Causality, Interpretation, and the Mind 9780198236252, 0198236255, 0198239785, 9780198239789, 9780191519536

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Oxford Philosophical Monographs Editorial Committee J. J. Campbell, Michael Frede, Michael Rosen C. C. W. Taylor, Ralph C. S. Walker Causality, Interpretation, and the Mind

Also Published in the Series The Justification of Science and the Rationality of Religious Belief Michael Banner Individualism in Social Science Forms and Limits of a Methodology Rajeev Bhargava The Kantian Sublime From Morality to Art Paul Crowther Determinism, Blameworthiness, and Deprivation Martha Klein False Consciousness Denise Meyerson Truth and the End of Inquiry A Peircean Account of Truth C. J. Misak The Good and the True Michael Morris

Causality, Interpretation, and the Mind

William Child

CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © William Child 1994 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 1994 First issued in paperback 1996 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Child, William (T. William) Causality, interpretation, and the mind / William Child. (Oxford philosophical monographs) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Philosophy of mind. 2. Causation. 3. Interpretation (Philosophy) I. Title. II. Series. BD418.3.C455 1994 128′.2—dc20 93–36597 ISBN 0–19–823978–5 ISBN 0–19–823625–5 (Pbk.)

Acknowledgements Many people have helped me, in many ways, whilst I have been working on this book. It is a pleasure to acknowledge their help and to thank them. I am particularly grateful to the following people, who have read parts of the book and discussed them with me, sent me written comments, talked over my ideas, or helped in other ways: Bill Brewer, Justin Broackes, John Campbell, Quassim Cassam, Tim Crane, Adrian Cussins, Julia Drown, Jonathan Elven, Elizabeth Fricker, Mark Greenberg, Richard Holton, Lloyd Humberstone, Rae Langton, Mike Martin, Adrian Moore, David Owens, Sarah Richmond, Paul Robinson, Paul Snowdon, Helen Steward, Rowland Stout, Fred Stoutland, David Wiggins, and Tim Williamson. Many parts of the book started life in my B.Phil. and D.Phil. theses. That work was supervised, at various times, by David Charles, Jennifer Hornsby, Julie Jack, John McDowell, Christopher Peacocke, and David Pears. The influence of each remains, in many ways; I am very grateful to them all. Thanks also to a number of people who have typed parts of the book in its successive incarnations: Katy Cooper, Diane Hall, Maureen Jones, Judy Winchester, and, especially, Humaira Ahmed. I gratefully acknowledge the support of a number of institutions. I wrote the D.Phil. thesis which became the core of the book whilst a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and completed the book during a Visiting Fellowship at the Australian National University: my thanks to the Warden and Fellows of All Souls, and to the ANU, for their generous support. I am also very grateful to the Master and Fellows of University College, Oxford, for supporting my research in many ways and for giving me leave of absence to complete the book, A slightly earlier version of Chapter 2 appeared as ‘Anomalism, Uncodifiability, and Psychophysical Relations’ in Philosophical Review, 102 (1993), 215–45 and a shorter version of Chapter 5 appeared as ‘Vision and Experience: The Causal Theory and the Disjunctive Conception’ in Philosophical Quarterly, 42 (1992), 297–316. The discussion of Rorty in Chapter 4 § 2 has been developed

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from part of my ‘Critical Notice—Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (edited by E. LePore)’, Mind, 96 (1987), 549–69. A number of paragraphs in Chapter 4 § 2, and Chapter 5 §§ 2 and 5.4, appeared in ‘On the Dualism of Scheme and Content’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 94 (1994), 53–71. I am grateful to the editors and publishers of those journals, and to the following copyright holders, for permission to re-use that material: Cornell University Press, publishers of Philosophical Review; the editors of the Philosophical Quarterly; Oxford University Press, publishers of Mind; and the Aristotelian Society. T.W.C. Oxford February 1993

To my parents

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Contents Introduction 1. INTERPRETATIONISM 1. Interpretation and Interpretationism: Some Preliminaries 2. Language and Interpretation 3. Thought and Interpretability: Is Interpretability Necessary for Thought? 4. Thought and Interpretability: Is Interpretability Sufficient for Thought? 5. Constitutive and Non-Constitutive Interpretationism 2. ANOMALISM, RATIONALITY, AND PSYCHOPHYSICAL RELATIONS 1. The Argument for Anomalism 2. Psychological Indeterminacy and Psychophysical Determination 3. Anomalism and Supervenience 4. Anomalism, Psychophysical Correlations, and Functionalism 5. Uncodifiability and Token Correlations 6. Conclusions 3. CAUSAL THEORIES 1. The Basic Argument for a Causal Conception 2. Causation and Causal Explanation 3. Mentalism and Physicalism 4. CAUSALISM AND INTERPRETATIONISM: THE PROBLEM OF COMPATIBILITY 1. Incompatibilist Arguments 2. Compatibilism, Incompatibilism, and Realism 5. VISION AND EXPERIENCE: THE CAUSAL THEORY AND THE DISJUNCTIVE CONCEPTION 1. The Causal Theory of Vision

1 7 8 13 23 40 47 56 56 68 74 78 80 89 90 91 100 110 119 120 129 140 140

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CONTENTS

2. The Disjunctive Conception of Experience 3. An Objection to the Causal Theory 4. Compatibilism 5. The Conceptual Claim 6. Conclusions 6. ACTION: CAUSAL THEORIES AND EXPLANATORY RELEVANCE 1. Causal Explanation without Correlations 2. An Objection: Anomalism and Explanatory Relevance 3. Causal Relevance 4. Causal Explanatory Relevance 5. Causal Explanation and Non-Mental Properties 6. Causal Explanation and Mental Properties 7. Conclusions 8. Strict Laws and Anomalous Monism: A Concluding Note References Index

143 154 155 164 176 178 179 183 188 190 192 204 216 217 222 231

Introduction This book is an essay on two themes in the philosophy of mind, and on the relations between them. One theme is the idea that we can give an account of belief, desire, and the other propositional attitudes by giving an account of the ascription of attitudes to a subject on the basis of what she says and does. The other theme is the idea that the concepts of ordinary, common-sense psychology—the concepts of action, perception, memory, and so on—are essentially causal. The first theme informs an influential tradition in the philosophy of mind. According to that tradition, we can reach an understanding of the nature of the propositional attitudes by reflection on the procedure for interpreting a subject's attitudes and language: ‘What a fully informed interpreter could learn about what a speaker means is all there is to learn; the same goes for what the speaker believes’1 and desires. We can call this approach to the propositional attitudes, and to mental phenomena generally, interpretationism.2 The second theme is a central assumption in mainstream philosophy of mind. It is not universal; but the thought that common-sense psychological explanation is not a form of causal explanation, or that the idea of perception does not involve the idea that a subject is causally affected by the things she perceives, is certainly a minority view. My questions are these: What is interpretationism, and what are its consequences? What is involved in seeing psychology in causal terms? And to what extent, if at all, are causal theories compatible with interpretationism?

1

Davidson (1983) p. 315.

2

The most consistent and sustained interpretationist accounts of the mental are to be found in the writings of Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett (see e.g. Davidson (1974a), (1974c), and (1975) ; Dennett (1987a) ). But the interpretationist perspective is by no means confined to them. And there is a strong Wittgensteinian strand to the view (a strand which is clearly visible in both Davidson and Dennett, though neither makes much direct reference to Wittgenstein's writings).

2

INTRODUCTION

In some writers (most famously, Donald Davidson) the two themes, interpretationism and causalism, come together. But there is at least a prima facie question whether the interpretationist approach to the propositional attitudes is compatible with causalism about the mental. For interpretationism has consequences for the ontological status of mental phenomena, and for the relation between the mental and the physical, which have seemed to many to threaten the possibility of a causal understanding of commonsense psychology. A simple way of expressing that incompatibilist intuition would be this. ‘Causal theories commit us to a Cartesian view of the mind; but interpretationism is a fundamentally anti-Cartesian view; so it is impossible coherently to combine interpretationism and causalism.’ We can expand that intuition as follows. Someone who proposes to understand action or perception, say, in causal terms, must explain how the notion of causality figures in our mental concepts. How, for example, are we to understand the claim that explaining an action by citing the agent's reasons is a form of causal explanation? One way of trying to make sense of the causal elements in psychology would be to invoke an ontology of mental states and entities, modelled on ordinary physical states and entities; the internal mental phenomena would be causally related to one another, and to external phenomena, in just the way that physical phenomena are causally related to one another. That would give us something like the following model. ‘Beliefs, desires, experiences, and so on are internal states and entities. Perception consists in an object's appropriately causing an inner experience; action consists in the production of behaviour by inner states—beliefs and desires; and so on. And the causal behaviour of those mental entities is regular and law-governed, in just the way that the causal behaviour of physical things is governed by laws.’ Now it is often assumed that this view of mental phenomena as internal, causally interacting entities is the only way of making sense of causalism about the mind.3 And that is a thought common to opponents of causal theories and to some defenders of causal theories (the opponents and defenders disagree, of course, about the tenability of such a view of mental phenomena).

3

Some explicit statements: ‘The causal analysis [of action] belongs in the tradition inaugurated by Descartes’ (Stoutland (1985) p. 45); ‘The psychology implicit in the causal theory [of perception] is thoroughly Cartesian.—And its epistemology is equally Cartesian’ (Hyman (1992) p. 294).

INTRODUCTION

3

Now interpretationism is a radically anti-Cartesian view. Indeed, on some accounts, what motivates the interpretationist is the idea that the Cartesian conception of the mind is untenable.4 In particular, it is thought, that conception gives rise to the traditional problems of other minds and of the external world. The traditional problems stem from the idea that beliefs, for example, are internal states, whose intrinsic mental character is independent of anything external, including the subject's behaviour. If we conceive of others' beliefs like that, how can we ever know that someone else is in a given mental state; and how can we so much as make sense of the thought that someone else is in a given mental state? Similarly, if the intrinsic character of belief is wholly independent of the external world, how can beliefs yield knowledge of the world lying beyond experience; and how can beliefs so much as have a content about the external world?5 According to the interpretationist, we need a change of focus. Rather than starting with the notion of a belief, conceived as an internal entity, we should start from the way in which the concept of belief actually figures in common-sense psychology. Now the concept of belief plays a role in our ordinary, everyday understanding of one another, and of ourselves, as rational agents—individuals with our own perspectives on the world, whose actions can be explained in terms of our reasons for performing them. And the basic way in which the notion of belief comes into common-sense psychology is the idea of a person believing that p; the concept of belief is the concept of a property of a person. The interpretationist thought is that we can give an account of the circumstances under which it is true that S believes that p by considering the circumstances under which S could be interpreted as believing that p, on the basis of what she says and does. That moves away from the Cartesian

4

Note that, in my use of the term ‘Cartesian’, a conception can count as Cartesian without accepting Descartes's own commitment to the idea that a human person is composed of two substances: an extended, unthinking body and an unextended, thinking soul. A materialist view will count as Cartesian if it treats mental phenomena as internal entities, whose intrinsic character is wholly independent of anything external. The label ‘Cartesian’ has become traditional for such a conception, though ‘Humean’ might, perhaps, be more accurate. (For reflections on the connections between Descartes's own views and modern materialist forms of Cartesianism, see McDowell (1985) § 6 and Hornsby (1986) § 10.).

5

I develop these connections between the Cartesian picture and the problem of other minds in Ch. 1 § 3.3; and between that picture and the problem of the external world in Ch. 5 § 2.

4

INTRODUCTION

position in two crucial respects. First, by focusing on the idea of belief as a property of a whole person, we do away with the conception of beliefs as internal states, states which are literally inside people's heads. (Of course, if S believes that p, then we can introduce talk of a sort of entity, S's belief that p. But such entities are derivative and secondary; they play no essential role in an account of thought and meaning; and they cannot be thought of as causally interacting items, like billiard balls or cogs.) Second, and relatedly, we reject the idea that the intrinsic character of thought is independent of the environment and of the subject's behaviour. The process of interpretation proceeds on the basis of publicly available facts about a subject's behaviour and contextual relations; so the idea of belief as it figures in common-sense psychology is, from the outset, the idea of a property which is not internal. Interpretationism, then, stands opposed to the view of propositional attitudes as internal states. So, if we accept the widespread assumption that causal theories depend on the idea that beliefs and desires are internal, causally interacting phenomena, there is a real problem about the tenability of the compatibilist view—the view that an interpretationist approach to psychology can be coherently combined with a causal understanding of the mental. A defence of compatibilism would need three elements: (i) the formulation of an acceptable version of interpretationism, and an explanation of its commitments; (ii) the development of a version of causalism which is not committed to the Cartesian view; (iii) a demonstration, in detail, that the demands of interpretationism and of the causal theory are, in fact, compatible. That is what I shall aim to provide. In Chapter 1 I consider interpretationism. I distinguish a number of versions of the position, explore the options for interpretationists, and try to make clear what interpretationism really amounts to. An important part of the task here will be to explain and defend the central interpretationist presupposition, that reflection on the nature of interpretation can yield conclusions about the nature of thought. In Chapter 2 I examine the nature of the relations between the mental and the physical. Davidson's interpretationism is associated with the doctrine of the anomalism of the mental, the thesis that

INTRODUCTION

5

there is no system of strict laws on the basis of which mental phenomena could be precisely predicted and explained. Now the anomalism of the mental has often been taken to conflict with other claims about the relation between mental and physical; the claim that mental properties supervene on physical properties, for example, or that the mental is determined by the physical. Since we seem to need those claims if we are to explain how the mental can causally affect the physical, the doctrine of anomalism has seemed to many to make problems for the causalist approach. I start by explaining and defending the argument for anomalism, stressing its dependence on a thesis about the character of rationality. Turning to the implications of that argument, I argue that the doctrine of anomalism is perfectly compatible with the thought that the mental supervenes on the physical; but that, in ways which have not generally been appreciated, it rules out the possibility of various sorts of detailed correlation between mental and physical phenomena. All this has implications for the form of any causalism which could be compatible with interpretationism. Chapter 3 introduces and defends the arguments for a causal view of common-sense psychology. Those arguments come from two directions: there is the role of causality in understanding the form of psychological explanations; and there is the role of causality in understanding the content of mental phenomena. But it is one thing to say in general terms that action explanation, say, is a form of causal explanation; it is another to give a substantive causal theory which tells us, in detail, how causality figures in an understanding of action explanation. As a first step towards a substantive theory, I consider two questions: ‘What makes an explanation a causal explanation; what is the form of a causal explanation?’; and, ‘How are causal relations involving mental phenomena related to causal relations involving physical phenomena?’ Chapter 4 discusses arguments for thinking that there is a tension between interpretationism in the philosophy of mind and causalism about the mental: it answers some of those worries; discussion of others is postponed to Chapter 6. I then consider a common incompatibilist suggestion: ‘It is true that we need both causal stories about behaviour and the sort of rationality-involving psychological story offered by the interpretationist. But those are two different sorts of story, and should be kept apart; it is an error

6

INTRODUCTION

to try to combine them, by seeing psychological stories themselves as a type of causal story.’ I argue that this sort of bifurcation between the causal and the rational is unacceptable; and I suggest that what it loses, which compatibilism supplies, is the possibility of a modest but appealing form of realism. Chapters 5 and 6 work towards a detailed causal account of the concepts of vision and action. Chapter 5 considers the case of vision. Here I start from a challenge to the causal theory. According to the challenge, the causal theory requires an essentially Cartesian view of experience, which we have reason to reject: that conception ought to be replaced by what has come to be known as a disjunctive view of experience; but this disjunctive view undermines the motivation for, and is actually inconsistent with, the causal theory. I argue against both those claims: the causalist can accept the disjunctive view of experience; and there remain good reasons for thinking that causality is an essential feature of the concept of vision. In Chapter 6 I consider the case of action. Here I focus on a problem which seems to arise when we combine a causal theory of action, a physicalist conception of causation, and the doctrine of the anomalism of the mental: can we combine those three views without sacrificing the common-sense idea that mental properties are causally, or causally explanatorily, relevant? I argue that we can; by combining an account of the relation between people's mental properties and their physical properties with an account of our primitive causal understanding of the mental, we can vindicate the common-sense idea in a way which is compatible with interpretationism, and with the associated doctrine of the anomalism of the mental.

1 Interpretationism Interpretation is the process of ascribing attitudes to an individual on the basis of what she says and does. When we interpret someone, we aim to make sense of her by attributing beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and other propositional attitudes—attitudes in the light of which her behaviour is intelligible as, more or less, rational action. Interpretationists think that we can gain an understanding of the nature of the mental by reflecting on the nature of interpretation. The general interpretationist approach is familiar in the philosophy of mind. But exactly what does interpretationism amount to? What is the motivation for the interpretationist approach; and what justifies the claim that an investigation of the nature of interpretation can reveal the whole truth about the mental? What are interpretationists actually claiming about the link between thought and interpretability? And what, in detail, does interpretationism say about the mind? In this chapter I try to answer those questions, and to come to an understanding of the interpretationist position. In § 1 I sketch some of the key elements in the interpretationist's account of the mental, and make a number of preliminary points about the concepts of interpretation and interpretationism. In § 2 I consider the relation between the ascription of attitudes and the interpretation of language. In § 3 I discuss what I shall call the interpretationist's ‘necessity claim’, the claim that ‘[t]houghts, desires, and other attitudes are in their nature states we are equipped to interpret’;6 I examine the content of the claim, and the justification for it. In § 4 I consider whether interpretability is a sufficient condition for thought; and in § 5, whether interpretability is constitutive of thought.

6

Davidson (1990c) p. 14.

8

1. INTERPRETATIONISM

1. Interpretation and Interpretationism: Some Preliminaries I start by sketching in broad outline some principal features of an interpretationist conception of the mental. First, when we interpret someone we aim to make her behaviour intelligible in a certain way—by seeing why it made sense (or seemed to make sense) for her to act as she did. When we interpret someone, we explain her actions in terms of her reasons. So the idea of reason-giving explanation is central to the interpretationist conception of the mental. Internal to that form of explanation, and thus to the interpretationist conception, is the notion of rationality; the ideal of rationality has a constitutive role in propositional attitude psychology. To say that is to say (amongst other things) that if a subject has attitudes at all, the relations amongst her attitudes, perceptions, and actions must by and large be rational. No actual individual is perfectly rational; so all sorts of local irrationality in thought and action are intelligible. But what is not intelligible is that a subject might have a set of attitudes which were absolutely irrational, for none of which she had any reasons at all, and which it was impossible to relate intelligibly to her action; with an individual like that, the idea of explaining actions in terms of reasons could have no application. The general link between the propositional attitudes and the notion of intelligibility is one source of the interpretationist's principle of charity, or humanity: in ascribing beliefs, we should seek to optimize agreement between what S believes and what she ought rationally to believe, in the light of her situation, her other attitudes, and the available evidence. And the same goes for desire: subjects are, by and large, not just believers of the true but also ‘lover[s] of the good’.7 It will turn out that the constitutive role of rationality has wide-ranging implications for the character of the mental. Second, on the interpretationist's view, propositional attitudes are not literally internal states. The concept of belief, say, is the concept of a property of a person: what is primary is the idea of a person believing that p; the idea of a kind of entity, S's belief that p, is derivative from, and dependent on, that. So if we think of a belief as a state at all, we must think of it as a state of a

7

Davidson (1970a) p. 222. See also Dennett (1981) p. 50.

§ 1. INTERPRETATION AND INTERPRETATIONISM

9

person. Interpretationists allow that there are connections between a person's having the beliefs and desires she does and her having the internal causal organization she does. (What attitudes a subject has is a matter of how she can be interpreted, which is answerable to what she says and does; and at some level, we think, her saying and doing what she does results from her being causally organized in the way she is.) But it would be wrong to think that claims about what a subject believes and desires are claims about her internal physical states; if it is possible to match up attitudes and internal states one-to-one, that will be something that needs to be shown, not something built into the very idea of a propositional attitude. Third, every actual subject is a physical individual. In that sense, interpretationism is a physicalist, or materialist, view; the existence of minds in the world does not involve the existence of any nonphysical matter. Some interpretationists also endorse the stronger claim that each mental event is a physical event. But the physicalism to which interpretationism is committed is a modest physicalism. Indeed, interpretationism is often associated with the view that there are, or even that there could be, no systematic relations between the mental and the physical at all. (That is, again, a topic I explore in Chapter 2.) I have stated these central elements of the interpretationist position briefly, and dogmatically; the motivations for these interpretationist claims will emerge in this chapter and the next.8 But I want to draw attention here to three features of interpretationism as I am characterizing it. First, the interpretationism I have described is (in the first instance, at any rate) a methodology in the philosophy of mind, rather than a set of doctrines. The basic interpretationist idea is that we can gain an understanding of the mental by reflection on interpretation; not that reflection on interpretation is the only way of reaching such an understanding. Of course, if that basic idea is right, then certain views about the mental are ruled out; and certain conclusions about the mental will follow. But the basic idea is quite compatible with the thought that the conclusions which interpretationism yields could be reached by some other route; it is even compatible with the idea that there could be a more direct

8

See also the writings of Davidson and Dennett cited in Introduction, n. 2.

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1. INTERPRETATIONISM

route to the same conclusions. Some interpretationists go beyond the basic idea, and see the concept of interpretation as an indispensable element in an understanding of thought. If we adopt that perspective, we do see interpretationism as more than simply one way of thinking about the mental. But, for the moment, I will be discussing the less ambitious claim.9 Second, interpretationism offers us an understanding of the propositional attitudes: belief, desire, intention, hope, fear, pride, and so on. On one way of understanding ‘the mental’, a complete account of the propositional attitudes is a complete account of the mental; to hold that view is to accept ‘the criterion of the mental in terms of the vocabulary of the propositional attitudes’.10 (One who accepts that criterion can accept the status as mental of experiences, in so far as experiences have contents subject to the same constraints of rationality and coherence as the propositional attitudes.) There are other ways of using ‘mental’ which would extend the subject-matter of philosophy of mind beyond what figures in propositional attitude psychology: on some views, for example, facts about sub-personal cognitive psychology, or even about the brain, can properly be considered facts about the mind. But there is no need to dispute about the words ‘mental’ or ‘mind’. Interpretationism is an account of the propositional attitudes, and of other personal-level (as opposed to sub-personal) states with propositional content. I will talk of that as being an account of the mental; but someone who has a wider criterion of the mental can think of interpretationism as an account of a part of the mental. Third, I said that interpretation is the process of ascribing attitudes to someone on the basis of what she says and does. It is no part of that view that an interpreter must first identify what S says and does in non-mental terms, as mere vocalizations and physical movements, and then work out what mental properties S has.11 Interpretationism can perfectly well accept that our most primitive identifications of behaviour already pick out what a

9

I pursue the questions hinted at in this paragraph in § 5 below.

10

Davidson (1970a) p. 216.

11

We can say something parallel about perception. We form beliefs about the external world on the basis of perception—on the basis of how things seem. It need be no part of that view that we must first identify the appearances in a neutral vocabulary, which prescinds from any claims about physical objects, and then work out how the external world is on the basis of that.

§ 1. INTERPRETATION AND INTERPRETATIONISM

11

subject says and does in mental terms—as cases of saying that p, asking whether q, picking something up, driving to London, and so on. But the fact that, in the normal case, we identify S's behaviour in mental terms, as this or that action, does not conflict with the idea that we ascribe attitudes on the basis of what subjects say and do. I may immediately identify what you are doing as pumping up a tyre; that does not stop me from explaining your action by ascribing various attitudes, attitudes I might not have suspected if you had not acted as you did. And that is all that the interpretationist's idea requires. I make this point in order to forestall the frequently expressed worry that interpretationism must involve some sort of reductionism, or non-realism, about the mental. The worry is that interpretationism implies that all there really are are mere vocalizations and physical movements, and that talk of speech-acts and other actions, and of beliefs, desires, and the rest, is merely a convenient fiction.12 But, as I have said, interpretationists need not accept such a view. It is true that some of Davidson's accounts of interpretation do suggest that, when we ascribe attitudes and meanings to a subject, we are constructing a theory on the basis of more primitive data.13 Davidson is explicitly not attempting to reduce the intentional to something non-intentional; for what he regards as data—such facts as that S prefers one thing to another, or holds a given sentence true—are themselves intentional. But even allowing for that point, the theory may still seem too reductionist. Here are two common criticisms. (i) ‘Davidson's account treats the data as facts about a subject's holding a sentence true, for instance. It is true that, if I already understand something of someone's language, and know a good deal about his attitudes, I “can know that [he] holds a sentence to be true without knowing what he means by it or what sentence it expresses for him.”14 But it is wholly implausible that we could ever have access to a whole class of data about someone's holding sentences true in advance of any more detailed knowledge about his meanings and attitudes; and it is implausible that we could ever, even in theory, ascribe a whole set of more detailed intentional states on the basis of “more

12

I discuss worries of this form in Ch. 4 § 1 and Ch. 6 § § 2 and 5.

13

e.g.: ‘Everyday linguistic and semantic concepts are part of an intuitive theory for organizing more primitive data. . . ’ ((1974c) p. 143 (emphasis added)).

14

Davidson (1975) p. 162.

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1. INTERPRETATIONISM

primitive data” of that sort. Rather, what seems plausible is that “[l]ight dawns gradually over the whole”15—that, even in the case of radical interpretation, an interpreter works her way gradually to the ascription of a whole pattern of beliefs, desires, and meanings, a pattern in which no one part is any more basic than another.’ (ii) ‘The idea that all understanding is interpretation seems to obscure a fundamental difference between everyday cases in which we simply take another unthinkingly at face value, and cases in which we really do have to make an inference, from data that are not immediately intelligible, to a conclusion about what the speaker meant. The idea of interpretation is applicable to the second case; but it is not appropriate for the sort of everyday case where you hear someone speak, and know immediately, and unreflectively, that she has said that p. And this distinction is of great theoretical importance; for there are reasons for thinking that it could not be the case that all understanding involved an interpretation in that explicit sense.’16 I think these points are good reasons for rejecting some of what Davidson says about interpretation. For they cast doubt on the thought that the procedure of interpretation as he describes it could occupy the fundamental theoretical role he ascribes it. But suppose we accept the two points in the previous paragraph: first, that the process of coming to understand another is a process of gradually working one's way into a whole, rather than a process of constructing a theory from more primitive data; and second, that the possibility of meaning and communication depends on the existence of cases in which people take one another at face value without the need for explicit interpretation. Those thoughts do not disturb the main interpretationist theses about the nature of thought. They do not, for example, disturb the basic idea that what a fully informed interpreter could learn about S's thoughts, on the basis of what she says and does, is all there is to learn. And they leave intact the main elements of the view of thought which flows from the interpretationist approach: for example, the idea that the mental is constitutively governed by norms of consistency and rationality; the doctrine of the anomalism of the mental, and of certain sorts of indeterminacy of mental properties; and the anti-Cartesian metaphysics of thought.

15

Wittgenstein (1969) § 141.

16

See Wittgenstein (1958a), § § 143–201. Dummett quotes §201 in support of his objections to Davidson's use of ‘interpretation’ (Dummett (1986) p. 464).

§ 2. LANGUAGE AND INTERPRETATION

13

A final note about terminology. As I use it, ‘interpretation’ involves the ascription of attitudes to a subject as well as the ascription of meaning to her words and sentences (if she has a language). We interpret a subject, or what she says and does. So my use of ‘interpret’ and ‘interpretation’ diverges from Davidson's. He distinguishes between interpretation theory (which involves the ascription of meanings to a subject's words) and decision theory (which involves the ascription of beliefs and desires to a subject); so, for Davidson, interpretation is only a part of the wider overall process of making sense of a subject by making sense of her actions and utterances.17 But as long as we are clear about the terminology, the difference between Davidson's more restricted use of ‘interpretation’, and my broader use, is unimportant.

2. Language and Interpretation Is the ascription of beliefs and desires inseparable from the interpretation of language? Or could a subject have thoughts without possessing a language? More precisely, does an explanation of what is required for thought make reference to a subject's possession of a language? Interpretationists divide on their answer to that question. And, as we will see, that division does not just affect what we say about thought and language; it influences the nature of interpretationism in other ways too.18 On one view, which we might call linguistic interpretationism, the ascription of thought is inseparable from the interpretation of language: ‘a creature cannot have a thought unless it has language.’19 That is not to say that the abilities of creatures which lack a language are utterly discontinuous from the abilities of language-users; to the extent that they approximate to language-use, such creatures may approximate to the possession of beliefs.20 But these proto-beliefs of non-language-users have to be understood

17

For this distinction between interpretation theory and decision theory, see e.g. Davidson (1974c) pp. 144–8.

18

See the discussion of the interpretationist's necessity claim in § 3 below; and of the distinction between constitutive and non-constitutive interpretationism in § 5.

19

Davidson (1982) p. 477.

20

Davidson suggests a view of this sort: ‘small children and animals have beliefs and the rudiments of speech up to some system of transformations of ways of assigning propositions to their utterances or intentions. The fewer acceptable transformations, the more thought’ ((1985) p. 252).

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in terms of their approximation to full-blown beliefs; there is no separately intelligible category of proto-belief, prior to the full-blown belief of the language-user. On the opposing view, non-linguistic interpretationism, there are at least some beliefs whose possession does not require language. So what non-language-users have is not a mere approximation to something higher and language-dependent.21 Of course, possession of a language vastly increases the range and precision of the attitudes available to a creature. So there are some cognitive states which are peculiar to languageusers. But not all thought requires language. The main purpose of this section is to explore the arguments for linguistic interpretationism. I will suggest that there remains an important gap in Davidson's principle argument for that position; and that his recent efforts to fill it do not compel his conclusions. The fate of that argument will have important implications else-where (a point I pick up in § 3 and § 5 below). But even if the argument for linguistic interpretationism fails, that would not mean the failure of the interpretationist view of the mental more generally. What could motivate the linguistic interpretationist's claim that we can ascribe beliefs to S only if we simultaneously interpret a language which S uses? Davidson writes: ‘Belief . . . depends . . . on meaning, for the only access to the fine structure and individuation of beliefs is through the sentences speakers and interpreters of speakers use to express and describe beliefs.’22 Bracket the explicitly epistemic formulation here, and read it (as Davidson intends) as making a metaphysical claim too; the only way to make sense of someone's having a belief with ‘fine structure’ is to think of her as holding a sentence true. Now this seems to put the weight on the idea that a creature must have language if it is to have attitudes with relatively complex or fine-grained contents: attitudes like the belief that there is a largest prime number, that Napoleon had all the qualities of a great general, or that it is Friday.23 That in turn suggests that an attitude with a less complex or detailed content, like a desire for food or sex, might be explicable

21

For this view, see e.g. Dennett (1981) p. 65: ‘the cognitive capacities of non-language-using animals . . . must . . . be accounted for, and not just in terms of an analogy with us language users.’ See also Evans (1982) p. 123.

22

Davidson (1983) pp. 314–15. See also (1973c) p. 127, (1974c) pp. 143–4, and (1975) p. 163.

23

Davidson offers these as examples of attitudes which a creature without a language could clearly not possess.

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15

without reference to language. And something like that is Dennett's view: there are simple cognitive states which do not depend on their subject's possession of a language; and there are more complex beliefs which do—which ‘can only be acquired. . .via language’.24 On that view, there is a link between (some) thoughts and language; but it is not true that thought in general depends on language. However, Davidson has a different point in mind, which we could summarize as follows. ‘One mark of the mental is intentionality, and the mark of intentionality is semantic intensionality; “attribution[s of attitudes] may be changed from true to false, or false to true, by substitutions in the contained sentences that would not alter the truth value of the sentence in isolation.”25 And that sort of failure of substitutivity makes sense only in the case of language-users.’26 The argument depends on two assumptions: that the creation of opaque, or intensional, contexts is an essential mark of the propositional attitudes; and that the only way to account for that opacity is by thinking of belief, say, as a disposition (amongst other things) to hold a sentence true. The first assumption is very plausible. The second has some intuitive appeal (though Davidson offers little argument in its favour). But it is certainly open to challenge. For example, Evans's pioneering discussion of what is involved in thinking of objects under specific modes of presentation shows how much can be said about what it is to think demonstratively of a perceptually presented object, or to think of something on the basis of a recognitional capacity, without appeal to any linguistic capacity of the subject.27 And if we can make sense of a subject's having demonstrative and

24

Dennett (1976) p. 274.

25

Davidson (1975) p. 156. For similar claims, see Davidson (1970a) pp. 210–11 and (1982) pp. 474–5, and Dennett (1983) pp. 240–1. But note that Davidson leaves room for the possibility that there could be thoughts which we could not attribute using a ‘that’-clause followed by an ordinary sentence: ‘there may be thoughts for which the speaker cannot find words, or for which there are no words’ ((1975) p. 158). (He does not say what cases he has in mind. But one sort of example might involve cases where the subject is in the course of acquiring, or losing, a concept. See Ch. 2 § 3.)

26

Davidson suggests an argument of this form ((1975) pp. 163–4, (1982) pp. 474–7, and (1985) p. 252). But he also recognizes its limitations (for which, see the previous note): from ‘the dubious applicability of the intensionality test where dumb animals are concerned’ we could conclude only that ‘there probably can't be much thought without language’ ((1982) p. 477).

27

See Evans (1982) Chs. 6–8.

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recognition-based ways of thinking of things without appeal to its possession of a language, we can make sense of failures of substitutivity in belief-ascriptions without appeal to possession of a language. So the argument about substitutivity could certainly be contested. But that argument is not, in fact, the main motivation for Davidson's insistence that thought requires language. His motivation comes from a different, two-part, argument: the first part links possession of beliefs with possession of the concept of objective truth; the second links a subject's possession of the concept of objective truth with her being in communication with others. Why should possession of beliefs require possession of the concept of objective truth? The central thought is that there is a crucial difference between a subject with beliefs and a system which simply interacts in complex causal ways with its environment—a mere information processor. And the idea is that the key difference between a system which has beliefs and one which merely processes information is that something with beliefs can itself make sense of the distinction between how things seem to it and how they really are.28 A creature can interact with its environment in complex ways without having beliefs: ‘It may discriminate among colours, tastes, sounds and shapes. It may “learn”, that is, change its behaviour in ways that preserve its life or increase its food intake. It may “generalize”, in the sense of reacting to new stimuli as it has come to react to similar stimuli.’29 But none of that requires the creature to be thinking of things as parts of an objective world, independent of itself; a creature which has this sort of ability will be responding to features which are in fact elements of an objective world; but it need not be thinking of them as features of an objective world. For a creature to have thoughts about the world, it is not enough that we be able to distinguish between how things seem to it and how they are; the contrast must be available to the creature itself.30 In support of the idea that a creature can have beliefs only if it

28

Of course, when S 's beliefs are true, how things seem to her will actually be how they are; but that does not undermine the distinction between things seeming to S to be some way and their actually being that way.

29

Davidson (1982) p. 480.

30

In Davidson's words, a creature which has beliefs must ‘understand . . . the possibility . . . of being mistaken’; it must ‘command . . . the subjective–objective contrast’ ((1975) p. 170, (1982) p. 480).

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17

can think of itself as having beliefs, consider a parallel. We can distinguish the idea of a reason for x to Φ from the merely causal idea of a reason why x Φ-d: there are reasons why apples fall, stars twinkle, and flowers turn to face the sun; but they are not reasons for the apples, stars, and flowers. And it is plausible that the idea of something's being a reason for x to Φ is intelligible only if x can think of it as a reason for Φ-ing.31 Now some philosophers reject this first stage of the Davidsonian argument, and maintain that a creature can have beliefs without being capable of conceiving of itself as having beliefs. Dennett, for example, thinks that something can have what he calls first-order intentional states without having second-order intentional states (intentional states about other intentional states). So long as we are clear that a system which has only these first-order ‘beliefs’ does not think of things and events as objective things and events, there need be no conflict between Dennett's position and Davidson's; what Dennett calls a first-order intentional state does not even purport to be what Davidson calls a belief. For the sake of clarity, I propose to put things in Davidson's way: a state of a creature is a belief only if the creature is equipped to think of it as a belief. So much for the first part of the argument—which is really just a specification of what is meant by ‘belief’. What about the second part; why should possession of the subjective–objective contrast require one to be in communication with others?32 Two questions arise. First, how exactly is a subject's being in

31

Some may be tempted to think that some reasons why flowers turn to face the sun are reasons for the flowers —those having to do with biological function, or evolutionary purpose. But there is a distinction between rationality, on the one hand, and biological or evolutionary purpose, on the other. If one says that flowers themselves have evolutionary reasons to turn to the sun, one is not saying that a flower is a locus of rationality.

32

In an early version of the argument, Davidson was unequivocal that communication is a necessary condition: ‘We have the idea of belief [and thus of the subjective–objective contrast] only from the role of belief in the interpretation of language, for as a private attitude it is not intelligible except as an adjustment to the public norm provided by language. It follows that a creature must be a member of a speech community if it is to have the concept of belief’ ((1975) p. 170, emphases added). More recently, he has been more guarded, offering only the partial argument that communication is a sufficient condition for grasp of the subjective–objective contrast: ‘Clearly linguistic communication suffices’ for grasp of the contrast, and Davidson has no idea ‘how else one could arrive at the concept of an objective truth’ ((1982) p. 480).

18

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communication with others supposed to be relevant to her grasping the subjective–objective contrast? Second, is it true that only a creature's being in communication with others suffices for grasp of the subjective–objective contrast, or are there alternative possibilities? Davidson has two main lines of argument, which I will consider in turn. The first line of thought tries to show that it is only the fact of communication with others that gives each of us the resources to distinguish between how things seem to us and how, objectively, they are. The concept of objective truth ‘can emerge only in the context of interpretation, which alone forces us to the idea of an objective, public truth’.33 G. E. Moore pointed out that I cannot intelligibly say, or think, ‘I believe that p, but p is false’; the circumstances in which I am willing to assert that p and the circumstances in which I am willing to assert that I believe that p cannot come apart. Now someone who already has the general concept of objective truth can make sense of the possibility that how she believes things to be may not in fact be how they really are: she cannot intelligibly think, ‘I believe that p but p is false’; but she can intelligibly think, ‘I believe that p but it might turn out that p is false’. But suppose I did not already grasp the distinction between how things seem to me and how they really are. If I had the resources only of my own point of view, of how things seem to me, what could give me the idea of a contrast between what I believed and the truth? ‘Nothing’, is Davidson's response. In that situation, I could never be confronted with a contrast between how things seem to me and how they are. And if I could never be confronted by such a contrast, I could have no use for the distinction; indeed, I would not even have the resources to draw the distinction. It might happen that something I expected did not come to pass. But, with only my own point of view to go on, that would just be a case in which things seemed thus-and-so at one time, and seemed a different way at a later time. I would not have the resources to think of it as a case in which there was a distinction between how things seemed to me and how, objectively, they were. But now consider how things are if I am interacting with another creature, which has its own point of view on the world.

33

Davidson (1975) p. 170.

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19

There is now the possibility of divergence and disagreement. If S indicates that p is true when, in my opinion, p is false, I cannot make do with an undiscriminated conception of how things are, which makes no distinction between how things seem to me, how they seem to S, and how they really are. Initially, perhaps, I could make do with a single division: distinguishing between how things seem to S and how, in fact, they are—but still drawing no distinction between how things seem to me and how they are. But even if interaction does not compel one to distinguish between how things seem to oneself and how they really are, it provides one with the resources for doing so—resources absent when we consider things from the point of view of a single creature. And that, for the Davidsonian argument, is the important point. Now an obvious objection to this argument is the thought that there are in fact resources other than communication with others which would allow an individual to make sense of the distinction between how things seem to her and how they really are. For example, one might think that an individual could be confronted by a mismatch between a current series of perceptions and a generalization well established on the basis of past experience; surely that could provide the resources for making a distinction between how things now seem and how they really are. Or again, one might claim that a subject's grasp of the contrast between how things seem and how they are is explicable in terms of her grasp of a simple theory of perception; to grasp such a theory (the idea would be) is to think of one's experiences as being causally explained by objects and events in the world one inhabits; and to do that just is to have grasped the distinction between how things seem to oneself and how they really are.34 Prima facie, at least, that is a reasonable objection; at the very least, it needs answering. And I do think that Davidson has not done enough to answer it. But he has said something, which emerges in a second line of thought. The second idea is that the reason why ‘we cannot . . . resolve the question of the contents of mental states from the point of view of a single creature’ is that ‘[t]he identification of the objects of thought rests . . . on a social basis’.35 Communication with

34

See Strawson (1979), Evans (1980), and Campbell (1986).

35

Davidson (1991b) p. 201.

20

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others is part of what is necessary to fix the content of an individual's beliefs; and, since beliefs are, by definition, states with content, that means that communication is necessary for an individual to have beliefs at all.36 Here is a statement of the problem which appeal to communication is supposed to solve: [T]he cause of certain mental states is relevant to the content of those states. And . . . one kind of case is especially important: an example is the way the fact that a certain mental state has been typically caused by seeing cows allows us to think ‘There's a cow’, even when no cow is present. But here a problem arises. What determines the content of such basic thoughts . . . is what has typically caused similar thoughts. But what has caused them? There are many choices, for example events that occurred before all cows, or events spatially closer to the thinker than any cow.37 And here is a statement of Davidson's proposed solution, stressing the role of communication with others. [W]hat makes the particular aspect of the cause of [a] learner's responses the aspect that gives them the content they have is the fact that this aspect of the cause is shared by the teacher and the learner. Without such sharing, there would be no grounds for selecting one cause rather than another as the content-fixing cause.38 Davidson likes to describe this procedure in terms of the metaphor of triangulation: ‘Without one creature to observe another, the triangulation that locates the relevant objects in a public space could not take place.’39 How is the metaphor of triangulation to be cashed out? The idea is this. In the simple cases we are considering, there is, for every belief which might be expressed by saying ‘There's a cow’, a causal chain leading back from a subject's perception to her immediate environment, and beyond. We face the question, ‘Which stage of all these causal chains fixes the content of an utterance?’ The naïve response is, ‘The stage where the cause of one utterance is similar to the cause of other utterances of similar responses.’ But the problem with this naïve idea is that it gives us no reason for

36

The argument is suggested in Davidson (1982), and developed more fully in (1989b), (1991a), and (1991b).

37

Davidson (1991b) p. 200.

38

Ibid. 201.

39

Ibid. See also (1982) p. 480.

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21

saying that utterances of ‘cow’, and the beliefs thereby expressed, are about cows, rather than about patterns of retinal stimulation (at one extreme) or prehistoric ancestors of cows (at the other). There is a similarity between the animals which normally cause the beliefs we express with ‘There's a cow’—they are all cows. But, equally, there are similarities of some sort between the patterns of retinal stimulation which normally cause such beliefs: ‘all those arrays of light striking the retina have something in common; and so for other classes of causes’.40 What we must say, Davidson thinks, is that the stages of different causal chains which are the relevantly similar ones are the stages which we class together, naturally and unthinkingly, as being similar.41 The general thought is familiar as a theme in Wittgenstein's discussion of following a rule: what counts as going on in the same way is not dictated by the real nature of things, absolutely independent of us; how we find it natural to go on once trained plays some part in determining the categories we grasp and, therefore, in fixing what counts as going on in the same way.42 Now there is an obvious worry about this line of thought, a worry which is parallel to the objection we have already encountered: does the sort of triangulation needed to fix the content-determining stage of causal chains really require communication? On the face of it, the idea that what counts as similar to what is partially defined by similarity responses could be applied using only the similarity responses of an individual. But Davidson answers that worry by arguing that we cannot help ourselves to an

40

Davidson (1991b) p. 200.

41

‘It is we who class cow appearances together, more or less naturally, or with minimal learning’ (ibid. 200).

42

There are two points about which care is needed here. (i) We must be careful in describing the way in which the natural, blind, matter-of-course responses we give, once trained, help to fix what counts as similar to what; in particular, there is no prospect of a reduction of ‘x is similar to y ’ to ‘we find it natural to classify x as similar to y once trained’. (ii) The Wittgensteinian argument is an argument against what we might call ‘rampant platonism’ (the phrase is McDowell's); the idea that what counts as similar to what, or what counts as going on in the same way, is determined absolutely objectively, with no contribution by us. But the argument is consistent with the thought that there is a quite unobjectionable sense in which one cow is objectively similar to another, for example, or in which, if you are following the rule for adding 2, ‘1002’ is objectively the right thing to put after ‘1000’. The upshot of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations is not that anything goes, but just that what counts as (objectively) going on in the same way must be understood by reference to a practice.

