Author: Bill Vallicella

Neuroscientistic Neurobabble

UCLA philosopher Tyler Burge scores some good clean hits against neuroscientistic  Unsinn in a December NYT piece. (HT: Feser).  For example, did you know that there is an area of the brain that wants to make love?  (Is it equipped for any such thing, with  a tiny penis or vagina?  And what would it make love to?  An area of the brain of another organism?  Or a different area of the same brain?  The possibilities of mockery are endless, but I will restrain myself.) But I can't resist reproducing this tidbit:

For example, a recent article reports a researcher’s “looking at love, quite literally, with the aid of an MRI machine.”

Quite literally!  You, sir, have your head in the proctologist's domain, quite literally!

 

Mental Acts Versus Mental Actions: Sellars and Bergmann

I have been assuming that there are mental acts and that there are mental actions and that they must not be confused.  It's high time for a bit of exfoliation.  Suppose I note that the front door of an elderly neighbor's house has been left ajar.  That noting is a mental act, but it is not an action.  I didn't do anything to bring about that mental state; I didn't decide to put myself in the state in question; I just happened to see that the door has been left ajar.  There is nothing active or spontaneous about the noting; it is by contrast passive and receptive.  But now suppose I deliberate about whether I should walk onto the man's property and either shut the door or inform him that it is ajar. Suppose he is a cranky old S.O.B.  with an equally irascible old dog.   I might decide that it's better to mind my own business and "let sleeping dogs lie."   The deliberating is a mental action.  So, assuming that there are mental acts and assuming that there are mental actions, it seems as clear as anything that they are different.

Why then are mental acts called acts if they are not actions?  It is because they are occurrent rather than dispositional.  Not everything mental is occurrent.  For example, you believe that every number has a successor even when you are dead drunk or dreamlessly asleep. This is not an occurrent believing.   Indeed, you have beliefs that have never occurred to you.  Surely you believe that no coyote has ever communicated with a bobcat by cellphone, although I will lay money on the proposition that you have never thought of this before.  You believe the proposition expressed by the italicized clause in that you are disposed to assent to it if the question comes up.  So in that sense you do believe that no coyote, etc. 

Mental acts are so-called, therefore, because they are actual or occurrent as opposed to potential or dispositional.  My noting that the old man's door has been left ajar is an occurrent perceptual taking that is not in the control of my will. As Wilfrid Sellars points out,

It is nonsense to speak of taking something to be the case 'on purpose.'  Taking is an act in the Aristotelian sense of 'actuality' rather than in the specialized practical sense which refers to conduct.  A taking may be, on occasion, an element of a scrutinizing — which latter is indeed an action in the practical sense.  To take another example, one may decide to do a certain action, but it is logical nonsense to speak of deciding to will to do it; yet volitions, of course, are mental acts.  (Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes, Humanities Press, 1968, p. 74.)

Another example Sellars cites is drawing a conclusion from premises.  That is a mental action, but there are mental acts involved in this will-driven thinking process.  One is the 'seeing' that the conclusion follows from the premises.  It cannot be said that I decide to accept a conclusion that I 'see' follows from certain other propositions.  The will is not involved.  The 'seeing' is a mental act, but not a mental action.

Gustav Bergmann says essentially the same thing. "An act is not an activity and an activity is not an act." (Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong, University of Wisconsin Press, 1967, p. 153.)  He says that this was crystal clear to Brentano and Meinong, but that in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition 'act' carries an implication of activity.  "In the Aristotlelian-Thomistic account . . . an act of perceiving is the 'abstracting' of a substantial form; and an 'abstracting' is an activity." (Ibid.) 

Very interesting.  It sounds right to me, though I wonder if all Thomists would agree. Not being a Thomist, I incline to the later view.  So as I use 'mental act' a mental act is not a mental action or activity.  This is of course consistent, as already indicated, with its being  the issue of certain mental actions.

A deeper and more important question is whether there are mental acts at all.  Their existence is not obvious — or is it?  Wittgenstein appears to have denied the existence of mental acts.  Bergmann believes he did, while Geach believes he did not.  There is also the related but distinct question whether mental acts require a subject distinct from the act which remains numerically the same over time.  But is even a momentary subject needed?  Why couldn't awareness be totally subjectless, a "wind blowing towards objects" in the Sartrean image?  Butchvarov takes a line similar to Sartre's. 

Clearly, there has to be some distinction between conscious intentionality and its objects.  That's a rock-bottom datum upon which "our spade is turned" to borrow a phrase from old Ludwig.  But why must consciousness be articulated into discrete acts?  Why believe in acts at all?  What are the phenomenological and dialectical considerations that speak in their favor?

