. (1999) Contemporary Theories of Knowledge. 2nd edn. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Putnam, H. (1970) “Is Semantics Possible?” Metaphilosophy 1: 187–201. Putnam, H. (1975) “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’,” in K. Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind and Knowledge: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 7, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ramsey, W. (2007) Representation Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sripada, C. and Stich, S. (2006) “A Framework for the Psychology of Norms,” in P. Carruthers, S. Laurence and S. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind, Volume 2, Culture and Cognition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 280–301. Stich, S. (1983) From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Stich, S. (1990) The Fragmentation of Reason. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Stich, S. (1996) Deconstructing the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Weinberg, J., Nichols, S. and Stich, S. (2001) “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions.” Philosophical Topics 29: 429–60.
14
frances egan
1 Is There a Role for Representational Content in Scientific Psychology? FRANCES EGAN
Steve Stich used to be an eliminativist. As far as I can tell, he renounced eliminativism about the time that he moved from the west to the east pole.1 Stich was right to reject eliminativism, though I am not convinced that he rejected it for the right reasons. Stich 1983 contains a comprehensive attack on representational content, a central feature of both folk psychology and the Representational Theory of Mind, the leading philosophical construal of scientific psychology. Stich’s current position on the role of content in psychological explanation is not entirely clear. One of my aims in this chapter is simply to invite Stich to clarify his views on representational content; the question that forms the title of this chapter is therefore addressed directly to Stich. I begin by sketching his original anti-content argument. I then trace some later developments in his thinking about content. I argue that content does play an important role in scientific psychology, for precisely the reasons that Stich identified in his original argument against content. I conclude with some general remarks on eliminativism.
I Stich characterizes four distinct claims that eliminativists are inclined to make: 1 ‘Belief ’, ‘desire’, and other familiar intentional-state expressions are among the theoretical terms of a commonsense theory of the mind. This theory is often called folk psychology. 2 Folk psychology is a seriously mistaken theory. Many of the claims it makes about the states and processes that give rise to behavior, and many of the presuppositions of these claims, are false. 3 A mature science that explains how the mind/brain works and how it produces the behavior we observe will not refer to the commonsense intentional states and processes invoked by folk psychology. Beliefs, desires, and the rest will not be part of the ontology of a mature scientific psychology. 4 The intentional states of commonsense psychology do not exist. (Stich and Ravenscroft 1994: 116)
content in scientific psychology
15
Claim (1) is simply a presupposition of eliminativism. Realists about beliefs and desires typically endorse it too. We will call claim (3) weak eliminativism (following Stich 1992: 245), and a commitment to either (2) or (4) strong eliminativism. (2) and (4) are, of course, distinct claims, but we will note their differences only where relevant. Stich 1983 endorsed all three eliminativist claims.2 He also assumed there that (3) and (4) follow from (2). Stich’s 1983 argument for eliminativism was two-pronged. In the latter part of the book, he argued that folk psychology makes substantial assumptions about the cognitive architecture underlying our cognitive capacities and behavioral repertoire. He claimed, for example, that folk psychology is committed to the idea that a single memory system subserves verbal and non-verbal behavior (p. 231), and that belief organization and storage is modular.3 There is good reason, the argument continues, to suspect that these assumptions are false. I argue in Egan 1995a that folk psychology involves no substantive commitments about architecture or cognitive processing, and so the falsity of these architectural assumptions would not threaten it. I shall not defend this claim here, though the issue will come up again in the last section. My concern here is with the other prong of Stich’s 1983 argument for eliminativism, that is, his case against representational content. First, some stage-setting. Folk psychological predictions and explanations of behavior appeal to content-specific beliefs and desires. For example, it is my belief that there is beer in the refrigerator together with the content-appropriate desire (to drink a beer, or perhaps just to drink something cold), that explains my going into the kitchen and getting a beer. Appealing to my belief that there is beer at the local bar or my desire to win the lottery fails to provide an explanation of my beer-fetching behavior. Moreover, this behavior is rational just to the extent that it is caused by content-appropriate beliefs and desires. The case against content in Stich 1983 is a tour de force. Stich argues persuasively that content ascriptions are both vague and context-sensitive. For any given predicate of the form ‘believes that p’ there will be many contexts where there is simply no saying whether it applies or not, and hence it will often be unclear whether a generalization that invokes such a predicate applies to a given subject. Appeals to content are also observer-relative. As Stich puts it, “To believe that p is to be in a belief state similar to the one underlying our own sincere assertion of ‘p.’ ” (136). Moreover, appeals to content often presuppose both ideological similarity and reference similarity. Two beliefs are ideologically similar if and only if they are embedded in similar doxastic networks. Suppose, for example, that two subjects both say “Senator Smith is a liberal.” Whether or not we would be inclined to attribute the same belief – that is, a belief with the same content – to the two subjects depends on whether their other beliefs involving the concept liberal are similar.4 Two beliefs are reference similar if and only if the terms subjects use to express the beliefs have the same referent. Subjects using the vocable ‘granite’ to refer to different substances would express different beliefs when they say “granite counter-tops are durable.” Let us call these various properties of content – vagueness, context-sensitivity, observerrelativity, the tendency to presuppose ideological and reference similarity – the R (for ‘relativity’) properties. The problem, Stich argues, is that a taxonomy that has the R properties will impose a more fine-grained individuative scheme than is appropriate for use in scientific psychology. In particular, a taxonomy that has the R properties will not respect the Autonomy Principle, which holds that “any state or property properly invoked in a
16
frances egan
psychological explanation should supervene on the current, internal, physical state of the organism.”5 Stich argues (1983: 167–9) that systematic explanations of an organism’s behavior of the sort that psychologists seek to provide – as opposed to those sought by, say, social historians or biographers – will apply equally to an organism’s physical duplicate. Such explanations should invoke only narrow states and properties shared by all duplicates; in particular, they should invoke only narrow causal role. But states individuated in part by their content, as beliefs and desires are, build in various features of the subject’s historical, environmental, and social context, features that are irrelevant for scientific psychology. Stich offers what he calls the ‘replacement argument’ in support of the autonomy principle (1983: 165). Since physical duplicates would behave identically in all contexts, and since psychology is the science that aspires to explain behavior, any states or properties not shared by duplicates must be irrelevant to psychology. Of course, there are some behavioral descriptions that do not apply equally to duplicates. I can sell you my car; a physical duplicate of me cannot. Stich proposes that psychology restrict itself to ‘autonomous behavior descriptions’, that is, descriptions that satisfy the following condition: if they apply to an organism in a given setting then they would apply to any replica of the organism in that setting. Scientific psychology should aim to purge itself of language that builds in historical or contextual features. It should purge itself, therefore, of representational content. So, to summarize: one important strand in Stich’s 1983 case for eliminativism, which we will call the 1983 anti-content argument, is the following: 1 Content has the R properties. (It is vague, context-sensitive, presupposes various dimensions of similarity, etc.) 2 States and properties invoked in a scientific psychology should supervene on the current physical state of the organism (the Autonomy Principle). 3 Properties with the R properties do not supervene on the current physical state of the organism, and so a taxonomy based on such properties will violate the Autonomy Principle. 4 Therefore, content should not be invoked in a scientific psychology.
II Stich’s original argument concerned ordinary content ascribed in folk psychological predictions and explanations of behavior. In Stich 1991, he argued that narrow content – content that prescinds from the subject’s historical, environmental, and social context, and hence is shared by physical duplicates – is nonetheless still too vague and contextsensitive (in other words, it still has many of the R properties) to serve in a scientific psychology. In particular, he argued, narrow content is ill-suited to play a role in computational models of mind. Such models individuate mental states in terms of their narrow causal role but, as numerous examples show, narrow content does not track narrow causal role.6 Summing up, Stich says “the categories of a narrow content taxonomy are simply the categories of a broad content taxonomy extended to meet the demands of the principle of autonomy. But the broad content taxonomy of commonsense psychology is too vague, too context-sensitive and too unstable to use in a serious scientific theory. Narrow content
content in scientific psychology
17
inherits all of these deficits” (1991: 250). Clearly, at this point, Stich still believed that content, broad or narrow, is not suitable for science. And he still endorsed weak eliminativism – scientific psychology will not invoke commonsense intentional states because these states are individuated by content. The argument, which does not rely on the Autonomy Principle, looks something like this: 1 Content has the R* properties. (Where R* properties are the proper subset of the R properties that meet the demands of the Autonomy Principle, including, vagueness, context-sensitivity, and instability.) 2 Properties with the R* properties (vagueness, context-sensitivity, etc.) are not suitable for science. 3 Therefore, content should not be invoked in a scientific psychology. We will call this the 1991 anti-content argument. By 1996 Stich’s view has changed considerably. In 1996c, he says “being invoked in a successful science is all that it takes to render a property scientifically legitimate. On my view, the jury is still out on the question of whether successful science can be constructed using intentional categories” (1996c: 199). But one would have thought that the jury had already handed down its verdict. Has content somehow been rehabilitated? Let’s consider some recent developments in Stich’s thinking that might account for his change of mind: (1) The so-called “naturalization project” is the attempt to specify, in a nonintentional and non-semantic vocabulary, sufficient conditions for a mental state’s meaning what it does. Most, if not all, attempts at naturalization have failed to meet these stringent requirements while characterizing something that looks sufficiently like representational content.7 Stich argues persuasively (in Stich 1992 and Stich and Lawrence 1994) that the failure of the naturalization project would not impugn intentional content. Content, whatever its other failings, does not need to be naturalized. But this conclusion should give Stich no reason to reconsider whether content is fit for use in scientific psychology. His case against content – in particular, the 1983 and 1991 anti-content arguments – does not depend upon metaphysical or philosophical considerations of the sort that vex those engaged in the naturalization project. (2) Stich has become convinced that even if folk psychology is a seriously mistaken theory (claim 2 on p. 14), it does not follow either that scientific psychology will find no use for intentional categories (claim 3), or that beliefs and desires do not exist (claim 4). To think otherwise, as Stich once did, he argues in 1996b, is to make some dubious assumptions about the reference of theoretical terms. But the failure of the inference from claim (1) to (3) and (4) does not undermine the 1983 or the 1991 anti-content arguments, neither of which depends upon any assumptions about reference. The failure of the inference provides no reason to doubt that content has the R-properties, and so no reason to be optimistic that successful psychology will invoke intentional states. (3) The 1991 anti-content argument does not depend upon the Autonomy Principle. Still, it is worth noting that Stich is no longer willing to endorse the principle. In both 1991 and 1996b he holds the Autonomy Principle at arm’s length, claiming:
frances egan
18
There is, to put it mildly, considerable controversy surrounding this thesis. Some writers, myself included (but I was younger and much more naive at the time), have claimed that it is intuitively obvious . . . Others have tried to defend the thesis by deducing it from other, perhaps less controversial, metaphysical doctrines; still others have claimed that it is simply false. (1996b: 23)
He goes on to say: “But if it is not clear whether the thesis is defensible, it is clear that if the thesis is accepted then . . . folk psychology is in trouble” (1996b: 23). The Autonomy Principle requires that psychological properties supervene on the current physical state of the subject, and so it clearly prohibits individuating psychological states in terms of their broad content, as folk psychology appears to do. Rejecting the Autonomy Principle would let broad content back into the picture, if there were not independent reason to think that content – broad or narrow – is also vague, context-sensitive, and unstable. There is no obvious reason for Stich to repudiate his 1991 anti-content argument, which relies on the claim that content has the R* properties and hence is not suitable for use in a scientific psychology.8 In short, recent developments in Stich’s thinking do not account for his apparent change of mind about content. I will wrap up this section with a question for Stich: are there (still) principled reasons why scientific psychology should avoid a commitment to representational content?
III Here is what I will argue: 1 Content has the R properties. 2 A qualified version of the Autonomy Principle is true. In particular, a theory concerned primarily with characterizing the mechanisms underlying our cognitive capacities should employ taxonomic principles that prescind from the mechanism’s normal context. 3 Therefore, a theory concerned primarily to characterize the mechanisms underlying our cognitive capacities should not individuate by properties with the R properties (e.g., content) – it will violate the Qualified Autonomy Principle. 4 The theories that are in the business of characterizing the mechanisms underlying our cognitive capacities – computational cognitive theories – in fact, do not individuate by content. 5 Content nonetheless plays an important explanatory role in such theories, and it is able to play this role in part because it has the R properties. I will not defend (1); I take it to have been established by Stich 1983. Content is vague, observer-relative, context-sensitive; it presupposes reference and ideological similarity. My argument for claim (4) will be quite brief, as I have defended it at length elsewhere. Turning, then, to the argument for (2). Recall that the Autonomy Principle holds that the only properties to be invoked in a scientific psychology are narrow properties that supervene on the current physical state of the organism. When the principle is appropri-
content in scientific psychology
19
ately qualified it has a compelling rationale. If a theory is concerned primarily to characterize the mechanisms and processes underlying the behavior and capacities of a complex system, then relatively narrow taxonomies are better for the following reason: the narrower the individuative scheme – that is, the greater the range of contextual properties it prescinds from – the greater the scope of the theory’s generalizations. Narrow taxonomies maximize generality. Hence, the Qualified Autonomy Principle (henceforth, QAP) holds that a psychological theory concerned primarily to characterize the mechanisms underlying our cognitive capacities should employ taxonomic principles that prescind from features of the mechanism’s normal context. Consider the inhabitants of Twin Earth. According to Putnam’s (1975) myth, their cognitive capacities and dispositions to behavior are the same as ours. Characterizing the underlying commonalities between ourselves and Twin Earthlings, rather than obscuring such commonalities by building contextual features into our taxonomies, provides a basis for explaining and predicting our behavior, and theirs, in a wide range of counterfactual circumstances. This strategy does not ignore or downplay the subject’s environment as a determinant of her behavior. It simply requires that environmental and other contextual determinants of behavior be specified as independent variables. QAP is in one sense stronger than Stich’s original principle. The states and properties invoked by theories that purport to characterize the mechanisms responsible for cognitive capacities will typically supervene not just on the current physical state of the whole subject, but more narrowly on the current physical state of the mechanism itself. The theorist is directed to characterize the relevant mechanisms and processes independently of the larger systems in which they are embedded, prescinding from details of both external and internal (i.e., intra-organism) environment.9 The resulting theories will be radically internalist; the boundary of the subject’s skin will have no particular individuative significance.10 QAP is a special case of a more general principle about how to understand and explain complex systems. As noted above, taxonomies that prescind from contextual features, requiring that they be specified as independent parameters, provide a basis for predicting and explaining the system’s behavior in a wide range of counterfactual circumstances. The presumption in favor of narrow taxonomies applies only to theories in the business of explaining how complex systems work. It does not apply to “historical” theories, such as evolutionary biology and geology, whose explanatory goals are somewhat different.11 Thus, a theory that aimed to explain how circulation is possible might subsume human and Martian hearts under the same kind if they worked the same way, whereas evolutionary biology, with an interest in the specific origins of biological mechanisms on earth, type-identifies only homologous organs. In another sense, then, QAP is weaker than Stich’s Autonomy Principle. It does not require scientific psychology to restrict itself to narrow taxonomies. Not all of psychology is concerned to characterize the mechanisms underlying cognitive capacities and behavior. Computational psychology clearly is, but other branches of scientific psychology have other goals. Developmental psychology, for example, is concerned to characterize the particular stages in a human child’s cognitive development, and so we would not expect it to respect QAP. It follows from (1) and (2) that a theory concerned primarily to characterize the mechanisms underlying our cognitive capacities should not individuate psychological
20
frances egan
states and processes by reference to content (i.e., 3 in my argument). Physical duplicates in different environmental and social contexts may not share intentional content. A computational cognitive theory that individuated the mechanisms it characterizes by reference to content is therefore likely to violate QAP. It might be argued that only ordinary, broad content violates QAP. It is open to a psychological theory to specify its own special type of narrow content and individuate psychological states and processes in terms of it. The specified narrow content might even be free of the other R properties that Stich 1983 and 1991 claimed make content unsuitable for use in a science. It might not be vague, context-sensitive and unstable. But we won’t know until we see it.12 I claim that computational cognitive theories do not individuate in terms of any type of content (4 in my argument). Nonetheless, content does play an important role in computational models. It is able to play this explanatory role precisely because it is both interest relative and context sensitive (5 in my argument). I defend these claims in the next section.
IV I have argued in a series of papers (1992, 1995b, 1999) that computational cognitive theories do not individuate the states and processes they characterize by reference to intentional content. A given computational state might, in some counterfactual circumstances, have a different semantic content, or no content at all, and nonetheless be the same computational state. Disputes about whether or not computational theories individuate the states they characterize in semantic terms – by their content – turn on how the level of description that David Marr called the theory of the computation should be interpreted. The theory of the computation provides a canonical description of the function(s) computed by a computational mechanism. It specifies what the device does.13 By a “canonical description,” I mean the characterization that is decisive for questions of individuation or taxonomy. In Egan 1995b, I argued that the canonical description of the function computed by a computationally characterized mechanism is a mathematical description. An example from Marr’s own theory of vision illustrates the point. Marr (1982) describes a component of early visual processing responsible for the initial filtering of the retinal image. Although there are many ways to informally describe what this filter does, Marr is careful to point out that the theoretically important characterization, from a computational point of view, is a mathematical characterization: the device computes the Laplacean convolved with the Gaussian (Marr 1982: 337). As it happens, it takes as input light intensity values at points in the retinal image and calculates the rate of change of intensity over the image. But as far as the computational characterization of the device is concerned, it does not matter that input values represent light intensities and output values the rate of change of light intensity. The computational theory characterizes the visual filter as a member of a well-understood class of mathematical devices that have nothing to do with the transduction of light.14
content in scientific psychology
21
The computational characterization abstracts away from the visual function the device performs in its normal (external and internal) environment, and hence from visual contents normally attributed to the internal states and structures characterized by the theory. The very same mechanism might be found in the auditory system computing the same curve-smoothing function but defined over acoustical properties. Following Martin Davies (1991), we can call the mechanism a visex when it is embedded in the visual system, and an audex when it is embedded in the auditory system. Davies thought he was describing a far-fetched thought experiment, and he thought it obvious that psychology would treat visex and audex as type-distinct computational mechanisms. But the example is not far-fetched at all. For all we know, there might be a mechanism that computes the same curve-smoothing function in one of our other sensory systems. Provided that this mechanism uses the same algorithm to compute this function, a computational theorist would treat it, and the device described by Marr, as type identical. The mathematical characterization that is crucial for type-identifying the device as a computational mechanism prescinds from the device’s normal environment. In other words, it respects the Qualified Autonomy Principle. In doing so, this characterization provides the basis for predicting and explaining how the mechanism will behave whatever its (internal and external) environment. I turn, finally, to the defense of claim 5 of my argument. Representational content does not play an individuative role in computational cognitive theories; but it does play an important explanatory role. It is able to play this role in part because it has the R properties, in particular, because it is both interest relative and sensitive to various aspects of the subject’s context, and hence is not a property that respects the Qualified Autonomy Principle. A semantic interpretation of a computational system is given by an interpretation function that specifies a mapping between equivalence classes of physical states of the system and elements of some represented domain. To interpret a device as a visual system is to specify a mapping between states of the device and tokenings of visible properties such as changes of depth in the scene; to interpret a device as a parser is to specify a mapping between states of the device and syntactic items such as noun phrases or verb phrases. The specified states of the device are thus construed, under the interpretation, as representations of changes in depth, or of noun phrases. What does the semantic interpretation add to the computational characterization of the device, which construes it as computing a particular mathematical function? I have argued that it does not serve an individuative function. The semantic interpretation is necessary to explain how the abstractly characterized process, in a certain context (say, when situated in a certain external environment, or connected to certain performance systems) constitutes the exercise of a cognitive capacity, such as perceiving the depth of objects in the scene, or parsing a sentence. The questions that define a psychological theory’s domain are typically couched in intentional terms. For example, we want a theory of vision to tell us how the visual system can detect three dimensional structure from information contained in two dimensional images. We want a theory of language understanding to explain how the subject can recover the meaning of an acoustical signal. It is only under an interpretation of some of the states of the computationally characterized
22
frances egan
mechanisms as representations of visible distal properties (changes of depth), or as representations of syntactical categories (noun phrase), that the processes characterized in abstract mathematical terms by the theory are revealed as vision, or as parsing. Unless some of the internal states described by the theory can be interpreted as representations of visible distal properties, the computational visual theorist can make no claim to have described a mechanism that enables an organism to see. So, the semantic interpretation forms a bridge between the intentionally characterized explananda of the theory and the abstract, mathematical characterization of the mechanism that constitutes the explanatory core of a computational theory. We can specify the cognitive (as opposed to the mathematical) function subserved by a computational mechanism only by considering how it is embedded in the surrounding environment, including the internal environment. In some counterfactual environments, the mechanism might fail to compute the specified cognitive function. The point can be most clearly seen for perceptual capacities. In computational models of perception, the content ascribed to internal states of the device will be determined by the distal properties tracked by these internal states. For example, the structures that Marr calls edges are tokened in the presence of a disjunctive distal property, namely, a change in depth, surface orientation, illumination, or reflectance. So they represent a salient physical boundary of a general sort. But these structures cannot be expected to track, hence to represent, this property in every possible environment. In some weird counterfactual environments they might track no salient or easily characterizable property; in such circumstances they would represent no distal property. If a Marrian visual system were somehow to appear in such an environment (say, as a result of a genetic accident or an experiment by IBM) it would not enable its possessor to see. The mechanism would still compute the same mathematical function, but computing this function, in this environment, would not enable it to detect a salient or useful property of that environment.15 The point I wish to emphasize is that constraints on content ascription are both interest relative and context-sensitive. That they are interest relative can be seen by reflecting on the oft-noted fact that interpretation is not unique. The internal states and structures of a given mechanism may co-vary with any number of properties, and hence support multiple interpretations. But the semantic interpretation assigned to the states of a mechanism in a computational cognitive model reflects our interest in explaining the organism’s success at some particular cognitive task, in this case, recovering the 3-D structure of the scene. Opponents of computationalism, such as John Searle (1991), have appealed to the interest relativity of interpretation to argue that computational models are not genuinely explanatory. But the interest relativity noted above does not undermine a computational vision theorist’s claim to have explained how the mechanism performs a visual task, even in the unlikely event that the mechanism’s states also happen to track the New York Yankees’ batting averages. It does not follow that representation in computationally characterized systems is purely interest relative, that such systems do not, as a matter of objective fact, really represent, that ‘anything goes’. Some of the constraints on interpretation are objective. It is an objective fact that the mechanism, in its normal environment, goes into states that track, or co-vary with, changes in depth. This brings us to the second point: that constraints on content ascription are context sensitive. A given mechanism will subserve a cognitive function, such as vision, only in
content in scientific psychology
23
certain environments. The content ascribed to states of the mechanism is therefore likely to be expected to be environment-specific (that is, broad ), enabling an explanation of how the mechanism succeeds at recovering information about its normal environment. The semantic interpretation specifies the properties tracked by states of the mechanism when it is functioning properly in its normal (internal and external) environment. Change the environment – populate it with objects that behave very differently, or change the laws of optics – and the interpretation will no longer be supported. I have been leaning heavily on theories of perception to make the point. But the point has wider application. Suppose that we had a complete computational account of our cognitive capacities. Such an account would specify the mechanisms underlying our perceptual capacities, language understanding and production, reasoning, and so on, and it would provide a basis for the explanation and prediction of behavior. The theory would respect the Qualified Autonomy Principle and hence would apply to our physical duplicates in counterfactual environments. It would subsume our computational mechanisms and theirs under the same abstract mathematical description, and it would specify the basic causal operations of our type-identical mechanisms. But given that the explananda of psychological theories are expressed in ordinary language, in terms of publicly accessible objects and properties, and that the content of public language involves essential reference to the subject’s physical and social environment, we should expect the semantic interpretation that enables the theory to address these explananda to be specific to our world. Consequently, semantic interpretations appropriate to me and my twin-earth counterpart would assign different broad contents to our type-identical computational states. If this account is right, then Stich’s claim that psychology should stick to autonomous behavioral descriptions is wrong. The mathematical characterization that is decisive for individuating a computational mechanism is autonomous – it will respect the Qualified Autonomy Principle and so apply to any physical duplicate. But the semantic interpretation that accompanies the mathematical characterization is not. It will make reference to the mechanism’s historical and contextual features. In summary, then, representational content can serve the explanatory purposes of scientific psychology precisely because it is interest-relative and sensitive to the subject’s context. Having the R properties, as Stich argued so persuasively it does in the 1983 book, does not disqualify content from playing an important role in scientific psychology.
V I shall conclude with some remarks on eliminativism: (1) I have argued that scientific psychology, computational cognitive science in particular, invokes content in its explanations of our cognitive capacities. Does it follow that it invokes beliefs and desires? If it does, then weak eliminativism – the claim that beliefs, desires, and the other propositional attitudes invoked by folk psychology will not be part of the ontology of a mature scientific psychology – is false. The conspicuous successes of computational psychology have been in characterizing highly modularized, informationally encapsulated processes such as those responsible for
24
frances egan
early vision and syntactic and phonological processing. The states posited by these theories do not have the complex functional roles characteristic of the propositional attitudes, including, typically, accessibility to consciousness. Even if, as I have argued, many of these states are assigned content in computational accounts, there is little reason to identify these states with beliefs and desires. They are paradigmatic examples of so-called subdoxastic states. The states involved in domain-general processes, such as the processes underlying decision making and rational revision of belief, would make better candidates for identification with propositional attitudes, but these processes have so far resisted computational treatment. Their intractability is due in part to the fact that general constraints on the information that might be relevant to decision-making and belief revision are difficult, if not impossible, to specify. As Fodor 2000 notes, just about anything might be relevant to such processes. He concludes that the prospects for a computational treatment are dim. In any event, nothing in current computational psychology supports the claim that our best explanations of how the mind/brain works will invoke beliefs and desires. And I think there is a principled reason to be skeptical. Propositional attitudes find their home in personal level psychology, where the goal is to predict and explain how subjects behave in their interactions with each other and the world. Computational psychology, on other hand, is concerned with explaining the mechanisms underlying subjects’ cognitive capacities, which typically requires decomposing these capacities into their functional (i.e., sub-personal) components. Functional decomposition is the dominant explanatory strategy of computational psychology. Moreover, folk psychology is concerned with more than prediction and explanation. Notions such as belief, desire, and intention are central to our conceptions of personal identity and the self, which underpin a whole host of social practices, including assigning moral and legal responsibility to agents. There is no reason to think that these rich and complex notions will serve the rather austere explanatory purposes of computational psychology. Of course, it is always possible to expand the list of propositional attitudes to include explanatory constructs from scientific psychology. We could say, following Chomsky (1980), that subjects cognize (rather than know or believe) the contents attributed in computational models, where ‘cognize’ is a technical term introduced to refer to whatever relation subjects in fact bear to these contents. In other words, we could claim that scientific psychology has discovered new kinds of propositional attitudes. But calling cognizing a propositional attitude doesn’t make it one. Beliefs, desires, intentions, fears, and the other standard propositional attitudes form something like a natural kind. They have very complex functional roles; they are inferentially promiscuous; they are typically accessible to consciousness, etc. Cognitions, in Chomsky’s sense, have none of these properties. Admitting them, or similarly attenuated counterparts of beliefs and desires, into the club turns the notion of propositional attitude into a motley with no clear rationale. But other branches of scientific psychology do invoke beliefs and desires, so weak eliminativism is false. Attribution theory is the branch of social psychology that studies the perceived causes of behavior. (See Heider 1958 for the classic statement of attribution theory, and Weiner 1990 for a more recent survey of the attribution literature.) Often these perceived causes include beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, and so on. For example, an
content in scientific psychology
25
agent’s failure to expend the amount of effort required to secure a goal may be attributed to his fear that he will fail; a world class athlete’s Herculean efforts in the face of adversity might be attributed, in part, to her belief that she is the best at her sport. Developmental psychology attempts to characterize the commitments that infra-linguistic humans bring to their interactions with the world. Developmental theories attribute to infants beliefs and expectations about how objects move in space (see, for example Spelke 1990). There are striking differences between the branches of scientific psychology that do invoke propositional attitudes – attribution theory and developmental psychology, to name just two – and computational psychology, which I claim does not. Computational psychology is in the business of explaining how the mechanisms underlying our cognitive capacities work. A computational account typically begins with a problem posed at the personal level – for example, how does the organism recover the 3-D structure of the scene? – but it quickly abandons the personal stance in favor of sub-personal mechanisms that interact to produce complex behavior. (Recall that attributing content to these mechanisms allows the theory to address these questions posed at the personal level.) Attributiontheoretical and developmental explanations, on the other hand, are pitched at the personal level through and through. It is not surprising that propositional attitudes are their primary explanatory coin. They are, in effect, scientific elaborations of folk psychology. (2) Finally, recall Stich’s remark about folk psychology and the Autonomy Principle: “But if it is not clear whether the [autonomy] thesis is defensible, it is clear that if the thesis is accepted then . . . folk psychology is in trouble” (1996b: 23). He reasons as follows: For . . . folk psychology includes lots of nomological generalizations that are couched in terms of the content of intentional states. But the Twin Earth argument (putatively) demonstrates that content does not supervene on the nonrelational physical properties of an organism. And the [autonomy] principle insists that the properties invoked in the generalizations of scientific psychology must supervene. So if scientific psychology has it right, then folk psychology must have it wrong. (1996b: 23)
Stich wonders whether the Autonomy Principle is best construed as a metaphysical principle or as a methodological principle, and then confesses that he is less than clear where methodology ends and metaphysics begins. I am sympathetic with the general point, but it is hard to make sense of the Autonomy Principle as anything other than methodological. There are many perfectly good properties that do not supervene on the current physical state of the organism, for example the property being a US citizen. The Autonomy Principle says that such properties should not be invoked in scientific psychology. But folk psychology is not scientific psychology. There is no conflict here, just two different taxonomies, answering to different explanatory concerns. The Qualified Autonomy Principle (QAP) is explicitly methodological. It says that if a theory is concerned primarily to characterize the mechanisms underlying our cognitive capacities, then narrow taxonomies are preferable. Folk psychology is not concerned to characterize the mechanisms underlying our cognitive capacities.16 At least it is not primarily so concerned. It leaves that work for scientific psychology. QAP, then, simply doesn’t apply to folk psychology.
26
frances egan
There is a second, and I think more interesting, response to Stich’s argument that folk psychology and the Autonomy Principle are in conflict. As Stich notes, folk psychology includes lots of nomological generalizations that are couched in terms of the content of intentional states. But while folk psychological generalizations are typically couched in terms of content, it is not obvious that the states themselves are individuated in terms of their content. Let me elaborate. The fact that folk psychology identifies beliefs and desires by their contents does not imply that propositional attitudes have their contents essentially; in other words, it does not imply that content properties are individuative of the attitudes. To serve their typical predictive and explanatory functions, propositional attitudes must be construed as causally efficacious internal states of organisms, individuated essentially by the roles they play in mediating perception, cognition, and action. In other words, it is the functional roles of these internal states that are essential to their role in commonsense predictions and explanations of behavior. The generalizations of folk psychology provide only a partial and informal characterization of these complex functional roles. The most convenient (in practice, the only) way to refer to propositional attitude states is by their contents. The state that is typically caused by looking out the window on a rainy day and that typically causes (in conjunction with certain other functionally characterized states) umbrellacarrying behavior, can be referred to as the belief that it is raining. (I have mentioned only a small part of the complex functional role of this state, but when I identify the state by its content we can infer quite a bit about how it will interact with environmental conditions and other internal states to produce additional mental states and behavior.) The important point is that the contents of propositional attitudes play a reference-fixing role, enabling us to refer to internal states which future scientific psychology may eventually characterize in non-contentful terms, by elaborating precisely their functional roles.17 Contents, on this view, serve primarily to index mental states for the purposes of predicting and explaining behavior, but they are not essential properties of those states. It is possible for the same functional state – that is, for the same belief or desire – to be identified by reference to different propositional contents. For example, the type-identical belief states underlying my behavior and my Twin Earth counterpart’s when we both utter the form of words ‘water is wet’ are picked out, in our respective communities, by different broad contents. These different contents serve to pick out the same underlying functional state, much as different numbers – say 212 and 100 in the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales respectively – can be used to pick out the same underlying physical magnitude. This construal of folk psychology obviously needs elaboration and defense, which I will not undertake here.18 But if the construal is correct, then folk psychology can respect the Autonomy Principle. Its taxonomic scheme can supervene on current physical states of the organism, even if the contents in terms of which its generalizations are couched do not.
Notes 1 See Dennett 1982 for a discussion of “east pole” and “west pole” positions. 2 Stich’s 1983 commitment to strong eliminativism is qualified. (2) and (4) are claimed to be “a serious possibility” (p. 242).
content in scientific psychology
27
3 “A belief or memory storage system is modular to the extent that there is some more or less isolatable part of the system which plays (or would play) the central role in a typical causal history leading to the utterance of a sentence” (pp. 237–8). A similar premise – that folk psychology assumes that beliefs are stored in a modular fashion – plays a crucial role in Ramsey, Stich, and Garon’s 1991 argument for the claim that distributed connectionist cognitive models support eliminativism. 4 On holistic accounts of concept individuation, if the associated beliefs are not very similar, then the two subjects express different concepts by their use of the vocable ‘liberal’. 5 This formulation is from Stich 1991: 239. See also 1983: 164 and 1996b: 23. 6 Stich cites the case of Helen Keller, who comes to believe, after being told by a trusted informant, that there is a fat cat in the room. A sighted individual, upon seeing the cat, will acquire a belief with the same wide content and, hence, on one popular account of narrow content – the view that takes narrow contents to be functions from contexts to wide contents – a belief with the same narrow content. But the causal roles of these two belief tokens are clearly different: Helen Keller’s beliefs are never caused by visual states (1991: 246). 7 An adequate account must allow for misrepresentation, and for fine-grained determinate contents that distinguish rabbits, rabbit stages, and undetached rabbit parts. 8 In 1996b Stich canvasses various “semantic” arguments for eliminativism, including “the heterogeneity of the content taxonomy,” which is an amalgam of his own earlier arguments that content is unsuitable for use in science. He neither endorses nor rejects that argument. 9 See the visex/audex example discussed in the next section. 10 Hence the term “individualism,” coined by Burge 1979, is somewhat misleading as a name for the position defended here. 11 I am not suggesting that evolutionary biology and geology are not in the business of explaining how complex systems work, rather that their primary concern is to explain particular historical processes – those involved in the formation of terrestrial species and terrestrial geological structures, respectively. Given these explanatory goals, the increased generality that accrues to an explanatory scheme that relies on narrow taxonomies is not necessarily a virtue. 12 Segal 1989, 1991 characterizes a type of narrow content that he claims plays an individuative role in Marr’s theory of vision. Most interpreters of Marr’s theory, however, claim that Marrian contents are broad. (See, for example, Davies 1991, Egan 1991, and Shapiro 1993.) Segal 2000 characterizes a type of narrow content, which he claims is just ordinary content. It is, therefore, unlikely to be free of the R* properties. Chalmers 2002 characterizes a type of narrow content, which he calls epistemic content, but he makes no claim that epistemic content is actually used by cognitive science, and the claim is not independently plausible. 13 A full characterization of a computational mechanism also specifies the algorithm used to compute the function, and how the mechanism is physically realized in the brain or in a computer. 14 The claim that the canonical description of a computational device is not a semantic characterization needs an obvious qualification. Given that the canonical description specifies the mathematical function computed by the device, it is a semantic characterization. But mathematical characterization is not what theorists typically have in mind when they talk about “the semantic interpretation” of a device. The semantic interpretation of a visual mechanism assigns visual contents to the states it characterizes. For example, it may interpret some structures as representing visible edges in the scene. A parsing theory will assign appropriate linguistic contents. It will interpret some structures as noun phrases, others as verb phrases. The canonical characterization prescinds from these contents. 15 This mechanism would not enhance the fitness of its possessor in the counterfactual environment. Of course, we assume that our own cognitive mechanisms are adaptations; we have
28
16 17
18
frances egan them because they enhanced fitness in the ancestral environment. But being an adaptation is a contingent property of any computationally characterized mechanism. Moreover, the Marrian mechanism, or any computationally characterized mechanism, is only contingently a visual mechanism. It enables its possessor to detect useful distal properties by transducing light in some, but not all, environments. In particular, it must do so for the actual environment. We shouldn’t be surprised, for example, that our visual system does not allow us to recover 3-D structure in an Ames room. The mechanism isn’t malfunctioning in this context – it works the same way it always does. But seeing requires a certain fit between mechanism and environment. In the normal case, of course, this fit is a product of evolution. See Egan 1995a for argument. Or, precisely because the functional roles of propositional attitudes are so complex, they may not be tractably specifiable. The view sketched here is agnostic about whether computational cognitive science will eventually provide a vindication of the propositional attitudes. Proponents of Fodor’s Representational Theory of Mind assume that it will, and that the vindication will take the form of a specification of the language of thought. Readers will recognize here a “measurement-theoretic” construal of propositional attitudes, suggested by Churchland 1979, Dennett 1982, and Davidson 1989, among others. See Matthews (1994 and forthcoming) for elaboration and defense of the view.
References Burge, T. (1979) “Individualism and the Mental.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4: 73–121. Chalmers, D. J. (2002) The Components of Content, in Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 608–33. Churchland, P. M. (1979) Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, N. (1980) Rules and Representations. New York: Columbia University Press. Davidson, D. (1989) “What is Present to the Mind,” in J. Brandl and W. Gombocz (eds.), The Mind of Donald Davidson, Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, pp. 3–18. Davies, M. (1991) “Individualism and Perceptual Content.” Mind 100: 461–84. Dennett, D. C. (1982) “Beyond Belief,” in A. Woodfield (ed.), Thought and Object: Essays on Intentionality, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 1–95. Dennett, D. C. (1986) “The Logical Geography of Computational Approaches: A View from the East Pole,” in R. Harnish and M. Brand (eds.), The Representation of Knowledge and Belief, Tuscon: University of Arizona Press. Egan, F. (1991) “Must Psychology Be Individualistic?” Philosophical Review 100: 179–203. Egan, F. (1992) “Individualism, Computation, and Perceptual Content.” Mind 101: 443–59. Egan, F. (1995a) “Folk Psychology and Cognitive Architecture.” Philosophy of Science 62: 179–96. Egan, F. (1995b) “Content and Computation.” Philosophical Review 104: 181–203. Egan, F. (1999) “In Defence of Narrow Mindedness.” Mind and Language 14(2): 177–94. Fodor, J. A. (2000) The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Heider, F. (1958) The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: Wiley. Marr, D. (1982) Vision. New York: Freeman Press. Matthews, R. J. (1994) “The Measure of Mind.” Mind 103: 131–46. Matthews, R. J. (forthcoming) The Measure of Mind. Ramsey, W., Stich, S. P., and Garon, J. (1991) “Connectionism, Eliminativism, and the Future of Folk Psychology,” in W. Ramsey, S. P. Stich, and D. E. Rumelhart (eds.), Philosophy and
content in scientific psychology
29
Connectionist Theory, Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 199–228. [Reprinted in Stich 1996a.] Searle, J. (1991) The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Segal, G. (1989) “On Seeing What is Not There.” Philosophical Review 98: 189–214. Segal, G. (1991) “Defence of a Reasonable Individualism.” Mind 100: 485–93. Segal, G. (2000) A Slim Book about Narrow Content. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Shapiro, L. (1993) “Content, Kinds, and Individualism in Marr’s Theory of Vision.” Philosophical Review 102: 489–513. Spelke, E. (1990) “Origins of Visual Knowledge,” in D. Osherson and H. Lasnik, (eds.), Visual Cognition and Action: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Vol. 2, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Stich, S. P. (1983) From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Stich, S. P. (1991) “Narrow Content Meets Fat Syntax,” in B. Loewer and G. Rey (eds.), Meaning in Mind: Fodor and his Critics, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 229–54. Stich, S. P. (1992) “What is a Theory of Mental Representation?” Mind 101: 243–61. Stich, S. P. (1996a) Deconstructing the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Stich, S. P. (1996b) “Deconstructing the Mind,” in Stich 1996a, 3–90. Stich, S. P. (1996c) “Naturalism, Positivism, and Pluralism,” in Stich 1996a, pp. 192–200. Stich, S. P. and Lawrence, S. (1994) “Intentionality and Naturalism,” in French, Uehling, and Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19. [Reprinted in Stich 1996a.] Stich, S. P. and Ravenscroft, I. (1994) “What is Folk Psychology?” Cognition 50: 447–68. [Reprinted in Stich 1996a, pp. 115–35. Page reference is to this edition.] Weiner, B. (1990) “Attribution in Personality Psychology,” in L. A. Pervin, (ed.), Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research, New York: Guilford Press, pp. 465–85.
