Intentionality – Page 5 – Maverick Philosopher

Seeing versus Imagining a Ghost: Another Round with Hennessey

It is plain that 'sees' has many senses in English. Of these many senses, some are philosophically salient. Of the philosophical salient senses, two are paramount. Call the one 'existence-entailing.' (EE) Call the other 'existence-neutral.' (EN) On the one, 'sees' is a so-called verb of success. On the other, it isn't, which not to say that it is a 'verb of failure.' Now there is difference between seeing a tree (e.g.) and seeing that a tree is in bloom (e.g.), but this is a difference I will ignore in this entry, at some philosophical peril perhaps.

EE: Necessarily, if subject S sees x, then x exists.

EN: Possibly, subject S sees x, but it is not the case that x exists.

Now one question is whether both senses of 'see' can be found in ordinary English. The answer is yes. "I know that feral cat still exists; I just now saw him" illustrates the first. "You look like you've just seen a ghost" illustrates the second.

So far, I don't think I've said anything controversial.

We advance to a philosophical question, and embroil ourselves in controversy, when we ask whether, corresponding to the existence-neutral sense of 'sees,' there is a type of seeing, a type of seeing that does not entail the existence of the object seen. One might grant that there is a legitimate use of 'sees' (or a cognate thereof) in English according to which what is seen does not exist without granting that in reality there is a type of seeing that is the seeing of the nonexistent.

One might insist that all seeing is the seeing of what exists, and that one cannot literally see what does not exist. So, assuming that there are no ghosts, one cannot see a ghost.

But suppose a sincere, frightened person reports that she has seen a ghost of such-and-such a ghastly description. Because of the behavioral evidence, you cannot reasonably deny that the person has had an experience, and indeed an object-directed (intentional) experience. You cannot reasonably say, "Because there are no ghosts, your experience had no object." For it did have an object, indeed a material (albeit nonexistent) object having various ghastly properties. (Side question: Is 'ghastly' etymologically connected to 'ghostly'?)

This example suggests that we sometimes see what does not exist, and that seeing therefore does not entail the existence of that which is seen. If this is right, then the epistemologically primary sense of 'see' is given by (EN) supra.

Henessey's response: "I grant the reality of her experience, with the reservation that it was not an experience based in vision, but one with a basis in imagination, imagination as distinguished from vision." The point, I take it, is that what we have in my example of a person claiming to see a ghost is not a genuine case of seeing, of visual perception, but a case of imagining. The terrified person imagined a ghost; she did not see one.

I think Hennessey's response gets the phenomenology wrong. Imagination and perception are phenomenologically different. For one thing, what we imagine is up to us: we are free to imagine almost anything we want; what we perceive, however, is not up to us. When Ebeneezer Scrooge saw the ghost of Marley, he tried to dismiss the apparition as "a bit of bad beef, a blot of mustard, a fragment of an underdone potato," but he found he could not. Marley: "Do you believe in me or not?" Scrooge: "I do, I must!" This exchange brings out nicely what Peirce called the compulsive character of perception. Imagination is not like this at all. Whether or not Scrooge saw Marley, he did not imagine him for the reason that the object of his experience was not under the control of his will.

The fact that what one imagines does not exist is not a good reason to to assimilate perception of what may or may not exist to imagination.

Second, if a subject imagines x, then it follows that x does not exist. Everything imagined is nonexistent. But it is not the case that if a subject perceives x, then x does not exist. Perception either entails the existence of the object perceived, or is consistent with both the existence and the nonexistence of the object perceived.

Third, one knows the identity of an object of imagination simply by willing the object in question. The subject creates the identity so that there can be no question of re-identifying or re-cognizing an object of imagination. But perception is not like this at all. In perception there is re-identification and recognition. Scrooge did not imagine Marley's ghost for the reason that he was able to identify and re-identify the ghost as it changed positions in Scrooge's chamber. So even if you balk at admitting that Scrooge saw Marley's ghost, you ought to admit that he wasn't imaging him.

I conclude that Hennessey has not refuted my example. To see a ghost is not to imagine a ghost, even if there aren't any. Besides, one can imagine a ghost without having the experience that one reports when one sincerely states that one has seen a ghost. Whether or not this experience is perception, it surely is not imagination.

But I admit that this is a very murky topic!

Some Notes on Rescher’s “Nonexistents Then and Now”

A reader inquires:

Have you read Nicholas Rescher's Nonexistents Then and Now? I read it recently and thought I'd bring it to your attention because it's relevant to your recent posts on fiction. If I understand the article, Rescher would agree with you that a fictional man is not a man, but he would say the same of a merely possible man (denying premise 6 in your post More on Ficta and Impossibilia): he argues that because nonexistents are necessarily incomplete, they are not individuals but schemata for individuals. In response to your post Imagining X as Real versus Imagining X as Unreal and a Puzzle of Actualization Rescher would probably say that the "table" before your mind is not an individual table but a schema for an individual table, a "schema to which many such individuals might answer" (p. 376). As your concluding apory implies, the argument against the possibility of actualizing Hamlet might apply to any nonexistent. Rescher seems to think it does. It would be interesting to read some of your thoughts on Rescher's essay, but I do see that you're now considering a different problem.

I was aware of this article, but hadn't studied it carefully until today. I thank the reader for reminding me of it. What he says about it is accurate. Herewith, some preliminary comments.

1. One objection I have is that Rescher tends to conflate the epistemological with the ontological. A careful reading of the following passage shows the conflation at work. I have added comments in red.

To begin, note that a merely possible world is never given. It is not something we can possibly encounter in experience. The only world that confronts us in the actual course of things is the real world, this actual world of ours — the only world to which we gain entry effortlessly, totally free of charge. [This is practically a tautology. All Rescher is saying is that the only world we can actually experience is the actual world, merely possible worlds being, by definition, not actual.] To move from it, we must always do something, namely, make a hypothesis — assumption, supposition, postulation, or the like. The route of hypotheses affords the only cognitive access to the realm of nonexistent possibility. [Rescher's wording suggests that there is a realm of nonexistent possibility and that we can gain cognitive access to it.] For unlike the real and actual world, possible worlds never come along of themselves and become accessible to us without our actually doing something, namely, making an assumption or supposition or such-like. Any possible world with which we can possibly deal will have to be an object of our contrivance — of our making by means of some supposition or assumption. [In this last sentence Rescher clearly slides from an epistemological claim, one about how we come to know the denizens of the realm of nonexistent possibility, to an ontological claim about what merely possible worlds and their denizens ARE, namely, objects of our contrivance.](364, emphasis added)

As my reader is aware, Rescher wants to say about the merely possible what he says about the purely fictional, namely, that pure ficta are objects of our contrivance. But this too, it seems to me, is an illicit conflation. The purely fictional is barred from actuality by its very status as purely fictional: Sherlock Holmes cannot be actualized. He is an impossible item. I am tempted to say that not even divine power could bring about his actualization, any more than it could restore a virgin. But the merely possible is precisely — possibly actual! The merely possible is intrinsically such as to be apt for existence, unlike the purely fictional which is intrinsically such as to be barred from actuality.

