Sellars, Wilfrid – Maverick Philosopher

The Grain Problem

Ed Buckner writes,

Here is another problem that needs to be carefully phrased.

I want to say that the pitch of a musical note is continuous through time. I mean, at any point in continuous time, i.e. time as specified by the real numbers, the pitch of the note (e.g. middle C) is the same.

However, the “physical” property that grounds the pitch is not continuous, but rather a cycle of different events.

That strikes me as a problem for the kind of physicalism according to which qualities “as we perceive them” are identical with the properties that ground them. For pitch is temporally continuous, the oscillation that grounds it is not temporally continuous, ergo etc.

It is a problem indeed, Ed, although I have questions about your formulation of it.

The problem is known in the trade as the Grain Problem. Whether it surfaces before Sir Arthur Eddington, I don't know, but he raises it, or at least anticipates it with his question about the 'two tables.' A lot of work was done on the Grain Problem by the great American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars, son of the rather less distinguished Roy Wood Sellars, but nonetheless a quantity to be reckoned with in his day.

Here is Sellars fils in his seminal essay, "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man," reprinted in his Science, Perception, and Reality (Routledge, 1963). The portion I am about to quote is from pp. 35-37. I take the text from Chrucky's online version.

It is worth noting that we have here a recurrence of the essential features of Eddington's 'two tables' problem — the two tables being, in our terminology, the table of the manifest image and the table of the scientific image. There the problem was to 'fit together' the manifest table with the scientific table. Here the problem is to fit together the manifest sensation with its neurophysiological counterpart. And, interestingly enough, the problem in both cases is essentially the same: how to reconcile the ultimate homogeneity of the manifest image with the ultimate non-homogeneity of the system of scientific objects.

BV: Whether we are discussing colors with Sellars or sounds with Buckner, it is the same problem, that of reconciling the homogeneity of the manifest or phenomenal sensory quality with the non-homogeneity of the underlying scientific explanatory posits. For Sellars, of course, these posits are not mere posits but ultimately real, as you will see if you read below the fold.

Buckner's formulation above leaves something to be desired, however. He cites the continuous perception over time of the same note, middle C, let us say. But then in the very next sentence he reverts to a rarefied mathematical concept of continuity, thereby mixing phenomenological description with a mathematico-scientific construct. He thereby conflates phenomenal continuity with mathematical continuity. When I hear middle C sounding from an organ, say, over a non-zero interval of time, five seconds say, do I hear a series of points of time — a series of temporally extension-less moments — the cardinality of which is 2-to-the-aleph-nought? No. (The cardinality of the set of real numbers (cardinality of the continuum) is $\,2^{\aleph _{0}}~.$

$And then Ed goes on to say that "the 'physical' property that grounds the pitch is not continuous, but rather a cycle of different events." But that is not right either. Middle C depicted on an oscilloscope shows up as a sine wave:$

$Obviously the sine wave is continuous. What Ed wants to say, of course, is that the heard sound, the phenomenal sound, does not fluctuate as does the physical reality does, the physical reality that "grounds the pitch." Ed is equivocating on 'continuous.'$

$But I know what he is getting at, and it is a genuine problem. I am merely complaining about his formulation of it. Now back to Sellars, whose solution to the problem is not clear to me.$

Continue reading “The Grain Problem”

Mental Acts Versus Mental Actions: Sellars and Bergmann

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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