30
peter godfrey-smith
2 Representationalism Reconsidered PETER GODFREY-SMITH
1 Introduction One part of philosophy is concerned with the integration of the everyday, “folk” picture of human thought and agency with information from the sciences – the integration of the “manifest image” of ourselves with the “scientific image,” in Wilfrid Sellars’ famous terminology (Sellars 1962). Stich’s 1983 book From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science opens with some vivid recent history in this area. Around the middle of the twentieth century, the behaviorist movement in scientific psychology (especially in Skinnerian form) clashed dramatically with the folk picture. The decline of behaviorism and the rise of cognitive psychology in the third quarter of the century promised the possibility of a much more benign relationship. In the 1980s, various philosophers drew explicitly on these scientific developments, and tried to outline harmonious accounts of how folk and scientific accounts of the mind relate to each other. One example is Jerry Fodor (1981, 1987), who developed a representationalist and computational view of the mind, friendly to folk psychological assumptions, along with an explanatory agenda influenced by Chomsky. Another is Fred Dretske (1981, 1988), who drew more on Shannon’s information theory than on computationalism. Dretske also utilized a different empirical tradition, including comparative psychology, biology, and learning theory, but where learning theory is freed from behaviorist strictures and is happy with the idea of mental states as causes of behavior. The latter part of the twentieth century saw various other philosophical projects of the same kind (Lycan 1988; Sterelny 1990; Rey 1997). This first family of positions can be contrasted with views that saw the folk-theoretic and scientific descriptions of human thought as less seamlessly connected, but still with generally amicable relations between them (Davidson 1984; most of Dennett). And in a third category we have the naysayers who saw the possibility of substantial ongoing clashes between the scientific and folk views of the mind. Here we find Stich’s work in this period (1983), that of the Churchlands (P. M. Churchland 1981; P. S. Churchland 1986), and Dennett in some of his moods (1978b). Stich’s sketch of the terrain in the opening of his 1983 book ended with a profession of pessimism about the prospects for smooth integration of the folk and scientific pictures.
representationalism reconsidered
31
How do things look now? We find, as I see it, an interesting combination of developments. Psychology and cognitive science have forged ahead with what looks from the philosophical side like an assumption of harmony. Most cognitive science makes free use of concepts of representation, knowledge, reasoning, and so on. The philosophical projects aiming to make foundational sense of this, however, have not gone so well. The optimistic camp in philosophy tried to get physical and representational/semantic forms of description to explicitly connect. It is not that someone has shown that these can never neatly connect, but some particular pieces of philosophical theory that were expected to constitute an ideal connection never appeared in a way that generated any consensus. Or at least, they have not managed to generate any consensus so far. Here I have in mind the explicit attempts, in works like Fodor (1987) and Dretske (1988), to show exactly how the mind could really be – as it seems to be – a “semantic engine” in a robust sense. This is no occasion for panic, but it is a good time to be casting around for some new options. So I use the occasion provided by this Stichschrift to look again at these issues. The continuing evolution of Stich’s own ideas has an interesting relation to this situation. Stich’s 1983 book, following up its foreboding opening, went on to make “the case against belief.” The argument was not that we should conclude that beliefs do not exist, but beliefs are not, Stich argued, the kinds of things we should expect to see appearing in a future scientific psychology. Twenty years later, in contrast, Stich is developing elaborate cognitive scientific models that use a “belief-box” as a basic piece of architecture, and that trade freely in representations – here I have in mind his recent book co-written with Shaun Nichols (2003). This should not be seen as a simple reversal on Stich’s part. What Stich opposed in 1983 was the cognitive-scientific use of belief in the rather “thick” sense of the term. The concept employed in the recent work with Nichols is a considerably “thinner” one.1 But what is definitely true is that key parts of Stich’s recent work have been developed within a representationalist framework that is on reasonably friendly terms with folk psychology. Like those involved in the large body of empirical work mentioned above, Stich has found that the way to move forward at this time is to work within a representationalist framework. Many of the worries that motivated Stich back in 1983 have not been resolved; we have not properly sorted out the relation between representationalist and physicalist description. I am sure Stich would assent to that. But the representationalist framework does seem to be making progress possible. One thing I hope to do here is make some sense of this situation. So in this chapter I will have another look at some of the hard problems about the relation between physical and semantic descriptions. I see the ideas developed here as within the spirit of some (though not all) of Stich’s work, especially his 1982 paper on content, the middle chapters of Stich 1983, and Stich 1992. I would describe the spirit of that work as metatheoretically cautious and circumspect. What questions are we trying to answer? What do the intuitions that drive so many moves in the literature really show? This work is also willing to countenance more complicated and mixed options when looking for an account of the relations between the two sets of apparent facts that define the problem – the physical and the representational. In accordance with Stichian tradition, in this paper I will also let what remains of my hair down a little, and present some ideas that seem to me to be promising even though
32
peter godfrey-smith
they are unorthodox and in some places disconcerting. If these ideas had come from Stich himself, they would have had meticulously organized arguments to back them up. In this paper they will be presented in a much sketchier fashion.
2 The Basic Representationalist Model In this chapter my focus will be specifically on the idea of representation, and the kind of semantic description that goes along with the idea of representation. I will not discuss the exact relation between representation and core folk-psychological concepts such as belief and desire. Most of the discussion will be about the use of representationalist ideas within theorizing and explanation in cognitive science (a category I construe broadly). Here is the idea I will try to develop. A physical system can acquire a well-motivated semantic description by a variety of “paths.” I will discuss one of these “paths” – one that I take to be centrally important – in detail. This path treats a particular kind of public representation use as a model that can be employed to express hypotheses about inner processes. Model-based understanding of phenomena has a distinctive nature, as explored in recent philosophy of science. I think some of those ideas may be quite helpful here; they put the idea of mental representation into a different meta-theoretic context. This model-based version of representationalism will be my main topic here. But it is not seen as the whole story – a unified reductive account – of how physical systems can be properly described in representational terms. At the end of the chapter I will very briefly discuss other kinds of interpretation. My account starts by focusing on a particular sense of “representation,” and a way of talking about representations. This sense is often, though not always, treated as central in the philosophical literature. In this sense, a representation is one thing that stands for something else. Another way of putting it is that a representation is a thing whose state is consulted in dealing with something else. The state of X is consulted in dealing with Y. This is a familiar way of describing objects as representations in an everyday, public context (maps, diagrams, etc.). This sense of representation is also drawn on in various forms by philosophers like Millikan (1984), Hagueland (1991), and Cummins (1996). My approach in this paper is to start with that familiar idea but treat it differently from usual; I will put in a different overall philosophical context. In particular, I will treat this concept of representation as part of a model that is widely used, in different forms, in the cognitive sciences. When I say this, I have in mind a specific sense of “model.” Some recent philosophy of science has argued that there is a distinctive kind of scientific work that is model-based. Modeling is associated with a particular kind of understanding and a particular investigative strategy. Here are some key features of what can be called “model-based theorizing” (GodfreySmith 2006a; Weisberg 2007). This kind of scientific work operates by constructing and exploring hypothetical, usually simple, systems that are intended to have some relevant resemblance relation to a real “target” system that we are trying to understand. All the quirkiness, vagueness, and context-sensitivity of the notion of “resemblance” are supposed
representationalism reconsidered
33
to be in play here. Part of the point of model-based work in science is that one can try to develop a model system that has useable similarities to a target system while being unclear, indefinite, and changeable about exactly which features of the model are supposed to resemble features of the target, and unclear or changeable about the degree and kind of resemblance intended. The key to the contrast between model-based theorizing and other kinds of theorizing lies in the role of this resemblance relation. It allows a kind of indirectness. A model is specified, as a possible structure, and then this whole structure can be compared to a target system. This approach to theorizing can be opposed to a more “direct” approach: using theoretical language to describe, as directly as possible, what are taken to be the components of the target system, and how they operate. It is a hard question – and one whose answer depends on subtle unresolved issues about scientific language and practice – whether there is a reasonably sharp distinction between these two approaches or something more vague and continuous. I will proceed here as if the distinction was reasonably sharp. This may prove to be an idealization. It may turn out that the better way to describe much scientific work is in terms of a constant mixture or back-and-forth motion between more model-mediated and more direct description. But in this chapter I will assume that the reader recognizes that there is one kind of scientific work in which the indirect, model-based strategy is fairly clearly visible. My suggestion, then, is that representationalism often operates in psychology and other cognitive sciences as a model in the sense outlined just above. Or more precisely, representationalism operates as a schema for constructing models in this sense, to deal with specific phenomena under investigation.2 In the particular case of representationalism, the model has its origin in something familiar from everyday life – a pattern seen in public representation use. But I do not want to suggest that this drawing on the familiar is essential to all model-based scientific work (an assumption that has hampered some earlier discussion of models in science). Further, the fact that representationalism operates as a “model” does not mean that we must treat it in an instrumentalist way. One thing that models can sometimes do is accurately represent the internal workings of a complex system. I do associate modelbased science with various kinds of flexibility on the realism issues. But models can be applied and understood in a strongly realist way, and often people have good reason to do so. Let us now take a closer look at how this alleged model works. My next step is the description of a schematic structure that I will call the “basic representationalist model.” The main idea, again, is that the state of one thing (X) is consulted in dealing with another (Y). One thing is treated as a guide to another. Sometimes, but not always, this will involve the exploitation of a resemblance relation between X and Y. I emphasize the “not always” because some writers exploring similar ideas have supposed that a resemblance is always involved. I see this as optional. In many paradigm cases in which the structure described by the basic representationalist model is realized in everyday, public contexts, the representation is the product of some specialized, adapted, or intelligent representation-producing device, and is then interpreted or read by some kind of user. (Consider, again, a street map.) In Millikan’s theory
34
peter godfrey-smith
of representation, which in many ways follows the contours of the basic representationalist model, the representation is said to always exist “midway” between two “adapted devices,” a producer and consumer. In this discussion, however, I will lean much more on one end of this familiar structure than I do on the other. I will suppose that a representation need not be produced by any particular kind of mechanism. Its origin can be more happenstance or diffuse. The status of the reader or user, however, is different. I take it to be a core part of the model that there is some consumer or reader mechanism, which guides its activities towards Y according to the state of X. This constraint will do quite a lot of work in the argument to follow, and it will be discussed at several points. For now, I emphasize that I am describing features of the model itself, not the structure that a physical system must have for the model to be applicable to it. Suppose we look at the role of representationalism within cognitive science through this particular philosophy-of-science lens. How do things look? I claim that this framework makes sense of the current mindset in much of cognitive science. It is how representationalist ideas are often actually handled in discussions. (Note that people can treat representationalism this way without overtly speaking “modelese,” of course.) Representationalism is employed as a framework in which various empirically assessable alternatives are expressed. Within the framework, people can contrast and investigate hypotheses about what is represented, what information is used by various kinds of cognitive processes. If the foundational status of this kind of talk is challenged, the response is often that the framework works; it is useful for making important and empirically tractable distinctions concerning inner processes, and we definitely do not have a better option. Such a defense is compatible with considerable flexibility on the richness of the resemblance relation that we are expecting to find, when neuroscience gives us a complete lower-level story. So flexibility is always on the table. And when representationalist ideas are being employed in the most literal ways, with the hope of giving almost nuts-and-bolts explanations, then it is the structure that I describe as the “basic representationalist model” that is being treated as physically realized, to a high degree of fidelity. But there are also lots of subtle ways of backing away from these most realistic construals, and much of the time the model is being handled in this more circumspect manner. So there is no simple dichotomy between “realist” and “instrumentalist” applications of representationalist ideas. Instead there is a continuum – or really a space – of ways in which the model can be seen as capturing causal structure in a cognitive system. The philosophical literature also contains an older and alternative account of how representationalism can be justified in this kind of empirical work: one kind of functionalism. I will compare that approach to mine in the next section. But first I will discuss an even older family of arguments, which are still relevant and instructive. A number of people, both inside and outside philosophy, have suspected that representationalism about the mind is pseudo-explanatory. One version of this idea was once highly influential in philosophy of mind, and associated with the later Wittgenstein (1953). I see this general family of objections as holding that what I call the basic representationalist model is indeed the structure that would be required for representationalist explanation, and it is not possible for this structure to be found in the
representationalism reconsidered
35
internal workings of a single agent. Any hypothesis of that kind will collapse into a regress or something like it.3 As I see it, there are bad and good versions of this objection. The bad versions are those that do not allow enough possibility of idealization from the rich public phenomena of representation use to a useable empirical skeleton. The “good” versions of the argument hold that it is often very hard to know, when we strip the basic representationalist model down to something that makes physical/neural sense, whether what remains is usefully described in representational terms. The idea of representation use brings with it a characteristic “explanatory grammar.” For example, we can often explain behavioral success in terms of the agent’s consultation of accurate representations, and failure in terms of inaccurate representations. Do these familiar patterns of explanation, which are common in cognitive science, require a closer match between the representational model and actual neural processes than what we will usually find in nature? I take this form of challenge seriously. It is definitely possible to over-employ the basic representational model, and one kind of result can be the illusion of explanation. In the remainder of this section I will use my account of the structure and role of representationalism to diagnose one kind of misapplication of the representationalist framework. I claimed earlier that the structure of the basic representationalist model includes a distinction between the representation itself and a reader, interpreter, or user of the representation. This reader mechanism need not be as intelligent as a whole human agent. I see bar-code readers in supermarket checkouts as good cases here. They motivate application of the basic representationalist model because they are distinct from what they read and are responsive to bar codes in just the right way. It does not matter that they are very simple and inflexible. Further, a legitimate reader mechanism need not be as physically localized as a person reading a map or a bar-code reader is. Further still, the “use” or “reading” of a representation need not be a simple one-step process, in which action immediately ensues in response to the state of the representation. The use of the representation might be part of a more extended sequence of deliberation or processing. But for the model to be used in anything but a highly instrumentalist way, we do need some reasonably well-demarcated distinction between a representation and the reader or consumer. I argue elsewhere (2007) that this source of constraint is useful in diagnosing good and bad uses of informational and representational talk in areas outside of the cognitive sciences. Here I have in mind especially biology, and genetics in particular. Genetics is now full of information and representation talk. Some of it is not supposed to be explanatory, can be analyzed as a simple application of Shannon’s (1948) concept of information, and raises relatively few philosophical issues. But some appeals to information in biology raise problems familiar from the debates in the philosophy of mind, as biologists often seem to be claiming that information – and perhaps a “program” – stored in DNA explain how development and other biological processes are carried out.4 I argue that there are both good and bad uses of informational talk within genetics. Roughly speaking, the “good” uses are restricted to the explanation of the intra-cellular process of protein synthesis and its regulation. Genes contain information specifying protein primary structure, via the genetic code. The bad applications of informational
36
peter godfrey-smith
concepts in genetics are those that describe the whole organism or the “developmental program” as making use of genetic information that specifies the whole adult phenotype. How do we distinguish the good from the bad applications here? I used to do so purely on a case-by-case basis (see, for example, my 2000 paper), and did not have a unified account of what was bad about the various misapplications of informational and representational concepts in genetics. But the discussion above shows the way forward to a more unified diagnosis. And as far as I can see, the good uses of informational concepts in genetics line up with cases where there is a well-specified reader mechanism. The bad ones are cases where the reader is a mere fiction or abstraction, not a real part of the machinery, and something we have no reason to believe in except as a pseudo-device that permits informational description. This suggests a constraint: to introduce talk of representation, in anything but a very instrumentalist way, is to commit to the physical presence of a representation-user. The flexibility with which models can be employed does apply here, as usual. If a model is being used solely for predictive reasons, then there is no need to believe in the presence of a reader mechanism – or any other component of the basic representationalist model. Instrumentalism is always a possibility. My point about reader mechanisms is intended to apply only when the model is seen as capturing, to some degree, how the system does what it does, not just what it does. In those applications, I think the need for a reader is an important constraint. Do not allow representation-users to be mere pseudodevices, if the aim is to come up with genuine causal explanations.
3 Model-based Theorizing and Homuncular Functionalism In this section I will continue developing the model-based view of representationalism outlined above. I will do so by outlining and responding to an objection to the line of argument sketched at the very end of the previous section. The objection was made (forcefully) by Stich himself, with some (equally forceful) support from Alan Leslie, when I presented some of these ideas at a workshop in Maryland, 2004. The objection runs as follows. I criticized the trend in biology of allowing the readers or users of genetic information to be mere abstractions, mere pseudo-devices, as opposed to real parts of the machinery. But, said Stich, treating key components of a mechanism as “abstractions” is not a bad thing; it is exactly what has been done productively in cognitive science for many years. This is the key to one kind of functional analysis, once discussed in the philosophical literature under the banner “homuncular functionalism” (Fodor 1968; Dennett 1978a; Lycan 1981). According to classical homuncularism, here is how we often analyze complex systems. We undertake a sequence of decompositions of the system, where each decomposition aims to explain complex, intelligent-looking capacities in terms of simpler, “dumber” ones. Each level of description will have a set of components, several of which combine to produce the capacities existing at the next level up. Components at level L are often black boxes, described purely in terms of their causal capacities and their interactions
representationalism reconsidered
37
with other components at that level. Components at level L are eventually explained in terms of the simpler capacities and interactions of components at level L-1, and so on down to the physics. At any of the intermediate levels in this kind of analysis we recognize a number of components that are treated merely as black boxes, as things-that-do-such-and-such. These high-level or mid-level components are, in a sense, mere abstactions. They are posited as the loci of certain activities. They may or may not correspond to some spatially localized piece of the physical machinery. Positing such abstract components is essential to functional analysis, the objection to me runs, and entirely acceptable. So it seems that when I insist (as I did at the end of the previous section) that reader or user devices be genuine parts of the machinery as opposed to mere abstractions, I am denying the acceptability of a strategy of analysis that is standard and unproblematic within cognitive science. According to this view, there is no harm, when applying the basic representational model, in treating the reader as a “mere abstraction.” In the sciences of complex systems, abstractions are essential. In a sentence, then, the objection from Stich was that I was mishandling the “information must be read” constraint, by not taking seriously the possibility of the reader being an abstract device existing at an intermediate level of description in a functional analysis. I will give a detailed reply to this objection. And I do not claim that what I will say here entirely resolves the problem. First, it is clear that positing black boxes in a functional analysis is often legitimate. But it is also true that the practice can go wrong. It can be over-used. There can be pseudo-explanation. So how do we locate the difference between good and bad cases? There is a standard answer to this question within homuncular functionalism. The answer is that one can freely posit homunculi (smart black boxes) so long as the homunculi are stupider than the capacity being explained. At each level, the posited homunculi are stupider than the capacities at the next level up, and eventually the homunculi are so stupid that they can obviously be mechanized. I think of that as the “official” story told by homuncular functionalism. Clearly, there must also be another constraint, less official but more obvious. It is possible for a decomposition of a system to simply get the architecture wrong – to posit the wrong structural features – at a given level. It is possible to posit a conventional automobile engine when the real engine is rotary or hybrid. It is possible to posit a single computer processor when the real system uses parallel processors. ELIZA-like AI programs do not have any level of analysis that treats them as genuinely intelligent agents. It might often be reasonable, in a specific situation, to proceed by positing black boxes or homunculi solely on the basis of the fact that they would constitute a good explanation of the capacities in question, because the black boxes are of a suitable kind in principle. But any given decomposition may in fact get the architecture wrong. This may only become clear much further down the road. With that point in hand, let us look at the relation between homuncular functionalism and model-based analysis in my sense. There is intended to be a good deal of agreement between my account and the main themes of homuncular functionalism. Indeed, I think that some valuable ideas in this
38
peter godfrey-smith
literature have been neglected in recent decades. A lot of philosophy of mind has instead pursued a neo-Lockean wild goose chase in search of strangely reified “concepts” or other fundamental representational units. So there is supposed to be real concord between my view and homuncularism. But the model-based approach does have some distinctive features that homuncular functionalism does not have. Again, model-based scientific work always involves resemblance relations between model structures and target systems. Homuncular functionalism, at least officially, involves a more direct mode of description, though it is highly abstract. In homuncular functionalism as normally conceived, what the analyst is supposed to be doing is giving a sequence of direct descriptions, at different levels. The procedure was often illustrated by imaginary cases, or by actual cases in which there are definite and unproblematic objects at each level: engine, piston, iron molecule, electron. We simply posit various components, states, and properties at each level. If this is so, then homuncular functionalism (at least officially) is not supposed to have the kinds of flexibility that I emphasized in my account of model-based theorizing. Here I have in mind, again, the flexibility that comes from the many ways in which a model system can usefully resemble a target. But I suspect that quite a lot of the actual work that people might have associated with homuncular functionalism is more accurately seen as involving the application of models. This is because this work does take advantage of the kinds of flexibility that I am emphasizing. The theorizing is undertaken in a way that allows for a mixture of different kinds of resemblance between model structure and real structure. This can be the case in a wholesale sense; a model need not be abandoned completely if the overall resemblance between model and target is shown to be less good than some hoped. And it is also true in a piecemeal sense; some elements of the model structure might have clearer resemblances to elements of the real system than others. So I conjecture that some of the scientific work that is taken to exhibit homuncular functionalism may actually have a better analysis in terms of model-building in my sense. The two are quite close in some ways but not identical. With these ideas in hand, let us return to the issue of whether I have overstated my constraint on good applications of the basic representationalist model, involving the role of reader mechanisms. I allow that bona fide reader mechanisms can be unobvious – they need not all look like supermarket bar-code readers. They can be made up of physically scattered subsystems, whose coordinated functioning is only visible once we step away from the mechanical details. I must also allow that in many situations it will be reasonable to posit a reader, in a provisional and black-box way, simply because it seems that somehow the system is doing some information-processing, and we want to work within that framework, for now, in understanding it. But it is definitely possible for the basic representationalist model to be applied where it does not belong. There are ways in which a posited black-box structure may turn out to not coherently relate to the real mechanisms. There is more that can go wrong with these kinds of analysis than the standard error of positing “overly smart homunculi.” For example, it is easy to equivocate between “little readers and big readers,” between information-users that are deeply sub-personal (in the visual system, for example) as
representationalism reconsidered
39
opposed to information-users at the level of the whole agent or close to it. That is what led to a lot of the trouble in the biological case – equivocation between genetic information in the sense of something read by cellular machinery (the ribosomal and tRNA system) versus something that is supposed to exist at a much higher level. In the case of genetic information there is not a reader at the higher or whole-organism level, so what results from the equivocation is appeal to a fiction. Once again, this talk of higher-level information use might be acceptable for purely instrumentalist purposes, but it is known to be an inaccurate picture of how biological development works. More generally, we see here some of the distinctive strengths and weaknesses of the basic representationalist model, and to some extent of model-based science of this kind: there are many ways, while employing the basic representationalist model, to covertly switch between different ways in which the model is supposed to map onto the real system. Once we have little readers, it is natural to act as if lots of them make up a big reader, which is not in general true. There are ways of using the model that continually relocate the alleged reader; it can become a shell game. And as people tend to find explanations in terms of meaning and information so satisfying, as these explanations act as “attractors” in discussion, there are special dangers associated with the representationalist model, as opposed to other models. In sum: people analyzing complex and well-adapted systems “write cheques” on their readers, as the homuncular literature used to say. They posit informational states, and the manipulation or consultation of these states, while being indefinite about how and how well the model structure might be physically realized. That is fine, a lot of the time. It is a natural way to carry on some kinds of discussion. It is natural when the aim is to work out how in principle the system might perform a difficult task, or the aim is to contrast different kinds of information-processing that might be involved. But it is important to be aware of the ways in which this sort of investigation can go wrong – via, for example, various accidental (or deliberate) mystifications of the location of a reader mechanism. Once again, the line of argument given here is not supposed to compromise the claims made in earlier sections about the roles of resemblance and flexibility in model-based scientific work. With any model, there are ways to modulate the degree of realism with which the model is being used – what kind of resemblance it is supposed to have to the target system. If the model is being used purely instrumentally, then none of its core components need to have real analogues in the target system. Then the only resemblance being sought is input–output resemblance. The reality of a reader mechanism only becomes a real constraint when the model is being used in a more “realist” way than this; when it is being used to represent not just the behavior of the target but also the underlying causal processes responsible for its behavior. Another way to some of these points is in terms of a familiar observation about information in the Shannon sense, an observation familiar from Dretske’s work and the philosophy of biology literature (Dretske 1981; Griffiths and Gray 1994). Information is everywhere. But information-use is not everywhere. Most informational relations between events in the world are causally idle. Most ways in which one thing might be taken as a map of another are not exploited. Most natural signs are unread. So information is
40
peter godfrey-smith
not special, but information-use is special. My emphasis on the need for a well-specified reader or user when applying the basic representational model for explanatory purposes is making a similar point.
4 Other Pieces of the Picture The aim of this paper has been to cast representationalism within a different overall philosophical framework, supplied by recent philosophy of science. The notion of representation I have focused on is very familiar. What is more novel is the philosophical context in which that concept of representation has been embedded. Where does this discussion leave us with respect to the older philosophical discussion of the reality of semantic properties, and the relation between semantic and physical properties?5 As briefly indicated in section 2, I see the basic representationalist model as one “path” by which the semantic interpretation of a physical system can be motivated. It is not the only way. The term “path” here is supposed to suggest the following picture. Via a particular strategy of analysis, a semantic or representationalist description of a physical system can be introduced and motivated. But the same system might also be interpreted via another path. The interpretations given by means of each path may or may not agree with each other. For example, at present it is unclear to me how the basic representationalist model relates to the concept of computation, a concept that is often seen as a crucially important bridge between physical and semantic description. Clearly there are people who think of representationalism along something like the lines outlined in this paper, who are also strong advocates of computationalism (Gallistel 2001 is an example.) But it is not clear how tight the connection is. In particular, it seems likely that the basic representationalist model can be employed without using a notion of computation, and possible also that computation can be used to ground a semantic interpretation of a system in a way that does not draw on the basic representationalist model. Having raised this problem I will leave it unresolved, however. Another important phenomenon here is a family of very weak ways of introducing representationalist language in cognitive science. Representationalist language is sometimes used in a way that does not seem to bring with it any kind of definite explanatory pattern, but merely as a disciplinary marker of a general friendliness to a cognitivist picture, as opposed to behaviorism and (perhaps) its neuroscientific kin. Matthew Barrett (2004) argues that many uses of representationalist language in psychology and neighboring sciences function to assert nothing more empirically substantial that this contrast with behaviorism. As a matter of sociology of science, I agree with Barrett that this is a real phenomenon. Perhaps there is a family of weak usages here. For some authors, whenever we have a very complex set of causal processes that cannot be handled with an S-R model and that adapt an organism to a particular environmental condition or variable, the organism is thereby seen as representing that aspect of the environment. There is no stronger commitment than to complex processing and well-tuned adaptive response. It might be appropriate to see these weak usages as involving an application of the basic
representationalism reconsidered
41
representationalist model along with a very weak and instrumentalist construal of what the model is supposed to be doing. But there may also be other ways to analyze this very weakly representationalist talk. What is important, given the existence of these usages, is not to confuse representationalist talk that does appeal to a definite explanatory model with representationalist talk that does not. The basic representationalist model, as I indicated earlier, brings with it a particular “explanatory grammar.” When a process is described in terms of a representation being consulted, this introduces certain contrasts and possibilities. For example, behavioral failure can be explained in terms of consultation of an inaccurate representation – a representation with some definite, identifiable mismatch with the target. The options for explaining failure become: (i) inaccurate representation, (ii) bad processing, (iii) bad luck, and (iv) some conjunction of those options. One should not appeal to explanations that trade on this set of possibilities and contrasts unless the representationalist talk in question is an application of the basic representationalist model, or something like it, as opposed to (for example) a vague rejection of behaviorism. This is an appropriate point to raise the role of language, something that has been discussed hardly at all so far in this chapter. Language is relevant both as as a source of theoretical analogy and as a resource for intelligent thought itself. One possibility to note at this point is a connection between the model-based view of representation discussed here and a much older line of argument. Here I have in mind the idea that public discourse can function as a model of thought, in the sense of Sellars ([1956]1997). Sellars is seen as an important early figure in much of the modern discussion of representationalism. It is less often noted that Sellars’ original 1956 discussion used a model-based view of scientific theorizing that he rightly distinguished from a more traditional nomological one (see especially his sections 51 and 61). This feature of Sellars’ discussion has been dropped from subsequent discussions of the theory-theory. We see this in Lewis (1972) and everyone (I know of) since. But Sellars’ original idea may be an important part of a complete story; there may be more than one model operating at once. There may also be a place for a second role for language, one with intriguing connections to the first. Here I have in mind the idea, seen in various forms in different authors, that public language capacities may have deep effects on the representational powers of thought (Deacon 1997). From the point of view of the present chapter, the philosophical tradition of denying all representational capacities to non-linguistic organisms, for general reasons having to do with the nature of content ascription, has been quite misguided. (See Davidson 1984 for key works in this tradition). But it may well be that language makes possible not just mental representations of special kinds, but representation in a richer sense, a sense supporting more precise and determinate ascriptions of content, for example. Back in the 1980s, Robert Stalnaker distinguished two fundamentally different approaches to the problem of mental content. He called these the “linguistic picture” and the “pragmatic picture” (Stalnaker 1984). The linguistic picture sees the semantic properties of public language as primary. Interpretation of inner states proceeds by relating them somehow to a public language sentence. According to the pragmatic picture, mental content involves a link between an inner and an external state in virtue of the role the inner state plays in coordinating behavioral responses to that aspect of the world. Stich’s
42
peter godfrey-smith
own theory of the everyday ascription of content (1982, 1983) exemplified an attenuated version of the linguistic picture. For Stich, when an ascriber attributes a specific belief to another person, this ascription is done on the basis of a complex and multidimensional similarity relation between a state in the ascriber and a posited state in the ascribee. Roughly, when an ascriber attributes the belief that p, he or she is positing an inner state in the ascribee that is similar to a state that would, in the ascriber, result via normal processes in the assertion that p. In general, I see this account as too closely tied to the linguistic picture. Stich’s use of similarity relations in this account, however, was powerful. Stich used the context-sensitivity of the notion of similarity to handle phenomena that other writers have handled in much more inflexible and unparsimonious ways (including the alleged distinction between “de re” and “de dicto” belief ascriptions). These parts of Stich’s story might be useable within other views. The mixed view I am gesturing towards here is one that may include distinct roles for forms of intrepretation that fall within each of Stalnaker’s linguistic and pragmatic pictures. Looking at the larger literature, it may turn out that a key error in the tradition pursuing the linguistic picture has been to insist that, outside the domain of language use (and phenomena closely connected to it), we are outside the domain of the semantic altogether. A key error seen in those who pursued the other path – the family of causal, indicator, and teleofunctional theories that fall within Stalnaker’s “pragmatic picture” – is to think that public language adds nothing substantial to the phenomenon of mental representation; in particular, to think that representation entirely outside of language involves the same fine-grained semantic features seen in language-based representation.
5 “Look, Mr Dalton . . .” England, some time around 1808: “Look, Mr Dalton, you are taking this whole ‘chemical element’ thing in far too simple and literal a way. Elementism should really be seen as more like a model, with an accompanying ‘grammar’ . . .” There is a perennial risk in arguing for a more complex, less straightforward interpretation of a scientific idea that can also be construed more simply. If the simple version is dramatically vindicated, the less straightforward view looks like philosophical footwork of a highly counterproductive kind. And sometimes the simple version does turn out to be pretty straightforwardly right. William Bateson, in the early twentieth century, doubted the material reality of genes, thinking that the new science of genetics (which he was in large part responsible for developing) should avoid errors of naive misplaced concreteness. His worries were needless, at least given the grain at which he was working. Similarly, the full-speed-ahead realism about mental representation and the semantic properties of thought seen in the 1980s might yet prevail. All this meta-theoretic messing-around might turn out to be a distraction. But I doubt it, and I think Stich does too. Fifty years from now, I think most of the late twentieth-century literature on mental representaton will appear to have tried to lay an overly simple and regimented framework onto a very complicated and mixed psychological reality. And Stich, especially in the 1980s’ discussions, will be one of those who had many of the right doubts.
representationalism reconsidered
43
Acknowledgment I first met Steve when he visited the University of Sydney for a year in 1984–1985, when I was an undergraduate. His visit had a remarkable impact; just about everyone around the T&M Philosophy Department at that time was affected by Steve’s remarkable presence – by his dynamism, his generosity, and the acute challenge of his ideas. His Wednesday Honors seminar on folk psychology and cognitive science from that year is still vivid in the T&M collective memory. And Steve stayed in touch with me ever since. Like a large number of other people in philosophy of mind, I owe Steve a lot.
Notes 1 The development has also been affected by Stich’s more recent argument that there are no determinate facts about which (genuinely feasible) developments in cognitive science would suffice for eliminativism. See Stich (1996): ch. 1. 2 One problem with writing about this set of ideas is confusion resulting from the profusion of things that can be called ‘models’. When we consult the state of X in order to determine our behavior towards Y, it can be natural to say that we are using X as a model of Y. But what I am concerned with is the idea of taking that familiar pattern or situation – where one thing is consulted as a guide to another – and using that as a model for understanding some features of thought. So I will never use the term ‘model’ for an internal or external object (my schematic ‘X’) that is being treated as a representation of something else. 3 See Goldfarb (1992) for a revival of this kind of argument, and see my (2006b) for a detailed reply. 4 See Griffiths and Gray (1994), Maynard Smith (2000), Godfrey-Smith (2000). 5 More is said about this in Godfrey-Smith (2004).
References Barrett, M. (2004) Misrepresenting the Mind. PhD Dissertation, Stanford University. Churchland, P. M. (1981) “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes.” Journal of Philosophy 78: 67–90. Churchland, P. S. (1986) Neurophilosophy: Towards a Unified Theory of the Mind-Brain. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cummins, R. (1996) Representations, Targets, and Attitudes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Davidson, D. (1984) Essays on Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deacon, T. (1997) The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: Norton. Dennett, D. C. (1978a) Brainstorms. Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Dennett, D. C. (1978b) “Why You Can’t Make a Computer that Feels Pain.” Synthese 38: 415–56. Dennett, D. C. (1987) The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Dretske, F. (1981) Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Dretske, F. (1988) Explaining Behavior. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fodor, J. A. (1968) Psychological Explanation. New York: Random House. Fodor, J. A. (1981) Representations. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
44
peter godfrey-smith
Fodor, J. A. (1987) Psychosemantics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fodor, J. A. (1998) Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gallistel, R. (2001) “Mental Representation, Psychology of,” in P. Baltes and N. Smelser (eds.), The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. New York: Elsevier. Giere, R. (1988) Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Godfrey-Smith, P. (2000) “On the Theoretical Role of ‘Genetic Coding.’ ” Philosophy of Science 67: 26–44. Godfrey-Smith, P. (2004) “On Folk Psychology and Mental Representation,” in H. Clapin, P. Staines, and P. Slezak (eds.), Representation in Mind: New Approaches to Mental Representation, Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishers, pp. 147–62. Godfrey-Smith, P. (2005) “Untangling the Evolution of Mental Representation,” in A. Zilhão (ed.), Cognition, Evolution, and Rationality: A Cognitive Science for the 21st Century, London: Routledge, pp. 85–102. Godfrey-Smith (2006a) “The Strategy of Model-Based Science.” Biology and Philosophy 21: 725–40. Godfrey-Smith, P. (2006b) “Mental Representation, Naturalism, and Teleosemantics,” in G. MacDonald and D. Papineau (eds.), Teleosemantics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 42– 68. Godfrey-Smith, P. (2007) “Innateness and Genetic Information,” in P. Carruthers, S. Lawrence, and S. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind, Vol. 3: Foundations and the Future, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 55–68. Goldfarb, W. (1992) “Wittgenstein on Understanding,” in P. French, T. Uehling and W. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy XVII: The Wittgenstein Legacy, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Griffiths, P. and R. Gray (1994) “Developmental Systems and Evolutionary Explanation.” Journal of Philosophy 91: 277–304. Hagueland, J. (1991) “Representational Genera,” in W. Ramsey, S. Stich and D. Rumelhart (eds.), Philosophy and Connectionist Theory, Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 61–89. Lewis, D. K. (1972) “Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50: 249–58. Lycan, W. (1981) “Form, Function, and Feel.” Journal of Philosophy 78: 24–50. Lycan, W. (1988) Judgment and Justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maynard Smith, J. (2000) “The Concept of Information in Biology.” Philosophy of Science 67: 177–94. Millikan, R. (1984) Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Nichols, S. and Stich, S. P. (2003) Mindreading. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ramsey, W., S. Stich and J. Garron (1991) “Connectionism, Eliminativism and the Future of Folk Psychology,” in J. Greenwood (ed.), The Future of Folk Psychology: Intentionality and Cognitive Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Rey, G. (1997) Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: A Contentiously Classical Approach. Oxford: Blackwell. Sellars, W. (1962) “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” in Robert Colodny (ed.), Frontiers of Science and Philosophy, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 35–78. Sellars, W. ( [1956]1997) Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Shannon, C. (1948) “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” Bell System Technical Journal 27: 379–423, 623–56.
representationalism reconsidered
45
Sterelny, K. (1990) The Representational Theory of Mind: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Stalnaker, R. (1984) Inquiry. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Sterelny, K. (2003) Thought in a Hostile World. Oxford: Blackwell. Stich, S. P. (1982) “On the Ascription of Content,” in A. Woodfield (ed.), Thought and Object: Essays on Intentionality, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stich, S. P. (1983) From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Stich, S. P. (1992) “What is a Theory of Mental Representation?” Mind 101, reprinted in S. P. Stich and T. A. Warfield (eds.) (1994). Mental Representation: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Stich, S. P. (1996) Deconstructing the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weisberg, M. (2007) “Who is a Modeler?” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58: 207–33. Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan.
46
michael devitt
3 On Determining What There Isn’t MICHAEL DEVITT
In his engaging essay, “Deconstructing the Mind” (1996: 3–90), Stephen Stich raises some very good questions and gives some pretty good answers. My aim in this paper is to give some answers of my own, drawing on earlier work, and to compare these answers with Stich’s.
