Two things

First, new pilot data are in. They seem to be telling me that the folk are not all substance dualists. If the first people I've tested are like everybody else, folk beliefs about the metaphysics of mental properties are all over the place in every respect. So far, the only wider theoretical relevance I've been able to cook up for this apparent finding is that Paul Bloom's explanations of folk beliefs about the afterlife, moral worth, and personal identity in Descartes' Baby are probably unsound. After I get comments back from my professor, I think I'm going to send the write-up of the pilot out to PMS WIPS, although I get the strong sense that I need to discuss the philosophical relevance of the findings in some way that hasn't occurred to me yet.

Second, if you, like me, want to get your feet wet in the philosophy of information, I recommend that you read any of the good-sounding articles by Luciano Floridi except "What is the Philosophy of Information?" Or, if you do read that one, skip straight to section 4. I say this only because it's the fourth item on a google search of "philosophy of information," and the first one that looks relevant.

Hypothetical Substitution and Representational States

At least as important as developing a philosophical theory of what to count as a mental representation is a theory of what to count as a representational state – a state expressed in English by a relation between an individual and a proposition, that is best explained in terms of (or just is) a relation between an individual and something like a mental representation of (the meaning of) the proposition. Lillard (1993) notes that, simply in virtue of using a pen to stir my coffee, I do not necessarily represent my pen as a spoon, so using a pen to stir my coffee is not a representational state. Following Josef Perner, she calls using a pen as if it were a spoon an instance of hypothetical (as opposed to symbolic) substitution. The difference between the clearer cases of hypothetical (as opposed to symbolic) substitution are reflected in facts such as that “I am using a pen as if it were a spoon” is not, surface-grammatically, a relation between an individual and a proposition – an independent clause does not follow “as if.” But English could have been different here. We could have said “I am using a pen that it is a spoon;” perhaps that is roughly how locutions of this sort work in other languages. And maybe English does have a relation between an individual and a proposition in the deep structure of sentences reporting hypothetical substitutions.

I guess we could just say that hypothetical substitutions aren’t relations to mental representations because they are extensional, and relations to mental representations aren’t. For example, my intuition is that, if I am not pretending, then I am acting as if I am Clark Kent iff I am acting as if I am Superman iff I am acting as if I am the fictional male lead portrayed as having grown up in Smallville in such television shows as Lois and Clark. But that intuition is kind of weak, and I suspect that I would give it up in the face of a good argument. Do other people share this intuition?

Concepts and the Idiosyncrasy of Mental Representations

I was reading Margolis and Lawrence’s introduction to their anthology Concepts a couple of weeks ago. I got the impression that (perhaps for limitations of space) they didn’t do justice to the view that concepts are best thought of as abstracta, and especially the argument from what they call “the idiosyncrasy of mental representations” to that view. I want to do justice to that argument here, and maybe also air out my thoughts about the metaphysics of concepts in the process.

Consider two speech situations, S1 and S2. The utterances and contexts in S1 and S2 are entirely identical, except for the identity of the speaker – A in S1 and B in S2. Let’s assume that their utterances contain no first person pronouns or other self-referential indexical elements, such as “Some dogs have no hair” or “Would you like more hot pepper?” We have an inconsistent tetrad of propositions:

(1) A’s utterance in S1 means the same as B’s utterance in S2.
(2) A’s mental representation of the meaning of at least one sub-sentential expression in her utterance (“dogs,” “hair,” “hot pepper”) differs greatly in type from B’s mental representation of the meaning of that same expression.
(3) For any two sentential utterance-tokens U1 and U2, ceteris paribus, if U1 and U2 contain one expression-type e, such that the token of e in U1 and the token of e in U2 do not express significantly type-identical concepts, then U1 does not mean the same as U2.
(4) Concepts are (types of) mental representations of the meanings of sub-sentential expressions.

Another slightly different version of the tetrad, corresponding to another slightly different version of the view that concepts are mental representations replaces (2) and (4) with, respectively:

(2`) A’s mental representation of what A believes to be the extension of at least one sub-sentential expression in her utterance (“dogs,” “hair,” “hot pepper”) differs greatly in type from B’s mental representation of what B believes to be the extension of that same expression.
(4`) Concepts of referential expressions are (types of) mental representations of the presumed extensions of referential expressions.