2. The conflation of the merely possible with the purely fictional is connected with another mistake Rescher makes. Describing the "medieval mainstream," (362) Rescher lumps mere possibillia and pure ficta together as entia rationis. For this mistake, Daniel Novotny takes him to task, explaining that "Suarez and most other Baroque scholastics considered merely possible beings to be real, and hence they were not classified as beings of reason." (Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel, Fordham UP, 2013, p. 27) Entia rationis, beings of reason, are necessarily mind-dependent impossible objects. Mere possibilia are not, therefore, entia rationis.

3. As I understand it, the problem of the merely possible is something like this. Merely possible individuals and states of affairs are not nothing, nor are they fictional. And of course their possibility is not merely epistemic, or parasitic upon our ignorance. Merely possible individuals and states of affairs have some sort of mind-independent reality. But how the devil can we make sense of this mind-independent reality given that the merely possible, by definition, is not actual? Suppose we cast the puzzle in the mold of an aporetic triad:

a. The merely possible is not actual.

b. The merely possible is real (independently of finite minds).

c. Whatever is real is actual.

Clearly, the members of this trio cannot all be true. Any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one. For example, the conjunction of the last two propositions entails the negation of the first.

What are the possible solutions given that the triad is is genuinely logically inconsistent and given that the triad is soluble? I count exactly five possible solutions.

S1. Eliminativism. The limbs are individually undeniable but jointly inconsistent, which is to say: there are no mere possibilia. One could be an error theorist about mere possibilia.

S2. Conceptualism. Deny (b) while accepting the other two limbs. There are mere possibilia, but what they are are conceptual constructions by finite minds. This is essentially Rescher's view. See his A Theory of Possibility: A Constructivistic and Conceptualistic Theory of Possible Individuals and Possible Worlds (Basil Blackwell, 1975). He could be described as an artifactualist about possibilities: "A possible individual is an intellectual artifact: the product of a projective 'construction' . . . ." (p. 61)

S3. Actualism/Ersatzism. Deny (a) while accepting the other two limbs. One looks for substitute entities to go proxy for the mere possibles. Thus, on one approach, the merely possible state of affairs of there being a unicorn is identified with an actual abstract entity, the property of being a unicorn. For the possibility to be actual is for the the property to be instantiated.

S4. Extreme Modal Realism. Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs. David Lewis. There is a plurality of possible worlds conceived of as maximal merelogical sums of concreta. The worlds and their inhabitants are all equally real. But no world is absolutely actual. Each is merely actual at itself.

S5. Theologism. Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs. We bring God into the picture to secure the reality of the possibles instead of a plurality of equally real worlds. Consider the possibility of there being unicorns. This is a mere possibility since it is not actual. But the possibility is not nothing: it is a definite possibility, a real possibility that does not depend for its reality on finite minds. There aren't any unicorns, but there really could have been some, and the fact of this mere possibility has nothing to do with what we do or think or say. The content of the possibility subsists as an object of the divine intellect, and its actualizability is grounded in God's power.

4. Part of Rescher's support for his constructivism/conceptualism/artifactualism is his attack on the problem of transworld identity. For Rescher, "the issue of transworld identity actually poses no real problems — a resolution is automatically available." (371) Rescher's argument is hard to locate due to his bloated, meandering, verbose style of writing. Rescher rarely says anything in a direct and pithy way if he can pad it out with circumlocutions and high-falutin' phaseology. (I confess to sometimes being guilty of this myself.)

But basically such argument as I can discern seems to involve equivocation on such terms as 'individuation' and 'identity' as between epistemological and ontological senses. He gives essentially the following argument on p. 378. This is my reconstruction and is free of equivocation.

A. All genuine individuals are complete.

B. All merely possible individuals are complete only if completely describable by us.

C. No merely possible individuals are completely describable by us.

Therefore

D. No merely possible individuals are genuine individuals.

But why should we accept (B)? Why can't there be nonexistent individuals that are complete? Rescher just assumes that the properties of such individuals must be supplied by us. But that is to beg the question against those who believe in the reality of the merely possible. He just assumes the truth of artifactualism about the merely possible. Consider the following sentences

d. Bill Clinton is married to Hillary Rodham.

e. Bill Clinton remained single.

f. Bill Clinton married someone distinct from Hillary Rodham.

Only the first sentence is true, but, I want to say, the other two are possibly true: they pick out merely possible states of affairs. There are three possible worlds involved: the actual world and two merely possible worlds. Now does 'Bill Clinton' pick out the same individual in each of these three worlds? I am inclined to say yes, despite the fact that we cannot completely describe the world in which our boy remains single or the world in which he marries someone other than Hillary. But Rescher will have none of this because his conceptualism/constructivism/ artifactualism bars him from holding that actual individuals in merely possible worlds or merely possible individuals have properties other that those we hypothesize them as having. So, given the finitude of our hypothesizing, actual individuals in merely possible worlds, or merely possible individuals, can only be incomplete items, multiply realizable schemata, and thus not genuine individuals. But then the possible is assimilated to the fictional.

On Seeing: Intentionality without Aspectuality?

Consider this argument:

1. Tom believes that the man at the podium is the Pope

2. The Pope is an Argentinian

Therefore

3. Tom believes that the man at the podium is Argentinian.

The argument is plainly invalid. For Tom may not believe that the Pope is an Argentinian. Now consider this argument:

4. Tom sees the Pope

2. The Pope is an Argentinian

Therefore

5. Tom sees an Argentinian.

Valid or invalid? That depends. 'Sees' is often taken to be a so-called verb of success: if S sees x, then it follows that x exists. On this understanding of 'sees' one cannot see what doesn't exist. Call this the existentially loaded sense of 'sees' and contrast it with the existentially neutral sense according to which 'S sees x' does not entail 'X exists.'

If 'sees' is understood in the existentially loaded way, then the second argument is valid, whether or not Tom knows that the Pope is Argentinian. For if Tom sees the Pope, then the object seen exists. But nothing can exist without properties, properties most of which are had independently of our mental states. If the object has the property F-ness, then the perceiver sees an F-thing, even if he doesn't see it as an F-thing. So Tom sees an Argentinian despite not seeing him as an Argentinian.

Now seeing in the existentially loaded sense might seem to be a perfectly good example of an intentional or object-directed state since one cannot see without seeing something. One cannot just see. Seeing takes an object.

But whether existentially loaded seeing is an intentional state depends on what all enters into the definition of an intentional state. Now one mark of intentionality is aspectuality. What I am calling aspectuality is what John Searle calls "aspectual shape":

I have been using the term of art, "aspectual shape," to mark a universal feature of intentionality. It can be explained as follows: Whenever we perceive anything or think about anything, we always do so under some aspects and not others. These aspectual features are essential to the intentional state; they are part of what makes it the mental state that it is. (The Rediscovery of the Mind, MIT Press, 1992, pp. 156-157)

The phrase I bolded implies that no intentional state is such that every aspect of the object is before the mind of the person in the state. Suppose you see my car. You won't help being able to see it is as bright yellowish-green sport-utility vehicle. But you could easily see it without seeing it as a 2013 Jeep Wrangler. I take this to imply that the set of perceived aspects of any object of perception not only can be but must be incomplete. This should be obvious from the fact that, as Husserl liked to point out, outer perception is essentially perspectival. For example, all sides of the car are perceivable, but one cannot see the car from the front and from the rear simultaneously.