Future posts will tackle all these questions as we plunge deeper into the aporetics of mind and bang into one impasse after another.  It should prove to be a humbling experience.

What Song Did the Sirens Sing and in What Key?

Ulysses and sirens Ulysses had himself bound to the mast and the ears of his sailors plugged with wax lest the ravishing strains of the sea-nymphs' song reach their ears and cause them to cast themselves into the sea and into their doom.  But what song did the Sirens sing, and in what key?  Were their tresses of golden hue? And how long were they?  Were the nymphs  equipped with special nautical brassieres to protect their tender nipples from rude contact with jelly fish and such?

One cannot sing a song without singing some definite song in some definite key commencing at some definite time and ending at some later definite time.  But you understand the story of Ulysses and the Sirens and you are now thinking about the song they sang.  But what sort of object is that?

Current MavPhil Site Stats

This, the Typepad incarnation of Maverick Philosopher, commenced operations on 31 October 2008.  Since that date there have been 722,386 pageviews which averages to 876.68 pageviews per day. The site boasts 2107 posts and 4017 comments.  Recent surges: 1369 pageviews on 27 January and 1248 on 1 February.  I am somewhat surprised at this relatively high level of traffic given the arcane topics I write about.  Many thanks to those who visit.

I write out of an inner need, and would do so if I had no readers, driven by what drove me to maintain an off-line journal for the last 40 years.  But better read than unread.  Which reminds me of Schopenhauer's observation, "Forever reading, never read."

Intentional Objects and Dispositional Objects

One who balks at intentional objects on the ground of their queerness will presumably also balk at dispositional objects.  But there is reason to speak of dispositional objects. And there is the outside chance that  the foes of intentional objects might be 'softened up' by a discussion of dispositions and their objects.  But I am not particularly sanguine about bringing the Londonistas out from under their fog and into the Phoenician sunshine.

We can sensibly speak of object-directedness both in the case of thoughts (acts of thinking) and in the case of dispositions (powers, potencies, capacities, and the like).  I cannot think without thinking of something. That of which I am thinking is reasonably called the object of my thought.  Said object may or may not exist.  So we speak of intentional objects.  The intentional object of a mental act is the object precisely as intended in the act.

But dispositions have objects too.  Call them 'dispositional objects.'  Dispositions are directed to these objects which may or may not occur.  Thus dispositions to dissolve, shatter, or swell under certain circumstances are directed to dissolvings, shatterings, and swellings which may or may not occur, and indeed without prejudice to object-directedness.

A sugar cube, for example, is disposed to dissolve if immersed in water or some other fluid.  Distinguish the following four:  the sugar cube, its disposition to dissolve, the causal factors needed to trigger the disposition, and the manifestation of the disposition, i.e., its actual dissolving.  The last-mentioned is the object of the disposition, the dispositional object.  It is an event that may or may not occur depending on circumstances.  A disposition can exist without ever occurring.  Suppose a sugar cube is manufactured, exists for a year, and then is destroyed by being pulverized with a hammer.  It never dissolves.  But at each time during its career it harbors the disposition to dissolve. It is liable to dissolve whether or not it ever does dissolve.  It follows that one must not confuse a disposition with its manifestation.  Dispositions are what they are whether or not they are manifested, whether or not their dispositional objects occur.

Similarly, acts of thinking are what they are and have the specific aboutness that they have whether or not their intentional objects exist in reality.  In an earlier post I drew out the parallel between intentionality and dispositionality more fully.  There is no need to repeat myself here.  The point I want to make in this post is as follows.

If you admit that there are dispositions, then you must admit that there are dispositional objects.  Thus if you admit that a sugar cube, say, has the disposition to dissolve in certain circumstances, then you must admit that this disposition points beyond itself to an event — the manifestation of the disposition — that may or may not occur.  Why then balk at intentional objects?

Note that the following is apparently contradictory:  X is disposed to do something (e.g., shatter) but nothing is such that X is disposed to it.  That parallels: I am thinking of something but nothing is such that I am thinking of it.  Clearly, both statement-forms have some true substitution-instances.  So the statement forms are not contradictory.

How do we show that the apparent contradictions are not real?  By distinguishing between intentional  and dispositional objects on the one hand and real objects (objects-as-entities) on the other.

How will the Londonistas respond?  Will they deny that there are dispositions?  They might.  But if they accept dispositions, then they must accept dispositional objects and a fortiori intentional objects.  I write 'a fortiori' because, while dispositionality can be doubted, intentionality cannot be doubted, it being phenomenologically evident.  It is certain that I think and just as certain that I cannot think without thinking of something.