22

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absolutely objective similarity relation when considering similarities amongst responses: The criterion on the basis of which a creature can be said to be treating stimuli as similar, as belonging to a class, is the similarity of the creature's responses to those stimuli; but what is the criterion of the similarity of the responses? This criterion cannot be derived from the creature's responses; it can come only from the responses of an observer to the responses of the creature.43 But does this really help? The same objection seems to recur; that the idea of understanding similarity in terms of what seems similar to subjects can in fact be applied in understanding the idea of similarity amongst the responses of a single individual; for there is nothing to stop a subject reflecting on her own responses and finding some of them similar to each other and others different from one another. I do not say that this objection is conclusive. But it would at least need to be addressed if the triangulation argument is really to show that thought requires communication. To sum up. The main support for the linguistic interpretationist's position, that possession of thoughts depends on possession of a language, comes from Davidson's two-part argument. According to that argument: (i) possession of thoughts requires grasp of the contrast between how things seem to oneself and how things really are; (ii) grasp of that contrast requires that one be in communication with others. I have discussed the reasons why one might think that being in communication with others is necessary for grasp of the subjective–objective contrast, and I have mentioned a lacuna in the arguments Davidson uses to justify that claim. We can certainly see that communication with others is one way of providing the resources which are necessary, first, for an individual to be able to make sense of the subjective–objective contrast, and, second, for a solution to the triangulation problem. But, despite Davidson's recent efforts, it is not clear that we have been given an adequate reason to think that only communication with others could provide those resources. I am not unsympathetic to Davidson's intuition about the essentially communal character of thought. But I do not think he has offered arguments which compel us to share that intuition.

43

Davidson (1991a) p. 159.

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23

I will not try to settle here the debate between the linguistic interpretationist and the objectors. But we can set out the strategic position. There is an argument for linguistic interpretationism, and there are a number of objections. Suppose it turns out that, as the objectors claim, we can show how it is intelligible for a subject to command the subjective–objective contrast without possessing a language, or without interacting with others at all. That would undermine the principle argument for a linguistic version of interpretationism. But it would not undermine interpretationism altogether. What is essential for interpretationism is the claim that thought is, in its nature, interpretable. And there are arguments for that claim which are independent of linguistic interpretationism.

3. Thought and Interpretability: Is Interpretability Necessary for Thought? I said at the outset that interpretationism aims to draw conclusions about the nature of the propositional attitudes from reflection on the procedure for ascribing attitudes to a subject on the basis of what she says and does. But that gives rise to an obvious challenge. ‘A study of interpretation can reveal the conditions under which an interpreter can know what someone's attitudes are; and it can reveal general features of thoughts which are accessible to interpretation. But how can that justify us in making claims about thought in general? On the face of it, in moving from claims about thoughts which we can ascribe to claims about thought in general, the interpretationist is making a straightforward and objectionable shift from epistemic to metaphysical considerations’.44 According to this challenge, the interpretationist is faced with a dilemma. One option is to observe a proper distinction between epistemic and metaphysical considerations, in which case our conclusions must be restricted; the best that interpretationism could

44

A slippage between epistemic and metaphysical considerations seems clear when Davidson addresses the (metaphysical) question, ‘[H]ow much like us must an artefact be, and in what ways, to qualify as having thoughts?’, by making the (epistemic) point that ‘the only way to tell if an artificial device . . . has beliefs, intentions, desires, and the ability to perceive and interact with the world as a person does, is to attempt to interpret the behaviour of the device in the same way we do the behaviour of a person’ ((1990c) pp. 15, 26 (emphasis added)).

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do would be to say what must be true of the attitudes of subjects we are able to interpret.45 Alternatively, the interpretationist may press ahead and make claims about thought in general; but in doing so he will be relying on some sort of anti-realist assumption, which simply defines the truth about S's thoughts in terms of what an interpreter could come to know. To answer that challenge, the interpretationist needs to produce an argument to show why it follows, from the very nature of the mental, that ‘what a fully informed interpreter could learn’ about what a subject believes, desires, and means ‘is all there is to learn’.46 He needs to show (not just to assume) that ‘[t]houghts, desires, and other attitudes are in their nature states we are equipped to interpret; [that] what we could not interpret is not thought’;47 and he needs to explain why that does not conflict with various common-sense realist thoughts we might have. What the interpretationist needs, then, is a necessity claim: the claim that interpretability is a necessary condition for thought. But what exactly does the claim come to; and can it be justified? My discussion will proceed by considering three questions: (1) What does interpretability amount to? (2) What sort of thesis is the interpretationist's necessity claim, and how strong is it intended to be? (3) What reasons are there for accepting it?

3.1. Interpretability Interpretationism argues that there is an essential link between thought and interpretability. But what is interpretability? The basic idea is this: S is interpretable as Φ at t, just in case the best scheme for interpreting S on the basis of what she says and does would ascribe S the property Φ at t. (Instances of Φ could include, for example, believing that p, or possessing the concept F.) But that idea can be filled out in different ways, depending on how we understand the idea of ‘a scheme for interpreting S on the basis of what she says and does’. There are at least three parameters which can be varied, to produce different conceptions of interpretability.

45

This is McGinn's position: ‘it is a condition of interpretability that the subject by and large believes what he perceives . . . (This is not to say [that a person who systematically and globally refuses to let his beliefs be shaped by his experience] is impossible ; it is just that he is not interpretable )’ ((1986) p. 367).

46

See Davidson (1983) p. 315.

47

Davidson (1990c) p. 14.

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25

First, there is a question about the sort of information available to the interpreter. Here, notice that, for the interpretationist, ‘interpretability’ means interpretability on the basis of what S says and does. One point of interpretationism is to explain how ordinary people can have knowledge of one another's beliefs and desires. So the information that provides the basis for interpretation can include only what is, or in ordinary circumstances could be, available to the ordinary observer; it cannot, for example, include information about goings-on in a subject's brain or nervous system. Second, there is a question about how much information of this sort we are to consider when we ask what properties a subject is interpretable as having. Here are some options. We might say that S is interpretable as believing that p if S could be interpreted as believing that p by an interpreter with knowledge of: (a) the words she utters in response to questions during a five-minute interview;48 (b) what she says and does in the course of a prolonged conversation; (c) what she says and does in a conversation, together with enough information to show that she has had a normal history; (d) the totality of what she actually says and does over a lifetime; (e) the totality of possible evidence. Clearly, someone interpretable as believing that p according to one of the criteria at the beginning of this list need not be so interpretable by the stricter standards lower down. So our choice of a standard of interpretability will affect our answer to such questions as, ‘Could there be thoughts a subject was not interpretable as having?’, or, ‘Is being interpretable as Φ sufficient for being Φ?’ A third question is who is to count as the judge of interpretability. Is S interpretable as being Φ only if we could interpret her as being Φ? Or would it be enough if there were a community of others like S, all of whom could interpret one another, though we could not interpret them at all? For Davidson, interpretability is interpretability by us.49 But on the face of it, there might be room for an interesting form of interpretationism which did not understand ‘interpretability’ as ‘interpretability by us’: we might think that there are reasons for saying that any thinker must be interpretable by others with whom she interacts or shares a language,

48

Cf. Turing (1950).

49

For something on his reasons for saying this, see Davidson (1974d).

26

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but that a creature could meet that condition without being interpretable by us. In what follows, I will work with the following understanding of interpretability. The information we consider in assessing whether or not S is interpretable as being Φ can include only what is, or could be, available to ordinary observers: information about what S says and does, the circumstances in which she does so, and (we will see) certain information about S's history. Second, I will not assume that if S is interpretable as being Φ she is interpretable by us; I want to leave room for the possibility of thoughts which are manifestable to others, but which could not be ascribed by us (perhaps because our intellectual capacities are too limited). Third, the amount of information to be considered in assessing questions of interpretability must include everything that someone could find relevant in interpreting a subject; so it must include more, for example, than the verbal responses to a short series of questions. That rules out some conceptions of interpretability, but it leaves open a number of different possibilities; I explore them further in §3.3 below.

3.2. The Strength of the Necessity Claim Consider a formulation I quoted earlier: ‘Thoughts, desires, and other attitudes are in their nature states we are equipped to interpret; what we could not interpret is not thought.’50 That slogan might be used to express various different sorts of thesis. But I want to focus on an epistemic claim, about the relation between what S thinks and what S can be known to think. How strong an epistemic claim is the interpretationist making? We can locate the possible views on a spectrum between two extremes. At one extreme is what we might call the radically non-epistemic view of thought.51 That view has two elements. First, that the mental is epistemically private; that knowledge of a subject's mental properties is available only to the subject herself. Second, that it is intelligible that beliefs about minds which

50

Davidson (1990c) p. 14.

51

The label ‘radically non-epistemic’ originates with Putnam; it (and the complementary ‘radically epistemic’) are used by Davidson ((1990a) §2). I intend this use of the labels to suggest a parallel between the interpretationist's view of the relation between thought and interpretability, and Davidson's view about the relation between truth and knowability in general.

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27

are reached on the basis of interpretation might all be false. Summarizing: [A] Interpretation can yield no knowledge of others minds. [B] It is intelligible that all beliefs reached by interpretation might be false. Contrasting with that is a radically epistemic conception of thought. On that view, the conclusions an interpreter reaches cannot be wrong; it is not just that knowledge of others' minds is possible; if we follow the procedure for interpretation, error is actually ruled out. Now interpretationism clearly rejects the radically non-epistemic view of thought. But there are three questions about the interpretationist's positive position. How strong a rejection of the radically non-epistemic view is needed in order to vindicate an interpretationist approach? What is it, in fact, plausible to say about the relation between thought and interpretability? And what do interpretationists actually say? The interpretationist must reject [A]: the whole interpretationist approach depends on the idea that it is possible to know about others' minds on the basis of interpretation—‘an observer can under favourable conditions tell what someone else is thinking’.52 And she cannot give only the most modest denial of [A], saying that interpretation can yield knowledge of some facts about minds, but allowing that there may be other aspects of the mental which are in principle beyond the reach of interpretation; for the claim is that what we could learn about the mental by interpretation, and by reflecting on interpretation, is all there is to learn, that it is the whole truth about the mental. For the interpretationist, there can be nothing about S's mind which could be known only by S herself; and there can be nothing which could be known only by appeal to resources (such as detailed information about what is going on in a subject's brain) which are unavailable to the interpreter. So a defence of interpretationism requires the strongest repudiation of [A]: there could be no thought, of any thinker, which it was impossible for an interpreter, in favourable circumstances, to discover. That is what will vindicate the claim that epistemic reflections (about interpretation) can yield metaphysical conclusions (about thought in general).

52

Davidson (1982) p. 476.

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What about [B]? The interpretationist has no direct commitment to rejecting [B]; what is required is rather the rejection of [A], in full generality. But perhaps there is an indirect route from a thesis about the possibility of gaining knowledge by interpretation to a thesis about the impossibility of interpretation's leading to global error. It is arguable that someone who accepts [B] must accept [A]. The thought would be this: for it to be intelligible that all our beliefs about others' minds could be false, we must think of those beliefs as being based on a source of evidence (about people's behaviour, physically conceived) which could be as it is, even if what lay behind it (others' mental states themselves) were wholly different. And once we think of the relation between the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ in that way, it becomes impossible to see how beliefs about others' mental states could be justified at all: in fact, it becomes impossible to see how one could so much as form the idea of someone else being in such an ‘inner’ state.53 So [B] implies [A]. Hence, ¬[A] implies ¬[B]. So if we reject [A], and say that interpretation can yield knowledge, we are committed to rejecting [B]. The thought is that we could not so much as have the concept of others as possessors of thoughts unless we had some true beliefs about others: there must be some simple and basic cases, of the sort in connection with which we acquire the concepts of others as possessors of thoughts, in which the possibility of error does not arise.54 But even if we accept that reasoning, it only gets us to the most modest rejection of [B]; it is a long way from that to any stronger claim—such as the claim that our beliefs about others' minds must, by and large, be true. And the interpretationist does not seem to be committed to that stronger claim. Independently of interpretationism, what is it plausible to say about the relation between thought and interpretability?

53

For an explanation of this last point, see § 3.3 below.

54

Cf. Wittgenstein (1968) p. 293: ‘The language games with expressions of feelings are based on games with expressions of which we don't say that they may lie.’ See also p. 295: ‘I distinguish “moaning with toothache” and “moaning without toothache” and now we can't go on to say that of course in the child we make the same distinction. In fact we don't’; and Wittgenstein (1958a) §249: ‘Are we perhaps overhasty in our assumption that the smile of an unweaned infant is not a pretence?’, to which part of the answer is obviously supposed to be, ‘No’ (the other part being the observation that there is something inappropriate about calling this an assumption ).

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Intuitively, we do often know what others think; the claim that interpretation cannot yield knowledge of others' minds is not plausible. And (though this is less obvious) it is not clear that intuition involves the idea that there are features of others' minds which could not be detected on the basis of interpretation. But intuition also recoils from the radically epistemic view that an interpreter's conclusions are guaranteed to be right. For an actual interpreter, making ascriptions on the basis of a finite amount of ordinary evidence, it seems perfectly intelligible that some of her conclusions should be wrong. We know, for example, that a subject may resolutely conceal an opinion or desire, even from her closest friends and best interpreters. Similarly, there are actual cases of people born with profound physical disabilities, assumed to have severe mental disabilities too, and only discovered years later to have been, all along, perfectly intelligent. Such people had rich and complex attitudes; but they were taken by actual interpreters to lack attitudes altogether. In the cases we know about, the mistake was discovered. But there could surely be cases which went undetected; in fact, it seems likely that there actually have been. Intuitively, then, we cannot say that everything a careful and conscientious interpreter comes to believe about her subjects will be true—that there is no more to what a subject thinks than what an actual interpreter would interpret her as thinking. But accepting that is compatible with saying that there is no more to what a subject thinks than what an interpreter could find out, in favourable circumstances, on the basis of ordinary ways of telling. Where an interpreter reaches a mistaken conclusion about a subject's beliefs, the problem is not that, in order to have reached the correct conclusion, she would have needed a special sort of evidence unavailable to an ordinary interpreter; it is simply that the circumstances in which she was interpreting her subject were unfavourable. So we make sense of the possibility of an unknown truth about another mind not in terms of the presence of a state of a sort which could not be discovered by an interpreter, but rather in terms of S's being in a state which an interpreter would have known about in normal circumstances, but where the normally available basis for an interpreter's conclusion was, for special reasons, unavailable. A sober and intuitively appealing view, then, would reject the radically non-epistemic view of thought, and affirm that

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interpretation could, in favourable circumstances, reveal the whole truth about a mind; but it would also reject the radically epistemic view, that the conclusions we reach as interpreters could not be wrong. If that is a position which is intuitively plausible, is it what interpretationists have actually claimed? Interpretationists are often taken to be advocates of a radically epistemic view of thought; it is assumed that, on their view, what an interpreter concludes is, by definition, the whole truth about a mind. But, as I have stressed, interpretationists need not make such a strong claim. And Davidson, at least, clearly does not. The position he adopts has the following elements. (i) It is possible to gain knowledge of others, minds by interpretation: ‘an observer can under favourable conditions tell what someone else is thinking’,55 and ‘[a]ttributions of belief [are] publicly verifiable’.56 (ii) There is no element of the mind which could not be known, in favourable circumstances, on the basis of interpretation: ‘What a fully informed interpreter could learn about what a speaker [believes] is all there is to learn’,57 and ‘what we could not interpret is not thought’.58 (iii) There is no guarantee that the beliefs we actually form as interpreters will all be true. That is explicit in the claim that ‘any way of telling [that a creature thinks] will be fallible’;59 and it is implicit in the two claims just quoted in (ii): the claim is that what an interpreter could learn is all there is to learn, not that what an interpreter would in fact conclude is the whole truth. It seems, then, that there is a moderate view of the relation between thought and interpretability, which would be enough to vindicate the claim that reflection on interpretation can yield conclusions about thought in general, which is supported by intuition, and which is actually advocated by interpretationists: there is no element of the mental which could not, in favourable circumstances, be known on the basis of interpretation; but there is no guarantee that the conclusions we actually reach by interpretation will all be right, or even that they must, by and large, be true. Before considering arguments which attempt to vindicate that claim, I want briefly to consider an objection which is likely to have been nagging for some time. ‘You say that the interpretationist's

55

Davidson (1982) p. 476.

56

Davidson (1974c) p. 153.

57

Davidson (1983) p. 315.

58

Davidson (1990c) p. 14.

59

Davidson (1990b) p. 5.

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fundamental intuition is that what a fully informed interpreter could learn about S's beliefs and desires, in favourable circumstances, is all there is to learn. But that is hardly a distinctive view of the mind; it could surely be accepted on any view of the mind. Indeed, we can make an analogous claim about any subject-matter at all. What would be wrong, for example, with saying that what a fully informed investigator could learn about rocks or stones or trees, or about cabbages or kings, is all there is to learn?’ I would say three things in response. First, a fully informed interpreter, in favourable circumstances, is limited to knowledge of what a subject would do and say in various situations (and to certain sorts of knowledge about the subject's history).60 In particular, she does not have any knowledge about the subject's brain, or about sub-personal information-processing. So even the minimal claim that I have formulated puts the interpretationist in conflict, for example, with those who think that questions about an agent's mind which are unanswerable at the level of interpretation might in principle be settled by looking to the detail of sub-personal information-processing.61 Second, interpretationism as formulated also conflicts with a classically Cartesian approach. The Cartesian may claim to be able to endorse the idea that an interpreter can learn the whole truth about others' minds: arguing that, provided an interpreter is in the favourable circumstance in which others do in fact have attitudes and sensations like her own, she can learn the whole truth about others' minds by using an argument from analogy with her own case. But it is arguable that that is not a coherent position—that if we start from the Cartesian's starting-point, we cannot really make sense of ascriptions of conscious mental phenomena to others at all.62 If that is right then, contra the critic, the Cartesian is not entitled to endorse the interpretationist's claim. Third, it is true that many who could legitimately endorse the claim would not regard themselves as interpretationists; certain sorts of functionalists might be an example. But that is as it should be. I have introduced interpretationism, in the first instance, as a methodology for investigating the

60

For the importance of knowledge of a subject's history, see § 4 below.

61

I think this is compatible with saying that there are some constraints on the kind of causal mechanism which may be allowed to produce genuinely intelligent behaviour. On that topic, see further § 4 below.

62

See § 3.3 below.

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mental; it is not necessarily a distinctive view of the mental, which conflicts with all other views. There was also the charge that interpretationism as I have formulated it does not involve any contrast between the mental and other subject-matters. In one sense, I agree, there is a parallel. The slogan, ‘What a fully informed investigator could learn about cabbages is all there is to learn’, captures the idea that to learn all there is to learn about cabbages, you would need to employ only straightforward empirical methods. There is nothing transcendental about the reality of cabbages; nothing which resists discovery through being noumenal. We could make the same claim about thought. But there is this difference between the two cases. To learn all there is to learn about cabbages, you would need more than is available to the ordinary layperson; you cannot learn all there is to learn just by gross observation. One way of putting that is to say that, when you start investigating the cellular structure of cabbages, you are still learning about cabbages. By contrast, the parallel claim about interpretation builds in a restriction on the sort of information that is relevant to learning all there is to learn about belief; if we start to investigate the brains of believers, for example, we are changing the subject; information of that sort could not be required in an investigation of what an agent believed. So the claim that what a fully informed interpreter could learn about a subject's attitudes is all there is to learn really does say something distinctive. But why should we accept it? Why not accept the opposing intuition, that there could perfectly well be thoughts and thinkers which were wholly resistant even to an interpreter in the most favourable circumstances?

3.3. Arguments for the Necessity Claim We can identify at least four lines of thought which might be used to support the interpretationist's necessity claim. (i) Some arguments for the claim are specific to the linguistic interpretationist. And these include one of Davidson's few explicit arguments. The core of Davidson's argument is this thought: meaning is essentially public; belief is inextricably linked to meaning; so belief is essentially public also. As he puts it: ‘A speaker who wishes his

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words to be understood cannot systematically deceive his would-be interpreters about when he assents to sentences—that is, holds them true. As a matter of principle, then, meaning, and by its connection with meaning, belief also, are open to public determination.’63 Now it is certainly true that meaning is by its nature open to public determination. The meaning of a word is a matter of its use in communication, so there can be no element of its meaning which is not knowable by an interpreter on the basis of the use that speakers make of it; any such element would be irrelevant to its role in communication.64 But what exactly this establishes about belief depends on what ‘connection with meaning’ we take belief to have. To motivate the view that belief is in general interpretable, we would need a general connection between belief and meaning. Now, as we have seen, Davidson does indeed offer a general argument—the argument that a creature can have beliefs only if it has a language. But that argument does not license a move from the fact that meaning is open to public determination to the claim that belief is also, in its nature, open to public determination. For, as Davidson insists, the general argument does not show ‘that each thought depends for its existence on the existence of a sentence that expresses that thought’; it does not even give us ‘any reason to maintain that what we can't say we can't think’—‘there may be thoughts for which . . . there are no words’.65 If that is right, then an argument for the claim that there is no thought which an interpreter could not learn about cannot go via the publicity of meaning. If every thinker must be a language-user, then the essential publicity of meaning assures us that some thoughts of every thinker will be interpretable. But there is no route from the publicity of meaning to the interpretability of thought in general. (ii) A different argument for the necessity of interpretability falls out of a popular account of the metaphysics of propositional attitudes. According to the popular account, the notion of belief is a construct, implicitly defined by its place in a simple theory for

63

Davidson (1983) p. 315.

64

See Dummett (1973) p. 216. Cf. Wittgenstein's comments on the relation between meaning and use, and Davidson's commendation of Quine for ‘revolutioniz[ing] our understanding of verbal communication by taking seriously the fact . . . that there can be no more to meaning than an adequately equipped person can learn and observe’ (Davidson (1989b) p. 78).

65

Davidson (1982) p. 477; (1975) p. 158.

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explaining and predicting behaviour (including linguistic behaviour); the same goes for the notions of desire, intention, and the rest. Now, if belief is exhausted by its role in understanding people, and explaining their behaviour, it follows that there can be no element of a person's beliefs which is not available to the interpreter on the basis of what that person says and does; for, if there were such an element, it could play no role in an interpreter's understanding of the person. This line of thought is explicit in both Dennett and Davidson. Here is Davidson: ‘talk apparently of thoughts and sayings. . . belong[s] to a familiar mode of explanation of human behaviour and must be considered an organized department of common sense which may as well be called a theory. One way of examining [the nature of thought and language] is by inspecting the theory implicit in this sort of explanation.’66 Similarly, Dennett's starting-point for reflection on the propositional attitudes is ‘the concept of a system whose behaviour can be—at least sometimes—explained and predicted by relying on ascriptions to the system of beliefs and desires. . .’67 ‘Intentional system theory’ is the theory employed in this sort of explanation and prediction; and belief and desire are simply defined by their place within the theory. One obvious objection to this line of thought is the idea that our concepts of the propositional attitudes are not exhausted by their role in the interpretation of others: there is also the role of the mental in first-person awareness, and in one's own theoretical and practical reasoning. According to the objection, that shows two things. First, that the idea that the propositional attitudes are exhausted by their role in a simple theory for understanding others' behaviour is false; such a theory can at best characterize part of our concept of thought. Second, that there is an alternative explanation of our concept of thought, on which it will be perfectly intelligible that there could be uninterpretable thoughts and thinkers. On the alternative understanding, the contents of our concepts of belief, thought, and so on are determined not by a theory which involves the application of those concepts to others, but by our own first-person awareness of what it is to believe that p or to be a thinker. When I judge that x has thoughts I am applying

66

Davidson (1975) p. 158. For a similar statement, see (1974a) p. 234.

67

Dennett (1971) p. 3.

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to x the concept of thought whose content is determined by my awareness of my own thoughts; I am judging that x has states of the sort I have when I judge that I am thinking. Since the concept of thought is determined by its firstperson character, and not by any links to behaviour, there is no guarantee that all thought is even potentially manifestable. Concerning the first point, it is obviously true that an understanding of the mental would be inadequate if it gave no place to the role of consciousness, or of first-person awareness. And I think it is true that some versions of the idea that belief and desire are defined by their role in explaining behaviour do ignore the distinctive role of selfconsciousness: they think of beliefs and desires from a purely third-person perspective; they conceive of propositional attitudes as constructs in a theory for explaining people's behaviour in exactly the same way as we treat centres of gravity or masses, say, as constructs in a theory for explaining the behaviour of inanimate bodies. An explanation involving centres of gravity obviously does not involve the idea that a centre of gravity is (potentially) an object of reflexive awareness to the thing whose centre of gravity it is; if we think of belief and desire as exact analogues of centres of gravity, the same thing would hold for explanations in terms of propositional attitudes. But there is no reason why someone who holds that belief and desire are implicitly defined by their role in understanding people must ignore the role of self-consciousness. She can insist that subjects have a distinctive mode of awareness of their own thoughts, that a creature only has thoughts if it can think of itself as having thoughts, and that propositional attitude explanation is literally applicable only to creatures which can think of the reasons we cite as reasons for doing what they did. So it is not true that this sort of understanding of the propositional attitudes must take an exclusively third-person view. The second point went further and suggested, in effect, that our concepts of thought might be exclusively first personal. This line of objection has some intuitive appeal, and has been historically influential. But, for familiar reasons, it is not tenable. To see why, we can consider a third motivation for the necessity claim. (iii) The third argument (or set of arguments) involves a line of thought which lies behind Wittgenstein's idea that an ‘ “inner

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process” stands in need of outward criteria’68 and also behind Strawson's idea that ‘one ascribes P-predicates [predicates which are properly ascribed to persons but not to other material bodies] to others on the strength of observation of their behaviour; and that the behaviour-criteria one goes on are not just signs of the presence of what is meant by the P-predicate, but are criteria of a logically adequate kind for the ascription of the P-predicate’.69 I do not suggest that Wittgenstein's and Strawson's arguments are identical, or that there is just one line of thought in each. But there is at least a common core. We can apply the concept of thought univocally to ourselves and to others.70 Now suppose that there were types of mental state for which there were no outer criteria—no way of knowing that someone was in those states on the basis of what they said and did; a subject's being in such a state would be a fact which would resist discovery by the best-informed interpreter in the most favourable circumstances. How could we make sense of the thought that someone else was in such a state? The model would presumably be this: each person understands what it is to possess such a state by actually having it herself; we make sense of the idea of another's possessing it by analogy with our own case. But the model is beset with familiar problems. In the first place, it is arguable that, if I simply consider my own case introspectively, and without reference to the behavioural manifestations of mental properties, I do not have the resources to set up a psychological language at all; I cannot make sense of the identification and re-identification even of my own sensations.71 Nor do I have the resources to distinguish between myself and states I ascribe to myself; so I cannot make sense of ascribing mental properties to myself.72 But suppose, per impossible, that I could get the concept of a type of mental state in this way. Then my only way of making sense of there being a mental state of this kind

68

Wittgenstein (1958a) §580.

69

Strawson (1959) p. 106.

70

According to many interpretations, Wittgenstein held that present-tense mental self-ascriptions are not descriptions, do not express knowledge, and are not statements about a person (see e.g. (1958a) §246, (1958b) pp. 55, 67, and (1981) §472). I think that that interpretation is, at best, an exaggeration and over-generalization of claims Wittgenstein made about particular cases. But, even if we accept the interpretation, we need not deny that, in ‘I believe that p ’ and ‘You believe that p ’, ‘believe that p ’ has the same meaning.

71

See Wittgenstein (1958a) §§243 ff. and (1968) pp. 288, 290–1.

72

See Strawson (1959) Ch. 3.

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would be by imagining being in a state of that kind; and, in that case, I could not make sense of a state of that kind other than as one possessed by me: ‘If one has to imagine someone else's pain on the model of one's own, this is none too easy a thing to do: for I have to imagine pain which I do not feel on the model of the pain which I do feel.’73 But suppose, again per impossibile, that, having gained the concept of pain from my own case, with no reference to any behavioural manifestation, I could make sense of another's being in pain by analogy with my own case. I could not then explain why it is intelligible to ascribe pain to other people and to animals, say, but not to stones and plants.74 For, having altogether severed satisfaction of the concept of pain from the fulfilment of any behavioural conditions, there would be no conceptual grounds at all for limiting its application to individuals which behave in particular ways. In short, we can only make sense of others (and thus also of ourselves) as possessors of mental states, and we can only understand the limits of intelligibility of our psychological concepts, if we think of ourselves and others as possessors of non-mental as well as mental properties, and if our psychological concepts have some constitutive link with behavioural criteria.75 (iv) I have been discussing the question, ‘What reason is there for thinking that belief is in its nature interpretable; what justification is there for rejecting the idea that there could be uninterpretable thinkers and thoughts?’ I have described a number of answers. But a different response would be to reject the questions altogether. On that view, it is out of place to ask for a justification of the idea that thought is essentially interpretable; it is just a datum that we do generally know what others believe and desire, and that we have ways of telling what attitudes someone has. That does not mean that there is nothing for the philosopher to say about the link between thought and interpretability. We do not need to justify the assumption that we can know what others

73

Wittgenstein (1958a) §302. Cf. Williams (1978) pp. 100–1.

74

See ibid., §283.

75

I would emphasize that this view need not involve the idea that the ‘behavioural criteria’ can be stated in non-intentional terms, or the idea that there must be necessary and sufficient behavioural conditions for someone's being in an inner state, or the supposedly Wittgensteinian idea that knowledge that someone else is in an inner state is based on awareness of defeasible behavioural criteria. (On Wittgenstein's use of the notion of a criterion, see McDowell (1982).)

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believe and desire; that is the datum. But we do need a philosophical understanding of how that can be so; how must we think of belief if we are to make intelligible the familiar fact that a well-informed interpreter can, in favourable circumstances, tell what someone believes, desires, and intends? The interpretationist account of thought will then be an answer to that question. On this approach, we take the epistemological facts as the starting-point and then discuss how the metaphysics must be to make the epistemology intelligible. And there are precedents for such an approach; it can be found, for example, in some recent work about knowledge of the non-mental world. In this case, the idea is to start from the datum that we do, by and large, have knowledge of the world around us. The question for philosophy is then, ‘How must we think of our position vis-à-vis the rest of the world, and in particular, how must we think of perception, if we are to make it intelligible that we have knowledge of an objective world?’76 The parallel way of justifying an interpretationist approach to the mental is not, as far as I know, explicitly articulated by interpretationists. But it is certainly a possible line to take; and it does seem to be a strand in some interpretationist thinking. I suggest that we put aside the first view we considered (which argued from the publicity of meaning to the publicity of belief); as I said, even if we accept the Davidsonian argument for linguistic interpretationism, that does not give us the general link between thought and interpretability which interpretationism requires. But I propose to accept the other three lines of thought: (ii) the ‘theory’ view of thought; (iii) the argument that ‘inner’ states must have ‘outer’ criteria; and (iv) the idea that it is simply a datum that we can know facts about other minds. How strong a link between thought and interpretability do those arguments sustain? First, if we accept the arguments, we can reject the idea that knowledge of others' minds is impossible; and to do so is to reject one strand of the radically non-epistemic conception of thought. The possibility of knowledge of others' minds is directly asserted if we accept that it is a datum that we can, in favourable

76

For this approach to the problem of the external world, and for discussions of the relation between the source of that traditional problem and the source of the traditional problem of other minds, see McDowell (1982) and Davidson (1989a), (1991a). The approach has a thoroughly Wittgensteinian flavour—which is explicit in McDowell, and obvious, though less explicit, in Davidson.

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circumstances, know what someone is thinking: and it directly follows from the other two arguments. But none of the three lines of thought vindicates the radically epistemic claim, that the beliefs an interpreter forms about others' thoughts are guaranteed to be true. If we accept the ‘theory’ view of thought, we must accept that the theory of S's behaviour which we formulate, necessarily on the basis of finite evidence, may not be the best theory: it is always a possibility, for example, that our theory will be undermined by future behaviour; or that an attitude (or a creature) we cannot now interpret might come to be interpretable. Similarly, the fact that there are logically adequate behavioural criteria for S's being in some ‘inner state’ is no guarantee that, where it seems to us that the criteria are satisfied, S is on that occasion in that state. But the key question for the interpretationist is whether the arguments vindicate the central claim, that thought is essentially interpretable—that there could not be thoughts, or thinkers, which an interpreter, in favourable circumstances, could not interpret. Here, the ‘datum’ argument by itself is not enough. It may be a datum, where we can interpret a thinker, that it really has the beliefs we interpret it as having. But it is difficult to see how it could be a datum that nothing unreachable by interpretation could be thought. For that conclusion, we need the support of an account of what it is to think of something as a thinker. That is what we get from the ‘theory’ view and from the argument for ‘outer’ criteria. The negative part of the argument for criteria shows that we cannot make sense of the idea of uninterpretable thoughts or aspects of thought. The positive account of our mentalistic concepts suggested by that argument, and augmented by the ‘theory’ view, is an account from which it follows that all thought is in principle interpretable. The worry we started from was that, without an argument to show that thought was necessarily interpretable, interpretationism would be faced with the dilemma of choosing between an outright anti-realism about the mental, and the admission that it does not yield conclusions about thought in general, but only about those thoughts which are interpretable. I think the arguments I have been reviewing do supply what the interpretationist needs—a vindication of the claim that thought is in its nature interpretable, which avoids the radically epistemic (and obviously unacceptable) conception of thought.

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4. Thought and Interpretability: Is Interpretability Sufcient for Thought? Is being interpretable as being Φ sufficient for being Φ? Or is interpretability only a necessary condition for thought, a condition which needs to be supplemented by other conditions? Pure interpretationism holds that being interpretable as being Φ is sufficient for being Φ; supplemented interpretationism maintains that interpretability is not enough by itself, but needs to be supplemented by further conditions. (I said in §3.1 above that our answer to the question, whether being interpretable as being Φ is sufficient for being Φ, is affected by how much we build into the notion of interpretability. So at least part of what I am presenting as an issue between pure and supplemented interpretationism could alternatively be presented as an issue between a relatively liberal and a relatively demanding standard of interpretability.) Here are some cases where the issue between pure and supplemented versions of interpretationism will arise. (i) It can seem that heat-seeking missiles and chess-playing computers are interpretable as having beliefs and desires about their respective ‘targets’ and ‘goals’; do they really have those attitudes, or are there further conditions for genuine belief and desire which they fail to fulfil? (ii) Similarly, chimpanzees, dogs, and birds can seem interpretable as having ranges of attitudes more or less like our own; should they really be credited with such attitudes? (iii) Consider someone who is shifted, unbeknownst to her, from the normal environment where she has grown up and acquired her conceptual repertoire, to a different but, to her, indiscriminable environment; someone transported from Earth to Twin Earth, for example.77 An interpreter meeting her soon after the journey to Twin Earth, and knowing nothing of her background, would ascribe her beliefs and desires about the things and kinds on Twin Earth. But does she really have beliefs and desires with those contents? (iv) We seem to be able to imagine systems which would behave just like a normal human being, and which would therefore be interpretable as having thoughts, but whose behaviour would be produced in ways strikingly different from our own—so different, that there is an intuition that these would not be intelligent systems at

77

For the original discussion of Twin Earth cases, see Putnam (1975a).

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all.78 (‘Intelligent’ in this context simply means ‘possessing propositional attitudes’.) There are finitely many sensory stimuli which an ordinary human being can register. And there are finitely many physical movements a human being can make. So we can imagine sufficiently diligent and determined scientists, or Martians, adopting the following procedure. Working with sufficiently small time intervals, they take some ordinary human being and work out how she would respond to each of the n possible sensory inputs at t. They record all that information in the form of a table with n entries: if S received input i1 at t, she would respond with r1; if she received i2 at t, she would respond with r2; and so on. Then, for each possible input and response at t, they consider how S would respond to each possible sensory input at t+1: suppose that, at t, S had received input i1 and issued response r1—how would she then respond to each of the n possible sensory inputs she could receive at t+1?; suppose that, at t, S had received input i2 and issued response r2—how would she respond to each of the n possible inputs at t+1?; and so on. The process is continued until the scientists, or Martians, have produced a vast branching set of input–output correlations covering every possible series of sensory inputs which S could receive in the course of an ordinary human life span. Then they programme a system with this vast look-up table: if the system receives sensory input i1 at t1, it ‘consults’ the table and ‘reads off ’ the appropriate response, r1, which it then gives; and so on, for each successive time. Such a system would behave just like the normal human being on whose dispositions it was modelled. But there is a strong intuition that it is completely unintelligent, a mere machine: ‘All the intelligence it exhibits is that of its programmers.’79 Must the interpretationist deny that intuition? I think there is a clear case for interpretationists to supplement the most minimal condition of interpretability with further considerations of various sorts (or, equivalently, to employ a relatively demanding standard of interpretability). And the case is not simply an ad hoc response to counterexamples. One kind of supplementing condition concerns a system's history. Interpretation is answerable, not just to what an agent says and does at a moment, but to the wider context of her behaviour:

78

For the sort of example used in this paragraph, see Block (1981) pp. 19–25, 41, and Peacocke (1983) p. 205.

79

Block (1981) p. 21.

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what else she says and does (in the future as well as the past), what abilities and capacities she has, the nature of her natural and social environment, and so on. So what would in one context be a case of Φ-ing would not be so in another;80 and in order for S to be Φ, more is necessary than that she should, on an occasion, do and say things characteristic of being Φ. The surrounding context, and her history, must also be right. For example, suppose we accept that, at least in certain basic cases, the content of a belief is partially determined by the normal cause of beliefs of that type. Now the normal cause of beliefs of a given type at t may differ from their typical actual cause at t. Think of the person unknowingly transported from Earth to Twin Earth, and consider that person at some time shortly after the journey. At that time, the typical cause of the beliefs she expresses by saying ‘There's some water’ will be the presence of XYZ, not the presence of water. But the ‘normal’, content-determining cause of beliefs of that type will be water: it is her interaction with water which has given content to the beliefs she expresses by using the word ‘water’; and it is water (not XYZ) which these beliefs are about.81 So in order to know how to interpret someone, we need enough information about her history and past environments to tell what the content-determining causes of her beliefs are. In the normal run of things, a little acquaintance with S tells us all we need to know about her history. But the problem cases—the Twin Earth traveller, and so on—remind us of the importance of a creature's history in determining the contents of its attitudes. In order to be Φ, a creature must not just be interpretable as being Φ at a moment, it must also have the right sort of history. (Alternatively, we might say that having the right sort of history is a condition for really being interpretable as being Φ. That is the way Davidson tends to put it in his recent treatment of this theme.82) A second sort of supplementing condition involves the application of constraints of economy—versions of Occam's Razor. The general principle is that we should not ascribe attitudes any more

80

Cf. Wittgenstein: ‘What, in a complicated surrounding, we call “following a rule” we should certainly not call that if it stood in isolation’ ((1978)

81

As time passes, the normal cause of the beliefs she expresses by saying, ‘There's some water’, will be XYZ and not water; the content of the relevant beliefs will change likewise. (For an account of the parallel process of gradual change in the reference of a name, see Evans (1982) pp. 388–91.)

82

See Davidson (1990b) pp. 9–10 and (1990c) pp. 14–15.

VI

. 33).

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complex than are required to explain the range of x's behaviour. As Lloyd Morgan puts it: ‘In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.’83 Constraints of this sort may be applied at at least two levels. Applying a constraint of economy at the general level, we get the condition that we should not ascribe attitudes to a system at all unless it exhibits ‘the rich range of behaviour that a thinking creature must have’. So, for example, we should not ascribe beliefs to heat-seeking missiles or chess-playing computers: if we do so, we generate expectations about their other behaviour which could not be fulfilled; there is not enough there for the missile or computer to count as having thoughts.84 Dennett's version of this idea is that we should not attribute propositional attitudes where the pattern of behaviour detected by the putative intentional explanation could be detected equally well by a nonintentional explanation; there are ‘patterns in human behaviour that are describable from the intentional stance, and only from that stance’.85 By contrast, the patterns in the behaviour of, say, thermostats, can be captured naturally in nonintentional terms. So the ascription of attitudes to thermostats, or simple creatures, is surplus to explanatory requirements in a way that their ascription to human beings is not. And constraints of economy apply also at a detailed level, when it comes to considering the contents of the attitudes we ascribe: we should not ascribe contents to a creature which allow discriminations to be made between situations which it is unable to discriminate between. Consider a child who can count to three, and can tell whether collections of more than three things are equinumerous, but who lacks the concepts of the cardinal numbers in general. Her behaviour could be explained by ascribing attitudes about numbers greater than three; but such ascriptions would implicitly credit her with further abilities which she does not have.86 Third, how might an interpretationist respond to the worry that

83

Lloyd Morgan (1894) p. 53.

84

See Davidson (1982) p. 477 (from where the phrase in the previous sentence of text is taken) and (1990c) pp. 15–6.

85

Dennett (1979) p. 25 (second emphasis added).

86

For this example, and other applications, see Peacocke (1983) pp. 78–86. For related points, see Evans (1975).

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there are certain sorts of causal organization a system might have which would produce interpretable behaviour, over as wide a range of circumstances and times as one could demand, but which seem incompatible with the possession of thoughts? As far as I can see, there are the following options. (i) ‘There is no real intuition that the sort of system I described earlier—call it Blockhead—does not really have thoughts; as long as an individual is causally organised in such a way that its behaviour is reliably interpretable, it has the attitudes it is interpretable as having. Any temptation to think that Blockhead does not have thoughts results from a sleight of hand with the notion of a lookup table. Suppose a normal human being seems to be able to play chess well; but that she produces her “chess-playing behaviour” by literally looking up responses in a table of moves, understanding nothing of what she is doing (suppose she does not even know that this movement of pieces on a board is a game). That fact about her really would undermine the attribution of the detailed attitudes about chess which her “chess-playing behaviour” would seem to manifest. But the “look-up table” in the Blockhead example is quite different; it is not something literally consulted at all. The fact that Blockhead's sub-personal organization is structurally isomorphic with a look-up table is irrelevant to the question whether, at the personal level, Blockhead has propositional attitudes.’ (ii) ‘The sort of system described is not a genuine possibility; the computational resources needed to calculate and operate a look-up table which would take us from all possible stimuli to appropriate responses, for each moment in a hundred-year lifetime, would be so fantastically huge that no physically possible system could embody such a table.’ (iii) ‘The criterion of interpretability needs to be supplemented by constraints on causal organization. In order to have propositional attitudes, a system must be in physically realized states which play the same causal roles in relation to inputs, outputs, and other internal states as are played by the corresponding propositional attitudes in a psychological story about that system. Blockhead's causal organization is not like that. And that explains the intuition that Blockhead does not really have thoughts.’87 That reply works

87

This is Peacocke's answer to his version of the Blockhead problem. A system like Blockhead does not have thoughts because ‘[t]here are no states of [the system] related as folk psychology takes belief, experience, memory, intention, and so forth to be related to one another’ ((1983) p. 206).

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only if we can accept the idea that an individual's psychology must be mirrored in detail at the level of internal physically realized states. But I think there are serious reasons for doubt about that idea.88 (iv) ‘We need to supplement the condition of interpretability with constraints on causal organization. But the only constraints we can offer have a purely negative form: there are certain sorts of causal organization which are enough to establish that a system organized in those ways does not have thoughts; but we are not (yet) in a position to give any positive characterization of the type of causal organization that a system must have if it is to count as a subject of thought.’89 (v) ‘The criterion of interpretability must be supplemented by positive constraints on causal organization. But the constraints do not amount to the requirement of a full-blown isomorphism between an individual's physical make-up and its psychological make-up.’ I agree that we can make some claims of a general nature about the causal organization of a rational agent, without commitment to full-blown isomorphism. (I suggest a claim of this sort about memory in Chapter 6 § 1.) But it is not at all clear to me that one could develop these general claims, in a way which would rule out Blockhead, without recourse to the sort of functionalism implicit in (iii) above. (vi) ‘We have already seen one way in which a system's causal history is relevant to the question, whether it really has the thoughts it seems to have: since the contents of a system's beliefs are partially determined by the normal causes of beliefs of those types, the contents of its beliefs are inseparable from its causal history. Now that thought applies to Blockhead too: since his dispositions do not result from any pattern of causal interactions between him and the things and kinds he seems to be thinking about, he cannot correctly be interpreted as thinking about them. And there is another feature of Blockhead's causal history which also counts against the attribution of thoughts. The system which mediates Blockhead's “perceptual inputs” and “behavioural outputs” relies on information about which inputs would produce which outputs in some normal human being; so the way in which Blockhead's behaviour is produced from his perceptual inputs is entirely parasitic on

88

See Ch. 2 §4.