This aspectuality holds for intentional states generally. To coin an example, one can believe that a certain celestial body is the Evening Star without believing that it is the Morning Star. One can want to drink a Manhattan without wanting to drink a mixture of bourbon, sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters. As Searle says, "Every belief and every desire, and indeed every intentional phenomenon, has an aspectual shape." (157)

Intentional states are therefore not only necessarily of something; they are necessarily of something as something. And given the finitude of the human mind, I want to underscore the fact that even if every F is a G, one can be aware of x as F without being aware of x as G. Indeed, this is so even if necessarily (whether metaphysically or nomologically) every F is a G. Thus I can be aware of a moving object as a cat, without being aware of it as spatially extended, as an animal, as a mammal, as an animal that cools itself by panting as opposed to sweating, as my cat, as the same cat I saw an hour ago, etc.

But now it seems we have a problem. If that which is (phenomenlogically, not spatially) before my mind is necessarily property-incomplete, then either seeing is not existentially loaded, or existentially loaded seeing is not an intentional state. To put the problem as an aporetic tetrad:

1. If S sees x, then x exists

2. Seeing is an intentional state

3. Every intentional state has an aspectual shape: its object is incomplete

4. Nothing that exists is incomplete.

The limbs of the tetrad are collectively logically inconsistent. Any three of them, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining one. For example, the conjunction of the first three limbs entails the negation of the fourth.

But while the limbs are collectively inconsistent, they are individually very plausible. So we have a nice puzzle on our hands. At least one of the limbs is false, but which one? I don't think that (3) or (4) are good candidates for rejection. That leaves (1) or (2).

I incline toward the rejection of (1). Seeing is an intentional state but it is not existence-entailing. My seeng of x does not entail the existence of x. What one sees (logically) may or may not exist. There is nothing in or about the visual object that certifies that it exists apart from my seeing it. Existence is not an observable feature. The greenness of the tree is empirically accessible; its existence is not.

It is of course built into the intentionality of outer perception that what is intended is intended as existing whether or not the act or intentio exists. To put it paradoxically (and I owe this formulation to Wolfgang Cramer), the object intended is intended as non-object. That is, objects of outer perception are intended as existing independently of the mental acts that 'target' them, and thus not as merely intentional objects. But there is nothing like an 'ontological argument' in the vicinity. I cannot validly infer that the tree I see exists because it is intended as existing apart from my seeing. This is is an invalid 'ontological' inference:

A. X is intended as existing independently of any and all mental acts

ergo

B. X exists.

If the above is right, then seeing is an intentional state that shares the aspectuality common to all such states. A consequence of this is a rejection of 'externalism' about outer perception: the content of the mental state I am in when I see a tree does not depend on the existence of any tree. The object-directedness of the mental state is intrinsic to it and not dependent on any extrinsic relation to a mind-independent item. To turn Putnam on his head: the meaning is precisely 'in the head.'

Are there problems with this? We shall see. Externalism is a fascinating option. But I am highly annoyed that that typical analytic philosopher, Ted Honderich, who defends a version of externalism in his book On Consciousness, makes no mention of the externalist theories of Heidegger, Sartre or Butchvarov. How typical of the analytic ignoramus, not that all 'analysts' are ignorant of the history of philosophy.

On Multiplying Modes of Existence

Am I committed to an uneconomical multiplication of modes of existence? I said that the following set of propositions is logically consistent:

a. Tom is thinking of a unicorn
b. Unicorns do not exist in reality
c. Tom's mental state is object-directed; it is an intentional state.
d. The object of Tom's mental state does not exist in reality.
e. The merely intentional object is not nothing.
f. The merely intentional object enjoys intentional existence, a distinct mode of existence different from existence in reality.

David Brightly in a comment constructs a similar set:

By analogy with your (a)–(f) can we not also consistently assert the following?

a. This tapestry, rather beautifully, depicts a unicorn.
b. Unicorns do not exist in the (C1)-sense.
c. The tapestry is object-directed; it is a depictional entity.
d. The object of the tapestry does not (C1)-exist.
e. The merely depicted object is not nothing.
f. The merely depicted object enjoys depictional existence, a distinct mode of existence different from (C1)-existence.

Likewise,

Whereas my view is that when Tom thinks of a unicorn, he is thinking of something, an item that exists merely as the object of Tom's act of thinking, but does not exist mind-independently,

has the analogy,

When the tapestry depicts a unicorn, it is depicting something, an item that exists merely as the object of the tapestry's depicting, but does not exist tapestry-independently.

Three points.

First, the intentionality of Tom's thinking is original while the intentionality of the tapestry is derivative. The tapestry is not intrinsically intentional, but derives its intentionality from a mind's taking of the merely physical object as a picture or image of something else. By itself, the tapestry depicts nothing. It is just a piece of cloth.

Given the first point, my second is that there are not two kinds of intentionality or object-directedness, but only one, the intentionality of the viewer of the tapestry who takes it as representing something, a unicorn. 'Derivative' in 'derivative intentionality' is an alienans adjective.

Third, if there are not two kinds of intentionality, then there is no call to distinguish, in addition to (C1)-existence (real existence) and intentional existence, depictional existence.

In this way I think I can avoid multiplying modes of existence by the multiplicity of types of physical things (scribbles on paper, trail markers, grooves in vinyl, etc.) that can be taken to represent something.

Merely Intentional Objects and the ‘Existential Fallacy’

London Ed wants to pin the 'existential fallacy' on me. He writes and I respond in blue:

Continue reading “Merely Intentional Objects and the ‘Existential Fallacy’”

Imagining X as Real versus Imagining X as Unreal and a Puzzle of Actualization

Peter and I discussed the following over Sunday breakfast.

Suppose I want a table, but there is no existing table that I want: I want a table with special features that no existing table possesses. So I decide to build a table with these features. My planning involves imagining a table having certain properties. It is rectangular, but not square, etc. How does this differ from imagining a table that I describe in a work of fiction? Suppose the two tables have all the same properties. We also assume that the properties form a logically consistent set. What is the difference between imagining a table I intend to build and imagining a table that I do not intend to build but intend merely to describe as part of the fictional furniture in a short story?

In the first case I imagine the table as real; in the second as fictional. Note that to imagine a table as real is not the same as imagining a real table, though that too occurs. Suppose I remember seeing Peter's nondescript writing table. To remember a table is not to imagine one; nonetheless I can imagine refurbishing Peter's table by stripping it, sanding it, and refinishing it. The imagined result of those operations is not a purely imagined object, any more than a piece of fiction I write in which Peter's table makes an appearance features a purely fictional table.

The two tables I am concerned with, however are both nonexistent. In both cases there is a merely intentional object before my mind. And in both cases the constitutive properties are the same. Moreover, the two are categorially the same: both are physical objects, and more specifically artifacts. Obviously, when I imagine a table, I am not imagining a nonphysical object or a natural physical object like a tree. So there is a clear sense in which what I am imagining is in both cases a physical object, albeit a nonexistent/not-yet-existent physical object.

So what distinguishes the two objects? Roman Ingarden maintains that they differ in "ontic character." In the first case, the ontic character is intended as real. In the second, intended as fictional. (The Literary Work of Art, p. 119).

Now I have already argued that purely fictional objects are impossible objects: they cannot be actualized, even if the constitutive properties form a logically consistent set. We can now say that the broadly logical impossibility of purely fictional objects is grounded in their ontic character of being intended as fictional. The table imagined as real, however, is possible due to its ontic character of being intended as real despite being otherwise indistinguishable from the table imagined as fictional.