1 Introduction In his misspent youth, Stich was attracted to arguments for eliminativism about the mind – arguments against “intentional realism.” The arguments ran along the following lines: • beliefs, etc. are posits of folk psychology; • folk psychology is a seriously mistaken theory; • so, beliefs, etc., do not exist. Yet, as he now points out, such an argument needs an extra premise. How does the falsity of a theory establish the nonexistence of the entities it purports to be about? Implicitly or explicitly, the extra premise is usually an application of the description theory of reference; for example, the premise that if ‘belief’ refers, it refers to whatever is picked out by the description associated with it in folk psychology. Now, if folk psychology is seriously mistaken, that associated description does not pick out anything. So ‘belief’ does not refer. So beliefs do not exist. Stich was tempted by such arguments. But then along came William Lycan to wake Stich from his “dogmatic slumbers” (5).1 Lycan (1988) pointed out that the description theory of reference is not the only theory of reference in town: one might, for example, adopt a causal-historical theory of the sort made popular by Saul Kripke (1980) and Hilary Putnam (1975). A causal-historical theory does not require a word that refers to x to be embodied in a theory that is largely true of x. Indeed, the theory was born out of “arguments from ignorance and error” that showed that description theories of some words placed far too heavy an epistemic burden on competent users of those words. According to the causal-historical theory, a
on determining what there isn ’ t
47
word that has the right sort of causal link to x will refer to x however wrong the theory of xs. So, if a causal-historical theory applied to ‘belief’ it could refer even though folk psychology was seriously mistaken. So beliefs could exist despite our mistakes about them. I like another reason for being dubious of the use of description theories in realism debates: even if such theories are true for some words, they cannot be true for all words. Description theories explain the reference of a word in terms of the reference of the other words in the description with which the word is associated; the reference of those other words determine what the description picks out. How then are we to explain the reference of those other words? Perhaps we can appeal to a description theory again but clearly such appeals must ultimately come to an end, for description theories simply pass the referential buck. The buck must stop with a different sort of theory, one that explains the reference of a word in terms of direct, presumably causal, relations to reality. Perhaps the words relevant to a realism debate are of that sort. So I think that Lycan and Stich are doing a service in emphasizing the way description theories of reference are often, and inappropriately, simply taken for granted in reaching antirealist conclusions. The most regrettable examples of this procedure, in my view (1997a), are to be found in discussions of Putnam’s “pessimistic meta-induction” in the philosophy of science (1978). This meta-induction is an argument against scientific realism: briefly, the unobservables posited by past theories do not exist; so, probably the unobservables posited by present theories do not exist. Since past theories are clearly mistaken – that’s why they are past – a description theory of reference makes the premise of this argument seem rather obvious. But a causal theory (or perhaps a part-causal partdescription theory) of reference is often more plausible for the words of past theories. If we adopt a causal theory of reference, then the premise of the meta-induction is likely to seem overstated, at least. Although a description theory of reference should certainly not be taken for granted, I think that a description theory is plausible for terms like ‘belief’. So, I think that if intentional realism is to be saved we are likely to have to reject the view that folk psychology is seriously mistaken. In this respect, I differ from Lycan (1988: 31–2). This immediately raises a question: How should we settle such differences of opinion over reference? As Stich points out, there is nothing special about this epistemic question about reference: similar epistemic questions arise in theorizing about anything. Still, pondering his awakening, Stich thinks that reference raises some special metaphysical/ methodological questions (6: 37–8). What makes a theory of reference true or false? What is a theory of reference supposed to do? Stich’s discussion of these questions (37–51) yields a gloomy conclusion about reference and hence a gloomy conclusion about the importance and interest of the eliminativism issue. Worse still, as John Searle pointed out to Stich, this gloomy conclusion generalizes to other issues of existence, for example, of black holes and the big bang (51–4). Surely these central scientific issues are not unimportant and uninteresting. Something has clearly gone wrong. But what? Stich decides that the mistake came in the “semantic ascent” at the beginning, in the proposal “that questions about the existence of entities posited by false theories could be productively addressed by
48
michael devitt
focusing on what the theory of reference tells us about the terms used in such theories” (55). Stich concludes (60–82) by considering some non-semantic approaches to the issue of eliminativism. I think that Stich is absolutely right that it was a mistake to begin with semantic ascent. Indeed, my Realism and Truth (1997a) is an extended argument for tackling metaphysical/ontological issues before semantic ones;2 we should adopt the slogan, “put metaphysics first.” However, my reason for resisting semantic ascent is a bit different from Stich’s. His reason is his gloomy conclusion about the theory of reference. I do not share his gloom. Still, I think that an appropriately modest view of the accomplishments of the theory of reference goes decisively against the semantic ascent approach to metaphysical/ontological issues. I shall discuss this in section 4. But, first, I want to discuss the theory of reference. Although my view of this theory is not rosy, it is much more so than Stich’s. I shall discuss this in the next two sections. Finally, in section 5, I shall briefly consider non-semantic approaches to eliminativism, taking a view very like Stich’s.
2 The Theory of Reference as Folk Semantics The deep problem with the theory of reference is not, Stich thinks, the usual epistemic one but rather a special metaphysical/methodological one. But is there really such a problem? One might think not because, at first glance, his metaphysical/methodological questions that pose the problem seem to have obvious answers. What makes a theory of reference true or false? Well, the nature of the reference relation does. What is a theory of reference supposed to do? Well, characterize that nature. So where is the special problem? Perhaps these obvious answers are a bit naive. We shall soon see. Stich thinks that there are “two quite different stories to be told about what a theory of reference is up to”: “the proto-science account” and “the folk semantic account” (6). Stich offers criticisms of both accounts whilst remaining fairly neutral on the choice between them. I shall begin by rejecting the folk semantic account. The inspiration for the folk semantic account comes from our heavy reliance on ordinary intuitions in theorizing about reference. According to the folk semantic account, “the theory of reference is attempting to capture the details of a commonsense theory about the link between words and the world” (6), where that theory involves, at least, a generalization of the intuitions. Stich thinks that this account is “favored, albeit tacitly, by most philosophers” (6). I think he is right about that. Still, this common account is puzzling. I have argued against it at some length elsewhere, particularly in Coming to Our Senses (1996: 48–86; also 1994), and so will be brief here. According to my obvious answer above, the task of the theory of reference is to characterize reference; that is, the task is to characterize a certain word–world relation. If we start from this view, surely as good a starting place as one could have, why take the task to be to capture the folk theory of this relation? That would seem to be appropriate only if we assume that the folk must be right about reference. But why assume that? Why think that the folk have infallible insight into the nature of this particular word–world
on determining what there isn ’ t
49
relation? We don’t suppose that they are authorities on physics, biology, or economics, why suppose that they are on semantics? Stich has a neat suggestion (40). Folk semantics might be viewed the way linguists standardly view folk linguistics. Their standard view is that speakers derive their grammatical intuitions about their language from a representation of the grammatical principles of the language; the intuitions are, as I put it, “the voice of competence.” We might then take a similar view of referential intuitions: speakers derive them from a representation of referential principles. So, just as, according to the linguists, the true grammar that they seek to discover is already stored in the mind of every speaker, so too, according to the folk semanticists, is the true theory of reference. Linguistic intuitions, whether about syntax or reference, are not the result of the sort of empirical investigation that judgments of the world usually require. Rather, we might say, speakers have a “Cartesian access” to facts about their language simply in virtue of being competent in it and thus embodying representations of its principles. This would support the widely held view that semantics is a priori. But why should we accept the standard linguistic view? I have argued that the idea that the grammar is represented in the minds of speakers is implausible and unsupported. And even if the standard linguistic view were right, we would still need an independent reason to accept the folk semanticist view; mere analogy is not enough. I don’t think that there is any such reason.3 If we do not view folk semantics the way linguists view folk linguistics, what are we to say about folk semantics? As Stich points out, we might see it as analogous to folk physics. But then, “there will be no guarantee that our internalized folk semantic theory is correct.” Our attempt to describe it “may be an interesting bit of psychology, but there is no reason to suppose that it will tell us much about reference” (43). Exactly! In my view, Stich has described just the attitudes and opinions we should have about folk semantics. We should see the semantic theory and intuitions of the folk as fallible and incomplete empirical responses to the phenomena. We should have the same attitudes to them as we have to folk theories and intuitions about physics, biology, psychology, or whatever. This having been said, I do think that there is a small truth underlying the folk semantics account. The truth is that folk intuitions about reference play a role at the very beginning of the theory of reference. The first stage of a theory of any property F or relation R involves identifying some apparently uncontroversial examples where F or R is instantiated and some apparently uncontroversial examples where it is not instantiated. These examples can then be examined in the second stage to discover what is common and peculiar to F or R in the hope of determining its nature. In that first stage we should consult those most expert at identifying cases of F or R. If we are concerned with, say, being a gene, being an echidna, or being an isotope of, then we can look to scientists for the identification. But when our concern is with being referred to by, it is doubtful that anyone is more expert at identification than the folk. So these most basic folk intuitions about reference, intuitions that identify paradigm cases of it, play a role in the first stage of the theory of reference. But this role does not go against what I have just claimed about folk intuitions. Even these basic intuitions are not infallible. Theorizing at the second stage
50
michael devitt
can lead to the rejection of results at the first stage: apparently uncontroversial examples turn out to be controversial; whales are not fish after all; tomatoes are not vegetables; unacceptable strings of words turn out to be grammatical. There is even less reason to think that any richer folk intuitions or theories about the nature of reference must be true. So, despite the undoubted popularity of the folk semantic account, I regard it as a non-starter. I shall therefore set it aside without considering Stich’s two criticisms of it: that the account makes reference indeterminate; and that it makes reference “idiosyncratic and uninteresting” (47–8). Without more ado, I turn to the proto-science way of responding to Stich’s metaphysical/methodological problem about the theory of reference.
3 The Theory of Reference as Proto-Science Stich describes the proto-science account as follows: “the theory of reference is attempting to characterize a word–world mapping that will be useful in one or another empirical discipline such as linguistics, cognitive psychology, or the history of science” (6). On this account, “there is no saying what reference is until we have made some progress at building a science in which a reference-like word–world mapping plays a role” (46). Stich’s description of the proto-science account blurs a distinction that is, I think, important in thinking about the theory of reference. According to his description, the task of a theory of reference is to characterize some word–world mapping that is scientifically useful. But if we go with my earlier obvious answer, the task is to characterize reference in particular, not just some word–world relation. That task leaves, of course, the task of showing that the word–world relation that is reference is scientifically useful (and, perhaps, showing that no other word–world relation is as scientifically useful). But that is another task. We need to distinguish the task of characterizing reference from the task of showing its scientific utility. And although a lack of progress on the latter task might well make us lose interest in the former task it would not prevent progress on it; it would not prevent us “saying what reference is.” Even scientifically uninteresting properties like being a restaurant and relations like being to the left of have natures open to explanation. This distinction is commonly blurred. Why? The simple and obvious claim that the task of the theory of reference is to characterize reference strikes people as naive because there is thought to be a special problem about identifying reference. Which relation is it the task to characterize? To answer that question we must discover which word–world relations are scientifically interesting. So discovering this becomes part of the task of characterizing reference. I think that this line of thought is misguided because there is no special problem about identifying reference. The alleged problem was made vivid by Hilary Putnam’s famous “model-theoretic argument” (1978: 123–7; 1981: 29–48).4 We can pose it as follows: “Why identify reference with one word–world relation rather than with any of the others?” This asks why the relation between ‘Jemima’ and Jemima, ‘cat’ and cats, and . . . [continue on through the paradigms of reference] rather than that between, say, ‘Jemima’ and Fido, ‘cat’ and dogs, and . . . [continue on in any way that appeals] is to be identified as reference. But
on determining what there isn ’ t
51
there is no special problem about reference here. Consider an analogous question about the relation being the father of: Why is the relation between George H. Bush and George W. Bush, Prince Philip and Prince Charles, and . . . [continue on through the paradigms of fathering] rather than the relation between, say, George H. Bush and Bill Clinton, Prince Philip and Baroness Thatcher, and . . . [continue on in any way that appeals] to be identified as being the father of ? Or the analogous question about the property cathood: Why is the property of Jemima, Nana, and so on [continue on through the paradigm cats] rather than the property of, say, Fido, George W. Bush, and . . . [continue on in any way that appeals] to be identified as cathood? Insofar as we have any problem here it could be solved by the above-mentioned first stage in theorizing about any property F or relation R: we go back to those most expert at identifying instances of being a father of and cathood. These experts would, of course, confirm what we surely already know. We need say no more than that the specified relation just is being the father of and the specified property just is cathood. Similarly, if there really were any doubt about which word–world relation was reference we could go back to the experts. They would confirm our view that the specified relation just is reference and we need say no more. At the beginning of theorizing about any F or R, we may indeed have an identification problem but, as a matter of fact, we do not now have one with being a father of and cathood. No more do we now have one with reference. And if we did, we could solve it in the same way we solve it for any F or R. There is no problem identifying reference and certainly no special problem. If this is right, we can stand by our obvious answer: the task of the theory of reference is to characterize reference. No more need be said in describing that task. But it would indeed be naive to think that this should remove all metaphysical/methodological worries about reference. We need, at least, to accomplish this task: we need to discover what is common and peculiar to the reference relation. This is the above-mentioned second stage in theorizing about reference. Accomplishing this is not enough, however. We need to say why reference is theoretically interesting. Not everything that we could characterize is interesting enough to be worth characterizing; for example, being a Virgo, being a witch, and being a restaurant may not be. If reference is to be worth characterizing there has to be something scientifically useful about this particular word–world relation, perhaps even something that makes it more useful than any other word–world relation. The point of my distinction is that showing that reference is scientifically useful is a different task from characterizing reference. Having distinguished the two tasks, we can distinguish two ways to get gloomy about the theory of reference. We could get gloomy because science is not providing a characterization of reference. And we could get gloomy because science does not give reference a significant role. These are clearly very different matters as we can see by considering genes. The success of Mendelian genetics left no basis for gloom about the role of genes in science but in the decades before the rise of molecular genetics there was certainly a basis for concern, even if not gloom, about the characterization of genes. Stich seems to be gloomy about the theory of reference in both ways. However, he does not sharply distinguish the two ways and has very little to say about characterizing reference (43, 46, 54). Almost all his discussion is about the problems of finding a scientific role for reference.
52
michael devitt
Should we be gloomy about the characterization of reference? Certainly there is no established science that is casting light on this. Almost all the significant work on reference is being done by philosophers. From my naturalistic perspective, that alone is not sufficient reason for gloom. Philosophers have come up with a range of promising ideas to explain reference. Description theories seem plausible for some words; for example, ‘bachelor’ and ‘vixen’. Still, as we noted, description theories pass the referential buck and so in the end we will need other theories that explain the ultimate connections between words and the world. Attempted explanations have appealed to one or more of three causal relations between representations and reality. First, already alluded to in our discussion of Lycan, there is the historical cause of a particular token, a causal chain going back to the dubbing of the token’s referent.5 Theorists interested in this have emphasized the “reference borrowing” links in the chain: in acquiring a word or concept from others we borrow their capacity to refer, even if we are ignorant of the referent (Kripke 1980; Donnellan 1972; Putnam 1975; Burge 1979). Second, there is the reliable cause of tokens of that type: a token refers to objects of a certain sort because tokens of that type are reliably correlated with the presence of those objects. The token “carries the information” that a certain situation obtains in much the same way that tree rings carry information about the age of a tree (Dretske 1981; Fodor 1990). Third, there is the teleological cause or function of tokens of that type, where the function is explained along Darwinian lines: the function is what tokens of that type do that explains why they exist, what the type has been “selected for” (Millikan 1984; Papineau 1987; Neander 1995). I would be the last to claim that any of these developments have yielded a thoroughly persuasive characterization of reference.6 Still, much progress has been made. We have reason to hope that the reference of any word will be explained by some such “ultimate” theory, or by a description theory, or by a theory that combines elements of both. Much work remains to be done but there is no cause for gloom. Whether or not Stich is gloomy about characterizing reference, he is certainly gloomy about finding a role for reference in science. In his initial description of the proto-science account, he mentions the following sciences as possibly giving reference a role: linguistics, cognitive psychology, and the history of science (6). Later he mentions anthropology, history, and sociology (43). His gloom has two bases. First, he is “inclined to be more than a bit skeptical about the claim that any of these areas of inquiry make genuinely explanatory use of a reference-like word–world relation” (44); “the relevant sciences have not yet determined which word–world relation will be of use to them” (7). So, there is no sign that reference is scientifically useful. Second, “there is no a priori reason to suppose that the proto-scientific project . . . will yield a unique result” (45). So, even if reference were useful in some science, other word–world relations might be useful in other sciences. Is Stich right to be gloomy about finding a role for reference? If we were to set aside linguistics, I would be inclined to think that he was. All these other social sciences rather clearly have an explanatory role for the meaning/content (henceforth, simply “meaning”) of utterances and thoughts. This role is to be found in a widespread practice taken over by these social sciences from the folk: the sciences make ascriptions of the form, ‘X said that’, ‘X believes that p’, ‘X hopes that p’, and so on, to explain intentional behavior. In
on determining what there isn ’ t
53
these ascriptions, ‘that p’ ascribes a meaning to an utterance or thought.7 Consider a little bit of recent history as an example. Why did most Americans applaud the invasion of Iraq? Part of the explanation is that Bush had led them to believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was involved in 9/11, and so on. So part of the explanation is that Americans had certain mental states with certain meanings. Since these sorts of explanations are so common in the social sciences, meanings clearly have a big role in science.8 But, of course, meaning is one thing, reference another. And it does not look as if these social sciences have a direct role for reference. Nor does it look as if they have a direct role for other word–world relations. These relations just do not seem to be the concern of these sciences. But what about linguistics? Broadly construed, linguistics is the science of language. This includes semantics – the theory of meaning – studied in philosophy departments as well as linguistics departments. And we should take semantics to be concerned not only with the meanings of utterances but also with the meanings of thoughts; semantics includes psychosemantics. Now, prima facie, semantics does have a role for reference because the most popular theories of meaning are truth-referential. Thus, such a theory might claim that the meaning of the sentence ‘Bush is deceitful’ is largely explained by the sentence’s being true iff there is something that ‘Bush’ designates and ‘deceitful’ applies to. So, the meaning of the sentence is partly explained in terms of two referential relations, designation and application. If such truth-referential theories are along the right lines, then we have found a clear place for reference in science: reference is part of the scientific explanation of meaning and meaning has a place throughout the social sciences.9 In light of this, we might say that reference has an indirect role throughout those sciences. There is, of course, a range of ways to resist this conclusion. Eliminativists argue that meanings don’t really play an explanatory role. Friends of narrow meaning argue that the meanings that play an explanatory role are all narrow and so are to be explained without any mention of reference, perhaps in terms of conceptual role. I have argued elsewhere (1996) that the case for truth-referentialism is in fact strong and that these ways of resisting it fail. But there remains a final and, in my view, more serious threat to truthreferentialism: deflationism. In giving reference a key role in the explanation of meaning, truth-referentialists suppose that it is a substantial and explanatorily significant relation. Deflationists like Robert Brandom (1984) and Paul Horwich (1998a) reject this supposition. They think, roughly, that reference isn’t anything; in particular, it isn’t anything that could play the explanatory role required of it in a truth-referential semantics. If they are right, then we need some other account of meaning (unless we abandon meaning altogether). That is a serious problem that deflationists had not tackled until recent works by Brandom (1994) and Horwich (1998b). Brandom’s account of meaning rests on unexplained normativity, as he frankly acknowledges. This feature of his account is, of course, very troubling to the naturalistically inclined. Horwich’s account is a “use theory” inspired by Wittgenstein and does not have this feature. Indeed, he thinks that normativity is not intrinsic to meaning. However, in my view (2002), Horwich’s theory is open to strong criticism. The arguments from ignorance and error that were devastating for description theories of
54
michael devitt
reference for proper names and natural kind terms can be adapted to provide a strong case against Horwich’s use theory. More generally, we need a lot more details of this theory before it can be taken as a serious rival to truth referentialism. If all this is so, why is deflationism such a threat to truth-referentialism? First, deflationists argue very plausibly that the role of the reference term can be accounted for without taking it to stand for a substantial explanatory relation. Similarly, the truth term need not stand for a substantial explanatory property. Second, although I think we should be hopeful about the theory of reference, it is proving hard to come up with a convincing theory of the ultimate referential links between language and the world. This could be a sign that the deflationists are right and there is no substantial reference relation in need of a theory. It is time to take up Stich’s reasons for gloom about the theory of reference. First, he claims that there is no clear sign that reference has a role in science. Well, if I am right, there is a very clear sign that it has a role in semantics, which is part of the science of linguistics widely construed. Of course, the sign might be misleading. I do think that deflationism should make the truth-referentialist pause. But Stich does not cite deflationism as a reason for his gloom. Second, Stich wonders whether science will favor reference over other word–world relations. There are two issues to consider here. (1) Does science favor reference over other word–world relations in the explanation of meaning? (2) Whether or not science does, do other word–world relations have roles elsewhere in science? The short answer to (1) is that truth-referentialist explanations of meaning involve reference not any other relation. Any property of a word that was explained in terms of some other word–world relation would not be a meaning, would not play the explanatory role that is definitive of being a meaning. Any explanation of a property of ‘Bush is deceitful’ in terms of a relation that ‘Bush’ has to, say, Fido or to Clinton, and a relation that ‘deceitful’ has to, say, being hungry or being bald would not be an explanation of that sentence’s meaning (Devitt 1997b: 116–18). And the friends of reference can be very relaxed about (2). It might be the case that word–world relations other than reference have roles elsewhere in science. I doubt that it is the case but it remains to be seen. But, even if it is the case, that does not reflect on the role that reference has in explaining meaning. It is time to sum up this discussion of the theory of reference. The view that this theory is a study of folk semantics is a non-starter because we have no good reason to suppose that the folk are experts on reference. The proto-scientific view is much more promising. This view, properly conceived, yields two tasks: first, characterizing reference; second, showing that reference has a scientific role. I have argued that Stich is wrong to be gloomy about the prospects of accomplishing these tasks. The first is certainly proving difficult but there are various ideas on the table that have led to progress and give us hope of more. Accomplishing the second task starts with the ubiquitous role of meanings in the social sciences. Those meanings then have to be explained. The most promising explanations are truth-referential ones. Those explanations give reference a central role in explaining meanings. But there is a dark cloud in the sky: deflationism.
on determining what there isn ’ t
55
4 Metaphysics Before Semantics Stich’s gloom about the theory of reference leads him to the conclusion that it is a mistake to start an ontological investigation with “semantic ascent”: we should abandon the idea of using the theory of reference to address questions about the existence of entities posited by false theories (55). I think that this conclusion is absolutely right, as I have already noted. But we don’t need to share his gloom to see this. We simply have to be appropriately modest about the present accomplishments of the theory of reference. Consider how the argument from semantic ascent goes. It rests on connections of the following sort: (x) (Fx iff ‘F’ applies to x) (x) (a = x iff ‘a’ designates x)] The argument from semantic ascent then attempts to show, for example, either that there is nothing that ‘F ’ applies to and so there are no F ’s; or, that there is something that ‘F ’ applies to and so there are F’s. But it is important to notice that the argument could just as well go in the other direction. We could attempt to show either that there are no F’s and so ‘F ’ does not apply to anything; or, that there are F ’s and so ‘F ’ does apply to something. This raises the crucial question: Which direction is better? Should we argue from semantics to ontology or vice versa? “The linguistic turn” in philosophy has always favored the direction from semantics to ontology. In my view, appropriate modesty about semantics should lead us in the other direction: we know much more about ontology than about semantics. Consider two arguments from semantic ascent. (1) It is natural to think that the ancients lived on and had beliefs about the Earth, the very same planet that we live on and have beliefs about. Yet, some philosophers influenced by Thomas Kuhn claim that this is not really so. For, the descriptions that the ancients associated with their names for the heavenly body on which they lived, descriptions like ‘flat’, ‘the center of the universe’, etc., do not, from our theoretical perspective, pick out anything. Applying a description theory of reference, the philosophers may then say one of two things. (i) They may say that the purported referent of those ancient names does not exist and that all the beliefs that the ancients would express using those names were about nothing (and hence not about the Earth). (ii) Or they may say that those descriptions do pick out a planet and the ancient names referred to it; so, the ancients lived on that planet and had beliefs about it. But – this is where the story gets really nasty – that planet existed only relative to the ancient theories not absolutely; the ancients did not live on the same planet as we do. (2) Science tells us that phlogiston does not exist. Yet a philosopher enamored of a causal theory of reference might claim that phlogiston does exist because it is, say, oxygen. For, according to that causal theory, the term ‘phlogiston’ is causally related to the world in such a way that it refers to oxygen.10 Such arguments should give us pause. Theories of reference are being used to undermine widely held ontological views and, in the case of (1)(ii), to promote a bizarre metaphysics. Why should we have such confidence in these theories? How can we be
56
michael devitt
confident that that particular description theory is appropriate for the names that the ancients had for the heavenly body on which they took themselves to live and that that particular causal theory is appropriate for ‘phlogiston’. A Moorean response seems in order: the ontological views are much more firmly based than the theories of reference that are thought to undermine them. We have started the argument in the wrong place: rather than using theories of reference against the ontological views, we should use the ontological views against the theories of reference. Indeed, what support are these theories of reference supposed to have? Not usually the empirical support of the claims of science. Rather, the theories are supposed to be known a priori. Reflecting from the comfort of armchairs, philosophers decide what reference is and from this infer what the world must be like: A priori semantics → a priori metaphysics.11 The Moorean response alone casts doubt on this procedure and the philosophical method it exemplifies, the a priori method of “First Philosophy.” But we can do better: the doubt is confirmed by the sorts of considerations adduced by Quine (1952: xi–xvii; 1961: 42–6). These considerations should lead us to reject a priori knowledge and embrace “naturalism,” the view that there is only one way of knowing, the empirical way that is the basis of science (whatever that may be); in Quine’s vivid metaphor, the web of belief is seamless.12 From the naturalistic perspective, philosophy becomes continuous with science. And theories of reference have no special status: they are simply some among many empirical hypotheses about the world we live in. As such, they do not compare in evidential support with the posits of successful sciences. Experience has taught us a great deal about the world of trees, cats, atoms, and muons but rather little about how we refer to this world. So semantics is just the wrong place to start the argument.13 Instead, we should start with an empirically based metaphysics and use that as evidence in an empirical study of reference: semantics itself becomes part of science, it becomes “naturalized”: Empirical metaphysics → empirical semantics.14 The semantic ascent arguments not only proceed in the wrong direction, they typically use the wrong methodology.15 When we proceed empirically in the right direction, we should reject any theory of reference that is at odds with scientifically well-established metaphysical/ontological views. So the right response to the semantic ascent argument (1) about the Earth is: “So much the worse for that description theory of reference.” It is, of course, possible that we should have sufficient confidence in some theory of reference for a term to allow it to settle a metaphysical issue. However, appropriate modesty about the present achievements of the theory of reference should make this seem a very remote possibility. Quine is fond of a vivid image taken from Otto Neurath. He likens our knowledge – our “web of belief” – to a boat that we continually rebuild whilst staying afloat on it. We can rebuild any part of the boat but in so doing we must take a stand on the rest of the boat
on determining what there isn ’ t
57
for the time being. So we cannot rebuild it all at once. Similarly, we can revise any part of our knowledge but in so doing we must accept the rest for the time being. So we cannot revise it all at once. And just as we should start rebuilding the boat by standing on the firmest parts, so also should we start rebuilding our web. Semantics is among the weakest places to stand.
5 How Then Do We Do the Metaphysics? If we are not to appeal to theories of reference to settle ontological issues, how are we to settle them? As Stich says: “How are we to go about deciding whether or not the entities posited by any false theory exist?” He wonders whether we can find “principles of rational ontological inference” and describes one strategy for finding them (63). This is the “normative-naturalist” strategy which considers actual cases in the history of science and attempts to abstract the principles (63–5). Stich is skeptical that this strategy “will uncover principles of rational ontological inference that are rich enough to tell us, in lots of the most interesting cases, what ontological conclusions we ought to draw when we come to believe that some previously accepted theory is seriously mistaken.” He suggests that “in many historical cases the resolution of ontological questions can be explained in part by the personalities of those involved or by social and political factors in the relevant scientific community or in the surrounding society (70).” This leads him, enfant terrible that he likes to be, to wonder whether he is embracing social constructivism. I don’t think that he is embracing it and he certainly shouldn’t (Devitt 1997a). Still, I think that his skepticism about finding principles that will settle these tricky ontological questions is fairly well-based. Here, briefly, is my view on these questions, a view very much along the same lines as Stich’s. Consider how, in general, we argue directly for the nonexistence of Fs. On the basis of the established view of Fs, we start, implicitly if not explicitly, with an assumption about the nature of being F: something would not be an F unless it were G; being G is part of the very essence of being F. Then we argue that nothing is G. So, there are no Fs. But suppose that someone responds by denying the essentialist assumption upon which the argument rests. “Fs do not have to be G, they are just mistakenly thought to be G. So the argument proves nothing.” Stich has a very nice discussion of witches that illustrates this response: he describes people who believe in witches but claim that “witches make no pact with the devil, cast no evil spells, and do not practice black magic (or ride on broomsticks!)” (68–9). How do we settle disagreements over an essentialist assumption? The difficulty of doing so is apparent when we consider how we determine the nature of being F where Fs clearly do exist. As I pointed out (sec. 2), we identify some uncontroversial examples of Fs and non-Fs and examine them to see what is common and peculiar to the Fs. Our present difficulty is that we obviously can’t examine any Fs if there aren’t any to examine! There were, and are, plenty of people around who some people call “witches” but we witch-deniers obviously cannot discover the nature of witches by examining these people. For us, there are no uncontroversial examples of witches. So how do we discover what it is to be a witch?
58
michael devitt
We clearly do not have principles that are adequate to settle such issues and I think that Stich is right to be a bit dubious about our finding them. How worried should we be about this? I think we should be a little worried, but not very. And we certainly should not conclude that there is no fact of the matter about ontological issues (let alone sink into constructivism). There are, after all, many generally agreed claims about what exists and what does not. The fact that we do not have epistemological principles adequate to support these claims should not persuade us that they are ill-based. For, we do not have epistemological principles adequate to support most of what we agree on about the world. This having been said, there are many ontological claims that we do not agree on and I think we may have to accept that some of these disagreements do not concern matters of fact. Furthermore, the intentional realism issue seems particularly troublesome because it involves semantics, a notoriously vague area. It is usual to think that beliefs are essentially things with meanings (or contents). But then, meanings in what sense? Must they be truth-conditional, for example? These are tricky issues (Devitt 1996: 5.1). If folk psychology is really so wrong (which I doubt that it is) then I think that it will be very difficult to settle the intentional realism issue.
6 Conclusion Stich is absolutely right that it was a mistake to tackle ontological issues, including that of intentional realism, by appeal to the theory of reference. However, he is wrong about why it was a mistake. He thinks it was wrong because, whether we adopt the folk semantic or the proto-science account of the theory of reference, all we can see is the dark at the end of the tunnel. I have not challenged this gloom over the folk semantic account because, I argue, the account is a non-starter: we have no good reason to suppose that the folk are so expert about reference. I have challenged the gloom over the much more promising proto-scientific account. This account, properly conceived, yields two tasks: first, characterizing reference; second, showing that reference has a scientific role. The first is certainly proving difficult but there are various ideas on the table that should give us hope. Accomplishing the second task starts with the ubiquitous role of meanings in the social sciences. Those meanings then have to be explained. Despite the threat of deflationism, the most promising explanations are truth-referential ones. Those explanations give reference a central role in explaining meanings and hence in science. So I have argued that gloom about the theory of reference is not a good reason for resisting semantic ascent. Still, there is a good reason. It arises from being modest about the accomplishments of the theory of reference. Given how little we know about reference, a Moorean response is appropriate to semantic ascent arguments: rather than drawing ontological conclusions from claims about reference, we should be drawing conclusions about reference from claims about ontology. We should “put metaphysics first.” This Moorean response is good on its own but when supported by naturalism it is formidable. From the naturalistic perspective these claims about reference cannot be supported a priori and they do not come close to having the empirical support enjoyed
on determining what there isn ’ t
59
by the ontological claims that they seek to undermine. The semantic ascent arguments use the wrong methodology and proceed in the wrong direction. How then are we to settle ontological issues? I think that Stich’s answer is very much along the right lines. We do not have any principles adequate to help us with the difficult cases and it may be that some of these are indeterminate. And intentional realism may be a particularly difficult issue if folk psychology is very wrong. However, we should not lose track of the fact that many ontological issues are not difficult. And, most important of all, we should not lapse into the despair of constructivism, thinking that these issues are really nothing but matters of politics and personalities.
Notes 1 All such parenthetical numerals are references to pages in Stich 1996. 2 “Maxim 3 Settle the realism issue before any epistemic or semantic issue” (1997a: 4). Semantic ascent is one feature of “the linguistic turn” in philosophy. Another is the conflation of metaphysical and semantic issues. Realism and Truth argues against that too: “Maxim 2 Distinguish the metaphysical (ontological) issue of realism from any semantic issue” (1997a: 3). 3 I argue against the standard linguistic view in Devitt and Sterelny 1989 and in much more detail in my 2004b and 2005. I argue against the view that a person competent in a language must have propositional knowledge about the meaning and reference of its expressions in my 1981 (pp. 95–110), 1996 (pp. 48–86), and 1997a (pp. 270–5). 4 My discussion here draws on my 1997b. The alleged problem is prominent in the debate about Putnam’s argument; see, e.g., LePore and Loewer 1988. 5 I have argued that a term is usually grounded in its referent not only at a dubbing: it is multiply grounded in the referent (1981). This is important if the causal-historical theory is to handle reference change and many cases of reference confusion. 6 Devitt and Sterelny 1999 have a detailed discussion of the state of play with the theory of reference. 7 These ascriptions of meaning have another very important role (although not obviously a scientific role): they enable us to use the thoughts and utterances of others as guides to reality (1996: 53–62). 8 The idea here is that a thought has a certain effect in virtue of its meaning. It is worth noting that a thought also has a certain cause in virtue of its meaning. Thus, I might acquire a belief that Bush is deceitful as a result of perceiving Bush’s behavior. Part of the explanation of the formation of that particular belief is that it has the meaning it has; a belief that, say, Clinton is chaste would not have been caused by that perceptual experience. Meanings have a role in the social sciences both as causes and effects (1997b: 117). 9 Stich cites a passage in the first edition of Devitt and Sterelny 1999 as the “most explicit endorsement” of the view that reference has a role in linguistics (86 n). That endorsement seems rather inadequate to me now (1996). 10 Enc mentions, although he does not endorse, such a line of argument (1976: 267). 11 This procedure is, of course, analogous to that of traditional epistemology: inferring what the world must be like from a conclusion about the nature of knowledge. 12 A particularly important consideration against the a priori, in my view (1998, 2004a), is the lack of anything close to a satisfactory explanation of a nonempirical way of knowing. We are
60
13
14 15
michael devitt told what this way of knowing is not – it is not the empirical way of deriving knowledge from experience – but we are not told what it is. “Linguistics . . . is a tiny twig on the tree of science. Yet if [scientists cannot draw ontological conclusions until linguists tell them what reference is], then this twig on the tree of science . . . gets to play a fundamental role in determining” what exists. Stich is surely dead right to find this a “hopelessly implausible scenario” (54). Of course, one might wonder how an empirical semantics should proceed. I think that it is very difficult to say. My attempt is 1996, ch. 2. There is, of course, a truth underlying semantic ascent: to determine whether the posits of a theory exist we have to know what those posits are and for that we have to understand the language of the theory (1997a: 50–3). But understanding a language is a practical skill that does not require theoretical knowledge about the language, else we would understand very little; see note 3.
References Brandom, Robert (1984) “Reference Explained Away.” Journal of Philosophy 81: 469–82. Brandom, Robert (1994) Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Burge, Tyler (1979) “Individualism and the Mental.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. IV: Studies in Metaphysics, Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein (eds.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 73–121. Devitt, Michael (1981) Designation. New York: Columbia University Press. Devitt, Michael (1994) “The Methodology of Naturalistic Semantics.” Journal of Philosophy 91: 545–72. Devitt, Michael (1996) Coming to Our Senses: A Naturalistic Program for Semantic Localism. New York: Cambridge University Press. Devitt, Michael (1997a) Realism and Truth. 2nd edn with new afterword (1st edn 1984). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Devitt, Michael (1997b) “On Determining Reference,” in Sprache und Denk /Language and Thought, Alex Burri (ed.), New York: Walter de Gruyter: 112–21. Devitt, Michael (1998) “Naturalism and the A Priori.” Philosophical Studies 92: 45–65. Devitt, Michael (2002) “Meaning and Use.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65: 106–21. Devitt, Michael (2005) “There is No A Priori,” and “Reply to BonJour,” in Ernest Sosa and Matthias Steup (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 105–15, 118–20. Devitt, Michael (2006a) “Intuitions in Linguistics.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57: 481–513. Devitt, Michael (2006b) Ignorance of Language. New York: Oxford University Press. Devitt, Michael and Sterelny, Kim (1989) “Linguistics: What’s Wrong with ‘the Right View,’ ” in James E. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 3: Philosophy of Mind and Action Theory, Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company: 497–531. Devitt, Michael and Sterelny, Kim (1999) Language and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language, 2nd edn. (1st edn. 1987). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Donnellan, Keith S. (1972) “Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions,” in Semantics of Natural Language, Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman (eds.), Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 356–79.
on determining what there isn ’ t
61
Dretske, Fred (1981) Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Enc, B. (1976) “Reference of Theoretical Terms.” Nous 10: 261–82. Fodor, Jerry (1990) A Theory of Content and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Horwich, Paul (1998a) Truth, 2nd edn. (1st edn. 1990). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Horwich, Paul (1998b) Meaning. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kripke, Saul A. (1980) Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Lepore, Ernest and Loewer, Barry (1988) “A Putnam’s Progress,” in Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr. and Howard K. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy Vol. XII: Realism and Antirealism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 459–73. Lycan, William G. (1988) Judgement and Justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Millikan, Ruth. G. (1984) Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Neander, Karen (1995) “Misrepresenting and Malfunctioning.” Philosophical Studies 79: 109–41. Papineau, David (1987) Reality and Representation. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Putnam, Hilary (1975) Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Putnam, Hilary (1978) Meaning and the Moral Sciences. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Putnam, Hilary (1981) Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quine, W. V. (1952) Methods of Logic. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Quine, W. V. (1961) From a Logical Point of View. 2nd edn. (1st edn. 1953). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Stich, Stephen P. (1996) Deconstructing the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
62
frank jackson
4 Eliminativism and the Theory of Reference FRANK JACKSON
Discussions of eliminativism about the propositional attitudes have become embroiled in the theory of reference. Stephen Stich has argued that when we bear in mind the nature of the debate over reference, this appears to have a radical consequence for the significance of eliminativism.1 At its starkest, it seems that eliminativism becomes a trivial issue in the sense that it is impossible to see why we should care one way or the other about it. At one time Stich was prepared to accept this consequence, at least to the extent of defending it in the spirit of a challenge to fellow philosophers to show where the argument to triviality went wrong. However, he became convinced (with some encouragement from colleagues and friends) that if his argument works for the propositional attitudes, it works for the big bang, cures for AIDS, Venus, and so on. And he was, rightly, not prepared to embrace the view that the existence of such as these is a trivial issue. In consequence, he became very interested in where his original argument goes wrong.2 This chapter is concerned with the same question. In section 1, I briefly rehearse the way in which the discussion of eliminativism became embroiled in the theory of reference. In section 2, I describe Stich’s original argument to triviality. I will do this in my own words but in a way which, I hope, highlights what an interesting, “demanding of a good reply” argument it is. In section 3, I give his reason for rejecting the argument and why I am unconvinced by it. In section 4, I give a “cheap” way out of his argument. In section 5, I give the way out I favor. This involves a way of thinking about the theory of reference which is a venerable one – though not perhaps in quite the terms I will use to describe it – but which has, it seems to me, become somewhat submerged in recent debates over reference.
