Category: Intentionality

If it could be made to work, materialism would be attractive simply on grounds of parsimony. We all agree that entities, or rather categories of entity, ought not be multiplied beyond necessity.  There are those who will intone this Ockhamite principle with great earnestness as if they are advancing the discussion when of course they are not: the real issue concerns what is needed (necessary) for explanatory purposes.  If you agree that philosophers are in the business of explanation, then I hope you will agree that a good explanation must be categorially parsimonious but not at the expense of explanatory adequacy.

So we ought not introduce irreducibly mental items and/or abstracta if we can  get by with just material items By 'get by' I mean explain in adequate fashion all that needs to be explained: consciousness, self-consciousness including self-reference via the first-person singular pronoun, qualia, intentionality, conscience,  mystical and religious experience, the applicability of mathematics to the physical world, the normativity of logic, normativity in general, the existence of anything in the first place, the emergence of life . . . .

My main interest is negative: in showing that materialism doesn't work. Please don't respond by saying that some other theory (substance dualism, say) doesn't work either. For the issue is precisely: Does   materialism work? If theory T1 is explanatorily inadequate, its deficiencies cannot be made good by pointing out that T2 is also inadequate. This is an invalid argument: "Every alternative to materialism is inadequate; therefore we should embrace materialism despite its inadequacies." Wouldn't it be more reasonable under those circumstances to embrace no theory?

One more preliminary point. If materialism is explanatorily adequate, then we ought to embrace it, and dispense with God, the soul, and the denizens of the Platonic menagerie. For if materialism were adequate, there would be no reason to posit anything beyond the material. But if materialism is not adequate, then we do have reason for such posits.

The following argument is my interpretation of remarks made by Edward Feser in his Philosophy of Mind: A Short Introduction (One World, 2005), pp. 156-159)

1. Consider a representation such as a picture. You draw a picture of your mother. The picture represents her: it is of or about her, and it would remain about her even were she to cease to exist. The picture is a physical object with physical properties: the paper is of a certain size and shape and texture, the ink of a certain chemical composition, the lines have a definite thickness, etc. Now I would insist that these physical features cannot be that in virtue of which the picture represents your mother: they cannot be that in virtue of which the physical item is a representation. For it makes no sense to ascribe intrinsic semantic or intentional properties to merely physical items.  But even if I am wrong about this, there remains a problem for a materialist theory of representation.

2. Suppose a 'copycat' comes along and makes an EXACT copy of your picture of your mother. The copycat's intention is not to represent your mother; his intention is merely to represent your representation of your mother. Now there are two pictorial representations, call them R (the original) and R' (the copy). The question arises: Is R' a  representation of your mother, or is R' a representation  of R? Suppose a second copycat comes along and produces a second copy R''.   Does R'' represent R' or R or your mother? The situation is obviously iterable ad infinitum.

3. Clearly, there is a difference between saying that R' represents your mother, a human being, and saying that R' represents R, a nonhuman drawing of your mother. The reference is different in the two cases. But the reference is indeterminate if we go by the physical properties of the representations alone. Suppose I hand you two drawings of your mother, one an exact copy of the other, but you do not know which is the orignal and which is the copy. You cannot, by inspection of these drawings, tell which is which. Thus you cannot  determine the reference from the physical properties.

4. The point is generalizable to other types of representations.  Suppose I say 'cat' to refer to a cat and my copycat brother says 'cat' simply to copy me. If my brother mimics me perfectly, then it will be impossible from the physical properties of the two word-sounds to tell which refers to a cat and which does not.

Please do not say that we are both referring to a cat. For my copycat brother is a mere copycat: his intention is merely to reproduce the word-sound I made. To make it even clearer, replace my brother with a parrot who happens to be a perfect mimic. No one will say that the 'cat'-token produced by the parrot refers to a cat. The parrot is just an animate copy machine.

The same goes for any physical representation. Suppose a pattern of neural firings is taken to be a representation of X. An exact copy of  that pattern needn't be a representation of X; it could be a
representation of the original pattern. In general, no material representation of X is such that its physical properties suffice to make it a representation of X as opposed to a representation of a
representation of X.

5. Here is the argument:

P1. All thoughts have determinate objects.
P2. No purely material representation has a determinate object.
 —–
C. No thought is a purely material representation.

6. Let's consider an objection. "Granted, material representations on their own lack determinate reference, but that can be supplied by bringing in causal relations. Thus what makes a tokening of 'cat' refer to a cat rather than to a word is the fact that there is a causal chain starting with a furry critter and terminating with an utterance of 'cat.'"

But causal connections cannot secure determinacy of reference, as Hilary Putnam appreciates (Renewing Philosophy, Harvard UP, 1992, p. 23):

     One cannot simply say that the word "cat" refers to cats because
     the word is causally connected to cats, for the word "cat," or
     rather my way of using the word "cat," is causally connected to
     many things. It is true that I wouldn't be using "cat" as I do if
     many other things were different. My present use of the word "cat"
     has a great many causes, not just one. The use of the word "cat" is
     causally connected to cats, but it is also causally connected to
   &#0
160; the behavior of Anglo-Saxon tribes, for example. Just mentioning
     "causal connection" does not explain how one thing can be a
     representation of another thing, as Kant was already aware.