89

This is the position that Block recommends (see (1981) p. 43).

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there being interpretable behaviour which results from perceptual inputs in some other way. For that reason, it could not be the case that all intentional behaviour was produced in the same way as Blockhead's; there must be (or have been) a subject whose perceptions and behaviour are mediated by something other than information about the normal correlations of perceptions and behaviour in other agents. And there is an intuition that a creature or machine whose information-processing system is necessarily parasitic in this way, and could not be present in the general case, could not count as having intentional properties.’ I have described a number of responses to cases of the Blockhead type, and indicated some questions or difficulties about some of them. I do not at present have a fixed view about which of these responses is the best. But, in the absence of a firm decision between the options, I should say something about their implications for interpretationism. On one view, to supplement the interpretability criterion with any sort of constraint on causal organization would be to give up the essentials of interpretationism. For to do so would be to admit that there is more to being a subject of thought than simply having the capacity to do and say appropriate things in appropriate circumstances. I have the following comments. First, the inclusion of constraints on causal organization would indeed involve the repudiation of the purest form of interpretationism. But, as I am characterizing interpretationism, that is only one interpretationist position; and to move away from it is not to repudiate interpretationism altogether. We would only do that if we showed that there was thought which in its nature resisted interpretation; and the sorts of consideration we have been discussing do not suggest that. Second, and relatedly, even if we impose constraints on causal organization, the notion of interpretability is still playing a central role in our understanding of the conditions under which something is a subject of thought. For all we can say about what is in common to systems which have thoughts, but whose internal causal organization is different, is that they are all interpretable; interpretability remains a necessary condition for thought. And (as Block insists) it may be that the only positive thing we can say about the kind of causal organization a thinker must have is that it is a kind of organization which reliably produces behaviour on the basis of which a system is interpretable as having thoughts.

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47

Third, suppose we accept that the question, whether S is a subject of thought, is answerable to general constraints on the form of S's causal organization; we do not thereby accept the idea that facts about S's thoughts are facts about her internal information-processing (a claim which really would have an anti-interpretationist flavour). I conclude that the sorts of supplement considered here are not at odds with either the letter or the spirit of interpretationism. A final point. Interpretationism aims to make it intelligible that an ordinary interpreter can, in favourable circumstances, tell what someone believes and desires. Is that aim fulfilled if we add supplements to the simple test of interpretability (or, alternatively, if we adopt a relatively demanding criterion of interpretability)? It would not be fulfilled if the supplementing conditions were such that an ordinary interpreter could have no way of knowing that a subject satisfied them. But the conditions I have been mentioning are not of that sort. For example, an ordinary observer can know enough about someone's history and background to know what the content-determining causes of her attitudes are: my way of telling is fallible, but I know enough about your past history to know that you have had the same sort of causal interactions as I have, and thus to know what you mean by such terms as ‘cat’, ‘water’, ‘Lady Thatcher’, and ‘London’. Or again, if I am playing a game of chess by post, I may be fooled into thinking that my opponent is a person, when in fact it is simply a computer. But when I take my opponent to be a person, I do so on the assumption that it would behave in a range of other ways in other circumstances; and that assumption is one which it would be easy enough for me to test, given ordinary information of the sort that I do, ordinarily, have about other people. So to know that something has thoughts, and what its thoughts are, we need to know more about it than how it actually responds to various questions, or stimuli, on an occasion. But the additional information we need is information which is, or could be, available to the ordinary interpreter of others.

5. Constitutive and Non-Constitutive Interpretationism Does the notion of interpretability figure in a constitutive account of believing that p? Or is the relation between thought and

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interpretability non-constitutive; so that, though believing that p and being interpretable as believing that p always go together, and are a priori related, the idea of interpretability is inessential to an appreciation of what belief is? (For the sake of simplicity I will assume, in this section, that interpretability is sufficient for thought. But the constitutive–nonconstitutive contrast I develop works equally well if we are considering a more supplemented form of interpretationism.) Socrates discusses a partially parallel question in the Euthyphro. What is holy is what is loved by the gods. So we can say the following: (x)(x is loved by the gods if and only if x is holy). But there are two possibilities about the relation between x's being holy and its being loved by the gods: (i) x is holy because it is loved by the gods; (ii) the gods love x because it is holy. According to (i), being loved by the gods is constitutive of being holy. It is in virtue of satisfying the condition of being loved by the gods that a thing counts as being holy. So any account of the conditions for being holy must make reference to the fact that holy actions and people are loved by the gods. According to (ii), a thing's being holy is not constituted by its being loved by the gods. So we can give an account of the conditions something must satisfy to count as being holy without invoking the property of being loved by the gods; that is so, even if the ‘account’ says simply that holiness is a basic, unanalysable property.90 The debate between constitutive and non-constitutive forms of interpretationism is analogous. Constitutive interpretationism says that a statement of what it is for S to believe that p makes essential reference to the idea of S's being interpretable as believing that p. Non-constitutive interpretationism holds that an adequate account of what it is to believe that p will have the consequence that, whenever someone believes that p, they will be interpretable as believing that p. But a statement of what it is to believe that p makes no reference to the property of interpretability. For example, suppose we defined belief thus: for x to believe that p is for x to be disposed to behave as if p were true.91 On that

90

Socrates' discussion is only partially parallel to the distinction I want to draw between constitutive and non-constitutive interpretationism. (i) above holds that being loved by the gods is prior to, and independent of, being holy. But what I am calling constitutive interpretationism need not think that being interpretable as believing that p has the same sort of priority over, and independence with respect to, believing that p.

91

See Braithwaite (1932–3).

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account, what is constitutive of an agent's believing that p is her having a certain sort of behavioural disposition; interpretability as such is no part of the condition for belief. But since behavioural dispositions are open to public observation, the account has the consequence that anyone who believes that p will be interpretable as believing that p. The distinction between constitutive and non-constitutive interpretationism affects not just our understanding of what it is to have a particular belief, but also our understanding of the very general claims which interpretationists make about the character of belief. For example, both constitutive and non-constitutive versions will accept the following two claims: (I) Belief is in its nature veridical and rational. (II) An interpreter must so interpret as to find a subject's beliefs to be, by and large, true and rational.92 But they disagree about the relation of these claims. The non-constitutive interpretationist thinks that (I) is prior to (II): ‘We can explain why beliefs are generally true and rational without reference to interpretation. The veridicality of belief might be explained, for example, by reference to the role of normal causes in determining the content of beliefs of a given type; the fact that belief is answerable to constraints of rationality might be explained by the fact that belief aims at truth and that the canons of rationality are the canons of truth-preservation. Given (I), an interpreter wishing to make accurate attributions must respect (II), and interpret so as to maximize her subjects' truth and rationality.’ The constitutive interpretationist, by contrast, thinks that (II) is prior to (I): ‘General truths about belief must be understood by reference to facts about interpretation. In this spirit we might say, for example, that belief is veridical because it is only by assuming veridicality that we can find a way into the circle of belief and meaning, as we must if we are to interpret others' beliefs.93 Given

92

Some interpretationists would prefer different claims, for example:(I′) Belief is in its nature rational and intelligible in the circumstances. (II′) An interpreter must so interpret as to maximize rationality and minimize unintelligible falsehood.

But the point I am making will apply whatever versions of these claims one prefers. 93

‘From a formal point of view, the principle of charity helps solve the problem of the interaction of meaning and belief by restraining the degrees of freedom allowed belief while determining how to interpret words’ (Davidson (1983) p. 316).

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(II), and the constitutive status of interpretability, (I) simply follows; belief is in its nature true and rational.’ This distinction, between what I am calling the constitutive and non-constitutive versions, raises an important issue about the character of interpretationism. But it is not an issue which interpretationists have addressed head on, and the positions of actual interpretationists often involve a mix of both constitutive and non-constitutive elements. Many formulations of interpretationism are neutral as between the two versions. So, for example, suppose we hold that (x)(x believes that p iff x can be predictively attributed the belief that p).94 That is equally acceptable to the constitutive interpretationist (who reads the right-hand side as the condition which must be satisfied if the left-hand side is to be true) and to the non-constitutive interpretationist (who reads the left-hand side as explaining the truth of the righthand side). Similarly, the slogan, ‘what we could not interpret is not thought’, is acceptable by either sort of interpretationist. With some of Dennett's formulations, however, we seem to have a view which is firmly in the constitutive camp. For example, he writes: ‘What it is to be a true believer is to be an intentional system, a system whose behaviour is reliably and voluminously predictable via the intentional strategy.’95 The ‘what it is’ in that claim suggests that he is offering a constitutive account of belief. But Dennett offers other statements of his position which make no reference at all to the idea of interpretability or predictability. For example: ‘I am claiming . . . that folk psychology can best be viewed as a sort of logical behaviourism: what it means to say that someone believes that p, is that that person is disposed to behave in certain ways under certain conditions. What ways under what conditions? The ways it would be rational to behave, given the person's other beliefs and desires.’96 That specification of what it is to believe that p makes no reference to interpretability, or to explicability via the intentional strategy. What are we to make of the apparent conflict? One possibility would be that there is a tension in Dennett between constitutive and non-constitutive elements. But I am fairly sure that even what

94

For this formulation, see Dennett (1981) p. 67.

95

Dennett (1979) p. 15.

96

Dennett (1981) p. 50.

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look like his statements of constitutive interpretationism, when fleshed out, are actually expressions of a nonconstitutive position. Dennett insists that ‘all there is’ to being an intentional system is being a system whose behaviour is reliably predictable via the intentional strategy. As I said, that sounds like a constitutive formulation. But he goes on to provide the resources to understand this idea in terms which make no reference at all to interpretability. The behaviour of a system will be predictable via the intentional strategy if it can be predicted by the method of attributing beliefs, desires, and rational acumen according to the following rough and ready principles: [its] beliefs are those it ought to have, given its perceptual capacities, its epistemic needs, and its biography. . . . [its] desires are those it ought to have, given its biological needs and the most practicable means of satisfying them. . . . [and its behaviour] consist[s] of those acts that it would be rational for an agent with those beliefs and desires to perform.97 With that explanation of what is required for a system's behaviour to be predictable via the intentional strategy, we can give the following account of what it is to be a subject of propositional attitudes: ‘What it is to be a true believer is to be an intentional system, a system which behaves in a way that would be rational for an agent which had the beliefs and desires that system ought to have in the light of its circumstances and needs.’ And that account makes no reference to the idea of predictability or interpretability. (Of course, we can only spell out what behaviour would be rational for a given agent if we use the notions of reason and rationality. So to say that Dennett's account of what it is to be an intentional system does not ultimately rely on the idea of intentional stance predictability is not to say that he offers a reduction of the notion of a rational agent to something non-intentional.98)

97

Ibid. 49.

98

Dennett in fact goes on to offer an explanation of the notion of behaving rationally in evolutionary terms: the beliefs and desires a creature ought to have are those it ‘would have if it were ideally ensconced in its environmental niche’ ((1981) p. 49). (This explanation, incidentally, seems quite implausible: there is no reason to think that what is rational and what promotes survival need coincide; and even if they did, that would be a coincidence between two different sorts of consideration.) That confirms my point, that the concept of interpretability, or intentional stance predictability, is dispensable from the overall picture. But the point stands even without this further element in Dennett's theory.

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To motivate a constitutive position we would need to show that an account of what it is to possess beliefs must mention the role of belief in interpretation. One proposal, therefore, would be that a version of interpretationism will be constitutive if it sees belief as a construct in a theory for predicting and explaining behaviour. But in fact that idea is still not enough to give us constitutive interpretationism. And Dennett's case shows why. He proposes that the concepts of belief and desire are constructs in a theory for predicting and explaining behaviour, a theory of interpretation. But, as we have seen, it turns out that, in saying what conditions S must satisfy to count as having particular beliefs, we need not mention interpretability at all. And consider functionalism more generally. According to the functionalist, when we talk of propositional attitudes, we are operating with a primitive theory for predicting and explaining behaviour. We can in principle give an explicit statement of that simple theory; and from the statement of the theory, we can derive definitions of the concepts of belief, desire, and the rest. The theory concerns relations amongst perceptions, attitudes, and behaviour; that something satisfies the definitions derived from the theory, and therefore has given beliefs and desires, is simply a matter of its perceptions and behaviour being arranged in particular ways, of their exhibiting particular patterns. The fact that the theory which implicitly defines the notions of belief and desire is a theory for predicting and explaining behaviour, a theory we use in interpreting others, does not mean that the ideas of interpretability, predictability, or explicability play any role in saying what it is for a system to have a belief or desire. (Similarly, we could regard the concept of mass as being implicitly defined by its place in a theory for predicting and explaining the behaviour of physical things. But that does not mean that an account of what it is for something to have a given mass must mention the concept of predictability or explicability.) What, then, would be a genuinely constitutive form of interpretationism? We have already seen an argument which insists that belief must be understood in the context of communication and mutual interpretation—Davidson's argument that possession of beliefs requires mastery of the subjective–objective contrast, that that could arise only in the context of interpreting others, and therefore that a creature has beliefs only if it is in communication with others. If that argument succeeds, we cannot explain what it

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is to believe that p without invoking the idea of interpretation. So the position motivated by the Davidsonian argument really would be a constitutive interpretationism: it is an account of thought which essentially involves the concept of interpretation. As we have seen, there are difficulties with the argument: at the very least, it needs to be supplemented by further arguments to answer the critic who thinks that grasp of the subjective—objective distinction would be available to a sufficiently sophisticated individual which reflected on its past and future, or conceived of the course of its experience as being jointly causally explained by its position in the world and objective states of affairs. But something like this argument will be needed if the idea of interpretability is to figure in a genuinely constitutive account of thought. I conclude this section by considering three related charges of circularity, or self-defeatingness, which might be brought against the constitutive interpretationist. (i) ‘According to constitutive interpretationism, we have the mental properties we do in virtue of being interpretable as having them. S believes that p, for example, in virtue of being interpretable as believing that p. Now there is a general requirement that, if B obtains in virtue of A, A must be prior to, and in some sense more basic than, B. That condition is satisfied when we say that x is holy in virtue of being loved by the gods; there is no special difficulty in holding that the property of being loved by the gods is prior to the property of being holy. But the parallel priority thesis for interpretationism is not straight-forward: “Being interpretable as believing that p” mentions the property of believing that p; and, more generally, interpretability is not explicable without reference to the properties people are interpretable as having. So how could interpretability be prior to belief, and the rest, as it would have to be for the “in virtue of ” claims to go through?’ (ii) ‘Interpretationism analyses thought in terms of interpretability. Now to interpret S as being Φ is itself to have a propositional attitude about S. So interpretationism is explaining what it is for S to have an attitude in terms of an interpreter's having an attitude about S. But now we can ask what it is for the interpreter to have that attitude. And clearly there will be a vicious regress.’ (iii) ‘According to interpretationism, a rational agent is a creature whose behaviour is reliably predictable from the intentional stance. To understand what that condition comes to, we need to understand the notion of intentional stance

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prediction. And as we have seen, an explanation of intentional stance prediction will make claims such as the following: to operate the intentional stance, “treat the object whose behaviour is to be predicted as a rational agent”.99 But that explanation of intentional stance predictability itself employs the concept of a rational agent; it says that a creature is intentional stance predictable if it behaves like a rational agent. So the idea of a rational agent explains, rather than being explanatorily dependent on, the idea of intentional stance predictability; which means that the attempt to explain the concept of rational agency in terms of intentional stance predictability is self-defeating.’ One response to these objections would be to concede the points, and accept that interpretationism cannot provide a constitutive account of thought. That would not involve the rejection of interpretationism altogether; but it would mean accepting a less ambitious form. A second response would be to distinguish between different notions of priority, and thereby remove the threat of circularity. One might, for example, say that the concept of being interpretable as believing that p is definitionally prior to the concept of believing that p (i.e. the concept of believing that p can be illuminatingly defined in terms of the concept of being interpretable as believing that p), but that the concept of believing that p is cognitively prior to the concept of being interpretable as believing that p (i.e. no one could possess the second concept without possessing the first).100 But I think that the constitutive interpretationist should give a third response—a no-priority view. When the constitutive interpretationist says that a constitutive account of thought must involve the idea of interpretation, she is not intending to give analyses of mental concepts in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions about interpretability, conditions which are intelligible independently of the mental concepts being ‘analysed’. The constitutive interpretationist's point is just that an account of what it is to believe that p must involve the idea of interpretation and interpretability.101 The concept of being

99

Dennett (1979) p. 17.

100

For these notions of definitional and cognitive priority, see Peacocke (1983) pp. 30, 42.

101

That is why it is misleading to think of constitutive interpretationism as the view that S believes that p in virtue of being interpretable as believing that p (see n. 85 above).

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interpretable as being Φ is not intelligible in advance of the concept of being Φ; but (if the argument for constitutive interpretationism is right) the concept of being Φ is not intelligible without reference to the concept of being interpretable as being Φ, either. With that in mind consider, for example, the idea that an interpretationist account of what it is to be a rational agent will be self-defeating, since it depends on a prior (and non-interpretationist) account of rational agency. If the constitutive interpretationist is right, there simply is no conception of rational agenthood which is explanatorily prior to the interpretationist's account of an agent as a creature which interprets and is interpreted by others; the idea of a rational agent and the idea of rational intelligibility arise together, and arise essentially in the context of communication and interpretation. My own feeling is that there is something appealing about the constitutive interpretationist's position, but that none of the arguments we have seen does enough to establish it; we have yet to see an argument which shows that the concept of belief could not be understood except by reference to the concepts of interpretation and interpretability. So there remains an issue, and an important one, between the constitutive and non-constitutive positions. For present purposes, though, what matters is the necessity claim, the claim that thought is in its nature interpretable. As long as that is true—and I have argued that it is—we can approach questions about the nature of thought by considering interpretation. If constitutive interpretationism is true, then we can approach those questions only by considering interpretation. But we can adopt the interpretationist perspective without having to take a stand on that question.

2 Anomalism, Rationality, and Psychophysical Relations If our account of the propositional attitudes is shaped by interpretationism, what follows about the general character of (that part of) the mental, and about the relations between the mental and the physical? Interpretationism has been associated with the thesis of the anomalism of the mental, with the denial of psychophysical laws, and with various claims about the indeterminacy of mental properties. And it has often been thought that those features of the interpretationist view would constitute at least a prima-facie obstacle to a causal understanding of the mind. So we need to see how interpretationism gives rise to ideas about anomalism and the rest, and what those ideas actually amount to. I am particularly interested in three questions. First, what is the argument for the anomalism of the mental, for the non-existence of any system of ‘strict laws . . . on the basis of which we can predict and explain mental phenomena’?102 Second, what are the implications of the doctrine of the anomalism of the mental for the thesis that mental properties are determined by, or supervene on, physical properties? And third, what are the implications of anomalism for the possibility of effecting detailed correlations between particular mental and physical phenomena?

1. The Argument for Anomalism Davidson, famously, offers an ambitious argument against the possibility of psychophysical laws. The broad structure of that argument is this. Rationality is ‘constitutive of the range of applications of such concepts as those of belief, desire, intention and action’. But ‘[p]hysical concepts have different constitutive elements’.

102

Davidson (1970a) p. 224.

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So, ‘[s]tanding ready, as we must, to adjust psychological terms to one set of standards and physical terms to another, we know that we cannot insist on a sharp and law-like connection between them’.103 Spelling out that structure a little gives us the following. The possession of propositional attitudes is governed by normative constraints of ‘coherence, rationality, and consistency’;104 in determining what attitudes an agent has, we must consider such matters as what it would be rational for her to believe, what she has good reasons to want and to do, and what beliefs she can coherently combine. But these constraints of rationality and the rest cannot ‘be stated in a purely physical vocabulary’,105 they ‘have no echo in physical theory’.106 So no purely physical characterization of S, no matter how complicated or comprehensive, can yield a characterization of what it would be rational for her to believe, desire, or do in those circumstances; and thus, given the constitutive role of rationality, no purely physical characterization can yield a characterization of the mental properties she has in those circumstances. And that is enough to show that there cannot be laws relating the mental and the physical. That makes the argument clearer. But there are still a number of questions. What does it mean to say that the norms of rationality have no echo in physical theory, and what is the basis for the claim? What sorts of psychophysical relations does that fact about rationality rule out? And what is the status of the argument; is it, for example, a proof of the impossibility of psychophysical laws? As a preliminary, it is important to appreciate how much is built into the notion of rationality which the argument deploys. When we interpret a subject, we strive to make sense of her; in doing so, we are considering the question, ‘What, rationally, should someone think and do in these circumstances?’ Absolutely everything that goes into answering that question is included in the idea of rationality. So, rationality includes everything relevant to saying ‘what constitutes a good argument, a valid inference, a rational plan, or a good reason for acting’,107 and everything relevant to the application of those notions to the particular case; it includes

103

Davidson (1974a) p. 239. The quotations in the two previous sentences are from the same article (pp. 237, 239).

104

Ibid. 231.

105

Davidson (1973a) p. 259.

106

Davidson (1974a) p. 231.

107

Davidson (1974b) p. 241.

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practical rationality, not just theoretical rationality; it involves inductive as well as deductive rationality; and considerations about rationality are relevant, too, in assessing how a belief and desire must cause an action that they explain.108 Turning to the first question I raised above; what does it mean to say that the norms of rationality have no echo in physical theory? The idea is that the constraints imposed on a set of propositional attitudes by the criteria of rationality could not be exactly mirrored by the constraints imposed on a system of physical states by physical laws and principles. What supports that idea is a thesis about the character of rationality—the thesis that rationality is uncodifiable. We can explain the thesis, in the first instance, for practical rationality. The virtuous person is someone who knows what one ought to do, what practical rationality requires (or, perhaps more plausibly, someone who knows what one may do, what practical rationality permits). Now, as John McDowell says, it is natural to think that ‘the virtuous person's views about how, in general, one should behave are susceptible of codification, in principles’,109 from which, given a description of any set of particular circumstances, we can deductively derive a specification of what to do in that situation. But though the picture may be natural, McDowell insists, it is wrong: to an unprejudiced eye it should seem quite implausible that any reasonably adult moral outlook admits of any such codification. As Aristotle consistently says, the best generalizations about how one should behave hold only for the most part. If one attempted to reduce one's conception of what virtue requires to a set of rules, then, however subtle and thoughtful one was in drawing up the code, cases would inevitably turn up in which a mechanical application of the rules would strike one as wrong—and not necessarily because one had changed one's mind; rather, one's mind on the matter was not susceptible of capture in any universal formula.110 The point McDowell makes about practical rationality extends (as he stresses) to rationality in general: there is no fixed set of

108

For this last point, about the role of rationality in distinguishing deviant from non-deviant causal chains, see Davidson (1974a) p. 233 and (1973b) p. 79.

109

McDowell (1979) p. 336.

110

Ibid. See also Wiggins (1975–6) passim. For a splendid statement of the same theme, see the last paragraph of Book 7 Chapter 2 (‘St Ogg's Passes Judgement’) of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. (Dancy draws attention to the same passage ((1993) pp. 70–1).)

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rules or principles from which, together with a statement of the circumstances of any particular case, we could deductively derive a complete, detailed specification of what one ought to do or think in that case. Since the norms of rationality are the principles governing the interpretation of a subject's words and attitudes, we could express the same point about the uncodifiability of rationality as a point about interpretation: there is no definite set of rules or principles for arriving at the best interpretation of an agent. When we interpret others, we strive to make sense of them: in doing so we draw on our own conception of rationality to form judgements in each particular case; and we can draw on those resources without limit. So, in describing and applying our conception of rationality, there is no stage at which we can say that the canons of rationality have been exhaustively enumerated, that there is nothing more to add.111 To say that rationality is uncodifiable is not necessarily to say that there can be absolutely no true, exceptionless principles of rationality. But if there are any such principles, they will not be such as to deliver a detailed answer to every question (or, more ambitiously, to any question) of the form, ‘What should I do, or believe, in these circumstances?’ Consider two suggestions about what might qualify as a universal principle of theoretical rationality: (a) ‘If you believe that (p → q) and that p, then you should believe that q’; and (b) ‘Always believe what you have best reason to believe.’ These are true and exceptionless. But they do not threaten the thesis of uncodifiability for they fall far short of supplying a complete, detailed specification of what one ought to believe on an occasion. (a) does not tell us in detail what we should believe; for, when faced with that principle in an actual situation in which one believes that p and that (p → q), different responses are possible: one might come to believe that q; but equally, if one

111

Some evidence of the thesis of uncodifiability in Davidson. About rationality in general: ‘[r]ationality is . . . a normative notion which by its nature resists regimentation in accord with a single public standard’ ((1985) p. 245). And about the principles governing interpretation: ‘there are no rules for arriving at [the best theory of S 's language at t ], no rules in any strict sense, as opposed to rough maxims and methodological generalities’ ((1986) p. 446). In a longer treatment of this topic, I would develop the obvious parallels with Wittgenstein. For the present, I refer the reader to just one passage—Wittgenstein (1958a) p. 227 para. h —for a nice statement of the uncodifiability of a certain sort of knowledge in commonsense psychology.

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had independent reasons for thinking that q was not true, one might drop one's prior belief that p, or that (p → q). A principle like (a), by itself, does not determine what one ought to believe, all things considered. And (b) gains its exceptionlessness at the price of emptiness. A codification of rationality would have to spell out, in detail, exactly what there is best reason to believe in a particular situation; (b) is silent on that question. If we accept that rationality is uncodifiable, and thus that the norms of rationality have no echo in physical theory, what follows? First, that there is no set of general principles from which, together with a specification of any agent's physical properties, we can derive a complete and detailed specification of her mental properties. If rationality is uncodifiable, there is no system of principles from which we could derive, given a specification of an agent's physical properties, a statement of what it would be rational for her to believe, desire, and do. If there are no such principles for deriving a statement of what would be rational for S, there are no such principles for deriving a statement of which attributions of mental properties make best sense of S; and if there are no principles for deriving that, there are no principles for deductively deriving a specification of S's mental properties. Second, it follows from the uncodifiability of rationality that there can be no system of strict laws on the basis of which actions and other mental phenomena could be exactly predicted and explained. We could not give detailed predictions and explanations of every mental phenomenon by appeal to purely psychological laws, laws mentioning only mental states and events: for one thing, there are mental states and events which have non-mental causes; and those states and events could not be predicted or explained by appeal to purely psychological laws.112 So if there were a system of strict laws for predicting and explaining mental phenomena, they would have to relate the mental to the physical; they would have to be (or include) psychophysical laws. But given what has been said already, there could be no such system. There could be (and, we suppose, there is) a system of physical principles by reference to which it could be determined what sort of movement would result from any given physical impact on a particular human

112

Cf. Davidson (1974b) p. 241: ‘psychological events and states often have causes that have no natural psychological descriptions.’

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being. But there could not be a system of principles by reference to which it could be determined what action, if any, each such movement would be; that is a matter which requires the direct application of the uncodifiable norms of rationality to each particular case. It is important to be clear about what the argument from uncodifiability is supposed to rule out. The conclusion of the argument is that there is no system of ‘strict laws . . . on the basis of which we can predict and explain mental phenomena’,113 that it is impossible, even in principle, ‘to explain and predict human behaviour with the kind of precision that is possible in principle for physical phenomena’.114 The point, then, is that there is a kind of systematic and precise explanation which is characteristic of the physical sciences, but which is in principle impossible for propositional attitude psychology. In the physical case, there is a vocabulary, and a system of general, quantitative laws, such that the occurrence (or the chance) of any event at all could in principle be precisely predicted or explained by describing things in that vocabulary and applying those laws. (The parenthesis provides for the possibility of an irreducibly probabilistic element in physical theory.) Or, if you prefer: the occurrence (or the chance) of any event is precisely determined by the physical character of its antecedents, in accordance with laws which make up a general, quantitative system. And it is a crucial part of this picture that there is a system of laws. There are not separate, one-off laws for each situation, determining the occurrence (or the chance) of each event from its antecedent conditions. Rather, there is a finite set of laws; and the occurrence (or the chance) of any event is determined given the values of all variables mentioned in the laws.115

113

Davidson (1970a) p. 224.

114

Davidson (1974a) p. 230.

115

The picture given in this paragraph is summed up in the following claim of Davidson's: ‘Physical theory promises to provide a comprehensive closed system guaranteed to yield a standardized, unique description of every physical event couched in a vocabulary amenable to law’ ((1970a) pp. 223–4). (Note also his claims about the character of physical laws: they are ‘ “closed” in the sense of requiring no ceteris paribus clauses’; they ‘may have provisos limiting [their] application [but they must allow] . . . us to determine in advance whether or not the conditions of application are satisfied’. And they ‘come as close to allowing the unconditional prediction of the event in question as the perhaps irreducibly probabilistic character of physics allows.’ (The first and third quotations are from his (1987a) p. 44; the second from (1974a) p. 233.))

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The conclusion of Davidson's argument is that propositional attitude psychology ‘cannot be, or be incorporated in, a closed science’116 of the form I have just described. In other words, there is no system of general, quantitative laws by reference to which any mentally characterized event at all could be precisely predicted or explained, given its antecedents. Notice, therefore, that the argument does not rule out absolutely everything that someone might call a psychophysical law. For example, someone might say it is a law that if x has beliefs, then x has a brain with physical properties of a certain sort: that is a true, universal generalization (she might say), which is supported by its instances and supports counterfactuals. But the existence of the law ‘If x has beliefs, x has a brain with such-and-such physical properties’ is quite compatible with the conclusion of the argument. For a crude law of that sort is not part of a system of laws which would permit the precise prediction and explanation of particular mental phenomena. It is sometimes thought that, if this is what the anomalism of the mental amounts to, then it is a less interesting thesis than we had been led to believe. One reason for thinking this is the idea that what has been said about propositional attitude psychology could equally be said of any area at all, with the exception of fundamental physics. For in any ‘special science’ the laws make essential use of ceteris paribus clauses; they apply only in ‘normal conditions’ (where which conditions are normal cannot be non-question-beggingly specified in the vocabulary of the science itself). But this is not a point against the argument. The argument does not simply observe that the generalizations of psychology involve ceteris paribus clauses, and give that as a reason for saying that there could not be, in psychology, strict laws of the sort to which physics aspires. It also says that there is a principled reason for thinking that that feature of psychology could not be eliminated without changing the subject—‘deciding not to accept the criterion of the mental in terms of the vocabulary of the propositional attitudes’:117 namely, the constitutive role of rationality and the uncodifiability of rationality. Now there may be arguments to show that the absence of a system of strict laws is, equally, an ineliminable feature of other special sciences.118 But if there is, the

116

Davidson (1974b) p. 241.

117

Davidson (1970a) p. 216.

118

This, incidentally, is something which Davidson has always allowed (see (1974b) pp. 240–1 and, for a more recent statement, (1987a) p. 45).

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argument needs to be given. Without such an argument, there remains a disanalogy between, on the one hand, psychology (and the social sciences which make essential use of propositional attitude concepts) and, on the other, the non-psychological special sciences. And even if there are parallel arguments for the non-psychological cases, they must be very different arguments; for in geology or biology, for example, there is no question of finding the objects of our descriptions to be rational. A different reason for thinking that anomalism, as defined above, is not a distinctive feature of the mental is that even in physics there is no system of strict laws of the sort I described: it is not just that the laws of physics are irreducibly probabilistic (which the argument allows) but that the very idea of a finite system of general, quantitative laws which would in principle allow the exact prediction and explanation of every event (or its chance) gives a false picture of physics; it may capture the Newtonian ideal, but it is not an accurate picture of post-Newtonian physics. We can make a number of points in response to that argument. First, even if the laws of physics fall short of the ideal I have described, they come so much closer to it than any set of psychophysical or psychological principles could that the claim that there is a qualitative distinction between the two survives intact.119 Second, even if physics cannot in fact provide a system of strict laws, it makes sense to make the search for such a system a regulative ideal in the physical sciences; but, given the argument about rationality, that makes no sense in psychology. Third, and relatedly, whatever the actual character of physics, there are sciences of matter which aim at explanations in terms of strict law; and the point of the argument about rationality is that explanations in psychology could not be like that. So, when we talk about the sorts of relation we can expect between the mental and ‘the physical’, we can be happy to allow that ‘ “the physical” [does] no more than point to the subject matter of those sciences which aim at explanations of [a certain sort]’; namely, ‘explanation[s] in which one makes things intelligible by representing their coming into being as a particular instance of how things generally tend to happen’.120 Finally, whatever lack of system there is in moving

119

Davidson makes this claim ((1987a) p. 45).

120

McDowell (1985) pp. 390, 389.

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from a characterization of x's physical properties at t to a characterization of its physical properties at t′, it must be less than the lack of system involved in moving from x's physical properties at t to its mental properties at t′. For in the mental case the transition will involve all the lack of system characteristic of physical theory (in moving from physical properties at t to physical properties at t′) and more besides (in moving from physical properties at t′ to mental properties at t′).121 Everything that I have said thus far depends on the key claim that the norms of rationality are uncodifiable. But what can be said against the possibility of producing such a codification? As far as I know, everyone who makes the claim agrees that the uncodifiability of rationality is not susceptible of proof.122 There are two (complementary) ways of proceeding from there. The more modest route is to make an entirely negative case: rather than giving reasons for thinking that rationality is not codifiable, we simply challenge our opponent to give reasons for thinking that it is. We place the onus on the reductionist to say why we should think that a codification is possible; and we stand ready to show, case by case, why each purported regimentation of rationality falls short of what is required. This approach is strengthened if we can explain why philosophers might think that such a codification had to exist, and show that those motivations are not compelling. For example, one motivation for thinking that rationality had to be codifiable would be removed if we could show that considerations which are not codifiable need be no less objective than considerations which are. Another motivation would be removed if we could show how a grasp of rationality can constitute knowledge even if rationality is uncodifiable. Those two points would help to disarm a third worry, by helping to show that something can count as an exercise of reason without

121

Cf. Davidson: ‘Let us agree that psychophysical laws incorporate the indeterminism of quantum physics. If I am right, there will be a further indeterminism over and above the ubiquitous physical indeterminism, an indeterminism due to the nature of the propositional attitudes’ ((1985) p. 248).

122

See e.g. Davidson: ‘nothing I can say about the irreducibility of rationality deserves to be called a proof ’ ((1970a) p. 215). McDowell (1985) observes that, for some areas of rationality, it is plausible that the Davidsonian claim is susceptible of proof (p. 388); but insists that, for rationality in general, ‘proof is [not] in question’ (p. 391).

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involving the application of a set of codifiable considerations.123 And a fourth motivation would be removed if we could show how rational explanation can be a variety of causal explanation even though the principles of rationality do not form a system of causal laws.124 The more ambitious route would be to give positive reasons for thinking that there could be no codification of rationality. There are positive reasons of two sorts. First, there are considerations which make it reasonable to believe that rationality is uncodifiable without explaining why it is. For example, one might argue inductively in the following way: human beings have sought codifications of rationality for centuries, as they have sought codifications in the physical sciences; but whereas there has been some measure of success in the physical sciences, no effort at the codification of rationality even begins to look successful; so it is reasonable to believe that there is no codification to be found. That argument has some force. But it would be more satisfying to identify the features of rationality which rule out any codification, and thereby explain what makes rationality uncodifiable. And I think we can say something of this sort. The characteristic question we face in practical rationality is, ‘What should I do in this particular set of circumstances?’; the characteristic question of theoretical rationality is, ‘Is p (probably) true?’ The structure of the reasoning involved is parallel:125 in the practical case, we must decide what to do in the light of numerous judgements about the desirability of an action relative to certain features (e.g. Φ-ing is desirable in so far as it would be kind and undesirable in so far as it would be dishonest); in the theoretical case, we make an overall probability judgement in the light of various judgements of probability relative to given evidence (e.g. it is likely to rain tomorrow in so far as the barometer is falling, and unlikely to rain in so far as there is a red sky tonight). In neither case is there a fixed weighting or ordering of the competing considerations, or any definite rule for comparing them; our

123

For these points, see McDowell (1979) especially § 4. For analogous points about aesthetics, see Mothersill (1983), especially pp. 100 and 117; and about the philosophy of science, see Newton-Smith (1981), pp. 115–16 and Ch. IX § 9.

124

See McDowell (1985) and Davidson (1976).

125

See Davidson (1970b) pp. 37–8.

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conclusions may be guided by principles and rules of thumb, but they are not dictated by them. There is, in sum, no question of reaching a practical decision, or an overall probability judgement, deductively. Now someone might say that the fact that we do not reach our conclusions deductively does not show that they could not be reached deductively. But that point can be addressed in both practical and theoretical cases. In the case of practical rationality, it counts against the possibility of codification that, in a situation of choice, ‘[t]here is nothing a person is under antecedent sentence to maximize’;126 practical reasoning is not a matter of reasoning about the means to a set of predetermined ends, for it is not fixed in advance what the governing aim of a decision must be. Furthermore, we cannot ‘treat the concerns an agent brings to any situation as forming a closed, complete, consistent system. For it is of the essence of these concerns to make competing, inconsistent claims.’127 Practical reasoning often involves the weighing of different and conflicting values or concerns. It is very plausible that these really are different values, so that there is no question of resolving such conflicts by simple measurement of quantities of a single commodity; and it is also plausible that there is no fixed ordering of the conflicting values or concerns. In the case of both theoretical and practical rationality we can learn from discussions in the philosophy of science. Kuhn and Feyerabend have argued that there are no codifiable rules for judging between different scientific paradigms, or assessing different theories: ‘paradigm change cannot be justified by proof.’128 And many of the considerations which they and others apply to choices between paradigms or scientific theories can be applied also to choices between beliefs or courses of action.129 One key idea involves the application to this case of an idea I have just mentioned in the case of practical rationality—the idea that decisions about what is rational are governed by a number of

126

Wiggins (1975–6) p. 231.

127

Ibid.

128

Kuhn (1970) p. 152.

129

We can apply those considerations without needing to accept either the idea that different scientific theories are incommensurable (which is one of Kuhn's and Feyerabend's more extreme reasons for denying the existence of a codifiable scientific method) or the idea that the non-existence of a codifiable method for assessing competing theories leaves only relativism and irrationalism.

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different and potentially conflicting values. Thus, Kuhn argues that the comparison of different theories involves such ‘scientific values’ as accuracy, consistency, broadness of scope, simplicity, and fruitfulness—which together constitute ‘the shared basis for theory choice’.130 But the assessment of the relative merits of two theories cannot be a matter of the mechanical application of these values; for judgement is essentially involved in determining, for example, what counts as a simpler or more fruitful theory; and judgement is involved in assessing what weight to give the different criteria when they conflict.131 Or again, ‘since no paradigm ever solves all the problems it defines and since no two paradigms leave all the same problems unsolved, paradigm debates always involve the question: Which problems is it more significant to have solved?’132 And that question, too, essentially involves a judgement which cannot be determined by any rule or method.133 Philosophers more realistic than Kuhn or Feyerabend must still accept much of what they say about the comparison and assessment of different theories. For realists, for example, a choice between theories will often involve an inference to the best explanation; in assessing what counts as the best explanation, we cannot avoid considerations of simplicity, elegance, fruitfulness, and so on; and those are precisely the sort of consideration whose uncodifiability Kuhn and Feyerabend have done much to convince us of.134 (Someone might think that, if the argument for the anomalism of the mental succeeds, then there must be a parallel argument from the uncodifiability of scientific method to the impossibility of strict laws in the physical sciences; and that would mean that we would lose the sense of a disanalogy between the mental and the physical. But the thought would be mistaken. The fact that the standards for choosing between theories are not codifiable does not mean that, within any particular theory, there cannot be strict exceptionless laws by reference to which physical events can be precisely predicted and explained. It is the analogue of this latter claim which is being made in the mental case.) In considering the case for the uncodifiability of rationality, we

130

Kuhn (1977) p. 322.

131

See ibid. 324–5.

132

Kuhn (1970) p. 110.

133

For similar themes in Feyerabend, see e.g. his (1978) pp. 178–80.

134

For a discussion of inference to the best explanation, see Lipton (1991) ; and for a realist and rationalist insistence on the importance of uncodifiable judgement in theorychoice, see Newton-Smith (1981) Ch. IX § 9.

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can also learn from the case for saying that the aesthetic is uncodifiable—that verdicts about beauty, elegance, aptness, and so on are not reachable as deductive consequences of a set of aesthetic principles.135 For some of the considerations we apply to choices between theories and explanations (elegance, simplicity, and so on) are themselves aesthetic; and, of course, practical reason may directly involve aesthetic considerations. One feature in particular of the aesthetic case is worth bringing out. In determining whether or not an aesthetic work is good (beautiful, elegant, etc.), absolutely every feature of it is relevant; we cannot rest a judgement of beauty on some subset of its characteristics; such a judgement could always be defeated by its other characteristics. The result of that is that the only way of getting a true general principle of taste is to build in all the details of a particular case. But principles of that form simply sum up the results of aesthetic judgement in a particular case; they do not form a system which we could use to derive a verdict about each new case; so they do not provide the resources for a codification of the aesthetic. The same point applies directly to rationality. The only way to make ‘If Φ, then you should believe that p’ unconditionally true, with no ceteris paribus clauses, is to build into ‘Φ’ absolutely every feature of a particular case in which it is, all things considered, rational to believe that p; if Φ is anything less, the principle will not hold with complete generality. But principles like that are not the materials for a codification of rationality; they are the results of applying the uncodifiable norms of rationality to the details of a particular case. These considerations may not convince the sceptic. But perhaps they will be enough to persuade the neutral observer to agree to put the onus on the person who thinks there must be a codification of rationality.

2. Psychological Indeterminacy and Psychophysical Determination If there are no strict psychophysical laws, it is natural to think that there must be some sense in which the mental facts are not

135

See Mothersill (1983) for an extended defence of the view that ‘there are no principles of taste’ (p. 85), and a fortiori no ‘recipe that would guarantee [aesthetic] success’ (p. 123). (Mothersill herself notes (p. 108) the analogy between her claim that there are no laws of taste and Davidson's claim ((1974a) p. 233) that there are no ‘serious laws connecting reasons and actions’).

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determined by the physical; at any rate, it follows directly that they are not determined by the physical in accordance with a system of laws. But does this anomalism mean that the mental facts are not determined by the physical facts at all? And how do these issues about the determination of mental by physical relate to issues about the determinacy (or indeterminacy) of the mental? We can distinguish three grades or varieties of indeterminacy. The first is manifested in the fact that we cannot always accurately characterize a person's mental properties by ascribing full-blown propositional attitudes, or by the outright attribution of conceptual abilities; there are borderline cases, indefiniteness, and vagueness. One reason for this is the context-dependence of mental descriptions. An interpretation of a piece of behaviour is answerable not just to what the agent says and does at that moment, but to the wider context in which it occurs: what else she says and does, what abilities and capacities she has, the nature of her natural and social environment, and so on; so what would in one context be a case of Φ-ing would not be so in another.136 Now there will be indefiniteness, and borderline cases, when we consider the question, whether or not the context is sufficient to justify a particular mental characterization. For example, take the question, ‘Does S understand the word w?’ There will be some cases where there are determinate answers; but there will also be vague and indefinite cases. Consider, for instance, someone who is learning a new concept; for example, a child who is learning to use the word ‘sister’, and who has reached a stage where she knows that ‘sister’ applies to her own sisters, but does not realize that someone can be a sister without being a sister of hers. Suppose she says, ‘Katy is my sister.’ We cannot simply report her attitudes by saying, for example, ‘Jo believes that Katy is her sister’, or ‘Jo has no idea about whether or not Katy is her sister’. What we should do is to describe the case in detail, as I have just done, in a way which makes it clear what is going on, without insisting on a choice between two precise descriptions.137 In this case, the vagueness arises in the acquisition of a new concept or ability. There will be a parallel vagueness in descriptions of someone who is gradually

136

This context-dependence is a major theme of Wittgenstein's (see (1958a) passim ). See also the anti-individualist writings of Evans (especially (1982) ), Putnam (e.g. (1975a) ) and Burge (e.g. (1979) and (1986a) ).