1 How Eliminativism Became Embroiled in the Theory of Reference Why don’t we believe in phlogiston? The obvious answer is that phlogiston is given a certain role in the theory of combustion – roughly, it is the stuff such that, first, its
eliminativism and the theory of reference
63
presence explains a material’s being combustible, and, second, it is given off during combustion – and it turns out that nothing occupies this role. Many note that this account could have been taken from the manual for the description theory of reference and have argued that if we look at the issue through the eyes of a causal theory of reference, it becomes much less clear that we should say that phlogiston does not exist. For, on the causal theory of reference, it is allowed that we can successfully refer to something O despite being wrong about many of O’s key properties. There is controversy among causal theorists about how badly wrong we can be, but it is agreed that we can get a lot wrong, or simply be ignorant about a lot, and still refer to O provided that the term in question has the right kind of causal link to O. Indeed, causal theorists see this as a principal point in favor of theory.3 The same question arises for eliminativism about the propositional attitudes. The best known argument for eliminativism, or, more precisely, for taking eliminativism as a serious possibility, is due to Paul Churchland and runs as follows.4 The propositional attitudes are the posits of a theory held by the folk which we call folk psychology. This theory encapsulates the way we use hypotheses about what subjects believe, desire, hope, fear, etc., to explain and predict their behavior in circumstances. But, as with any folk theory, we should take seriously the possibility that it is a badly false theory. But if folk psychology is a badly false theory, its posits – the propositional attitudes – do not exist and eliminativism is true. Ergo, we should take seriously the possibility that there are no beliefs and desires. To those who respond by pointing to folk psychology’s strong record in predicting behavior, Churchland points out that seriously false theories can be good for prediction, Aristotelian physics being but one example. Most philosophers want to resist eliminativism. For the record, I think the best way to resist is to argue that the propositional attitudes are the posits of a core part of folk psychology – call it, commonplace psychology – which, like any causal-explanatory theory, folk or not, might be false. In fact, it is false for tables and chairs. However, we have overwhelming evidence that it is true for creatures like us much as we have overwhelming evidence in favor of the theory of imprinting in young birds.5 Many, however, turn to the causal theory of reference for immunity. The clearest statement I know of this kind of response is a passage from Bill Lycan that Stich and I have had occasion to quote a number of times. Here it is: I am at pains to advocate a very liberal view. Unlike David Lewis, and unlike Dennett . . . I am entirely willing to give up fairly large chunks of our commonsensical or platitudinous theory of belief or of desire . . . and decide we were just plain wrong about a lot of things, without drawing the inference that we are no longer talking about belief or desire. To put the matter crudely, I incline away from Lewis’s Carnapian and/or Rylean cluster theory of the reference of theoretical terms, and towards Putnam’s causal-historical theory. As in Putnam’s examples of ‘water’, ‘tiger’, and so on, I think the ordinary word ‘belief ’ (qua theoretical term of folk psychology) points dimly towards a natural kind that we have not fully grasped and that only mature psychology will reveal. I expect that ‘belief ’ will turn out to refer to some kind of information-bearing inner state of a sentient being . . . but the kind of state it refers to may have only a few of the properties usually attributed to beliefs by commonsense.6
64
frank jackson
The key issue for us here is not whether we should follow Lycan in drawing on a causal theory of reference to buy protection from eliminativism. It is the implications of making the connection between eliminativism and the theory of reference for the debate over eliminativism. One implication is that, because the theory of reference is so controversial, it gives us yet one more hard issue to address.7 But Stich’s challenge potentially cuts more deeply and, if successful, has the implication that eliminativism is a trivial, “who cares”-type issue. His challenge rests on a point about the nature of the debate over reference.
2 Stich on the Meta-theory of Reference, and Eliminativism The theory of reference is concerned with the relation between words and the world – what words are about. Stich’s meta-theoretical point about the theory of reference is that there are many relations between words and the world, and that when we look at how the debate over the theory of reference is conducted, it is difficult to see how to justify privileging one relation out of the many as “true” reference or what reference really is. Instead we should acknowledge many word–world relations as deserving the name of reference. These relations will serve different theoretical purposes and correspond to different intuitive conceptions but be bona fide reference relations all the same. But, as we saw when discussing Lycan, it matters for the truth of eliminativism which theory of reference is correct. Ergo, if that question has no one “correct” answer, there is no one “correct” answer to whether or not eliminativism is true or false. That, in a nutshell, is Stich’s argument to triviality. Let me expand a little on some of the steps.8 How does the nature of the debate over reference lead to the position that there is no justified basis for privileging exactly one word–world relation? Stich points out, correctly it seems to me, that when you examine the literature on the theory of reference, you find two, sometimes intertwined, lines of argument. One, the dominant one, is full of appeals to intuitions, though they are not necessarily described, or acknowledged, as such. The most famous illustration is the role of Twin Earth intuitions in driving the case against the description theory of reference.9 We are invited to say what counts as water on Twin Earth going by intuition, and the description theory loses if we agree that water on Twin Earth is not XYZ despite XYZ being the potable, clear liquid that falls from the sky etc. – that is, despite being the stuff satisfying the descriptions associated with water – on Twin Earth.10 But appeal to intuition is ubiquitous in discussions of reference. Much of the debate consists of teasing out consequences of one or another theory of reference and inviting assent or dissent to the consequences – and the force of the consideration rests on the strength of the intuitive assent or dissent to the noted consequences. The second line of argument is, as Stich puts it, the theory of reference as protoscience. The focus is on identifying one or another account of the relation between words and the world as being best for the purposes of one or another science – biology,
eliminativism and the theory of reference
65
cognitive science, behavioral psychology, information theory, neuroscience or whatever. Sometimes the aim explicitly is to move right away from appeals to intuition – which are seen as a hangover of the misguided program of seeking a conceptual analysis of reference11 – and sometimes the aim is to find an account of reference that suitably blends the intuitively plausible with the scientifically respectable and important. Teleological theories of reference are a good example. Some advocates of teleonomy concentrate almost exclusively on finding the relevant, biologically important relation between words and the world, typically via the biologically important, selectional relation between brain states and the world. Words enter the picture through their connections with these brain states. Teleonomists of this stamp care little about the result that swampman has not a thought in his (or its) head. They see it as a discovery of a properly biological approach to reference. Other teleonomists take the counterintuitive nature of the swampman result very seriously and seek to explain it away or to devise a version of teleonomy that somehow avoids it.12 If the theory of reference is proto-science, there is no reason to think that there is one favored reference relation. Physicists once sought the important mass–velocity property in kinematics. This was a mistake. There are two equally important mass-velocity properties – momentum and kinetic energy. In the same way, it makes sense that there will be a number of important word–world relations. Examples of devices that represent would seem to confirm the thought. One and the same device may be equally an indicator of the level of petrol remaining in the tank or an indicator of how far the car can go at a given speed before refueling. Under one guise, the reading refers to a level of a liquid; under the other, it refers to a period of time. There is no single answer to the question of what it really indicates. And in saying this I am not going against those who insist that representation necessarily involves design (not that I accept the view that representation and design necessarily go together). The device may well have been designed to do both jobs at once. A similar point applies to the reading on a barometer: it represents both the current air pressure and future weather. I would say the same about the much-discussed case of frogs that snap at flies and lead shot equally.13 There is no answer to whether their head state represents a fly, or a lead shot, or any small moving dark object. Of course, in saying this, I am taking a controversial position. Many want to argue that even when we have a range of prima facie plausible candidates to be what a symbol – on paper, on a dial, or in the head – represents, there is, all the same, one strictly correct answer. Many insist that there is a single answer as to what the head state of the frog represents. But I think that the best policy is to be easy-going about what counts as representation and to distinguish varieties of a generic notion. There are representation relations of special interest to evolutionary biologists, of special interest to weather forecasters, those that hold by design, those that hold by cosmic accident, and so on. In any case, Stich is right that the proto-science approach can give no comfort to those who seek to identify one reference relation as the real McCoy. The same applies to the approach to the theory of reference via intuition. The fact is that people’s intuitions about what to say about the frog example have not converged and show no sign of being about to do so. And, of course, there are a whole range of accounts
66
frank jackson
of reference on the market, and there is no obvious sign of convergence through intuition-swapping being on the near horizon. We might try saying that one set of intuitions have got it right and that all the others are wrong, but this would appear to be more a dogma than a reasoned position. In “Deconstructing the Mind,” Stich describes in some detail a number of cases where people’s intuitions about reference differ. When you read these cases it is very hard to insist that one party is “really” right. And of course there is a general point to be made. It is reasonable to use X’s intuitions when exploring X’s concepts on the ground that it is X’s deployment of the concept that is under investigation, and people are generally reliable, though far from infallible, about their own concepts. But this means that differing intuitions are often to be explained by reference to differing concepts. There is no question of one intuition being really right. In sum, the problem Stich presents to us is as follows. The question of the existence of the propositional attitudes turns in part on the question of the correct theory of reference. But not only is it highly controversial what that theory is, there seems, as a matter of principle, no single answer to it. Be the theory of reference proto-science, or the theory that best captures reflective intuitions, or a bit of both, there is no reason to hold that there is one theory of reference. Ergo, the debate over eliminativism is trivial. We must find a way of avoiding this conclusion. The reason is simple. The line of argument does not depend on its subject’s being the existence of the propositional attitudes. If it works, it works equally for any ontological conclusion whatever, including the existence of a way out of a maze, the big bang, a cure for AIDS, and so on. This, as we noted earlier, is why Stich himself came to seek a way out.
3 Stich’s Way Out Stich’s way out of his own conclusion is to repudiate the step where the debate over eliminativism becomes embroiled in the theory of reference. Here is the key passage from “Deconstructing the Mind.” the crucial mistake . . . was taken very early on. It was the step in which I proposed that questions about the existence of entities posited by false theories could be productively addressed by focussing on what the theory of reference tells us about the terms used in those theories. This strategy of trading substantive scientific or metaphysical questions concerning the nature or existence of entities . . . for apparently equivalent semantic questions concerning the terms we use in talking about those entities . . . is sometimes called the strategy of semantic ascent . . . Resorting to semantic ascent was the crucial error that lead to disaster . . . On my current view, semantic ascent and appeal to the theory of reference can be of no help at all in addressing ontological issues. Since eliminativism is an ontological doctrine, appeal to the theory of reference can play no role in determining whether or not the doctrine is true. (p. 55)14
I think Stich’s way out misses a key point. He is right that the question of the existence of Ks is not the same as the question of the reference of the term ‘K’. The first is a question about, say, the big bang, and the second is a question about the reference of a
eliminativism and the theory of reference
67
noun phrase, say, ‘the big bang’. My agreement with him on this point is indeed why I have not given a longer quote from his presentation of his way out. There is no quarrel with his key contention. However, the fact remains that we use the phrase ‘the big bang’ to introduce the question of the existence of the big bang. It is our contact with certain shapes on paper or sound wave patterns in the air that alerts us to the question that is being addressed. Moreover, the question is not about the existence of those marks on paper or sound waves. If it were, it would be a very easy question to answer. What then is it about? Surely the answer has to be that it is about something that those marks and sound waves putatively point to. But that is the, or a, question of reference. A necessary precondition of having sensible discussions about what exists is having some way of identifying the putative subject of discussion. We can do that without using words – pointing or holding up a map or a picture may do the trick. But when we use words, as we so often do, the presumption must be that we identify the subject of our discussion via the putative references of those words in some good sense that might be given to the relevant notion of reference. Perhaps, as is suggested by the points we retailed from Stich, there are many notions of reference, but there had better be a preferred notion in play for the purpose of raising ontological questions. Or, if it comes to that, there had better be a preferred notion in play if we want to find the nearest coffee shop going by verbal or written directions. The question of where the nearest coffee shop is is not a question about words, but you will not find it going by verbal or written directions if you do not know what various words refer to in some preferred or intended sense of reference. I take it as incontestable that we often use word-phrase tokens to ask existence questions (and very many other questions); that when we do, we are not asking about the existence of the word phrases themselves; and, in consequence, we are often asking about the putative references of those word phrases in some sense of reference. When we address eliminativism about the propositional attitudes, we are not discussing the theory of reference but we have a common subject of discussion via our grasp of what words like ‘belief ’ and ‘desire’ putatively refer to on some intended interpretation of ‘refer’. This why I think Stich’s earlier self was right to ask his challenging questions about the theory of reference.
4 The Easy Way Out When Saul Kripke made his case against the description theory of reference, he agreed that its failings for proper names were an empirical not a necessary feature of our language. Here is the key passage. The picture that leads to the cluster-of-descriptions theory is something like this: . . . one determines the reference for himself by saying – ‘By Gödel I shall mean the man, whoever he is, who proved the incompleteness of arithmetic’. Now you can do this if you want to. There’s nothing really preventing it. You can just stick to that determination. If that’s what you do, then if Schmidt discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic you do refer to him when you say ‘Gödel did such and such’.15
68
frank jackson
Kripke is surely right that the description theory might have been correct for some proper nouns (some would argue that these proper nouns would not in that case be logically speaking proper names, but that is another issue), and the same goes for common nouns like ‘water’. And the same goes for the word ‘belief ’ and the various other terms we use for the propositional attitudes. Some kind of description theory might have been true for them. It is another question altogether of course whether or not a description theory of reference might be true across the board.16 This means that we might introduce the term ‘belief1’ to mean the state that satisfies the relevant part of folk psychology for some interesting account of what folk psychology might be. Indeed, we might introduce a range of terms: ‘belief i’, ‘belief2’, ‘belief3’, . . . ‘belief17’, to refer to that which satisfies folk psychology1, folk psychology2, . . . folk psychology17, respectively, where these various versions of folk psychology cover all the versions of interest. We could then proceed to discuss, for each belief i , whether or not it exists; whether or not, that is, folk psychologyi is true or near enough true for its posits to count as existing. I call this the easy way out not because the issue so reshaped is of no interest. Obviously, the existence or nonexistence of entities satisfying the various descriptions corresponding to the various interesting versions of folk psychology is of interest precisely because the versions of folk psychology are, ex hypothesi, of interest. All the same, we have not actually addressed the issue on the table – the existence of belief without a subscript. We have ducked it. It might be said that we have ducked it by replacing it with issues of more interest – many cognitive scientists might say this and I might find it hard to disagree too vigorously – all the same, we have ducked. And, of course, as we saw above, eliminativism about the propositional attitudes is not special. The same questions arise for the existence of a cure for AIDS and the big bang. Surely we do not want to end up in the position of refusing to discuss whether or not there is a cure for AIDS or was a big bang or, if it comes to that, whether or not there is a window in the room in which I am writing this paper, while being prepared to discuss whether or not there is a cure1 for AIDS1 or was a big bang5 or, if it comes to that, whether or not there is a window3 in the room2 in which I1 am writing this paper4.
5 The Theory of Reference and How Sentences Code for Content As we saw in section 2, Stich’s challenge is to give a principled justification for identifying one notion of reference, for identifying one of the many word–world relations, as the notion of reference through which to address the question of the existence of beliefs – or a cure for AIDS, the big bang, the winner of Super Bowl or whatever. In this section I describe a way of looking at the theory of reference which tells us how to respond to this challenge. I do not offer a theory of reference as such; that is a job for a book, not a section of a chapter. But I say enough, I trust, to allow us to identify what it is we are looking for when we seek the designated word–world relation. I will give a criterion for choosing, from among a range of candidate word–world relations, the one which is of interest when we do ontology.
eliminativism and the theory of reference
69
The way of thinking about reference I have in mind starts with the fundamental point that language is a learnt, convention-based system of representation. It is conventionbased in the same sense as markings on petrol gauges, shapes on maps, proofreading marks, and so on. What they are used to tell us about is a matter of an agreement that serves the information and communication needs of the parties to the agreement. In the case of language, there is the big difference that the agreements that underlie what stands for what are largely implicit. In the physical sciences, explicit agreements are sometimes entered into concerning various units of measurement but nothing like that happened for most of the words we folk use.17 Our possession of language is how we are able to make public and communicate the contents of our mental states. If you and I share a language, we can use it to tell each other about what we believe, hope, fear, wonder, speculate, and so on. How does this system of representation come into being? Very roughly, we start with mental states that represent how things are, most especially beliefs and thoughts that things are thus and so, and somehow hit on an implicit understanding that certain noises and marks are to be given the task of making public these representational contents. On this picture, children who learn to produce one word utterances like ‘water’ or ‘mother’ are saying what we say with ‘There’s water’ or ‘Mother is here’ because what they are conveying is something about how they take things to be. Indeed, there is no such thing as being confronted with water in the absence of being confronted with water’s being some way or other. What children perforce learn to tag is not water per se but water’s being some way or other. Although children master a good number of one-word sentences, there is an upper limit on how many primitives we can tolerate. We need a code with structure to communicate possible contents for the same reason we need a code with structure in order to talk about numbers. In order that the code be learnable, we need structures in the entities that do the coding, the sentences, which determine how a given sentence maps onto the entities, the states of affairs, being coded for. Although a particular sentence S may lack semantic structure, in general we need a coding system made up of a finite number of elements or terms, together with rules of combination, in order to create a learnable, in principle infinite, list of sentences that can serve to express the enormous range of possible states of affairs that can be the contents of these sentences. A term’s reference is a key part of this coding system. Although the sentences ‘Aristotle is famous’ and ‘Aristotle was a great philosopher’ express different contents, they express related contents. And it is a piece of folk knowledge what the connection is – both contents contain the same thing, namely, the thing that the word ‘Aristotle’ refers to, in the sense that neither content can be the actual state of affairs unless the thing ‘Aristotle’ refers to exists.18 On this picture, what it is for ‘Aristotle’ to refer to x is for the states of affairs we use sentences of the form, for example, ‘Aristotle is F’ to express to be such that they cannot be actual unless x exists.19 This is how the two sentences are able to be part of an open-ended system that codes for possible contents. In the same way, although the sentences ‘Hume was a great philosopher’ and ‘Aristotle was a great philosopher’ express different contents, they are related contents. And it is a piece of folk knowledge what the connection is – both contents contain things with the same property,
70
frank jackson
namely, the property that the phrase ‘was a great philosopher’ refers to – in the sense that neither sentence is able to be true unless something has the property of being a great philosopher. On this picture, what it is for ‘was a great philosopher’ to refer to y is for the states of affairs we use sentences of the form, for example, ‘x was a great philosopher’ to express to be such that they cannot be the actual way things are unless something in fact satisfies y. There are many issues here that obviously call for a lot of discussion. What are these states of affairs that are the contents of sentences? What is it for one of these things to contain a particular individual or an individual with a particular property in the sense described above in terms of what it takes for the states of affairs to be actual? What about sentences with more complex sentential structures than ‘a is F ’? What about the role of context, ambiguity, indexicality, and so on? All the same, I think that two things are clear despite the plethora of unanswered questions (which is par for the course in philosophy). First, we are able to use sentences to capture or express a whole range of contents in a way that would be quite inexplicable unless sentences had a structure that played a key role in determining the pairings of sentences with contents or states of affairs. The way structure enters into determining the content expressed by a sentence is such that knowledge of a finite number of correspondences between sentences and contents enables one to project to new cases much as one can with systems of numbering – except that it is much more complicated. Secondly, the way sentential structure does the needed job involves word–world relations, relations from parts of sentences to individuals and properties (including relations). These word–world relations are reference relations. I do not say that they are the only relations one might call reference relations but I do say that they are among the word–world relations that are properly called reference. In saying this, I am taking no stance on whether the word–world relation that holds between a name and its putative bearer is different from that which holds between a predicate and a property, class, or whatever. They are both cases of reference but may be different varieties. The final step is to observe that our thoughts have (reasonably) determinate contents which we can report using sentences. Anyone who denies this cannot allow that they know what this paper, or indeed any paper, or indeed a cookery book, is about, for papers and cookery books are full of sentences expressing contents. We use sentences to pass on what we think and to find out what others think, and we often do so successfully. It follows that the word–world relations that we have just noted are properly counted as cases of reference are very often determinate (or determinate enough) and known. Often, our words are determinately about known things and properties. I said I would not offer a theory of reference and it will be obvious that I have not done so. I have told you how to identify the right word–world relations by tying reference to the way sentences code via their semantic structure for possible objects of thought, but I have not offered an analysis of the word–world relations themselves. Let me spell this out in terms of the example of believing that Aristotle is famous. A full theory of reference for the relation between the word ‘Aristotle’ and the object it refers to would include the following. First, we would need an account of the circumstances under which a subject S believes that Aristotle is famous. This account would, in my and
eliminativism and the theory of reference
71
most people’s view, have to mention causal links between S and Aristotle, and lots more besides. Second, we would need an account of the circumstances under which the sentence ‘Aristotle is famous’ reports this belief of S’s. This would involve an account of S’s agreeing (implicitly) to use the sentence in certain circumstances to report the belief that Aristotle is famous. Accounts of the kind in question are to be found, for example, in Grice (“Meaning”) and Lewis (Convention). Third, we would need an account of the circumstances under which the sentence ‘Aristotle is famous’ counts as semantically structured (rather than as a “blob”), with ‘Aristotle’ playing the role of a name for an individual. This would involve inter alia the belief-reporting role of other sentences with syntactic parts in common with ‘Aristotle is famous’ and the inferential relations between the sentence ‘Aristotle is famous’ and other sentences. This inventory of topics makes it very clear that I have not offered anything like a theory of reference. It might well be said that I have ducked some of the most interesting questions. But I am happy if I have given you a way of identifying the relations between words and the world that matter for our purposes here – they are the correspondences between certain parts of sentences and objects and properties that explicate how sentences made up of a finite number of parts, and according to a finite number of rules of combination, are able to report the contents of indefinitely many beliefs in the way that we have evidently mastered to some large extent. Have I identified the right word–world relations for the posing of ontological questions? It is one thing to give a way of narrowing the field; another to show that one has narrowed down in the right way. Well, the relations deliver the belief about how things are which sentences like ‘There are beliefs’, ‘There is a cure for AIDS’, ‘There was a big bang’ report. That follows from how we identified the relations – they are precisely the relations that capture the contents of the relevant beliefs. But isn’t whether or not we should accept that there are beliefs, a cure for AIDS or was a big bang precisely what is on the table when we ask these ontological questions?
6 Coda We can now see what to say about theory of reference as proto-science and as theory driven by intuitions that sometimes conflict in ways that do not allow us to designate one as correct. (i) Yes, there are many word–world relations that are of interest to one or another science. But the relations that matter for the discussion of eliminativism are those needed to capture what we assert using sentences that capture what we think. And, as we emphasized earlier, we can be confident that it is not true that there are many things the word ‘Aristotle’ for example has the designated relation to. This follows from the fact that the beliefs we report with sentences of the form ‘Aristotle . . .’ and variants thereon have reasonably determinate, known contents. For the same reason we can be confident that it is not true that there are many properties the words ‘is famous’ has the designated relation to – we do know what belief about how things are we report with sentences of the
72
frank jackson
form ‘. . . is famous’. If we didn’t, we would not have a clue about what might be evidence for or against Aristotle’s or Hume’s or Clinton’s being famous. (ii) Yes, there will be cases where people differ in their intuitions about how to describe certain possible (and actual) cases. And some of these cases will be ones where we should take a no-fault attitude to the disagreement. But this is exactly what we should expect when we appreciate the connection between reference and belief. We should expect differences between people in the words they use to report the contents of their beliefs. One person will use ‘shrub’ to cover cases another will use ‘tree’ for. Sometimes these differences will be subtle ones that only reveal themselves under interrogation by possible cases. Sometimes it will be vague what a word is used for in a way that allows for a different resolution of that vagueness under pressure to conform one’s usage to that of one’s discussant. Fault will not be an issue; both parties will be right for their own usage of the term or terms in question; or both resolutions of the vagueness will be equally acceptable. In such cases, the issue of existence can be a don’t-care one. We can all agree that there is little point in getting hot under the collar about whether Canberra is a town or a city. But vagueness and difference in some cases is consistent with agreement and determinacy in many others – Canberra is, determinately is, either a town or a city, and is, determinately is, not a tree, and that is enough to make ontological questions in general non-trivial.
Notes and References 1 See Stephen Stich (1990), The Fragmentation of Reason, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, ch. 5, and “Do True Believers Exist?,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 65 (1991): 229–54. 2 For the history of his thoughts on the question, see Stephen Stich (1996), “Deconstructing the Mind,” in Deconstructing the Mind, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–90. 3 See, e.g., Michael Devitt and Kim Sterelny (1987), Language and Reality, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. The classic sources for the case against the description theory are of course Saul Kripke (1980), Naming and Necessity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, and Hilary Putnam (1975), “The Meaning of ‘Meaning,’ ” reprinted in Language, Mind and Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. For dissent see, e.g., Frank Jackson (1998), “Reference and Description Revisited,” Philosophical Perspectives, 12, Language, Mind, and Ontology, ed. James E. Tomberlin, Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, pp. 201–18. 4 Paul Churchland (1981) “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes,” Journal of Philosophy 78: 67–90. 5 See, e.g., Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit (1993), “Folk Belief and Commonplace Belief,” Mind and Language 8 (2): 298–305. 6 William G. Lycan (1988), Judgement and Justification, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 31–2. 7 However, sometimes the answer to the hard question will not matter for the question of the existence of Ks. For sometimes the answer to whether or not there are Ks will be the same on all sane theories of reference. 8 What follows is a short account of matters Stich spells out in forceful detail, especially in “Deconstructing the Mind,” op. cit.
eliminativism and the theory of reference
73
9 In Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning,’ ” op. cit. See also the many examples in Kripke, Naming and Necessity. 10 Some protest that it is not intuition that delivers the verdict that water on Twin Earth is H2O and not XYZ but good science – we go by the relevant natural kind. But functional roles are just as much part of the story science tells about our world as are natural kinds. 11 See Ruth Millikan (1993), White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, esp. p. 15. 12 For a recent example, see David Papineau (2001), “The Status of Teleosemantics, or How to Stop Worrying about Swampman,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 2: 279–89. 13 See, e.g., Jerry Fodor (1994), “A Theory of Content, II: The Theory,” in Mental Representation: A Reader, ed. Stephen P. Stich and Ted A. Warfield, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 180– 222, see p. 195. 14 Stephen Stich (1996), “Deconstructing the Mind,” in Deconstructing the Mind, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–90. 15 Saul Kripke (1980), Naming and Necessity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, p. 91, my emphasis. 16 E.g., Devitt and Sterelny, Language and Reality, argue that some words at least have to get their reference in some other way, but see Jackson, “Reference and Description Revisited.” 17 See David Lewis (1969), Convention, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. The picture of language that follows is that, e.g., in Lewis and in H. P. Grice (1957), “Meaning,” Philosophical Review, 66: 377–88 and John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Chapter II, §2. 18 An important question about states of affairs or propositions is what a state of affairs or proposition, which is such that it cannot be actual unless x exists, is like in itself ? This is a highly controversial issue for metaphysicians and not a matter on which the non-philosophers among the folk have a view. 19 This means that the common way of talking of reference as a word–world relation – which we have followed – needs to taken with care. The world side of the relation need not exist – the relation is to that which would have to exist were certain sentences to be true.
74
fiona cowie
5 Why Isn’t Stich an ElimiNativist? FIONA COWIE
In 1975, and as usual scratching where it itches, Steve Stich published Innate Ideas, a collection of philosophical papers illustrating and analyzing the varied roles of the concept of innateness in philosophical psychology. In the thirty years since then, the idea of the innate has flourished in both popular and academic writings. Not only has it received a fair amount of use (think Chomsky and Pinker; think Fodor; think Herrnstein and Murray; think the New York Times’ “Science Times” every other Tuesday), it has also occasioned a good deal of mention, particularly in the last ten or so years, as philosophers, biologists, and psychologists have sought to develop a more precise understanding of what innateness is. In §1 of this chapter, I briefly survey this large elucidatory literature, starting with Stich’s influential account in the “Introduction” to Innate Ideas (Stich 1975). Most of these proposals about innateness are reductive in tenor: they are attempts to specify in scientific terms what it is for some trait – be it a concept, a representation of Universal Grammar, a heart, or a disposition to fool around – to be innate. As we will see, what emerges from these analytical sorties is not a better grip on innateness but, rather, a disturbing appreciation of its slipperiness. Innateness has been said to correspond to an array of underlying properties, most of which seem to have little to do with each other. Worse, each proposal is plausible in light of a certain range of cases, but outside that range is beset by counterexamples that cannot be dismissed as deriving merely from peripheral uses of the notion. So while there is a certain ‘family resemblance’ among the meanings ascribed to ‘innate’ there is no analysis of the term that does justice to its multifarious uses. Despite our efforts, innateness insists on remaining a bunch of rather different, if related, things.1 Or, perhaps, nothing at all? In §2, I explore the eliminativist option with respect to the innate – what one might call ‘elimiNativism’. Very tempting indeed when confronted with the analytical anarchy surrounding ‘innateness’, and urged explicitly by behavioral ecologist Patrick Bateson (Bateson 1983, 1991), neuroscientist Mark Blumberg (Blumberg 2005) and philosopher Paul Griffiths (Griffiths 2002), elimiNativism is the view that no natural kind (or at least, no unified, explanatorily useful property) corresponds to the concept ‘innate’ and that we should therefore stop talking as if one did. According to the elimiNativist, the concept of innateness does not ‘carve nature at its joints’. Instead, it is
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
75
a pre-scientific or “folk-biological” (Griffiths 2002: 76) idea with no role to play in the sciences of the mind. Putative explanations in terms of innateness are at best void and at worst misleading, because encourage fallacies of equivocation (Griffiths 2002: 72). Rather than talking of traits that are innate, then, we should explain those traits’ development in terms of underlying processes and properties that are really ‘in there’ – properties and processes like canalization, generative entrenchment, and a variety of different sorts of genetic and epigenetic processes and interactions. If we free ourselves of our obsession with innateness, the elimiNativist thinks, we will be in a better position to understand the developmental phenomena that interest us. I have some sympathy with this line of thought, although as I will argue in §3, there is reason to be cautious in our linguistic and ontological prescriptions. Before I get to this, however, I want to point to a certain oddity in the trajectory of Steve Stich’s thoughts about innateness, namely, that he has never expressed any sympathy with elimiNativism. Normally not one to pass up the opportunity to hound treasured ‘folk’ notions (like belief, truth, and rationality), Stich has nonetheless remained a champion of the innate – not in the sense that he has explicitly defended any particular nativist thesis, but in the sense that he seems quite committed to the concept’s remaining part of the discourse of cognitive science. He has sponsored conferences on innateness, and edited books on innateness (Carruthers, Laurence and Stich 2005, 2006, 2007), and written influential papers exploring the boundaries of the concept (Stich 1975, 1978; Ramsey and Stich 1990). The first section of this chapter will motivate the question: Why is this so? Innateness looks ripe for elimination, so why isn’t Stich, paragon of conceptual and ontological austerity, an elimiNativist? The rest of the paper will offer an answer to this question on Steve’s behalf. I shall argue that Stich is justified in eschewing elimiNativsm for two reasons. First, the arguments for eliminating innateness aren’t as strong as they might initially seem (§2). Second, there are powerful pragmatic reasons in favor of keeping the concept current in cognitive science, at least for now (§3).
1 What is Innateness? We begin our survey of the concept of innateness with Stich’s “Introduction” to Innate Ideas (Stich 1975). Like Locke, Stich rejects the idea that innateness is a matter of being present at birth: many traits that are thought to be innate (e.g., teeth, perhaps some concepts) emerge much later in development (p. 3). He then distinguishes two main senses in which ‘innate’ is used in ancient and early modern discussions of innate ideas. The first, deriving from Descartes’ analogy between innate ideas and innate diseases, held that a belief (or more generally, a trait) is innate in a person “if, and only if, from the beginning of his life . . . it has been true of him that if he is or were of the appropriate age (or at the appropriate stage of life) then he has, or in the normal course of events would have, [the trait or] the belief. . . .” (Stich 1975: 8) As Stich recognizes, such an account is hostage to one’s conception of a ‘normal course of events’. Conceive normalcy too broadly, and virtually all traits turn out to be innate; conceive it too narrowly, and none do. While Stich leaves it open that a satisfactory account of ‘normal development’ could be articulated (i.e., an account such that just the right kinds of things come out innate),
76
fiona cowie
others have argued that there is no reason to expect such an account to emerge. (Cf. Cowie 1999; Griffiths 2002; Mameli and Bateson 2005.) Stich recognizes a second usage of ‘innate’ in the writings of theorists like Plato and Chomsky. This is the notion that innate ideas (beliefs or concepts) are those that are ‘catalyzed’ or ‘triggered’ (pp. 14–15) by experiences that do not seem sufficiently rich or informative to account for the content that the resultant idea ends up having. The same goes for innate behaviors: the way that a duckling behaves towards its mother seems somehow richer than mere causal commerce with a middle-sized moving body could engender. The idea here is that a trait is innate if its external or experiential causes are in some sense inadequate to explain the trait’s existence or properties. The world is merely the occasion for the development of the idea or trait; it doesn’t ‘construct’ the trait. One difficulty with this account is that it is very restricted in its application: it simply does not apply to many traits standardly held to be innate, like hearts and lungs, learning abilities, or genetic diseases. A second difficulty, and the one Stich emphasizes, is its vagueness: how do we quantify the informational content of beliefs and experiences so as to be able to tell whether the content of a belief outruns that of its trigger? How do we decide whether an external cause (or possibly, a cascade of external causes) is ‘constructing’ or merely ‘occasioning’ the development of a behavior? Given that everyone agrees that all traits are partly internally and partly externally caused, how does one assign ‘more’ of the causative responsibility to one type of factor rather than another? (Cf. Cowie 1999, §1.5.) Stich leaves his questions about the dispositional and triggering accounts of innateness open; he so to speak offers them up to the philosophical community as opportunities for further work. However, the philosophical community at the time declined Stich’s invitation to elucidate. This is not to say that the issue of innateness went away. On the contrary, Chomsky’s provocative claim that linguistic knowledge was innate provoked substantial and spirited debate in the 1970s and 1980s. However, while there was considerable ink spilled on the question of whether linguistic (or biological, or mathematical) knowledge is innate, there was very little at the time that explicitly addressed the question of what it is for such knowledge – let alone any other traits – to be innate.2 From the mid-1990s, however, more and more theorists began leaning on the concept of innateness itself. There seemed to be a feeling, among many philosophers interested in the question of how traits develop, that calling some feature or property innate was at best just a gesture towards explaining how it comes into existence. To complete the explanation, one needs to know what innateness is, and how innate traits come to be expressed in the ‘finished’ organism. Some came at this issue from a more biological point of view; others were more motivated by uses of ‘innateness’ in philosophy, developmental psychology, linguistics, and cognitive science.
1.1 Innateness and cognitive science Taking the latter group first, I argued (Cowie 1999) that neither of Stich’s analyses, even when made more precise, was adequate to account for uses of ‘innate’ in either the
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
77
philosophical psychology of the past or in modern cognitive science and linguistics. I argued instead that ‘innate’ was used in two different ways in these literatures. On the one hand, ideas or bodies of knowledge are called ‘innate’ when they are acquired as a result of the operation of highly specialized, or domain-specific, mechanisms of learning. What makes an idea or concept innate, on this understanding, is its being got via the functioning of a device that is determined or constrained to produce output conforming to that idea. It is in this sense, I argued, that knowledge of Universal Grammar might be innate: we know Universal Grammar to the extent that it is implicit in our knowledge of the grammar of our language, and we know our language in virtue of the operation of a specialized ‘language acquisition device’ whose job is to produce outputs conforming to UG. On the other hand, I maintained, ‘innate’ is sometimes used in a different way in both historical writings and modern cognitive science. At times, the term is used to describe ideas whose acquisition is inexplicable given the explanatory apparatus and concepts of psychology – to express, as I put it, a ‘metatheoretic gloom’ about our prospects for understanding how the ideas in question are acquired. For instance, when Fodor (e.g., Fodor 1998a, 1998b, 2001) says that most concepts are innate, he should be read as meaning that they were acquired by mechanisms the explanation of which is outside the scope of psychology.3 A clear difficulty with the first of these accounts of innateness is that, because it appeals to mechanisms of learning, it applies only to psychological and behavioral traits. It does not capture what is meant when (say) hearts, or secondary sex characteristics, are said to be innate. A difficulty with the second, metatheoretic or ‘primitivist’ account is that because it regards a trait as innate if it’s inexplicable by psychology, it counts too much as innate: it’s not psychology’s job to explain why Christopher Reeve was quadriplegic, yet that trait was not innate for him. In addition, primitivism relativizes innateness to our explanatory interests and capacities. This does not seem to be right. The intuition is rather that innateness is a feature that some traits have regardless of our explanatory practices. One could try to tinker with these accounts in an attempt to fit them to our intuitions. But this just leads to additional problems. For instance, one could count a trait as innate so long as it was acquired by means of some specialized developmental mechanism, that is, a mechanism that had been designed by natural selection to produce that trait reliably at some appropriate point in the course of the organism’s development. Ideas got via specialized learning mechanisms would count as innate under this construal, as would the appropriate parts and processes of the body and brain. However, other traits, such as Down syndrome or Williams syndrome would not be classified as innate, since the genetic mechanisms giving rise to them have not been selected for that purpose. Also, many traits that are not normally counted as innate would be misclassified. For instance, if mechanisms of psychological and behavioral plasticity have been selected for (cf. Sterelny 2003), then the representations or skills arising out of such learning mechanisms – say, the belief that Dad is dangerous when angry, or the ability to craft a hand axe – would wrongly be classed as innate. A similar mess results from any attempt to widen the ‘primitivist’ interpretation of innateness so as to take account of intuitions about innate non-psychological traits.
78
fiona cowie
Whatever sciences S one chooses to include in one’s expanded definition (“T is innate if it’s inexplicable in terms of science S”), one gets some traits misclassified. Worse, if more than one science is included (“. . . inexplicable in terms of science A and science B”), the definition fails to deliver univocal answers about the innateness or not of a given trait, since what is taken as primitive for one science is often explicable by another. For instance, neuroscience can explain the development of ocular dominance columns in visual cortex but cognitive psychology takes them to be primitive; psychologists are interested in how we acquire our values but behavioral economists aren’t, and so on. These criticisms do not imply that these are bad analyses of innateness as used in cognitive science. What they do show, though, is either that ‘innate’ as used in cognitive science is a different concept from ‘innate’ as used in other sciences or by the folk; or else, perhaps, that those whose focus is philosophical psychology are missing a deeper point that talk about innateness is meant to make. After all, intuitions are strong that innateness and the genes have something to do with one another, and yet neither of the ‘psychologized’ accounts discussed in this section acknowledges this. Perhaps, then, we should look to the term’s use in biology, rather than psychology, in our attempt to elucidate its meaning?
1.2 Innateness and biology Many theorists clearly thought that the answer to this question is “yes”. For at the same time as cognitive scientists were attempting to understand the meaning of ‘innate’ in their discipline, a plethora of other accounts, more biological in flavor, began to appear in the literature. One line of thought, traceable back to Konrad Lorenz, has it that innateness has to do with genetic determination. However, as Block (1981), Kitcher (1985), and Mameli and Bateson (2005), among others, have argued, the concept of ‘genetic determination’ is itself a problematic one, and to explain innateness in terms of it is to trade one analytical pickle for another. For instance, if ‘innate’ means ‘genetically determined’ and ‘genetically determined’ means ‘caused by the genes alone’ then no trait is innate. But weakening one’s notion of ‘genetic determination’ leads towards errors in the other direction. For instance, if ‘genetic determination’ means ‘genetically influenced’, then everything is innate. Lorenz introduced a notion of ‘appropriate causation by genes’ to cash out ‘genetic determination’. But this raises the question of what counts as ‘appropriate causation’ – a question that neither he nor anyone else has ever answered adequately. A recent paper by Steve Quartz (2003) is illustrative of this difficulty. He articulates five different “Innateness Proposals,” each specifying a different way to understand the notion of ‘appropriate causation by the genes’. A trait is ‘strongly innate’, for example, if the neural architecture realizing it is regulated solely by intrinsic processes and mechanisms (genetic and epigenetic); and if T itself develops solely as a result of such intrinsic processes, together with ‘merely permissive’ environmental interactions4; and if T has been ‘evaluated’ by natural selection (p. 27). On another hand, a trait T* is innate in the sense of having been ‘triggered’ if it’s just like T, except that instructive as well as
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
79
permissive environmental interactions are among its causes. (p. 28). It’s unclear whether any traits are innate by these definitions and, if they are, whether they’re the right ones. For it all depends on what’s meant by (i) a neural structure’s being regulated solely by intrinsic factors and (ii) the notion of a permissive (vs. instructive) environmental interaction. But we will not pursue these issues here. For suppose that Quartz is right, and there are five kinds of genetic causation, each covering some but not all prototypically innate traits. That in itself is almost sufficient to make the point I’m aiming at in this section, namely, that ‘innate’ means so much to so many that it’s in danger of meaning nothing at all. A second major biological approach to innateness cashes out that concept in terms of genetic coding or genetic information: a trait is innate if it is coded in the genes, or if all the information required for the trait’s development is encoded in the genes, the environment playing merely a supportive, non-informational role (cf. Maynard Smith 1993; Bates et al., 1998; Fodor 1998a, 2001; Quartz 2003). Such accounts must explain the notions of genetic encoding or information they invoke. Predictably, given that these are semantic notions, problems arise (Godfrey-Smith 1999, 2000a, 2000b; Griffiths and Gray 1994, 1997, 2001; Griffiths 2001). Correlational accounts say that T is genetically encoded (hence innate) because certain genetic properties – say, a deletion at a certain locus – correlate with T (e.g., Sterelny and Kitcher 1988). But if correlation between As and Bs sufficed for A’s encoding B, then environments would code for traits, too. However, they don’t: being raised in an English-speaking environment correlates pretty well with – but doesn’t encode – being an English speaker.5 Selectional accounts say that a gene, G, carries information about T iff G has been selected for its role in producing T (e.g., Maynard Smith 2000; Sterelny and Griffiths 1999). But diseases like Huntington’s chorea are innate, and are said by experts to be ‘genetic’ or ‘genetically encoded.’ Yet they have not been subject to any selection at all, so far as we know, for their presence is known only after reproduction has occurred.6 In addition, Godfrey-Smith has argued that if genes correlate with (‘code for’ or ‘carry information about’) any traits at all, it’s most plausible to think that the relevant properties are properties of proteins or other factors, not the high-level phenotypical properties that are the concern of nativists (Godfrey-Smith 2007; see also Samuels 2004).7 A third approach is to focus on the link between innateness and developmental invariance. Both Bill Wimsatt and Andre Ariew, for instance, explore the idea that innate traits are developmentally invariant: they appear very reliably, and are very hard – and often dangerous – to interfere with. Wimsatt argued that innateness should be understood in terms of generative entrenchment (e.g., Wimsatt 1986, 1999). On his view, a trait is innate if it has come under strong stabilizing selection due to its playing a role in the development of many other adaptive features, and if this stabilizing selection has resulted in the processes responsible for the trait’s development having been made more robust (i.e., harder to interfere with). Ariew’s proposal defined innateness in terms of the related but distinct notion of canalization (Ariew 1996, 1999). On this view, a trait is innate if its development is highly canalized, that is, buffered against a wide range of initial conditions and environmental variables – if it develops pretty much ‘come what may’.