Now here is the puzzle of actualization formulated as an aporetic triad

a. Every incomplete object is impossible.

b. The table imagined as real is an incomplete object.

c. The table imagined as real is possible, i.e. actualizable.

The limbs are collectively inconsistent, but each is very plausible. At any impasse again.

Do Merely Intentional Objects Have Being of Their Own? With a Little Help from Ingarden

WARNING! Scholastic hairsplitting up ahead! If you are allergic to this sort of thing, head elsewhere. My old post, On Hairsplitting, may be of interest.

My Czech colleague Lukas Novak seems to hold that there is no mode of being that is the mode of being of purely or merely intentional objects:

. . . no problem to say that a merely intentional object O has an esse intentionale; but what is this esse? There are reasons to think that it is nothing within O: for objects have intentional being in virtue of being conceived (known, etc. . . ), and cognition in general is an immanent operation, i.e., its effects remain within its subject. It would be absurd to assume that by conceiving of Obama just now (and so imparting to him an esse intentionale) I cause a change in him! So intentional being seems to be a mere extrinsic denomination from the cognitive act, a merely extrinsic property. Consequently, objects which have only intentional being, are in themselves nothing. They do not represent an item in the complete inventory of what there is. It seems to me that it is an error (yes, I believe there are philosophical errors:-)) to assume that objects must be something in themselves in order to be capable of being conceived (or referred to).

While agreeing with much of what Novak says, I think it is reasonable to maintain that merely intentional objects enjoy intentional being, esse intentionale, a mode of being all their own, despite the obvious fact that merely intentional objects are 'existentially heteronomous,' a phrase to be defined shortly. But to discuss this with any rigor we need to make some distinctions. I will be drawing upon the work of Roman Ingarden, student of Edmund Husserl and a distinguished philosopher in his own right. I will be defending what I take to be something in the vicinity of Ingarden's position.

1. An example of a purely intentional object is a table that does not exist in reality, but is created by me in imagination with all and only the properties I freely ascribe to it. In a series of mental acts (intentional experiences) I imagine a table. The table is the intentional object of the series of acts. It is one to their many, and for this reason alone distinct from them. Act is not object, and object is not act, even though they are correlated necessarily. In virtue of its intentionality, an act is necessarily an act of an object, the italicized phrase to be read as an objective genitive, and the object, being purely or merely intentional, is dependent for its existence on the act. But although the object cannot exist without the act, the object is no part of the act, kein reeller Inhalt as Husserl would say. So, given that the act is a mental or psychic reality, it does not follow that the object, even though purely intentional, is a mental or psychic reality. Indeed, it is fairly obvious that the imagined table is not a mental or psychic reality. The object, not being immanent to the act, is in a certain sense transcendent, enjoying a sort of transcendence-in-immanence, if I remember my Husserl correctly. Of course it is not transcendent in the sense of existing on its own independently of consciousness. Now consider a really existent table. It may or may not become my intentional object. If it does, it is not a purely intentional object. A purely intentional object, then, is one whose entire being is exhausted in being an object or accusative of a conscious intending. For finite minds such as ours, nothing real is such that its being is wholly exhaustible by its being an intentional object.

My merely imagined table does not exist in reality, 'outside' my mind. But it also does not exist 'in' my mind as identical to the act of imagining it or as a proper part of the act of imagining it, or as any sort of mental content, as Twardowski clearly saw. Otherwise, (i) the merely imagined table would have the nature of an experience, which it does not have, and (ii) it would exist in reality, when it doesn't, and (iii) it would have properties that cannot be properties of mental acts or contents such as the property of being spatially extended.

2. The problem posed by purely intentional objects can be framed as the problem of logically reconciling the following propositions:

A. Some mental acts are directed upon nonexistent, purely intentional, objects.
B. Anti-Psychologism: These purely intentional objects typically do not exist intramentally, for the Twardowskian reasons above cited.
C. These purely intentional objects do not exist extramentally, else they wouldn't be purely intentional.
D. These purely intentional objects are not nothing: they have some mode of being.
E. Existential Monism: everything that exists or has being exists or has being in the same way or mode.

The pentad is logically inconsistent. One solution is to reject (D): Purely intentional objects do not exist at all, or have any sort of being, but we are nonetheless able to stand in the intentional relation to them. To this Twardowski-Meinong-Grossmann view I have two objections. First, what does not exist at all is nothing, hence no definite object. Second, if intentionality is a relation, then all its relata must exist. A better solution, that of Ingarden, is to reject (E).

3. Ingarden rejects Existential Monism, maintaining that there are different modes of being. (TMB, 48) Here are four modes Ingarden distinguishes:

a. Existential Autonomy. The self-existent is existentially autonomous. It "has its existential foundation in istelf." (Time and Modes of Being, p. 43)

b. Existential Heteronomy. The non-self-existent is the existentially heteronomous. Purely intentional objects are existentially heteronomous: they have their existential foundation not in themselves, but in another. Now if existential heteronomy is a mode of being, and purely intentional objects enjoy this mode of being, then it follows straightaway that purely intentional objects have being, and indeed their own heteronomous being. If Novak denies this, then this is where our disagreement is located.

c. Existential Originality. The existentially original, by its very nature, cannot be produced by anything else. If it exists, it cannot not exist. (52) It is therefore permanent and indestructible. God, if he exists, would be an example of a being that is existentially original. But matter, as conceived by dialectical materialists, would also be an example, if it exists. (79)

d. Existential Derivativeness. The existentially derivative is such that it can exist only as produced by another. The existentially derivative may be either existentially autonomous or existentially heteronomous. Thus purely intentional objects are both existentially derivative and existentially heteronomous.

4. Now let me see if I can focus my rather subtle difference from Novak. I am sure we can agree on this much: purely intentional objects are neither existentially original nor existentially autonomous. They are existentially derivative, though not in the way a divinely created substance is existentially derivative: such substances, though derivative, are autonomous. So I think we can agree that purely intentional objects are existentially heteronomous. The issue that divides us is whether they have their own, albeit heteronomous, being. Or is it rather the case that their being reduces to the being of something else? I say that purely intentional objects have a very weak mode of being, existential heteronomy, in Ingarden's jargon. Novak denies this. Novak cites his master, the doctor subtilis, Duns Scotus:

And if you are looking for some “true being” of this object as such [viz. of
the object qua conceived], there is none to be found over and above that
“being in a qualified sense”, except that this “being in a qualified sense” can
be reduced to some “being in an unqualified sense”, which is the being of
the respective intellection. But this being in an unqualified sense does not
belong to that which is said to “be in a qualified sense” formally, but only
terminatively or principiatively — which means that to this “true being” that
“being in a qualified sense” is reduced, so that without the true being of this
[intellection] there would be no “being in a qualified sense” of that [object
qua conceived]. – Ord. I, dist. 36, q. un., n. 46 (ed. Vat. VI, 289)

The idea seems to be that the being of the purely intentional object reduces to the being of the act, and that it therefore has no 'true being' of its own. The purely intentional object has being only in a qualified sense. This qualified being, however, reduces to the being of the intellection. I think this reduction opens Scotus and Novak up to the charge of psychologism, against which Ingarden, good student of Husserl that he was, rails on pp. 48-49 of TMB. For if the being of the purely intentional object reduces to the being of the act, then the purely intentional object has mental or psychic being — which is not the case. The object is not a psychic content. It is not the act or a part of the act; not is it any other sort of psychic reality.