 

Obamacare and Wussification

An ugly word for an ugly thing.  Either one.

The Obamacare provision which allows children to remain covered by their parents' health care insurance until the age of 26 promotes wussification.  Do I need to explain this? Not to a conservative, for whom the old virtue of self-reliance is indeed a virtue and therefore something to be encouraged and not undermined. 

 

Representation and Causation, with Some Help from Putnam

1. Materialism would be very attractive if only it could be made to work. Unfortunately, there are a number of phenomena for which it has no satisfactory explanation. One such is the phenomenon of
representation, whether mental or linguistic. Some mental states are of or about worldly individuals and states of affairs. This fact comes under the rubric 'Intentionality.'  How is this intentional directedness possible given materialist constraints? Following Chisholm and Searle, I subscribe to the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic. But let's approach the problem of representation from the side of linguistic reference. How is it that words and sentences mean things? How does language hook onto reality? In virtue of what does my tokening (in overt speech, in writing, or in any other way) of the English word-type 'cat' refer to cats? What makes 'cat' refer to cats rather than to pictures of cats or statues of cats or the meowing of cats?  This, in linguistic dress, is the question, What makes my thought of a cat, a thought of a cat?  And how is all this possible in the materialist's world?

2. The materialist has more than one option, but a very tempting one is to reduce reference to causation. The idea is roughly that the referent of a word is what causes its tokening. Thus 'cat'-tokenings refer to cats because cats cause these tokenings. Suppose I walk into your house and see a cat. I say: "I see you have cat." My use of 'cat'  on this occasion — my tokening of the word-type — refers to cats because the critter in front of me causes my 'cat'-tokening.  That's the idea.

3. Unfortunately, this is only a crude gesture in the direction of a theory. For it is obvious, as Hilary Putnam points out (Renewing Philosophy, Harveard UP, 1992,p. 37), that pictures of cats cause 'cat'-tokenings, but   pictures of cats are not cats. Cats are typically furry and cover their feces. Pictures, however, are rarely furry and never cover their (nonexistent) feces. Yet I might say, seeing a picture of a cat over your fireplace, "I see you like cats." In that sentence, 'cat' is used to refer to cats even though what caused my 'cat'-tokening was not a cat but a non-cat, namely, a picture of a cat.

Indeed, practically anything can cause a 'cat'-tokening: cat feces, cat hair, cat caterwauling. Suppose I see Ann Coulter engaged in a 'cat-fight' with Susan Estrich on one of the shout shows. I say, "They are fighting like cats." Nota Bene: my use of 'cat' in this sentence is literal, but it is not caused by a cat! (My example, not Putnam's).

4. Our problem is this: what determines the reference of a word like 'cat'? What makes this bit of language represent something extralinguistic? 'Cat' is a linguistic item; a cat is not. (French   'philosophers' take note.) In virtue of what does the former target the latter? If both a cat and a pile of cat scat can cause a 'cat'-tokening, then the causal theory of reference is worthless unless it can exclude these extraneous (excremental?) cases.

The problem is that 'cat' refers to something quite specific, cats, whereas 'cat'-tokenings can be caused by practically anything. To solve this problem, a notion of causation must be invoked that is also quite selective. It turns out, however, that this selective notion of  causation presupposes intentionality, and so cannot be used in a noncircular account of intentionality. Let me explain.

4. Context-Sensitive versus Context-Independent Concepts of Causation. We often in ordinary English speak of 'the cause' of some event, a myocardial infarction say, even though there are many contributing  factors: bad diet, lack of exercise, hypertension, cigarette smoking, high stress job, an episode of snow-shoveling. Which of these will be adjudged 'the cause' is context- and interest-relative. A physician who gets a kick-back from a pharmaceutical concern will point to hypertension, perhaps, so that he can prescribe a massive dose of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor, while the man's wife might say that it was the snow shoveling that did him in.

To take a more extreme example, suppose a man dies in a fire while in bed. The salient cause might be determined to be smoking in bed. No one will say that the flammability of the bedsheets and other room
furnishings is the cause of the man's incineration. Nevertheless, had the room and its furnishings not been flammable, the fire would not have occurred! The flammability is not merely a logical, but also a   causal, condition of the fire. It is part of the total cause, but no one will consider it salient. The word is from the Latin salire to leap, whence our word 'sally' as when one sallies forth to do battle at a
chess tournament, say.   A salient cause, then, is one that jumps out at you,  grabbing you by your epistemic shorthairs as it were, as opposed to being a mere background condition.