80
fiona cowie
These accounts seem to capture, albeit in different ways, the innateness of (i) bodily parts and processes; (ii) basic neural and psychological machinery; (iii) various behaviors and behavioral dispositions; and (iv) species-typical traits (like menstruating or growing body hair) which reliably occur later in development. They thus seem successful in accounting for many of the paradigmatic cases of the ‘innate’. However, they suffer from two serious flaws. One derives from the fact that learned beliefs and behaviors can be entrenched and/or canalized in exactly Wimsatt and Ariew’s senses. Yet it’s often said to be a sine qua non innateness that nothing learned is innate. Our acquisition of the vocabulary of a natural language is a case in point. It is buffered against what certainly seems to be a wide range of environmental variations: except for cases where the linguistic environment is radically impoverished, all children, whatever their circumstances, learn the vocabulary of their language. Further, it’s plausible that our ability to learn the phonological forms and meanings of words has been selected for and made more robust because of its vital role in the acquisition of linguistic competence, itself vital in our acquisition of numerous other adaptive features and behaviors. If so, then the mechanisms that allow us to acquire a vocabulary, whatever they are, would have become both canalized in Ariew’s sense, and entrenched in Wimsatt’s sense. Acquiring a vocabulary is buffered, and it is entrenched; yet vocabularies are learned, hence paradigmatically not innate.8 Another potential problem with both Ariew and Wimsatt’s accounts is that they make innateness a matter of degree. For Ariew, traits seem to be more or less innate depending on the scope of the environmental buffering they are blessed with. For Wimsatt, traits would seem to be more or less innate depending on (i) the number of ‘downstream’ developmental processes that depend on them and/or (ii) their degree of entrenchment or robustness. This by itself is not necessarily a problem for these analyses: surely the idea that some traits are more innate than others can be accommodated by the folk. What is a problem, though, is the fact that the deliverances of these analyses are highly sensitive to one’s choice of a certain range of environments (in Ariew’s case) or particular notion of robustness (in Wimsatt’s case). Consider an example due to Mameli and Bateson (2005: 20): the development of normal hands and feet. Hands and feet are buffered against interference in a wide range of environments so long as the relevant range does not include environments in which thalidomide circulates in the placenta. If, however, the range does include such environments, then hands and feet are not buffered in that range. Likewise, one might ask, in what sense is getting hands and feet a robust developmental process if it can be interfered with so easily and drastically via the ingestion of thalidomide during pregnancy? Why choose one range of environments rather than another? Why choose a particular notion of robustness? It won’t do simply to pick the ranges and ideas of robustness that give the right intuitive answer for these will differ from case to case. We need a principled answer to these questions. A fourth biological notion that has been appealed to in attempting to clarify innateness is heritability: a trait is innate if it is highly heritable (cf., e.g., Herrnstein and Murray 1994). However, this approach is bankrupt. First, traits that are universal in the population – like having a head – have a heritability of 0, so would not be deemed innate. Secondly, learned traits – like being able to read – have high heritability in many
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
81
populations. Which brings us to a final problem for heritability-based accounts of innateness: since heritability is a population measure, heritability estimates vary with one’s choice of population. Thus, among children in California, having freckles on one’s nose is highly heritable: basically, you get them if you’re Anglo, but otherwise, not. Among children in Australia, by contrast, freckles are much less heritable, even among Anglos; for having freckles depends on exposure to the sun, which in turn is affected by whether your school has (as many do) a policy that sunhats must be worn when playing outside. To define innateness in terms of heritability is to inherit this counterintuitive population-relativity. Finally, in this survey of attempts to ‘biologize’ innateness, we come to two related ideas: innateness as species typicality and innateness as adaptatedness. Again, neither is satisfactory, either alone or in conjunction. Some species-typical adaptations are learned or otherwise culturally transmitted: tool-making in homo erectus; some birds’ characteristic songs; wearing clothes in modern homo sapiens. And some innate traits (being a haemophiliac, being homozygous for the sickle cell gene) are neither species-typical nor adaptive. Being an adaptation is neither necessary nor sufficient for being innate, and the same goes for being a species-typical trait.
1.3 The inner and the outer A third major line of thinking about innateness, and the last we will be covering here, is less overtly biological in tone. It focuses on the intuition that innate traits in some sense ‘come from inside’ as opposed to ‘coming from the environment’. However, this intuition proves difficult to nail down. Since all traits are produced via interactions between inner and outer, one cannot simply say, for instance, that innate traits are ones that are not caused by the environment, or that innate traits are the ones that are produced by “interactions internal to the organism” (Elman et al. 1996: 23). But as we have seen already, in discussing Quartz’s (2003) attempts to come to grips with innateness, there are many ways that genes and environments collaborate to produce phenotypes and it’s not obvious which of these ways should be held to produce the innate ones. Moreover, as Mameli and Bateson argue in some detail, analyses in the ‘inner vs. outer’ vein founder when they confront particular cases (Mameli and Bateson 2005: 8–9). For instance, consider the notion that a trait is innate if it is not alterable by environmental factors. This gets being a queen bee right: being a queen is not innate because whether a female becomes a queen or not depends on the amount of royal jelly she ingests. However, it gets having arms wrong: that trait is innate, despite its being environmentally alterable (say, by thalidomide, or by a Congolese machete). Or consider the idea that a trait is innate if it’s unalterable in normal environments: that would cope with the case, just discussed, of having arms. However, as Mameli and Bateson rightly emphasize and as we have seen above (§1.1), appeals to normalcy carry their own problems. If the relevant notion is statistical normality, then what is innate becomes unacceptably hostage to changing fortune and fashion. But if it’s evolutionary normalcy that is at issue, then we must (i) nail down the period of interest for the evolution of the trait in question, and (ii) determine what normal conditions at that time were, and (iii)
82
fiona cowie
decide whether the trait was alterable in those conditions or not. None of these is an easy task, of course, but even given an account of normal conditions in the Pleistocene, say, it is plausible that we would find many behaviors and properties that we would not want to count as innate despite their being unalterable in those conditions: eating only minimally processed foods or having a short life expectancy are examples.9 A related approach resting on the inner vs. outer distinction contrasts the innate with the learned. Thus, Fodor (1981) equates innate concepts with those that are unlearned. But, first, this approach makes innateness hostage to our conception of what is to count as learning – a notoriously thorny issue in itself. Moreover, it does not generalize beyond the mental: there are many unlearned traits – having a tattoo, for example – that are not innate. Mameli and Bateson (p. 15) explore the possibility of invoking the broader notion of phenotypical plasticity (rather than the narrowly cognitive notion of learning) in this context. For instance, they consider the idea that a trait might be innate iff it does not result from mechanisms designed to produce plasticity, i.e., “mechanisms adapted to produce different traits in response to different environmental conditions” (Mameli and Bateson 2005: 15). Again, though, this analysis encounters counterexamples and problems. For instance, there is a sense in which the genetic mechanisms responsible for sex determination in humans are adapted for plasticity: add androgens to the placental mix and you get a male rather than a female. Yet surely one’s sex, of all things, is innate? Moreover, a failure to be produced by such mechanisms is not sufficient for innateness. While the analysis gets such things as menstruation and body hair right (they are innate because the mechanisms producing them are not adapted for plasticity), it gets loads of other traits wrong: thalidomide-affected limbs, acquired sociopathy, Christopher Reeves’ quadriplegia: not a result of mechanisms adapted for plasticity, but not innate either.
1.4 Innateness: a too-many-splendour’d thing In §1 so far, we have examined the following ways of understanding what it means to say that a trait, T, is innate: 1 T is innate if T is present at birth. 2 T is innate if T emerges in the normal course of development. 3 T is innate if T’s external or experiential causes are inadequate to explain its existence or properties. 4 T is innate if T is acquired as a result of the operation of a highly specialized, or domain-specific, mechanism of learning. 4a T is innate if T was acquired by means of a developmental mechanism designed by natural selection reliably to produce T at the appropriate point in the organism’s development. 5 T is innate if the processes responsible for T’s development are inexplicable given the explanatory apparatus and concepts of psychology (‘Primitivism’). 5a T is innate (by the lights of some science, S) if the processes responsible for T’s development are inexplicable given the explanatory apparatus and concepts of S.
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
83
6 T is innate if T is genetically determined. 6a T is innate if T is caused by the genes alone. 6b T is innate if T is genetically influenced. 6c T is innate if T is appropriately caused by the genes. 6d T is innate if (i) T has been selected for and (ii) the architecture of the part(s) of the brain responsible for the acquisition of T developed under the control of genetic factors together with merely ‘permissive’ environmental factors.10 7 T is innate if T is genetically encoded. 7a T is innate if all the information required for T’s development is encoded in the genes. 8 T is innate if T is generatively entrenched. 9 T is innate if T is highly canalized. 10 T is innate if T highly heritable. 11 T is innate if T is species typical. 12 T is innate if T is an adaptation. 13 T is innate if T is “produced by internal causes.” 14 T is innate if T is not caused by the environment. 15 T is innate if T is not environmentally alterable (i.e., if changes in the environment cannot produce alternative phenotypes T’). 15a T is innate if T is not alterable in normal environments (i.e., if alternative phenotypes T’ cannot occur in normal environments). 16 T is innate if T is unlearned. 16a T is innate if does not result from mechanisms designed to produce plasticity. Yet not one of these sixteen (or twenty-five, depending on how you count) accounts appears adequate to capture everything that we mean when we claim that a trait is innate. My conclusion echoes that of Mameli and Bateson (2005), who likewise argue that the concept of innateness is fragmented and confused, and that every analysis ever proposed misclassifies central exemplars of the concept it purports to elucidate.
2 The Case for ElimiNativism Given the mess that the folk concept of innateness is patently in, it’s tempting to ask whether we ought not try to do without it. In this section, we will look at whether there is reason to pursue this course. After distinguishing two different kinds of eliminativist project (ontological and linguistic) and explaining how they are related, I turn to the arguments for elimiNativism. There are three kinds of argument used to support an eliminativist position – what I call the ‘Aren’t Any’, ‘Doesn’t Work,’ and ‘It’s a Mess’ arguments. In §§2.2–2.4, I illustrate these arguments with examples taken from other areas of philosophy, and look at how they might apply to the issue of innateness. In §2.5, I argue that these arguments, taken together, raise a serious conundrum for theorists interested in development, which I then explore in §3.
84
fiona cowie
2.1 Two eliminativist projects and three kinds of eliminativism I distinguish two different kinds of eliminativist project: ontological and linguistic (or conceptual). The ontological project asks whether a given type of object exists or whether a certain property is instantiated. As it pertains to innateness, the ontological question is whether any trait out there in the world is in fact innate. The linguistic (or conceptual) project asks whether a given theoretical term (or a given concept) should be used or eschewed: does the term ‘innate’ have any substantive role to play in philosophical or cognitive scientific theorizing? (Henceforth, for ease of exposition, I will talk of eliminating terms and eliminating concepts interchangeably. The eliminativist arguments I will consider apply to both, mutatis mutandis.) These projects are related, but distinct. If a certain object or property does not exist, then there may be reason to stop using terms that purport to refer to it (in certain contexts, at least). But equally, there may be reasons to continue with that usage: centers of gravity do not exist, but there are many contexts in which it’s not just OK but arguably necessary to think and talk – and design bridges, or figure skate, or play pool – as if they did. Electrons are not just particles, and atoms are not like tiny solar systems, but when doing chemistry, one often talks as if they were. Conversely, the fact that a certain term is unfitted to play an explanatory role in any scientific or philosophical theory may be reason to think that the class or property the term purports to pick out does not exist; but equally it may not. ‘Socks’, ‘Hummers’, ‘dirty jokes’, and ‘herbs’ are terms that no reputable philosophical or scientific theory needs or wants; yet all those things are really out there, nonetheless. In this chapter, I will talk of eliminating ‘innateness’ when it’s the linguistic question at issue; when it’s the ontological question we are concerned with, I will talk of eliminating innateness (no quotes). Orthogonal to the distinction just made is one between the three kinds of eliminativist argument to be found in the philosophical literature. The first is what I call the ‘there aren’t any’ argument for eliminativism, or ‘Aren’t Any eliminativism’ for short. Aimed squarely at the ontological issue, it takes an analysis of a certain concept and argues that nothing in the world does (or, stronger, could) satisfy that analysis. This is the eliminativism pursued, for instance, by Hume with respect to causation, by Mackie (1977) with respect to moral properties, and more recently by Stich with respect to the propositional attitudes. Aren’t Any eliminativists may or may not advocate linguistic eliminativism as well: Stich (1983) thinks we can do without ‘belief’ and the like, but compare Hume’s (sometime) views about ‘causation’ or Mackie’s attitude towards moral talk. A second eliminativist strategy is ‘Doesn’t Work eliminativism’. Aiming primarily at the linguistic question, the Doesn’t Work eliminativist contends that the concept of interest is enmeshed in a bankrupt theory: one that is false, explanatorily inadequate and part of a thoroughly ‘degenerate’ research program. On this view, the offending theory and its component concepts should be expunged from our thought, and its linguistic correlates should be replaced in our discourse by other, better, theories and terms. The ontological question in this case remains open. Because false theories can succeed in referring to real entities and properties (and here arise issues in the philosophy of
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
85
language that I will not explore), the Doesn’t Work eliminativist argument, even if successful, does not entail any position on the ontological question. A final kind of eliminativism is ‘It’s a Mess eliminativism’, again aimed in the first instance at the linguistic or conceptual question. But rather than taking an analysis of a concept and arguing that nothing satisfies it, as does the Aren’t Any eliminativist, and rather than arguing that the term or concept is embedded in a useless and dispensable theory (like the Doesn’t Work eliminativist), the It’s a Mess eliminativist argues that the concept in question has no determinate analysis, and that it is too vague or confused to be used profitably in a certain context. We see this form of argument in, for instance, Woodward (2003) with respect to the concept of a law of nature, and in Godfrey-Smith (1999, 2000a) with regard to ‘genetic information.’ Frequently, It’s a Mess eliminativists take their arguments for linguistic elimination to support ontological elimination too: given that it’s so unclear what the concept is a concept of, the existence of its object(s) must be dubious as well. However, the mere fact that a concept is unanalyzable can’t by itself entail any sort of eliminativism: most concepts are unanalyzable! So the It’s a Mess eliminativist’s argument must include a claim to the effect that there is something about the uses to which the concept is put, or the practical consequences of its unanalyzability, that causes unusual difficulties in this case. If, for instance, the eliminativist claim were just that concept C is unsuitable for use in some science, or in metaphysics or philosophy of science, it may not follow that there are no Cs. We’ve seen this with socks and herbs. ‘Memory’ is another case in point, as David Chalmers (pers. comm.) has pointed out to me. ‘Memory’ (unqualified) refers to a plethora of mental states and processes (long-term memory, short-term memory, procedural memory, somatic memory, etc.). As such, it lacks the precision that neuroscientists and philosophers dealing with these phenomena require, and for the purposes of theorizing, most experts on memory are eliminativists about ‘memory.’ None, however, are eliminativists with respect to memory! With these brief sketches in hand, let us see in more detail how the various strategies work, and how they might be wielded against innateness.
2.2 Aren’t Any eliminativism and its bearing on elimiNativism The Aren’t Any eliminativist takes an analysis of some commonsense concept or term, like ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘belief’ or ‘true’ or ‘rational’, and argues that there is nothing in the world that corresponds to that analysis, that is, that there is no such thing as goodness, or badness, or beliefs, or truth. Confronted with this situation, one should probably replace talk of the good or beliefs or truth with other, more accurate ways of talking. But if we continue to use these dubious terms and concepts, we must be aware that when we think or talk in those ways, we often speak and think falsely.11 A good example of Aren’t Any eliminativism is Steve Stich’s (1983) argument for the view that folk-psychological concepts like belief “ought not to play any significant role in a science aimed at explaining human cognition and behavior” (1983: 5, emphasis Stich’s). Stich’s argument begins with an analysis of the notion of belief. When we ascribe the
86
fiona cowie
belief that p to someone, he maintains, we attribute to her a certain relation towards a token sentence, stored somehow in her brain, which means that p. Two mental sentence tokens (hence two belief tokens) are of the same type in virtue of their contents. Thus, these mental sentences, Stich argues, are individuated ‘widely’ (or ‘semantically’), not ‘narrowly’ (‘syntactically’ or ‘functionally’). However, Stich contends, being of the same belief-type is not a matter of having the same content. Instead, the folk individuate beliefs in terms of similarity of content. This raises a problem. Since similarity judgments are notoriously context-sensitive and vague, a taxonomy of mental states based on them will be vague and context-sensitive too. Worse, since the folk judge similarity of content relative to their own contents, our taxonomy will be observer-relative and limited in application to thinking beings very like the folk. But the taxonomy of mental states used in cognitive science won’t be vague, contextsensitive, observer-relative, or limited in application! Its taxonomy will be precise, objective, and applicable to any thinking thing. For the purposes of science, Stich argues, the folk’s talk of beliefs individuated in terms of content will be replaced with talk of different kinds of entities – ‘beliefs*’ – which are individuated in terms of their syntactic (narrow, functional, non-semantic) properties. Propositional attitudes* – not the propositional attitudes of the folk – will be what are quantified over in the sciences of the mind. So according to the scientists, there’ll be nothing in our heads that has the properties (i.e., the semantic properties) that we ascribe to beliefs, etc. In which case, Stich intimates, the beliefs, desires, hopes and fears of the folk must be eliminated: “[i]f our science is inconsistent with the folk precepts that define who and what we are, then we are in for rough times. One or the other will have to go” (Stich 1983: 10, emphasis added). Returning to innateness, it is immediately clear that the Aren’t Any strategy is unable to support elimiNativism – and I suspect that this is one reason why Stich is not an elimiNativist. The Aren’t Any argument against propositional attitudes worked because Stich was able to establish that propositional attitudes are essentially contentful: if anything is to count as a belief, it has to be the kind of thing that is individuated in terms of its content. Given the plausibility of this essentialist claim about beliefs, Stich is able to argue that since a scientific taxonomy of the mental is very unlikely to end up individuating mental states in terms of content, the ontology of folk psychology will not be empirically vindicated. Of course, there are many things to be said about all this. Our concern, however, is with the applicability of this form of eliminativist argument to innateness, and it is very clear that it does not apply at all. For what is striking about the plethora of analyses of innateness surveyed in the previous section is that there seems to be nothing that is essential to the folk concept ‘innate’! But if there’s nothing that’s essential to innateness, then the Aren’t Any eliminativist’s strategy cannot even begin to get off the ground. And thus, returning to the question posed in §1, Stich is quite right not to have applied the Aren’t Any strategy that worked so well in the case of propositional attitudes to the question of innateness. But there are other eliminativist arguments to consider: should Stich have pursued one of them?
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
87
2.3 Doesn’t Work eliminativism and the innate The Doesn’t Work eliminativist argues that the concept or term of interest is embedded in a false, unproductive, or otherwise scientifically useless theory. For that reason, he maintains, we should cease using that concept. A classic example of this eliminativist strategy is Paul Churchland’s assault on the propositional attitudes of folk psychology (Churchland 1981). He argues, first, that folk psychology is an empirical theory, on a par (in terms of its epistemic status) with other empirical theories. For instance, it makes generalizations that quantify over a variety of theoretical entities, such as beliefs and desires, and it is sensitive in a variety of ways to evidence. Since folk psychology is an empirical theory, he points out, it “might (really) be false” (72). Which, he thinks, it is. First, Churchland argues that although it does enjoy some explanatory successes (you and I succeed in meeting up at the Impeachment Rally in West LA because each believes the other will be there, each wants to see the other, and each takes appropriate steps, based on her further beliefs and desires, to arrive on the right day at the right time at the Federal Building in Westwood), folk psychology nonetheless is weighed down with numerous serious explanatory failures. It has nothing to say about mental illness, creativity, the origins of intelligence differences, the nature and functions of sleep, visual perception and illusions, memory, or learning. Because folk psychology offers so little insight about so many matters ostensibly within its domain, Churchland argues, it is “at best a highly superficial theory, a partial and unpenetrating gloss on a deeper and more complex reality” (74). As to its history, “the story is one of retreat, infertility and decadence” (74). Its domain has contracted; primitive people used folk psychology to explain the workings of the world quite generally. Its understanding of those things left in its domain (viz., our minds) “[has] not advanced sensibly in two or three thousand years,” (74) this despite the “backlog” of anomalies and explanatory failures that should have spurred its refinement. In addition, folk psychology appears not to cohere with other human and biological sciences: “its intentional categories stand magnificently alone, without visible prospect of reduction [to other sciences]” (75). In sum, folk psychology, together with its classification of mental states as beliefs, desires, sensations etc., is a highly limited theory, rife with explanatory failures and anomalies, that has been stagnant and in retreat for millennia. Just as folk psychology turned out to be false of the weather (clouds do not move intentionally), it will likely turn out to be false of us and our behavior. This idea is supported by the fact that despite years of effort, there is no prospect of reducing its categories to those of ‘respectable’ sciences: the mind–body problem resists solution. Folk psychology is ripe for elimination – and the entities, properties, and processes it postulates are likewise ready to disappear. Can this type of argument be run in the case of innateness? It is true that the innate has resisted reduction to the categories of some or other science – the motley collection of analyses in §1 is testament enough to that. But is it true that the theory has stagnated, or that its domain is in retreat? I don’t think so. To be sure, there are things that nativists cannot explain, and there are limits to the explanations they offer, but the charge of degeneracy can hardly be leveled at the developmental sciences that are currently making use of the idea of innateness. On the contrary, they have been hugely productive,
88
fiona cowie
especially over the last few decades. The search for the innate has inspired philosophers, psychologists, biologists, and other scientists not only to talk about what ‘innate’ means, but to investigate the development of so-called innate traits in extraordinary depth, leading to a vast explosion of knowledge about how the processes of development unfold in us and other species. The case of language acquisition is very much to the point. Chomsky’s claim that universal grammar is innate has inspired several generations of smart young people to devote their lives to explaining how language is acquired. This was not even considered a problem in the eighteenth, nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, and although the behaviorists in psychology had begun to sniff around the issue by the late 1950s, Chomsky’s claim in the early 1960s that language is innate focused people’s attention on this phenomenon in an unprecedented way, and led to the development of a huge body of new knowledge about how languages are learned, stored, used, and lost. In light of developments like these – and they are paralleled in all sorts of other areas, such as the study of concept acquisition in psychology and philosophy, the study of birdsongs and various ‘instinctual’ behaviors in ethology, and the study of visual perception, face recognition, causal reasoning, and mathematical abilities in psychology and neuroscience. There simply is nothing degenerate about the nativist’s research program: the Doesn’t Work eliminativist’s argument has no purchase here.
2.4 It’s a Mess eliminativism and its implications for elimiNativism However, the It’s a Mess eliminativist’s argument remains to be examined. §1 constituted its first premiss: ‘innate’ is a term that stubbornly resists analysis. The second premiss asserts that the concept is so hopelesly muddled that it warrants elimination, regardless of any fruits borne by its deployment. Griffiths (1997, 2002) and Bateson (1983, 1991) advance arguments along these lines. Griffiths (2002: 71) identifies three ‘core features’ as characteristic of the innate: • Developmental fixity: innate traits are hard to change; • Species nature: what is innate is somehow related to what it is to be a member of a certain species; • Intended outcome: innate traits are non-accidental; they are somehow meant to be there. These three properties, he argues, pretty much capture what we pre-theoretically take innateness to be. Moreover, he argued, each of them has a ‘respectable’ and related successor concept in modern biological science: the successor to developmental fixity is canalization; the descendant of species nature is species typicality; and the notion of an adaptation provides a scientifically decent gloss on what it might be for some outcome to be intended. However, he continues, if that is what innateness is, then that notion is in deep trouble. For these properties frequently come apart in actual cases. For instance, bilateral symmetry in vertebrates is highly canalized and typical of the phylum, but is not clearly an adaptation, being rather the result of developmental constraints. A Live Oak’s generously
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
89
spreading crown is species-typical and adaptive, but that growth pattern is not canalized: in high altitudes, the Live Oak’s profile is sparse and scrubby. An Australian Aborigine’s dark skin is adaptive and canalized, but not species-typical. Griffiths argues that because the properties clustering together under ‘innateness’ need not co-occur, continuing use of the term encourages fallacies of equivocation, such that a trait’s evolutionary origin (say) is inferred from its species typicality, or its immutability is inferred from its being an adaptation. If we mean developmental fixity, species typicality or whatever, we should just say so. From their consideration of the various proposed analyses of innateness, Mameli and Bateson (Mameli and Bateson 2005) identify a larger cluster of ‘core’ features of innateness, which they call ‘innateness properties’ or ‘i-properties’. These are (p. 26): 1 reliably appearing in a particular stage in the life cycle; 2 being such that environmental manipulations capable of producing an alternative trait are evolutionarily abnormal; 3 not being produced by a mechanism adapted to map different environmental conditions onto different phenotypes and, at the same time, not produced by the impact of evolutionarily abnormal environmental factors; 4 being generatively entrenched; 5 being developmentally environmentally canalized (i.e., development is buffered against a wide range of environmental changes); 6 being post-developmentally environmentally canalized (i.e., once the trait has developed, it is stable under a wide range of environmental variation); 7 being species-typical; 8 being a standard Darwinian adaptation. They point out that whether or not these ‘i-properties’ are highly correlated or not “is an empirical question, and an important one” (p. 27). Answers to it allow us to answer a range of other, important empirical questions (e.g., “How often and in what circumstances does natural selection result in developmental or post-developmental canalization?” (p. 27)). In addition, they would also have implications for elimiNativism: “If the i-properties cluster, then it is appropriate to say that the folk concept [of innateness] does track a real biological phenomenon: . . . it tracks what we can call the ‘innateness syndrome’ ” (30). In that case, they argue, the concept of innateness would be “scientifically useful in that it could play a positive role in theory development and in the discovery of generalizations” (30). However, if the i-properties are not highly correlated, “we shouldn’t try to use the notion of innateness while doing science . . . [in that case] the various debates that have been framed in terms of innateness are better dealt with by referring to each of the i-properties individually” (30–1).
2.5 Something of a paradox The arguments discussed in §2.3, as well as the rather motley character of Bateson and Mameli’s list of ‘i-properties’ itself, however, suggest that the i-properties are not highly
90
fiona cowie
correlated. By Bateson and Mameli’s lights, as by Griffiths’, then, the concept ‘innate’ should be eliminated. But to accept this conclusion is to confront a somewhat paradoxical situation: ‘innate’ is a concept that is inadequate in numerous ways, failing to carve nature at its joints, meaning different things to different people, and thereby generating fallacious reasoning, confusion, and an inordinate amount of analytical despair. Yet at the same time, it seems to be a linchpin of a vital and exciting set of explanatory research programs and projects in the sciences of the mind (§2.3). As analytical philosophers, it appears, we can’t live with the concept; yet as cognitive scientists, it appears just as plainly, we can’t shoot it. What is to be done? I suggest: nothing. In §3, I argue, first, that it is quite common in science for investigators to continue using concepts that everyone knows to be inadequate – ambiguous, vague, incomplete, perhaps even incoherent. I maintain, secondly, that this practice seems de facto to be part and parcel of the development of new, better ways of conceiving the world. I urge, third, that there are philosophical (not just historical) reasons to expect this to be the case. And thus I conclude that it’s a bad idea on both pragmatic and philosophical grounds to eliminate bad concepts – like ‘innateness’ – until better ones are found.
3 Good Uses for Bad Concepts 3.1 ‘Gene’ In two recent papers (2006, 2007), Paul Griffiths and Karola Stotz describe the development of the concept ‘gene’. The term ‘gene’ was introduced by Johannsen (1909), but the origins of the corresponding concept are much more obscure. In large part, this is because there wasn’t and still isn’t a single gene concept in use in biology, or even in genetics itself. In the early days, most geneticists were instrumentalists about genes or ‘factors’: they were defined functionally, as the elements (possibly fictional) that were transmitted from parent to offspring and explained observed patterns of inheritance. Each Mendelian trait, or ‘character’ was associated with a single ‘factor’, and traits that did not follow a Mendelian inheritance pattern were held to be produced by two or more genes. But little attention was paid to the question of what genes were. Even Thomas Hunt Morgan, whose group established that genes are arranged linearly on chromosomes, was content to regard them as purely hypothetical entities, mere fictions used in calculating the observable results of hybridization experiments “because at the level at which genetic experiments lie, it does not make the slightest difference” (quoted in Griffiths and Stotz 2007, p. 86). However, Herman J. Muller, a student of Morgan, was dissatisfied with the instrumental notion of ‘gene’ and set out to discover genes’ physical basis. According to him, genes were physical entities that could replicate and mutate, and that played a role in the construction of phenotypes. Whether they corresponded to the classical geneticist’s factors was for Muller unimportant. Thus gene-properties that for the classical concept had been essential because definitional, were now treated as accidental and open to question.
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
91
The advent of the field of biochemistry, between the two world wars, led to further refinements of the gene concept. For instance, now genes had to be the kinds of molecules that could create other, very specific molecules, with highly constrained conformations: genes were individuated one-to-one with their specific enzymatic products. It was thought that genes were proteins because the structures of proteins, like those of enzymes, were tightly constrained. This ‘one gene–one enzyme’ view led early evidence that genes were composed of DNA to be ignored, as DNA did not seem to have the complex structure the hypothesis required. It was not until the 1940s, when new experimental techniques and assumptions were introduced into biochemistry by physicists such as Max Delbruck, that it was accepted that genes were made of DNA. In the early 1950s, Richard Goldschmidt had pointed out that the geneticist’s instrumentalist conception of a gene (and related concepts like ‘mutation’) was incompatible with the material concept emerging in biochemistry. He urged that the biochemist’s conception was the correct one, famously opining that there were no genes, at least in the classical sense. Genetic eliminativism! After the structure of DNA was elucidated by Watson and Crick, further changes in the gene concept occurred. For instance, Muller had held that genes were by definition the unit of recombination, which was held to occur only when alleles from the two different arms of the chromosome come together during meiosis. Seymour Benzer, however, established that recombination could occur within a gene, as parts of the gene changed position. This led to the dropping of the requirement that genes be what are recombined in (sexual) reproduction, and the foregrounding of genes’ functional role: genes became the segments of DNA that produce the molecules of RNA that produce a specific protein (or, later, other product). At the same time as the molecular gene concept was evolving, so too was the geneticist’s more instrumentalist conception. By the 1970s, geneticists had abandoned their forebears’ insistence that genes were what mutated and recombined; all that remained of the classical conception was genes as contributors to phenotypes. Griffiths and Stotz argue that at this point, the two conceptions were compatible and that both sides (so to speak) were more or less in agreement about what genes are. And although they go on to show that this halcyon period was brief, with ‘gene’ again coming unstuck (and remaining so today), Griffiths and Stotz conclude that this story represents “a highly successful example of the research strategy of identifying a functional role, searching for the mechanism that fulfills that role at a lower level of analysis, and using knowledge of that mechanism to refine understanding of function at the original (in this case phenotypic) level of analysis” (2007, p. 94). And indeed it does. However, I wish to draw a slightly different moral from their tale. The philosopher-historian telling a hundred years of history in thirty pages can only gesture at the turmoil, breast-beating (and, occasionally, despair) that accompanied this conceptual evolution as it was actually going on. At the time when Goldschmidt declared that there are no genes, it appeared to those in the field not just that the geneticists’ concept was never going to square with that of the biochemists’, but – and importantly – that the biochemical concept itself was hopelessly muddled, empirically unjustified, perhaps at times even empirically invalidated. Yet it appears to us just obvious that the
92
fiona cowie
field would have made a gross mistake had it followed Goldschmidt’s eliminativist advice and given up on genes – certainly the things, but even the word or concept. Many new discoveries and techniques, not to mention better concepts, were born of the jostling between the apparently incompatible notions of gene-as-replicator, gene-as-protein, geneas-locus-of-mutation, gene-as-producer-of-phenotypical-characters, etc. And while the counterfactuals are, of course, speculative, it is hard not to believe that, had any of these been jettisoned prematurely, the nature of the relations between them would not have been clarified, but rather obscured further, to the likely detriment of both biological research and our understanding of the world. Good things can come from ‘bad’ concepts.
3.2 ‘Principle’ or ‘element’ In this section, we look at another case illustrating how science makes eminently productive use of concepts that everyone knows to be inadequate. The historian Ursula Klein (2005) traces the development of organic chemistry from pre-1750 botanical practices up until the late nineteenth century, when modern classifications and nomenclature emerged. I argue that this account demonstrates that, particularly when the structure of some natural phenomenon or domain is genuinely up for grabs, it can be necessary – in the strongest, albeit pragmatic sense – to continue using concepts that one knows are ripe for elimination in order to design and carry out the very experiments and tools that will reveal the correct classificatory scheme. Prior to 1750, European chemists accepted the ancient distinction between the three natural ‘kingdoms’ of plants (‘vegetables’), animals, and minerals (Klein 2005: 268–9). In their attempts to classify vegetable substances further, they drew on the practices of those involved in the non-scientific manipulation of plants and their derivatives, for instance, apothecaries, dyers, brewers, and traders. Numerous lists classifying plant materials were published around this time, each differing significantly from the others as to the placement of particular substances. Nonetheless, according to Klein, classification was organized around three (maybe four) main categories: (i) natural origin (species, country or city, type (e.g., Balsam of Peru)); (ii) mode of extraction (substances made by nature (‘simples’) vs. substances made by human art – ‘composita’ (mixtures) and ‘preaparata’ (simple chemical extractions)); (iii) observable or sensible properties (waxes, gums, leaves, etc. and their properties – e.g., balsams have a strong aromatic smell, syrupy consistency, yellow-brown color, and minimal or no solubility in water); and, less commonly, (iv) practical uses (e.g., substances that were used in brewing and distilling were grouped together, as were those used in the production of wines and spirits, as were those used as dyes. Notably not among these classificatory principles is what the substance is made of. This is not because no one was interested in the composition of plant and other natural substances. On the contrary, the search for the alchemist’s ‘ultimate principles’ – the underlying natures that caused the perceived properties of natural substances – was most definitely afoot at this time. Nor is the chemist’s lack of taxonomic interest in constituent
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
93
structure due to no one’s having thought to base classification on constituency. Georg Ernst Stahl, for instance, had proposed a taxonomy that classed substances based on their composition and modes of chemical combination in 1730 (Klein 2005, p. 269, n. 12.). Rather, the search for constituents had little or no impact on the classificatory project because “chemists did not consider knowledge of composition a reliable precondition to order all of the kinds of materials they were dealing with” (269). And as we now know, they were right! For the constituents that were being sought (and ‘found’) at this period were the ‘ultimate principles’ postulated in the alchemical philosophy, such as phlegma, spirit, oil, salt, and earth. Since they don’t exist, and since substances have always refused to behave as if they did, taxonomists were right to ignore them. In their taxonomic endeavors, in other words, chemists were behaving as if they were eliminativists about principles or constituents – and about ‘principles’ and ‘constituents’. Those terms and properties were not relevant to the scientific task at hand, and were not used or adverted to. But it would have been a mistake for these theorists to have elevated their decision to pursue one taxonomic course rather than another into a matter of eliminativist principle. Any of the arguments we examined in §2 – Aren’t Any, Doesn’t Work, It’s a Mess – could have been run on the alchemist’s notion of a principle or constituent to justify eliminativism, ontological and linguistic. But the abandonment of all talk and thought of principles in chemistry from 1750 onwards would have been a disaster, as the rest of Klein’s story indicates. For after 1750, constituency was gradually foregrounded as the foundation for vegetable taxonomy. Spurred by the discovery of substances’ ‘proximate principles’ or ‘compound components’, and spurring in turn numerous further developments in chemical practice and theory, the search for the elemental structure of organic substances culminated 150 years later in Dumas’ eight-volume Traité de chimie appliqué aux arts (1835), widely regarded as the first work of organic chemistry as we know it today. The interplay between changing conceptions of substances’ principles or elements, new experimental techniques and instruments, new representational techniques, and developing theories about the organization of nature that made this magnificent achievement possible simply could not have happened had some hypothetical eliminativist about principles or elements ‘won’ in the 1750s. The first development relevant to the emergence of a constituent taxonomy was a proliferation, around mid-century, of a variety of new chemical techniques. In addition to distillation, decoction, and combustion, chemists began to stress the use of mechanical means (such as grinding), low-temperature (‘wet’) distillation, and various solvents as being important means for the chemical analysis of plant substances (283). These new analytical methods served in the first instance to reveal that the old taxonomy (outlined above) was inadequate. For instance, the old distinction between simples and praeparata was undermined when analysis showed that some simple substances (like saps and resins) were more similar to various praeparata (like essential oils) than to other simples (say, leaves). Thus, the French chemist Venel (along with many others) classified saps and essential oils together as being among the proximate principles or constituents of plants (287). A second vital development was conceptual. Between the 1750s and 1790s, chemists recognized plants as organized living beings, and began replacing the three ‘kingdoms’ of
94
fiona cowie
the previous centuries with a bipartite division of nature into organized or ‘organic’ beings (plants and animals), on the one hand, and those that are not so organized (minerals), on the other. This reclassification was no simple merging of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. For instance, Rouelle placed some plant-derived substances, such as balsams, resins, and gums, on the mineral side of the divide and, in 1766, Macquer attributed a vegetable origin to bitumen, what had been thought to be a mineral. Macquer also proposed a criterion of the organic in terms of constituency, rather than origin: both animal and plant bodies contained “an inflammable, fatty or oily substance” (291) whereas minerals did not and, by 1790, it was recognized that certain mineral salts were not among the principles of plants, even though they could be extracted from plants. The old taxonomy was breaking down, but no new orthodoxy had yet emerged. A third precondition for the rise of a new classificatory schema was the importation into organic chemistry of discoveries about inorganic substances. In 1789, Lavoisier, together with a number of other chemists, had published the Méthode de nomenclature chimique. It codified the trend that was emerging more slowly in plant chemistry, explicitly excluding from taxonomic consideration such properties as place in the three kingdoms, sensible properties, manner of production or extraction, and practical application. Instead, it advocated the classification metal oxides, acids, and salts based on their composition. The new, ‘elemental’ chemistry was vastly more explanatory than the old, for Lavoisier had coupled a ‘theory of affinity’ to his theory of composition. According to the affinity theory, the various elemental constituents of organic substances bore mutual relations of affinity with one another, and were in equilibrium only at ordinary temperatures. This explained why upon heating, the various component parts were released from the bonds of affinity, and made manifest. The notion of affinity also explained why different ‘proximate principles’ were observed under different conditions. By the early 1800s, the community of chemists, impressed with the new chemistry’s successes in the inorganic realm, recognized that this kind of elemental approach was, in principle, the way to go in classifying organic substances as well. Lavoisier himself suggested applying the elemental approach to organic substances, proposing in the Méthode that “the true constituent elements of vegetables are hydrogen, oxygen and charcoal” (quoted in Klein 2005, p. 300). However, no serious attempt to analyze plant substances in terms of these basic elements was made until well after the turn of the century. (Lavoisier abandoned the search for the principles of plants soon after the Méthode was published.) Instead, chemists continued to try to develop taxonomies that were recognizable descendants of the older, more practical and phenomenological approach. Some substances got put in different classes, to be sure, and the classes themselves were played with and renamed. But further developments were necessary before the ‘elemental’ approach to taxonomizing organic substances could finally be taken. A major impediment to such a step, according to Klein, was a lack of conceptual tools for understanding how the various elemental substances could combine to produce the variety of observed organic substances. While chemists around 1800 knew that organic substances were made of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, and while they wanted to taxonomize them in these terms, they could not “because of the absence of a theory of definite quantitative composition that would have allowed the clear identification and
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
95
demarcation of the different kinds of plant substances” (314). J. J. Berzelius recognized the problem acutely. His experiments had shown that wildly different substances – for instance, sugar and gum – contained the same proportions by weight of the elemental substances: Sugar:
Gum:
6.802% hydrogen 44.115% carbon 49.083% oxygen 6.792% hydrogen 41.752% carbon 51.456% oxygen (Klein 2005: 314)
How, then, were the two to be distinguished? Berzelius recognized that by assuming that different elemental substances had ‘atoms’ of different characteristic weights, he could get clearly different accounts of their composition: Gum: Sugar:
12 O + 13 C + 24 H 10 O + 12 C + 21 H
This – the origin of modern chemical nomenclature – was a major breakthrough. However, a further theoretical problem, noted but not addressed by Berzelius, remained. For it seemed clear that mere numbers of ‘atoms’ could not account for the observed differences among organic substances: some substances that differed only a little in the number of atoms they contained differed a lot in their observed properties, and conversely. This problem was solved by Dumas and Boullay. In 1828, they argued that not only was the number of atoms of each element important to a substance’s identity, but so too was how the atoms were put together. They proposed that the substances that they had grouped together – namely, two kinds of sugar, ethal (a substance isolated from fat), alcohol, and ethers – were not directly composed of the elements, but nonetheless shared the same ‘binary constitution’ (Klein 2005, p. 316): they were all “compounds of bicarbonated hydrogen” and the differences between them were explained in terms of differences in the other, non-bicarbonated component (316). Dumas and Boullay’s insight is still celebrated as the beginnings of organic chemistry as we know it today (318). By 1835, substances were no longer being classified according to superficial similarities (sensible or chemical) or in terms of their uses or origins. Instead, as Dumas urged in his eight-volume Traité de chimie appliqué aux arts, they were classified “from a purely chemical standpoint” (Dumas, quoted in Klein 2005: 318) – that is, in terms of “their atomic weights and . . . the rational formulae which represent their nature and their properties” (p. 319). Even substances made in the laboratory were to be treated in this way, so long as their constituency – being compounds of carbon – marked them as organic. And substances formerly thought to be emblematic of plant chemistry – such as wood fibers, fibers, corn starches – were no longer of interest to plant chemists. Carbon chemistry had begun, and with it came a whole new ontology for organic chemistry. More good things from some (really terrible) concepts.