137

A similar idea is developed by Dan Sperber ((1985) pp. 49–53).

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losing concepts or abilities.138 And similar issues arise when we consider the contents of thought; consider the vagueness implicit in talk about the ‘normal’ cause of thoughts of a given type. In these cases, the physical facts do not determine a set of definite, full-blown ascriptions of propositional attitudes. But it would be wrong to say that such cases alone show that there need be no fact of the matter about S's attitudes, or that there can be several equally good mental descriptions compatible with all the non-mental facts. It is not that there is no fact of the matter about which of a number of competing ascriptions is correct. Rather, there is a fact of the matter about S's attitudes; it is just that the facts are not reportable by a simple ascription of the form ‘S believes that p’. Because of the possibility of vagueness of this form, a full physical characterization of a subject need not determine a precise mental characterization. But for all that has been shown so far, the imprecise mental facts may be completely determined by the physical facts. A different grade of indeterminacy in mental descriptions stems from the indeterminacy of interpretation. There are different sources, or forms, of indeterminacy. I want to focus on the form associated with what Davidson calls a ‘commonplace fact about interpretation’, the fact that an agent's choices are jointly determined by her beliefs and desires.139 It follows from that commonplace fact that there will be any number of different ascriptions of belief and desire which account equally well for a given choice. A vote for the Conservatives in an election, for example, could be accounted for by a belief that the Conservatives will cut taxes and a desire that taxes should be cut; alternatively, it might be accounted for by a belief that the Conservatives will raise taxes and a desire that taxes should be increased. It is clear that the scope for indeterminacy diminishes when we require, first, that an interpretation should account not just for a single datum but for a whole pattern of data, and second, that the interpretation should meet various standards of plausibility, rationality, and consistency,

138

See Stich's (1982) discussion of the attitudes of a subject who is becoming senile.

139

Davidson (1973a) p. 257. Strictly, taking account of the role of meaning in the overall project of interpretation, the commonplace fact is that an agent's preferring the truth of one sentence rather than another is jointly determined by what her words mean, what she believes, and what she desires. For present purposes, it is harmless to ignore the complication.

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and should fit with our general empirical knowledge of ‘how persistent various preferences and beliefs are apt to be, and what causes them to grow, alter and decay’.140 But, Davidson thinks, indeterminacy remains even when we take account of those factors. What though, is the character of this remaining indeterminacy? One idea is that interpretation is indeterminate because different methods of interpretation may be empirically equivalent; even ‘when all the evidence is in’, when we are faced with ‘all possible evidence’,141 two different schemes of interpretation may give equally acceptable explanations of every datum. The measurement of temperature is often used as an analogy for this sort of indeterminacy:142 there is a sense in which the measurement of temperature is indeterminate, for there are numerous different ‘schemes’ for measuring temperature (Fahrenheit, Centigrade, and so on); each scheme is equally acceptable, since each is equally good at capturing the relations amongst different temperatures. Now if the mental is indeterminate in this sort of way, what follows for the idea that mental properties are determined by physical? Consider the case of temperature. In a very weak sense, a complete physical characterization of a thing does not determine a description of its temperature; for x's being in a given physical state is compatible with a description of its temperature as having, for example, either the value 0° or the value 32°. But in a different sense, temperature-descriptions are quite determinately settled by physical characterizations; for once we have made an arbitrary choice of a scheme for measuring temperature, and have decided to describe x's temperature as having the value 32°, temperature-descriptions for all other things, and for x at all other times, are fixed systematically by their physical properties without further indeterminacy. Adapting a claim from the Tractatus, we could say that, ‘although there is something arbitrary in our temperature-descriptions, this much is not arbitrary—that when we have determined one thing arbitrarily, everything else follows automatically’.143

140

Davidson (1976) p. 274.

141

For ‘when all the evidence is in’, see Davidson (1973c) p. 139 and (1974c) p. 154; for ‘all possible evidence’, see Davidson (1973a) p. 257.

142

For one of Davidson's many uses of the analogy, see his (1973a) p. 257.

143

See Wittgenstein (1961) 3.342. Strictly speaking, in the case of temperature, we ought to say that everything else follows automatically once we have fixed two things: for we need to fix both an origin and a unit of measurement.

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Let us accept that the mental exhibits at least the relatively superficial indeterminacy of the Centigrade–Fahrenheit case. That cannot be the whole story; for, as the case of temperature shows, that form of indeterminacy is compatible with the existence of a set of laws which, given an arbitrary choice of one of the equally eligible schemes, systematically relate descriptions in one vocabulary to descriptions in another.144 And that is just what is ruled out, in the mental case, by the argument for anomalism.145 What character must the indeterminacy of the mental have, then, if it is to incorporate the anomalism of the mental? Here we reach a third grade of indeterminacy. We get a helpful model by considering the relation of aesthetic and physical characterizations. According to one plausible view, the aesthetic does not simply float free of the physical; if one judges that x is beautiful, and y is an exact physical replica of x, then one must also judge that y is beautiful—the aesthetic supervenes on the physical. But, consistent with that, we can say that there are features of the relation between the aesthetic and the physical which have no parallel in the Centigrade–Fahrenheit case. When we evaluate x, we do not make a single arbitrary choice of an ‘aesthetic scheme’, relative to which the aesthetic properties of all other things are automatically determined by their physical properties—as we do make a single arbitrary choice of a unit and origin for measuring temperature. Rather, we make a new aesthetic judgement in each particular case we consider. To say this is not to say that we simply make it up as we go along, unconstrained by our previous judgements: it is to make the point that an aesthetic outlook need not be codifiable. Now, just as aesthetic judgement does not involve a single arbitrary choice of an aesthetic scheme, relative to which the aesthetic properties of all things are fixed by their physical properties, so interpretation does not involve a single arbitrary choice of a scheme of interpretation, relative to which a person's mental properties at any time are systematically fixed by her physical

144

A point Davidson notes: the nomological irreducibility of the mental is not ‘due simply to the possibility of many equally eligible schemes, for this is compatible with an arbitrary choice of one scheme relative to which assignments of mental traits are made’ ((1970a) p. 222). See also (1974c) p. 154 and (1985) p. 245.

145

Of course, we might still use the analogy of the indeterminacy of physical measurement to capture the empirical insignificance of indeterminacy in the mental case, without suggesting that the indeterminacy of measurement captures the form of the indeterminacy of interpretation.

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properties. And the reasons are the same. Since there is no codifying the considerations we use in interpretation, we cannot represent the interpreter's task as the arbitrary one-off choice of a scheme of interpretation, which she then simply applies; rather, the interpreter must assess what rationality requires in particular situations by considering each situation as it arises. What are the implications of this third grade of indeterminacy for the thesis that mental properties are determined by physical? There is, as I have stressed, an important disanalogy between the mental case and the Centigrade–Fahrenheit case. But on the question of the determination by physical properties of other descriptions, the two cases are on all fours. There is an obvious sense in which the physical facts do not determine a mental description; for, given a physical characterization, there are different mental characterizations which are equally good at accounting for all choices. But in a different sense, the mental facts on an occasion do seem to be completely fixed by the physical facts. We could say that the different equally eligible mental descriptions are simply different ways of describing the same facts; the facts about the mental, on that view, are what is invariant between different acceptable descriptions.146 Now the physical facts do not fix the correctness of one of the equally acceptable mental descriptions rather than another. But they do, presumably, fix what is invariant between the different descriptions; a subject's causal powers and dispositions. And to fix that just is to fix the mental facts. What the anomalism of the mental rules out is the sort of systematic determination of mental properties by physical which could be codified in a set of strict psychophysical laws; but it has nothing to say against the kind of case-by-case determination which I have just described. That point has important implications for the compatibility of psychophysical anomalism and psychophysical supervenience.

146

See Davidson (1974c) p. 154 and (1977) p. 225. In a recent paper, Davidson has put the point quite explicitly: ‘Because there are many different but equally acceptable ways of interpreting an agent, we may say, if we please, that interpretation or translation is indeterminate, or that there is no fact of the matter as to what someone means by his or her words. In the same vein, we could speak of the indeterminacy of weight or temperature. But we normally accentuate the positive by being clear about what is invariant from one assignment of numbers to the next, for it is what is invariant that is empirically significant. The invariant is the fact of the matter. We can afford to look at translation and the content of mental states in the same light’ ((1991a) p. 161).

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3. Anomalism and Supervenience The doctrine that the mental is supervenient on the physical has been taken to capture (at least a part of) an acceptably modest form of physicalism, a form which embodies the idea that mental properties are determined by physical whilst respecting the anomalism of the mental.147 But are the doctrine of supervenience and the principle of the anomalism of the mental really consistent? Many have thought not. Intuitively, the sort of claim we need in order to capture the idea that mental properties are determined by physical is what has come to be know as strong supervenience. Loosely, we can take the general form of a psychophysical supervenience claim to be this: there cannot be two subjects who are alike in every physical respect without being alike in every mental respect. Weak supervenience claims only that this is true within any possible world. Strong supervenience makes the claim across worlds: a subject in any possible world who was physically exactly the way x actually is would be mentally exactly the way x actually is. Slightly more precisely: Necessarily, for every mental property M, if x has M there is some physical property P such that x has P and Necessarily, for all y, if y has P, it has M.148 We need strong supervenience to reflect the intuitive idea that the mental facts are determined by the physical facts, because the intuitive idea supports cross-world claims; we do think that, if y had been physically exactly the way x actually is, then y would have been mentally exactly the way x actually is. One objection to the idea that psychophysical supervenience is compatible with the anomalism of the mental is the idea that that sort of supervenience claim directly yields psychophysical laws: ‘qui dit survenance, dit loi.’149 As Jaegwon Kim puts it, ‘if you want psychophysical dependence, you had better be prepared for psychophysical laws’.150 Another objection is that the source of the mental's anomalism (its answerability to norms of rationality) rules

147

See Davidson (1970a) p. 214. I add the proviso ‘at least a part of ’ because there are good reasons for thinking that supervenience alone is not enough to capture the intuitive notion of psychophysical dependence. See, amongst others, Charles (1992) and Snowdon (1989).

148

For this formulation, and for discussion of the distinction between strong and weak supervenience more generally, see Kim (1984).

149

Thanks to Jerry Cohen for this formulation.

150

Kim (1984) p. 171.

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out psychophysical supervenience: for (it has been thought) if the doctrine of supervenience were true, that would mean that considerations of overall rationality could be trumped by non-rational considerations; and that conflicts with the claim that rationality plays a constitutive role in the realm of the mental. For example: Imagine two people alike in all relevant physical respects, one of whom has the mental property M. If we now consider whether the other person also has M, why should we let his physical similarity to the first person be a consideration at all? It might well be the case that the principles of rationality which Davidson takes to govern the attribution of mental content, taken in conjunction with the other mental states already attributed to him, require us to deny that the second person has M.151 The first thing to show in response to these objections is that we can motivate the doctrine of supervenience without relinquishing the supremacy of considerations of overall rationality. The motivation would go as follows. The ascription of attitudes is answerable to two things: a subject's behaviour, physically described; and the context in which she acts—which includes the subject's past history, the nature of the physical environment, of the social environment, and so on. So where there is a difference between A's and B's mental properties, there must be a difference either in actual or counterfactual behaviour, or in contextual facts. But (a) it is a plausible causal hypothesis that where there is a difference in subjects' actual or counterfactual physical behaviour, there must be a difference in their underlying physical properties. And (b) it is an obvious feature of even the mildest physicalism that where there is a difference in context there must be a physical difference: the differences in context which affect a mental characterization are such facts as that a subject is in Oxford rather than Orissa (consider the significance of a shake of the head), or that she has been in causal contact with one of a pair of duplicates rather than the other; and contextual differences like that are, or are dependent on, physical differences. Taken together, (a) and (b) give us the following motivation for accepting the doctrine of supervenience. If there is to be a mental difference, there must be a difference in physical behaviour, and/ or a difference in context. And a difference in either behaviour or context requires a physical difference; for causal reasons in the one case, and for general physicalist

151

Evnine (1991) p. 69.

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reasons in the other. Equivalently: to say that A and B are alike in all physical respects is to say that they are (i) alike in their dispositions to physical behaviour, and (ii) alike with respect to every feature of context. If that is so, there could be no basis for interpreting A differently from B; given (i) and (ii), there can be no mental difference between them. In the light of that account of the motivation for the doctrine of supervenience, consider again the second of the objections I described. The objection was this: ‘if we accept the anomalism of the mental, we must accept that A and B could be alike in all relevant physical respects yet differ mentally, because considerations of overall rationality could require that B be interpreted differently from A; and to say that is flatly to contradict the thesis of supervenience.’ But the objection is misguided. Interpretation, and rationality, have to get a grip on something. And what they get a grip on are facts about behaviour and about context. If there really are reasons of overall rationality for interpreting A and B differently, that can only be because of differences in context, or in physical dispositions. But then A and B are not, after all, alike in every physical respect. Suppose, on the other hand, we find that A and B really are alike in every physical respect; the doctrine of supervenience requires us to ascribe to B the same mental properties that we have ascribed to A, on the basis of their physical likeness and our existing interpretation of A.152 Does that mean that rationality has been displaced from its constitutive role? Surely not. Our characterization of A is driven by the norms of rationality. That A and B are alike in every physical respect guarantees that the considerations of rationality have nothing different to go on in B's case than in A's. So, in confidently applying our interpretation of A to B also, our interpretation of B remains properly answerable to considerations of overall rationality. The other worry was that, by making the sort of cross-world claims it does, strong supervenience delivers psychophysical laws. It is true that strong supervenience delivers sufficient conditions for a subject to have a given mental property: Necessarily, if x has maximal physical property P*, then x has mental property M. And if we are happy with conditions which contain infinite disjunctions

152

I take it that similarity in every physical respect, including every respect of context, could arise only for counterparts in different possible worlds. So talk of our finding that A and B are physically exactly alike is metaphorical.

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of properties, then strong supervenience gives us necessary and sufficient conditions for a mental property: Necessarily, x has M iff x has P*1 v P*2 v. . .P*n. However, strong supervenience will only threaten anomalism if the modalized, universally quantified conditionals (or biconditionals) which it yields count as psychophysical laws in the sense that the advocate of anomalism was concerned to deny. One strategy has been to argue that the biconditionals, at any rate, are not proper laws, on the grounds that the disjunctive properties they exploit are not proper properties.153 But I want to stress a different point. What laws, exactly, would supervenience yield? The laws would be principles saying that, as a matter of necessity, in a completely specified set of physical circumstances, with every aspect of context fixed, a subject will have a given set of mental properties: Necessarily, (x) (P* x → Mx). That principle links a set of mental characteristics with a single, completely specified set of physical characteristics. But it is not part of a system of exact, quantitative laws in accordance with which mental characteristics are determined by physical—or by reference to which one could derive mental characterizations from physical; it does not, for example, tell us what mental change in S would be brought about by a given physical change. Even if we knew all the supervenience conditionals derivable by considering every subject in the history of the world, we would not have the resources, in a new case, to derive a subject's mental properties directly from a specification of all the physical circumstances of the case (for any two actual subjects must differ in some physical respect); rather, we must make a new judgement about the application of the norms of rationality in each new case.154 There is, therefore, no genuine tension between the doctrine of supervenience and the anomalism of the mental. The conditionals (or biconditionals) which supervenience gives us may be allowed, in one sense, to be lawlike; they support counterfactuals, for example. But they do not form a system of laws which would permit the precise prediction and explanation of

153

See e.g. Teller (1984) and Charles (1992) p. 272 n. 9.

154

This is a point which Davidson makes in explaining why complete knowledge of the physical make-up of an artificially created ‘human being’ would not give us psychophysical laws. If we had such knowledge, ‘we could only say, in psychological terms, what the machine would do under completely specified circumstances; no general laws about its behaviour would be forthcoming’ ((1973a) p. 258).

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particular mental phenomena; and it was the possibility of such a system which the argument for the anomalism of the mental was an argument against.

4. Anomalism, Psychophysical Correlations, and Functionalism It is sometimes thought that, in order to make intelligible the causal explanatory role of the mental, or to vindicate the factuality of mental ascriptions, we need to show that mental phenomena are related in a systematic way to physical phenomena. And it is that thought which often drives the search for a systematization or regimentation of propositional attitude psychology: there must be some way of correlating mental and physical phenomena, of marrying up the mental and the physical (the thought proceeds), and any such correlation requires a systematization of propositional attitude psychology. Now we can distinguish between two general levels at which such a systematization might be sought. First, and most ambitious, is the aim of codifying propositional attitude psychology in general. Second, there is the less ambitious aim of providing a regimentation of, or a systematic scheme of interpretation for, the attitudes of a particular individual. And this aim might itself be pursued at two levels. The stronger idea is that we could provide a diachronic systematization of S's attitudes. The weaker aim would be simply to provide a synchronic systematization of S's attitudes; though there is no codifiable scheme of interpretation for an individual agent over time, S's attitudes at any given time do constitute a definite structure of interrelated states.155 Whatever the scope of the regimentation, the marrying-up of mental and physical is to be achieved (on the view we are considering) via an isomorphism between the mental scheme or structure and the physical scheme or structure; given such an isomorphism, we will be able to correlate parts of the mental structure with corresponding parts of the physical structure.

155

This weaker aim might be encouraged by an analogy with some of Davidson's views about interpreting language. According to Davidson, there can be no systematic scheme for interpreting the meanings of S 's words over time ; but a theory of meaning for S 's language at a time can be perfectly systematic—it can take the form of a Tarski-style truth theory. (See Davidson (1986).)

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Now this project, of course, is characteristic of functionalism. Functionalists usually aim for the most ambitious form of codification: a general account of propositional attitude psychology. And the most plausible view of this type is ‘common-sense functionalism’. On that view, our common-sense psychological descriptions and explanations embody a set of principles about the relations between attitudes, perceptual inputs, behavioural outputs, and other attitudes; these constitute a common-sense theory of the propositional attitudes, implicit in our ordinary practice. We can make the theory explicit by exhaustively articulating the platitudes of common-sense psychology. From that, we can derive an explicit definition of each mental concept (in the manner of Ramsey and Lewis156). Then S believes that p, for example, just in case S is in some physical state whose functional role, in relation to S's physically characterized inputs, outputs, and other states, is the same as the functional role played by believing that p in the common-sense psychological theory. How does functionalism of that form fare in the light of the argument against psychophysical laws? According to the argument, rationality is not codifiable; there is no way to systematize the requirements of rationality, only general principles and rules of thumb which guide judgements about what would be rational in particular cases. But the principles about how attitudes and actions must be related to one another, and to objective circumstances, if they are to be rational are, in another guise, the common-sense platitudes which the functionalist treats as implicitly defining our concepts of mental states. So if the principles of rationality cannot be codified, then the platitudes of common-sense psychology cannot be codified either. And that seems to undermine the functionalist's programme for defining the propositional attitudes. If the common-sense platitudes about desiring that q, say, cannot in principle be systematically specified, then there is no definite functional role which we can associate with desiring that q. We can specify, in mental terms, roughly and indefinitely, a causal role characteristically played by a type of desire. But the specification of any such causal role must make essential play with considerations about what would be rational. (To have a desire to make a parachute jump, for example, is (at least) to have a

156

See Ramsey (1929) and Lewis (1972).

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disposition to make a parachute jump, given appropriate beliefs and other attitudes. Which beliefs are ‘appropriate’? Clearly, beliefs in the light of which it would be rational for someone with that desire to act on it.) And given the irreducibility of rationality to any set of physically stateable rules or principles, that sort of mentally specified causal role is not something which could be captured in physical terms; nor could that role be played by something identifiable in non-rational terms. The sort of general isomorphism required by the common-sense functionalist's project, between psychological causal roles and physically specifiable causal roles, is incompatible with the uncodifiability of rationality.157 This conclusion is perfectly compatible with the view, endorsed by the interpretationist, that part of what it is for a creature to have a given attitude is for it to have a certain rationally specified disposition. That view is much weaker than the common-sense functionalism we are considering; for the functionalism requires, not just that the creature as a whole be organized in such a way that it has the relevant dispositional property, but that the psychologically specified causal roles be played by internal states or properties naturally identifiable in non-psychological terms.

5. Uncodiability and Token Correlations The argument about rationality rules out functionalism as a general theory of propositional attitude psychology. But it may seem that the argument does not rule out the idea of precise psychophysical correlations altogether. For there are two related, and far less ambitious, ideas which may seem unthreatened: the idea that we can think of an individual's psychology at a time as a definite structure of interrelated mental states and events, isomorphic with a structure of interrelated physical states and events; and the idea that we can correlate each token mental state or event with some token physical state or event. It is easy to see why these less ambitious ideas seem unthreatened by the argument which ruled out functionalism as a general theory. The thought is this.

157

The same claim is made by Hornsby: ‘the causal-explanatory powers of mental states cannot be specified in such a way that a scientist could be led to recognize states that are the subjects of his studies as having those powers’ ((1986) p. 112). And see, more generally, McDowell (1985).

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‘Rationality in general is not codifiable. But when we characterize S's attitudes at t, we do not have to characterize rationality as a whole, but only a particular set of attitudes, rationally related in specific ways.’ Or again. ‘Maybe there is no way of capturing in physical terms the type of causal role that the belief that p plays in common-sense psychology in general. But in characterizing S's belief that p we need not do that; S's belief that p is a particular state, with definite causes and effects; and there is no reason why that specific and definite set of causal relations should not be isomorphic with the causal relations of some specific physical state of S's.’ I shall argue, however, that there is a problem even for the possibility of token correlations between particular mental states and events and particular physical states and events; and that at least part of that problem stems from what I have said about the character of rationality. I will suggest separate arguments (i) against the possibility of detailed correlations between mental and physical states, and (ii) against the possibility of identities between mental and physical events (though the arguments are related in various ways).

5.1. States The argument will have two parts. (I start by concentrating on token identities; I suggest later how the argument might generalize to other forms of token correlation.) First, if a single mental state is to be a physical state, even on an occasion, then something stronger must be true—that there is a general isomorphism between a person's mental states and her physical states: the train of reasoning which explains an action, say, must form a definite structure, each element of which can be correlated with an element in an isomorphic story about causally related physical states. Second, given the uncodifiability of rationality, there cannot in general be that kind of isomorphism between a structure of mental states and a structure of physical states; given uncodifiability, we cannot regard S's attitudes at t as having a definite structure of the required sort. I will state the argument in a way which accepts that states as well as events can be the relata in causal relations: so that beliefs,

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desires, hopes, and so on, as well as events like a person's seeing or hearing something, or the onslaught of an attitude, can be causes and effects. That this is what many philosophers think seems clear. (I think in fact that we do better to understand the causal significance of propositional attitudes not by thinking of an attitude as a causally relevant item but by focusing on the explanatory relevance of a person's having an attitude.158 But for the moment I will talk in the terms usually involved when people are trying to match up mental and physical phenomena.) If we think that a given mental state can be matched up with some particular physical state, how is the matching of these two phenomena to be effected: how are the items for matching up to be selected from amongst the totality of S's mental and physical make-up? The general suggestion is that we should exploit causal role. The mental state, m, is identifiable as the occupant of some definite token causal role—sandwiched, as it were, between a set of mental causes and mental effects. To identify m with a physical state p, we must find some physical item which is the occupant of the same causal role: each mental cause of m must correspond to some physical cause of p, and each mental effect of m to some physical effect of p.159 Already we can see that, if just one mental state is to be a physical state, there must be a substantial isomorphism between a structure of causally related mental phenomena and a structure of causally related physical phenomena. But the causal isomorphism cannot stop at the immediate causes and effects of m and p. For the whole story can be repeated for each of those causes and effects. I claim, therefore, that in order for m and p to be identical, there must be a definite structure of causal relations between m and other mental states, which is mirrored by a structure of causal relations amongst physical states. But that view of a person's attitudes—as a complex of mental phenomena whose interactions could be mirrored by the causal interactions of a set of physical items—seems threatened by the thesis of uncodifiability. The threat can be brought out, in the first instance, by looking at the case of action.

158

See Ch. 3 §2, Ch. 4 §1, and Ch. 6 §6.

159

There may also, of course, be physical causes and effects of m which are not mental; but there will be no mental causes of p which are not physical.

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To understand an action fully we need to be able to recapitulate the practical reasoning which explains its appeal to the agent.160 (There need be no commitment to the idea that the agent consciously went through that reasoning.) Consider an example. I learn that my mother is terminally ill in Edinburgh; having various concerns about her welfare, and about my duties as a child, I travel there to be with her. Now that points to a simple explanation of my action: I believed that my mother was dying, was concerned for her welfare, and so on, and therefore went to see her. And that simple explanation looks like the sort of causal story which could be mirrored by some physical causal story, in just the way required for interesting token identities. But of course, we do not fully understand my action if we know only a particular belief and desire in the light of which acting in that way seemed attractive. For I went to see my mother even though that meant failing to do other things. The practical reasoning which went into this action involves more than the recognition of a single reason; there is the recognition of other reasons to do competing things, and the assessment of the strength of those competing reasons. In a full understanding of an action, we must see the particular concern on which I acted in the light of the other concerns which competed with it, and understand why I acted on just that concern rather than any other; we must understand my assessment of competing reasons. And in order to understand that, one must appreciate my conception of practical rationality, of how to live. Now if my conception of how to live were codifiable, then the recapitulation of my practical reasoning, the account of my assessment of competing reasons, could take a deductive form, supplying a proof that going to be with my mother in Edinburgh was the thing I should do; and that would be a train of reasoning which we might reasonably think could be mirrored in a series of mechanical steps. But in fact my conception of how to live is not codifiable, and it cannot be broken down into any fixed set of components. So, it seems, the reasoning which led to my selection of just this concern as the one to act on cannot be represented as a definite series of

160

In what follows, I am indebted to McDowell's account of the form that action explanation takes when we recognize the uncodifiability of rationality, an account which itself draws on Wiggins's discussion of practical reasoning. See McDowell (1979) § 5 and Wiggins (1975–6).

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causal transactions amongst a fixed set of considerations.161 That means that an explanation of my action, which recapitulates that reasoning, cannot represent it as the upshot of a definite series of causal transactions amongst a fixed set of rational considerations. But then the explanation does not have the sort of definite causal form necessary in order to effect detailed correlations between parts of the explanation and parts of a causal story about the physical antecedents of my behaviour. The argument moves from the claim that a conception of practical rationality is uncodifiable to the claim that a person's practical reasoning on an occasion cannot be represented in terms of the interaction of a fixed set of components. Someone might resist that move, on the following grounds. ‘S's conception of how to live cannot be represented in a set of principles deductively applied in particular cases to yield verdicts about what to do. But, for all that, her conception of how to live may consist in a set of general principles (containing references to what one should do “on the whole”, or “for the most part”), which she applies non-deductively to particular cases. Uncodifiability is no bar to representing the deliverances of such a conception as the causal consequences of a fixed set of principles. So we can, after all, break down the application of S's conception of how to live into a definite set of elements. And those mental elements can be matched with the elements of a physical set.’ But it seems to me that a person's conception of how to live is not adequately represented as a simple collection of principles. An integral part of that conception is how those principles are applied, and how they are weighed against one another. If we know, for example, that S thinks that, by and large, it is important to be kind, and important to be fair, then we know something of S's conception of how to live. But to understand that conception fully we need also to know the answers to such questions as, ‘What sort of thing does S count as an instance of kindness?’, and ‘How will S go about adjudicating conflicts between fairness and kindness?’ Those are questions which we can (sometimes) answer; for we can come to understand someone else's

161

I think, incidentally, that this is a claim which Davidson himself is inclined to accept. Talking of what would be involved in ‘giving an account of how a decision is reached in the light of conflicting evidence and conflicting desires’, he says that he ‘doubt[s] whether it is possible to provide such an account at all’ ((1974a) p. 232).

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conception of how to live and, having understood it, we can reliably anticipate the judgements she makes about new cases. But that is something we do by learning to see things as S does, not by referring to a fixed catalogue of principles or considerations. I have concentrated on the case of practical rationality—arguing from the uncodifiability of a conception of practical rationality to the impossibility of representing practical reasoning on an occasion as a structure isomorphic with a structure of causally related physical states. But the same considerations will apply, mutatis mutandis, in the case of theoretical rationality: the considerations which explain my forming (or retaining) the belief that p, by showing why it is rational for me to believe it, cannot in general be mapped on to a pattern of causal relations amongst physical states. I have presented my argument as an attack on the possibility of identities between token mental states and token physical states. But I think that the same considerations show that there could not be relations of constitution between particular mental and physical states either. To effect any correlations at all between mental states and physical states (whether identity or something weaker, like constitution), we need to be able to regard the train of reasoning which explains an action or belief as having a definite structure. My argument has been that, given the uncodifiability of rationality, we cannot regard reasoning in that way. That rules out identifying individual elements of a train of reasoning with individual elements of a physical causal story. But it equally rules out relations of constitution between mental particulars and sets of physical particulars. What we might still say is that, overall, S's reasoning at t is constituted or realized by some set of physical transactions or processes. But what we cannot do is to break down the reasoning into a definite set of parts, or a collection of individual attitudes; and if we cannot do that, there cannot be relations of constitution between specific parts of the process of reasoning and specific physical states or events. I will mention two objections to the argument I have been developing. The first objection concedes the point of the argument but questions the generality of the conclusion it establishes. ‘Let us agree that the reasoning which explains an action or a belief need have no definite structure, and that where it does not, it cannot be broken down into a fixed set of mental components, each with a

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definite causal role, which can be mirrored by a set of physical states and events. That may cover a great many cases: all non-deductive reasoning, we might allow. But it does not cover every case. Some beliefs are reached as the result of a precise and finite deductive argument; and some instrumental practical reasoning is deductive. Those chains of reasoning do have a definite structure which could be mirrored in the mechanical interactions of a set of physical states. So they avoid the force of the argument: token-identities do seem possible for the elements of reasoning of that sort. Or again, attitudes may be causally produced in entirely non-rational ways: by drugs, or electrodes, or bumps on the head. In those cases, there is no problem about matching a rationalizing account of the causal history with a physical account; so again, the argument does not apply; where a mental state or event has a definite, clearly defined set of causes and effects, there is no bar to a correlation with a particular physical state or event.’ A concessive response would allow the objection but insist on two points: first, that the argument from uncodifiability shows that we cannot accept a token-identity theory as a general thesis about mental states; and second, that the argument still applies to the vast bulk of mental states, since non-deductive reasoning is so pervasive. I think in fact that it might be plausible to defend a stronger response: that no mental state figures only in chains of deductive reasoning or in non-rational causal relations; so that the argument from uncodifiability does have a fully general application. But even if one rejects the stronger view, the argument is still strong enough to count against the sort of token-identity theory that many people have actually held. The second objection says that the argument, if successful, would be much too strong. ‘The claim that the reasoning which explains a particular action cannot be mirrored in the causal relations amongst a set of physical states amounts to the claim that rational behaviour cannot be produced by a mechanism at all. And that is absurd. Since rational behaviour does in fact occur, it must be causally produced somehow; and in fact we know that it is produced by a mechanism—the brain.’ If the argument did purport to show that rational behaviour could not be produced by the operations of a mechanism, that would be a devastating objection. But in fact it does not. What it shows is that we cannot, even on an occasion, identify individual physical parts, or properties, or

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states of a mechanism as the individual attitudes we mention in describing, in mental terms, the aetiology of the rational behaviour it produces. It is consistent with that to think that we could effect correlations at a coarser level. We might, for example, show that a particular sort of mental function was associated with a particular region of the brain. We might identify a mechanism in the brain which was causally responsible for, say, S's linguistic behaviour; and we might regard such a mechanism as actually being S's linguistic ability. If S engaged in some reasoning for a specified period of time, we might say that S's thinking was, or was constituted by, the neural goings-on in the appropriate region of S's brain during that time. But in none of those cases are we correlating particular propositional attitudes with particular physical states or phenomena. What blocks psychophysical correlations at that level is the character of the constraints of rationality which apply to them. Where we are dealing with coarser mental phenomena, those constraints do not directly apply; which is why there is no parallel problem about correlating mental and physical phenomena at the coarser level.

5.2. Events The argument of § 5.1 depended on the claim that the reasoning which rationally explains an action or an attitude cannot be regarded as being a definite structure of causally interrelated mental phenomena.162 But, one might think, that argument does not count against the view that mental events are physical events. For a story about the causal relations between mental events really can be broken down into a definite series of components; it can be regarded as having a definite causal structure. A causal story about events will not capture the complexity of the practical reasoning which explains an action, say; indeed, it may have only two elements, a perceptual cause and the action which is its effect.163 But, for just that reason, such a story does have a specific set of components,

162

That is not to say that we should reject the view that the attitudes involved in such an explanation causally explain actions; only that we should reject a particular model of the way in which reason explanations are causal explanations. (For more on this, see Ch. 3 § 2, Ch. 4 § 1, and Ch. 6.)

163

For a discussion of the relation between action explanations and causal relations between events, see Ch. 3 § 2 and Ch. 4 § 1.

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whose causal relations are quite clear. So, even if we accept the argument of § 5.1 about correlating mental and physical states, there is no parallel barrier to correlating mental and physical events. However, there is a different argument, which is due to Hornsby, against identifying mental and physical events—an argument which I think we should accept.164 The argument is this. Suppose we know which mental event caused some bodily movement involved in S's Φ-ing; call that event m. And suppose we also know in full detail about the neural events involved in causing that bodily movement. Hornsby's question is, ‘Which element of the neurophysiological causal story is identical with the mental event m?’ There is no particular neurophysiological event which can plausibly be identified with m; for neurophysiology individuates things much more finely than psychology, both spatially and temporally. And there is no metaphysically respectable way of constructing larger neurophysiological events from smaller ones so as to yield a neurophysiological event of the right spatio-temporal dimensions to be identified with m. If we set ourselves to produce a collection of neural events which jointly occupy just the spatial and temporal dimensions that m occupies, we might be able to do so. But there is no natural way to pick out such a collection in nonmental terms; and that is a reason for not regarding such a collection as a neurophysiological entity. The argument can be seen as a variant of a familiar argument against psychophysical type identities.165 If there is a reason to expect the predicates of mental and physical vocabularies not to pick out the same types—because they are answerable to different standards and designed for different descriptive and explanatory purposes—then there is, equally, reason to expect their singular terms not to pick out the same individuals and events.166

164

See Hornsby (1980–1).

165

For a classic statement, see Putnam (1967).

166

For a similar conclusion, see Stoutland: ‘the individuals of psychology are as irreducible to the individuals of physics, as the kinds of psychology are to the kinds of physics’ ((1985) p. 59).Someone might say that this argument has no force against Davidson. For his criterion for something's being a physical event (or a mental event) is just that it has a physical description (or a mental description) ((1970a) p. 211). And the gerrymandered collection of neural events which occupies the same location as m does have a physical description, even if it is not one which would occur to, or be of any use to, neurophysiologists. But in fact Davidson's own position seems to require a more restricted conception of what it is to be a physical (or mental) event. (The possibility of a more restricted conception is not something he has denied (see (1970a) p. 212).) His reason for holding that the mental is not a closed system is that there are mental events which do not have mental causes. But that is only true if our criterion of what it is for an event to be mental (or not) goes beyond the liberal criterion stated above. The point, as Davidson says, is that ‘psychological events and states often have causes that have no natural psychological descriptions’ ((1974b) p. 241 (emphasis added)).

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That argument does not directly draw on the feature of rationality which I have identified as being crucial to the argument for anomalism—its uncodifiability. But it is still in the spirit of that argument. For it depends essentially on the idea that mental and physical vocabularies are answerable to different constraints, and to different descriptive and explanatory purposes.

6. Conclusions I finish with a brief review of the conclusions of the chapter. I argued in §1 that the Davidsonian argument for the anomalism of the mental depends on a thesis about the character of rationality—the thesis that the norms of rationality are uncodifiable; and I said why that is a plausible thesis. In §2 I distinguished between various ways in which the mental might be said to be indeterminate, and discussed the relation of indeterminacy to the thesis that mental properties are determined by physical properties. In §3 I showed, first, that we can motivate the claim that mental properties strongly supervene on physical properties without giving up anything essential to the argument for anomalism, and, second, that strong supervenience does not yield laws of a sort which the advocate of anomalism denied. Turning to the possibility of effecting psychophysical correlations, I argued in §4 that the uncodifiability of rationality rules out functionalism as a general theory of the propositional attitudes, and in §5.1 that it rules out the possibility of detailed correlations between propositional attitudes and physical phenomena. I concluded in §5.2 by sketching an argument against the view that mental events are physical events. We must now see whether the view of the relation between the mental and the physical which has emerged from the discussion is compatible with a causal view of the mind; and, if it is, what sort of causal view that will be.

3 Causal Theories It is a commonplace of contemporary philosophy of mind that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of psychology is a form of causal understanding; and that many of our common-sense psychological concepts have an essentially causal element. So, for example, causality figures in the concepts of perception and memory: if S sees x, then x causally explains S's perception; the same goes, mutatis mutandis, for memory. It figures in determining the contents of propositional attitudes; for, at least in certain central cases, the content of a belief is partially determined by the normal cause of beliefs of that type. And causation figures twice over in the understanding of action: in describing an action as a Φ-ing, we make reference to its effects—if S killed his father, he did something which caused his father's death; and in describing an action as an intentional Φ-ing, we make reference to its causal history—if S intentionally killed his father, then a desire for his father's death must be part of what causally explains the action. We can distinguish two different roles which causation is playing. First, there is the idea that various explanations in psychology are causal explanations; when we explain an action by citing the agent's reasons for doing what she did, for example, we have causally explained the action. Second, there is the idea that causation plays an essential role in determining the intentional content, or the correct mental characterization, of a phenomenon: what makes it the case that it is x not y that I am seeing is that it is x not y which is causally responsible for my experience; what makes it the case that the thoughts I express by saying ‘cats are Φ’ are thoughts about cats are the complex causal relations between me and cats. And the two roles causation plays are intertwined; for the causal facts which determine the content of mental phenomena (causation's second role) are facts about what causally explains those phenomena (its first role). For example, what makes it the case that my current beliefs count as memories of some

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earlier event is (partially) that those beliefs are causally explained by my participation in the original event. I shall start by examining the first idea about causation—the idea that explanations in psychology are causal explanations; and I focus on a particular class of explanations, reason-giving explanations of intentional actions.

1. The Basic Argument for a Causal Conception Davidson's classic argument for a causal conception of action explanation goes as follows.167 Reasons explain actions. But we have not yet explained an action if we have said only that S acted some way and had a reason to perform that action: ‘for a person can have a reason for an action, and perform the action, yet this reason not be the reason why he did it. Central to the relation between a reason and an action it explains is the idea that the agent performed the action because he had the reason.’168 But what is the force of the ‘because’ which captures the link between a reason and an action it explains? We have two options. Either we say that the link between reason and action is sui generis, a basic relation; in which case there is no further understanding to be had and the relation remains a mystery. Or we give some kind of analysis of the relation; and what could that be but a causal analysis? As Davidson says: ‘One way we can explain an event is by placing it in the context of its cause; cause and effect form the sort of pattern that explains the effect, in a sense of “explain” that we understand as well as any. If reason and action illustrate a different pattern of explanation, that pattern must be identified.’169 And, Davidson thinks, there is no plausible candidate for the pattern of reason explanation other than the causal pattern: ‘the best argument for a [causal] scheme . . . is that it alone promises to give an account of the “mysterious connection” between reasons and actions.’170 The argument is appealing. But what explains its appeal? There are, after all, many explanatory uses of ‘because’ which are not causal. For example, we can say that I broke the law because I parked on the yellow lines; or that the delivery was a no-ball

167

See Davidson (1963).

168

Ibid. 9.

169

Ibid. 10.

170

Ibid. 11.

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because the bowler overstepped the crease; or that Xanthippe became a widow because she was married to Socrates and Socrates died; or that it is more likely than not that a random selection of twenty-three people will contain two with the same birthday because the probability of their all having different birthdays is ((365 × 364 × . . . × 343) ÷ 36523), which is less than half. None of these uses of ‘because’ points to a causal explanation; so why should the ‘because’ in action explanation be causal? The intuition behind Davidson's argument is that an explanation of an action is an explanation of why something happened, or why an event occurred. A non-causal explanation may explain something about a particular event; this particular parking was illegal, for example, because it was a case of parking on the yellow lines. That is an explanation of why a particular event had a certain property; it explains why, given that there was a parking at this place and time, that parking was illegal. But it does not explain, and no non-causal explanation could explain, why the event occurred in the first place. So the appeal of Davidson's argument rests on this thought: (i) an action explanation is an explanation of why something happened; but (ii) no non-causal explanation can explain why something happened; so (iii) action explanations must be causal. One could resist this argument by denying either of the premisses: so, either by denying that an action explanation is an explanation of why something happened, or by claiming that there can be non-causal explanations of happenings or occurrences. I will consider these responses in reverse order. The idea that any explanation of the occurrence of an event must be causal is plausible case by case. For any putatively non-causal explanation of an event, we can always make the Davidsonian point: knowing this story allows us to fit the event into a pattern which potentially makes sense of it; but we are still left wanting to know why the event actually occurred, what made it happen when it did. And for that, we need to be told something causal. What supports the intuition is this. Every event either has a cause or it does not. If it has a cause, then explaining why the event occurred must make reference to that cause. If it does not have a cause, then there is simply no explanation of why this particular event occurred when it did.171

171

For further discussion, and endorsement, of the idea that all explanation of events is causal explanation, and for ways of dealing with some supposed counterexamples, see Lewis (1986a) §3.

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In practice, philosophers who think of action explanation in non-causal terms typically accept that explanations of the occurrence of events are causal explanations. They reject the causal theory because they deny that an explanation of an action is an explanation of the occurrence of an event. The central idea of this sort of non-causal account of action explanation is this: to give the reason for an action is to explain, not why it happened, but why it counts as the sort of action it is, to explain its meaning or significance. (Compare an explanation of why this delivery was a no-ball; what we explain is not why the delivery occurred, or why the ball was bowled, but why, given that it was, it counted as a no-ball.) On this view, the concept of intentional action plays a basic role in our observation and description of the world. We see someone catching a ball, crossing the road, eating an apple, flipping a switch, boiling a kettle. Such descriptions embody the ‘meaning’, or the intentional significance, of an action. And citing the agent's reasons explains that significance or meaning in two ways. It allows us to see why the action counts as an action of that sort. And it may give us a more detailed characterization of the action, thereby revealing a level of significance which was not immediately apparent: when we learn S's reason, we learn that he was not only flipping the switch but also, intentionally, signalling to someone watching outside. On this picture, reason explanations are to be distinguished from causal explanations. As Stoutland writes: [The non-causal theory] gives no explanation of why the agent's behaviour occurs or comes about . . . An explanation of action, on [the] non-causal theory, gives the attitudinal conditions in terms of which to derive the understanding of the agent's behaviour as the act that he performed—and that is sufficient to explain why the agent acted as he did.172 Since human behaviour has causes and effects, there is, of course, a causal explanation of behaviour to be given. But giving it is a matter for neurophysiology. There is no reason to think that ‘the factors which account for the intentionality of behaviour and in terms of which action is explained should also account for, i.e., cause, the behaviour in the act’.173 It may be helpful to compare this non-causal conception of action explanation with non-causal conceptions of explanation in other areas. Suppose we want to understand a text: perhaps we

172

Stoutland (1976) p. 302.

173

Ibid. 303.