Putnam cites the example of the pressure cooker that exploded (p. 48).  No one will say that it was a lack of holes in the pressure cooker's vessel that caused the explosion. A stuck safety valve caused the   explosion. Nevertheless, had the vessel been perforated, the contraption would not have exploded!

What these examples show is that there is an ordinary-language use of 'cause' which is context-sensitive and interest-relative and (if I may) point-of-view-ish. A wholly objective view of nature, a Nagelian view from nowhere, would not be able to discriminate the salient from the nonsalient in matters causal. In terms of fundamental physics, the whole state of the world at time t determines its state at subsequent  times. At this level, a short-circuit and the current's being on are equally causal in respect of the effect of a fire. Our saying that the short-circuit caused the fire, not the current's being on, simply advertises the fact that for us the latter is the normal and desired state of things, the state we have an interest in maintaining, and that the former is the opposite.

The ordinary notion of cause, then, resting as it does on our interests and desires, presupposes intentional notions. I cannot be interested in or desire something unless I am conscious of it. And I   cannot adjudge one state of affairs as normal and the other as  abnormal unless I have interests and desires.

5. Recall what the problem was. The materialist needs to explain reference in physicalist terms. He thinks to do so by invoking physical causation. The idea is that the referents of a word W cause W-tokenings. The reference of a word is determined by the causal influence of the word's referents. So it must be cats, and not  pictures of cats, or the past behavior or English speakers that causes  'cat'-tokenings. But surely the past behavior of English speakers is part of the total cause of p
resent 'cat'-tokenings. (See Putnam, pp. 48-49.) 'Cat' does not refer to this behavior, however. To exclude the   behavior as non-salient requires use of the ordinary interest-relative notion of causation. But this notion, we have seen, presupposes intentionality.

6. The upshot is that the above causal account of representation –  which is close to a theory proposed by Jerry Fodor — is viciously circular: it presupposes the very notion that it is supposed to be   reductively accounting for, namely, intentionality.

Does a Cube Have 12 Edges?

Well of course.  In reality every cube has 12 edges. But one could think of a cube without thinking of something that has 12 edges, and indeed without thinking of something that lacks 12 edges.  If you know what a cube is, and I ask you, "How many edges does a cube have," you might reply, "I don't know."  During this exchange you are most assuredly thinking of a cube, but a cube indeterminate in respect of the property of having 12 edges.  What you have before your mind is an incomplete object, one that, because incomplete, cannot exist.  Your thought has an intentional object, but it is an object that does not exist.

Another example.  Peter shows up at my door.  I note that he is wearing a brown leather vest.  Now anything made of leather must be made of cow leather or horse leather or alligator leather or . . . .  But the leather vest that is before my mind as the object of my visual experience is indeterminate with respect to type of leather.  What is before my mind is an intentional object.

Peter's vest is brown, and in reality everything brown is colored.  But the intentional object of my visual experiencing is brown but not colored.  Extracting the principle, we may erect the following thesis:

Non-Closure Under Property-Entailment:  Intentional objects, reflecting as they do the finitude of the human mind, are not closed under property-entailment. 

It follows from this principle that no merely intentional object exists.  (For everything that exists is complete.)  But that is not to say that they are denizens of Meinong's realm of Aussersein.  Talk of merely intentional objects does not commit one to Meinongianism.  One could take the line that merely intentional objects are "ontically heteronomous" to borrow a phrase from Roman Ingarden: their existence is parasitic upon the existence of the mental acts whose intentional objects they are.

Now there are problems with this sketch of a theory of intentional objects, but it is not an obviously senseless or incoherent theory.  So I suspect Edward of London feigns incomprehension when he says he doesn't understand it.  Does he have a better theory? 

The Aporetics of the Intentional Object, Part I

Here is a puzzle that may be thought to motivate a distinction between intentional and real objects, a distinction that turns out to be problematic indeed.

Puzzle.  One cannot think without thinking of something, but if one is thinking of something, it does not follow that  something is such that one is thinking of it.

Example.  Tom is thinking of the fountain of youth.  So he is thinking of something. But there is no fountain of youth.  So from the fact that Tom  is thinking of the fountain of youth, it does not follow that something is such that Tom is thinking of it.

The puzzle expressed as an aporetic dyad:

1. One cannot think without thinking of something.
2. If one is thinking of something, it does not follow that something is such that one is thinking of it.