96
fiona cowie
4 Against Premature Elimination In §3, with the examples of ‘gene’ and ‘principle’ (what we now call ‘element’), I have tried to show that conceptual confusion is not unheard of in science; nativists are not alone in having only a dim and confused idea of what it is they are talking about. Further, as I tried to show in §3.1, the clashing of incompatible concepts can be highly fruitful of research: the battle of the instrumental vs. the material gene led workers both in genetics and in biochemistry to examine their own concepts more closely than they would perhaps otherwise have done, to the benefit of both disciplines. And finally, as I’ve tried to bring out in §3.2, scientists often have no choice but to keep working with concepts that they know to be inadequate. It’s simply not possible to design, conduct, and interpret the very experiments one needs to perform in order to show the way forward without using some concepts – and if the bad old concepts are the only ones available, well: it’s put up or shut up. Organic chemists could not have simply tossed out the ultimate principles of the alchemists, or the proximate principles of the pre-1750s taxonomies, until they had something else to put in their place. And even when they knew what the correct principles were – oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon – they still were unable to theorize in terms of them until a wealth of other knowledge and techniques had been developed. Modern discussions of innate traits look a lot like eighteenth-century discussions of plant materials. Different taxonomies of developmental processes abound (canalized vs. not; entrenched vs. not; learned vs. not; genetically determined vs. not). It seems that our talk of innateness is functioning to delineate in a general way what the topic of inquiry is, just as the early ‘ultimate’ and ‘proximate’ principles, and the taxonomies that went along with them pointed in the direction of the truly organic. And just as late eighteenth-century chemists knew that their taxonomic principles were the wrong ones, yet couldn’t burn the boat they were fishing from, we can know that the innate/not innate distinction is not quite the right one to make, yet keep right on making it nonetheless. These are concepts that ‘glom onto’ important classes of closely related phenomena, even though they don’t get the boundaries of those classes exactly right, and even though they don’t properly taxonomize the kinds of phenomena that are in the family they refer to. Socrates said, more or less, that you can’t learn something if you don’t already know it. I say: you can’t investigate something if you don’t have a way of thinking about it. The concept of innateness, I contend, enables us to think about developmental phenomena that we don’t yet fully comprehend. Throw that concept away, and we lose that ability; lose the ability to think about those phenomena, and you lose the ability to investigate them. With these points in mind, we can return to the question that heads this paper: why isn’t Stich an elimiNativist? We saw in §2 that the ‘Aren’t Any’ argument doesn’t run, because there’s nothing that’s essential to innateness; that the ‘Doesn’t Work’ argument doesn’t work, because the nativist research program is flourishing; and that the ‘It’s a Mess’ argument poses a conundrum. On the one hand, ‘innate’ really is a mess, and as philosophers, appalled at the sight of a concept so déshabillé, we long to draw a veil. On the other hand, though, there is that flourishing research program to contend with. What to do?
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
97
On the basis of the historical examples discussed in §3, I have suggested that in this kind of case, one’s philosophical prudishness should give way to vulgar pragmatism. Good things can come from bad concepts. Premature elimination can be disastrous. That being so, Stich is quite right not to have eliminated the innate.
Notes 1 The position I take in this paper is thus a departure from the one I took in Cowie (1999). There, I argued that there are two ‘core’ senses of ‘innate’ as used in philosophical psychology. I now doubt that there are just two senses of the term used in philosophical psychology, and I am certain that there are many more than that in other contexts. 2 A notable exception is Harman (1969a, b). 3 Samuels (2002, 2004) has developed and defended this interpretation, giving it the name ‘Primitivism’. 4 A ‘permissive’ environmental interaction is one that affects development by virtue of its mere presence or absence. This is to be contrasted with an ‘instructive’ interaction, where features of the environment affect development by virtue of their statistical structure or informational content (Quartz 2003: 30). Thus, the ingestion of food is a merely permissive environmental input, while being told that Elizabeth I bathed once a month whether she needed it or not is instructive. 5 Such objections motivate some developmental systems theorists’ skepticism about the theoretical usefulness of the gene-environment distinction, e.g., Griffiths and Gray 1997. 6 Now that genetic testing can reveal the presence of some genetic diseases before symptoms appear, selection against them may become quite strong, as individual reproductive choices are influenced by knowledge hitherto unavailable. 7 Indeed, the occurrence of ‘alternative splicing’, whereby genes may conform themselves in different ways to give rise to different protein products in different circumstances, may problematize even the idea that genes code for proteins, if coding is understood as a correlational notion. 8 It’s consistent with this claim that other aspects of our knowledge of language are innate. Indeed, the argument can be made more generally: bracket off whatever parts of language you take to be inborn; the rest still has to be learned, and because of the value of having a language, it’s plausible that that learning process will be both buffered and entrenched in our species. 9 Of course, this argument depends on adopting a particular reading of ‘alterable’. I won’t explore this issue here, except to note that the fact that alterability is a modal notion reveals another dimension of vagueness that dogs this analysis (as well as providing a potentially fertile source of counterexamples to it). 10 A ‘permissive’ environmental interaction is one that affects development by virtue of its mere presence. This is to be contrasted with an ‘instructive’ interaction, which affects development by virtue of its statistical structure or informational content (Quartz 2003: 30). 11 Or maybe even meaninglessly, depending on your semantic theory. Note that whatever his semantic theory, the Aren’t Any eliminativist can’t hold that all talk involving such terms is false or meaningless: ‘There are no beliefs’ is a statement that Stich and Churchland both embrace! Thanks to Frank Jackson for this point.
98
fiona cowie
References Ariew, A. (1996) “Innateness and Canalization,” Philosophy of Science 63: S19–S27. Ariew, A. (1999) “Innateness is Canalization: A Defense of a Developmental Account of Innateness,” in Valerie Hardcastle (ed.), Where Biology Meets Psychology, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 117–39. Bates, E. et al. (1998) “Innateness and Emergentism,” in W. Bechtel and G. Graham (eds.), A Companion to Cognitive Science, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 590–601. Bateson, P. (1983) “Genes, Environment and the Development of Behavior,” in T. R. Halliday and P. J. B. Slater (eds.), Genes, Development and Learning, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 52–81. Bateson, P. (1991) “Are there Principles of Behavioural Development?” in P. Bateson (ed.), The Development and Integration of Behaviour, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 19– 39. Block, N. (1981) “Introduction: What is Innateness?” in N. Block (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. 2, New York: Methuen, pp. 279–81. Blumberg, M. S. (2005) Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press. Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. and Stich, S. (eds.) (2005) The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents. New York. Oxford University Press. Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. and Stich, S. (eds.) (2006) The Innate Mind, Vol. 2: Culture and Cognition. New York: Oxford University Press. Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. and Stich, S. (eds.) (2007) The Innate Mind, Vol. 3: Foundations and the Future. New York: Oxford University Press. Churchland, P. M. (1981) “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes.” Journal of Philosophy 78(2): 67–90. Cowie, F. (1999) What’s Within? Nativism Reconsidered. New York: Oxford University Press. Elman, J. L. et al. (1996) Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fodor, J. (1981) “The Present Status of the Innateness Controversy,” in J. Fodor (ed.), RePresentations: Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fodor, J. A. (1998a) In Critical Condition. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fodor, J. A. (1998b) Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fodor, J. A. (2001) “Doing without What’s Within.” 2001. http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/ kant/field/cowiesymp.htm. Fodor, J. A., Bever, T. G. and Garrett, M. F. (1974) The Psychology of Language: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics and Generative Grammar. New York: McGraw Hill. Godfrey-Smith, P. (1999) “Genes and Codes: Lessons from the Philosophy of Mind?” in V. Hardcastle (ed.), Biology Meets Psychology: Constraints, Conjectures, Connections. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 305–22. Godfrey-Smith, P. (2000a) “On the Theoretical Role of Genetic Coding.” Philosophy of Science 67: 26–44. Godfrey-Smith, P. (2000b) “Information, Arbitrariness and Selection: Comments on Maynard Smith.” Philosophy of Science 67: 202–07. Godfrey-Smith, P. (2007) “Innateness and Genetic Information,” in P. Carruthers, S. Laurence, and S. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind, Vol. 3: Foundations and the Future. Oxford University Press, pp. 55–68.
why isn ’ t stich an eliminativist?
99
Griffiths, P. E. (1997) What Emotions Really Are. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Griffiths, P. E. (2001) “Genetic Information: A Metaphor in Search of a Theory.” Philosophy of Science 68(3): 394–412. Griffiths, P. E. (2002) “What is Innateness?” The Monist 85(1): 70–85. Griffiths, P. E. and Gray, R. D. (1994) “Replicators and Vehicles? Or Developmental Systems?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17(4): 623–4. Griffiths, P. E. and Gray, R. D. (1997) “Replicator II: Judgement Day.” Biology and Philosophy 12(4): 471–92. Griffiths, P. E. and Gray, R. D. (2001) “Darwinism and Developmental Systems,” in S. Oyama, P. E. Griffiths and R. D. Gray, Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press: 195–218. Griffiths, P. E. and Stotz, K. (2006) “Genes in the Postgenomic Era?” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 27(6): 499–521. Griffiths, P. E. and Stotz, K. (2007) “Gene,” in Michael Ruse and David Hull (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Philosophy of Biology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 85–102. Harman, G. H. (1969a) “Linguistic Competence and Empiricism,” in S. Hook (ed.), Language and Philosophy: A Symposium, New York and London: NYU Press and University of London Press: 143–51. Harman, G. H. (1969b) “Psychological Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.” Journal of Philosophy 64: 75–87. Herrnstein, R. J. and Murray, C. (1994) The Bell Curve. New York: Free Press. Johannsen, W. (1909) Elemente der exakten Erblichkeitslehre. Jena: Gustav Fischer. Kitcher, P. (1985) Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Klein, U. (2005) “Shifting Ontologies, Changing Classifications: Plant Materials from 1700 to 1830.” Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 36: 261–329. Mackie, J. L. (1977) Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. London: Penguin. Mameli, M. and Bateson, P. (2005) “Innateness and the Sciences.” Biology and Philosophy 21(2): 155–88. Maynard Smith, J. (1993[1975]) The Theory of Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maynard Smith, J. (2000) “The Concept of Information in Biology.” Philosophy of Science 67: 177– 94. Quartz, S. R. (2003) “Innateness and the Brain.” Biology & Philosophy 18(1): 13–40. Ramsey, W. and Stich, S. (1990) “Connectionism and 3 Levels of Nativism.” Synthese 82(2): 177– 205. Samuels, R. (2002) “Nativism in Cognitive Science.” Mind & Language 17(3): 233–65. Samuels, R. (2004) “Innateness in Cognitive Science.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8(3): 136–41. Sterelny, K. (2003) Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. Sterelny, K. and Griffiths, P. E. (1999) Sex and Death: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sterelny, K. and Kitcher, P. (1988) “The Return of the Gene.” Journal of Philosophy 85: 335–58. Stich, S. P. (1975) “Introduction: The Idea of Innateness,” in S. P. Stich (ed.), Innate Ideas, Berkeley: University of California Press: bibl. Stich, S. P. (1978) “Empiricism, Innateness, and Linguistic Universals.” Philosophical Studies (April) 33(3): 273–86. Stich, S. P. (1983) From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
100
fiona cowie
Stich, S. P. (1990) The Fragmentation of Reason: Preface to a Pragmatic Theory of Cognitive Evaluation. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Wimsatt, W. C. (1986) “Developmental Constraints, Generative Entrenchment, and the Innateacquired Distinction,” in W. Bechtel (ed.), Integrating Scientific Disciplines, Dordrecht: Martinus-Nijhoff. Wimsatt, W. C. (1999). “Generativity, Entrenchment, Evolution and Innateness: Philosophy, Evolutionary Biology, and Conceptual Foundations of Science,” in V. G. Hardcastle (ed.), Where Biology Meets Psychology: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Woodward, J. (2003) Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation. New York: Oxford University Press.
the use of intuitions in philosophy
101
6 A Defense of the Use of Intuitions in Philosophy ERNEST SOSA
Although some forms of reasoning are innate, others are culturally derived. That being so, there may be significant cultural variation in how we reason.1 If patterns of reasoning vary from culture to culture, accordingly, why should we prefer our own? One might naturally wonder: What makes one set of such patterns of reasoning, one “system” of reasoning “better than another, and how are we to tell which system of reasoning is best?” (572). In a series of publications, Stephen Stich has taken up this question and has argued vigorously against “analytic epistemology.” He denies in particular that a subject’s system of reasoning is right in virtue of standing in reflective equilibrium. Of course, this is not the only account of the rightness of a system of reasoning on offer in analytic epistemology. Competing accounts might appeal rather to the truth-reliability of the system of reasoning. How are we to decide among such accounts? Stich uses “the term analytic epistemology to denote any epistemological project that takes the choice between competing justificational rules or competing criteria of rightness to turn on conceptual or linguistic analysis” (578).2 Given a system of reasoning in competition with ours, how do we defend our preference for our own? The analytic epistemologist proposes that we engage in conceptual analysis, aiming to elaborate a criterion of rightness for systems of reasoning. With this criterion, we can then assess our system and compare it with competitors. According to Stich, that is “very wrong.” For our evaluative epistemic concepts, such as “justification” and “rightness of reasoning,” are themselves likely to vary from culture to culture (579). So we can hardly defend our own system of reasoning through how well it accords with our criteria of rightness, if criteria of rightness also vary culturally. This seems especially problematic if the competing system accords no less well with its culture’s criteria than does our system with our criteria. Are we driven to a kind of relativism according to which our most basic criteria of rightness determine what is right only relative to our culture? Not quite. Indeed this tack would be a “disastrous mistake,” since a system of reasoning is assessable by reference to values other than epistemic justification, values such as happiness, prediction,
102
ernest sosa
and control. We can ask whether our systems of reasoning foster “happiness, power, or the rest. And if they do not, we can explore alternatives that do a better job, though there is of course no guarantee that all of these values can be maximized together” (580). We are told, finally, that “the program of analytic epistemology views conceptual analysis or explication as a stopping place in disputes about how we should go about the business of cognition.” But this is firmly rejected as epistemic xenophobia. Many of us do care whether our system of reasoning leads to “beliefs that are true, or give us power over nature, or lead to happiness. But only those with a deep and free-floating conservatism in matters epistemic will care whether their cognitive processes are sanctioned by the evaluative standards that happen to be woven into our language” (581). Optional criteria of rightness are supposedly woven into a community’s language in such a way that adoption of that language imports those criteria, whereas adoption of another language imports competing criteria. To allow linguistic or conceptual analysis to settle which are the right criteria is therefore at bottom simply to insist on our linguistic or conceptual community’s optional criteria of rightness. Do we say that these criteria are right because they are the ones writ into our language? That now seems tantamount to saying that they are right because they are ours, a descent to xenophobic conservatism. If we cut through the bits about linguistic analysis, then the analytic epistemologist is supposed to reason as follows. (AEA) Analytic Epistemology Argument (According to Stich) 1 2 3 4
My system of reasoning, S, is in line with my community’s. S is right according to my community’s criteria of rightness, C. These criteria of rightness, C, are correct because they are endorsed by my community. Therefore, S is right.
To cut through the bits about linguistic analysis is to leave aside reasoning such as the following: a
Linguistic analysis reveals the meaning content of terms such as ‘justified’, ‘right’, and ‘correct’ as applied respectively to beliefs, systems of reasoning, and criteria of rightness. b To adopt a given meaning for such a positively evaluative or normative term involves adopting specific optional criteria or standards that specify substantive conditions for falling within the extension of the term. c These terms being positively evaluative or normative, it is part of their semantics that they serve to express pro-attitudes; and adopting them involves adopting general pro-attitudes towards the satisfaction of the relevant substantive conditions. d To adopt a language containing such terms is hence ipso facto to adopt such optional pro-attitudes. e Accordingly, to individually endorse some such pro-attitude because it is thus involved in the adoption of the common language is to endorse it because it is adopted
the use of intuitions in philosophy
103
in common by one’s linguistic community, although it is an optional attitude, one not shared by other possible and even actual communities. It is some such reasoning that would show how linguistic analysis, by revealing the meanings of our evaluative or normative terms, thereby reveals optional substantive pro-attitudes. And it is this, presumably, that underlies the charge of xenophobia against analysts. For consider why it is that analysts uphold the meanings of our shared evaluative or normative terms. The reason is that they are the meanings assigned by our linguistic community to these terms expressive of our pro-attitudes. And upholding those meanings is now said to involve upholding also certain optional pro-attitudes. And now these appear to be upheld in virtue of being those commonly adopted by our linguistic community. Such reasoning requires controversial claims or assumptions, however, prominent among which is (b) that the adoption of a particular meaning for a positively evaluative or normative term necessarily involves adopting some optional standards or criteria yoked by meaning to the relevant pro-attitudes. It is at best controversial that our ordinary normative or evaluative terms thus involve, by their very meaning, certain optional, substantive criteria or standards. In any case, we can sidestep this controversial issue by focusing directly on the criteria themselves. Once having discerned the optional criteria, so as to hold them up separately for consideration on their own, the question will remain whether to adopt them. To say that intuition speaks in favor of doing so, either directly or via the deliverances of reflective equilibrium, is now separable from mere ethnocentric xenophobia. For the appeal to intuition here, once we are holding the criteria or standards themselves in focus, is quite distinct from any conservative appeal to community consensus. If I believe that 2 + 2 = 4 because this is obvious upon consideration, then the reason why I believe it, its obviousness upon consideration, is quite distinct from the fact that everybody else also agrees. Accordingly, any reasoning based on assumptions such as (b) seems best avoided. And that is why I here put it aside in order to focus on the core of the attack on analytic epistemology as xenophobic, a core that rests on the attribution to analytic epistemology of argument AEA. How then might one conceive of analytic epistemology so that it can avoid AEA? One project of analytic epistemology is a priori theorizing about the nature, conditions, and extent of human knowledge, rationality, and justification. Other such projects fall under the more naturalist epistemology that studies contingent ways in which we humans can and do satisfy conditions revealed by reflection as necessary for human knowledge of one or another variety. This deepens our understanding of the varieties of human perceptual, or mnemonic, or inferential, or a priori knowledge, et cetera. However that may be, reflection and discussion can be favored as one route to epistemic insight. At least since Plato, philosophical analysis has relied on thought experiments as a way to test hypotheses about the nature and conditions of human knowledge, and other rational desiderata, such as justice, happiness, and the rest. Any such practice gives prime importance to intuitions concerning not only hypothetical cases but also principles in their own right. The objective is to make coherent
104
ernest sosa
sense of the contents that we intuit by adopting general accounts that will best comport with those intuitions and explain their truth. Note that this does not require semantic ascent or specifically linguistic analysis any more in philosophy than in mathematics, or even in empirical science. Semantic ascent does have a place in epistemology if only when we attempt to understand persistent disagreement by appeal to ambiguity or context-dependence. Where discussion proceeds smoothly enough, and disagreement is either explicable or recedes through discussion, there semantic ascent is unnecessary. It would of course be illuminating to understand the sources of rational belief in philosophy generally and in epistemology more specifically. Epistemologists would doubtless welcome the kind of ascent involved in the epistemology of epistemology, where we take up the epistemic standing of our beliefs about epistemic standing. What sort of theorizing is there in epistemology? How do we discover that a belief can be both true and justified without being knowledge, when we had once been so sure of the opposite? It is here that the appeal to intuition seems in place. We feel confident that if someone deduces a true conclusion from a justifiedly believed false premise, his justified true belief in that conclusion will not thereby constitute knowledge. So we can see, in a way that seems intuitively obvious, something previously overlooked: namely, a way in which someone could arrive at a justified true belief that would not thereby constitute knowledge. Nor need that be a matter of linguistic intuition. There is no semantic ascent in the preceding paragraph. We do of course need to presuppose that we have a common understanding of the words I have written, if we are to take ourselves to be communicating properly by means of them. But this is nothing peculiar to philosophy. It is the normal background presupposition of linguistic communication generally. The question is not just whether “knowledge” applies to the protagonist in a certain example. The question is whether the protagonist who satisfied the conditions specified in the example would know. To see that this is the interesting question in epistemology, we need only retreat to our own reflection, leaving behind any kind of dialogue, whether in journal, conference, seminar, or hallway, and just entertain the question reflectively in foro interno. The question we then consider is whether someone who believed a true conclusion, but only because he had derived it from a justified false belief, would know in believing that true conclusion. We can of course consider also whether in our idiolect of the moment it would be correct to apply our word ‘knows’ to such a justified believer of a truth. But this is a different question, though one now with an equivalent answer. That the questions are different may be seen by comparing this. If we consider a hypothetical case of a triangle on a plane surface, and we consider whether that triangle is a square, we know the answer to that question and we know it because it is intuitively obvious. Of course, one can also consider the question whether the word ‘square’ in one’s idiolect of the moment would apply to that figure. And this is clearly a different question, even if it must receive an equivalent answer. That I must give the two questions equivalent answers follows from the fact, concerning my idiolect of this moment, that so long as I use this idiolect properly, anything that I correctly characterize as ‘square’ must be square, and vice versa. Nevertheless, it is
the use of intuitions in philosophy
105
equally obvious that the being square of any figure is a different condition from its being correctly characterizable as ‘square’ in my idiolect of the moment. Fine, it may be responded, but still our way of knowing the facts of philosophy has to be through knowing facts about proper usage. How unpromising this is may be gauged by comparing the analogous claim about our knowledge of the triangular figure. Do we know that the triangle on our imaginary plane is no square by knowing that our word ‘square’ does not apply to it? Why ever think this? Surely we don’t know an apple we see to be red by knowing that our word ‘red’ applies to it. The redness of the apple is something different from the applicability of our word, nor do we know the former by reasoning from the latter. And the same seems true of the squareness of the figure. Take my knowledge that my word ‘square’ does not apply to a hypothetical figure that I have stipulated to be a ‘triangle’. How indeed do I know that my word ‘square’ does not apply to that figure, supposing that my word ‘triangle’ by stipulation does apply to it? Must I not know at a minimum that my word ‘square’ is a different word from my word ‘triangle’? And how do I know this? By intuition, perhaps? Will it now be said that the way I know this is by knowing that my word for my word ‘square’, namely “square,” applies to my word ‘square’ but not to my word ‘triangle’? This way lies vicious regress. It is hard to avoid appeal to direct intuition sooner or later. I mean intuition that is not just a material mode reflection of some metalinguistic knowledge. Once we allow direct intuition as a source of data for philosophical reflection, we make room for a way of understanding analytic epistemology that has no truck with the xenophobic conservatism of AEA. According to this alternative, the individual philosopher has intuitive access to data such as the Gettier examples, and can take these data into account in assessing criteria of rightness. Once he shares his thoughts with others, the philosopher may encounter apparent disagreement. And this in a way will also constitute relevant data. If it is real disagreement, not just apparent disagreement in misleading linguistic garb, then some explanation will be desirable. If the thinker’s own side of the disagreement is to prevail rationally, then, it will be helpful to have some theory of error, of how the other side has fallen into error. This is one reason why it is better to attain agreement with others who share one’s philosophical questions. The reason need not be just xenophobic conservatism. Nor need one think that the very fact of the agreement among us is a fundamental source of the justification for the coincident beliefs. On the contrary, the main reason for engaging in dialectic may be to learn from others in an exchange of reasons. Preferably, such discussion will yield agreement, which will save us the trouble of elaborating a theory of error. The explanation of agreement as joint, rational discerning of a truth is confirmatory of our own belief, which then needs no special defense through a theory of error. In more recent work, Stich has attacked philosophical intuitions directly with the help of collaborators and with the ostensible support of extensive experimental results. I would like now to discuss these results and the attack based on them. The project is described and its results reported in “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions,” by Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich, to whom I will refer collectively as WNS.3
106
ernest sosa
WNS have conducted an experimental study of two empirical hypotheses, the truth of which would allegedly pose a “serious problem” for epistemology in the analytic tradition. In particular, each would pose a problem for “Intuition Driven Romanticism.” This is any strategy that takes epistemic intuitions as input and delivers epistemic normative claims as output, and does so in such a way that significantly different inputs would yield significantly different outputs. WNS investigate the following two hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: Epistemic intuitions vary from culture to culture. Hypothesis 2: Epistemic intuitions vary from one socioeconomic group to another. More strictly, the hypotheses investigated are, presumably, that culture and socioeconomic class affect the epistemic intuitions of members. Accidental variation would have no real bearing. Found variation is relevant only if it cannot be put down to mere chance variation. Moreover it cannot be just variation in intuitions that matters. If people from different cultures or socioeconomic groups tend to be interested in different subject matter, this will of course entail difference in actual intuitions, with one group never even considering the contents of interest to the other. Clearly, the relevant variation must pertain to the same contents. But even this does not yet adequately specify the relevant variation. For epistemic intuitions may vary from group to group only in strength, or in the numbers of those from the different groups who share a given intuition. All such variation is compatible with total agreement across the cultures and socioeconomic groups in the sense that everyone from any of the cultures or groups who has an epistemic intuition re
agrees on whether p. There may be more or less variation in the strength of the intuition, but either everyone who intuits either way intuits that p or else everyone who intuits either way intuits that not-p. If so, there may remain considerable variation in the number of those who intuit either way or in the strength with which they do so, but whatever such variation may remain does not obviously pose a problem for analytic epistemology. Presumably, the main problem would derive not just from any such variation, but rather from conflict. There must be enough people from one side with a strong enough positive intuition in conflict with enough people from the other side with a strong enough negative intuition. What is more, they must have conflicting intuitions on the same contents. Given all this, I have some doubts about the study and its ostensible results. In each instance the study presented an example to two groups different culturally or socioeconomically, who were asked to say whether a protagonist in the example knew a certain fact or only believed it. Striking statistical variation was found in several instances. Consider first a few of the examples: 1 (From p. 443.) Bob has a friend, Jill, who has driven a Buick for many years. Bob therefore thinks that Jill drives an American car. He is not aware, however, that her Buick has recently been stolen, and he is also not aware that Jill has replaced it with a Pontiac, which is a different kind of American car. Does Bob really know that Jill drives an American car, or does he only believe it?
the use of intuitions in philosophy REALLY KNOWS
107
ONLY BELIEVES
2 (From p. 444.) It’s clear that smoking cigarettes increases the likelihood of getting cancer. However, there is now a great deal of evidence that just using nicotine by itself without smoking (for instance, by taking a nicotine pill) does not increase the likelihood of getting cancer. Jim knows about this evidence and as a result, he believes that using nicotine does not increase the likelihood of getting cancer. It is possible that the tobacco companies dishonestly made up and publicized this evidence that using nicotine does not increase the likelihood of cancer, and that the evidence is really false and misleading. Now, the tobacco companies did not actually make up this evidence, but Jim is not aware of this fact. Does Jim really know that using nicotine doesn’t increase the likelihood of getting cancer, or does he only believe it? REALLY KNOWS
ONLY BELIEVES
3 (From p. 445.) Mike is a young man visiting the zoo with his son, and when they come to the zebra cage, Mike points to the animal and says “that’s a zebra.” Mike is right – it is a zebra. However, as the older people in his community know, there are lots of ways that people can be tricked into believing things that aren’t true. Indeed, the older people in the community know that it’s possible that zoo authorities could cleverly disguise mules to look just like zebras, and people viewing the animals would not be able to tell the difference. If the animal that Mike called a zebra had really been such a cleverly painted mule, Mike still would have thought that it was a zebra. Does Mike really know that the animal is a zebra, or does he only believe it? REALLY KNOWS
ONLY BELIEVES
The responses to these and other examples were found to vary significantly with cultural or socioeconomic background. It is this that allegedly presents a problem for analytic epistemology. But the following reflections suggest otherwise. 1 It is not clear exactly what question the subjects disagree about. In each case, the question would be of the form: “Would anyone who satisfied condition C with regard to proposition
know that p or only believe it?” It is hearing or reading a description of the example that enables the subjects to fill in the relevant C and
. But can we be sure that they end up with exactly the same C and
? Here is a reason for doubt. When we read fiction we import a great deal that is not explicit in the text. We import a lot that is normally presupposed about the physical and social structure of the situation as we follow the author’s lead in our own imaginative construction. And the same seems plausibly true about the hypothetical cases presented to our WNS subjects. Given that these subjects are sufficiently different culturally and socioeconomically, they may, because of this, import different assumptions as they follow in their own imaginative construction the lead of the author of the examples, and this may result in their filling the crucial C differently. Perhaps, for example, subjects
108
ernest sosa
who differ enough culturally or socioeconomically will import different background beliefs as to the trustworthiness of American corporations or zoos, or different background assumptions about how likely it is that an American who has long owned an American car will continue to own a car and indeed an American car. For some if not all of the examples, I can’t myself feel sure that C stays constant across the cultural or socioeconomic divide. But if C varies across the divide, then the subjects may not after all disagree about the very same content. 2 A second reason for doubt pertains to the choices offered. We are all familiar with multiple-choice tests where we are asked to choose the option closest to the truth. Now, the choices presented to our subjects were just (a) S knows that p, and (b) S only believes [and does not know] that p. But there are other logically possible options that were left out. It is compatible with all the results obtained that if the test had included a third choice, one that it could logically have included, then there would have been unanimity across all the groups, or at least substantially less divergence. Here is one such third choice: (c) we are not told enough in the description of the example to be able to tell whether the subject knows or only believes. What I am suggesting is that for at least some if not all of the examples, this might be the option of choice across the board, even when subjects import what they can properly import from their background knowledge. If this turned out to be so, that would considerably diminish the interest and importance of whatever differences may remain in the distribution of answers across divides. 3 Finally, WNS explain the conflicting intuitions across the East-Asian/Western divide by appeal to what they call epistemic vectors (p. 457). East Asians (EAs) are said to be “much more sensitive to communitarian factors, while Westerners (Ws) respond to more individualistic ones” (p. 451). And the disagreement may now perhaps be explained in a way that casts no doubt on intuition as a source of epistemic justification or even knowledge. Why not explain the disagreement as merely verbal? Why not say that across the divide we find somewhat different concepts picked out by terminology that is either ambiguous or at least contextually divergent? On the EA side, the more valuable status that a belief might attain is one that necessarily involves communitarian factors of one or another sort, factors that are absent or minimized in the status picked out by Ws as necessary for “knowledge.” If there is such divergence in meaning as we cross the relevant divides, then once again we fail to have disagreement on the very same propositions. In saying that the subject does not know, the EAs are saying something about lack of some relevant communitarian status. In saying that the subject does know, the Ws are not denying that; they are simply focusing on a different status, one that they regard as desirable even if it does not meet the high communitarian requirements important to the EAs. So again we avoid any real disagreement on the very same propositions. The proposition affirmed by the EAs as intuitively true is not the very same as the proposition denied by the Ws as intuitively false. In a more recent paper,4 WNS have responded to this sort of doubt by conceding the possibility of such conceptual variation combined with terminological uniformity, while countering that the variation would still be a problem for analytic epistemology.
the use of intuitions in philosophy
109
In the philosophical tradition, skepticism is taken to be worrisome because it denies that knowledge is possible, and that’s bad because knowledge, it is assumed, is something very important. On Plato’s view, “wisdom and knowledge are the highest of human things” . . . and many people, both philosophers and ordinary folk, would agree. But obviously, if there are many concepts of knowledge, and if these concepts have different extensions, it can’t be the case that all of them are the highest of human things. [It has been argued that] . . . the arguments for skepticism in the philosophical tradition pose a serious challenge to the possibility of having what high SES [Socio-Economic Status], white westerners with lots of philosophical training call ‘knowledge’. But those arguments give us no reason to think that we can’t have what other people – East Asians, Indians, low SES people, or scientists who have never studied philosophy – would call ‘knowledge’. And, of course, those skeptical arguments give us no reason at all to think that what high SES white western philosophers call ‘knowledge’ is any better, or more important, or more desirable, or more useful than what these other folks call ‘knowledge’, or that it is any closer to ‘the highest of human things’. Without some reason to think that what white, western, high SES philosophers call ‘knowledge’ is any more valuable, desirable or useful than any of the other commodities that other groups call ‘knowledge’ it is hard to see why we should care if we can’t have it.5
To my eyes this line of reasoning boils down to the following: If what is picked out by the cognates of ‘knowledge’ in various cultures and socioeconomic groups varies enough, this itself gives rise to doubt that we should continue to value what is picked out by our epistemic vocabulary of “knowledge,” “justification,” et cetera. This line of argument I find baffling. I wonder how it is any better than saying to someone who values owning money banks that since others mean river banks by ‘banks’ his valuing as he does is now in doubt, and that he needs to show how owning money banks is better than owning river banks. Why need he suppose that owning money banks is better? He just thinks it’s quite good as far as it goes. Maybe owning river banks is also good, maybe even better in many cases. And the same would seem reasonable when the commodities are all epistemic. The fact that we value one commodity, called ‘knowledge’ or ‘justification’ among us, is no obstacle to our also valuing a different commodity, valued by some other community under that same label. And it is also compatible with our learning to value that second commodity once we are brought to understand it, even if we previously had no opinion on the matter. 4 Nevertheless, it might be concluded, we do get a real disagreement between the EAs and the Ws when the former insist on communitarian standards for the formation of beliefs while the latter do not. And this raises an interesting question about the content of epistemic normative claims. When we say that a belief is justified, epistemically justified, or even amounts to knowledge, are we issuing a normative verdict that this is a belief one should form or sustain? Might there not be more valuable or important things that we might be doing with our time than forming a belief on that question? Are we even saying so much as this: that if we leave aside other desiderata proper to a flourishing
110
ernest sosa
life, and focus only on epistemic desiderata, then we should be forming or sustaining this belief? I doubt that our talk of knowledge and epistemic justification is properly understood along these lines. Just consider the fact that one can obsessively accumulate all sorts of silly facts that one has no business attending to at all, that are not worthy of one’s attention. One might out of the blue decide to count the number of coffee beans remaining in one’s coffee bag and if one proceeds with due care and diligence one may attain epistemic justification of a very high grade that there are now n beans in that bag. Is this something that one should believe at that time? Well, in one clear sense it is not. Clearly one should not even concern oneself with that question, so it is false that one should be conducting one’s intellectual life in such a way that one then returns an affirmative answer to that question. The whole question is beneath one’s notice. One should not be forming any opinion, positive or negative, on that question. One has better things to do with one’s time, even if we restrict ourselves to properly epistemic concerns. That being so, it is far from clear that the EA emphasis on communitarian factors will necessarily reveal itself in a proclivity to form beliefs that satisfy such factors, or in a normative approval of beliefs that satisfy such factors, or even in a normative approval of such beliefs once we restrict ourselves to epistemic concerns. Silly beliefs about trivial matters can attain the very highest levels of epistemic justification and certain knowledge even if these are not beliefs that one should be bothering with, not even if one’s concerns are purely epistemic. Thus, the supposed normativity of epistemology seems rather like the normativity of a good gun or a good shot. This normativity is restricted to the sphere of guns and shots in some way that isolates it from other important concerns, even from whether there should be guns at all, or shots. At least that seems clear for a discipline of epistemology whose scope is the nature, conditions, and extent of knowledge. If ours is the right model for understanding the normativity proper to such epistemology, then in speaking of a justified belief we are saying something rather like “Good shot!” which someone might sincerely and correctly say despite being opposed to gun possession and to shooting.6 And now any vestige of conflict across the divides is in doubt. For now there seems no more reason to postulate such conflict than there would be when we compare someone who rates cars in respect of how economical they are with someone who rates them in respect of how fast they can go. Even when we take all such considerations into account, clearly we will fall short if we leave out of account the sort of disagreement that divides the superstitious from the enlightened. The enlightened are not just saying that the superstitious value beliefs that satisfy certain conditions (derivation from tea leaves, or crystal balls, or certain writings) such that the enlightened are just focused on different conditions. No, the enlightened object to the conditions elevated by the superstitious. But they do not necessarily object to the formation of such beliefs as a means to inner peace or community solidarity. They may object this way too, but they need not, and probably should not, at least in some actual cases of primitive cultures, and in many cases of conceivable cultures. What the enlightened object to is the notion that the sort of status elevated by the superstitious
the use of intuitions in philosophy
111
constitutes epistemic value in the actual world. And this is presumably because they see superstitious status as insufficiently connected with truth. Compare a culture that loves the way a certain sort of gun sounds, even though it is woefully unreliable and far inferior to bows and arrows. The visiting military advisor need not object to their preference for that sound, nor need he object to their taking the gun into battle in preference to their bows and arrows. He need not object to that all things considered. That would be at most the business of a political advisor; actually, not even he may be in a position to make any such all-things-considered objection. The military advisor’s advice is restricted to informing his clients on what would produce the best results in the battlefield with regard to military objectives. The political advisor’s advice would take that into account, but would go beyond it to consider also broader political objectives. And of course even that will not cover the full span of considerable objectives. Something similar seems true of epistemology. Epistemic justification concerns specifically epistemic values, such as truth, surely, and perhaps others not entirely reducible to truth, such as understanding. Even once we put aside inner peace, happiness, solidarity, and technological control, as not properly epistemic values, however, various remaining statuses of a belief may still qualify as epistemic, such as the following: • • • • • •
being true; being a truth-tracker (would be held if true, not if not true); being safe (would not be held unless true); being virtuously based (derives from a truth-reliable source); being rationally defensible by the believer; being reflectively defensible by the believer (rationally defensible in respect of the truth-reliability of its sources); • being virtuously based through a virtue recognized as such in the believer’s community (and, perhaps, properly recognized as such). Interestingly enough, it is not just people from different cultures or different socioeconomic groups who apparently diverge in rational intuitions on epistemic questions. Notoriously, contemporary analytic epistemologists have disagreed among themselves, nearly all professors at colleges or universities, nearly all English-speaking Westerners. On one side are internalist, evidentialist, classical foundationalists, on the other externalists of various stripes (process reliabilists, trackers, proper functionalists, some virtue epistemologists). It is increasingly clear, and increasingly recognized, that the supposed intuitive disagreements across this divide are to a large extent spurious, that different epistemic values are in play, and that much of the disagreement will yield to a linguistic recognition of that fact, perhaps through a distinction between “animal” knowledge and “unreflective” justification, on one side, and “reflective” knowledge and justification on the other.