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are debating whether Henry V illustrates the glory of war, the virtues of single-minded leadership, and the importance of nationalism; or whether it is a graphic warning of the brutality and horror of war, the dangers of absolute power, and the importance of internationalism. Now (it is said) we can approach the question without reference to the causal history of the text (and without reference to the author's intentions). What we do is to see which interpretation makes best overall sense of the pattern of speeches and events in the play; we argue for one interpretation rather than another by showing that it accommodates all the different incidents more convincingly or coherently; there is no question of any causal claim in this process of interpretation.174 Or again, suppose we want to explain the meaning of a painting; perhaps we are looking at a cubist canvass titled Young Girl with Guitar, and we want to explain the painting to someone who does not even begin to see how this might be a picture of a young girl with guitar. What is required (it is said) is not a story about the causal history of the painting; rather, we need to point to features of the painting itself (‘Follow this line and you can see how it traces the profile of a face’) and of its context (we might say both ‘Think of the different views you get of a guitar from different angles’ and ‘Think of the way that artists had already been breaking away from ideals of realistic depiction’). Similarly, it is suggested, when we explain an action we are showing how to make sense of it by fitting it in a particular way into a pattern of the agent's words and deeds. Suppose there are two competing explanations for a given action: S killed her terminally ill father by administering poison; she needed money and knew that if she killed him she would inherit a large sum; she also saw that he was in pain and wanted to end his suffering. We show that one explanation is better than the other by showing that it makes better overall sense of this action in the light of her other actions: true, she needed the money, but nothing about her is consistent with her having killed her father for his money, and she was always given to acts of compassion; the pattern associated with something done from compassion fits this case, the pattern associated with something done for personal benefit, or from greed,

174

For a comparison of action explanation to the explanation of a text, see Ricoeur (1971).

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does not. Just as in the case of explaining a play, when we explain the meaning of the action—what sort of action it was—we must look to features of the behaviour itself and of its context (the circumstances in which S acted, the pattern of her actions in general), not to features of its aetiology. In the broadest outline, then, there are two proposals about how we should understand action explanation. One proposal is that an action explanation explains why something happened, or why an event occurred; on that view, the explanation must be causal.175 The alternative is that an action explanation tells us not why an event occurred but why it has a given significance; why it counts as the sort of action it is. What could show that one proposal rather than the other was right? It is sometimes said, in defence of the causal view, that there is no conflict between the idea that to explain an action is to give its causes, and the idea that to explain an action is to explain its significance. ‘ “[E]vents are often redescribed in terms of their causes. (Suppose someone was injured. We could redescribe this event ‘in terms of a cause’ by saying he was burned.)”176 That shows that a description which illuminates something's meaning or significance may do so by reference to its causes. So the idea that action explanations are significance-yielding explanations is no bar to the causal view of action.’ But this point cannot be decisive. The non-causalist will agree that there are some significance-yielding descriptions (like the description of an injury as a burn) which work by displaying a thing in the light of its causes, but say that there are others which do not mention causes. And, of course, she will claim that action explanations are significance-yielding explanations of the non-causal kind. From the other side, the argument for a causal view is sometimes attacked in the following way. ‘The argument depends on the assumption that there are cases in which an agent has two equally good reasons for an action, but where just one of them is the

175

The event whose occurrence is explained when we explain an action is someone's doing something, not a mere motion of someone's body. (If we say that the events which action explanations explain are bodily movements, we should, as Jennifer Hornsby has pointed out, notice an ambiguity in the phrase ‘bodily movement’. Action explanations are concerned with bodily movements in the sense of movings by agents of their bodies, rather than with bodily movements in the sense of mere motions of bodies. (See Hornsby (1980) Ch. 1.))

176

Davidson (1963) p. 10.

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reason why she acted; in such a case, the argument claims, only a causal link could make the difference between, on the one hand, having a reason and acting, and, on the other, acting because of a reason. But there is something wrong with the idea that there could be an agent with two equally good reasons for an action which she performs for only one of them. Suppose an agent performs an action for which she had two reasons. There are two possibilities. (i) When we look at the pattern of the agent's reasons as a whole, we see that there are in fact grounds for saying that one of the reasons was better, or more compelling, than the other, and thus for concluding that the action was done for that reason and not the other; or (ii) even when we look at the totality of the agent's reasons, there are no grounds at all for distinguishing between the two reasons. In a case of the first sort, our ordinary criteria for assessing the strength of an agent's reasons suffice to determine that she acted for that reason and not the other, without any appeal to causation. In a case of the second sort, the two reasons are equally good; but then to invoke causation in an effort to show that one reason rather than the other was the reason why she acted would be to impose a bogus determinacy on the mental; what we ought to say in that case is just that the agent acted for more than one reason. In neither case, therefore, is there any basis for the appeal to causation: either we can say what makes it the case that S acted for one reason rather than the other without appeal to causation; or else it is not true that S did act for one reason rather than the other.’ That line of thought, however, is mistaken. In the first place, it is wrong to think that the Davidsonian argument depends on the idea that there are cases in which an agent acts for just one of two equally strong reasons. The point of the argument is that we need to understand the ‘because’ in ‘She Φ-d because she believed that p’. Suppose there is never a case in which S has two equally good reasons for an action she performs for only one of them. It is still true that the mere fact that S's attitudes made it rational to Φ does not by itself explain her actually Φ-ing. The point of the argument for a causal view is not that we must appeal to causation in order to tell whether S Φ-d for one reason rather than another; it is, rather, that we must appeal to causation in order to understand the metaphysics of the relation between reason and action. Second, and relatedly, the fact that we can effect a distinction by

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using a set of criteria which are not explicitly causal is clearly compatible with the distinction's being a distinction between things with a causal history of one sort and those with a causal history of another. For example, I can tell the difference between the song of a garden warbler and the song of a blackcap by applying a test which is not explicitly causal; how sustained is the song, and what is its pitch? But the distinction thus effected is a distinction between songs with different aetiologies; the one is produced by garden warblers, the other by blackcaps. Similarly, even if it were true that I could distinguish between a compassionate killing and a killing motivated by greed without the use of explicitly causal considerations, that would not show that a philosophical understanding of the distinction should not appeal to the characteristically different aetiologies of the two sorts of action. (Furthermore, of course, the causalist will not agree that the considerations which I use are not explicitly causal. So the argument begs the question against the causal view in any case.) I have stressed that the essential move in the argument for a causal conception of reason explanation is the thought that the causal view is needed if reason explanation is to be made intelligible. But what sort of intelligibility is this; in what sense does the causal view allow us to understand explanations of action? A detailed answer will depend partly on the detail of the substantive theory we produce. But there are two general points to make at this stage. First, the idea is not that we have to learn that reason explanation is causal explanation in order to be able to understand an explanation of someone's action in terms of her reasons. Nor is it that we can first have the general concept of causal explanation and only later come to see reason explanation as an instance of that general form. On the contrary, it is a datum that reasons explain actions; and it is plausible that our grasp of the general concept of causal explanation is derivative from (or, at least, interdependent with) our grasp of specific modes of explanation, of which reason explanation is one. Rather, the understanding we get from seeing that reason explanation is a form of causal explanation is a reflective understanding of the metaphysics of this form of explanation; we understand what sort of explanation it is, and how reasons explain actions. And that paves the way for an understanding of the way in which facts about action fit in with facts

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about the rest of the natural world, and of the way in which psychological explanations relate to the facts of physical causation. Second, the understanding which a causal theory yields will not be reductive. For one thing, behaviour counts as action only if it is causally explained by a reason in the right of sort of way,177 and it is very plausible that there is no way to specify that ‘right sort of way’ which does not itself presuppose the concept of action. For another, our ‘analysis’ says that actions are causally explained by reasons—by beliefs, desires, intentions, and so on. But the concepts of those attitudes are inseparable from the concept of action, not prior to it, as they would have to be if reductive explanation were in question. So far, then, we have explored the general form of the causal and the non-causal views. What can we say to judge the issue between them? The first point at issue, I have stressed, is what we regard an action explanation as explaining; the causalist insists, and the non-causalist denies, that we are explaining why something happened. So it would help the causalist's case if we could defend that claim. Now it may be that the best that the causalist can do by way of defence is to point out the intuitive plausibility of the view, and offer to explain why various objections from the non-causalist do not threaten it. But perhaps we can add strength to the intuition by showing how naturally we exploit the idea of causality in thinking of the relation between an agent's attitudes and her actions. For example, one way of producing a result is to produce in someone else a motive for bringing it about; by inducing attitudes in you, I can affect your actions and, through them, the world beyond you. It is hard not to think causally of the whole transaction, and equally hard not to think causally of each of its stages. The first stage is clearly causal; when I induce some motive in you, I am evidently affecting you causally. And it is equally natural to think causally of the relation between your attitudes and your actions. And that, perhaps, may go some way to vindicating the causalist's conception of the explanandum in action explanation. A different way of supporting the causal view is to see how such a view of action fits into a wider understanding of the mental. For example, it is arguable that a causal view gives us a better overall

177

See e.g. Davidson (1974a) p. 232.

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understanding of the structure of the concept of action than any non-causal view; for it is plausible that a causal theory will give us an understanding of why the concept of action has various features (for example, a particular set of enabling and defeating conditions), which a non-causal theory would have to regard as being inexplicable features of our practice.178 Or again, a causal view of action is part of a more general causal understanding of the mental, an understanding which has things to say about the status of mental phenomena, about thought, content, and objectivity. I will argue, in fact, that the adoption of a worthwhile and plausible form of realism requires a general causal understanding of the mental, of which a causal view of action explanation is a part. Of course, a non-causal view of action is also part of a wider overall conception of the mental and of its relations to the non-mental. So the issue between the two views of action can be discussed at two levels. At the particular level, we can ask which view accords better with our natural understanding of the concept of action, and which view gives a better account of the various features of that concept. At the more general level, we can compare the overall conceptions of the mental of which the different views of action are parts. I have already said something about why I think a causal understanding of action is superior at the particular level; and the detailed discussion of the form of a causal theory which follows is intended to support that. In Chapter 4 §2 I address the more general question, what makes the causal conception of the mental as a whole preferable to a non-causal conception. Before proceeding, a brief note on the label, ‘causal theory of action’. As I am using the phrase, a causal theory of action is simply a theory which says that explaining actions by giving the agents' reasons for doing them is a mode of causal explanation. Some causal theories of action have included other claims. In particular, some writers associate the causal theory of action with the view that S's Φ-ing was an action if and only if it was caused (in the right sort of way) by an intention, or by a belief and desire (of an appropriate sort). Against such accounts it is sometimes objected that there are many intentional actions which are not done for reasons at all. For example: ‘When I cross my legs while

178

I say something about the parallel claim for the case of vision in Ch. 5 §5.1.

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listening to a lecture, that action (usually) has no explanation in terms of reasons for doing it that I had antecedently. I just spontaneously do it.’179 But someone who claims that reason explanation is a form of causal explanation can remain neutral on that point: if there can be actions which the agent does for no reason at all, these will be actions for which there are no reasongiving explanations; and actions like that fall outside the scope of the sort of causal theory I am considering.

2. Causation and Causal Explanation The conclusion of the Davidsonian argument of §1 is that reason explanation is a form of causal explanation. But what does this conclusion come to; what is involved in the claim that reason explanations are causal explanations; and how are we to think of reason explanation in causal terms? There are at least two questions which any causalist must answer. (i) What is the relation between causal explanation and causation? (ii) What is the relation between, on the one hand, causation and causal explanation involving mental phenomena and, on the other, physical causes and effects? In this section, I shall consider the first of those questions. Suppose we ask, what makes an explanation a causal explanation? On one view, what causal explanations have in common is this: wherever there is a true causal explanation there is, behind it, an instance of causation, a ‘natural relation which holds in the natural world between particular events or circumstances, just as the relation of temporal succession does or that of spatial proximity’.180 On another view, causal explanations are united not by their dependence on a natural relation of causality, but rather by the fact that they are all explanations of the occurrence or persistence of particular events or circumstances, or of general types of event or circumstance; ‘cause’ is ‘the name of a general categorial notion which we invoke in connection with the explanation of particular circumstances and the discovery of general mechanisms of production of general types of effect’.181 I start by examining the first view.

179

Ginet (1990) p. 130. Ginet's point is not just that intentional actions need not be preceded by intentions or desires; he thinks there need be no causally operative intention or desire at all, whether antecedent or concurrent (see ibid. 9).

180

Strawson (1985) p. 115.

181

Ibid. 135.

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The simplest and most familiar version of that view goes like this. We can distinguish between a relation of causal explanation and a relation of causation.182 Causal explanation is a non-natural, intensional relation between facts or sentences, reportable in such idioms as ‘The fact that p explains the fact that q’, ‘The reason why q was that p’, and ‘If you know that p you can see why q’. For example, ‘The fact that the building was made of inferior materials explains the fact that it collapsed’, ‘The reason why the train came off the rails was that the axle broke’, and ‘If you know that the city has been shelled you can see why there are lots of ruined buildings.’ Causation, by contrast, is a natural, extensional relation between particular events, reportable in such idioms as ‘x caused y’, or ‘y was due to x’. For example, ‘The blaze in Pudding Lane caused the Fire of London’, and ‘His death was due to his fall.’183 A number of questions about the relation between causal explanation and causation naturally arise. First, the metaphysics of the relation. The basic picture is this. Causal reality is a network of causally interrelated events. We can pick out causes and effects using singular terms; and however we pick out two events, the purely causal claim that one event caused another is true if the relation of causality holds between the two events picked out. When we give a causal explanation, we are giving information about causally related events; and the truth of a causal explanation (unlike that of a purely causal statement) depends on our picking out causes and effects in particular ways. Suppose the collision with an iceberg mentioned on page three of the Guardian caused the sinking of the Titanic mentioned on page five of The Times. Then, ‘The event mentioned on page five of The Times was caused by the event mentioned on page three of the Guardian’ is a true but unexplanatory causal statement. ‘The fact that the Titanic sank is explained by the fact that it collided with an iceberg’ expresses the same basic causal truth; but it picks out cause and effect in such a way that to see the effect in the light of the cause is to make the effect intelligible; in doing that, it gives us an explanation. The

182

This contrast is drawn and discussed by Davidson (1967) and Strawson (1985). Many features of the account I give draw, in particular, on Strawson.

183

As Strawson remarks, ordinary language does not always mark the distinction as carefully, or in the same terms, as might be suggested by the selection of these different idioms to represent the different relations.

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general idea, then, is that the truth (or acceptability) of a causal explanation rests on the presence of appropriate relations of causation. And a natural thought would be to put the point in the following way: a causal explanation is one whose explanatory power depends on the assumption that there are events mentioned, or pointed to, in the explanans and explanandum sentences, between which the natural relation of causation obtains; and whose truth (or acceptability) requires that that relation does indeed obtain. For example, I might offer this explanation; Spencer Percival died because he was shot. If the explanation is true, then the relation of causal explanation obtains between two facts: the fact that Spencer Percival was shot and the fact that he died. And it is a necessary condition for the explanatory relation to hold between these facts that there is an event introduced by ‘the fact that Spencer Percival was shot’ (namely, the shooting of Spencer Percival) and an event introduced by ‘the fact that Spencer Percival died’ (namely, Spencer Percival's death), such that the natural relation of causation holds between the two events. Reference to causally related events is rarely quite so near to the surface of a causal explanation as it is in the case just considered. In some cases the explanandum is the fact that an event occurred, but there is no simple way of identifying, from what is given as the explanans, an event which was the cause; for example, ‘The train crashed because the driver was drunk.’ In other cases, the explanandum is not the occurrence of an event but something's having a certain feature; for example, ‘The train arrived late because there were leaves on the line.’ But the fact that, in some (or even most) cases, reference to causally related events is concealed is compatible with the idea that the truth of an explanation depends on the presence of appropriate relations of causality between particular events. Suppose, for instance, that it is true that the train crashed because the driver was drunk. Though it is not explicitly mentioned in the explanation, there was an event which caused the crash—the train's crossing the points. Since trains often cross points without crashing, an explanation should tell us what was special about this crossing, why it caused a crash when most crossings do not. It was a crossing at 70 m.p.h., on a Tuesday, at 10.00 a.m., of a train containing 120 passengers, driven by a drunken driver. Why did it cause a crash? The first and last of those features of the cause are the relevant ones, the

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features which are connected in some regular way with derailings of trains or with recklessness. And in saying that the crash happened because the driver was drunk, we select one particularly salient feature of the cause. In some cases we may offer such a feature-citing explanation without even knowing what the cause was; knowing that the driver was drunk, we are sure that, whatever the exact cause, its involving a drunken driver will be a relevant feature. But, even in this case, the truth of the explanation depends ultimately on the obtaining of a causal relation between events. So much for the metaphysical question. What of the epistemic question? Typically, causal explanation is epistemically prior to causation; that is to say, knowledge that x caused y is generally based on knowledge of an explanation—the fact that x occurred explains the fact that y occurred. I myself may know (by testimony) only that the event mentioned on page three of the Guardian caused the event mentioned on page five of The Times, and thus know that a certain causal relation obtains without knowing any explanatory relation. But my doing so depends on someone's having the causal information in an explanatory form. In some cases we may know of a causal relation without anyone having an explanation: by observing a regularity involving events of certain kinds we may learn enough to see that there must be a causal relation between x and y without yet being able to offer an explanation of y in terms of the occurrence of x: ‘it must be that which is producing the effect, but I don't see how.’ But such cases seem the exception; they presuppose a framework of causal relations which are understood, and knowledge of which we have in an explanatory form. There are, finally, two points to make about the concepts of causation and of causal explanation. First, it is plausible that the concept of a relation of causality holding between particular events is derivative from concepts of causal explanation; that, as Anscombe suggests, the very possibility of having the general concept of causation as a relation between events is dependent on having simple causally explanatory concepts—concepts of causal action such as ‘scrape, push, wet, carry, eat, burn, knock over, keep off, squash, make (e.g. noises, paper boats), hurt’.184 Second, the model I have

184

Anscombe (1971) p. 137.

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been describing is intended to be quite general. Wherever there is a relation of causal explanation, there is a relation of causation between events. And causation is a single type of natural relation; there is no question of action explanation (for example) involving a different type of causation from other modes of causal explanation. But that is compatible with there being something primitive and sui generis about our various causal concepts and forms of causal explanation. We can say, for example, that action explanation is a sui generis mode of causal explanation. And we can allow that action explanation plays a primitive role in our grasp of causal concepts. Before proceeding, I want to comment on the relation between the broadly Davidsonian picture of causal explanation I have been describing and the account offered by David Lewis.185 On Lewis's view, ‘to explain an event is to provide some information about its causal history’.186 The information may or may not be given in a form which makes it easily assimilable, which allows the recipient to fit it into her overall stock of information about this event, or such events in general, or which shows (if it is true) ‘that the causal processes at work are of familiar kinds; or that they are analogous to familiar processes; or that they are governed by simple and powerful laws; or that they are not too miscellaneous’.187 We have a preference for being given information in a form which is easily assimilable (and so on); but we have still been given an explanation, even if we are given the information about y's causal history in some less useful form.188 So, for example, ‘The Titanic sank because of an event mentioned on page three of the Guardian’ is no less of an explanation than ‘The Titanic sank because it hit an iceberg’. How important is the issue between the Davidsonian conception and Lewis's? If we adopt Davidson's conception, then one use for the distinction between causation and causal explanation is this: there is a question how cause and effect must be described if the information that x caused y is to give us an explanation of the fact that

185

See Lewis (1986a).

186

Ibid. 217.

187

Ibid. 228.

188

Lewis himself thinks it is fruitless to debate the question, whether an unsatisfactory chunk of explanatory information is still an explanation, or whether, rather, it does not count as an explanation at all; ‘we will gladly say either’ ((1986a) p. 218). Strictly speaking, therefore, what I am describing is a position slightly more committed than Lewis's own.

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y occurred; and, in particular, there is an issue about whether mental properties satisfy plausible criteria of explanatory relevance. If we accepted Lewis's framework, we would not put the issues in that way; the information that x caused y is an explanation of y's occurrence, in whatever form it is given. But the same questions could be recast: there are some ways of giving the information that x caused y which make it easily assimilable and allow the recipient to make use of it; so there is a question about which ways of giving causal explanatory information are useful, and why; and there is an issue about whether mentioning mental properties when we give information about causes is one way of making that information useful. As far as I can see, any suggestion we might make, in the Davidsonian framework, about how the information that x caused y must be given if it is to yield an explanation could be recast, in Lewis's framework, as a suggestion about how the information should be given if it is to meet various pragmatic desiderata; and any argument which showed, in the first framework, that mental properties can be explanatorily relevant could be recast as an argument to show, in the second framework, that giving explanatory information by using mental descriptions can be a way of giving information which meets the desiderata. So though there is an overarching issue about whether we should accept Lewis's framework or Davidson's, for many purposes we can safely abstract from that question. The broadly Davidsonian model I have described is simple and elegant. But critics say that it is inadequate; for, they say, it is not true that all our causal talk can be understood as either (a) reporting relations of causality between events, or (b) giving causal explanations, whose status as causal depends on the fact that there are suitable causally related events underlying explanans and explanandum. Some of the supposed counterexamples are not unduly troubling. One sort of counterexample is supposed to show that causal explanations may depend on causal relations between states, or between states and events, and not just on causal relations between events. So, for instance, it is said that underlying the explanation, ‘My leg is broken because I fell off my bike’, is a causal relation between an event (my falling off my bike) and a state (my leg's being broken, or my leg's broken state); or that the truth of the explanation, ‘The bridge collapsed because the bolt was weak’,

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is sustained by a causal relation between a state (the weakness of the bolt) and an event (the collapse of the bridge). But such cases can be accommodated comfortably within the Davidsonian model. For instance, when we talk loosely of a state as a cause of an event, there is a causal relation between events; the state was part of the circumstance in which the cause occurred; and mentioning that state can help to explain why that cause had the effect it did. For example, the bridge collapsed because the bolt was weak. What caused the collapse of the bridge was an event—the train's crossing the bridge. But the train's crossing would not have caused the bridge's collapse if the bolt had not been weak; so mentioning the weakness of the bolt helps to explain why the bridge collapsed by explaining why the cause had the effect it did. A different sort of counterexample concerns negative causal explanations: ‘Don did not die because his rope did not break.’ In that explanation there are no events mentioned, or indicated, in the explanans and explanandum sentences. So again, it is suggested, it is wrong to say that a causal explanation is true, if it is true, in virtue of the presence of an underlying causal relation between such events.189 But we can accommodate these cases if we allow that the relation between a causal explanation and causal relations between events may be less direct than I suggested earlier. So, we can say simply that to give a causal explanation is to ‘tell, or suggest, a causal story’, or ‘to provide some information about [a] causal history’.190 And a negative causal explanation does seem to fulfil that criterion; for a causal story can be a story saying that an event of type F (which might have been expected to cause an event of type G) did not do so; and information about causes can include the information that there was no event of type G because no event of type F happened to cause it. For example, Don did not die because his rope did not break. What happened was that Don fell. But the fall did not cause a death, because his rope did not break. That is a causal story: a story about an event (Don's fall), about its having a certain feature (being a fall with an unbroken rope), and about its not causing an effect of a certain sort. We explain the fact that there was no event of a certain sort by citing features of an event which did occur. Or, on another

189

For this last example, and discussion of the relation between causal explanation and causation, see Mellor (1987).

190

Davidson (1967) p. 161; Lewis (1986a) p. 217.

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occasion, we might explain why Don did not die by pointing out that he did not fall at all. In that case, there is no causal relation between events mentioned in explanans and explanandum sentences. But to say that there was no event of a certain kind is to tell a story about causes; and it is a story which makes it intelligible why no event which was a death of Don came about. But there are two sorts of case which are not so easily accommodated. First, simple causal explanations often cite the causal action of an individual substance in bringing about an effect. Our ordinary causal vocabulary reflects that when we talk of one thing crushing another, or of breaking, bending, closing, denting, scratching, knocking over, and so on.191 And second, many causal explanations cite the continuous operation of causal processes. The snow is melting because the sun is shining; the durian fruit filled the room with an unpleasant smell; his smoking gave him cancer; the boxer is being kept alive by a life-support machine. Where, in these cases, are there events which we can plausibly think of as cause and effect? The natural thought in the case of causal action is that ‘whenever any of these simple verbs is applicable, some causing is going on or has gone on’;192 and we might say something similar about causal processes. We might, in other words, regard the operation of a causal process, or a case of causal action, as involving a series of causal relations amongst events. But what will those events be? We should not expect processes to be constituted by events at the same level as the processes themselves—events naturally identifiable in the same sort of vocabulary that we use to pick out the original processes. When I push a pram, I make it move over a period of time; it is not plausible to think that there is a series of pushings and movings, where each pushing and each moving is a distinct event, such that my pushing at t caused the pram's movement at t (or, perhaps, at t′), my pushing at t′ causing its movement at t′ (or t″), and so on. A natural thought would be that we can find causally related events implicit in the operation of causal processes if we appeal to the way in which processes identified in everyday causal vocabulary are constituted by lower-level physical events. That may be a defensible position. But notice two things about it.

191

For discussion of such causal verbs, see Strawson (1985) p. 124, Anscombe (1971) p. 137, and Mackie (1974) pp. 132–4.

192

Mackie (1974) p. 132.

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First, processes fall readily into kinds; rotting, growing, dissolving, melting, and so on. We can naturally and easily pick out processes which are instances of these kinds, and we can make generalizations about them. But there is no reason to think that there will be any natural way, using the vocabulary in which we pick out the constituting events, to pick out just the set of events which constitute a particular instance of a process. Nor is there any reason to think that, using that vocabulary, we will be able to formulate the generalizations about processes.193 So there is a way in which talk of causal action and causal processes is just as basic in our causal thinking as is talk of causally related events. And that gives us a reason to question the primacy given in the Davidsonian model to causal relations between events, and to explanations which depend on such relations. Second, the suggestion is now this: instances of causation which may not, on the surface, appear to involve causally related events (such as the operation of causal processes) do in fact involve them, since they are constituted by causally related physical events. But that involves a shift from the position we started with. That was a position about the form of statements concerning causality: the idea was that causal statements relate events; and causal explanations tell stories about causally related events. And the causally related events with which causal explanations are concerned were events describable and identifiable in the sort of vocabulary used in the explanations. But the defence I am envisaging changes that model: according to that defence, we can, in the case of some causal explanations, find causally related events which sustain the explanations only by investigating the underlying nature of causation, and only by employing the vocabulary of the sciences of matter. So the idea that there is a general relation between causal explanation and relations of causation between events requires, not just an analysis of the logical form of causal statements and of causal explanation, but also an analysis of the metaphysics of causation. To the extent that the original model suggested that causal explanations would always be backed by causally related events at the same level as the phenomena mentioned in a causal explanation, that model does seem threatened by some of the problem cases.

193

See Stout (1991) for extended discussion of, and opposition to, the idea that causal processes can be reduced to series of causally related events.

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Where does this leave us? It seems that it is not, in general, true that wherever there is an instance of causality there are, at the same level, and identifiable in the same vocabulary, causally related events. In the face of that, we could defend a revised (though still broadly Davidsonian) model of the relation of causality and causal explanation by incorporating in the model claims about the relation between different levels of description; where there is a causal explanation, there must, underlying the explanation, be low-level, causally related physical events. Alternatively, we could give up the idea that what makes an explanation a causal explanation is its dependence on the presence of causal relations between events, and accept the alternative suggestion, that ‘cause’ is the name of a general categorial notion having to do with the explanation of particular circumstances. I incline in this latter direction: for it is not clear that we should build into a general account of what it is for an explanation to be a causal explanation the details of the actual physical nature of causation. Notice also that what persuaded us, in §1 above, that action explanation is a form of causal explanation was simply the conviction that an action explanation is an explanation of something's happening; we did not need to exploit any claim about the dependence of action explanations on the obtaining of causal relations between events. However, whilst this approach would involve a move away from the broadly Davidsonian picture, one should not overemphasize the difference. First, on anyone's view, there are very many causal explanations whose truth does depend on the obtaining of a causal relation between events mentioned, or introduced, in the explanans and explanandum sentences. In those cases, we can accept all that the Davidsonian model says about the relation between causality and causal explanation. And it may well be that all of the psychological cases which will concern us in Chapters 5 and 6 are of this sort. So, for many cases, we might agree with Strawson's further point, that it ‘do[es] not . . . matter . . . very much’ whether we regard ‘cause’ as the name of a natural relation or rather as a general categorial notion of the sort I have described. Second, there are (as we shall see in §3) reasons for thinking that where there are causal phenomena (including causal processes and instances of causal action) there must be causally related physical events; so, even if we cannot regard it as part of the concept of causation, the suggestion of a general relation between causal explanation and

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physical causality (which I called a ‘revised (but still broadly Davidsonian) model’) seems to be right.

3. Mentalism and Physicalism I turn now to the second question I raised at the beginning of §2: how are mental causation and causal explanation related to the physical? There is a distinction between, on the one hand, what we could call a purely mentalistic account of psychological causation and, on the other, accounts which accept some degree of physicalism.194 The pure mentalist accepts that we can tell causal stories about mental phenomena. But she thinks that the causal stories can be fully understood in mental terms, without making any claims or assumptions about physical causes, effects, or causal processes. All the claims we need to make in order to vindicate the idea that a particular type of mental phenomenon, or explanation, is causal can be made in wholly mental terms: causes and effects need only be characterized in mental terms, for instance; the counterfactuals we associate with causal claims can be understood without appeal to anything non-mental; and so on. There is no philosophical need to mention any non-mental properties in making causal claims about a subject's thoughts and actions intelligible. The physicalist denies this; a full understanding of causal relations involving mental phenomena, and of psychological explanations, must relate them to physical phenomena and to physical causality. Very crudely expressed, the physicalist's leading thought is this. All causal efficacy is the result, ultimately, of the efficacy of microlevel physical causes and causal processes. If we are given all microlevel physical causal relations and processes in the world, we do not need to add anything else in order to have all the causal relations and processes (including the mental ones) in the world, or to generate all the causal occurrences (including the mental occurrences). That is to say that, in some sense, the facts of mental

194

A terminological point. I use ‘mentalism’ to contrast with ‘physicalism’—in a way which this section should make clear. So my use of the term is different from the use of some philosophers of psychology—where the contrast is between mentalism and behaviourism. (For an example of that usage, see e.g. Fodor (1975) pp. 2–9.)

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causality are wholly determined by, or are constituted by, or obtain in virtue of, or are supervenient on, the facts of physical causality. The basic physicalist thought, then, is that if the facts of mental causation are to be intelligible, they must be related in some way to facts about physical causation. But there are different ways in which this thought may be developed, which differ about the strength of the relation between mental and physical. Suppose S switched on the kettle to make some coffee. That explanation expands in a familiar way: she switched on the kettle because she wanted to make some coffee and believed that switching on the kettle was a way to do so; she Φ-d because she desired that q and believed that p. If that causal explanation is true, what must be true at the physical level? Or, in other words, what are the physical implications of a psychological explanation? There is a spectrum of possible views. The strongest view would be the familiar type—type identity theory. For each type of propositional attitude (believing that p, desiring that q, hoping that r, and so on), there is some physical property which is lawfully co-extensive with possession of that attitude. On that view, if our simple explanation of S's turning on the kettle is true, then the following must be true: S has some physical property P1, of a type which is lawfully co-extensive with believing that p; S has a physical property P2, of a type which is similarly correlated with desiring that q; and P1 and P2 combined causally in bringing about the physical movements by which S turned on the kettle. A slightly less demanding view, which still requires a very strong pattern of correlations between a subject's mental and non-mental properties, is the representational theory of mind, or the language of thought hypothesis.195 On that view, there are no general type correlations between propositional attitudes and physical properties. But there are token correlations: to have a belief, say, is to be in some specific relation to an internal representation, where internal representations are real, physically realized entities. And there are strong constraints on the physical (or, more generally, syntactic) properties of those internal representations. Propositional attitudes have causal roles. And, by and large, the causal role actually played by a token belief, say, mirrors its rational role; on the whole, a

195

See e.g. Fodor (1975) or, for a brief statement, (1987) Ch. 1 and appendix.

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belief causes only attitudes and behaviour which are rational in the light of its content. Now the properties of a belief are explained by the properties of its associated representation. The only properties of a representation which could influence its causal behaviour are its physical or syntactic properties. So in order to understand the (otherwise miraculous) match between the semantic content of a belief, say, and its causal role, we must suppose that a representation's syntactic properties mirror its semantic properties. Given that theory, what are the physical implications of our simple action explanation? If S believes that p and desires that q, then S stands in the Belief relation to an internal representation R1, and stands in the Desire relation to an internal representation R2; R1 has syntactic properties which mirror the content p, and R2 has syntactic properties which mirror the content q; and R1 and R2 causally combine to bring about S's physical movements. Davidson's anomalous monism proposes a considerably weaker relation between the mental and the physical.196 ‘S Φ-d because she believed that p and desired that q’ is a causal explanation. (i) Where there are causal explanations, there are causally related events. So there must have been a causal relation between mental events m1 and m2: m2 (the effect) was S's Φ-ing; m1 might have been the onset of the desire for coffee, perhaps, or S's noticing that it was coffee-time. (ii) Where there are causally related events, there are strict causal laws which those events instantiate. And the only strict laws are physical laws. So there must be physical descriptions P1 and P2, such that m1 is a P1 event and m2 is a P2 event, and there is a law linking events which are P1 and events which are P2: Necessarily, whenever there is a P1 event there is a P2 event. (iii) If events are identical, they have all the same causes and effects. So the whole pattern of causal relations amongst the mental events which led up to the action must be mirrored in the pattern of physical events which caused it.197 The most relaxed view about psychophysical correlations is that where there is a true causal story about mental phenomena, there

196

For the canonical statement of anomalous monism, see Davidson (1970a), (1973a), and (1974a).

197

See Davidson (1973a) pp. 254–5. This last requirement, obvious enough in itself, is often forgotten. That can make the sort of psychophysical correlations required by anomalous monism seem weaker than, in fact, they are.

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must be some causal story or other about the physical production of physical correlates of the mental effect, but that nothing very specific follows about the elements or the form of that physical causal story. We should not, for example, expect the physical causal story to be isomorphic with the corresponding mental story, with a one–one correlation between each element in the mental story and some corresponding element in the physical story. Rather, we should expect that the physical story will have its own shape and its own sort of complexity, and that there will be no systematic correlation at all between elements in the two causal stories; we should not even expect to find identities between token mental and physical events or states. If S Φ-d because she believed that p and desired that q, what we can say is this. The claim has what we might call ‘causal import’. This means that we are entitled to assume that there is a [physical, or neurophysiological] causal explanation of the fact that S did Φ and that this explanation relates this action to other (actual and possible) actions by S in a causal, counterfactual supporting way . . . . It means that we are entitled to assume that there is a causally organized network through which actions that go with the same belief are related. But none of this entitles us to the simple idea that in marking S's reason as believing that p and desiring that q, we are limning the units that a future neuroscience will use in identifying the [physical] causes of behaviour.198 Similar views are expressed, for example, by Dennett and by Hornsby.199 And if the arguments of Chapter 2 are right, then nothing stronger than this view is sustainable. Most of us are drawn to some version of the physicalist view, rather than to the purely mentalist account of mental causation. But it is worth trying to understand what we find appealing about the physicalist view, and unappealing about the mentalist. The mentalist's thought is likely to be this: take a given area in which mental causation is at work; philosophy is interested in the concept of that phenomenon; and nothing in the concept of a causal

198

W. Robinson (1990) p. 51. (Rather than saying that there is a physical explanation of the fact that S did Φ, I would say that there is a physical explanation of the bodily movements involved in S's doing Φ. )

199

For Dennett's view, see e.g. his (1981) : a reason explanation, he says, commits itself only ‘to there being some causal explanation or other falling within a very broad area (i.e. , the intentional interpretation is held to be supervenient on [the agent's] bodily condition)’ (p. 57). For Hornsby's, see her (1993), especially pp. 167–8, 184–5.

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relation between mental phenomena requires that the mental causation should be underpinned in some way by the physical—it is perfectly coherent to think of the mental causation operating without any physical underpinning at all. Consider the case of memory. There is a common-sense distinction between cases in which prompting jogs a memory, and cases in which it merely imparts information afresh. How can we make sense of that distinction? It is natural to do so in causal terms: when I really remember, my witnessing the event is causally responsible for my current beliefs and impressions; when I do not really remember, my current beliefs and impressions are causally explained by something else (typically by what others have told me about the event).200 And, on the mentalist view, that is all we need to say about the causation of memory. The connection between a memory and the remembered event is, in Anscombe's words, ‘an original phenomenon of causality: one of its types . . . No general theory about what causality is has to be introduced to justify acceptance of it. Nor does it have to be accommodated to any general theory, before it is accepted. It is just one of the things we mean by causality.’201 So to make intelligible the distinction between prompting which jogs a memory and prompting which imparts the information afresh, all we need say is this: ‘When prompting jogs a memory, the prompting brings it about that I have beliefs and images which are causally derived from my witnessing of the original event; when prompting imparts the information afresh, there is no such causal link. That is a full and fully intelligible account. If someone challenges us to explain the causal relation, we should say that no further explanation is required; the causal claim is true, and that is all we need to say. In particular, the concept of memory does not require that there should be any linking mechanism intermediate between cause and effect.202 Since it is not a priori that the causation of memory is physically mediated, and nothing about physical causes or causal processes comes into the concept of memory, there is simply no philosophical (as opposed to scientific) need to say anything about the relations between the causation of memory and the physical.’ One response to this line of argument would be to question the

200

See Martin and Deutscher (1996).

201

Anscombe (1976) p. 127.

202

Cf. Wittgenstein (1981) §610.

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rigid distinction which it requires between features which are part of the concept of memory and those which are not.203 If it is actually true that memory is mediated by neurophysiological changes in the brain, and if that is widely believed by those who possess the concept of memory (or by experts to whose use of the concept ordinary usage is in some way deferential), there may be a good case for saying that the idea of physical mediation is part of the concept; or there may be no saying whether it is part of the concept or not. There is much to be said for that response. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that we concede that the idea of physical mediation is not part of the concept of memory. It may still be an intellectual imperative to say something about the relation between a mentalistic story about memory and various facts of physical causality. Philosophy has a legitimate interest not just in understanding the concept of memory but also in understanding the relations between different sorts of concepts which apply to subjects, and between different levels of description; and in that way it has an interest in understanding the phenomenon of memory itself. From that perspective, the purely mentalist story of memory causation is inadequate and intellectually unsatisfying. There are a number of reasons why. First there is the general physicalist point that I have already mentioned: that all causal relations and processes are determined by minute physical causal relations and processes. One way of putting the point is this. Consider the case of action. When someone acts, something physical happens. (We can say this without being committed to the idea that an action is a physical event.) But, at a basic level, any physical occurrence, any movement or change in matter, can in principle be completely causally accounted for in terms of minute physical causes and causal processes.204 In giving this detailed microphysical account we give as complete an account as possible of what brought about the physical movements—of what ‘did the actual causing’. Now there is also a mentalistic causal story; S Φ-d because she noticed that p (and believed that q . . . etc.). The mental causation of the action must either operate independently of the physical processes which caused the movements S made, in which case the movements were causally

203

For the classic statement of this sort of response, see Quine (1953).

204

Sometimes S can act by not moving; but in those cases, too, there is a complete physical explanation of the absence of physical movement.

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overdetermined; or it must in some way be realized or constituted by the physical causal processes. But the physical movements by which S Φ-d, or which constitute S's Φ-ing, were not overdetermined; it is not true that, had the physical processes not occurred, those movements would still have happened, brought about directly by the mental cause. So the mental causation must be realized or constituted by the physical processes.205 And exactly the same considerations apply to memory. This reasoning clearly depends on a general physicalist premiss: that any physical change or movement can be completely accounted for by physical causal processes.206 That is not something we know a priori; epistemically, it could have turned out that some physical changes were accounted for by non-physical causes and mechanisms; or that they happened causelessly. But even if the physicalist premiss is not knowable a priori, it is, we suppose, true. Given its truth, we cannot be content to say that memory, for example, involves a sui generis sort of causation, whose operation is simply a basic, autonomous feature of the world; if we make the bare causal claim about memory and leave it at that, we do not fully understand the idea that present memories are caused by past events; we need to say something about how the effect is brought about by the cause. A second sort of reason for thinking that an account of memory—or of any mental phenomenon—must relate the mental causation to underlying physical processes is the idea that there are constraints on causation, or causal explanation, which can be satisfied in the mental case only if we appeal to the physical. There are various arguments of this sort. (i) It has been said that causal relations must be backed by strict causal laws. Given that premiss, it is argued, and the fact that there are no strict laws stateable in terms involving mental vocabulary, we must identify mental events with physical events if we are to understand the metaphysics of

205

Peacocke offers arguments of this form to show that mental events are identical with physical events ((1979) pp. 134–43), and that ‘possession of a mental property (on a particular occasion) consists (at least on that occasion) in possession of a physical property’ ((1989) pp. 73–4 (emphasis added)). One can accept the main thrust of the argument—that mental causation is realized or constituted by physical causation—without having to accept Peacocke's identity claims. For another statement of essentially the same line of thought, see Papineau (1990).

206

In cases of indeterminism, what is accounted for by physical causal processes is the chance of the change that occurs.

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mental causation.207 (ii) It has been argued that psychological explanations will satisfy conditions about the independence of explanans and explanandum only if the explanatory psychological properties are realized by physical properties.208 (iii) Again, we might argue that we must appeal to physical characterizations of mental causes and effects to show how cause and effect satisfy the condition that causes and effects must be independent existences. If (i)–(iii) are genuine conditions on causation and causal explanation, they are a priori conditions; and it is a priori that they cannot be met by a purely mentalistic account of mental causation. So (if they are genuine constraints) it is a priori that pure mentalism is inadequate. (What we cannot tell a priori is whether there is some level of non-mental description other than the physical at which those constraints can be met. So these considerations would not provide an a priori route to physicalism.) I will not make use of either (i) or (ii); but (iii) will be a consideration, in Chapter 5 § 4, in favour of a physicalist rather than a purely mentalist understanding of the causal element in vision. Third, there are general reasons for saying that a subject cannot be a possessor only of mental properties. (We have seen these reasons in the arguments for interpretationism (in Chapter 1 § 3.3).) So there seems to be no prospect for an account of what it is to be a thinker, or to remember, or to act, which simply makes no reference to the fact that a subject is a physical individual with physical properties. Nor is there any clear motivation for wanting such an account; if our very concept of a thinker is the concept of a thing with a physical nature, it is not clear why we should want to understand mental phenomena and mental causation in a purely mentalistic way, nor why we should think it possible to do so. In making out the general case for preferring some sort of physicalist understanding of mental causation, I have concentrated mostly on the case of memory. But the considerations I have described apply across the board—to action, perception, and thought as much as to memory. I stressed that there is a whole spectrum of views which share the basic physicalist perspective. The strongest of these views are certainly ruled out by the arguments for the anomalism of the mental. If I am right, then there is a problem even about anomalous monism too; which would leave only the

207

See Davidson (1970a).

208

See Peacocke (1979) Ch. 3 § 4.

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weakest form of physicalism. But issues about the precise form of an acceptable physicalism, and the exact way in which appeal to the physical must enter our understanding of mental causation, can only be decided by a detailed examination of the various phenomena; I shall approach these issues of detail in Chapter 5, where I discuss vision, and Chapter 6, where I discuss action.

4 Causalism and Interpretationism: The Problem of Compatibility In the previous chapter I started to develop the case for thinking of the mental in causal terms. But is causalism about the mental really compatible with the interpretationist approach? Many have thought not. Some of those in this incompatibilist tradition are causalists about the mental, who think (because of their incompatibilism) that interpretationism is unacceptable. They tend to express the incompatibilist intuition thus: ‘causal theories see mental phenomena as internal states and events, mediating causally between perceptual inputs and behavioural outputs; but interpretationism is a form of instrumentalism, which rejects that view; so interpretationism is incompatible with causalism.’ Other incompatibilists have a broadly interpretationist understanding of the mental, and see that as a reason to reject causal theories. They might express the intuition in these terms: ‘causal theories commit us to a Cartesian view of the mind; but the prime motivation for interpretationism is opposition to the Cartesian view; so it is impossible to accept both interpretationism and causal theories.’ But, despite the differences, the central incompatibilist intuition is the same in each case. In this chapter I start, in §1, by exploring the main reasons for thinking that there is a tension between causalism and interpretationism. I defend the possibility of a compatibilist view against some of these objections; but a full defence will depend on the more detailed discussions of Chapters 5 and 6. In §2 I examine the suggestion that we can accommodate the important features of the interpretationist view and the causal view without accepting the compatibilist idea that interpretative stories about mental phenomena are themselves causal stories. In countering that suggestion I will argue that the compatibilist view is essential to a modest and plausible form of realism.