Psychologism is avoided, however, if purely intentional objects are granted their own mode of being, that of existential heteronomy. Although they derive their being from the the being of mental acts, their being is not the being of mental acts, but their own mode of being. Analogy: Though created substance derive their being from God, their mode of being is their own and not the same as God's mode of being.

From the Laws of Logic to the Existence of God

James N. Anderson and Greg Welty have published a paper entitled The Lord of Non-Contradiction: An Argument for God from Logic. Having worked out similar arguments in unpublished manuscripts, I am very sympathetic to the project of arguing from the existence of necessary truths to the necessary existence of divine mind.

Here is a quick sketch of the Anderson-Welty argument as I construe it:

1. There are laws of logic, e.g., the law of non-contradiction.

2. The laws of logic are truths.

3. The laws of logic are necessary truths.

4. A truth is a true proposition, where propositions are the primary truth-bearers or primary vehicles of the truth values.

5. Propositions exist. Argument: there are truths (from 1, 2); a truth is a true proposition (3); if an item has a property such as the property of being true, then it exists. Ergo, propositions exist.

6. Necessarily true propositions necessarily exist. For if a proposition has the property of being true in every possible world, then it exists in every possible world. Remark: in play here are 'Fregean' as opposed to 'Russellian' propositions. See here for an explanation of the distinction as I see it. If the proposition expressed by 'Socrates is Socrates' is Russellian, then it has Socrates himself, warts and all, as a constituent. But then, though the proposition is in some sense necessarily true, being a truth of logic, it is surely not necessarily existent.

7. Propositions are not physical entities. This is because no physical entity such as a string of marks on paper could be a primary truth-bearer. A string of marks, if true, is true only derivatively or secondarily, only insofar as as it expresses a proposition.

8. Propositions are intrinsically intentional. (This is explained in the post which is the warm-up to the present one.)

Therefore

9. The laws of logic are necessarily existent, nonphysical, intrinsically intentional entities.

10. Thoughts are intrinsically intentional.

The argument now takes a very interesting turn. If propositions are intrinsically intentional, and thoughts are as well, might it be that propositions are thoughts?

The following invalid syllogism must be avoided: "Every proposition is intrinsically intentional; every thought is intrinsically intentional; ergo, every proposition is a thought." This argument is an instance of the fallacy of undistributed middle, and of course the authors argue in no such way. They instead raise the question whether it is parsimonious to admit into our ontology two distinct categories of intrinsically intentional item, one mental, the other non-mental. Their claim is that the principle of parsimony "demands" that propositions be constued as mental items, as thoughts. Therefore

11. Propositions are thoughts.

Therefore

12. Some propositions (the law of logic among them) are necessarily existent thoughts. (From 8, 9, 10, 11)

13. Necessarily, thoughts are thoughts of a thinker.

Therefore

14. The laws of logic are the thoughts of a necessarily existent thinker, and "this all men call God." (Aquinas)

A Stab at Critique

Line (11) is the crucial sub-conclusion. The whole argument hinges on it. Changing the metaphor, here is where I insert my critical blade, and take my stab. I count three views.

A. There are propositions and there are thoughts and both are intrinsically intentional.

B. Propositions reduce to thoughts.

C. Thoughts reduce to propositions.

Now do considerations of parsimony speak against (A)? We are enjoined not to multiply entities (or rather types of entity) praeter necessitatem. That is, we ought not posit more types of entity than we need for explanatory purposes. This is not the same as saying that we ought to prefer ontologies with fewer categories. Suppose we are comparing an n category ontology with an n + 1 category ontology. Parsimony does not instruct us to take the n category ontology. It instructs us to take the n category ontology only if it is explanatorily adequate, only if it explains all the relevant data but without the additional posit. Well, do we need propositions in addition to thoughts for explanatory purposes? It is plausible to say yes because there are (infinitely) many propositions that no one has ever thought of or about. Arithmetic alone supplies plenty of examples. Of course, if God exists, then there are no unthought propositions. But the existence of God is precisely what is at issue. So we cannot assume it. But if we don't assume it, then we have a pretty good reason to distinguish propositions and thoughts as two different sorts of intrinsically intentional entity given that we already have reason to posit thoughts and propositions.

So my first critical point is that the principle of parsimony is too frail a reed with which to support the reduction of propositions to thoughts. Parsimony needs to be beefed-up with other considerations, e.g., an argument to show why an abstract object could not be intrinsically intentional.

My second critical point is this. Why not countenance (C), the reduction of thoughts to propositions? It could be like this. There are all the (Fregean) propostions there might have been, hanging out in Frege's Third Reich (Popper's world 3). The thought that 7 + 5 = 12 is not a state of an individul thinker; there are no individual thinkers, no selves, no egos. The thought is just the Fregean proposition's temporary and contingent exemplification of the monadic property, Pre-Personal Awareness or Bewusst-sein. Now I don't have time to develop this suggestion which has elements of Natorp and Butchvarov, and in any case it is not my view.

All I am saying is that (C) needs excluding. Otherwise we don't have a good reason to plump for (B).

My conclusion? The Anderson-Welty argument, though fascinating and competently articulated, is not rationally compelling. Rationally acceptable, but not rationally compelling. Acceptable, because the premises are plausible and the reasoning is correct. Not compelling, because one could resist it without quitting the precincts of reasonableness.

To theists, I say: go on being theists. You are better off being a theist than not being one. Your position is rationally defensible and the alternatives are rationally rejectable. But don't fancy that you can prove the existence of God or the opposite. In the end you must decide how you will live and what you will believe.

Are Propositions Counterexamples to Brentano’s Thesis?

Franz Brentano, for whom intentionality is the mark of the mental, is committed to the thesis that all instances of (intrinsic) intentionality are instances of mentality. Propositions and dispositions are apparent counterexamples. For they are nonmental yet intrinsically object-directed. Whether they are also real counterexamples is something we should discuss. This post discusses (Fregean) propositions. Later, dispositions — if I am so disposed.

On one approach, propositions are abstract objects. Since abstracta are categorially barred from being mental, it is clear that if intrinsic intentionality is ascribed to abstract propositions, then the thesis that all instances of intentionality are instances of mentality must be rejected. For specificity, we consider Frege's theory of propositions. He called them Gedanken, thoughts, which is a strangely pyschologistic terminological choice for so anti-psychologistic a logician, but so be it.

A proposition is the sense (Sinn) of a certain sort of sentence in the indicative mood, namely, an indicative sentence from which all indexical elements, if any, such as the tenses of verbs, have been extruded. Consider the following sentence-tokens each of which features a tenseless copula:

1. The sea is blue
2. The sea is blue
3. Die See ist blau
4. Deniz mavidir.

(Since Turkish is an agglutinative language, the copula in the Turkish sentence is the suffix 'dir.')

The (1)-(4) array depicts four sentence-tokens of three sentence-types expressing exactly one proposition. Intuitively, the four sentences say the same thing, or to be precise, can be used by people to say the same thing. That same thing is the proposition they express, or to be precise, that people express by uttering them. The proposition is one to their many. And unlike the sentence-tokens, it is nonphysical, which has the epistemological consequence that it, unlike the sentence-tokens, cannot be seen with the eyes. It is 'seen' (understood) with the mind. Frege is a sort of latter-day Platonist.