112
ernest sosa
Notes and References 1 ‘Cognitive state’ is Stich’s term for belief-like information-storing mental states, while ‘cognitive processes’ is his “cover term whose extension includes our own reasoning processes, the updating of our beliefs as a result of perception, and the more or less similar processes that occur in other organisms.” See p. 571 of his “Reflective Equilibrium, Analytic Epistemology, and the Problem of Cognitive Diversity,” Synthese 74 (1988): 391–413; the references here are to its reprinting in E. Sosa and J. Kim (eds.), Epistemology: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2000), pp. 571–83. Parenthetical references in the main text will be to this publication. My own preference is to stretch the terms ‘belief ’ and ‘reasoning’ to cover these extensions. So the beliefs and reasonings to be discussed in what follows count as such in correspondingly broad senses. Reasoning, for example, is a “cognitive process” that bases a belief or “cognitive state” on reasons, i.e., on other mental states to which the subject gives some weight, pro or con, in forming or sustaining that belief. ‘Basing’, finally, is quasi-technical. Ordinarily we would speak more naturally of acting for a reason, or of being angry or in some other emotional state for a reason. Decisions and beliefs are naturally said to be based on reasons, however, and I am here extending the use of that terminology to cover all cases in which one is in a mental state for a reason, or for some reasons. (And it is better yet to speak of one’s being in that mental state for a reason that then “motivates” one to be in that state. This is to distinguish the case of interest from that in which one is in the state in question “for a reason” only in the sense that “there is” a reason why one is in that state, though it is not a reason that one has, much less one that motivates one to be in that state.) 2 It is a great pleasure for me to contribute to this well-deserved tribute to Steve Stich, long-time colleague and true friend, and iconoclast of analytic epistemology. Here I engage only one of the challenges in his stimulating and influential work. 3 In The Philosophy of Alvin Goldman, in a special issue of Philosophical Topics, ed. Christopher S. Hill, Hilary Kornblith, and Tom Senor, Vol. 29, Nos. 1 and 2; pp. 429–61. (Parenthetical page references in the main text will now be to this article.) 4 “Meta-skepticism: Meditations in Ethno-epistemology,” in S. Luper (ed.), The Skeptics (Ashgate, 2003), with a different order of authors, now listed as Nichols, Stich, and Weinberg. 5 Ibid., p. 245. 6 This leaves open the possibility of a broader concern with the kind of knowledge we should seek in a good life. Wisdom might be one such, something closely connected with how to live well, individually and collectively. Another such might be a world view that provides deep and broad understanding of major departments of proper human curiosity, which of course cries out for an account of what makes curiosity proper.
cognitive and epistemic diversity
113
7 Reflections on Cognitive and Epistemic Diversity: Can a Stich in Time Save Quine? MICHAEL BISHOP
In “Epistemology Naturalized,” Quine famously suggests that epistemology, properly understood, “simply falls into place as a chapter of psychology and hence of natural science” (1969: 82). Since the appearance of Quine’s seminal article, virtually every epistemologist, including the later Quine (1986: 664), has repudiated the idea that a normative discipline like epistemology could be reduced to a purely descriptive discipline like psychology. Working epistemologists no longer take Quine’s vision in “Epistemology Naturalized” seriously. In this chapter, I will explain why I think this is a mistake. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Stephen Stich published a number of works that criticized analytic epistemology and defended a pragmatic view of cognitive assessment (1985, 1987, 1990, 1993). In the past five years, Stich, Jonathan Weinberg, and Shaun Nichols (henceforth, WNS) have put forward a number of empirically based arguments criticizing epistemology in the analytic tradition (Weinberg, Nichols and Stich 2001; Nichols, Stich and Weinberg 2003). My thesis is that the most powerful features of Stich’s epistemological views vindicate Quine’s now moribund naturalism. I expect this thesis to be met with incredulity – not least from Stich, who has explicitly argued that the reductionist view standardly attributed to Quine is a non-starter (1993: 3–5). The chapter will proceed as follows. In section 1, I interpret Stich’s epistemology in a way that provides a prima facie vindication of Quine’s naturalism. In section 2, I take a slight detour to consider and reply to a family of arguments that aim to show that giving up the analytic project in the way Stich suggests is ultimately self-defeating. In section 3, I propose a reliabilist approach to epistemic evaluation that I argue is superior on pragmatic grounds to Stich’s view. In the final section, I bring the various threads together and suggest that the sturdiest elements of Stich’s epistemology drive us to the vision Quine advocated in “Epistemology Naturalized.”
114
michael bishop
1 Stich’s Epistemology At its heart, Stich’s view consists of two empirical hypotheses. 1 Cognitive diversity: There are significant and systematic differences in how different people reason about the world. 2 Epistemic diversity: There are significant and systematic differences in the epistemic concepts, judgments, and practices different people employ in evaluating cognition. Cognitive diversity (the subject of 1.1) raises what is, for Stich, the fundamental problem of epistemology: How are we to evaluate the various ways different people can and do reason? And epistemic diversity (the subject of 1.2) undermines the most popular method philosophers have used to solve that problem: by developing theories that capture our commonsense epistemic judgments (i.e., our epistemic intuitions). But if conceptual analysis, the analysis of our epistemological concepts, cannot deliver a solution to the fundamental problem of epistemology, what’s left? Stich’s epistemological writings suggest two alternative approaches (the subject of 1.3). One approach is explicitly argued for in Stich’s earlier writings, and the other is implicitly suggested in the later, coauthored pieces. While I will argue that there may be some tension in these approaches, they both vindicate Quine.
1.1 The challenge of cognitive diversity Cognitive diversity holds that there are significant and systematic differences in how different people reason about the world. In the earlier pieces, Stich does not offer much empirical evidence for thinking that cognitive diversity is true. In Fragmentation, for example, Stich tries “to make the world safe for irrationality” by criticizing two arguments against cognitive diversity (1990: 17). I will not pursue these defensive maneuvers because in the 15 years since Fragmentation, psychologists have amassed a good deal of evidence in support of cognitive diversity. Richard Nisbett and his colleagues have identified some significant differences in the thought patterns of East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) and non-Asian Westerners (from the US and Europe) (Nisbett, Peng, Choi and Norenzayan 2001; Nisbett 2003). The reasoning of Westerners tends to be more analytic, “involving detachment of the object from its context, a tendency to focus on attributes of the object to assign it to categories, and a preference for using rules about the categories to explain and predict the object’s behavior. Inferences rest in part on the practice of decontextualizing structure from content, the use of formal logic, and avoidance of contradiction.” The reasoning of East Asians tends to be more holistic, involving an orientation to the context or field as a whole, including attention to relationships between a focal object and the field, and a preference for explaining and predicting events on the basis of such relationships. Holistic approaches rely on experience-based knowledge rather than on abstract logic and are dialectical, meaning that there is an emphasis on
cognitive and epistemic diversity
115
change, a recognition of contradiction and of the need for multiple perspectives, and a search for the “Middle Way” between opposing propositions. (Nisbett et al. 2001: 293)
A few examples will help make this distinction concrete. In the “Michigan Fish” study, Japanese and American subjects viewed animated underwater scenes and then reported what they had seen (Masuda and Nisbett 2001). The first statement by Americans usually referred to the fish, while the first statement by Japanese usually referred to background elements, e.g., “There was a lake or a pond.” The Japanese made about 70 percent more statements than Americans about background aspects of the environment, and 100 percent more statements about relationships with inanimate aspects of the environment, e.g., “A big fish swam past some gray seaweed” (Nisbett et al. 2001: 297). In this study, the Westerners subjects focused on objects detached from their background, while the Japanese subjects focused on the context and the relationships between objects in the field. Referring to this study, Nisbett has joked that for Westerners, if it doesn’t move, it doesn’t exist. In another fascinating study (Peng and Nisbett 1999), American and Chinese subjects were shown conflicting statements, such as: A A survey found that older inmates are more likely to be ones who are serving long sentences because they have committed severely violent crimes. The authors concluded that they should be held in prison even in the cases of a prison population crisis. B A report on the prison overcrowding issue suggests that older inmates are less likely to commit new crimes. Therefore, if there is a prison population crisis, they should be released first. Subjects were asked to rate the plausibility of one or both of these claims. For each pair of statements studied, American and Chinese subjects agreed about which was more plausible (in this case, A). Who gives higher plausibility ratings to A, subjects who rate A by itself, or subjects who rate both A and B together? The answer is different for American and Chinese subjects. American subjects gave higher plausibility ratings to A when they rated both A and B, while Chinese subjects gave higher plausibility ratings to A when they rated it by itself. In the face of conflicting claims, American subjects become more polarized while Chinese subjects become less polarized (Nisbett et al. 2001: 302). East Asians tend to avail themselves of a “Middle Way” whereas Westerners tend to insist on “My Way.” After reviewing the evidence for cognitive diversity, Nisbett and his colleagues conclude that “literally different cognitive processes are often invoked by East Asians and Westerners dealing with the same problem” (Nisbett et al. 2001: 305). Nisbett argues that these cognitive differences are explained by some deep and long-standing cultural differences between East Asian and Western societies (Nisbett 2003: chs. 1–3). In support of this hypothesis, Nisbett and his colleagues note that “Asians move radically in an American direction after a generation or less in the United States” (Nisbett et al. 2001: 307). A fair reading of the literature suggests that Stich’s defense of cognitive diversity was prescient.
116
michael bishop
Why does cognitive diversity matter to epistemology? “It is the prospect of cognitive diversity among normal folk that lends a genuine, almost existential, urgency to the project of cognitive evaluation” (1990: 74). Cognitive diversity motivates a project Stich sees as fundamental to epistemology: How to evaluate the various ways different people can and do reason. Most contemporary epistemology focuses on defending theories and theses about epistemological categories that apply to individual belief tokens (i.e., knowledge or justification). But a theory that assesses how different people reason will not focus on the evaluation of belief tokens. Instead, it focuses on the evaluation of methods of inquiry. It tries to say which ways of going about the quest for knowledge – which ways of building and rebuilding one’s doxastic house – are the good ones, which the bad ones, and why. Since reasoning is central to the quest for knowledge, the evaluation of various strategies of reasoning often plays a major role in the assessment of inquiry. (1990: 1, emphases added)
As Stich notes, this project has been pursued by Bacon, Descartes, Mill, Carnap and Popper, among others. But it differs substantially from the projects pursued by almost all contemporary epistemologists. Rather than provide a theory for the evaluation of belief tokens, Stich aims to provide a way to evaluate methods of inquiry, ways of acquiring and revising beliefs, reasoning strategies.1, 2
1.2 Epistemic diversity Epistemic diversity holds that there are significant and systematic differences in the epistemic concepts, judgments, and practices different people employ in evaluating cognition. The early arguments do not offer much in the way of evidence for epistemic diversity. In Fragmentation, for example, Stich raises the possibility of epistemic diversity in order to criticize the analytic approach to epistemology. The main aim of the later arguments is to proffer empirical evidence for epistemic diversity. In a typical study, WNS gave the following Gettier-style example to a group of Western subjects and nonWestern subjects: Bob has a friend, Jill, who has driven a Buick for many years. Bob therefore thinks that Jill drives an American car. He is not aware, however, that her Buick has recently been stolen, and he is also not aware that Jill has replaced it with a Pontiac, which is a different kind of American car. Does Bob really know that Jill drives an American car, or does he only believe it? REALLY KNOWS ONLY BELIEVES A large majority of Western subjects gave the answer sanctioned by analytic epistemologists (“only believes”) but a majority of East Asians and a majority of subjects from India gave the opposite answer (“really knows”) (2001: 443). WNS also found cases in which there were significant differences between the epistemic judgments of people of high socioeconomic status (SES) and of low SES (2001: 447–8).
cognitive and epistemic diversity
117
WNS emphasize that they did not merely find random variation in people’s epistemic judgments across cultures. The cognitive differences that Nisbett and his colleagues found between East Asians and Westerners are reflected in WNS’s epistemic diversity findings. This consilience suggests some pretty deep differences in how people in different cultures evaluate reasoning. WNS argue that the differences between Ws [Westerners] and EAs [East Asians] look to be both systematic and explainable. EAs and Ws appear to be sensitive to different features of the situation, different epistemic vectors, as we call them. EAs are much more sensitive to communitarian factors, while Ws respond to more individualistic ones. Moreover, Nisbett and his colleagues have given us good reason to think that these kinds of differences can be traced to deep and important differences in EA and W cognition . . . What our studies point to, then, is more than just divergent epistemic intuitions across groups; the studies point to divergent epistemic concerns – concerns which appear to differ along a variety of dimensions. (Weinberg, Nichols and Stich 2001: 451)
In Fragmentation, Stich laid a bet that the epistemic diversity thesis is true. This increasingly coherent body of evidence gives us some reason to think that Stich may well win that bet. Of course, one might reasonably raise concerns about these studies, and defenders of the analytic tradition in epistemology have already done so (e.g., Sosa, this volume). In my view, the best way to rebut WNS’s empirical case for epistemic diversity is with more empirical findings. Absent contrary findings, I propose to provisionally accept that people in different cultures evaluate cognition in at least somewhat different ways.
1.3 Two arguments against analytic epistemology For an epistemological theory to be genuinely prescriptive, for it to earn its normative keep, it must explain why some ways of thinking are better than others. Theories of analytic epistemology seek “criteria of cognitive evaluation in the analysis or explication of our ordinary concepts of epistemic evaluation” (1990: 19). According to WNS, contemporary epistemology assumes that knowledge of the correct epistemic norms is implanted in us and we can discover them by an appropriate process of self-exploration. The analytic philosopher’s method for testing and developing epistemological theories, which they dub “Intuition Driven Romanticism,” involves three features: (1) It takes epistemic intuitions (spontaneous judgments about the epistemic properties of cases) as inputs; (2) it produces epistemic claims or principles as output; and (3) the output is a function of the input – in the sense that significantly different inputs would yield significantly different outputs (Weinberg, Nichols and Stich 2001: 432). How does epistemic diversity undermine the method of analytic epistemology? The main early argument is framed in terms of what we intrinsically value, what we value for its own sake. other languages and other cultures certainly could and probably do invoke concepts of cognitive evaluation that are significantly different from our own . . . For many people –
118
michael bishop
certainly for me – the fact that a cognitive process is sanctioned by the venerable standards embedded in our language of epistemic evaluation, or that it is sanctioned by the equally venerable standards embedded in some quite different language, is no more reason to value it than the fact that it is sanctioned by the standards of a religious tradition or an ancient text, unless, of course, it can be shown that those standards correlate with something more generally valued . . . (Stich 1990: 94)
Stich’s contention is that when we “view the matter clearly, most people will not find it intrinsically valuable to have cognitive states or to invoke cognitive processes that are sanctioned by the evaluative notions embedded in ordinary language” (1990: 93). Unless we are inclined toward epistemic chauvinism or xenophobia – preferring our epistemic standards merely because they are our own – we are unlikely to value cognitive states or processes merely because they accord with the contingent and idiosyncratic standards implicit in our epistemic concepts.3 Of course, if that’s true, then most of us will not intrinsically value beliefs and belief-forming processes because they are endorsed by somebody else’s intuitions or practices of epistemic evaluation, either. In Fragmentation, the objection to analytic epistemology is that it is incapable of solving the fundamental problem of epistemology – how to evaluate the various ways different people reason. Its basic mistake is to evaluate such matters on the basis of our idiosyncratic, culturally specific epistemic concepts, judgments, intuitions, and practices.4 There is a second argument against analytic epistemology that is implicit in the later writings. Analytic epistemology seeks theories that aim to capture our intuitive judgments about whether a belief is justified or whether S knows that p. Jaegwon Kim gives clear expression to this desideratum: “It is expected to turn out that according to the criteria of justified belief we come to accept, we know, or are justified in believing, pretty much what we reflectively think we know or are entitled to believe” (1988: 382). Of course, in order to clarify and regiment our epistemological judgments, a successful theory might require some minor revision to some of our reflective epistemic judgments. But other things being equal, a theory that captures our reflective epistemic judgments is better than one that does not. J. D. Trout and I (2005a, 2005b) have called this the stasis requirement: To be correct, theories of analytic epistemology must “leave our epistemic situation largely unchanged” (Kim 1988: 382).5 WNS pointedly suggest that when we couple epistemic diversity with the stasis requirement, the resulting image of analytic epistemology is not of a universal normative theory, but of ethnography: Our data indicate that when epistemologists advert to “our” intuitions when attempting to characterize epistemic concepts or draw normative conclusions, they are engaged in a culturally local endeavor – what we might think of as ethno-epistemology . . . [I]t is difficult to see why a process [Intuition Driven Romanticism] that relies heavily on epistemic intuitions that are local to one’s own cultural and socioeconomic group would lead to genuinely normative conclusions. Pending a detailed response to this problem, we think that the best reaction to the high-SES [socioeconomic status] Western philosophy professor who tries to draw normative conclusions from the facts about “our” intuitions is to ask: What do you mean by “we”? (Weinberg, Nichols and Stich 2001: 454–5)
cognitive and epistemic diversity
119
To identify the core of analytic epistemology with ethnography is to suggest that it is empirical. Of course, analytic epistemology is not entirely empirical. Analytic philosophers extract lots of normative, epistemological claims from their descriptive, ethnographic theories. If this is right, then the method of contemporary analytic epistemology has been broadly Quinean all along. It’s just that rather than starting with psychology, analytic epistemology starts with anthropology. This interpretation of analytic epistemology immediately raises alarms about whether it is deriving ‘ought’s from ‘is’s. This is rather awkward, since this is precisely the charge analytic epistemologists have repeatedly made against naturalistic approaches to epistemology (e.g., BonJour 2002; Feldman 2003; Plantinga 1993; Williams 2001). It raises the possibility that analytic epistemologists have been throwing stones at naturalized epistemology from glass houses. But WNS don’t raise this worry. (Bishop and Trout 2005b, however, do.) Instead, the critique implicit in the above passage is that, as an empirical endeavor, analytic epistemology is bad science. Analytic epistemology relies heavily on the introspective judgments of a relatively small group of idiosyncratic folks (i.e., professional philosophers) to deliver empirical results about what “we” think about certain issues. As such, it ignores well-understood and widely accepted scientific methods that allow us to effectively investigate and discover what some group thinks about a subject.
1.4 Pragmatism and experimental philosophy We have considered two arguments against analytic epistemology – the early argument from intrinsic value and the later argument (co-authored with Nichols and Weinberg) from bad science. The first argument says that as an attempt to solve the fundamental problem of epistemology, analytic epistemologists are investigating the wrong parts of the world. The second argument says that analytic epistemology uses empirically dubious methods. In a nutshell, the problem with analytic epistemology is that it searches for answers in the wrong place and in the wrong way. To fix these problems, Stich must tell us where to look for answers (1.4.1) and how to look for answers (1.4.2). I will argue (1.4.3) that there might be some tension in the fixes Stich offers. 1.4.1 Where to look for answers: pragmatism Analytic epistemology attempts to solve the fundamental epistemological problem raised by cognitive diversity – how to properly evaluate the various ways different people can and do reason – in terms of considerations most of us do not, upon reflection, value. Stich proposes the obvious fix: “One system of cognitive mechanisms is preferable to another if, in using it, we are more likely to achieve those things that we intrinsically value” (1990: 24). In evaluating systems of cognitive processes, the system to be preferred is the one that would be most likely to achieve those things that are intrinsically valued by the person whose interests are relevant to the purposes of the evaluation. In most cases, the relevant person will be the one who is or might be using the system. So, for example, if the issue at hand is the evaluation of Smith’s system of cognitive processes in comparison with some
120
michael bishop
actual or hypothetical alternative, the system that comes out higher on the pragmatist account of cognitive evaluation is the one that is most likely to lead to the things that Smith finds intrinsically valuable. (1990: 131–2)
As opposed to the evaluations that come out of analytic epistemology, Stich notes that “there is no mystery about why [we] should care about the outcome of [the pragmatic] evaluation” (1990: 132). For Stich, pragmatism leads directly to relativism – the idea that the cognitive evaluation of a set of reasoning strategies will be highly sensitive to facts about the person (or group) using those strategies. The pragmatic view of cognitive evaluation is relativistic for two reasons. Most obviously, it is sensitive to what reasoners intrinsically value. If there are significant differences in what different people intrinsically value, then we should expect a pragmatic view to recommend quite different cognitive systems to different people (Stich 1990: 136). The second reason a pragmatic account is relativistic is that it will be sensitive to a reasoner’s environment. A set of reasoning strategies that yields the best expected consequences in one environment might not do so in a different environment (Stich 1990: 136–40). There is, in the pragmatist tradition, a certain tendency to down play or even deny the epistemic relativism to which pragmatism leads. But on my view this failure of nerve is a great mistake. Relativism in the evaluation of reasoning strategies is no more worrisome than relativism in the evaluation of diets or investment strategies or exercise programmes. The fact that different strategies of reasoning may be good for different people is a fact of life that pragmatists should accept with equanimity. (1993: 9)
Relativism is not the bogeyman it’s cracked up to be. A natural criticism of Stich’s view would be that he has unnecessarily run together two quite different normative domains – the epistemic and the pragmatic. The complaint might best be put by insisting, “But Stich hasn’t provided an account of epistemic evaluation” (table-pounding for emphasis is optional). In reply to this objection, Stich embraces “the very Jamesian contention that there are no intrinsic epistemic virtues” (1990: 24). “For pragmatists, there are no special cognitive or epistemological values. There are just values” (1993: 9). So although one might call Stich an “epistemic pragmatist” or an “epistemic relativist,” these locutions can lead to misunderstanding. Everything one intrinsically values is relevant to one’s evaluative judgments, whether those judgments are (intuitively) moral, esthetic, epistemic, etc. Stich is a pluralist about a great many things, but when it comes to normative, evaluative matters, he is a methodological monist. Regardless of the item one is evaluating, the evaluative considerations that arise are the same: What is most likely to bring about those things one intrinsically values? 1.4.2 How to look for answers: experimental philosophy WNS allege that a central element of analytic epistemology is empirical. As such, it is bad science. A natural way to fix this problem is to replace this bad science with good science. This is a plausible way
cognitive and epistemic diversity
121
to understand the motivation behind experimental philosophy. Experimental philosophy involves “using experimental methods to figure out what people really think about particular hypothetical cases” (Knobe forthcoming). It is easy to see how the method of experimental philosophy might be extended. By getting clear about the patterns of people’s judgments across different cultures and socioeconomic classes, experimental philosophers can offer well-grounded hypotheses about the nature of the psychological mechanisms that subserve these judgments (see, e.g., Nichols 2004). While I am in no position to limn the historical details, Stich seems to be a reasonably central figure in the development of this movement. Fragmentation provides a powerful intellectual justification for the empirically respectable study of what people actually think about philosophical matters. Further, as far as I can tell, WNS (2001) authored some of the earliest examples of experimental philosophy (some of which we reviewed in section 1.2). The experimental method in philosophy is growing in popularity. It is being used in epistemology, as we have seen, but also in debates about ethics (Nichols 2004), free will (Nahmias, Nadelhoffer, Morris and Turner 2005), action theory (Knobe 2003), and philosophy of language (Machery, Mallon, Nichols and Stich 2004). 1.4.3 A normatively modest approach to experimental philosophy? Whatever the merits of experimental philosophy, and I think there are many, Stich (or at least, the Stich of Fragmentation) is committed to the view that experimental philosophy is incapable of solving the fundamental epistemological problem raised by cognitive diversity. Experimental philosophy is victimized by the same objection that defeated analytic epistemology. Recall that Stich argues that the problem with analytic epistemology is that it tries to evaluate different ways of reasoning by appealing to our parochial, idiosyncratic epistemic concepts, judgments and intuitions. Since we don’t intrinsically value cognitive states or processes that are sanctioned by our – or anybody else’s – hidebound epistemic practices, a description of those practices can’t serve as the basis for a legitimate evaluation of different ways of reasoning. The fact that analytic epistemology is also bad science merely adds insult to injury. Experimental philosophy avoids the insult, but not the injury. Instead of focusing on the wrong things in the wrong way, experimental philosophy focuses on the wrong things in the right way. So as an attempt to solve the fundamental epistemological problem, the Stich of Fragmentation would have to conclude that experimental philosophy is the wrong tool for the job. The experimental philosopher has lots of potential responses to this argument. One possibility is to adopt a normatively modest view of experimental philosophy, according to which experimental philosophy is entirely descriptive. So when it comes to normative philosophical disciplines, experimental philosophy is ancillary. It can confirm or disconfirm the empirical assumptions or empirical implications of genuinely normative philosophical theories. But that’s it. Of course, there is plenty of positive descriptive knowledge experimental philosophy has to contribute. But a brief survey of some experimental philosophy gives some support to the normatively modest view. WNS’s epistemological writings fit the typical disconfirmatory mold. They argue that, to be fruitful, the method of analytic epistemology requires the truth of an empirical assumption: there is
122
michael bishop
considerable similarity in different people’s epistemic intuitions. WNS then attempt to undermine the legitimacy of this method by showing that the empirical assumption on which it relies is false. Recent examples of experimental philosophy applied to morality seem to further confirm its essentially ancillary normative functions. Shaun Nichols (2004) offers an account of the psychological mechanisms that subserve our moral judgments. Nichols uses this account to criticize a major argument in favor of moral realism – namely, that the best explanation of the historical trend “towards increasingly inclusive and nonviolent norms” is that people are coming to better and deeper understanding of real moral properties or values (149). Nichols argues that his psychological account of how we make “core” moral judgments does a better job of explaining this trend than moral realism (2004: ch. 7). In a pair of recent papers, Doris and Stich (2005) and Machery, Kelly and Stich (2005) have suggested that moral realism is challenged by the apparent existence of fundamental moral disagreements. Experimental philosophy has much to teach us about the nature and structure of the human mind. It promises to put some psychology into moral psychology. And this is all to the good. But prima facie, it seems incapable of offering up positive normative theories or principles. There is not much textual evidence for the normatively modest view of experimental philosophy in WNS’s epistemological writings. In fact, there are hints that there might be a legitimate role for epistemic intuitions in our epistemological theorizing. For polemical purposes we have been emphasizing the diversity of epistemic intuitions in different ethnic and SES groups . . . But we certainly do not mean to suggest that epistemic intuitions are completely malleable or that there are no constraints on the sorts of epistemic intuitions that might be found in different social groups. Indeed, the fact that subjects from all the groups we studied agreed in not classifying beliefs based on “special feelings” as knowledge suggests that there may well be a universal core to “folk epistemology.” Whether or not this conjecture is true and, if it is, how this common core is best characterized, are questions that will require a great deal more research. (WNS 2001: 450)
Perhaps there is some “universal core” of our epistemic practices that can be unearthed by experimental philosophy and that should be taken seriously in our epistemological theorizing (see also Nichols, Stich and Weinberg 2003). This core might involve some set of epistemic intuitions, judgments, or (perhaps more plausibly) it might involve some set of general psychological mechanisms that subserve our epistemic judgments and intuitions. Of course, it is an entirely empirical issue whether such a core exists. But if there is a robust psychological foundation for our epistemic practices, then there may be good reasons – including good pragmatic reasons – to take this core seriously in our epistemological theorizing. After all, the costs involved in significantly revising our epistemic practices might overwhelm whatever benefits might accrue from such a revision. Prohibitive start-up costs for new alternatives can be a powerful consideration in favor of the status quo (Sklar 1975; Harman 1986; Bishop and Trout 2005a). There is much more to say about what can be legitimately extracted from experimental philosophy. But for now, I will simply point out the prima facie tension between Stich’s views in Fragmentation and an experimental approach to philosophy that has positive normative aspirations.
cognitive and epistemic diversity
123
2 A Brief Digression: The Role of Intuitions in Epistemology It is perhaps appropriate to linger a bit over the role of intuitions in epistemology. Epistemic intuitions are usually taken to be our non-discursive, though perhaps considered, judgments about the epistemic properties of some cognitive item (Cohen 1981; Bealer 1987; BonJour 1998; Pust 2000). The paradigm example of an epistemic intuition is our judgment that subjects in Gettier cases do not have knowledge. For many analytic epistemologists, epistemic intuitions are taken to be basic sources of evidence. An adequate reconstruction of philosophical methodology here requires a two-step evidential route. In the first step, the occurrence of an intuition that p, either an intuition of one’s own or that of an informant, is taken as (prima facie) evidence for the truth of p (or the truth of a closely related proposition). In the second step, the truth of p is used as positive or negative evidence for the truth of a general theory. (Goldman and Pust 1998: 182)
So intuitions are a basic evidential source if and only if the intuition that p (when formed in favorable circumstances) provides prima facie evidence that p is true (Goldman and Pust 1998: 182–3; see also Bealer 1998: 204–7). To say that intuitions are a basic source of evidence is to say that any (properly formed) intuition that p is by the very fact of its being a (properly formed) intuition prima facie evidence of the truth that p. What happens if we deny that intuitions are a basic evidential source? Some philosophers have argued that a deep skepticism about epistemic intuitions is not viable (Bealer 1993, 1998; Jackson 1998; Kaplan 1994; Siegel 1984) and that it leads to “intellectual suicide” (Bonjour 1998: 99). The basic idea behind these arguments is that we cannot accept beliefs on the basis of good reasons without relying, at some point, on our epistemic intuitions. How could we start believing anything if we never accepted a belief that p on the basis of evidence e simply because it is intuitively obvious that evidence e licenses the belief that p? There is certainly room to criticize these arguments but, from my perspective, the best reply is strategic capitulation. Let’s distinguish two sorts of epistemological theories. 1 An ethno-epistemological theory that aims to capture our epistemic intuitions (with perhaps some light revisions in the service of power or clarity). 2 A genuinely prescriptive theory with normative force that will enable us to legitimately evaluate the various ways different people can and do reason. The first sort of theory might also be a theory of the second sort; but as Stich has stressed, this will require some argument. Now, are intuitions basic sources of evidence? This is a poorly framed question. We need to ask: Evidence for what? Our olfactory beliefs might be a basic evidential source, but they’re not legitimate evidence for theories of logic. They might play a legitimate, though minor, evidential role in the natural sciences; for example, the belief that there is an acrid burning smell might be a legitimate part of our evidence for thinking that an experiment has gone awry (or not gone awry!). Now suppose we want an epistemological theory of the first sort, one that satisfies the
124
michael bishop
stasis requirement by (in Kim’s words) leaving “our epistemic situation largely unchanged.” It is hard to see how our epistemic intuitions could not be a legitimate source of evidence. They are, after all, what such theories are trying to capture. But what if we want a theory of the second sort, a theory with genuine normative bite? It’s not so obvious that our epistemic intuitions should be a significant source of evidence. This does not imply that our epistemic intuitions never have any normative force. Properly understood, the defenders of intuition may be right that we have no choice but to trust our epistemic intuitions (maybe often). But plenty of philosophers who have reservations about the role of intuitions in our philosophical theorizing have granted this point (e.g., Kornblith 2002: 5; Devitt 1994: 564). I am certainly prepared to grant that our epistemological intuitions have directed our reasoning well enough to have a reasonable claim to some normative legitimacy. So I don’t believe there is a case to make that our intuitions are in principle irrelevant evidence for or against a genuinely prescriptive epistemological theory. (And as far as I know, no one, including Stich, has made such a case.) We need our intuitions to get on in the world; and perhaps having an epistemic intuition that reasoning strategy R is the epistemically best way to reason may be prima facie evidence for thinking that, in fact, reasoning strategy R is the epistemically best way to reason. But it doesn’t follow that our epistemic intuitions are (or must be) the primary source of evidence for our epistemological theorizing. We can draw an illuminating analogy with our physical intuitions (our immediate judgments about the behavior of physical objects).6 We would not long survive without trusting our physical intuitions. If someone genuinely stopped trusting his physical intuitions, we would worry that he was trying to commit actual suicide rather than just intellectual suicide. Besides their pragmatic importance, our physical intuitions are almost surely essential to our theorizing about the nature of the physical world. If physicists could never rely on their physical intuitions (about, e.g., whether some pointer has come to rest at zero or how, roughly, an object will fall), it’s doubtful they would get far in their theorizing. So our physical intuitions are “basic evidence” in the sense given above: having a physical intuition that p is prima facie evidence that p is true. In fact, we know that our physical intuitions are often true, but we also know quite a bit about their systematic failures (Clement 1982; Halloun and Hestenes 1985). So even though a deep skepticism about our physical intuitions would be catastrophic on practical and theoretical grounds, it would be grotesque to suggest that we must therefore trust our physical intuitions to play a significant evidential role in the testing and development of our physical theories. As far as I can tell, the analogous point is all Stich needs. Those of us who are skeptical about our epistemic intuitions are denying that they ought to play a significant role in epistemological theorizing, an activity engaged in by a tiny fraction of the world’s population and even then only occasionally. This highly limited pessimism about our intuitions is perfectly coherent and, in fact, is consistent with the claim that intuitions are a basic source of evidence (as characterized above). Giving up epistemic intuitions in our epistemological theorizing does not lead to intellectual catastrophe. The case for a circumscribed skepticism about our intuitions is incomplete. I have granted that our intuitions have some prima facie normative force. So whether it is reasonable to ignore them in our epistemological theorizing depends on whether we have
cognitive and epistemic diversity
125
an evidential source that is better than our intuitions. The physics analogy is apt. If we don’t have some source of evidence that is better than our physical intuitions and if our physical intuitions are reasonably reliable, then the best we can do is appeal to our physical intuitions in constructing our physical theories. Our resulting theories might be disappointing. But cooks are only as good as their ingredients. So what alternatives do we have to evaluating epistemological theories in terms of how well they capture our epistemic intuitions? Well, at least a few. Stich has offered a pragmatic alternative in Fragmentation: Epistemological theories, principles and judgments are to be evaluated in terms of how well they promote what we intrinsically value. Some experimental philosophers might offer a different alternative: Epistemological theories, principles and judgments are to be evaluated in terms of how well they capture a universal “core” of people’s epistemic practices (as described by a scientifically respectable account of those practices). J. D. Trout and I (2005a, 2005b) have offered yet a third alternative: Epistemological theories, principles and judgments are to be evaluated in terms of how well they capture the normative judgments of “Ameliorative Psychology” – those areas of psychology that for more than 50 years have been extremely successful in giving us useful advice about how to reason about matters of great practical significance (e.g., whether a convict is likely to be violent if paroled, whether a heart-attack victim is at risk of dying within the next month, whether a newborn is at risk for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, whether a Bordeaux wine will be any good when it matures).7 These are all genuine options for epistemology. And by firmly grounding epistemology in science, they are all animated by the spirit of Quine’s naturalism.
3 A Critique: The Pragmatic Virtues of Reliabilism What if we evaluated different ways of reasoning in terms of their tendency to deliver true beliefs? Against this suggestion, Stich has argued that “once we have a clear view of the matter, most of us will not find any value, either intrinsic or instrumental, in having true beliefs” (1990: 101). In 3.1, I will spell out this argument, surely one of the more shocking positions in the Stich oeuvre. In 3.2, I will argue that, despite the power of Stich’s case against truth, we are naturally drawn to true belief even when it is against our interests to do so. In 3.3, I use our default attraction to true belief to try to justify on pragmatic grounds a reliabilist theory of cognitive evaluation.
3.1 Against truth The heavy work in Stich’s argument against the value of truth involves spelling out in considerable detail what is involved in having true beliefs (1990: 101–18). The crux of the story involves an account of the interpretation function, which maps belief tokens onto entities that can be true or false (e.g., propositions, truth conditions, sets of possible worlds). So the interpretation function maps a particular brain state of mine onto the proposition . According to that interpretation function,
126
michael bishop
that mental state (we’ll suppose it’s a belief) has the content: Lincoln was a great president. The belief is true just in case the proposition is true. Since the interpretation function is simply a mapping, there are “endlessly many” different possible interpretation functions – different ways of mapping belief tokens onto propositions (1990: 119). What makes one of these functions the right one, the one that accurately specifies the content of our beliefs? Stich contends (with good reason) that when philosophers are articulating various aspects of the interpretation function, they are trying to accurately capture the judgments of the man or woman in the street about what content sentences or truth conditions get paired with the ordinary beliefs of ordinary folk. Thus any theory of interpretation that assigns to all of my beliefs truth conditions pertaining to events in the Crimean War, or to events in my own brain, would be immediately ruled out of court . . . (1990: 105)
The interpretation function favored by our intuitive judgments will be idiosyncratic. The best way to see this is to consider evidence suggesting that there are systematic, cross-cultural differences in people’s intuitive semantic judgments (Machery, Mallon, Nichols and Stich 2004). If true, this means that the interpretation function favored by our culture will be different from the interpretation function favored by some other cultures. Stich argues that once we reflect upon what’s involved in having true beliefs, we will find that we don’t intrinsically value them: “Those who find intrinsic value in holding true beliefs . . . are accepting unreflectively the interpretation function that our culture . . . has bequeathed to us and letting that function determine their basic epistemic value. In so doing, they are making a profoundly conservative choice; they are letting tradition determine their cognitive values without any attempt at critical evaluation of that tradition” (1990: 120). Stich readily admits he has no useful reply to the person who, when fully informed, intrinsically values true belief. But he maintains that most people, when they are clear about what it involves, will come to see that they don’t intrinsically value true belief. What about the instrumental value of true belief? The issue here is not whether true belief is sometimes instrumentally valuable (surely it is) but whether true belief is more instrumentally valuable than potential alternatives. To get clear about this, let’s consider an example. Shelley Taylor and her colleagues (Taylor 1989; Armor and Taylor 2002) have argued that having views that are somewhat unrealistically optimistic can promote mental and physical health. “Unrealistic optimism about the future is generally adaptive in that it promotes . . . feelings of self-worth, the ability to care for and about others, persistence and creativity in the pursuit of goals, and the ability to cope effectively with stress” (Taylor et al. 1992: 460). Before the advent of reasonably effective antiretroviral drugs, a study found that men with AIDS who were unrealistically optimistic lived longer than those who had more realistic views about their prospects (Reed et al. 1994). More generally, research suggests that mildly unrealistic optimists cope better with health issues than realists, they tend to recover more quickly than realists, and they have
cognitive and epistemic diversity
127
higher recovery rates than realists (Scheier et al. 1989; Fitzgerald et al. 1993). So consider the possibility of having true* beliefs. Most true* beliefs are also true, but true* beliefs are more optimistic than true beliefs in certain cases having to do with health prospects.8 “True beliefs are not always optimal in the pursuit of happiness or pleasure or desire satisfaction, nor are they always the best beliefs to have if what we want is peace or power or love, or some weighted mix of all of these” (1990: 123).