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1. Incompatibilist Arguments Why might one think that interpretationism is incompatible with a causal understanding of the mental? Here are some reasons. (i) ‘The basic argument for causalism presupposes a Cartesian view of the mind, and is therefore not available to an interpretationist.’ (ii) ‘The metaphysics of interpretationism is incompatible with the metaphysics of causalism. For example: (a) interpretationism makes beliefs and desires the wrong sorts of things to be causes and effects; (b) interpretationism brings with it an indeterminacy of the mental which is incompatible with the determinacy we expect in a causal account; (c) interpretationism is not a sufficiently realist view of the propositional attitudes for beliefs and desires to figure in causal explanations.’ (iii) ‘Interpretationism rules out the possibility of any systematic connections between the mental and the physical. Given plausibly physicalist views about causation, that means that, on the interpretationist view, mental properties are causally irrelevant or inefficacious, and that they can play no part in causally explaining behaviour. But a view on which mental properties are causally and explanatorily irrelevant is not a version of causalism about the mental.’ Before developing those ideas, it is worth drawing attention to three areas in the philosophical literature where the idea that there is a fundamental tension between interpretationism and causalism is evident. First, there is the Wittgensteinian tradition: many writers influenced by Wittgenstein have adopted a broadly interpretationist picture of the mental, and have combined that with the supposition that such a picture is at odds with a causal approach.209 Second, there is a more recent tradition in the philosophy of psychology, according to which the options for an understanding of commonsense psychology gather round two poles. At one pole, represented by the writings of Fodor, is the view that propositional attitudes are (or are relations to) real, internal entities which enter into causal relations. At the other pole, represented by the writings of Dennett, is the view of common-sense psychology as ‘a rationalistic calculus of interpretation and prediction’; on that view, propositional attitudes are not internal causally operative entities, but ‘abstracta . . . or logical constructs’.210 And that way of setting up

209

Anscombe (1963), von Wright (1971) and (1974), and Stoutland (1976) and (1985) are prominent examples.

210

Dennett (1981) pp. 48, 53.

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the debate builds in the assumption that causalism requires a view of propositional attitudes, as internal states or entities, which is incompatible with interpretationism. Third, there is the common suggestion that there is a tension between two strands in Davidson's philosophy: his causalism and his interpretationism. So, for example, a recent critic writes that Davidson has ‘two quite different projects. On the one hand, there is a causal, explanatory project . . . On the other hand, there is an interpretative, hermeneutic project’, and (the critic urges) the two projects cannot coherently be combined.211 So the perception of a tension between causalism and interpretationism is widespread. How is the tension supposed to arise? First, the idea that the basic argument for a causal theory presupposes a Cartesian view of the mind. The arguments for causal theories of action, perception, and memory, the critic says, have a common form. For the case of action, the argument goes as follows. There are cases in which S Φs and S has a reason R to Φ, but in which R is not the reason why she Φ-d (she Φ-d for some other reason). What is the difference between such a case and a case in which R is the reason why S Φs? It cannot be anything about the behaviour itself; for behaviour of the very same type can be present in cases where she Φs for one reason, or Φs for a different reason. So the difference must be in something extrinsic to the behaviour. And the best candidate for the relevant sort of difference is a causal difference: for S to Φ for one reason rather than another is for her behaviour to be causally produced by one sort of underlying mental state rather than another. The arguments for causal theories of memory and perception are parallel. There is a kind of internal mental entity common to two sorts of case: a visual experience, common to cases of seeing and cases of hallucination; or a memory impression, common to cases of remembering and cases of only seeming to remember. For this to be a case of seeing, or remembering, is for the neutral mental entity to be caused in one sort of way rather than another. And similar arguments can be given in a host of other cases. For example, ‘If I have two friends with the same name and am writing one of them a letter, what does the fact that I am not writing it to the other consist in?’;212 ‘When I walk past a wooden board, what makes it the case that I am following a signpost, not merely

211

See Evnine (1991) p. 175.

212

Wittgenstein (1981) §7.

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walking past a wooden board?’213 In each case, the causalist will say, there is something neutral, common to the two sorts of case: it counts as one thing rather than the other in virtue of its cause. But, the objection goes, this argument involves a thoroughly Cartesian conception of the relation between the mental and behaviour, between the inner and the outer. The mental is conceived as an inner realm, its intrinsic nature entirely independent of the subject's behaviour, or of anything in the world beyond. Correspondingly, the intrinsic character of behaviour is non-intentional; if a piece of behaviour has an intentional character—if it is an intentional Φ-ing, say—it has that character only in virtue of its inner mental accompaniments and causes. The problems of such a picture of the relation between mind and world are familiar: the epistemic and semantic problems of the external world and, their twins, the epistemic and semantic problems of other minds; and the problem of seeing how appeal to inner states or entities of this sort could confer the requisite intentional properties on behaviour. And those are precisely the problems which motivated the interpretationist approach. So the argument for a causal view of the mental is bound up with a picture of the mental which interpretationism explicitly rejects.214 In response, I would simply say that the argument of Chapter 3 §1, for a causal view of action, did not take the form just sketched. In particular, my argument did not start with the idea that the behaviour an agent produces when she acts is intrinsically non-intentional, and then search for something to distinguish the case of Φ-ing for one reason from the case of Φ-ing for another. The aim of the argument was to reach a philosophical understanding of the form of a kind of explanation; not to explain how something which is intrinsically non-intentional can acquire an intentional character. In offering that argument, we can perfectly well accept that ‘S is Φ-ing intentionally’ is epistemically and metaphysically the most basic characterization of an action, and that ‘S Φ-d because she desired that q’ is similarly basic; as I said, that reasons explain actions is our starting-point. So, though some arguments for a causal theory of action may presuppose the objectionable picture of the mental as ‘inner’, this one does not.

213

Cf. Wittgenstein (1958a) §198.

214

For examples of the claim that arguments for causalism presuppose a Cartesian conception of the mind, see Stoutland (1985) and Hyman (1992).

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(I will say more against the idea that causal theories require an essentially Cartesian view of the mind in Chapter 5.) Second, the idea that the metaphysics of interpretationism is at odds with the metaphysics required for a causal understanding of the mental. There are a number of points here. First of all, there is the claim that, if we accept interpretationism, mental phenomena are the wrong sorts of things to be causes and effects; that interpretationism cannot supply us with the components necessary to make sense of the causalist's causal stories. According to interpretationism, there are people, who can truly be described as believing that p, desiring that q, hoping that r, and so on; and there are mental events—actions, decisions, noticings, the onsets of beliefs and desires, and so on. And that exhausts the ontology of the mental. We can say, of a whole person, that she believes that p and desires that q; and we can say that she Φ-d because she believed that and desired that. But there is no licence for thinking of her belief and her desire as internal states or entities, which causally interact to produce her behaviour. For, according to interpretationism, propositional attitudes are not entities or items at all; and if we think of them as states, we think of them as states of people, not as the literally internal states of ‘an internal behaviour-causing system’.215 Of course, if S believes that p, we can, if we want, talk of S's belief that p. But that way of talking is entirely derivative from the simple claim that S believes that p; we should not be encouraged by the ‘S's belief that p’ idiom into thinking of a belief as an entity, an item which could have a causal impact, like a billiard ball or an avalanche. So if we assume that a causal view must treat propositional attitudes as the internal causes of behaviour, or that it must vindicate claims of the form, ‘S's belief that p caused S's action’, it follows that interpretationism is incompatible with causalism. We can put the same problem in a different way. The attitudes we cite in explaining an action need not correspond to anything running through the agent's head before she acted; I can act intentionally even though there was nothing that ‘went on in my mind and issued in the action’. For example: suppose I feel an upsurge of spite against someone and destroy a message he has received so that he shall miss an appointment. If I describe this by

215

See Dennett (1981) p. 52.

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saying ‘I wanted to make him miss that appointment’, this does not necessarily mean that I had the thought ‘If I do this, he will. . . ’ and that affected me with a desire of bringing it about, which led up to my doing so. This may have happened, but need not. It could be that all that happened was this: I read the message, had the thought ‘That unspeakable man!’ with feelings of hatred, tore the message up, and laughed.216 But if the reasons which explain an action can be considerations which the agent did not even have in mind when she acted, those reasons, it seems, can hardly be the causes of her action. The standard reply to that objection has been to concede that actions are not always (or even often) preceded by conscious reasoning, but to argue that there always are, none the less, definite mental causes of an action. For there are onslaughts of propositional attitudes; and there are perceptual events: a subject's noticing something, hearing a request, seeing a ball flying towards him, and so on.217 But that gives rise to two further problems. First, an appeal to the onslaughts of attitudes helps only if those onslaughts are ‘precisely dateable events’, the sorts of things which could be causes. But it is a feature of interpretationism that attitudes need not have precisely dateable onslaughts; and it is an obvious common-sense truth that many attitudes do not. For example, my believing that my friend has a drink problem may explain various actions of mine. But there is no event which we could identify as the onslaught of that belief; it dawned on me gradually. And in general, it seems, there will be many actions for which we will not find mental causes by appealing to the onslaughts of propositional attitudes.218 Second, suppose we say that the mental causes of actions are mental events like a subject's noticing something, or hearing something. It is plausible that there are events of these sorts preceding every action; but such events cannot plausibly be identified with the agent's reason for acting.219 So if we defend a causal theory in this way, we have not vindicated the claim that beliefs and desires cause actions; and, in particular, we have not vindicated the claim, which many take to be the touchstone of a causal view, that ‘[t]he primary reason for an action is its cause’.220 Now it is true that, on the interpretationist picture, beliefs and desires are the wrong sorts of things to be causes and effects;

216

Anscombe (1963) §11. See also Anscombe (1983) especially pp. 179–81.

217

See Davidson (1963) pp. 12–13.

218

See Hornsby (1993) p. 186.

219

See Stoutland (1976) pp. 324–5 n. 37.

220

Davidson (1963) p. 4.

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we cannot make literal sense of such claims as ‘Her belief that p caused her Φ-ing’, or ‘The primary reason for her action was its cause’.221 But we can have a causal theory of action without holding that propositional attitudes are causes of behaviour. The argument for a causal view concluded that ‘She Φ-d because she believed that p and desired that q’ is a causal explanation; it did not conclude that, if S Φ-d because she believed that p, her belief that p must have been an item causally implicated in producing her behaviour. And we have seen already how mentioning a property of something can figure in a causal explanation without our having to think of the property itself as a cause. Suppose I strike this glass a smart blow, and it breaks. We can explain its breaking by saying that it was fragile. The cause of the glass's breaking was its being struck. ‘It broke because it was fragile’ is a causal explanation, whose truth depends on the obtaining of a causal relation—the causal relation between the striking and the breaking. The explanation works by mentioning a feature of the glass—its being fragile; citing that feature is explanatory because it makes it intelligible why the glass's being struck caused its breaking. If the causes of action are not propositional attitudes, the critic is certainly entitled to ask how causality does figure in reason explanation. There are two possibilities, depending on which view we take on the general issue of what makes an explanation a causal explanation. One possibility, we saw, is to insist that, underpinning a reason explanation, there is always a causal story about mental events. Since it is plausible that few actions are preceded by events which are the onslaughts of attitudes, the best way of implementing this suggestion is to focus on the perceptual antecedents of action: hearing you ask for the salt, noticing the road sign, and so on. As we saw, that view has been criticized, on the grounds that what it cites as the cause of the action (say, hearing you ask for the salt) is not the agent's reason for acting; so even if we acknowledge that my hearing your request was the cause of my action, we are no nearer a vindication of the idea that ‘I passed the salt because I thought you wanted it’ is a causal explanation. But that objection embodies an overly restrictive view

221

Of course, an interpretationist can allow that ‘Her belief caused her Φ-ing’ is not nonsense. But, she will say, we make sense of such claims only by seeing them, not as reports of causal relations between distinct items, but as elliptical for causal explanations: ‘She Φ-d because she believed that p ’, and so on.

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of the relation between causally explanatory considerations and the causal relations on which they depend. Think again of the way in which we explain why the glass broke by saying that it was fragile. The situation is the same in the case of a reason explanation. John notices the sign, ‘The Red Lion’, and slows down. We explain his slowing-down by saying that he wanted to take the first left after the Red Lion. The cause of his slowing-down was his noticing the sign. ‘He slowed down because he wanted to take the first left after the Red Lion’ is a causal explanation; it works by citing a feature of a person (his desire to take the first left after the sign) which makes it intelligible why his noticing the sign caused his slowing-down. A second possibility would be to allow that, where there is a causal explanation, there need not be a singular causal relation between mental events. If we take this view, we accept that there need be no mental item or event which precedes an action and could plausibly be identified as its cause; but we simply deny that that is any barrier to accepting the thesis that reason explanations are causal explanations. (This is a view suggested, for example, by Hornsby.222) A different worry about the metaphysics of interpretationism concerns the question of determinacy. There is, according to the critic, a conflict between the indeterminacy of the mental which is a feature of interpretationism, and the determinacy which is associated with causality. One consequence of interpretationism is that we must give up the idea of the mental as a realm of determinate facts. Mental concepts are intrinsically indeterminate; there simply need be no determinate answer to a question such as ‘Was generosity or vanity the reason for S's large donation?’ or ‘Does S understand the word w?’ But causality is a determinate matter. On a given occasion, the sounds which emerge from a pianola, for example, are either being caused by the roll inside it or they are not; there is no room for a middle position.223 So the causal, by its very nature, exhibits a determinacy which the mental, by its very nature, is lacking. That means that a causal account of the mental is bound to be distorting, imposing determinacy where matters are really indeterminate. (An incompatibilist more sympathetic to causalism might use the same point to make the opposite criticism:

222

Hornsby (1993) appendix A.

223

See Wittgenstein (1958b) pp. 118–21.

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interpretationism is bound to be inadequate, since it can supply only vague and indeterminate answers to questions about the causal antecedents of behaviour which really have quite specific answers.) This is not an effective criticism. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that mental events are physical events. In a given case, it may be quite determinate that a certain bit of behaviour was caused by a certain neural event. But that need not make it determinate whether this behaviour counts as an intentional Φ-ing; for it need not be determinate whether the mental event which is that neural event is, say, a case of S's noticing that p, or of the onslaught of the belief that q; the context may be such that there simply is no determinate mental characterization of the cause. So a causal theory need not introduce an objectionable degree of determinacy into its understanding of the mental. Next there is the thought that the metaphysics of interpretationism is inadequate to sustain a causal view because interpretationism is too instrumentalistic, and insufficiently realistic, about the mental. One form of interpretationism which really would deserve the charge of instrumentalism would be a view on which the attitudes S has are constituted by the act of interpreting her: on such a view, people do not possess attitudes at all unless they are actually interpreted by others as possessing them; and they have only the attitudes which are actually ascribed to them by others. If that were our account of propositional attitudes, it would be plausible to say that attitudes could play no part in causal explanations. For, in general, we think of the causal history of any phenomenon as something which is as it is independent of what observers know about it; and, in particular, we think of the causes of S's behaviour as operating independently of what interpreters know about S. But plausible forms of interpretationism are not anti-realistic about the mental in that way. According to the sort of view that interpretationists have actually advanced, we must say that S believes that p only if S is interpretable as believing that p. And such a view avoids the current objection: for it allows that S has attitudes which she is not actually interpreted as having; and it need not claim that a person's attitudes are constituted by an act of interpretation (or, indeed, by anything else). But many philosophers would argue that there is still a sense in which interpretationism is instrumentalistic about common-sense

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psychology. Their thought seems to be this. ‘What is real, on the interpretationist picture, is physical behaviour; what are causally efficacious in producing it are internal physical states, events, and processes; and the properties which affect an individual's behaviour are physical properties. If we could systematically marry up the elements in an account of S's propositional attitudes with the elements in this story about the real internal causes of S's behaviour, then we could regard common-sense psychology in causal terms. But interpretationism insists that there need be, or even could be, no such correlation between the individual attitudes we ascribe to a whole person and the specific internal causes of her behaviour. So, on the interpretationist view, common-sense psychology cannot be represented as an account of the real causal antecedents of action; and we cannot identify the mental properties it ascribes with people's causally relevant physical properties. So, whilst allowing that, on the interpretationist view, propositional attitude ascriptions can be true, we should admit that they are true only in some “second string” way, or “with a grain of salt”.’224 One sort of response to this objection is to challenge the standards of ‘literal truth’ it assumes. When Dennett, for example, says that statements attributing beliefs ‘are true only if we exempt them from a certain familiar standard of literality’,225 there is a real question why we should accept the standard of literal truth on which his claim depends. If ‘literal truth’ is defined as ‘truth stateable using physical concepts’, then, naturally, claims about the mental will turn out not to be literally true. But there is no reason to accept any such definition of ‘literal truth’. However, that does not get to the root of the charge of instrumentalism. What really motivates the charge is the idea that the interpretationist view of the mental has the consequence that mental properties are causally irrelevant or inefficacious, or that they pull no weight in causal explanations. That consequence, it is said, flows from two features of interpretationism which we have already accepted: the idea that there can be no systematic psychophysical relations; and the idea that causal relations involving mental phenomena obtain, ultimately, in virtue of physical facts. If we accept both ideas, we cannot maintain that mental properties are causally efficacious, or that they pull their weight in causal

224

Loar (1992) p. 241; Dennett (1987b) pp. 72–3.

225

Dennett (1987b) p. 72.

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explanations; there is no reason not to see mental properties as causally and explanatorily irrelevant epiphenomena of a system of causal relations which can be completely accounted for in physical terms.226 Similarly, interpretationism holds that there are no lawlike relations between physical facts about an agent and the psychological evidence on the basis of which we judge that S Φ-d for that reason. But that makes it a mystery how we are able to make reliable judgements about S's reasons without knowing anything about the physical facts which make those reasons the reasons why S acted as she did.227 I think there are real issues here, which require extended discussion. I shall address them in Chapter 6 §§2–7. The conclusions we have reached so far are these. (i) The interpretationist's argument for causalism need not, selfdefeatingly, start from a Cartesian conception of the mental. (ii) Interpretationism stands opposed to the conception of propositional attitudes as internal states or entities which cause behaviour. That means that the causal theory is not well summarized by such slogans as ‘the primary reason for an action is its cause’. But it is compatible with the view that ‘She Φ-d because she believed that p and desired that q’ is a causal explanation. If asked what makes it a causal explanation, we may say one of two things: either, that where there is a reason explanation there is always a mental cause of some kind (which may be, or include, a perceptual cause); or else that a psychological explanation can be a causal explanation without there having to be a causal relation between distinct mental events underlying it. (iii) The ways in which the mental is indeterminate are no bar to a causal understanding of action. The major task which remains is to show how an interpretationist can vindicate the idea that people's mental properties really are relevant in causal explanations; to do so will be to rebut the charge of instrumentalism or of epiphenomenalism.

2. Compatibilism, Incompatibilism, and Realism Impressed by the worries about compatibilism sketched in the previous section, many philosophers have concluded that the

226

I develop a detailed account of this criticism in Ch. 6 §2.

227

For worries of this sort, see Stoutland (1988) p. 47 and Føllesdal (1985) p. 322.

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incompatibilist is right; we cannot simultaneously adopt the interpretationist perspective and treat the mental causally. On their view, there are causal stories about behaviour, and there are interpretative stories governed by the norms of rationality. But these are two distinct kinds of story; no story about behaviour can be simultaneously causal and normative. Is there anything wrong with that sort of view? It does, after all, allow that psychological and causal stories are both legitimate. So what do we gain by insisting that it is not enough simply to find room for both sorts of story—that interpretative psychological stories must themselves be understood as being causal stories? To answer that question, we must return to the original motivations for thinking of psychology in causal terms. One idea was that causality must play a role in psychology if we are to understand the form of psychological explanations. The other idea was that causality must play a role if we are to understand how mental phenomena can have the contents they do, including contents concerning objective, mind-independent things and kinds. Now the compatibilist's point is this: we cannot satisfactorily understand either the form of psychological explanations or the content of thought and experience unless we treat psychological stories themselves as causal stories; it is not good enough to allow the possibility of both sorts of story but to insist that they are distinct; causality must figure in the psychological stories themselves. The debate between the compatibilist and incompatibilist views has very wide-ranging implications. And one question it raises is the tenability of realism. For the two central reasons for thinking of psychology in causal terms correspond to two dimensions of a modest form of realism. One dimension is realism about mental phenomena themselves: by seeing the explanation of mental phenomena as explanation of natural occurrences, a causal view of the mental sees minds and mental phenomena as elements of the natural world. Another dimension of realism concerns the content of mental phenomena. Consider the claim that it is possible to have thoughts about, and knowledge of, an objective, mind-independent world. That is an unassuming claim. None the less, it characterizes a view of the relation between mind and world which deserves to be called a form of realism. And it is a claim which we should surely want to accept. Now I think that this modest realism essentially depends on a view which relates the contents of beliefs to what causally explains them. So if we reject

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compatibilism and insist on regarding the intentional and the causal as quite distinct, we are not only unable to give any adequate account of psychological explanation and of the content of thought; we are also, and thereby, unable to adopt a sensible and moderate form of realism. For some writers, notably Richard Rorty, the connection between realism and compatibilism is a reason for objecting to compatibilism; on their view, there is simply nothing in the realist thoughts I have just mentioned.228 It is instructive to look at Rorty's incompatibilist view, for it illustrates clearly what we lose by divorcing the causal from the psychological. According to Rorty, we can adopt two quite different viewpoints on our beliefs and other attitudes. Beliefs can be seen either ‘from the outside as the [radical interpreter] sees them (as causal interactions with the environment) or from the inside as the [agent] sees them (as rules for action). [There is no] third way of seeing them—one which somehow combines the outside view and the inside view, the descriptive and the normative attitudes.’229 On this view, any story about behaviour or belief will be either a causal story or a normative, justificatory story. Stories of both sorts are legitimate. But we must resist ‘[t]he urge to coalesce the justificatory story and the causal story’.230 In saying this, Rorty expresses a strongly incompatibilist position. Now Rorty has a good point against some of the ways in which philosophers have tried to combine causal and normative stories. He is surely right, for example, that we should reject the sort of merging of the normative and the causal involved in the idea that there are entities ‘like sense-data or surface irritations’ which belong both in stories about the causal interactions between subject and world—where they figure as causal intermediaries between a subject and what she perceives—and in stories about a subject's justification for believing what she believes—where they figure as epistemic intermediaries, data with respect to which a subject's beliefs about the external world have the status of a theory.231 Other, equally objectionable, examples of the ‘queer’ or ‘esoteric’

228

See Rorty (1986) and, for the same views in more detail, (1979). My discussion of Rorty's position has been influenced by lectures given by John McDowell in Oxford in Trinity Term 1986 (some of the contents of which are suggested in McDowell (1986) §9).

229

Rorty (1986) p. 345.

230

Ibid. 353.

231

I take the ‘causal intermediary–epistemic intermediary’ vocabulary from Davidson (1983). For further discussion, see Ch. 5 §2.

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entities which result from the reification of elements of ‘normative stories’ about belief and meaning would include: facts, as conceived by those who think that we can explain the truth of a belief as consisting in its bearing a relation of correspondence to a fact; and meanings, as conceived by those who think that we can explain a word's having the meaning it does by invoking a relation to an entity—a meaning—which gives it its significance. So we can go some way to agreeing with Rorty: some ways of combining the justificatory and the causal are untenable. But it does not follow from that that there is no acceptable form of compatibilism. I said that the objection to incompatibilism is its inability to give an adequate account either of psychological explanation or of the content of thought and experience. To see the first of these points—about explanation—recall the basic argument for a causal view of reason explanation.232 Suppose that, as the incompatibilist recommends, we say that every story about behaviour is either a normative, explanatory story or else a non-normative, causal story. Then accounts of action fall into two distinct kinds: they either fit actions into rational patterns but make no causal claims at all; or they give merely causal explanations, seeing actions simply as bodily movements, or causes of bodily movements, and leaving considerations of rationality aside. But the point of the Davidsonian argument for a causal view of action explanation was that neither sort of story is adequate: a non-causal story, taken by itself, would not be an explanation of why an action occurred; a merely causal story would have nothing to do with action. So the idea that a normative, interpretative story is itself a causal story is essential for understanding the form of reason explanation. It is also essential for understanding the simple realist thought, that it is possible for us to have thoughts about, and knowledge of, ‘an objective public world which is not of our own making’.233 On Rorty's view, there are no genuinely philosophical problems about the relation between mind and world. The feeling that there is a problem arises, he thinks, only if we fail to distinguish between causal stories about the aetiology of our beliefs and justificatory stories about the evidence for those beliefs. If we keep the two kinds of story apart, such traditional questions as (a) ‘Can we have thoughts about an objective world?’, or (b) ‘Is there any reason

232

See Ch. 3 §1.

233

Davidson (1983) p. 310.

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to think that beliefs which are members of a coherent set are likely to be true?’, will be revealed as being entirely unproblematic, not genuine philosophical questions at all. The reason is as follows. There are two quite different sorts of story to be told about the ‘intentionality’ of belief, Rorty thinks, and two different kinds of aboutness. First, there is a normative story, about ‘the inferential relations between our belief that s and our other beliefs’;234 these are what we consider when we ask, from the point of view of a subject of beliefs, what those beliefs are about. Second, there is a merely causal story, involving an ‘aboutness relation which ties s to its objects’;235 that story involves causal relations between utterances or beliefs, on the one hand, and things in the environment, on the other.236 But the two sorts of story are entirely distinct; the inferential relations which capture the aboutness visible from the subject's point of view ‘have nothing in particular to do with the aboutness relation which ties s to its objects’.237 And, on Rorty's view, there is a similar bifurcation in our concept of truth. There are two ways of using ‘true’: one is associated with the inside view we adopt as subjects, ‘where we use “true” as a term of praise’;238 the other is associated with the outside view of the radical interpreter, where ‘true’ has a non-normative use, and captures a complex causal relation between language and world. But, again, the two uses are quite distinct.239 Now, given this bifurcation between uses of ‘true’ or ‘about’ (Rorty argues), we can see that questions like (a) and (b) above have no genuine philosophical point. Suppose we ask, ‘Are my beliefs, which are coherent, or justified, really true?’ Given the bifurcation, that must be interpreted as either a justificatory or a

234

Rorty (1986) p. 353.

235

Ibid.

236

According to Rorty, this second, merely causal, story captures the radical interpreter's sense of what her subjects' beliefs are about. That is a curious view; for it is surely internal to the procedure of radical interpretation that interpretation is answerable to norms of rationality: there is, pace Rorty, no discontinuity between the viewpoint of an interpreter ascribing attitudes to others, and the viewpoint of a subject assessing her own attitudes in the light of considerations of rationality.

237

Rorty (1986) p. 353.

238

Ibid. 347.

239

In Rorty's words: ‘the understanding you get of how the word “true” works by contemplating the possibility of a Tarskian truth-theory for your language is utterly irrelevant to the satisfaction you get by saying that you know more truths today than you did yesterday, or that truth is great, and will prevail’ (ibid. 347–8).

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causal question. The justificatory question would be this: ‘These beliefs are justified; but, from my point of view, as a subject, should I accept them?’ The answer to that question is straightforwardly ‘yes’; for to say that a belief is justified, all things considered, just is to say that we ought to accept it. The causal question would be: ‘Is this set of beliefs, considered in merely causal terms, causally related to the rest of the world?’ That is a straightforward empirical question. We may have doubts about whether we are causally in touch with the world. But those will be ordinary doubts about a matter of empirical fact, and the way to address them will be by considering the empirical evidence. There is nothing of distinctively philosophical interest here; as Rorty puts it, ‘there is nothing more for us to know about our relation to reality than we already know’240 when we know about the causal relations between us and the rest of the world. The question whether our beliefs, which are justified, are really true, could only seem to be raising a genuine philosophical issue if we thought there was ‘a third way of seeing [beliefs]—one which somehow combines the outside view and the inside view, the descriptive and the normative attitudes’.241 And, according to Rorty, there is no such view. However, this account—which flows directly from Rorty's bifurcationism—seems unsatisfactory, for two reasons. In the first place, his account of the import of the use of notions like ‘aboutness’ and ‘truth’ seems wholly inadequate. Consider his comments about ‘aboutness’. For Rorty, the aboutness visible from the agent's point of view is entirely a matter of justificatory relations amongst beliefs; and those relations ‘have nothing in particular to do with the [causal] aboutness relation which ties [a belief, or the sentence which expresses it] to its objects’.242 But that makes it hard to see how, when we think of ourselves, ‘from the inside’, as having reasons for believing something, we can regard those reasons as having any bearing on how things are in the world with which we causally interact. In the second place, the questions which Rorty says we cannot really understand—questions like, ‘Why couldn't my beliefs all hang together, yet be false of the actual world?’—actually seem to be perfectly intelligible. Rorty says that such questions are unintelligible because he assumes that they presuppose a correspondence theory of truth. But, in fact, the questions

240

Ibid. 341.

241

Ibid. 345.

242

Ibid. 353.

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seem separable from the correspondence theory. Suppose we think that the concept of truth is basic—that it is not analysable in terms of correspondence, justification, warranted assertability or anything else: it cannot be empty to ask whether the fact that a set of beliefs is justified gives us any reason for thinking that those beliefs are true.243 Of course, Rorty is right that we cannot answer that question by producing more evidence for the truth of our beliefs; if we gather more evidence we will simply increase our overall stock of beliefs, without establishing anything about the relation between our beliefs as a whole and the way things really are. But if that really is all we can say in answer to the sceptic's question, we are not entitled simply to say that the sceptic is asking ‘a bad question’; we ought to admit that the sceptic is right—there is no reason to think that justified beliefs are likely to be true. I claim, then, that Rorty's bifurcation between the normative and the causal gives an inadequate account of key intentional notions, and that it obscures genuine questions about the relation between mind and world. What we want, then, is a view which (unlike Rorty's) accepts the intelligibility of the sceptic's questions, but shows how it is indeed possible to have thoughts about, and knowledge of, an objective world. There are some views of the relation between mind and world which accept the intelligibility of the questions but seem unable to answer them adequately; they make it impossible to see how we could have knowledge of, or think or talk about, the world. For example, there is the familiar classical empiricist view: on that view, the task for philosophy is to show how, starting from experiences conceived as an autonomous sensory given, we can construct ways of thinking about an objective world, and justify beliefs about that world. But it is arguable that once we accept the classical empiricist's starting point—the view of experience as a ‘source of evidence whose character can be wholly specified without reference to what it is evidence for’, which inhabits ‘a self-contained subjective realm, in which things are as they are independently of external reality (if any)’244—we make the classical philosophical task impossible.245 Indeed, it is the hopelessness

243

The point is familiar from objections to the ‘analytic justification of induction’. For the analytic justification, see Strawson (1952) and Edwards (1949). For statements of the objection, see Urmson (1953) and McDowell (1982) pp. 458–9.

244

Davidson (1989a) p. 162; McDowell (1986) p. 151.

245

I discuss some of the arguments in Ch. 5 §2.

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of the classical empiricist's task which helps to motivate Rorty's view that the questions which the classical empiricist addresses do not even make sense—that they arise from a confusion between two viewpoints. But, as we have seen, Rorty's position is unacceptable; for the questions do seem to make sense, even if the framework within which classical empiricism addresses them makes them unanswerable. What conception of the relation of mind and world would avoid the untenable consequences of the classical empiricist's picture? A key to any such conception, I think, is a compatibilist view of thought—an account of thought which is simultaneously causal and normative. The core of such a view is the idea that causal facts about the relation between a subject and her environment themselves come into an account of the content of her thought and experience: there is no level at which we can make sense of thought or experience in world-independent terms (which is what distinguishes this causal view from classical empiricism); equally, there is no story to be told about thought or experience which does not involve the idea of causal relations between subject and world (which is what distinguishes this view from Rorty's bifurcationism). The essence of a satisfactory view of content is the idea that simple causal facts about the relations between agents and objects play an essential role in fixing the contents of their words and thoughts. The point can be made in the first instance for language: in the simplest and most basic cases words and sentences derive their meaning from the objects and circumstances in which they were learned. A sentence which one has been conditioned by the learning process to be caused to hold true by the presence of fires will be true when there is a fire present; a word one has been conditioned to be caused to hold applicable by the presence of snakes will refer to snakes.246 And what goes for words and sentences also goes for the beliefs one expresses by using them: ‘we must, in the plainest and methodologically most basic cases, take the objects of a belief to be the causes of that belief.’247 That answers the question, how it is

246

Davidson (1989a) p. 164. For parallel passages, see e.g. Davidson (1990a) p. 320 and (1983) p. 317.

247

Davidson (1983) pp. 317–18. A more careful statement (of a sort that Davidson clearly intends) would make it explicit that content is not determined at the level of the individual belief; what (partially) determines the content of a given belief is not what caused it but, for example, the normal cause of beliefs of that type.

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possible so much as to think about the objective world of mind-independent things. It is possible because the contents of our words and thoughts are directly fixed by our causal relations with whatever mind-independent things we interact with; there is no question of explaining the contents of our words and thoughts by reference to their relations to something internal and world-independent.248 But this account is not available to Rorty, for it involves, within a single view, both interpretative and causal considerations; the contents of our beliefs and experiences—their contents for us, as subjects—are partially fixed by causal relations between us and the rest of the world. Now Davidson himself goes beyond the claim that the remarks about content just sketched make it possible to see how we can have thoughts about, and knowledge of, an objective world. He claims that it follows from the way that the content of beliefs is determined that ‘belief is in its nature veridical’, that ‘it is impossible for all our beliefs to be false together’.249 Since the content of a belief is determined by the normal environmental cause of beliefs of that type, he argues, beliefs of that type cannot normally be false. All sorts of mistakes and falsehood will be possible; but what is not possible, at least ‘in the simplest and most basic cases’, is that none of the things we have been trained to call Fs and Gs, and continue to pick out as Fs and Gs, is really an F or a G. Now, even if we accept Davidson's anti-sceptical thought, it is important to see that the anti-sceptical conclusion is very modest. First, what the argument shows (if we accept it) is that we could not by and large be wrong about the existence and properties of things in our immediate environment; but that allows a great deal of falsity in a set of beliefs, even at the best of times. Relatedly, the beliefs expressed by paradigmatic occasion sentences have the highest degree of intrinsic veridicality; but the further a type of belief gets from that class, the more falsity is intelligible in beliefs

248

A supporter of the classical empiricist model might object that he too could appeal to the existence of causal relations between mental items and the external world to explain how our experiences come to have contents about an objective world; if the appeal to causation works for the position which I am advocating (he might suggest), then it works for the classical empiricist too. The objection is understandable, but it can be met; for the way in which causation figures in my account is quite different from the way in which it would have to figure in the classical empiricist's account. (See Ch. 5 § § 2 and 5.4.)

249

Davidson (1983) pp. 314, 319.

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of that type. Second, though the argument undermines a familiar way of formulating global scepticism of the senses, it does not show that scepticism is unintelligible; for new sceptical hypotheses can be formulated which respect the causal principles of content-determination which the argument insists on. For example, suppose that, unbeknownst to me, I am moved from the environment A in which I have grown up and learnt my language to a qualitatively indistinguishable, but different, environment B. On any plausible account of content, at the moment immediately after the change of environments, and for at least some time afterwards, most of the beliefs I attempt to form about my immediate environment will be about the things and kinds in A, not those in B; so most of those beliefs will be false. Thus, we can make sense of the sceptical question, ‘Couldn't all my beliefs about my immediate environment be false?’, by making sense of the question, ‘Couldn't I have just been transported to a B environment without noticing it?’ The Davidsonian argument from the determinants of content does not by itself make all forms of ‘global scepticism about the deliverances of the senses’ unintelligible. Recognizing that forms of global scepticism can still be formulated, one might be tempted to give up altogether the idea that a causal account of content yields any anti-sceptical insight; we could still insist that the points about causation and content-determination are important, but say that they are important as theses in the theory of content, rather than because they have any implications for scepticism. But to say that would be to concede too much. There really is an important relation between the causal account of content-determination and anti-scepticism. But the point is not that the causal account makes scepticism unintelligible. It is, rather, this. With an account which makes the content of thought, and the justification for beliefs, dependent on something world-independent, scepticism of one sort or another becomes unavoidable; for (I suggested) the classical empiricist conception of experience makes it impossible to see how any belief about a world beyond experience could be justified; and, taken to its logical conclusion, it makes it impossible to see how we could so much as form beliefs about a world beyond experience. A view of this kind would be sceptical either because it made reality unknowable, or (taken to its logical extreme) in the sense in which ‘idealism or phenomenalism are sceptical; they are sceptical not

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because they make reality unknowable, but because they reduce reality to so much less than we believe there is’.250 With the causal account, by contrast, there remain ways of formulating scepticism; but it becomes possible to see how we can have knowledge of an objective, public world. So what we get from the causal account is not a knock-down answer to scepticism, nor an outright refutation of all sceptical worries. It is, rather, a philosophical understanding of the relation between mind and world which, by showing how we can avoid the epistemology and semantics which go with the classical empiricist picture, shows why we need not concede that the sceptic is, ultimately, right.251 To sum up. There are two ways in which causation is indispensable from an understanding of the mental: it is indispensable from an understanding of the force of psychological explanation; and it is indispensable from an understanding of the content of thought. And causation must figure in our understanding of the mental itself; the sort of incompatibilism which Rorty (and many others) advocate cannot capture what we want to say, either about explanation or about content. We could sum up the result of this discussion, I suggested, by saying that the compatibilist view of the mental is an essential part of a modest and plausible realism. The arguments of this section have been conducted at a very general level. In the next chapters I will illustrate and explore these general compatibilist points at a more detailed level.

250

Davidson (1990a) pp. 298–9.

251

For this sort of account of the force of a compatibilist view of content, see Davidson (1987b) pp. 136–7 and McDowell (1986) especially pp. 161, 168.

5 Vision and Experience: The Causal Theory and the Disjunctive Conception In the previous two chapters I have introduced in a general way the motivations for adopting causal theories in the philosophy of mind, and described some of the issues which arise when we try to combine causal theories with interpretationism. I now turn to the particular case of perception and, specifically, vision. I begin (in § 1) by formulating the causal theory of vision. Then (in § 2) I introduce and discuss what has come to be known as the disjunctive conception of experience.252 I conclude that there is much to be said in favour of this disjunctive conception, and that it is a natural conception for interpretationists to adopt. In § 3 I describe an objection to the causal theory. According to that objection, the causal theory requires a broadly Cartesian view of experience; but the disjunctive conception is radically anti-Cartesian; so, if the disjunctive conception is correct, there is no place in a satisfactory philosophy of mind for a causal theory of vision. My response to that argument has two parts. First, I argue in § 4 that the causal theory is in fact compatible with the disjunctive conception of experience. Second, I argue in § 5 that there are powerful motives for thinking that a causal component is indeed required by the concept of perception. This discussion of the case of vision also suggests more general conclusions about the form, and the significance, of causal theories in the philosophy of mind.

1. The Causal Theory of Vision We can schematically define the causal theory of vision in terms of its commitment to the following claims.

252

For discussion, and recommendation, of the disjunctive conception, see Hinton (1973), Snowdon (1980–1) and (1990), and McDowell (1982) and (1986).

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[I] If S sees o then: (a) there is a state of affairs reportable by a sentence of the form ‘It looks to S as if. . . ’, and (b) o is causally responsible for this state of affairs. [II] Conditions (a) and (b) are requirements imposed by our ordinary concept of vision.253 Note two features of this formulation. First, [I] is not supposed to give a sufficient condition for S to be seeing o: for one thing, many things are causally involved in seeing without themselves being things seen (for example, S's retinas, and the sun); for another, there are the familiar cases of deviant causation. All I am concerned with is a putatively necessary condition for vision. Second, note condition [II], which says that the alleged causal element is built into the very concept of perception. A defence of the causal theory will have to include a defence against critics who accept some version of [I] as a general empirical truth, but do not accept that [I] is a conceptual requirement.254 The motivation for the causal theory comes from two familiar forms of argument. The first form uses problem cases to show that we need to appeal to a causal relation between a perceived object and a perceiving subject in order to explain what is involved in perception as opposed to veridical hallucination. For example, it may be that I am standing in front of a clock, and that it looks to me as if there is a clock of this type in front of me, but that my experience is being caused not by the clock but by a scientist directly stimulating my visual cortex. Or, Macbeth is hallucinating a dagger; a real dagger is then placed before him, so that the hallucination is now veridical; but the experience is not caused by the dagger (it would continue unchanged if the dagger were removed). In these and similar cases, our inclination is to say that the object is not seen. The causalist's argument is that such cases highlight a causal requirement in our ordinary concept of seeing; the reason why the object is not seen is that it is not causally affecting the subject. The argument can be seen as an inference to the best explanation of why, in the problem cases, S is not seeing o. The best explanation, the causalist says, is that S is not seeing o because o is not causally affecting S.

253

This specification is adapted from Snowdon (1980–1), who is himself summarizing the position of Grice (1961).

254

Such a position is taken by Snowdon (see (1980–1) p. 194 and (1990) p. 142).

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The second form of argument can be found, for example, in Strawson and in Evans, and ultimately traces back to Kant.255 It takes various forms, but the central idea is this: the concept of perception is the concept of a way of finding out about an objective world, independent of us; and to think of our perceptions as being perceptions of an objective world is to think of them as being causally explained by that world.256 I have presented these two sorts of consideration as though they were different arguments. But I think in fact that they are really different ways of making the same point. The first argument is sometimes presented as the claim that a causal element is needed in order to distinguish seeing from veridical hallucination. Put like that, the argument may seem open to the simple rejoinder that we can in fact distinguish seeing from hallucination without the need for any causal analysis; for we have already distinguished them when we identify cases of one sort as instances of seeing, and cases of the other as instances of hallucination. But the simple rejoinder is too simple. The point of bringing out the causal difference between vision and hallucination is not to allow us to distinguish states of affairs which were indistinguishable before. Rather, it is to yield a philosophical understanding of the distinction.257 Now a philosophical understanding of vision essentially involves a conception of what vision is. And the causal intuitions elicited by arguments of the first sort seem to depend on the point made explicit in arguments of the second sort, that vision is a way of informing ourselves about an objective, independently existing world. If that is right, the ‘two types’ of argument are really two different ways of making the same point—that for seeing to be awareness of an objective world, a subject's perceptions must be causally explained by that world. It is important to see what the causal link between object and perceiver is supposed to account for. The causal theory is offering two (related) accounts: an account of what causally explains a subject's experiences; and an account of what makes it the case, when S is seeing o, that it is o that S is seeing. What it is not

255

See e.g. Strawson (1979) and Evans (1980).

256

For an example of this claim, see Strawson (1979) p. 103, quoted at the beginning of § 5.2 below.

257

This point exactly parallels a point I made earlier about the causal theory of action. See Ch. 3 § 1.

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doing, by itself, is offering a general account of the content of experience. So, for example, if S has an experience which is causally explained by a rabbit, then, according to the causal theory, S is (other things being equal) seeing that rabbit and not something else. But it is no part of the causal theory that S must be seeing the rabbit as a rabbit: she may mistake it for a stone, or a hare, and so on.258

2. The Disjunctive Conception of Experience How must we think of visual experience if we are to conceive of vision in causal terms? One sort of objection to the causal theory arises from considering that question. Briefly put, the objection goes as follows: the causal theory of vision is committed to a particular conception of experiences; but that conception is objectionable; so there is no place in a satisfactory philosophy of mind for a causal theory.259 According to the objector, we ought to accept what I earlier called ‘the disjunctive conception of experience’. But (on his view) the causal theorist is committed to a ‘nondisjunctive’ view. What do these conceptions of experience come to? I start with the non-disjunctive view. Imagine a case of vision, and a corresponding hallucination. In each case, it looks to S as if something is F. Now, on the non-disjunctive view of experience there is a single sort of state of affairs common to all cases in which it looks to S as if something

258

This is a point about the relation between the content of a particular experience and its causal origin. That point is quite consistent with the view that, in certain basic cases, the content of an experience is partially determined by what normally causes experiences of that type. Having an experience which is causally explained by an F is not sufficient for seeing x as an F ; but it may be a necessary condition for seeing x as an F that one have some experiences which are causally explained by F s.

259

The objection is due to Snowdon (see (1980–1) and (1990) ). (Hyman (1992) offers an objection to the causal theory in a similar spirit.) Snowdon's formulation of the objection is in fact slightly more complicated: the causal theory of vision is committed to a particular conception of experience; the conception may in fact be unobjectionable; but there is an alternative conception which cannot be ruled out a priori; since there are no a priori grounds (in the traditional arguments, at least) for preferring the conception of experience required by the causal theory, we cannot accept the causal theory as a conceptual truth about vision (see Snowdon (1980–1) p. 208 and (1990) pp. 130–1).