So one reason to introduce propositions is to account for the fact that the same meaning-content can be expressed by different people using different sentences of different languages. Another reason to posit propositions is to have a stable entity to serve as vehicle of the truth-values. The idea is that it is the proposition that is primarily either true or false. Given that a proposition is true, then any sentence expressing it is derivatively true.

There is quite a lot to be said for the view that a sentence-token cannot be a primary truth-bearer. For how could a string of marks on paper, or pixels on a screen, be either true or false? Nothing can be either true or false unless it has meaning, but how could mere physical marks (intrinsically) mean anything? Merely physical marks, as such, are meaningless. You can't get blood from a stone, or meaning from meat, no matter how hard you squeeze, and no matter how wondrously organized the meat.

Fregean propositions are especially useful when it comes to the necessary truths expressed by such sentences as '7 is prime.' A necessary truth is true in all possible worlds, including those worlds in which there is nothing physical and so no means of physically expressing truths. If truth is taken to be a property of physical items or any contingent item, then it might be difficult to account for the existence of necessary truths. The Fregean can handle this problem by saying that propositions, as abstract objects, exist in all possible worlds, and that true ones have the property of being true in all possible worlds. The Fregean can also explain how there can be necessary truths in worlds in which there is nothing physical and nothing mental either.

Propositions also function as the accusatives of the so-called 'propositional attitudes' such as belief. To believe is to believe something. One way to construe this is de dicto: to believe is to stand in a relation to a proposition. Thus if I believe that the river Charles is polluted, then the intentional object of the belief is the proposition expressed by 'The river Charles is polluted.' (Of course, there is also a de re way of construing the belief in question: To believe that the Charles is polluted is to believe, of the river Charles, that is is polluted.)

Well, suppose one endorses a theory of propositions such as the one just sketched. You have these necessarily existent Platonic entities called propositions some of which are true and some of which are false. My believing that p is an intentional state directed upon p; but is it not also the case that p is directed upon the world, or upon a truth-making state of affairs in the world in the case in which p is true?

But now it looks as if we have two sorts of intentionality, call them noetic and noematic, to borrow some terminology from Husserl. Noetic intentionality connects a mental state (in Frege's Second Reich) to a proposition (in Frege's Third Reich), and noematic intentionality connects, or purports to connect, a proposition to an object in Frege's First Reich. Frege wouldn't think of this object as a state of affairs or concrete fact, of course, but we might. (The peculiarities of Frege's actual views don't matter for this discussion.)

The problem for Brentano's thesis above is that propositions — which are abstract objects — seem to display intrinsic aboutness: they are about the concrete world or states of affairs in the world. Thus the proposition expressed by 'The Charles is polluted' is intrinsically about either the river Charles or else about the state of affairs, The Charles River's being polluted. Intrinsically, because the proposition's being about what it is about does not depend on anyone's interpretation.

If this is right, then some instances of intentionality are not only not conscious but not possibly conscious. Does this refute Brentano's thesis? Brentano himself denied that there were such irrealia as propositions and so he would not take propositions as posing any threat to his thesis. But if there are (Fregean) propositions, then I think they would count as counterexamples to Brentano's thesis about intentionality.

Is there a way to uphold Brentano's thesis that only the mental is intrinsically intentional? Yes, if there is a way to identify propositions with thoughts or rather content-laden thinkings. My thinking that 7 is prime is intrinsically intentional. Unfortunately, my thinking is contingent whereas the content of my thinking is necessarily true and hence necessarily existent. To identify propositions with content-laden thinkings one would have to take the thinkings to inhere in a necessarily existent mind such as the mind of God.

So I end on an aporetic note. Intentionality cannot be the mark of the mental if there are Fregean propositions. But given that there are necessary truths and that truth-bearers cannot be physical items, then only way to avoid Fregean propositions is by identifying propositions with divine thoughts, in which case they are Gedanken after all.

More on the Status of Thomistic Common Natures

This is proving to be a fascinating topic. Let's push on a bit further.

Aquinas says that any given nature can be considered in three ways: in respect of the esse it has in concrete singulars; in respect of the esse it has in minds; absolutely, in the abstract, without reference to either mode of esse. The two modes are esse naturale (esse reale) and esse intentionale. We can speak of these in English as real existence and intentional existence.

According to Schopenhauer, the medievals employed but three examples: Socrates, Plato, and an ass. Who am I to deviate from a tradition at once so hoary and noble? So take Socrates. Socrates is human. The nature humanity exists really in him, and in Plato, but not in the ass. The same nature exists intentionally in a mind that thinks about or knows Socrates. For Aquinas, there are no epistemic deputies standing between mind and thing: thought reaches right up to and grasps the thing itself. There is an isomorphism between knowing mind and thing known. The ground of this isomorphism is the natura absoluta, the nature considered absolutely. Call it the common nature (CN). It is so-called because it is common to both the knower and the known, informing both, albeit in different ways. It is also common to all the singulars of the same nature and all the thoughts directed to the same sort of thing. So caninity is common to all doggy thoughts, to all dogs, besides linking the doggy thoughts to the dogs.

My concern over the last few days has been the exact ontological status of the CN.

This morning, with the help of Anthony Kenny, I realized that there are four possible views, not three as I stated earlier:

A. The CN really exists as a separate, self-subsistent item.

B. The CN exists only intentionally in the mind of one who abstracts it from concrete singulars and mental acts.

C. The CN has Meinongian Aussersein status: it has no mode of being whatsoever, and yet is is something, not nothing. It actually has properties, but is property-incomplete (and therefore in violation of LEM) in that it is neither one nor many, neither universal nor particular, neither intentionally existent nor really existent.

D. The CN exists intentionally in the mind of God, the creator.

(A) is a nonstarter and is rejected by both me and Lukas Novak. (B) appears to be Novak's view. (C) is the interpretation I was tentatively suggesting. My thesis was that the CN must have Aussersein status, but then it inherits — to put it anachronistically — all the problems of Meinongianism. The doctor angelicus ends up with Meinongian monkey on his back.

Let me now try to explain why I reject (B), Novak's view, and incline toward (C), given that (A) cannot possibly be what Aquinas had in mind.

Consider a time t before there were any human animals and any finite minds, and ask yourself: did the nature humanity exist at t? The answer has to be in the negative if there are only two modes of existence, real existence in concrete singulars and intentional existence in finite (creaturely) minds. For at t there were no humans and no finite minds. But surely it is true at t that man is rational, that humanity includes rationality. This implies that humanity at t cannot be just nothing at all. For if it were nothing at all at t, then 'Man is rational'' at t would lack a truth-maker. Furthermore, we surely don't want to say that 'Man is rational' first becomes true when the first human being exists. In some sense, the common nature must be prior to its existential realization in concrete singulars and in minds. The common nature cannot depend on these modes of realization. Kenny quotes Aquinas (Aquinas on Being, Oxford 2002, p. 73):

Socrates is rational, because man is rational, and not vice versa; so that even if Socrates and Plato did not exist, rationality would still be a characteristic of human nature.