3.2 True belief as prodigal son These are powerful arguments. And properly understood, I don’t want to challenge them. Upon reflection, we have no good reason to value true beliefs (intrinsically or instrumentally) as opposed to true* beliefs. I want to suggest, however, that we distinguish between what we find valuable (worthy of value) upon reflection and what we actually value. We value the truth, despite the results of our Stich-inspired deliberations on its idiosyncrasies and practical failings. The truth is like the prodigal son. We might realize that he does not deserve our love, our care, our energy; we might realize that we would be much better off committing those feelings and resources to a more deserving child. But despite what our heads say, we can’t help but embrace him. To make the case for truth, let’s go back to the benefits of unrealistic optimism. Suppose Hobart is suffering from a serious disease for which there is some hope for recovery. Hobart is unrealistically optimistic about his prospects, as are his friends and loved ones. This sort of example seems to give succor to the pragmatist and headaches to the supporter of true belief. It suggests that we ought to reason in ways that are unreliable. But now suppose that Hobart gets a visit from Lance, who is a decent enough fellow but who can sometimes be stunningly thoughtless. Lance brings Hobart a large notebook full of evidence that supports in gruesome detail the hypothesis that Hobart’s prospects for recovery are rather poor. What’s more, Lance presents this evidence to Hobart. He raises every consideration that might lead Hobart to be overly optimistic about his prospects for recovery, and he utterly demolishes each consideration in meticulous detail with true and well-grounded evidence. Lance concludes by allowing that there is a small probability that Hobart will recover, but the probability is considerably lower than the average patient with Hobart’s condition. Let’s suppose that Lance’s performance is not the result of any cruelty or malevolence – he just has a stunningly tin ear when it comes to interpersonal relationships. And let’s further suppose Lance delivers this information in a genuinely friendly manner. Despite Lance’s intentions and affability, we recoil at the prospect of his forcing Hobart to hear the truth about his situation. But why? Suppose that Pam had thoughtlessly gone on about the genuinely pathetic prospects of the Cubs, Hobart’s favorite baseball team. Assuming his attachment to the Cubs is not unreasonably fanatical (not always a safe assumption), Pam’s behavior would be rude and stupid, but not nearly as cruel as Lance’s. Unlike telling Hobart the truth about the Cubs, telling him the truth about his prospects for recovery threatens to destroy Hobart’s hope and weaken his will. In this way, it threatens to rob Hobart of the resources he needs to survive his disease.
128
michael bishop
And here’s the point: Lance’s performance is appalling precisely because Hobart values true beliefs. If he didn’t value true beliefs but instead valued true* beliefs, he could laugh off Lance’s evidence and stick to his rosy beliefs about his prospects. But when we become convinced that we hold a false belief, even when that belief is highly useful, we are often drawn to the true belief like a moth to the flame. And that is why forcing the truth about Hobart’s prospects on him undermines those prospects. When we are clearly convinced that p is true, we are naturally and powerfully drawn to the belief that p. We are drawn to the truth (or rather, what we clearly and fully understand to be the truth) in matters of belief in a way that we are not drawn to (what we clearly and fully understand to be) the good, the beautiful, or the useful. Luckily, we have powerful psychological systems that enable us to elude a clear vision of the truth, and hence to escape its attraction. We are deceived and self-deceived in many ways (e.g., Nisbett and Wilson 1977; Wilson and Stone 1985). And most of us have a surprisingly robust capacity for adopting and protecting from disconfirmation overly rosy beliefs about ourselves (Taylor 1989: ch. 4). We tend to believe that we possess a host of socially desirable characteristics, and that we are free of most of those that are socially undesirable. For example, a large majority of the general public thinks that they are more intelligent, more fair-minded, less prejudiced, and more skilled behind the wheel of an automobile than the average person. This phenomenon is so reliable and ubiquitous that it has come to be known as the “Lake Wobegon effect,” after Garrison Keillor’s fictional community where “the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” A survey of one million high-school seniors found that 70% thought they were above average in leadership ability, and only 2% thought they were below average. In terms of ability to get along with others, all students thought they were above average, 60% thought they were in the top 10%, and 25% thought they were in the top 1%! Lest one think that such inflated self-assessments occur only in the minds of callow high-school students, it should be pointed out that a survey of university professors found that 94% thought they were better at their jobs than their average colleague. (Gilovich 1991: 77)
While we are adept at protecting these rosy beliefs from negative evidence, it is surely a mistake to suppose that they are totally immune from disconfirmation. It might be hard to convince us that our rosy beliefs are false. But when we do finally become convinced, we find it quite difficult (or perhaps even impossible) to continue believing them – even when doing so would be in our interests. We might agree with Stich that upon reflection, true beliefs are not intrinsically valuable and not as instrumentally valuable as true* beliefs. The problem is the hard empirical fact of our mindless, unthinking, default attraction to true belief.
3.3 The pragmatic benefits of reliabilism The cool-eyed pragmatist will be the first to insist that a theory of cognitive evaluation should not make demands on us that we can’t meet. Our judgment and decision-making
cognitive and epistemic diversity
129
capacities are deeply imperfect, and the limits on our memory, computing power, time, energy, patience, and will are legion (Stich 1990: 149–58). I’m suggesting the pragmatist add one more imperfection to the list: We tend to value truth, even when, from a pragmatic perspective, we shouldn’t. Once we take this fact about ourselves to heart, the pragmatist is faced with a familiar challenge: What sorts of normative principles, theories, or recommendations can we offer that will effectively guide our reasoning but that will clearly recognize and compensate for our built-in limitations and imperfections? Perhaps our regrettable attraction to true belief gives us pragmatic grounds for placing truth at the center of our epistemological theory. Not because truth is more valuable to us than truth* (or truth** or truth***) . . . but just because we’re stuck valuing true belief. To compensate for our unfortunate attraction to true belief, two different strategies suggest themselves. A direct strategy, which Stich adopts in Fragmentation, places pragmatic virtues center stage. Normative claims about cognitive matters – generalizations about good reasoning as well as evaluations of particular cognitive states and processes – are framed directly in terms of what we intrinsically value. An indirect strategy would place truth (or some other non-pragmatic category) center stage but would find some way to license the adoption of false (or true*) beliefs when they serve our interest.9, 10 What might such a theory look like? I suggest it might look something like Strategic Reliabilism (Bishop and Trout 2005a). While Strategic Reliabilism has not been defended on pragmatic grounds, I want to argue here that (with some minor modifications) it can be. The indirect pragmatic theory of cognitive evaluation I will sketch here consists of two parts. The first holds that an excellent reasoner will have at her disposal a set of reasoning methods or strategies that are robustly reliable – they yield a high percentage of true beliefs across a wide variety of situations. The second part of the theory focuses on the problems these strategies will apply to, and how the excellent reasoner will use them. Given the infinitely many reasoning problems one might tackle at any moment and our limited resources, the excellent reasoner will do more than reason reliably about useless matters. It is here that the pragmatic element of the indirect theory plays a vital role. Given the indefinitely many reasoning problems we face, some are more worthy of attention than others in a straightforwardly pragmatic sense: 1 Constructive problems: Reasoning in a robustly reliable way about some problems will help us achieve those things we intrinsically value. 2 Neutral problems: Reasoning in a robustly reliable way about most problems we face will bring us nothing that we intrinsically value – they are just a waste of time and resources. 3 Undermining problems: Reasoning in a robustly reliable way about some problems will lead to results that undermine those things we intrinsically value.11 So the excellent reasoner will have at her disposal robustly reliable reasoning strategies for handling constructive problems. In her daily life, she will mete out attention and resources to these problems in a prudent, cost-effective manner. She will ignore neutral
130
michael bishop
problems. And she will be naturally disposed to avoid spending cognitive resources on undermining problems. The idea here is not that the excellent reasoner will consciously work through these various cost-benefit calculations every time she faces a reasoning problem. That would lead to an infinite regress. (I’m faced with problem P. Before solving it, I must solve problem P′: Is P a constructive, neutral or undermining problem? But before solving P′, I have to solve problem P″: Is P′ a constructive, neutral or undermining problem? . . .) So a lot of these “decisions” occur at a non-conscious level. That’s not to say that we have no control over what reasoning strategies we employ (“I need to insist on controls when thinking about causal claims”) or over where to put our cognitive resources (“I should spend less time and energy thinking about the mind–body problem”). It is to say that, most of the time, we run our cognitive lives without any high-level, conscious decision-making about what reasoning problems to tackle. And this is part of (and perhaps a large part of) why our overly rosy beliefs can be so effective. Imagine if Hobart had to consciously decide to not spend a great deal of energy scrutinizing the issue of his prospects for recovery on the grounds that doing so might kill him. That just wouldn’t work. Psychological research (e.g., Wegner 1994) as well as schoolyard wisdom (“Don’t think about pink elephants!”) supports the idea that we aren’t very good at suppressing our thoughts. So Hobart’s rosy belief survives because we are naturally inclined to not bring our critical faculties to bear on undermining issues; and absent critical scrutiny, our rosy beliefs are protected by the powerful psychological mechanisms that account for the sturdiness of the Lake Wobegon effect (Gilovich 1991; Taylor 1989: ch. 4). On what grounds are we to choose between a direct and an indirect pragmatic theory of cognitive evaluation? Insofar as Stich is committed to a direct theory, he will surely not argue that his direct theory is to be preferred because it is a true account of the nature of cognitive evaluation. Any choice between a direct or indirect theory must ultimately be made on pragmatic grounds. For Stich, whichever theory works better in straightforwardly pragmatic terms (i.e., it helps people better achieve those things they intrinsically value), that’s the one we should believe. So the choice between these theories is, for Stich, an empirical matter. Since I don’t have the empirical goods to settle the issue, plausibility considerations will have to suffice. The primary mission of epistemology is to evaluate the various ways different people can and do reason and (hopefully) offer useful suggestions about how we can reason better. A direct theory will frame these normative judgments in terms of useful belief, while an indirect (reliabilist) theory will frame these normative judgments in terms of true belief. Given our default attraction to true beliefs, the indirect theory starts off with all the pragmatic advantages of incumbency. We are already used to thinking about our epistemic responsibilities in terms of true belief. And so given any claim about the relative quality of one of our reasoning strategies, we’ll have an easier time understanding, accepting, and reflecting upon the claim made by the indirect theory. Further, we are likely to find it easier and more natural to be guided by the normative recommendations made by the indirect theory. This is a significant, built-in advantage for the indirect (truth-based) pragmatic theory of cognitive evaluation.12 Can the direct theory overcome its built-in deficit? Perhaps. Consider that we sometimes accept beliefs we know are useful but not true, as, for example, when we use Newtonian theory to predict and explain the motion of medium-to-large objects. But in that case, we
cognitive and epistemic diversity
131
give up negligible amounts of accuracy for a great deal of utility. Further, I think we are naturally inclined to explain the utility of such beliefs in terms of their proximity to the truth. So this example doesn’t give us any reason to suppose that revising our epistemic habits so we are no longer mindlessly attracted to true belief will be easy. In fact, I speculate that it would take considerable work to refashion our habitual epistemic practices in such a dramatic way. Of course, such a change might be psychologically impossible, or so difficult as to be practically impossible. If that’s so, then the pragmatist will have to settle for an indirect theory. Let’s suppose we can alter our epistemic habits so that pronouncements about how to reason and believe that are framed in terms of useful belief are as easy for us to grasp, ponder, accept and act on us as pronouncements that are framed in terms of true belief. Should we go to the trouble of revising our epistemic practices? It depends on the pragmatic benefits of doing so. These benefits will come from our increased ability to reason unreliably (i.e., reliably*) to useful beliefs in those cases the indirect theory cannot plausibly handle. If the direct and indirect theories were to make exactly the same recommendations, then the direct theory would be doomed. It couldn’t overcome the indirect theory’s incumbency advantages. But I think Stich will argue (rightly) that we have no good reason to suppose the direct and indirect theories will yield exactly the same cognitive evaluations. To see how the direct and indirect theories might make different recommendations, let’s go back to the Hobart example. The indirect theory could license Hobart’s useful, false but true* (rosy) belief because of two contingent psychological facts: (a) Hobart’s reasoning strategies naturally deliver rosy beliefs. (b) Hobart is inclined to avoid critical scrutiny of his rosy beliefs. Without these psychological mechanisms, the indirect theory has no epistemic resources to license Hobart’s rosy belief. In fact, the indirect theory will tend to undermine (a), Hobart’s natural inclination to reason to the rosy belief rather than the true belief. That’s because the indirect theory directs us to adopt robustly reliable reasoning strategies. Doing so could readily undermine our natural tendency to adopt rosy beliefs. Once a reasoner comes to a true belief as a result of robustly reliable reasoning, the indirect theory has no resources to license the true* belief or the reliable* reasoning strategy. Now consider those cases in which (b) is false. Suppose Hobart is naturally disposed to critically scrutinize his rosy belief. The indirect theory might pronounce that, to be an excellent reasoner, Hobart ought to avoid scrutiny of such beliefs. But as we have already seen, this is not likely to be a particularly effective recommendation (“Don’t think about pink elephants!”). So if there are undermining problems that the indirect theory can’t handle (i.e., it can’t effectively recommend the rosy belief), then the direct theory has a chance to overcome the indirect theory’s incumbency advantages. The case for an indirect pragmatic theory is by no means a slam dunk. But the direct theory faces two pressing problems. First, the direct theory fails if we cannot alter our default epistemic practices. And second, the direct theory must show that the costs of altering our default epistemic practices will be more than compensated for by the direct theory’s advantages over the indirect theory. The direct theory needs both claims, but
132
michael bishop
it’s not clear it can have either. Without a clear case for the pragmatic advantages of revising our epistemic habits, on pragmatic grounds, we should stick with what seems to be working well enough. Given what we know, the pragmatist should provisionally adopt an indirect theory.
4 Conclusion In “Epistemology Naturalized,” Quine offered a vision of epistemology that has fallen on hard times. “The simulation of his sensory receptors is all the evidence anybody has had to go on, ultimately, in arriving at his picture of the world. Why not just see how this construction really proceeds? Why not settle for psychology?” (1969: 75) Epistemology, or something like it, simply falls into place as a chapter of psychology and hence of natural science. It studies a natural phenomenon, viz., a physical human subject. This human subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled input – certain patterns of irradiation in assorted frequencies, for instance – and in the fullness of time the subject delivers as output a description of the three-dimensional external world and its history. The relation between the meager input and the torrential output is a relation that we are prompted to study for somewhat the same reasons that always prompted epistemology; namely, in order to see how evidence relates to theory, and in what ways one’s theory of nature transcends any available evidence. (1969: 82–3)
For decades, analytic epistemologists have been united in their opposition to the idea that epistemology could be reduced to psychology. Tradition holds that such a reduction is subject to a devastating objection: It empties epistemology of its normative character. On this point, Stich agrees with tradition. The Quinean naturalized epistemologist can explore in detail the various ways in which different people construct their “picture of the world” on the basis of the evidence available to them. But he has no way of ranking these quite different strategies for building world descriptions; he has no way of determining which are better and which are worse. And since the Quinean naturalized epistemologist can provide no normative advice whatever, it is more than a little implausible to claim that his questions and projects can replace those of traditional epistemology. We can’t “settle for psychology” because psychology tells us how people do reason; it does not (indeed cannot) tell us how they should. (Stich 1993: 4–5)
But what is the lesson? That we can’t put empirical theories at the heart of our epistemology? But then what survives? Not Quinean naturalism. Not analytic epistemology. If we can’t replace epistemology with psychology, then we can’t replace it with ethnography, either. Not Stich’s pragmatism, which is built on empirical claims about how people reason, about how people evaluate cognition, and about what we intrinsically and instrumentally value. And not experimental philosophy, either. If we take the arguments proposed by Stich and by WNS against analytic epistemology seriously, then a genuinely normative, reason-guiding epistemology cannot be in the
cognitive and epistemic diversity
133
business of a priori reflection on our parochial epistemic concepts, judgments, and intuitions. But then science is all that’s left. If this is right, then Quine’s mistake was not identifying epistemology with science. His mistake was identifying it with the wrong bit of science. Of course, we’re still left with the very serious problem of how to extract normative, epistemological claims from science. But if Stich’s and WNS’s critique of analytic epistemology is correct, we don’t have a choice. At every crucial step, Stich’s epistemology drives us to the conclusion that genuinely normative theories find their homes in science. Further, the alternatives to analytic epistemology we have considered all make epistemology a chapter, though perhaps a rather quirky chapter, of psychology. Maybe a Stich in time saves Quine.13
Notes 1 Has Stich changed the subject so much that he is not engaging, and hence not disagreeing with, analytic epistemologists? Goldman (1978) recognizes that some contemporary epistemologists might be disinclined to take this project to be epistemology. To avoid becoming embroiled in boundary disputes, Goldman calls this project by a different name, “epistemics.” Stich has at least two replies to the “change of subject” worry. First, reasoning strategies typically yield belief tokens. So to recommend a reasoning strategy is to recommend belief tokens, at one remove. Thus, a theory that evaluates reasoning strategies and a theory that evaluates belief tokens can recommend incompatible belief tokens. And second, Stich’s pragmatic view of cognitive evaluation can be applied directly to belief tokens. So his theory can make recommendations that directly conflict with those of standard theories of justification. 2 Debates about the quality of people’s default reasoning strategies, and the variation in the quality of different people’s default reasoning strategies, provides another motivation for this project (see, e.g., Stanovich 1999). 3 Stich also argues that we have no good reason to believe that our epistemic standards are instrumentally valuable – or rather, more instrumentally valuable than any alternative set of epistemic standards. And, in fact, he argues that we have some reason to doubt that they are (1990: 96–127). 4 The intrinsic value argument does not appear in WNS’s articles, although a weaker form of it does. WNS note that if we were to begin the analytic project with different sets of intuitions (e.g., intuitions of East Asians, or of Westerners, or of low SES subjects or of high SES subjects) we would end up with very different epistemological theories. WNS then ask: “What reason is there to think that the output of one or another of these Intuition-Driven Romantic strategies has real (as opposed to putative) normative force?” (Weinberg, Nichols and Stich 2001: 434). Not all of these theories can be genuinely (as opposed to putatively) normative. While I think this argument is less ambitious than Stich’s earlier intrinsic value argument, I needn’t press the point here. 5 I have been surprised to find philosophers occasionally denying that stasis really is a requirement on contemporary theories of analytic epistemology. Here is a crucial experiment to test this suggestion: Find cases of contemporary analytic epistemologists “outsmarting” themselves (where “outsmart” is a technical term from The Philosophical Lexicon (Dennett 1987): “outsmart, v.: To embrace the conclusion of one’s opponent’s reductio ad absurdum argument. ‘They thought they had me, but I outsmarted them. I agreed that it was sometimes just to hang an innocent man.’ ”) If the stasis requirement is not operative, we should find lots
134
6 7
8
9
10 11
12 13
michael bishop of cases in the epistemological literature in which people embrace positions with little regard for their intuitive judgments – as occurs in the sciences. But we don’t find lots of instances of contemporary analytic epistemologists “outsmarting” each other. In fact, except for the occasional skeptic, I am hard pressed to think of any. Bealer (1993, 1998) has argued strenuously that philosophical (“a priori”) intuitions are unlike physical intuitions. Perhaps. Still, their evidential relationship to certain theories might be similar. A potential advantage of this approach over the others is that it grounds epistemology in a bit of psychology that, prima facie, already has legitimate normative force. The great challenge for the naturalist is how to extract ‘ought’s from ‘is’s. That challenge is met if we’re extracting epistemological ‘ought’s from epistemological ‘ought’s we find in psychology. That still leaves the puzzle of what we’re to make of these apparently normative parts of psychology. In this case, some true* beliefs are true and others false. But some alternatives to true beliefs won’t involve false beliefs. The interpretation function is not only idiosyncratic, it is also partial: it won’t assign propositions to many belief-like states. So some true** beliefs might be true while the rest have no truth values at all (Stich 1990: 121–2). This indirect strategy is familiar in ethics, particularly among hedonists who argue that, although only happiness is intrinsically valuable, in order to achieve happiness, people ought to intrinsically value lots of things besides happiness (e.g., see Mill’s Utilitarianism: ch. IV). The case for an indirect theory undermines Stich’s methodological monism with respect to normative issues in a way that does not require table-pounding (see the discussion in 1.4.1). The main difference between this indirect pragmatic view and Strategic Reliabilism has to do with the nature of these values. Trout and I assume (without argument) a realistic conception of value, but this is an optional part of the theory (2005a: 93–103). What I have done here is to modify Strategic Reliabilism by replacing the realistic conception of value with a pragmatic one. As I suggested at the end of section 1, the experimental philosopher can adopt a remarkably similar pragmatic defense of her approach. The credit for this line and for the subtitle of this paper belongs to the anonymous wag who defined ‘stich’ in The Philosophical Lexicon (Dennett 1987): “stich, n. (cf. croce) The art of eliminative embroidery. In the art of stich, one delicately strips the semantics off the rich tapestry of folk psychology revealing the bare warp and wood of pure syntax. ‘A stich in time saves Quine.’ ”
References Armor, D. and Taylor, S. (2002) “When Predictions Fail: The Dilemma of Unrealistic Optimism,” in T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, and D. Kahneman (eds.), Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bealer, George (1987) “The Philosophical Limits of Scientific Essentialism.” Philosophical Perspectives 1: 289–365. Bealer, George (1993) “The Incoherence of Empiricism,” in S. Wagner and R. Warner (eds.), Naturalism: A Critical Appraisal, Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press. Bealer, George (1998) “Intuition and the Autonomy of Philosophy,” in M. DePaul and W. Ramsey (eds.), Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bishop, Michael and Trout, J. D. (2005a) Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment. New York: Oxford University Press.
cognitive and epistemic diversity
135
Bishop, Michael and Trout, J. D. (2005b) “The Pathologies of Standard Analytic Epistemology.” Nous 39(4): 696–714. BonJour, Laurence (1998) In Defense of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BonJour, Laurence (2002) Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Clement, J. (1982) “Students Preconceptions in Introductory Mechanics.” American Journal of Physics 50(1): 66–71. Cohen, L. J. (1981) “Can Human Irrationality be Experimentally Demonstrated?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4: 317–31. Dennett, Daniel (1987) The Philosophical Lexicon. Blackwell Publishers (online). http:// www.blackwellpublishing.com/lexicon/ Devitt, Michael (1994) “The Methodology of Naturalistic Semantics.” Journal of Philosophy, 91: 545–72. Doris, J. and Stich, S. (2005) “As a Matter of Fact: Empirical Perspectives on Ethics,” in F. Jackson and M. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 114–52. Feldman, R. (2003) Epistemology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Fitzgerald, T., Tennen, H., Affleck, G., and Pransky, G. (1993) “The Relative Importance of Dispositional Optimism and Control Appraisals in Quality of Life after Coronary Bypass Surgery.” Journal of Behavioral Medicine 16: 25–43. Gilovich, Thomas (1991) How We Know What Isn’t So. New York: The Free Press. Goldman, Alvin (1978) “Epistemics: The Regulative Theory of Cognition.” The Journal of Philosophy 75: 509–23. Goldman, Alvin and Pust, Joel (1998) “Philosophical Theory and Intuitional Evidence,” in M. DePaul and W. Ramsey (eds.), Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Halloun, I. A. and Hestenes, D. (1985) “The Initial Knowledge State of College Physics Students.” American Journal of Physics 53(11): 1043–55. Harman, Gilbert (1986) Change in View. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Jackson, Frank (1998) From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defense of Conceptual Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kaplan, M. (1994) “Epistemology Denatured.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19: 283–300. Kim, Jaegwon (1988) “What is ‘Naturalized Epistemology’?” Philosophical Perspectives 2: 381–405. Knobe, J. (2003) “Intentional Action and Side Effects in Ordinary Language.” Analysis 63: 190–3. Knobe, J. (forthcoming) “What is Experimental Philosophy?” The Philosophers’ Magazine. Kornblith, Hilary (2002) Knowledge and Its Place in Nature. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Machery, E., Kelly, D., and Stich, S. (2005) “Moral Realism and Cross-Cultural Normative Diversity,” a commentary on J. Henrich et al., “ ‘Economic Man’ in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28(6) (Dec.): 830. Machery, E., Mallon, R., Nichols, S., and Stich, S. (2004) “Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style.” Cognition 92: B1–B12. Masuda, T. and Nisbett, R. E. (2001) “Attending Holistically vs. Analytically: Comparing the Context Sensitivity of Japanese and Americans.” Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 81: 922–34. Nahmias, E., Nadelhoffer, T., Morris, S., and Turner, J. (2005) “Surveying Freedom: Folk Intuitions about Free Will and Moral Responsibility.” Philosophical Psychology 18(5): 561–84. Nichols, S. (2004) Sentimental Rules. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
136
michael bishop
Nichols, S., Stich, S., and Weinberg, J. (2003) “Meta-Skepticism: Meditations in EthnoEpistemology,” in S. Luper (ed.), The Skeptics, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing. Nisbett, R. (2003) The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . And Why. New York: The Free Press. Nisbett, R., Peng, K., Choi, I., and Norenzayan, A. (2001) “Culture and Systems of Thought: Holistic vs. Analytic Cognition.” Psychological Review 108: 291–310. Nisbett, R. and Wilson, T. (1977) “Telling More than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes.” Psychological Review 84(3): 231–59. Peng, I. and Nisbett, R. (1999) “Culture, Dialectics, and Reasoning about Contradiction.” American Psychologist 54: 741–54. Plantinga, A. (1993) Warrant and Proper Function. New York: Oxford University Press. Pust, J. (2000) Intuitions as Evidence. New York: Garland Publishing. Quine, W. V. O. (1969) “Natural Kinds,” in Ontological Relativity & Other Essays, New York: Columbia University Press. Quine, W. V. O. (1986) “Reply to Morton White,” in Lewis Hahn and P. Schilpp (eds.), The Philosophy of W. V. Quine, La Salle, IL: Open Court. Reed, G., Kemeny, M., Taylor, S., Wang, H., and Visscher, B. (1994) “Realistic Acceptance as a Predictor of Decreased Survival Time in Gay Men with AIDS.” Health Psychology 13: 299– 307. Scheier, M., Matthews, K., Owens, J., Magovern, G., Lefebvre, R., Abbott, R., and Carver, C. (1989) “Dispositional Optimism and Recovery from Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery: The Beneficial Effects on Physical and Psychological Well-being.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57: 1024–40. Siegel, H. (1984) “Empirical Psychology, Naturalized Epistemology and First Philosophy.” Philosophy of Science 51: 667–76. Sklar, Lawrence (1975) “Methodological Conservatism.” Philosophical Review 84: 374–400. Stanovich, Keith (1999) Who is Rational? Studies of Individual Differences in Reasoning. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Stich, Stephen (1985) “Could Man Be an Irrational Animal?” Synthese 64(1): 115–34. Stich, Stephen (1987) “Reflective Equilibrium, Analytic Epistemology and the Problem of Cognitive Diversity.” Synthese 74(3): 391–413. Stich, Stephen (1990) The Fragmentation of Reason. Cambridge: MIT Press. Stich, Stephen (1993) “Naturalizing Epistemology: Quine, Simon and the Prospects for Pragmatism,” in C. Hookway and D. Peterson (eds.), Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Royal Institute of Philosophy, Supplement no. 34, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, S. (1989) Positive Illusions: Creative Self-Deception and the Healthy Mind. New York: Basic Books. Taylor, S., Kemeny, M., Aspinwall, L., Schneider, S., Rodriguez, R., and Herbert, M. (1992) “Optimism, Coping, Psychological Distress, and High-Risk Sexual Behavior among Men at Risk for AIDS.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 63: 460–73. Wegner, D. M. (1994) “Ironic Processes of Mental Control.” Psychological Review 101: 34–52. Weinberg, J., Nichols, S., and Stich, S. (2001) “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions.” Philosophical Topics 29(1 & 2): 429–60. Williams, M. (2001) Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press. Wilson, T. and Stone, J. (1985) “Limitations of Self-Knowledge: More on Telling More than We can Know,” in Shaver, P. (ed.), Review of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 6, Beverly Hills: Sage, pp. 167–83.
simulation theory and cognitive neuroscience
137
8 Simulation Theory and Cognitive Neuroscience ALVIN GOLDMAN
Is Simulation a Natural Category? One topic on which Steve Stich and I have occupied opposing positions is the topic of mindreading (also called mentalizing, or folk psychology). In his first position statement on the subject, he and Shaun Nichols framed the debate as one between simulation theory and theory-theory (Stich and Nichols 1992). Responding primarily to Bob Gordon (1986) and me (Goldman 1989) as protagonists of simulation theory, they offered a lucid and spirited defense of theory-theory. As the decade of the 1990s proceeded, Stich and Nichols published a seemingly endless stream of articles on the subject, most of which appeared in Mind and Language. A funny thing happened, however, on the way to the century’s close. The Stich–Nichols attack on the simulation theory gradually softened. In Stich and Nichols (1995) and Nichols, Stich, Leslie and Klein (1996), they showed grudging appreciation of simulationism’s virtues, at least in some of its forms or applications. By the time they published their book on mindreading (Nichols and Stich 2003), their preferred theory was acknowledged to be “very eclectic” (2003: 100). The book rarely refers to their position as theory-theory, and emphatically rejects the theorytheory of self-awareness (2003: ch. 4). One mindreading process (inference prediction) is definitely said to be executed by simulation, and other mindreading processes are allowed to bear some similarities to simulation prototypes (2003: 135). Not surprisingly, I find this increased appreciation for simulation quite congenial. But philosophers are a hard bunch to please, myself included. For my money, Stich and Nichols still haven’t moved far enough in the direction of simulationism. Let us look more closely at their early and late assessments of its prospects. In early writings they viewed simulation theory as an unwelcome intruder into cognitive science. In 1992 they warned that it is fundamentally at odds with “the dominant explanatory strategy in cognitive science” (Stich and Nichols 1992: 36). Again in 1996 they called it “a radical departure from the typical explanations of cognitive capacities” (Nichols et al. 1996: 39). In 1997 their complaint shifted a bit in tone and focus. Surveying what they regarded as
138
alvin goldman
the excessively heterogeneous use of the term ‘simulation’, they challenged the naturalness or utility of the term and urged that it be retired. They continue to urge this in 2003, quoting with approval a passage from their 1997 paper: In reaction to the apparently irresistible tendency to use the word ‘simulation’ as a label for almost anything, we have for some years been arguing that the term ‘simulation’ needs to be retired, because ‘the diversity among the theories, processes and mechanisms to which advocates of simulation theory have attached the label “simulation” is so great that the term itself has become quite useless. It picks out no natural or theoretically interesting category’ (Stich and Nichols 1997: 299). (Nichols and Stich 2003: 134)
Now, I do not want to defend every application of the term ‘simulation’ that anybody has ever proposed. But I do want to resist Nichols and Stich’s continuing claim that there is no natural or theoretically interesting category of simulation. Defense of the naturalness, robustness, and theoretical interest of simulation is the main aim of this paper. The paper also has a secondary, though pervasive, aim. I believe that the best case for the robustness and theoretical interest of simulation can be made with the help of cognitive neuroscience. This is where the best evidence for simulation, including simulationbased mindreading, resides. It is a major omission of Nichols and Stich (2003) to neglect cognitive neuroscience. In general, Stich and Nichols and I agree that the subject of mentalizing requires a heavy dose of inputs from empirical science. Nichols and Stich mention cognitive ethology, anthropology, developmental science, and clinical psychology (2003: 3–5). But they give no attention to, or even make mention of, cognitive neuroscience. This is a serious lacuna. Mentalizing is a prominent topic in cognitive neuroscience; articles on the subject are sprinkled generously throughout its journals. My own booklength treatment of mentalizing (Goldman 2006) makes heavy use of cognitive neuroscience. I regard it as a vital discipline to infuse into the debate about mentalizing. In particular, the full power and merit of the simulation theory only emerges with the help of neuroscientific findings. Notice that I view mental simulation as a broader phenomenon than mental simulation for mindreading. Simulation-based mindreading is a special application of mental simulation in general. Mental simulation can be used for further tasks, such as mindreading, but it doesn’t have to be so used to qualify as simulation. I would claim that the existence and robustness of mental simulation in the broad sense lends support to the claim that simulation is a natural and theoretically interesting category. Some of the material in this paper is intended to elaborate on this point (for more extended defense, see Goldman, 2006). Cognitive neuroscience is a mix of methods, including single-cell recordings (primarily of laboratory animals), lesion studies of clinical patients, a variety of imaging techniques (e.g., PET and functional MRI), neurocomputational modeling, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). The present discussion registers no preferences among these methods; on the contrary, it draws on quite a few of them. Of course, any of these methods can pose problems in application or interpretation. Each method is susceptible of more or less careful employment; but this holds equally of traditional psychological
simulation theory and cognitive neuroscience
139
methods. (For an instructive discussion of special pitfalls in the use of fMRI, see Saxe, Carey and Kanwisher 2004.) Needless to say, I regard the studies cited here as good examples – indeed, often superior examples – of their respective methods.
Simulation and Respects of Similarity How should the term ‘simulation’ be understood, especially for purposes of the simulation theory of mindreading? This is a complex and delicate matter which I won’t try to cover thoroughly (see Goldman 2006: ch. 2). But the general approach I recommend, fairly consonant with a good bit of the simulationist literature (though not all of it), is keyed to the notions of similarity, copying, or replication. Very roughly, one process successfully simulates another, in the intended sense, only if the first process copies, replicates, or resembles the target process, at least in relevant respects. A process needn’t successfully simulate its target process, however, to qualify as simulation. If a process is launched in an attempt to replicate another process (either actual or possible), it can be considered a simulation even if it fails quite miserably to copy or replicate its target. Furthermore, even to be successful, process P does not have to replicate all aspects or stages of process P ′ in order to simulate P′; it suffices to replicate relevant stages and aspects of P ′ (relevant to the task at hand). Now, when we are concerned with mental simulation, we are concerned with similarities or resemblances along mental or psychological dimensions. But exactly which types or respects of psychological similarity are relevant? Phenomenological respects? Functional respects? Neurological respects? According to a standard version of simulation theory, a simulation routine occurs when an attributor creates in himself an imagined or pretend mental state intended to resemble its genuine counterpart in the head of the target. For example, if I wish to predict a forthcoming decision of yours, I might create in myself pretend desires and beliefs that correspond to the genuine desires and beliefs I take you to have. These pretend states, if they are well chosen, will be similar to their genuine counterparts. What kind of similarity, however, is in question? Starting with the phenomenological answer, several problems immediately arise. First, it is highly debatable whether (occurrent) propositional attitude tokens have any phenomenological properties at all. Is there anything it’s “like” to have them? If not, then a pretend propositional attitude (token) cannot resemble a genuine propositional attitude counterpart in phenomenological respects. Second, even if propositional attitude tokens do have phenomenological properties, it may be extremely difficult to identify those properties and compare them across mental events. Given this difficulty, the prospects for verifying or falsifying ST (or even gathering trustworthy evidence) in a sound, reliable way becomes highly problematic. Third, it is widely conceded that a large part of mindreading activity, like other cognitive activity, occurs non-consciously. Moreover, it is usually assumed that non-conscious states lack phenomenology (though there are those who dissent from this presumption). Thus, if the sole or principal respect of similarity were phenomenological similarity, this threatens to preclude the possibility that mindreading activity is simulational. That seems unfairly prejudicial against ST.
140
alvin goldman
What about functional similarities, the option that Stich would probability endorse (if he accepted a similarity-based characterization of simulation)? If we follow ST’s standard story, this option also runs into problems from the get-go. Pretend, or surrogate, states are described by the standard story as having important functional dissimilarities from their counterparts. Dissimilarities are apparent on both output and input sides. To illustrate, suppose you are asked to predict what you would do if you entered your house and saw a skunk in your parlor? Suppose you make this prediction via a simulation routine, by constructing, among other states, a pretend state of seeing a skunk in the parlor. What are the functional properties of a pretend skunk-seeing state? Presumably they don’t include (a) causing you to grab for a skunk-sized object, or (b) causing you to turn around and run out the door. Why? Because, according to the standard ST story, a pretend decision is something that gets taken off-line; it isn’t a state that tends to cause behavior that a corresponding genuine decision would cause. So there’s a functional difference between a pretend state and its genuine counterpart. Similarly on the input side. Genuine skunk sightings are typically produced by skunks; pretend skunk sightings are not typically so caused. They have a more “endogenous” causal source. Admittedly, these functional differences between genuine skunk sightings and pretend skunk sightings do not exhaust the functional properties of the two states. So, the existence of these functional differences does not prove that the two states fail to share any relevant functional properties. But the selected functional properties are quite important ones, and they are typical of pretend states and their genuine counterparts in general. If these (types of ) functional properties aren’t shared, one wonders whether a credible case could ever be made for significant and relevant similarities between pretend states and their counterparts along the functional dimension. Again, this would threaten a fair shake for simulationism. A pretend skunk sighting might resemble a genuine skunk sighting in more categorical, or intrinsic, respects even if they don’t resemble one another very closely in functional terms. For example, a pretend decision might not produce its “natural” behavioral output because it is neurally inhibited. This is a serious possibility, not a merely abstract one. In other words, a pretend decision might closely resemble a genuine decision in “intrinsic” terms but be attended by an inhibition instruction that cancels its normal, downstream effects. This analysis already moves beyond the functional to the neurological level. At the neurological level, there may be better prospects for finding illuminating resemblances among processes. Admittedly, there are many grains of neuroscientific analysis, and it isn’t clear ab initio at what grain there might be interesting process resemblances. As I shall show, however, there is lots of evidence of neural resemblances, and they greatly strengthen the case for simulation as a robust characteristic of both mindreading and other forms of social cognition. Notice that the evidential value of cognitive neuroscience does not depend on the foregoing argument that neurological respects of similarity are critical. Even if functional respects of similarity were agreed upon as the crucial “truth-makers” for simulation, it could still emerge that cognitive neuroscience provides invaluable evidence for the existence or nonexistence of such functional resemblances. But if the foregoing argument is right, there are more direct reasons to turn to neuroscience.
simulation theory and cognitive neuroscience
141
Simulation and Motor Cognition Instead of turning immediately to simulation-based mindreading, I want to start by examining mental simulation in a certain type of non-mindreading activity. The activity in question is in the motor domain, the domain of action. The cases in question are cases in which a simulation relation holds between mental activity involving purely covert action-related thoughts and mental activity that executes overt action. In other words, under a variety of action-related conditions in addition to execution, the motor part of the cognitive system is activated (often at subliminal levels) in ways very similar to the way it is activated when it executes overt action. A typical simulating event is imagining (kinesthetically) the performance of an action, or producing a plan for such an action while watching someone else perform it. The main point to be established is that imagining a mental activity consists of genuinely simulating execution-related mental activity in the sense of ‘simulation’ I have specified, namely the resemblance, similarity, or approximate-duplication sense of ‘simulation’. (Notice, I am not saying that motor imagination resembles overt action, only that it resembles the mental activity responsible for producing the sort of overt action imagined.) I draw here on a review paper by Marc Jeannerod (2001), one of the leading figures in motor imagery research. Jeannerod summarizes his simulation theory for motor cognition as follows: The simulation theory to be developed in this paper postulates that covert actions are in fact actions, except for the fact that they are not executed. The theory therefore predicts a similarity, in neural terms, between the state where an action is simulated and the state of execution of that action. The term S-states [for simulation states] will be used throughout to designate those ‘mental’ states which involve an action content and where brain activity can be shown to simulate that observed during the same, executed action. (2001: S103)
Jeannerod begins by citing behavioral findings suggesting that action imaginings have the same temporal characteristics as the corresponding real, executed actions. For example, Decety, Jeannerod and Preblanc (1989) measured the time it took subjects to walk to a target. When they were blindfolded and encouraged to imagine walkin