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is F, whether they are cases of vision or of hallucination. So vision and hallucination have a common ingredient; that is what explains the fact that both are cases of its looking to S as if something is F. It is natural to think of the common ingredient as being an experience as of an F; and, on this view, we can think of an experience as being (in McDowell's phrase) a ‘highest common factor’ of vision and hallucination.260 So the difference between vision and hallucination is to be understood in terms of the aetiology of a subject's experiences: in vision, an experience as of an F is appropriately caused by an F; in hallucination, the experience is caused in some other way. On this view, the concept of an experience is basic, and we make sense of vision and hallucination by extension from this basic unit: a case of vision is a case in which an experience matches the world for the right sort of reason; a case of hallucination is a case in which it does not. The disjunctive conception reverses that order of explanation. What is fundamental is the idea of a state of affairs in which a subject sees something; that idea is explained in terms only of the subject and the world, without reference to any ‘inner’ entity (though not without suitable reference to the subjective character of experience; the idea of visual experience includes the idea of its being some way for the subject, of there being ‘something it is like’ to be the subject of such a state). The idea of hallucination is derivative from that of seeing; a hallucination is simply a state of affairs in which the subject is not seeing anything, but which is for her just like a case of vision. And the idea of experience, neutral between vision and hallucination, is an abstraction from the more fundamental and specific ideas of vision and hallucination. On this view, then, there is a single sort of characterization which can be applied to cases of vision and to cases of hallucination; in both, it looks to S as if something is F. But there is no single type of state of affairs common to cases of vision and of hallucination. Rather, any case of its looking to S as if something is F will be, more fundamentally and specifically, either a case of something's looking F to S, or else a case of its merely being for S as if something looked F to her. The issue between these two views is not about whether there is something common to vision and hallucination (of course there

260

See McDowell (1982) § 3.

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is—why else would appearances ever deceive?); it is about the ontological status of what is common. Should we treat what is common to vision and hallucination as an ingredient, a complete mental entity (as the non-disjunctivist says)? Or should we rather (with the disjunctivist) treat the only complete parts of mental reality as being, on the one hand, cases of vision and, on the other hand, cases of hallucination; and say that what vision and hallucination have in common is not an ingredient, but rather that both fall under the higher-level characterization ‘experience’? We might put the point like this: both conceptions are agreed that there is something common to vision and hallucination; but the disjunctive conception denies, whilst the non-disjunctive conception affirms, that there is some thing common to vision and hallucination. Some analogies may help to capture the point. There are some areas in which a non-disjunctive conception of phenomena is clearly sound. For example, suppose there are two different sorts of burn, exactly alike in the type of physical injury they involve (call it type B), but differing with respect to what produces the injury; there are sunburns, in which B is caused by exposure to the sun, and scorches, in which B is caused by proximity to a source of heat. Now consider the concepts ‘sunburn’ and ‘scorch’, and the concept ‘B’. It is clearly correct to adopt a non-disjunctive conception of burns, and to treat cases of sunburn and cases of scorching as having a common ingredient; there is a single type of state of affairs—injury of type B—common to these different types of burn. By contrast, consider the two concepts ‘photograph of S’ and ‘drawing of S’, and the concept ‘likeness of S’. In this case, it is clearly correct to treat the concept ‘likeness of S’ disjunctively. Any particular likeness of S is fundamentally, and more specifically, either a photograph of S or a drawing of S; it is a likeness of S only derivatively—in virtue of its being either a photograph or a drawing. There is something common to photographs and drawings of S; both fall under the concept ‘likeness of S’. But the concept ‘likeness of S’ does not pick out a common factor or ingredient; correspondingly, we cannot analyse the distinction between photographs and drawings by saying that a photograph of S involves a common entity (a likeness) causally produced in one sort of way, whilst a drawing of S involves the same sort of entity causally produced in a different way.

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In these examples it is clear whether a disjunctive or a non-disjunctive account is appropriate; for the case of burns, we need a non-disjunctive account, for the case of likenesses, a disjunctive one. That does not tell us what to say about experience; but it does clarify the issue. What determines whether it is right to treat vision and hallucination as having a common ingredient? Ontological questions do not have content in isolation; they need to be judged by reference to the considerations which jointly give them content. In this case, those issues will include at least the following: questions about the direction of explanation amongst the concepts of vision, hallucination, and experience; about the epistemology of perception, and about perceptual content; about phenomenology; and about the form of explanations of action in terms of visual experiences. Note also that the disjunctive conception is a direct analogue of the view that singular thoughts are Russellian in Evans's sense (i.e. that the existence and identity of a singular thought depends on the existence and identity of the thing thought about); so one would expect discussions of the issue between Russellian and nonRussellian conceptions of singular thought to bear more or less directly on the question about experience.261 I shall not attempt a detailed assessment of the arguments for and against the disjunctive conception; my main concern is to explore the impact of that conception of experience on the causal theory. But, in order to do that, we do need to see what the outlines of the case for the disjunctive conception are; for we can only understand what the position amounts to if we understand something of the motivation for it. A central motivation concerns the consequences for epistemology and content of accepting the highest-commonfactor conception. According to the disjunctivist, to think of conscious experience as a highest common factor of vision and hallucination is to think of experiences as states of a type whose intrinsic mental features are worldindependent; an intrinsic, or basic, characterization of a state of awareness will make no reference to anything external to

261

For de re accounts of singular thought, see Evans (1982) passim and McDowell (1984) and (1986). For a clear statement of the opposing, highest common factor, account of singular thought, see Blackburn (1984) Ch. 9. For comments on the relation between the disjunctive conception of experience and the de re view of singular thought, see McDowell (1986).

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the subject.262 But if that is what experience is like, the disjunctivist objects, how can it yield knowledge of an objective world beyond experience, and how can it so much as put us in a position to think about such a world?263 The line of thought is simple. Take the epistemological claim first. If knowledge is based on experience, and the intrinsic character of experience is world-independent, then it is impossible to see how we could have knowledge of the world beyond our experiences. One might hope to bridge the gap between experience and world by appeal to a theory, or by an inference to the best explanation of our experiences. But that hope is blocked when we consider the related line of thought about content. According to that line of thought, one cannot have thoughts about Fs unless: either one is (or has been) in direct cognitive contact with Fs; or one can construct a way of thinking of Fs from concepts of kinds of thing with which one is (or has been) in direct cognitive contact. Now on the non-disjunctive conception of experience we are not in direct cognitive contact with the world, since the most basic mental characterization of experience is world-independent. But it is arguable that no concept constructed solely from world-independent contents can itself be a concept of an objective world independent of thought: if that is right, then no theory, or inference to the best explanation, could get us from experience conceived as a highest common factor to thought about the world.264 In opposition to this last claim, it is often suggested that we can appeal to causation to show how experience conceived on the non-disjunctive model could ground thoughts about things in the external world. How would the appeal to causation go? One suggestion is this. ‘If world-independent experiences of a given type are regularly caused by worldly things of a given sort (Fs, say),

262

A caveat should be entered. There are some positions on which thoughts and experiences which seem to the subject to be exactly alike but which in fact concern different things do contain a common element, but on which the common element is environment-involving and therefore not ‘world-independent’. One who held such a position would resist the characterization of the highest-common-factor view just given. I say something about the possibility of such a view, the ‘hybrid conception’, at the end of this section.

263

For objections of this general form, see McDowell (1982) and (1986) and Davidson (1983) and (1989a).

264

For the same claim, see McDowell (1982) p. 477.

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then those experiences will have contents concerning Fs; so, by appeal to facts about their causal relations, we can show how an experience of that type can count as an experience as of an F.’ But the disjunctivist will not accept that; for it is plausible that experiences whose intrinsic mental character—whose most fundamental mental characterization—is world-independent cannot acquire contents concerning the world merely in virtue of the fact that they stand in causal relations with things in the world. To see that this is plausible, consider an analogy. Suppose I have experiences in which it looks to me as if people have spots of a certain kind. Those spots, and hence the experiences, are reliably caused by measles. But that causal relation does not by itself bring the concept of measles into a specification of the content of my experience; the fact that such a causal relation obtains does not mean that, where I have such an experience, it looks to me as if someone has measles. Of course, if someone knows of the causal relation between measles and spots of this kind, she may have experiences which would be accurately reported by saying, ‘It looks to S as if that person has measles.’ But that case crucially depends on the fact that the subject already has the concept of measles; it is not the mere fact that these experiences are regularly caused by people with measles that makes them experiences as of someone with measles.265 So such cases do nothing to support the thought that the mere fact that there are causal relations between, on the one hand, things in the world and, on the other, world-independent experiences (experiences whose intrinsic mental character can be

265

A defender of what is sometimes called a causal theory of content may complain that the plausibility of my comments rests on considering a very impoverished account of the relation between these experiences and measles. She will say that if we enrich the relation to include not just the mere fact that experiences of that sort are regularly caused by cases of people with measles, but also, for example, the fact that in normal circumstances such experiences are never caused by anything else, we can justify the claim that these experiences indicate the presence of measles; and then it is plausible that we have explained, in causal and counterfactual terms, how experiences whose intrinsic mental character is world-independent can be (or become) experiences as of a person with measles. But that misses the basic point. The disjunctivist can agree that, in virtue of various causal and counterfactual relations between world-independent experiences and measles, the presence of an experience of a given sort may ‘indicate’ the presence of measles, in the sense that it would indicate it to an observer who knew that those relations obtained. What she denies is that relations of that sort can themselves make it the case that such an experience indicates something about measles to the subject.

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fully characterized without using concepts of worldly things) could make those experiences experiences as of worldly things.266 A different way of appealing to causation to show how world-independent experiences could put us in a position to have thoughts about the world is this: ‘We can use our concept of causation to think of things in the external world as the causes of our experiences.’ But if we are starting from wholly world-independent resources, how could we so much as possess a concept of causation as a relation holding between the experiences we are directly aware of and mindindependent things beyond? Such a concept of causation seems to be part of what we lose in confining ourselves, at the starting-point, to resources which are genuinely world-independent. A central motivation for the disjunctive conception, then, is the thought that if we accept a non-disjunctive conception of experience, we make experience intrinsically world-independent; and that to conceive of experience in such terms is to make it unintelligible how our experience could put us in a position to have knowledge of, or even to think about, an objective, mind-independent world. Now, given that fact about its motivation, it is clear that the disjunctive conception is a thesis about experience as it features in epistemology, and about the conceptual content of experience, content which is immediately available to the thinking, reasoning subject. It is a thesis about how things stand in the ‘logical space of reasons’,267 not about how things stand in the ‘logical space of (mere) causes’. When the disjunctivist objects to the idea that experience is a highest common factor of vision and hallucination, his objection is to a common epistemic factor, an ‘epistemic intermediary’ between us and the things we suppose we see; there is no objection to a common causal factor, a merely causal intermediary between us and what we see. It follows from that that one form of argument which has been thought to threaten the disjunctive conception is in fact irrelevant to it. I have in mind the suggestion that empirical discoveries about the brain and visual system might count against the

266

The reader may want to protest that what I have just said is incompatible with my own reliance on causation in an account of content (which was suggested in n. 7 above, has been exploited in Ch. 1 and § 2 and Ch. 4 § 2, and will be developed below). There is in fact no incompatibility; I explain why in § 5.4 below.

267

See Sellars (1956) p. 299 (quoted by McDowell (1982) p. 477).

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disjunctive conception by demonstrating that there is in fact a physical ingredient common to vision and hallucination.268 But such empirical discoveries would not establish anything about the epistemology of vision; nor would they establish anything about the conceptual content of visual experience, or about the appropriate direction of explanation amongst the concepts of vision, hallucination, and experience. So to show that there are physical factors common to vision and hallucination is not to establish that there is a common factor of the sort which the disjunctivist denies. These observations are relevant to another issue. In characterizing the subjective character of experience without reference to a class of experiences conceived as internal common factors, the disjunctivist relies on such formulations as this: the content of an experience is given by the content of the judgement about how things are that the subject would be prepared to make, on the basis of that experience, in the absence of extraneous information.269 But there are phenomena which seem to show that there are effects produced in a seeing subject which cannot be characterized simply in terms of the judgements she would then be prepared to make about the environment. For example, there are cases of the following kind. S has an experience of some scene at t, on the basis of which she is prepared to form a belief with a certain content. Later on, recalling her earlier encounter, she realizes that the scene had features which she did not notice at the time; consequently, the beliefs she would now be prepared to form are richer or more detailed than the belief she would have formed at the time, although, crucially, the source of these later beliefs is the same earlier encounter. Given phenomena of that sort, we must allow that there are effects produced in a seeing subject which cannot be characterized simply in terms of the judgements she would then be prepared to make about the environment. So it seems that we will need a two-level picture like the following. Perception involves the gathering of non-conceptual information

268

For such an argument, see H. Robinson (1985) pp. 173–7. In a later article he repeats the suggestion that if science showed that ‘the very same process as produces a veridical perception would, if artificially stimulated, produce a veridical-seeming hallucination’, that would constitute an empirical argument against the disjunctive conception ((1990) p. 151). Snowdon seems to concur ((1990) pp. 130–1).

269

See Evans (1982) § 7.4—though notice that I am working with a different conception of an experience from Evans's (see n.

270

This two-level view draws heavily on the account given by Evans (1982) pp. 226–7 (see also pp. 154–9). But on one point there is an important difference. On Evans's view, ‘we may regard a perceptual experience as an informational state of the subject’, whose content is ‘non-conceptual, or non-conceptualized ’. (This is so even when the creature is a rational, concept-exercising subject. In the case of such a subject, there is indeed ‘conscious experience’; but the content of that experience itself remains non-conceptual; concepts come in only the judgements the concept-exerciser makes on the basis of its experiences.) By contrast, the two-level view sketched in the text involves experiences with conceptual content; and that is, presumably, how we must view experiences if the disjunctivist's epistemic arguments about experience are to be relevant.

270

below).

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by the senses, only some of which, that which is available to the subject's judgement-making and reasoning, is conceptualized. So, when it looks to S as if so-and-so, there are two levels of description: S is in a non-conceptual state, and S is enjoying an experience with a conceptual content; and typically (or perhaps always) the informational state will embody more information (in non-conceptual form) than figures in the conceptual content of the experience.19 In accepting the idea of a non-conceptual informational state, does this two-level picture concede a common factor conception of experience? Not if my earlier characterization of disjunctivism was correct. For, again, the disjunctivist is making a claim about the characterization of experience as it figures in an account of how things are for the subject, of the subject's thought and knowledge. To move to an account of sub-personal, non-conceptual information-processing is, from the point of view of the disjunctivist's project, to change the subject.270 I have said what the disjunctive conception amounts to, and outlined arguments for accepting it. Given what I have said, it is clear why the disjunctive conception is appealing from the interpretationist point of view, and why it fits neatly into the interpretationist understanding of the mental. Most generally, disjunctivism gives a radically anti-Cartesian account of visual experience; and interpretationism is a radically anti-Cartesian conception of the mind. Both share the view that we cannot intelligibly think of mental phenomena as internal states and events,

270

In a similar vein, Peter Smith ((1991) pp. 195–6) points out the possibility of a view which is disjunctive at the conceptual level, but accepts the common factor conception at the non-conceptual level. But he characterizes this possibility as opening the path ‘to a non-disjunctive account of perceptual experience’, whereas, if I am right that the issue between the disjunctive and non-disjunctive conceptions is an issue at the conceptual level, the possibility that Smith and I both describe would leave us firmly with a disjunctive account of perceptual experience.

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whose character is wholly independent of the world beyond the subject. More specifically, the general arguments for interpretationism included the following points against the Cartesian conception: that it would make it impossible to see how we could conceive of others as having thoughts and experiences (the semantic problem of other minds) and a fortiori impossible to understand the possibility of knowledge of other minds (the epistemic problem of other minds).271 And the conception of the mental which leads to these problems simultaneously leads to the problems which help to motivate the disjunctive conception: a concept of experience as essentially internal and world-independent would make it impossible to see how experience could put us in a position to think about, or have knowledge of, the world ‘beyond’ our minds.272 The general argument for interpretationism also suggests a different way of attacking the non-disjunctive conception of experience (though I will not develop it here). The interpretationist claimed that a Cartesian conception of mental phenomena would make it impossible to have concepts of those phenomena at all, even in the first-person case. By the same token, one might argue, a non-disjunctive conception of experience would seem to make it impossible to identify experiences, or to sort them into types.273

271

See Ch. 1 § 3.3.

272

I put ‘beyond’ in scare quotes for the following reason. On the interpretationist view, the mental is conceived as essentially world-involving; so there is no need to see the world as being beyond our minds, or to see experiences and thoughts as being concealed inside a person's body. But, on a Cartesian view, with the mental conceived worldindependently, ‘beyond’ and ‘inside’ do apply, quite literally.

273

There are two points here: that, with experience conceived in a wholly world-independent way, we could not introspectively identify individual experiences; and that, with experience so conceived, we could not introspectively identify and reidentify types of experience. Those are, respectively, the claims of what David Pears has called Wittgenstein's first private language argument (for which, see e.g. Wittgenstein (1958b) p. 71) and Wittgenstein's second private language argument (for which, see his (1958a) § § 243 ff. and (1968) at e.g. pp. 288, 290–1). (For the ‘first and second private language argument’ terminology, and an account of the parallel between the two arguments, see Pears (1987) p. 235; and for an account of the first private language argument, see ibid. Ch. 10, especially pp. 245–8.) I mention this partly because the main point of Snowdon's argument against the non-disjunctive conception (in his (1980–1) § V) is this: if someone is seeing an F, then the only demonstrative identification she can make when she looks ahead and says, ‘That's a Φ’, is an identification of that F : in particular, she cannot be regarded as demonstratively identifying an element of a visual impression, for there simply is no way of making a demonstrative identification of this latter kind. And that seems very close to Wittgenstein's first private language argument.

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At this stage I should enter a caveat about the way in which I have been characterizing the highest-common-factor conception. The assumption has been that, if we say that experience is a highest common factor of vision and hallucination, then we must allow that an intrinsic, or basic, characterization of experience will be world-independent; it will mention nothing external to the subject. But one might try to resist that thought without accepting a fully disjunctive conception of experience. The idea of such a hybrid conception would be to accept, with the disjunctivist, that experience is world-dependent, but reject the disjunctivist's stronger claim that experience is entity-dependent. So the hybridist will accept that the character of our concepts of general properties and kinds is partially determined by the nature of the normal instances in our environment: the content of the experience I report by saying ‘It looks as if there is a cat in front of me’ is different from the content of an experience reported in the same words by my Twin Earth doppelgänger. But, contra the disjunctive conception, the identity of the particular individual I see does not enter the specification of the intrinsic character of my experience; there will be no mental difference between the experiences I have when I see cat x, qualitatively indistinguishable cat y, or am merely hallucinating a cat.274 The hybrid and disjunctive conceptions, then, are agreed that we cannot give an adequate account of the (conceptual) content of an experience which captures cognitive significance and determines the right set of truth conditions, but does not presuppose the existence and identity of the sorts of things experienced. The issue is whether we can give an adequate account of the content of an experience which captures cognitive significance and determines truth conditions, but does not presuppose the existence and identity of the actual thing experienced. The disjunctivist maintains that we cannot; the hybridist disagrees. Having noted the room for disagreement at this point, I shall not try to adjudicate the issue. I will concentrate on the fully disjunctive conception; for the disjunctive conception offers the hardest case for the causalist.

274

An example of the hybrid conception can be found in the work of Tyler Burge. See especially Burge (1982).

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3. An Objection to the Causal Theory It has been argued that the disjunctive conception of experience threatens the causal theory of vision.275 There are two ways in which the threat seems to arise. First, there is the idea that the disjunctive conception undermines the motivation for a causal theory.276 Recall the first form of the argument for the causal theory.277 The idea was that the best explanation of why an object is not seen in certain familiar problem cases is that it is not causally affecting the subject; the problem cases show that what we need to add to the fact that it looks to S as if something is F, in order to have a case of vision, is the fact that o is causally responsible for its looking to S as if something is F. Against this, the disjunctivist offers an alternative explanation of why the objects in the problem cases are not seen. According to the disjunctivist, when S sees o, there is a state of affairs of the type, o's looking F to S. And that allows us to give a satisfying explanation of why, in the problem cases, S's experience is not a case of seeing, without appeal to causation. The explanation is this: we know in these cases that if o were removed or occluded, S would still seem to see it; that shows that the experience in such a case cannot be an instance of o's looking F to S; for, if it were, S would stop having the experience when o was removed. The availability of that alternative explanation undermines the claim that the causal theory gives the best (or only) explanation of why there is no seeing in the problem cases: so there is no need to suppose a causal element in vision. The second argument goes further, and claims that the disjunctive conception leaves no room for any causal element; for, it says, if the disjunctive conception is right, there is nothing, in a case of vision, which could plausibly be regarded as an effect.278 For there to be a causal relation there must be two separate states or events, one of which causes the other. But if the disjunctive conception is correct, the presence of an object and the experience S has in seeing it are not two separate states of affairs; the experience is a case of

275

See Snowdon (1980–1) and (1990). For other statements of the assumption that a causal theory of vision requires a non-disjunctive conception of experience, see e.g. Dancy (1985) p. 175 and (1988) pp. 19–20, and H. Robinson (1985) pp. 173–7.

276

See Snowdon (1980–1) especially p. 202; (1990) p. 129.

277

See § 1 above.

278

See Snowdon (1980–1) especially § § IV and V; (1990) especially § V.

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o's looking F to S; and that is a single state of the world, not a state of S which might be produced in her by the action of o. So, on the disjunctive conception, an experience is simply the wrong sort of thing to be the effect of a seen object: it does not even make sense ‘to regard the looks-state as something causally produced by the seen object’; to treat such an experience as an effect is ‘absurd’.279 I will call the view that the disjunctive conception rules out a causal analysis incompatibilism, and the opposing view (according to which it is possible to combine the disjunctive conception with the causal theory) compatibilism. If I am right to associate the disjunctive conception with the interpretationist conception of the mental in general, then compatibilism concerning the disjunctive conception and the causal theory of vision will be a special case of a more general compatibilism about interpretationism and causalism in the philosophy of mind; and similarly, mutatis mutandis, for incompatibilism. The disjunctive conception, then, issues two challenges to the causal theorist. Reversing the order in which I introduced them, those challenges are: first, to say how the causal theory could be true if the disjunctive conception is correct; and second, to explain what motivates the causal theory once we accept the disjunctive conception.

4. Compatibilism To show that the disjunctive conception can be combined with the causal theory, we need to produce a substantive causal theory, which spells out exactly how we are to make sense of the causal element in vision. We saw in Chapter 3 § 2 that there are two key questions about the form of any substantive causal theory. Posing those questions for the case of vision, we can ask the following. (i) The causal theory says that, when S sees o, o is causally responsible for a state of affairs in which it looks to S as if so-and-so. What makes that a case of causal responsibility, or causal explanation? If we say that vision is causal in virtue of the presence of causal relations between distinct events or states of affairs, we must identify the cause and the effect, and we must say

279

Snowdon (1980–1) pp. 200, 201.

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something about how the one brings the other about. If we say that vision can be causal without being underpinned by relations of causality between distinct states or events, we must say something about why it is correct to think of vision in causal terms at all. (ii) How is the causal element in vision related to the physical? Here we must choose between a mentalist and a physicalist account. The physicalist asserts, and the mentalist denies, that the causal element in vision can be made intelligible only if we draw on physical facts about the subject. I said in Chapter 3 that these issues about the form of substantive causal theories could be discussed at both a general and a detailed level. We have already seen something of what can be said at a general level. In this section, I will augment those considerations by a detailed discussion of the case of vision. For the most part, I shall concentrate on the question about mentalism and physicalism. In tackling that question, we can draw some conclusions about the other; I will comment on them in § 4.3. I start by considering the mentalist alternative.

4.1. The Mentalist Alternative The mentalist proposal is this. ‘The entire causal story implicit in saying that something is a case of vision can be told in mental language; in showing how vision is causal, we do not need to rely on any non-mental characterizations.’ On this view, then, seeing is a basic, unanalysable, relation, an original phenomenon of causality. Now, to say that o's looking F to S is a causal state of affairs is, presumably, to say that, when o looks F to S, o causally affects S in some way. So we can ask, ‘What is the effect which an object causes when it affects a subject in such a way that she sees it?’ The mentalist will say that the effect in vision is, simply, o's looking F to S. We do not need to appeal to any non-mental characterization; in particular, we do not have to appeal to a description of S's experience as a physical state or event. All that is required in a causal relation is that cause and effect should be distinguishable states or events; and that condition can be met at the level of mental descriptions. On the one hand, there is o's presence, which is a fact independent of S and whatever is going on with her; on the other hand, there is the effect, o's looking F to S.

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There is a familiar objection to this proposal—the claim that it violates a (supposedly) Humean requirement, according to which neither cause nor effect should be inferable a priori from the other. For, if we treat a case of o's looking F to S as an effect, with o as its cause, then we can tell a priori, by knowing the character of the effect, what its cause was. One sort of response to this objection is the following. ‘As it stands, the Humean requirement is mistaken. Since we can redescribe causes in terms of their effects and vice versa, there is no prohibition on a priori relations between causes and effects. For consider: “[S]uppose ‘a caused b’ is true. Then the cause of b = a; so substituting, we have ‘The cause of b caused b’, which is analytic. The truth of a causal statement depends on what events are described; its status as analytic or synthetic depends on how the events are described.”280 The example shows that we cannot conclude that a statement is not causal from the fact that either cause or effect can be inferred a priori from the other.’ That response is decisive against the ‘Humean’ constraint as originally stated. But it does not show that there was no good thought behind the traditional constraint. The fundamental intuition is the thought that, if a caused b, then a and b must be numerically distinct events. That is a thought which we should accept. And it is a thought which we might express thus: [C] If a caused b, then the fundamental descriptions of a and b must be such that, under those descriptions, neither one can be inferred a priori from the other. Now suppose that, when a and b are naturally picked out in our ordinary vocabulary, we can make a priori inferences from one to the other. Someone who thinks that a and b are, none the less, causally related, has two options. One option is to say that the possibility of the inference depends on the fact that a and b have been picked out in some nonfundamental way; they could be characterized in more fundamental terms, and, if they were, then no a priori inference would be possible; that would show that a and b were, after all, suitably independent. The other option is to deny principle [C]: the descriptions of a and b which create the possibility of a priori inferences from one to the other are their

280

Davidson (1963) p. 14.

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most fundamental descriptions; but the ineliminable presence of internal relations of this sort is no bar to the presence of causal relations.281 Now the mentalism we are considering must take this second view. To take the first view, we would need to find a redescription of the effect (o's looking F to S) which would show it to be suitably independent of its cause (the presence of o). But what could such a redescription be? The mentalist cannot appeal to any less specific mental characterization of the effect; for the point of the disjunctive conception is that ‘o's looking F to S’ is itself the most specific, fundamental mental characterization of S's experience. And she cannot appeal to a physical characterization of the effect; that is just what the mentalist excludes in insisting that the causal relation must be explained entirely in mental terms. So the mentalist must deny the principle [C]. And, in the face of that, the objector will simply insist that [C] is a genuine condition of our concept of causation; it is partially definitive of the difference between b's causally depending on a and its depending on a non-causally. The mentalist might say two things against [C]. First, if an a priori inference were possible from a putative cause to its putative effect (under their most fundamental descriptions), that really would undermine the claim that the relation was causal; if the occurrence of b could be inferred a priori from the occurrence of a, it would not be a contingent, causal fact that b occurred (or will occur) given a. But the mentalist's compatibilism does not permit an inference in that direction; the cause is the presence of o, and it is not a priori, given that o is in front of S, that an appropriate effect (o's looking Φ to S) will be produced. [C] is, therefore, too strong; the only distinctness condition which is warranted is the requirement that, under their fundamental descriptions, there should be no a priori inference from cause to effect. And the mentalist proposal meets that requirement. The second possibility would be to question the pedigree of [C] as a requirement on causal relations involving mental phenomena.282

281

This appears to be the view of Searle. He writes, of instances of ‘intentional causation’, that ‘there seems to be a logical or internal relation between cause and effect. And I do not mean just that there is a logical relation between the description of the cause and the description of the effect; but rather that the cause itself quite independently of any description is logically related to the effect quite independently of any description’ ((1983) p. 121).

282

See Hinton (1973) p. 80.

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[C], it might be said, is a constraint on causal relations which is derived from our knowledge of physical causes and effects. The point about the physical in this context is that it is a realm of autonomous entities, things whose intrinsic natures are independent of any other things. Since [C] is derived from the physical, we cannot assume that it applies to causal relations involving mental phenomena, unless we model our conception of the mental on our conception of the physical, and think of the mental, like the physical, as a realm of autonomous and self-standing entities. And the whole thrust of the disjunctive conception (and of interpretationism more generally) is against such a view of the mental. So the idea that [C] must apply to causal relations involving mental phenomena is just a prejudice, born of the tendency to think of the mental on the model of the physical. I have some sympathy with these comments about [C], and with the mentalist form of compatibilism they have been used to support. But I also have doubts about the position. For one thing, it is not clear what really motivates the mentalist position—a point which takes us back to the general reasons for preferring a broadly physicalist approach to causation in the philosophy of mind.283 There are general reasons for thinking that no story about mental properties and possessors of mental properties can be told in exclusively mental terms; for a possessor of mental properties is essentially the possessor also of non-mental (and, in our world, physical) properties.284 But if that is so, why should we want to characterize a mental phenomenon, like vision, without making any reference to its physical nature, and why should we think it is possible? Furthermore, there are reasons for thinking that where something produces a mental change or effect, the mental change cannot be the only change there is; there must also be some non-mental change.285 But then, why should we think we can make sense of the idea of a affecting b mentally without thinking of a affecting b in some non-mental respect? Certainly, these points do not add up to a refutation of the possibility of any mentalist form of compatibilism. But they do give us reasons for thinking that a physicalist form of compatibilism is likely to be preferable.

283

See Ch. 3 § 3.

284

See Ch. 1 § 3.3.

285

See Ch. 2 § 3.

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4.2. The Physicalist Alternative The physicalist accepts that the arguments for the disjunctive conception show that there is no mental factor common to cases of vision and of hallucination. And she accepts that we cannot satisfactorily understand the causal element in vision if our only description of the effect is as a case of o's looking F to S; for in that case we have no identifications of cause and effect which show them to be suitably independent of one another. But, she thinks, if we exploit a physical description of the effect, we can, in a familiar way, show cause and effect to be suitably independent. The proposal would be this. ‘The effect in vision has a mental description and a physical description. It can be described in mental terms as an experience—o's looking F to S. But in physical terms it can be described as (the onset of) a physical state of S, a physical state of a type which is common to cases of vision and of hallucination. When we describe the effect in this way, we can see that the seen object and the experience it causes are genuinely distinct existences, so we satisfy the requirement of independence imposed by the constraint [C]. An experience, then, is a physical as well as a mental phenomenon; and our account of experience will be disjunctive at the mental level but non-disjunctive at the physical level.’286 On that formulation, the physicalist position is claiming that some mental states or events—experiences—are identical with physical states or events. But the identity claim is not essential to the proposal. A weaker relation, such as constitution, would suffice. Allowing for that proviso, the physicalist proposal would take the following form: when S sees o, (i) S has an experience, whose fundamental mental description is o's looking Φ to S, (ii) that experience is identical with (or constituted by) a physical event (or set of events) in S, and (iii) that physical event (or set of events) is caused by o. But is this really a form of compatibilism? We can distinguish between an event relationally described and an event, or state of affairs, which is itself the obtaining of a relation. (An example of the first—an event relationally described—would be the

286

For the reasons given in § 2 above, the fact that there is, on this view, a physical factor common to vision and hallucination is quite compatible with the disjunctive conception of experience.

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description of a as ‘the cause of b’; and an example of the second—a state of affairs which is itself relational—would be Sarah's standing to the left of Julia.) Now one thing which made the disjunctive conception of experience look bold and interesting was the idea that a perceptual experience is actually a relational state of affairs—o's looking F to S; that is what underpins the idea that, on the disjunctive conception, an object is actually a component of the experience S has when she sees it. But the present form of compatibilism seems to give up that thesis in favour of the much less radical view that an experience is an event or state relationally described; a perceptual experience is a physical event or state internal to S, which is described in terms of its cause, o. If that is what disjunctivism amounts, to, then it is hardly surprising that it is compatible with the causal theory; in fact (with ‘described in terms of its cause’), it requires the causal theory. Now it is not clear to me that the considerations which motivate the disjunctive conception do in fact require the more radical view that a perceptual experience is itself the obtaining of a relation between S and o. As far as the epistemological argument for disjunctivism goes, for example, what is important is that we avoid making knowledge of the external world dependent on an inference from world-independent resources. And even if experiences are internal physical events relationally described, the epistemological problem will not arise if the most fundamental mental characterizations of those experiences are already world-involving. However, suppose that the disjunctivist does insist on the more radical idea that ‘o's looking F to S’ picks out a relational state of affairs.287 A physicalist compatibilism is still possible, along the following lines. ‘The mental state of affairs, o's looking F to S, is not a state or event at the end of a causal chain of events initiated by o; it is, rather, a (larger-sized) event or state of affairs which itself consists in the whole chain of physical events (not merely events within S) by which o causally affects S. The experience is the complete state of affairs, o causally affecting S. The ultimate effect in this causal state of affairs—the state or event which lies at the end of the causal chain which starts with o—is something physical in S; but that ultimate effect is neither identical with nor

287

It seems clear that Snowdon intends the more radical idea: ‘in perceptions [looks-judgements] are made true by some feature of a certain relation to an object, a non-inner experience’ ((1990) p. 130 (emphasis added)).

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constitutive of the experience itself.’ So this form of physicalist compatibilism makes the following claim: if S sees o, then (i) S has an experience whose fundamental mental description is, o's looking Φ to S, (ii) there is a chain of physical effects in S, which itself forms the end of a causal chain initiated by o, and (iii) o's looking Φ to S (or is constituted by) the whole chain of physical events involved in o's causally affecting S (not just that part of the chain within S). However, if we say that o's looking F to S is a relational state of affairs, with o as a component, can we still say that o is causally responsible for the experience? I think we can. One possibility would be to say simply that o causally explains the occurrence (or persistence) of the experience, whilst agreeing that o does not cause the experience (since the experience is not something which lies at the end of a causal chain initiated by the object). But there may be a case for saying something stronger. David Lewis has introduced the idea of piecemeal causation. A case of piecemeal causation is a case in which, by exploiting the idea of causal relations amongst the parts of a whole, we can talk of the whole causing one of its later parts. For example, ‘when an early part of the depression causes a bankruptcy which is a later part of the depression, we may . . . say simply that the depression causes the bankruptcy’.288 Similarly, perhaps, we can talk of a part causing the whole of which it is a part: we might talk of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, for example, as the cause of the Pacific War of which it was a part. And if that way of talking is legitimate, then we can say, similarly, that o is a cause of the relational state of affairs, o's looking F to S, of which it is a component.289

4.3. Conclusions In § 4.1 I outlined a mentalist form of compatibilism. In § 4.2 I have described two forms of physicalist compatibilism: one form

288

Lewis (1986b) p. 174.

289

I should say that the possibility of a compatibilism of this sort is not something which Snowdon would contest (though he would deny that it is a conceptual truth about vision). In his (1980–1), he allows that it is in fact ‘physically necessary for S to see o that o have an effect on S ’, and suggests that we might ‘treat the seeing as the affecting’ (p. 208). (See also (1990) p. 125.) I am suggesting that, when we treat the seeing as the affecting, we can also legitimately treat o as being causally responsible for the perceptual experience, o 's looking F to S. But other than that, I take this last form of physicalist compatibilism to be close to the form of causalism which Snowdon accepts as an empirical truth about vision.

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treats the experience in a case of seeing as being (or being constituted by) an event or state (or a set of events or states) relationally described; the other treats an experience as an event or state of affairs which is itself the obtaining of a relation. For the reasons suggested at the end of § 4.1, I am inclined to favour a physicalist account. Now the causal theory is often glossed as the view that when we see things, the things we see cause experiences in us. My initial formulation was weaker; I spoke only of o's being causally responsible for a state of affairs reportable by a sentence of the form, ‘It looks to S as if so and so.’ One way in which that formulation is weaker is that it does not require that we think of an experience as a state of affairs internal to S. Another way in which it is weaker is that ‘causally responsible for’ suggests ‘causally explains’ rather than ‘causes’; and, as we have seen, if we think of a causal explanation as being, simply, a story about causes, there is a good deal of flexibility about the exact form of the story told by any given sort of causal explanation. None the less, one might wonder whether or not the forms of compatibilism which I have suggested vindicate the common gloss. In each case, we can certainly say that when S sees o, the presence of o causally explains its looking to S as if o is F. But the different forms of compatibilism will give different accounts of what underpins that explanation and makes it true. On the mentalist view, when S sees o, o causes S's experience; what we cannot say is that o causes an experience in S; for the mental state of affairs, o's looking F to S is not internal to S. On the second view, a perceptual experience is treated as a physical event or state relationally described: when S sees o, it is unproblematically true that o causes experiences in S; for o causes a physical effect in S, and that physical effect is (or is constitutive of) the experience. On the third view, a perceptual experience is a relational state of affairs; what o causes in S is a physical effect which is neither identical with nor constitutive of the experience. I suggested at the end of 4.2 that we might still say, in this case, that the object causes the experience of which it is a part. But even if we rejected the ideas about piecemeal causation which are needed to support that suggestion, we could still accept: first, that o's looking F to S is (or is constituted by) o's causally affecting S; and second, that o causally explains the experience, for an explanation of why the experience occurred (or continued) will make reference to o's causally affecting S.

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So each of the forms of compatibilism I have described does make sense of the idea that, when S sees o, o is causally responsible for its looking to S as if something is F. And it is at least arguable that each form also makes sense of this version of the common gloss on the causal theory—‘when S sees o, o causes S's experiences’.

5. The Conceptual Claim Suppose we accept one of the compatibilist positions of § 4. We then face the second challenge for the causalist: what reason is there, given the disjunctive conception, to think that the compatibilist's causal claim is a conceptual truth about vision, rather than, for example, an a posteriori necessity? I think there are two ways of showing that its causal character is indeed part of the concept of vision. The first is to consider our ordinary concept of vision and show that grasp of the idea that something which is seen is causally affecting the subject is an essential part of mastery of the concept. The second is to show that the idea of vision as a causal process is contained in the idea of vision as a way of informing ourselves about an independently existing world. I will consider the points in order.

5.1. Causal Conditions as Part of the Concept of Vision The view that it is an empirical, but not a conceptual, truth that vision is causal must involve something like the following picture. ‘We have a concept of vision which can be specified in mental terms, without making any particular assumptions about causation in general, or physical causal processes in particular. Mastery of the concept of vision, therefore, gives us the resources to say what is involved in S's seeing o without assuming anything about causation or the physical. As a matter of fact, whenever the conceptual conditions for seeing are satisfied, the seen object is causally affecting the perceiver. But that fact is not something which one is required to learn in learning the concept of vision.’ But this position seems to me to be untenable. In the first place, I do not think we can hold that there is a

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sharp division between mental and physical aspects of vision, so that one could have a complete grasp of the mental concept of vision yet lack any idea that seeing is, or depends on, a physical process, or that it is causal. There seems no prospect for an account of what it is to be a perceiver which does not include the fact that perception has a physical nature. And there is no prospect for an understanding of vision which does not include the causal notions that an experience cannot be a case of seeing o if it could not have been caused by o, or if it was demonstrably caused by something other than o. Mastery of the concept of vision, in other words, directly involves the mastery of causal notions and causal conditions. For example, if one has the concept of vision, one must know that S will stop seeing something if she shuts her eyes, or if we interpose something opaque between her and the object, or if the object is moved away; and to know that is to know that something cannot be seen if it is prevented from, or cannot be, causally affecting S. However, to show that one must master causal conditions in mastering the concept of vision, and that one must be sensitive to causal facts in applying the concept, is not yet to show that the causal theory is right. In the first place, someone might agree, for example, that mastery of the concept of vision requires mastery of its blocking conditions, but claim that all that enters the concept of vision is the idea that you cannot see x if x is blocked from view, not the idea that to block x from view is to prevent it from causally affecting you. In the second place, someone might agree that there are various conditions about how S's experience cannot be caused if S is to be seeing o, without conceding the positive condition that, for S to see o, o must be causally affecting S.290 For example, causalist and non-causalist agree that S's experience cannot be a case of vision if her eyes are closed. But they give different explanations of why the fact that a subject's eyes were closed defeats the claim that this was a case of vision. The causalist says that it is a conceptual requirement for vision that experiences must be causally explained by the things seen; the fact that S's eyes

290

Stoutland makes the parallel claim about action: when we say that S 's behaviour was intentional, ‘[w]e may be committed to many open-ended claims about his behaviour not having certain sorts of causes, but neither the evidence nor the truth-conditions for psychological descriptions require, in general, that the behaviour have any particular causes’ ((1985) p. 58).

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were closed is a defeating condition because it shows that her experience cannot have been causally explained by o. The non-causalist says that the fact that S's eyes were closed defeats the claim that S saw o because it is simply built into the concept of vision that one cannot see when one's eyes are closed: the concept of vision has various defeating conditions, of which this is one; and that is a basic fact about the concept which cannot, and need not, be explained. We can reply to both these points. First, concerning the concept of blocking. We can plausibly claim that the notion of blocking just is, itself, a causal notion; it is a distortion to say that the idea of preventing one thing affecting another is something over and above the idea of blocking.291 Second, there are some cases in which it is right to say that certain features are basic to a concept, and cannot be explained: for example, the reason why the relation of light blue to dark blue is the relation of different shades of the same colour, whereas the relation of dark blue to purple is the relation of different colours, really is that that is simply how our system of colour concepts works. But that sort of answer seems inadequate for the case of vision and its defeating conditions. The concept of vision has a range of different defeating conditions. It is compelling to ask what unifies those conditions, what explains why the concept has just the conditions of application it does.292 Now the non-causalist cannot give any answer to that question. For him, the defeating conditions of vision are defeating conditions simply in virtue of being built into the concept of vision; there is no further account to be given, and nothing which unifies them. But it is implausible to think that all these conditions are separate and individually built into the concept, so that it is simply an arbitrary matter that our concept of vision has just the defeating conditions it does. And it is difficult to reconcile that idea with our ability to recognize new conditions as defeating the application of the concept of vision, or not, simply on the basis of our possession of the concept. By contrast, the causal theory offers a satisfying

291

The concept of blocking, in other words, belongs to the class of causal concepts mentioned in Ch. 3 § 2 (see especially the text associated with nn. 18 and 25). (Cf. the last sentence of Anscombe (1971) : ‘The most neglected of the key topics in this subject [namely, causation] are: interference and prevention’ (p. 147).

292

A parallel point applies to the suggestion that we can understand the concept of blocking in non-causal terms.

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account of what unifies the various defeating conditions and allows us to recognize new ones.293 I would argue, then, that we can see that the concept of o's looking some way to S is a concept of o's causally affecting S by reflecting on the conditions one has to master to count as possessing the concept of vision. But we need to press the enquiry further; even if we can establish that our concept of vision is causal, we naturally want to ask why it is, what the point is of having a concept with this essentially causal element. Answering that question introduces the second reason for the causalist's conceptual claim.

5.2. The Kantian Argument Strawson writes: The idea of the presence of the thing as accounting for, or being responsible for, our perceptual awareness of it is implicit in the pre-theoretical scheme from the very start. For we think of perception as a way, indeed the basic way, of informing ourselves about the world of independently existing things: we assume, that is to say, the general reliability of our perceptual experiences; and that assumption is the same as the assumption of a general causal dependence of our perceptual experiences on the independently existing things we take them to be of. The thought of my fleeting perception as a perception of a continuously and independently existing thing implicitly contains the thought that if the thing had not been there, I should not even have seemed to perceive it.294 The argument here might be summarized thus: (i) if perception is to be a way of informing ourselves about an objective world it must be reliable; (ii) if perception is to be reliable, our perceptual experiences must depend on the world; (iii) the assumption that our perceptual experiences depend on the world is the assumption that they are causally explained by the world. Now one response to this sort of argument would be to deny the initial premiss, and maintain that perception is not essentially a way of informing ourselves about the world at all. But the two responses I want to focus on both accept the starting-point of the Kantian argument (the thought that the idea of perception is the idea of a way of informing ourselves about the world), and its first

293

Snowdon raises a similar worry about an account of vision which he considers (and is inclined to reject) ((1980–1) p. 200).