We could generate different “prime” versions of the basic tetrad for all sorts of different views of concepts and mental representation. (I’ll limit the discussion here to the first version, assuming that everything I have to say holds, mutatis mutandis, for the other versions.) Despite the vagueness of “significant difference,” I take it that all of these different versions are inconsistent; we have to deny at least one premise in order to avoid inconsistency. I also take it, however, that one ends up thinking about mental representations, (2) is supposed to be true by hypothesis. The question, then, is whether to drop (1), (3), or (4). Here is how I see the scene, now:

> I probably won’t give up (1). My intuitions – about utterance-meaning, anyway – are semantic-externalist enough at this point that (1) is, to me, pre-theoretically obvious. As far as theory goes, I think that linguistic conventions fix the semantic properties of utterances, and that whatever determines linguistic conventions, whatever those ultimately turn out to be, cannot tap so deeply into our minds as to draw distinctions in utterance meaning solely on the basis of differences like those between A’s mental representations and B’s mental representations. That said, I bet that all sorts of psycholinguists would prefer to drop (1).

> I would give up (3) if I thought that theories of concepts weren’t supposed to explain the semantic properties of utterances. Sometimes I think that is the case; sometimes I think that theories of concepts, as developed by psychologists, are just designed to explain typicality effects and related, more-or-less overt behavioral facts and dispositions. To the extent that the facts about typicality effects are not also facts about the meanings of words, this should lead me to drop (3). But I get the sense that I am really deeply confused about what theories of concepts are supposed to explain, and that my confusion obscures the role of concepts in semantic theory. That’s why I’m inclined not to give up (3).

> That leaves me with (4). I am motivated to reject (4) both because of the tetrad and because I don’t see a natural, sensible way to preserve locutions of the form “the concept of x” if we think of concepts as mental representations. I am motivated not to reject (4) by what I take to be the fact that most psychologists think of concepts as mental representations of one sort or another. On the plausible meta-philosophical view that what we philosophers are trying to do with our discussions of concepts and mental representations is to shed light on these terms as they are used by psychologists, it tells against an explication of “concept” if it does not also come with a truth- or plausibility-preserving interpretation of psychologists’ mental-representational talk of concepts. But what tells against an explication is not always what ultimately defeats it, and theories of concepts might be one of those areas in philosophy in which merely scrutinizing accepted scientific terminology ought to lead to broad change in the way scientists construct their theories. (How different would this be from the sort of verificationist thinking that motivated Einstein to develop the relativistic conception of simultaneity?) To what extent treating concepts as abstracta would lead to such a change is not clear to me, though, since there might be a simple, painless translation of most psychological, mental-representational talk about concepts into the “abstracta” idiom. (Perhaps the mental representations psychologists call “concepts” are best construed as mental representations of the abstracta that are called “concepts” in expressions of the form “the concept of x.”) Anyway, I lean towards giving up (4) because I like (1)-(3).

A New Version of the Identity Theory?

I'm reading Schiffer's Remnants of Meaning and its gotten me thinking about most (all?) physicalists' demand that mentalistic talk, and especially mentalistic ontology, needs to be reduced to physical talk and ontology somehow or other. My intuition is that most* mentalistic talk and ontology is itself physical in nature, and not because type-type or token-token or any such identity theory is true. I think my intuition is to accept the two premises of the following argument. I've never seen this before, but it's reminiscent of some of the discussion in Stoljar's "Two Conceptions of the Physical."

(1) For all x, if x is introduced to explain the overt physical behavior of paradigmatically physical objects, then x is a physical object.

(2) The special ontological commitments of cognitive science (mental representations, information processing mechanisms, etc.) are introduced to explain the overt physical behavior** of animals' bodies.

Therefore, (3) The special ontological commitments of cognitive science are physical objects.

I think the argument is also sound if we replace both occurrences of "special ontological commitments" with "novel linguistic forms (e.g. relations to mental representations)" and "physical objects" with something like "physicalistic linguistic form."