Socrates est rationalis, quia home est rationalis, et no e converso; unde dato quod Socrates et Plato non essent, adhuc humanae naturae rationalitas competeret. (Quodl. VIII, I, c, 108-110)

Aquinas' point could be put like this. (i) At times and in possible worlds in which humans do not exist, it is nevertheless the case that rationality is included in humanity, and (ii) the metaphysical ground of humans' being rational is the circumstance that rationality is included in humanity, and not vice versa.

Now this obviously implies that the CN humanity has some sort of status independent of real and intentional existence. So we either go the Meioningian route or we say that CNs exist in the mind of God. Kenny:

Aquinas' solution is to invoke the divine mind. There are really four, not three ways of considering natures: first, as they are in the mind of the creator; second, as they are in the abstract; theitrs, as they are in individuals; and finally, as they are in the human mind. (p. 74)

This may seem to solve the problem I raised. CNs are not nothing because they are divine accusatives. And they are not nothing in virtue of being ausserseiend. This solution avoids the three options of Platonism, subjectivism (according to which CNs exist only as products of abstraction), and Meinongianism.

The problem with the solution is that it smacks of deus ex machina: God is brought in to solve the problem similarly as Descartes had recourse to the divine veracity to solve the problem of the external world. One ought to be forgiven for thinking that solutions to the problems of universals, predication, and intentionality ought to be possible without bringing God into the picture. But this is a separate can of worms.

Differences Between Wishing and Hoping

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I'd give it all gladly
If our lives could be like that.

Bob Dylan's Dream

Wishing and hoping are both intentional attitudes: they take an object. One cannot just wish, or just hope, in the way one can just feel miserable or elated. If I wish, I wish for something. The same holds for hoping. How then do the two attitudes differ? They differ in terms of time, modality, and justification.

1. The object of hope lies in the future, of necessity. One cannot hope for what was or what is. In his dream, Dylan wished to be together again with his long lost friends. But he didn't hope to be together with them again. Coherent: 'I wish I had never been born.' Incoherent: 'I hope I had never been born.' Coherent: 'I wish I was with her right now.' Incoherent: 'I hope I was with her right now.'

Although hope is always and of necessity future-directed, wishing is not temporally restricted. 'I wish I were 30 again.' 'I wish I were in Hawaii now.' 'I wish to live to be a hundred.' I cannot hope to be 30 again or hope to be in Hawaii now. But I can both wish and hope to live to be a hundred.

Can I hope to be young again? That's ambiguous. I could hope for a medical breakthrough that would rejuvenate a person in the sense of making him physiologically young and I could hope to undergo such a rejuvenation. But I cannot hope to be calendrically young again.

2. One can hope only for what one considers to be possible. (What one considers to be possible may or may be possible.) But one can wish for both what one considers to be the possible and what one consider to be impossible. I can hope for a stay of execution, but not that I should continue to exist as a live animal after being hanged. ('Hanged' not 'hung'!) I can hope to survive my bodily death, but only if I consider it possible that I survive my bodily death. But I can wish for what I know to be impossible such as being young again, being able to run a 2:30 marathon, visiting Mars next year.

3. There is no sense in demanding of one who wishes to be cured of cancer that he supply his grounds or justification for so wishing. "Are you justified in wishing to be cancer-free?" But if he hopes to beat his cancer, then one can appropriately request the grounds of the hope.

If I both wish and hope for something I consider possible that lies in the future, then the difference between wishing and hoping rests on the fact that one can appropriately request grounds for hoping but not grounds for wishing.

I'll end with my favorite counterfactual conditional: 'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.'

Geach on the Real Distinction II: The Argument from Intentionality

See Geach on the Real Distinction I for some background on the distinctio realis. This post lays out the argument from intentionality to the real distinction.

A theory of intentionality ought to explain how the objective reference or object-directedness of our thoughts and perceptions is possible. Suppose I am thinking about a cat, a particular cat of my acquaintance whom I have named 'Max Black.' How are we to understand the relation between the mental act of my thinking, which is a transient datable event in my mental life, and its object, namely the cat I am thinking of? What makes my thinking of Max a thinking of Max? Or perhaps Max is in front of me and I am seeing him. What makes my seeing a seeing of him?

Here is what Peter Geach has to say, glossing Aquinas:

What makes a sensation or thought of an X to be of an X is that it is an individual occurrence of that very form or nature which occurs in X — it is thus that our mind 'reaches right up to the reality'; what makes it to be a sensation or thought of an X rather than an actual X or an actual X-ness is that X-ness here occurs in the special way called esse intentionale and not in the 'ordinary' way called esse naturale. This solution resolves the difficulty. It shows how being of an X is not a relation in which the thought or sensation stands, but is simply what the thought or sensation is . . . .(Three Philosophers, Cornell UP, 1961, p. 95)

But what the devil does that mean? Allow me to explain. The main point here is that ofness or aboutness is not a relation between a mental act and its object. Thus intentionality is not a relation that relates my thinking of Max and Max. My thinking of Max just is the mental occurrence of the very same form or nature — felinity — which occurs physically in Max. Max is a hylomorphic compound, a compound of form and (signate) matter. Old Max himself, fleas and all, is of course not in my mind. It is his form that is in my mind. But if felinity informs my mind, why isn't my mind a cat? Here is where the distinction between esse intentionale and esse naturale comes in. One and the same form — felinity — exists in two different modes. Its mode of being in my mind is esse intentionale while its mode of being in Max is esse naturale.

Because my thought of Max just is the intentional occurrence of the same form or nature that occurs naturally in Max, there is no problem about how my thought reaches Max. One could call this an identity theory of intentionality.

What if Max were, unbeknownst to me, to cease to exist while I was thinking about him? My thinking would be unaffected: it would still be about Max in exactly the way it was about him before. The Thomist theory would account for this by saying that while the form occurs with esse intentionale in my mind, it does not occur outside my mind with esse reale.

That in a nutshell is the Thomist theory of intentionality. If you can see your way clear to accepting it as the only adequate account of intentionality, then it supplies a reason for the real distinction. For the account requires that there be two distinct modes of esse, an immaterial mode, esse intentionale, and a material mode, esse naturale. Now if F-ness can exist in two different modes, then it cannot be identical to either and must be really distinct from both. (Cf. "Form and Existence" in God and the Soul, pp. 62-64.)

This argument for the real dstinction is only as good as the Thomist theory of intentionality which in turn rests on the notion of a common nature, felinity, say, which is indifferent to existence inasmuch as it can exist with esse naturale in Max and with esse intentionale in a Max-thinker, but taken in itself and absolutely is neither material nor mental, neither many nor one.

The aporetics of common natures will be taken up in subsequent posts.

Jaegwon Kim on Reductionism and Eliminativism

I've been studying Jaegwon Kim's Physicalism, or Something Near Enough (Princeton UP, 2005). Here are some notes and questions.

1. It's clear that mental causation must be saved. If Kim is right that nonreductive physicalism is not viable, then by his lights our only hope of saving mental causation is via "physical reductionism." (159). It is of course easy to see how such reductionism, if true, would save mental causation. Surely my desire for a beer together with my belief that there is beer in the reefer are part of the etiology of my getting out of my chair and heading to the kitchen. If beliefs and desires are physical states, then there is no in-principle difficulty in understanding the etiology of my behavior. Reductionism insures the physical efficacy of the mental. What was a thorny problem on dualist approaches is no problem at all for the physical reductionist.