Related Post:  Representation and Causation, With Some Help from Putnam

1. Even if every mental state is a brain state, it is quite clear that  not every brain state is a mental state: not everything going on in the brain manifests mentality. So what distinguishes the brain states that are mental states from the brain states that are not? This question cannot be evaded.

The distinguishing feature cannot be anything intrinsic to brain states qua brain states. To put it another way, the biological, electrochemical, and other terms appropriate to the description of  brain phenomena are of no help in specifying what makes a brain state  mental. Talk of axons, dendrites, synapses, diffusion of sodium ions across synapses, etc. is not the sort of talk that makes intelligible why a particular complex state of Jones' brain is his intense elation at getting his neuroscience text accepted for publication.
  
2. To help you understand what I have just said, I offer an analogy.  Even though every valve-lifter is an engine part, it is quite clear that not every engine part is a valve-lifter. So what distinguishes  the engine parts that are valve-lifters from the parts that are not?

The distinguishing feature cannot be anything intrinsic to engine parts qua physical objects. The mechanical, chemical, electrical, metallurgical and other terms appropriate to the description of engine parts are of no help in specifying what makes an engine part a  valve-lifter. A metallurgist might tell us everything there is to know  about the physical properties of those engine parts that are valve-lifters. But knowing all of that, I do not yet know what makes the part in question a valve-lifter. Similarly, I don't know what makes a certain heavy object under my hood a battery just in virtue of knowing all the electrochemistry involved in its operation.

3. The obvious thing to say at this point is that what make an engine part a valve-lifter or a battery or a generator or a transmission is its function. Physical composition is irrelevant. What makes a part a valve-lifter is the causal role it instantiates within the 'economy'  of the engine. A thing is a valve-lifter in virtue of the job it does  when properly connected to valves, cams, etc. Its being a valve-lifter is not intrinsic to it. Its being is its function within a system whose parts are causally interrelated.

I stress that physical composition is irrelevant. Anything that does the job of a valve-lifter is a valve-lifter. Anything that does the job of a modem is a modem.  There is more than one implementation of the modulation-demodulation function.  The function is 'multiply  realizable' as we say in the trade. Of course, not every physical substratum supports the function: not even in Eskimo land could valve-lifters in internal combustion engines be made of ice.

Another important point is that a particular thing that functions as a valve-lifter can assume other functions, that of paper-weight for example.  So not only are causal roles typically multiply realizable, causal role occupants or realizers are typically multi-functional. 

I think we are all functionalists when it comes to things like valve-lifters, screwdrivers, switches, and modems. Anything that modulates/demodulates is a modem regardless of the stuff inside the
box that realizes or implements the function. For all we care, there is a colony of leprechauns inside the box that chop up the analog input into digital bits. If it does the job of a modem, it IS a modem.

Can we apply this functionalist model to the mind?

4. If there is nothing intrinsic to brain states that explains why some of them are mental states, then the naturalist must look to the extrinsic or relational features of brain states. How do they function? What causal role do they play? How do they stand in relation to inputs and outputs? How did they come into being? What are they good for?

One answer is the functionalist theory that causal role is what makes a brain state a mental state. What makes a mental state mental is just  the causal role it plays in mediating between sensory inputs,   behavioral outputs and other internal states of the subject whose state it is. The idea is not the banality that mental events have causes and effects, but that it is causal role occupancy, nothing more and nothing less, that constitutes the mentality of a mental state. The intrinsic nature of what plays the role is relevant only to its fitness for instantiating mental causal roles but not at all relevant to its being a mental state.

That's the basic idea. What makes a brain state a desire is the causal role that state plays. There is nothing intrinsic to the brain state itself that could tell you that it was a desire for a beer rather than
an intention to paint the bathroom, or a memory of a trip to the Grand Canyon.  In their intrinsic nature mental states are just brain states; it is only their external relations that confer upon them mentality.

5. Here is one problem. It seems clear that my intention to clear brush could not have been a desire for a cold beer. Nor could it be an intention to paint the bathroom. The act of intending is individuated by its intentional content (to clear brush; to pain the bathroom): the content enters into the description of the act. This entails that the act could not have been an act having a different content.

But if it is causal role occupancy that makes brain state B an intention to clear brush, then B could have been an intention to paint the bathroom, had its causal relations been different.  Since this is absurd, it cannot be causal role occupancy  that makes B an intention to clear brush.  The fact of intentionality refutes functionalism.

Compare the valve-lifter. A particular engine part is a valve-lifter in virtue of the causal role it plays in the engine. But that part might not have been in the engine; it might have been on my desk weighing down papers, in which case it would have been playing a different causal role. There is no problem in this case because valve-lifters lack content, or directedness to an object. A valve-lifter is not about anything. But an intention is. And this aboutness is intrinsic to it, which is why it cannot be captured extrinsically in terms of functional role.

So one should not suppose that qualia are the only problems for functionalism.  Intentionality is just as much of a problem.  Compare the Martian neuroscientist argument given earlier.

Besides, one is superficial and thoughtless if one imagines that a clean separation can be made between qualia and intentional phenomena.  But that's a separate post.