I want to call this an identity theory (maybe a bit cheekily) because (3) is, as far as I can tell, just what all identity theories have in common. It would be a new version because it is an identity theory no matter whether or how the posits and theorems of cognitive science are identical to various paradigmatic objects and theorems in and about the body.

Perhaps some won't like (3) because the posits of cognitive science lack spatial location, and aren't physical for that reason. I myself am willing to give up the intuition that something has to have a spatial location in order to be a physical object. If I weren't so willing, I would note that, as far as I can tell, nothing is lost by stipulating that these posits are located diffusely throughout the body.

Seriously, is this totally undefensible for reasons I can't see?
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* - I tend to think phenomenal consciousness is fundamentally different. Let's restrict "mentalistic talk" and "mentalistic ontology" to the theory and ontology of cognitive science, narrowly construed.
** - Where "overt physical behavior" is taken to include some number of physiological states.

A Problem for Frequentists?

I don’t know much about the philosophy of probability yet, but I wanted to throw an objection to the frequentist interpretation out there and see whether it sticks. Consider a pair of propositions p and q. From the dawn of time until 10,000 C.E., p is true 99 out of every 100 times q is true. Subsequently, p is true 1 out of every 100 times q is true. Suppose that q turns out to be true only some finite number of times into the future, but on many occasions for many trillions of years after 10,000 C.E. Let m be the number of times q turns out to be true in the whole history of the universe before 10,000 C.E., and n be the number of times q is true after 10,000 C.E. On the frequentist interpretation, I think P(p | q) = .99*[m / (m + n)] + .01*[n / (m + n)]. This number will, evidently, be quite lower than .99; if n is great enough, the frequentist’s value for P(p | q) will approach .01. But wouldn’t it be extremely counterintuitive, long before 10,000 C.E., to say that P(p | q) is far below .99, even approaching .01? After all, p follows on q nearly all the time and will for another 7,993 or so years. So it seems that the frequentist interpretation yields the wrong results in this case.

Perhaps my intuition here is that statements like this about the probability of untensed propositions are themselves tensed. If this intuition is commonly shared, then a frequentist interpretation of "P(p | q)" should refer to something like the number of times at which p is true divided by the number of times q is true for some length of time before and after the present moment. But then the frequentist needs to say something about why this length of time should be of any particular size. I have some ideas about what she can say, but I'm having trouble expressing them precisely, so I'll save them for another post.

Dealing with Death

I am sympathetic to the view that appreciation for the heroic or noble or dignified quality in simultaneously confronting one’s own death and embracing life is a good motivator for dealing with death. But it occurred to me last night that what it is, according to this view, I am supposed to appreciate is not as clear as I would like. I would like to clarify this view here.

Embracing life is clear enough. One embraces life if one values the ephemeral people, experiences, objects, and states of affairs that constitute life. I think, in this sense, most people who do not firmly believe in an afterlife do embrace life. I think, in this sense, I embrace life.

Embracing life is not, on its own, a way of confronting or dealing with mortality, however. By “dealing with mortality,” I do not mean merely not encountering one’s fear of one’s own or others’ death, nor do I mean preparing for the material well-being of others after one’s own or others’ death. I can’t deal with mortality by never thinking of what is terrifying in death, and I can’t deal with mortality by buying life insurance. The metaphor of “looking into the abyss” is helpful. Whether there is little or nothing to “see” in the prospect of imminent death, one who looks into the abyss can, at will, “look at” all there is to see in its every facet. You can deal with death to the extent that you can contemplate all aspects of death: the phenomenology of the various ways of dying – the feeling of drowning, the physical helplessness of being murdered, the mental helplessness of the progression of dementia or Alzheimer’s; the misfortune of others in your absence; the annihilation of the memories and experience you continue to accumulate; the abortion of your life’s ongoing projects. One can deal with mortality (one’s own or others’) when there is nothing about death that one cannot, at will, look at – i.e., bring to mind, reason with, meditate on, believe – indefinitely. On this view, belief in an afterlife is a way of dealing with mortality, if it is, because the believer in the afterlife can think of every aspect of death, as long as she accompanies it with the thought of eternal reward. One way of not dealing with death is to busy oneself with other thoughts or activities when any particularly unsavory thought of death occurs.