2. At this point some of us are going to wonder whether reductionism collapses into eliminativism. I tend to think that it does. Kim of course must disagree. His project is to find safe passage between nonreductive physicalism and eliminativism. But first I want to concede something to Kim.

3. Kim rightly points out (160) that we cannot assume that the mental cannot be physical in virtue of the very meaning of 'mental.' We cannot assume that 'mental' means 'nonphysical.' The following argument is not compelling and begs the question against the physicalist:

Beliefs and desires are mental
Whatever is mental is nonphysical
Ergo
Beliefs and desires are not physical.

The physicalist finds nothing incoherent in the notion that what is mental could also be physical. So he will either reject the second premise, or, if he accepts it, deny the first and maintain that beliefs and desires are not mental in the sense in which his opponents think they are. It seems clear, then, that one cannot mount a merely semantic argument against the physicalist based on a preconceived meaning of 'mental.'

4. Is my present state of consciousness real and yet reducible to a pattern of electrical activity in a network of neurons? Can we secure reduction without elimination? Reductionist: there are Fs but what they are are Gs. Eliminativist: There are no Fs. There at least appears to be a difference in these two sorts of claims. Kim claims that "There is an honest difference between elimination and conservative reduction." (160) Phlogiston got eliminated; temperature and heat got reduced. Witches got eliminated; the gene got reduced. The reductionist thinks he can secure or "conserve" the reality of the Fs while reducing them to the Gs. In the present case, the physical reductionist in the philosophy of mind thinks that he can maintain both that mental states are real and that they reduce to physical states.

5. Let's note two obvious logical points. The first is that identity is a symmetrical relation. The second is that reduction is asymmetrical. Thus,

I. Necessarily, for any x, y, if x = y, then y = x.
R. Necessarily, for any x, y, if x reduces to y, then it is not the case that y reduces to x.

It is clear, then, that identity and reduction are not the same relation. And yet if particular a reduces to particular b, then a is nothing other than b, and is therefore identical to b. If you think about it, reduction is a strange and perhaps incoherent notion. For if a reduces to b, a is identical to b, but, since reduction is asymmetrical, b is not identical to a! Reduction is asymmetrical identity. Amd that smacks of radical incoherence. This is what inclines me to say that reduction collapses into elimination. For if a reduces to b, and is therefore identical to b, while b is not identical to a, then it follows that there simply is no a. And so if my present mental state reduces to a pattern of electrical activity in a network of neurons, then my mental state does not exist; all that exists is the electrical activity.

6. Kim wants to have it both ways at once. He wants mental states to be both real and reducible. He wants to avoid both eliminativism and dualism. My claim is that it is impossible to have it both ways. Kim thinks that reduction somehow "conserves" that which is reduced. But how could it? If my desire for a beer is nothing other than a brain state, then then it is a purely physical state and everything mental about it has vanished. If 'two' things are identical, then there is only one thing, and if you insist that that one thing is physical, then it cannot also be mental.

7. My present thinking about a dog is intrinsically intentional, intrinsically object-directed. But no physical state is intrinsically object-directed. So, by the Indiscernibility of Identicals, my present thinking about a dog simply cannot be identical to any brain state, and so cannot reduce to any brain state. Kim of course thinks that intentional properties are functionalizable. I have already argued against that view here. Whatever causal role my thinking about a dog plays in terms of behavioral inputs and outputs, causal role occupancy cannot be make makes my thinking intentional. For it is intentional intrinsically, not in virtue of causal relations.

8. Kim speaks of the functional reducibility of intentional/cognitive properties. But surely it is not properties that need reducing but particular meetal acts. Properties are not conscious of anything. Nor are causal roles. It is the realizers of the roles that are bearers of intentionality, and it simply makes no sense to think of these as purely physical.

9. Once one starts down the reductive road there is no stopping short of eliminativism. The latter, however, is surely a reductio ad absurdum of physicalism as I explain in this post on Rosenberg's eliminativism.

The Irreducibility of Intentionality: An Argument From the Indeterminacy of the Physical

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.

Could Intentionality be an Illusion? A Note on Rosenberg

Could intentonality be an illusion? Of course not. But seemingly intelligent people think otherwise:

A single still photograph doesn't convey movement the way a motion picture does. Watching a sequence of slightly different photos one photo per hour, or per minute, or even one every 6 seconds won't do it either. But looking at the right sequence of still pictures succeeding each other every one-twentieth of a second produces the illusion that the images in each still photo are moving. Increasing the rate enhances the illusion, though beyond a certain rate the illusion gets no better for creatures like us. But it's still an illusion. There is noting to it but the succession of still pictures. That's how movies perpetrate their illusion. The large set of still pictures is organized together in a way that produces in creatures like us the illusion that the images are moving. In creatures with different brains and eyes, ones that work faster, the trick might not work. In ones that work slower, changing the still pictures at the rate of one every hour (as in time-lapse photography) could work. But there is no movement of any of the images in any of the pictures, nor does anything move from one photo onto the next. Of course, the projector is moving, and the photons are moving, and the actors were moving. But all the movement that the movie watcher detects is in the eye of the beholder. That is why the movement is illusory.

The notion that thoughts are about stuff is illusory in roughly the same way. Think of each input/output neural circuit as a single still photo. Now, put together a huge number of input/output circuits in the right way. None of them is about anything; each is just an input/output circuit firing or not. But when they act together, they "project" the illusion that there are thoughts about stuff. They do that through the behavior and the conscious experience (if any) that they produce. (Alex Rosenberg, The Atheists' Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions. The quotation was copied from here.)

Rosenberg is not saying, as an emergentist might, that the synergy of sufficiently many neural circuits gives rise to genuine object-directed thoughts. He is saying something far worse, something literally nonsensical, namely, that the object-directed thought that thoughts are object-directed is an illusion. The absurdity of Rosenberg's position can be seen as follows.

1. Either the words "The notion that thoughts are about stuff is illusory" express a thought — the thought that there are no object-directed thoughts — or they do not.
2. If the latter, then the words are meaningless.
3. If the former, then the thought is either true or false.
4. If the thought is true, then there there are no object-directed thoughts, including the one expressed by Rosenberg's words, and so his words are once again meaningless.
5. If the thought is false, then there are object-directed thoughts, and Rosenberg's claim is false.
Therefore
6. Rosenberg's claim is either meaningless or false. His position is self-refuting.

As for the analogy, it is perfectly hopeless, presupposing as it does genuine intrinsic intentionality. If I am watching a movie of a man running, then I am under an illusion in that there is nothing moving on the movie screen: there is just a series of stills. But the experience I am undergoing is a perfectly good experience that exhibits genuine intrinsic intentionality: it is a visual experiencing of a man running, or to be perfectly punctilious about it: a visual experiencing AS OF a man running. Whether or not the man depicted exists, as would be the case if the movie were a newsreel, the experience exists, and so cannot be illusory.

To understand the analogy one must understand that there are intentional experiences, experiences that take an accusative. But if you understand that, then you ought to be able to understand that the analogy cannot be used to render intelligible how it might that it is illusory that there are intentional experiences.

What alone remains of interest here is how a seemingly intelligent fellow could adopt a position so manifestly absurd. I suspect the answer is that he has stupefied himself by his blind adherence to scientistic/naturalistic ideology.

Here is an earlier slap at Rosenberg. Peter Lupu joins in the fun here.