Both limbs make a strong claim on our acceptance.  The first is utterly datanic.  The second, though exceedingly plausible, and indeed true as far as I can see, is not datanic.  It is reasonably denied by Meinong and the Meinongians.  For if some items have no being at all, and if the fountain of youth counts as a beingless item (as it does for Meinong & Co.), and if Tom is thinking of the fountain of youth, then it does follow that something is such that Tom is thinking of it.  This shows that our puzzle rests on a presupposition  which ought to be added to our dyad so as to sire the following aporetic triad or antilogism:

1. One cannot think without thinking of something.
2. If one is thinking of something, it does not follow that something is such that one is thinking of it.
3. There are no beingless items.

Though the limbs are individually plausible, they appear collectively inconsistent.  If they really are inconsistent, then we face a genuine aporia, an intellectual impasse: we have three propositions each of which we have excellent reason to think is true, but which cannot all be true on pain of logical contradiction.

There is at least the appearance of contradiction.  For if Tom is thinking of a mermaid, and there are no mermaids, then Tom is both thinking of something and not thinking of something.  Tom's thought has an object and it does not have an object.  It has an object because no one can think without thinking of something.  It does not have an object because there are no mermaids.  So we have at least an apparent contradiction.

To dispel the appearance of contradiction, one could make a distinction.  So let us distinguish the intentional object from the real object and see what happens.  Every intentional state is a directedness to an object, and the intentional object is simply that to which the intentional state is directed precisely as it is intended in the mental act with all and only the properties it is intended as having. So when Tom thinks of a mermaid, a mermaid is his intentional object.  For it is that to which his thought is directed. But there is no 'corresponding' real object because there are no mermaids in reality.  Accordingly, 'Tom's thought has an object and it does not have an object' is only apparently a contradiction since what it boils down to is 'Tom's thought has an intentional object but it does not have a real object' — which is not a contradiction.

Unfortunately, this solution brings with it its own difficulties.  In this post I will mention just one.

The putative solution says that if I am thinking about Pegasus or Atlantis or the fountain of youth, my thinking has an intentional object, but that there is no corresponding real object.  But what if I am thinking of Peter, who exists?  In this case the theory will have to maintain that there is a real object corresponding to the intentional object.  It will have to maintain this because every intentional state has an intentional object.  The theory, then, says that when we intend the nonexistent, there is only an intentional object.  But when we intend the existent, there is both an intentional object and a corresponding real object.  There is a decisive objection to this theory.

Clearly, if I am thinking about Peter, I am thinking about him and not about some surrogate intentional object, immanent to the mental act,  which somehow mediates between the act and Peter himself.  The mental act terminates at Peter and not at an intentional object.  Intentionality, after all, is that feature of mental states whereby they refer beyond themselves to items that are neither parts of the mental act nor existentially dependent on the mental act.  Clearly, it is intrinsic to the intentionality of my thinking of Peter that my thinking intends something that exists whether or not I am thinking of it. 

This objection puts paid to the notion that intentionality relates a mind (or a state of a mind) to a merely intentional object which functions as an epistemic intermediary or epistemic surrogate. This scheme fails to accommodate the fact that intentionality by its very nature involves a transcending of the mind and its contents towards the transcendent.  Suppose I am thinking about a mountain.  Whether it exists or not, what I intend is (i) something whose nature is physical and not mental; and (ii) something that exists whether or not I am thinking about it.

The point I just made is that when I think of Peter, it is Peter himself that my thought reaches: my thought does not terminate at a merely intentional object, immanent to the act, which merely stands for or goes proxy for or represents Peter.  This  point is well-nigh datanic.  If you don't understand it, you don't understand intentionality.  One will be tempted to accommodate this point by saying that when one thinks of what exists, the IO = the RO.  But this can't be right either.  For the intentional object is always an incomplete object, a fact that reflects the finitude of the human mind.  But Peter in reality is a complete object.  Now identity is governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals which states, roughly, that if x = y, then x and y share all properties.  But the IO and the RO do not share all properties:  The IO is indeterminate with respect to some properties while the RO is wholly determinate.  Therefore, the IO is never identical to the RO.

So the point I made cannot be accommodated by saying that the IO = the RO in the case when one thinks of the existent.

Where does this leave us?   I argued that our initial puzzle codified first as a dyad and then as a triad motivates a distinction between intentional and real objects.  The distinction was introduced in alleviation of inconsistency.  But then we noted a serious difficulty with the distinction.  But if the distinction cannot be upheld, how do we solve the aporetic triad?  It looks as if the distinction is one we need to make, but cannot make.