Why deal with death, and not simply avoid it? I think there actually aren’t too many reasons, which makes it important to weigh those we have as carefully as we can. If one’s failure to deal with death is of a certain sort, perhaps it will lead you to make irrationally those decisions that aspects of mortality have a rational bearing on. These might be decisions about how to reach your goals, whether to purchase life insurance, or whether to take the interesting-looking drugs in front of you. The value of honesty with oneself is a loftier big reason to deal with death. The other lofty one, I think, is the view that we began this post with. If dealing with death – or, better, “confronting” death in the sense of actually, at a single moment surveying what apparent facts there are to survey in regards to one’s own death – and embracing life at the same time strikes you as a heroic, noble, or exceptionally dignified thing to do, then this itself is a reason to deal with or confront death. I am probably not the only person who sometimes finds the prospects of heroism, nobility, or extreme dignity more motivating than the prospect of heightened honesty with oneself or more rational decision-making.

The Horizontal-Vertical Illusion

If I wasn't convinced before - really, I can't remember - Eric Schwitzgebel has convinced me here, here, and (to a lesser extent) here that naive introspective reports are not a reliable indicator of the contents of subjects' experiences. He has a number of good examples to show this. I want to point out one example which might not be so good, and why I think it probably isn't.

This figure is meant to induce the so-called "horizontal-vertical illusion." Look at the figure closely. Does either line seem longer than the other?

Well, it's not clear. I have a slight tendency to judge that the vertical line seems longer. But since I learned that the vertical line is supposed to appear longer than the horizontal line when I was first shown the figure, that tendency is a little suspect. Does it sort of "seem" that way in the sense that, or because, the suggestion that the vertical line is supposed to seem longer sort of influenced me? Or does it sort of "seem" that way in the sense that, or because, my introspecting on the experience of viewing the figure and assessing the length of the two lines sort of worked?

Two things. First, I think that introspection yields a great wealth of reliable results in this situation. It seems quite clear to me that the vertical line does not seem two millimeters or more longer than the horizontal. Now, it would be interesting if the vertical line did seem longer than the horizontal line - even just a little bit. And if that is the case, I think we would need some highly trained introspectors to reveal that phact (= phenomenal fact) to us. But, if there is a phact of the matter as to whether or not one line seems longer than the other, that is seemingly the only phact in the case of looking at this figure that we can't reliably apprehend via introspection. So, if there is this phact of the matter - yes, one line might seem longer than the other without our being able to tell that it does. But if the point of the example is to show that there are gross features of our experience that are unavailable to naive introspection, I think it fails.

Second is a suspicion of mine. I don't think we should be all that sure that "the vertical line seems longer than the horizontal line to me" really attributes a phenomenal property to me (or some of my mental states). I have this doubt, not because I think "seems" should be understood strictly in terms of some non-phenomenal feature of our mental make-up (e.g. our credence or tendency to believe that the vertical line seems longer than the horizontal), but because I think it is likely that "x seems longer than y to z" does not pick out a real phenomenal property for all values of "x", "y", and "z". Sometimes I think there is a tendency among philosophers to think that for any property of physical objects P, if P is observable to the naked eye, then sentences of the form "it seems to x that P(y)" attribute a real phenomenal property to "x" (or one of x's mental states, if you like). This thought, together with the thought that "is longer than" picks out an observable property, might be behind the presumption (not necessarily Schwitzgebel's) that "the vertical line seems longer than the horizontal line to me" attributes a phenomenal property to me. But (a) I'm not sure why we should believe this general claim about "seems" and observable properties, and (b) even if we should, it's not clear that "is longer than" picks out an observable property. After all, how often are we actually called on to judge, with the unaided eye, that two lines are exactly the same length, or (what is almost the same) that one or the other is even just the smallest bit longer? And, I should add, if "the vertical line seems longer than the horizontal line to me" does not attribute a real phenomenal property to me, then that would seem to explain why using introspection to determine whether that sentence is true doesn't work and leaves me confused.