294

Strawson (1979) p. 103.

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stage ((i) above). The first response questions the final transition (in stage (iii) of Strawson's argument) from the claim that our perceptions must depend on the world to the claim that they must be causally explained by the world. The second response questions the transition (in stage (ii)) from the claim that our perceptions are reliable to the claim that they must depend on the world.295

5.3. Non-Causal Dependence The first response to the Kantian argument takes a position directly analogous to the non-causalist position about action.296 It starts with the observation that there are many sorts of non-causal dependence, where non-causal principles support counterfactuals. For example, my having broken the law depends on my having parked on the yellow lines (if I had not parked there, I would not have broken the law), and the fact that this ball was a no-ball depends on the bowler's having overstepped the crease (if the bowler had not overstepped the crease, it would not have been a no-ball). There is dependence here, but it is not causal; rather, the fact that I parked on the yellow lines constitutively makes it the case that my parking was a breach of the law; and the fact that the bowler overstepped the crease constitutes the ball's being a no-ball. Similarly, it may be said, we can see the necessary dependence in the case of vision non-causally too. What needs explaining is the reliability of perception. Now the reliability of perception amounts to this: that, by and large, it only seems to S as if p when p is in fact the case. And that is guaranteed by the following constitutive principle of content attribution: [P] The content of an experience of a given type is (partially) determined by the nature of the circumstances in which S normally has experiences of that type. It follows directly from this principle that experience could not normally be misleading; in other words, that perception is reliable. So the reliability of perception is the result of a relationship between world and experience; but the relationship is that the world constitutively determines the content of experience, not that the

295

Both responses are mentioned by Snowdon (1980–1) pp. 196–7.

296

See Ch. 3 § 1.

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world causally produces experiences.297 And the non-causal sense of dependence captured by [P] is the only sense in which we need to think of our perceptions as depending on the independently existing things we take them to be of. However, a non-causal account of that sort seems inadequate, for the same reason that the non-causal account of action was inadequate; namely, that if the only sort of explanation of experiences we have is the sort of non-causal explanation underpinned by [P], something essential is missed out. On the causal view, the causal relation between object and perceiver plays a role in three kinds of explanation: it causally explains the occurrence, or persistence, of S's experience; it figures in an account of which thing S is seeing; and, in a causal version of a principle like [P], it contributes to an explanation of the content of S's experience.298 But the non-causal view omits the first form of explanation; it offers no naturalistic explanation of the occurrence or persistence of experiences at all. To say that S had an experience as of an F because circumstances were normal and there was an F in front of him exploits [P] to tell us why, given that S had an experience, it was an experience as of an F; but it does not explain why the event of S's having an experience occurred (or why the state of S's having an experience persisted). Now, like the non-causalist about action, someone whose only explanations of experience are the non-causal explanations underpinned by [P] may take one of two positions about explaining the occurrence of experiences. She may maintain that the only explanation of an experience which interests philosophy of mind is the explanation of why it has the content or significance it does, so that there simply is no philosophical task of explaining the occurrence of experiences; causal explanation is the task of psychology or neurophysiology. But such a view seems hard to motivate. It is a datum that experiences are occurrences; where there is an occurrence there is at least the possibility of an explanation of that occurrence; and where there is an explanation of an occurrence, there is a legitimate philosophical question about the

297

An anti-causal view of this general form can be found in White (1961).

298

It is important to notice that [P] is a non-causal principle. That makes it crucially different from the similar-sounding principle I discuss in § 5.4 below, which explains the content of an experience (say) partially in terms of what normally causes experiences of that type.

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form of the explanation. Alternatively, the anti-causalist may claim that she can explain the occurrence of experiences, but that the explanations are non-causal. But what would a non-causal explanation of the occurrence of an experience be? Certainly, [P] will not underpin a non-causal explanation of the occurrence of an experience: once we spell out in detail which circumstances are normal circumstances and which observers are normal observers, it cannot be anything but a contingent, causal truth that observers of that type in circumstances of that sort tend to have experiences.

5.4. Occasionalism Suppose that God simultaneously produces both things in the world and experiences in us which truly tell us about them; would not that be a situation in which, contrary to the causalist's claim, our perceptions reliably informed us about a world on which they were not causally dependent? In Michael Dummett's statement of this position: ‘If someone believes, with Malebranche, that the presence of the object and my perception of it are joint effects of some further cause, his belief does not violate the concept of perception, so long as he allows that my perception supplies a reason for taking the object to be there’.299 A response to that argument would need to show that it is only if experiences are caused by things in the world that they can inform us about that world. Now if one is to be informed about some area of reality, one must have concepts of the things and kinds one is informed about; one must be in a position to grasp thoughts and form beliefs about them. So the causalist could defend the claim that experiences can inform us about the world only if they are causally dependent on it by arguing that a subject who was causally isolated from the world could not even possess concepts of the things and kinds in the world. The principle that the causalist needs is that, at some level, it is only if one is (or has been) in causal contact with Fs that one can have the concept of an F. As Davidson puts it, ‘we must, in the plainest and methodologically most basic cases, take the objects of a belief to be the causes of that belief’.300 This is an extremely

299

Dummett (1979) pp. 35–6. (Dummett credits the point to John Foster.)

300

Davidson (1983) pp. 317–18. For similar claims about perceptual experience, see also Burge (1986b) especially pp. 130–1.

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plausible principle, embodying the obvious thought that, in the most basic, unreflective cases, one is in a position to think about things only because one is in a position to interact with, and be affected by, them. Of course, the principle needs to be restricted; for it is clearly possible to possess concepts of some properties with which one has had no causal contact, by having a specification of them in simpler terms. And we need to give an account of the sort of ‘causal contact’ required for concept possession; how much causal contact with Fs is needed, and how vicarious can the contact be? Furthermore, causal contact with Fs will be only a necessary, and not a sufficient, condition for having the concept of an F; possession of the concept will also require appropriate inferential dispositions, for example. All this means that there will be many different specific versions of the causalist's key principle. But we need not consider the (no doubt very substantial) differences of detail here. For the anti-causalist must deny every version of the principle; she holds that it is conceptually possible for experiences to inform a subject about a world with no part of which she has ever, or could ever, causally interact, however remotely. The challenge for the anti-causalist is then this: what reason is there to see the experiences in the occasionalist picture as having contents about the world, rather than as informing the subject only about themselves, or, at best, about the common cause of which they and the states of ‘the world’ are the joint upshot? I do not know how to show conclusively that that challenge could not be met. What I can do is to give reasons for being sceptical about the possibility of meeting it. Before doing that, however, I should address a worry about the coherence of my overall position. The worry is this. In the current section I am proposing to support the causal theory of vision by appeal to this principle: it is only if a subject's experiences are causally explained by things in the world that those experiences can be experiences as of such things—experiences with contents specified using concepts of things in the world. But in § 2, in arguing against the non-disjunctive conception of experience, I said that the mere fact that experiences of a certain sort are reliably caused by objects of a certain sort does not make those experiences experiences as of such objects. An advocate of the non-disjunctive conception is likely to appeal to the fact that experiences as he conceives them are reliably caused

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by material objects in an effort to show how they can be experiences as of material objects. But, I claimed, that appeal does not work. And now the worry about the consistency of my position is clear: how can I deny the relevance of causal relations between experience and world when I argue against the non-disjunctive conception, yet simultaneously appeal to the idea that our experiences are causally explained by material objects when I myself explain the fact that our experiences can inform us about the world? The answer to the worry is that causation enters the picture in a quite different way in the two accounts: the nondisjunctivist's account which I am criticizing; and the compatibilist account which I am advocating. In the nondisjunctive account, an experience is conceived in world-independent terms; its intrinsic character, its most fundamental mental characterization, is wholly independent of any things or kinds in the world beyond experience. Causation is then introduced to show how experiences, thus conceived, are tied to the rest of the world. And my claim is that once the intrinsic mental nature of an experience is allowed to be world-independent, no amount of extrinsic causal relatedness to the world can remedy the defect and bring concepts of worldly things into an account of the content of experience. According to the compatibilist position developed in § 4, by contrast, causation is not a relation between a world-independent experience and something in the world beyond. The most basic, intrinsic, mental characterization of an experience is world-involving; and what makes it intelligible that experiences can have the worldinvolving contents they do is that subjects causally interact with the world. Those causal interactions are already involved in the most fundamental mental characterization of an experience; by contrast with the non-disjunctive conception, there is no level at which we can employ concepts of experiences, of how things are for a subject, but where causal relations between subject and world are not already in the picture. So, to reiterate, there are two ways of appealing to causation in trying to account for the fact that we have experiences of things in the world. One way appeals to a causal relation between, on the one hand, material objects and, on the other, experiences whose intrinsic mental characterization is world-independent. The other way appeals to causal relations between subject and world in accounting for the fact that subjects have experiences whose intrinsic mental characterization is

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world-involving.301 I am rejecting the first sort of causal account, but advocating the second. I now turn to the reasons for challenging the coherence of the occasionalist's account. The question, recall, was this: ‘What reason could there be for saying that experiences, in the occasionalist's picture, really have contents concerning things in the world?’ First, as we have seen, Dummett holds that occasionalism is consistent with the idea that we perceive objects, as long as we allow that a perception supplies a reason for taking an object to be there. Now suppose that my experiences and material objects are indeed joint effects of a common cause. We can certainly allow that, if I know that fact about the relation between my experience and material objects, then my having this particular experience does give me a reason for taking there to be an appropriate object present. But this presupposes that I already have a way of knowing about the world, a way employed in gaining the general knowledge that occasionalism is true, which is an essential part of my reason for forming the specific belief. But what is this way? Recall Strawson's point that perception is the basic way of informing ourselves about the world of independently existing things. The possibility of perception's giving us reasons for forming beliefs about the world must be consistent with its basic part in epistemology. And whilst experience conceived as occasionalism conceives it may give a reason for beliefs about the world to someone who already knew that occasionalism was true, it is entirely unclear how it could play the requisitely basic role. (The idea of a basic epistemological role need not, of course, be understood in foundationalist terms.) Second, I have suggested that a major reason for accepting a disjunctive view of experience is that, if experience were intrinsically world-independent, it could not justify beliefs about the external world, or even enable us to think about the world. Now, on the face of it, the occasionalist seems committed to a conception of experience as independent of the material world it is alleged to inform us about. She might hold that the intrinsic character of an experience is not independent of the character of the common cause. But it is hard to see how she could deny that the intrinsic

301

The difference between the two views comes out in the different ways in which they will make sense of such claims as ‘x caused S 's experience’. See the discussion of the disjunctivist's interpretation of that claim in § 4.3 above.

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character of an experience of a given type is wholly independent of the nature of the material thing which is, in normal circumstances, the joint effect of such a cause. If that is right, then the occasionalist's experiences are worldindependent, and the original arguments against a non-disjunctive conception of experience will apply to show that experiences conceived in the occasionalist's way could not put us in a position to have thoughts about the material world. Third, consider this suggestion. ‘In the normal case, there are two sorts of causal link between experiences and the external world: input relations—experiences are causally produced by the world; and output relations—experiences give rise to actions on the world. Now the causal theorist puts all the weight on the input relations; what makes an experience an experience as of something in the world is a causal relation which holds, in the normal case, between experiences of that sort and the relevant kind of thing. But why not have a theory of content-determination which stresses output relations? On this view, what makes an experience an experience as of an F is that, in the normal case, it enables the subject to act successfully on Fs. And with such an account of content we can make sense of the possibility of experiences having contents concerning an objective world which does not causally affect us. In the situation where experiences and states of the world are joint upshots of a common cause, for example, our experiences could count as experiences of the world in virtue of allowing us to act successfully on that world.’ It is true that, in ascribing content, we must take account of ‘output’ relations, as well as of ‘input’ relations; we need to look not just at the causal history of thoughts and experiences but also at the behaviour and abilities to which they give rise.302 (That

302

This is an important theme in Evans (1982). It is embodied in his objections to what he calls the Photograph Model of mental representation (see his Chs. 3.4 and 4). And it is central to the account he gives of the content of experience: for example, ‘having spatially significant perceptual information consists at least partly in being disposed to do various things’ (p. 155); and ‘[f]or an internal state [to have a certain content it] must have appropriate connections with behaviour—it must have a certain motive force upon the actions of the subject’ (p. 226). The importance of the same idea in Wittgenstein's comments on experience is no coincidence. For example: ‘I may be able to tell the direction from which a sound comes only because it affects one ear more strongly than the other, but I don't feel this in my ears; yet it has its effect: I know the direction from which the sound comes; for instance, I look in that direction’ ((1958a) p. 185).

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is one reason for saying that an account of what normally causes experience and beliefs of a certain kind only partially determines the content of those experiences or beliefs.) However, it is one thing to point out that ‘input’ relations provide only a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for experiential content, and quite another to ignore ‘input’ relations altogether and embrace a pure ‘output’ theory. An intuition which might seem to support an ‘output’ theory is this. Imagine a situation in which the normal ‘input’ relations are disturbed, so that, whilst physically located in environment O, S is receiving information from an indiscriminable environment I, in such a way that she is able to manipulate things in O in ways which seem successful. Then there is a sense in which we can say that S acts on things in the O environment; this makes it tempting to say that she has intentions concerning those things, and to say that she has intentions directed at things in the O environment is to say that she has thoughts about it; the temptation may be compounded when we notice that S may, for example, reach out and touch an O object, saying, ‘That's the one I'm thinking of.’ But such cases do not really support the ‘output’ theory. In this kind of situation S could certainly construct a thought which picked out things in the O environment; she could think of them descriptively as the things on which she was acting (just as she could think descriptively of the things in the I environment as those things from which she was receiving information). But if she was not aware that the situation was abnormal in this way, S's thoughts would surely not be about the O objects merely in virtue of her apparently successful manipulations of them. It is an assumption in our ordinary thought that the environment from which we are receiving information is the same as the environment on which we act; where that assumption is false, it is unclear that determinate thoughts have been had at all.

5.5 Conclusions For most of § 5 I have been considering the Kantian argument—that it follows, from the fact that the concept of perception is the concept of a way of informing ourselves about an objective world, that perception in general, and vision in particular, must be a

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causal process. I have considered two objections to that argument: the first said that the dependence of experience on the world could be a non-causal dependence; the second said that occasionalism, for example, shows that the conceptual conditions for perception's informing us about the world could be met without any causal relation between experience and world. In § 5.3 I argued against the first objection, on the ground that no account of non-causal dependence could explain the occurrence of experiences; in vision, a natural change occurs, which needs explaining, and that explanation must be a causal explanation. In § 5.4 I have considered the second objection. The considerations I have offered have not amounted to a conclusive rejoinder to the occasionalist challenge. But I think they do suggest that the central question I have been pressing is a powerful reason for rejecting the anti-causal position: without a causal relation between subject and world, what reason is there to say that the subject's experiences are informing her about the world? The onus is on the anti-causalist to explain how it could be coherent in such circumstances to regard the subject as being perceptually informed about the world. If I am right that no such explanation could be given, then the Kantian argument is successful; the claim that vision is a causal process really is required by the concept of vision; it is not simply an empirical truth.

6. Conclusions The conclusions of this chapter can be applied at two levels. At the specific level, I have argued that the causal theory of vision is compatible with a plausible anti-Cartesian conception of experience; in the course of showing how such a compatibilist position is possible, I have made various suggestions about the form of a substantive causal theory of vision. And I have argued that there are two ways in which causation plays an essential role in the concept of vision. Explaining an experience has two dimensions: explaining why the experience occurred, and explaining how it can have the content it does. Both dimensions require a causal relation between an experience and the thing seen: unless there is a causal component we have not been given an explanation of the occurrence of anything; and without causal relations between subject and world we cannot understand how the experience can be an experience of the world.

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Now these points about the particular case of vision illustrate more general points about the mental, and about the place of causal theories in the philosophy of mind. The possibility, and the form, of a compatibilist position in the specific case suggests the possibility of a more general compatibilism, which combines causalism with interpretationism. And the reasons for saying that causation is essential to the concept of vision can be generalized (in ways suggested in Chapter 4 § 2). There are two sorts of reason why it is important to see the mental as part of the causal order. On the one hand, consideration of mental concepts like action, memory, and perception shows that they, and the forms of explanation in which they figure, require a causal element. On the other hand, the mental must be causally related to the rest of the world if thought about the world is to be possible, and hence if we are to understand how mental phenomena can have the intentional character they do.

6 Action: Causal Theories and Explanatory Relevance Reason-giving explanation is a form of causal explanation. That was the conclusion of the Davidsonian argument of Chapter 3 § 1. But, we saw, we need to say more if we are properly to understand that idea; for there is the further question of how, exactly, reason explanation is supposed to be causal. We have already encountered two issues which need to be addressed by a substantive causal theory of action: what makes an explanation a causal explanation; and what is the relation between, on the one hand, causation and causal explanation involving mental phenomena, and, on the other, physical causes and causal processes? I will summarize the conclusions of my discussion of those two issues. First, we can explain a person's action by citing the fact that she had various beliefs, desires, or other attitudes. The reasons for saying that that is a causal explanation are, first, that it is an explanation of why something happened; and second, that such explanations are, arguably, underpinned by causal relations between mental events—including relations between perceptual causes and actions; in citing the agent's attitudes, we are mentioning properties of the agent which make it intelligible why those causes had those effects. Second, there are reasons for rejecting pure mentalism about psychological causation, and for preferring some form of physicalism. The causal processes which underpin the causal explanations of common-sense psychology, then, are physical processes. But the considerations discussed in Chapter 2 count against all but the weakest forms of physicalism: they give us reasons for rejecting typeidentity theories, which would require general psychophysical laws; for rejecting functionalism and the representational theory of mind, which depend on the idea that the norms of rationality could be systematized or codified, so that the constraints they impose on a mind could be mirrored in a set of

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physically stateable constraints on a set of physical states; and even for rejecting some forms of token-identity theory. What we can say is that the reasoning which causally explains S's Φ-ing at t is, as a whole, realized or constituted by the physical processes involved in causing the bodily movements by which S Φ-s. But there is no reason to expect any detailed correlations between the ‘parts’ of the mental story about S's reasoning and the parts of the physical story about the causes of her movements. Summing up that position, we might say that the causal explanations of commonsense psychology are physically based, but that they presuppose no detailed psychophysical correlations. So we have the general form of a substantive causal theory of action. In this chapter I want to consider a question of detail, and to face an objection. The question of detail is this: ‘according to the causal theory, if S acts for one reason rather than another, her action is causally explained by her having one reason rather than another; but what is it for that claim to be true?’ The objection, or problem, is the issue of causal relevance, or explanatory relevance, which was introduced in Chapter 4 § 1, and has yet to be tackled: if mental causal explanations are grounded in facts about physical causes and effects, and there are no psychophysical laws, how can we avoid the conclusion that the mental is causally, and causally explanatorily, irrelevant?

1. Causal Explanation Without Correlations The difference between Φ-ing for one reason and Φ-ing for another is a difference in what causally explains my action; where there is a difference in causal explanation there is a difference in causally related events, or in causal processes; and where there is a difference in causal processes there is a physical difference. But exactly what is the difference? What else has to be true for it to be true that S Φ-d in order to ψ, and not in order to χ? There is a naïve, and common, view on which that question has a simple answer. Elements of any psychological story can be correlated, one-to-one, with the elements of an internal physical story about what is going on in a subject's brain and nervous system. So distinctions, for example, between acting for one reason

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and acting for another, or between really and only apparently remembering, correspond straightforwardly to distinctions between different physical aetiologies that a subject's behaviour, or behavioural disposition, might have. If S administered poison because she knew her father was suffering and wanted to relieve his pain, then the aetiology of her bodily movements will involve separate internal states which are (or which individually realize) that particular belief and desire; and so on for every other attitude which was causally relevant to her doing as she did. I have rejected that view: there are objections to treating people's beliefs and desires as causally interacting internal entities; there are reasons to think that the reasoning which explains an action cannot be broken down into the kind of specifiable set of elements which would be needed if we were to correlate its elements with those of a physical causal story; and there are reasons to think that individual mental events cannot be identified with physical events. But if we reject the naïve view, what are we to say about the causal differences between, say, acting for one reason and acting for another, or between really and only apparently remembering? In the case of memory, it is fairly clear that we can answer the question without identifying any particular attitude with a particular physical element, or property, of S's brain. There is a commonsense distinction between a case in which prompting jogs a memory and a case in which prompting imparts information afresh. Reflection on that distinction yields this thought: it is a necessary condition for S to remember some event that her participation in that event should cause some change in her, and that it is as a causal result of that change that S now has the memory-beliefs and memory-impressions she does. In physical individuals, we can say, such changes will be physical changes. That gives us the following picture of causation in the case of memory. There is a physical change, c, caused in S by her participation in an event. S's current belief that p is a memory of the original event only if c figures in a causal explanation of her having that belief. We can, if we want, think of c as the acquisition of a complex physical property, Φ. But we cannot identify S's believing that p with her having the physical property Φ. For, first, there will be other beliefs derived from the encounter, which also count as memories in virtue of the aetiological path from c, via the physical property, Φ,

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to current behaviour; and there need be no systematic way of analysing Φ so as to identify different memory-beliefs with different elements or sub-properties of Φ. Second, someone might suggest that, if the only mental change in S at t was the acquisition of a number of beliefs, then we could identify S's overall memory of the original event, the whole set of S's memory beliefs about the event, with the physical property Φ. Perhaps we could. But even if we could, that does not give us what the naïve picture wanted—an identity between a particular attitude of S's and a particular physical property. So, it seems, the idea that memory is physically based can be developed in a way which does not support the naïve picture.303 What about the case of action? In some instances, the distinction between acting for one reason and acting for another might show up in a fairly obvious way at the level of physical causation. For example, suppose that, just as I notice a friend walking past outside, I hear my telephone ringing. I jump up; not to answer the phone, but to see the friend. In that case, we might expect that the physiological correlates of hearing the phone would play no part in an account of the aetiology of my bodily movements. But in most cases, there is no such simple difference. Consider the woman who gives her father poison in order to end his suffering, not to get his money. There need be nothing in the perceptual causes of her action which distinguished the benevolent from the selfish motives; and there need be no onslaughts of attitudes which are relevant to one of the motivations but not the other. She acted for one reason, not the other; and her doing so had a basis in her complex, neurophysiologically based, causal organization. But we cannot say anything detailed and specific about what is different about the underlying physical causation in the two cases. What we can say is just this. To say that S acted for R1 rather than R2 is to say that the best interpretation of her behaviour will account for her action by citing R1 not R2. There can only be a difference in how S is interpretable if there is a difference in what S does, or would do, in various circumstances; and that requires some internal physical difference. So if S acted for R1 not R2, her behaviour was causally produced by one sort of causal mechanism and not

303

W. Robinson (1990) develops similar arguments against identifying particular attitudes with particular physical states.

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another. But all we can say about the sort of causal mechanism is that it is that sort of causal mechanism which produces behaviour best captured by the interpretation that S Φ-d, on this occasion, for R1. We started with the question, ‘Given that causation is physically based, what is it for an action to be causally explained by a particular reason?’ In some cases, there may be a fairly direct link between acting for a particular reason and specific facts about the physical aetiology of behaviour. But for the most part there will not. So, in general, we should answer the question thus: an action is causally explained by a particular reason if the best overall interpretation of the agent sees her as having acted for that reason; that S exhibits a pattern of action that is best interpreted in that way is a result of her having the physical causal organization that she does; but her acting for just this reason on this occasion need not correspond to any particular facts about the physical aetiology of her behaviour on this occasion. The question I have addressed arises at a particular level; what is it for a given action to be causally explained by a particular reason? But one might think there is a parallel question at the general level; what is it for an individual to be one whose actions are causally explained by its attitudes? That question will be particularly pressing if we think that there could be individuals which were interpretable as acting for reasons, but whose internal causal organization was such that it would be false to say that their actions were causally explained by their attitudes. I think there is a genuine issue here. But it is an issue that we have already considered, in Chapter 1 § 4 above. The question we addressed there was whether interpretability is sufficient for thought, or whether there are constraints on the sort of causal organization compatible with interpretable behaviour's counting as intelligent behaviour. I think that is the same as the question whether a creature's being interpretable is sufficient for its behaviour to count as being causally explained by the propositional attitudes it seems to have. (That the questions are essentially the same follows directly if we think that a creature has propositional attitudes only if its behaviour is causally explained by attitudes.) I will not add to what I said about this question in Chapter 1.

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2. An Objection: Anomalism and Explanatory Relevance I now turn to the question raised, and postponed, in Chapter 4 § 1: ‘Are mental properties epiphenomenal, or causally irrelevant, or explanatorily irrelevant?’ The charge that they are comes in two versions. (i) Sometimes it is directed at those who accept the anomalism of the mental: if we accept that thesis (the thought goes), then epiphenomenalism about the mental follows. According to this version, the idea of causal relevance, or explanatory relevance, is associated with the idea of a property's figuring in strict laws; the anomalism of the mental is the thesis that no mental properties figure in strict laws; so anyone who accepts the thesis is committed to saying that mental properties are causally, or causally explanatorily, irrelevant. (ii) In other cases, the charge of causal irrelevance is aimed at anyone who thinks that people's mental properties are context-involving: if we allow that a person's mental properties depend, not just on what is literally in her head, but also on her physical and social context, then the mental cannot be causally relevant. A thing's causal behaviour is determined entirely by its internal physical properties. So, in so far as our mental properties are sensitive to context, and therefore not wholly a matter of our internal physical properties, they cannot make any causal difference to our behaviour. Those are the two basic lines of thought. Now to expand them in more detail. There are two ways of developing the first line of thought: one focuses on the idea of a property's being causally relevant, the other on the idea of a property's being causally explanatorily relevant. I start with two formulations aimed specifically at Davidson's anomalous monism.304 Frederick Stoutland puts the point like this: Davidson's view amounts to the claim that events are causes only in virtue of their having certain properties—namely, properties which figure in causal laws—nomic properties. His view that all causal laws are physical means that only physical properties are nomic. A reason cannot, therefore, cause an action in virtue of its psychological properties, for those are non-nomic; there are no nomological ties between the

304

The main features of anomalism monism are summarized in Ch. 3 § 3.

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psychological and the physical. But if a reason causes an action only in virtue of its physical properties, then the psychological as psychological has no causal efficacy, so that the connection between the psychological and the physical is accidental: it is an accident that any event should have, on the one hand, the property of being, say, a desire, and, on the other hand, any causally relevant (i.e. physical) property.305 And Mark Johnston writes: According to anomalous monism if there are mental properties or types none of them figure in laws. (In the formal mode, no mental predicates figure in any statement of law.) That is, no mental property need be cited in order to account for any truth about singular causal relations between events or states, even if those events or states are intuitively mental events or states. All such truths can be accounted for via appeal to law statements with only physical predicates in them; in the material mode, laws which relate only physical properties. There is then a clear sense in which, according to anomalous monism, no mental properties are causally relevant.306 The general idea is that to accept anomalous monism is to accept the following picture. ‘Mental events have two sorts of property; mental and physical. And they play two sorts of role in relation to behaviour; explaining behaviour and causing it. But there is a bifurcation between their explanatory role and their causal role; events explain behaviour in virtue of their mental properties, and they cause it in virtue of their physical properties. So psychological explanations are not causal explanations; and its mental properties are not relevant to an event's power to cause its effects.’307 Though Stoutland and Johnston formulate their point as an objection to anomalous monism, it can clearly be put in more general terms, as follows. ‘People have properties of two sorts: mental and physical. A property can be causally relevant only if it figures in strict laws. Some of a person's physical properties do figure in such laws; so those properties are causally relevant. But, since mental properties do not figure in strict laws, they cannot be causally relevant.’ The key thought is evidently that a property can be causally relevant only if it figures in strict causal laws. Why should we

305

Stoutland (1985) p. 53.

306

Johnston (1985) p. 423.

307

Objections to anomalous monism of this general form are also offered by, amongst others, Honderich (1982), (1983), and (1984), Føllesdal (1985), and Lennon (1990).

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accept that? There seem to be two routes: the first sees a direct link between a property's being causally relevant and its figuring in laws; the second starts with some other criterion of causal relevance and argues, or assumes, that mental properties can meet that criterion only if they figure in strict laws. I will describe four thoughts which seem to be motivating the charge of causal irrelevance in its present form: (i) and (ii) exemplify the first route; (iii) and (iv) the second. (i) Its falling under strict laws is constitutive of an event's being a cause and/or effect.308 So the properties which figure in strict laws are the properties which are constitutive of an event's being the cause and/or effect it is. To be causally relevant is to be constitutive of an event's being the cause it is. So properties which do not figure in strict laws, including mental properties, are not causally relevant. (ii) To cause something is to necessitate it, or (allowing for indeterministic causation) to make it much more probable than it would otherwise have been.309 So the properties in virtue of which an event is the cause it is are the properties in virtue of which it necessitates, or highly probabilities, its effect. Now the properties in virtue of which a cause necessitates (or probabilities) its effect are those in virtue of which it figures in strict (or probabilistic) laws, linking it with its effect. So, if only physical properties figure in strict (or probabilistic) laws, then only physical properties are causally relevant. (iii) We can tell a complete physical story about the production of behaviour without mentioning mental properties at all. So there is an intuitive sense in which all the causing is done by an event's physical properties; there is nothing left, in the way of bringing about behaviour, for mental properties to do. Now if there were psychophysical laws of such a kind that mental properties were physical properties, then the possibility of giving an exhaustive physical account of the origins of behaviour would be compatible with the causal relevance of the mental; for some of the physical properties mentioned in that physical account would be mental properties. But if the thesis of anomalism is right, there are no such lawlike connections. So there

308

Note that Davidson (whom Stoutland and Johnston were attacking) has no commitment to this claim. He says explicitly that his remarks on the link between singular causal relations and strict laws are not intended to be an analysis of causation (see Davidson (1967) pp. 149, 158).

309

For this formulation, see Lewis (1986a) p. 214.

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is no causal role for the mental. (iv) It is natural to think of causal relevance in counterfactual terms: a property is causally relevant (to the production of e) if it is true that, if c had not had that property, e would not have occurred.310 And, it is argued, if there are no psychophysical laws, then mental properties must fail that test of causal relevance: if there are no psychophysical laws, we must conclude that a mental event could have had the effect it did even if it had had different mental properties, or none at all; or, in other words, that even if S had not had the attitudes she did, she would still have exhibited the same bodily movements, physically produced by the same internal states. Why should this follow from the anomalism of the mental? The thought is this: to say that S would have acted differently if she had had different attitudes is to say (a) that if she had had different attitudes (or none at all) then the physical causes which actually operated would not have done so; and (b) that other physical causes would have operated to produce relevantly different behaviour. But (it is assumed) that could be true only if there were psychophysical laws.311 A different version of the epiphenomenalism charge moves from the anomalism of mental properties to the idea that mental properties are not causally explanatorily relevant—that they can play no part in explanations whose explanatory power essentially depends on the presence of causal relations. We start from the familiar observation that, when c caused e, not just any characterizations of c and e will yield an explanation of the fact that e occurred in terms of the fact that c occurred: the death of Trotsky is not explained by the fact that an event mentioned on page 504 of The Prophet Outcast312 occurred; we need to know that that event was an attack with a sharp instrument. How, then, must cause and effect be characterized, if citing the occurrence of the cause is to explain the occurrence of the effect? We have a clear enough intuitive idea of the difference between an explanatorily relevant and an explanatorily irrelevant property; but how do we explain the difference? Dagfinn Føllesdal suggests a direct link between explanatory relevance and lawinstantiation: ‘To say that A is a

310

The formula abstracts from the possibility of overdetermination and back-up mechanisms. But the abstraction is harmless.

311

Cf. Kim: ‘to suppose that altering an event's mental properties would alter its physical properties and thereby affect its causal relations is to suppose that psychophysical anomalism . . . is false’ ((1989) p. 35).

312

Deutscher (1963).

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cause of B does not contribute to an explanation of the occurrence of B unless there is a law which is instantiated by A and B under approximately these descriptions.’313 And we could generalize the suggestion: to say that x had a property F does not contribute to an explanation of the fact that some event occurred, or of the fact that y had some property G, unless there is a law linking x's being F with effects of that general type, under approximately those descriptions. But the mental properties of people (or events) fail this test; for, given the anomalism of the mental, mental properties do not, even approximately, figure in laws. Føllesdal links explanatory relevance directly to law-instantiatingness. But here, too, someone might take an indirect route to the same position. An explanatorily relevant property is one the possession of which, by a cause or a substance, makes it intelligible why the cause had the effect it did. Now explanatory relevance, like causal relevance, seems naturally linked to counterfactuals. (In fact, I suspect that the supposed relation between causal relevance and counterfactuals is better thought of as a relation between explanation and counterfactuals.) If we know that, had c not been F, a G effect would not have occurred, then the fact that c was F will help to make it intelligible why the G effect which occurred did occur. But again, the worry is that these sorts of counterfactuals could be reliably true only if there were psychophysical laws; if the only laws are physical laws, then the only counterfactuals we can rely on are physical counterfactuals, and only physical properties can be causally explanatorily relevant. So far I have been developing the first intuition behind the worry that, on certain views, mental properties are epiphenomenal. The second intuition linked the causal relevance, or causal explanatory relevance, of a property to its depending only on a thing's internal physical properties. That intuition might be supported in the following way. ‘Everything we know from the sciences of matter supports the view that a thing's causal powers are exhaustively determined by its internal physical make-up. Call a property of x an intrinsic property if it would be shared by any molecule-for-molecule replica of x.314 Then the properties which make x behave as it does are all intrinsic properties; nothing which can differ whilst x's internal physical make-up is held constant

313

Føllesdal (1985) p. 315.

314

See Lewis (1983).

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could possibly influence the behaviour x is disposed to exhibit. But, according to common-sense psychology, a person's mental properties depend, not just on what is literally in the head, but also on her physical and social context, and on her causal history; the mental properties which common-sense psychology ascribes us are not intrinsic properties. And if they are not intrinsic, then they cannot be causally efficacious; our having the mental properties we do could not be what makes us behave in the way we do. Perhaps we could revise common sense and devise a “narrow psychology”, which really was an account of the internal states and events which cause behaviour. But since our ordinary common sense understanding of beliefs and desires is not a narrow psychology, that would be to buy causal relevance at the cost of abandoning our ordinary talk of the mind.’ How should we respond to these objections?

3. Causal Relevance The first point to make is this. In Chapter 3 §2 I discussed the distinction between the relation of causation and the relation of causal explanation. Now the argument for a causal theory of action aimed to show that reasons causally explain actions. So what we need to defend, in the first instance at least, is the idea that mental properties can be relevant to a reason's power to explain an action causally. If someone claims that the causalist must also defend the idea that a person's mental properties are relevant to the presence of extensional relations of causation, that is something which needs to be argued; a claim about causal relevance (as opposed to explanatory relevance) was no part of the causalist's initial thesis. So the idea that the anomalism of the mental threatens the causal relevance of the mental may well be a complete red herring. Still, the arguments about causal relevance have been presented. How should we respond? First, I think there is an intuition (partially captured in claim (iii) concerning causal relevance which I sketched in the previous section) that the properties which are causally efficacious in a given case are just those which would have to be mentioned in a detailed account of the causal processes involved at the most minute physical level: those are the properties which actually do the causing; fix them, and everything

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else follows.315 But if, in this way, the idea of causal relevance is associated with fundamental causal processes, then it is no objection to a view of the mind to point out that, according to that view, mental properties are not causally relevant. Only the most unattractive forms of physicalism or dualism would say that they were. In this sense, the idea that only minute physical properties are causally relevant is the idea that a thing's causal dispositions are metaphysically determined by its physical constitution, or that a thing's physical properties play a basic role in determining its causal behaviour. And it seems unobjectionable to allow that, in that sense, mental properties are not causally relevant. But there is a different sense in which some critics seem to mean the claim that events stand in the causal relations they do in virtue of some of their properties and not of others; a sense which depends not on a thesis about the metaphysical determination of causal powers, but on a thesis about the analysis of the causal relation. The idea is that its falling under strict laws is what makes an event the cause it is; it is in virtue of falling under laws that an event is the cause it is, so it is in virtue of its law-instantiating properties (and only those properties) that a cause has the effects it does. But it is not clear that we need accept that idea. On the picture of causation and causal explanation sketched in Chapter 3 § 2, causation is a basic, natural relation between events. The relation does not obtain, or hold, in virtue of anything else. In particular, the idea that singular causal relations must instantiate strict laws is not to be taken as a metaphysical analysis of causation (as if what there really were were simply regularities, with causal facts obtaining only in virtue of those regularities). On this view, we should not think that its law-instantiating properties make an event the cause it is, for we should not think that an event is the cause it is in virtue of instantiating laws. Compare other natural relations: when a precedes b, that temporal relation does not hold in virtue of anything else more basic; its holding is itself a basic fact.316

315

That thought is advanced, happily, by Jackson and Pettit (1990) —who say that only such physical properties are ‘causally efficacious’—and, rather less happily, by Block (1990) especially §§ 6, 7.

316

Cf. Davidson (1993) : ‘Given [the] extensionalist view of causal relations, it makes no literal sense . . . to speak of an event causing something as mental, or by virtue of its mental properties, or as described in one way or another’ (p. 13); ‘it is . . . irrelevant to the causal efficacy of physical events that they can be described in the physical vocabulary. It is events that have the power to change things, not our various ways of describing them’ (p. 12).

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The critic may respond that what is at issue need not be the idea of a property in virtue of which c stands in the extensional relation of causation to e, but rather the idea of a property which ‘makes a causal difference’—a property such that, if c had not had it, c would have had different causal powers. That introduces the fourth intuition, which explained the idea of a property's being causally relevant in terms of its figuring in counterfactuals. There certainly is an issue there. But I think it is really an issue about causal explanatory relevance, to which I now turn.

4. Causal Explanatory Relevance The critics claim that a property can be causally explanatorily relevant only if it figures in laws. So, given the anomalism of the mental (they say), mental properties cannot be causally explanatorily relevant. Now a quick response would be this. According to the critics, accepting the anomalism of the mental gives us the following picture: reasons explain actions; but they do not causally explain them, for mental properties are causally explanatorily irrelevant. How, then, do reasons explain actions? The idea must be this: a reason explains by being a consideration in the light of which the action made rational sense. But we saw in Chapter 3 § 1 that that is not an adequate view of the force of actionexplanation; we need the thesis that reason explanation is causal explanation to show how citing a reason can yield an explanation of why an action occurred. And that causal requirement comes directly from considerations imposed by our psychological understanding of action; it is not something which is simply tacked on as an a posteriori addition to a set of non-causal mental facts which are already fully explanatory. As far as it goes, that response is correct. (In particular, it is entirely appropriate as a response to those who maintain that the point of anomalous monism is actually to recommend a position on which mental events cause actions, and explain actions, but where the explanations are not causal explanations.317) But it is not

317

For this understanding of anomalous monism see e.g. Smith, who writes that a reason explanation ‘mentions causes but is not itself a causal explanation’ ((1982) p. 223).

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a complete answer. In the first place, it is too ad hoc; what we really want is a general account of what makes properties causally explanatorily relevant. And, second, it ignores a deeper way of posing the problem. That is the idea that reason explanations could not be causal explanations unless there were psychophysical laws. According to that idea, a property must meet various standards if it is to count as being causally explanatorily relevant—it must, for example, figure in relevant counterfactuals; but it is not intelligible how a property could meet those standards if it did not figure in laws. (According to this version of the complaint, the problem with anomalous monism is not that it recommends the idea that reason explanations are not causal explanations; it is that, given its other commitments, anomalous monism makes it unintelligible how reason explanations could be the causal explanations it says they are.) The broad lines of my account will be as follows. First, we must distinguish between two levels: a level of lawinstantiating, physical properties, which would figure in an account of the most basic causal mechanisms and processes; and a level of properties (including mental properties) which figure in ordinary, everyday causal explanations. Second, it is not true that, in order to be causally explanatorily relevant, a property must instantiate strict laws, or that it must be intrinsic (in Lewis's sense),318 or that it must figure in accounts of the most minute causal processes. Rather (the third point), explanatory relevance is in general linked to a property's figuring in counterfactuals and rough generalizations, and to its being connected in regular ways with a thing's causal powers. If that is how we understand explanatory relevance, mental properties can be explanatorily relevant, even though they do not instantiate strict laws and are not intrinsic. For mental properties do figure in counterfactuals and rough generalizations; and the possession of mental properties does affect a person's causal powers. Fourth, we must give an account of the relations between explanatorily relevant properties (including mental properties) and lower-level, law-instantiating, or intrinsic, ‘microphysical’ properties. A thing's causal powers are, au fond, determined by its intrinsic, or

318

To say that mental properties are not intrinsic in Lewis's sense is, recall, to say that it is not true that the mental properties of something which is a molecule-for-molecule replica of S will be indiscernible from the mental properties of S. The truth of that claim should not suggest that there is no good sense in which some mental properties are intrinsic properties of people.

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law-instantiating, microphysical properties. But explanatorily relevant properties are associated with causal powers, patterns of actual and counterfactual causal behaviour. So there must be some relation between those explanatory properties and the law-instantiating, microphysical properties; only if there were such a relation could it be true that, whenever a thing possesses some specific explanatorily relevant property, it has the appropriate causal powers. Something like this general picture, with its distinction between levels of description and explanation, is quite widespread. It can be found, for example, in the following writers. (i) Davidson, who distinguishes between (a) the properties of the ‘ultimate physics’, which figure in strict laws, and (b) the causal concepts of ‘special sciences, or explanatory schemes’, including the explanatory scheme of common-sense psychology, which figure only in rough, heteronomic generalizations.319 (ii) Strawson, who distinguishes between (a) properties which are picked out by the ‘technical vocabularies of physical theories’, and figure in ‘general, exceptionless, and discoverable law’, and (b) properties which are mentioned in our ‘ordinary causal explanation[s] of particular events and circumstances’, and do not figure in general and exceptionless law.320 (iii) Jackson and Pettit, who distinguish between (a) properties of basic physics, which are causally efficacious and are mentioned in detailed accounts of causal processes, and (b) properties which are causally relevant without being causally efficacious, and are mentioned in ‘program explanations’, explanations which ‘program for’ the presence of (or guarantee that there will be) a suitable causal process.321 That is the general picture. But how is it to be implemented? I start with the non-mental case.

5. Causal Explanation and Non-Mental Properties A boulder crashes down on a mountain hut and smashes it. The size of the boulder, its speed as it tumbles down the mountain, its

319

As well as Davidson (1987a) p. 45 (from which the quotations in this sentence of text are taken), see Davidson (1963) pp. 17–18, (1967) pp. 159–60, and (1970a) p. 219.

320

Strawson (1985) pp. 132–3—and, more generally, § VI.

321

See Jackson and Pettit (1990). For similar distinctions, see also Macdonald and Macdonald (1986), LePore and Loewer (1987), Block (1990), and Charles (1992).

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mass, and its being composed of rock are all relevant in explaining the destruction of the hut; the boulder's colour, the fact that it fell on a Tuesday, and the fact that it had been photographed by Jones, are all irrelevant. Whence the difference? We can work towards an answer from two directions: the first starts with an everyday model of causal explanation and accounts for the difference in terms of that model; the second starts by examining the relations between properties which are relevant in causal explanations and the lower-level physical properties which determine things' causal behaviour. Ultimately, these routes will turn out to be intertwined. But we can start by developing them separately.

5.1. A Model of Causal Action Our most primitive understanding of the world includes the idea of causal action and reaction. And perhaps the most primitive model of causal action is the idea of mechanical action—the mechanical action of a substance in bringing something about.322 This sort of mechanical causal action is something we can observe in the particular case: we see, for example, the brick smashing the window, the scissors cutting the string, or the falling tree breaking the sapling. And quoting it is a sufficient explanation of its end state: ‘Why is the window broken?’—‘A brick smashed it.’ Now suppose that an event mentioned in an explanandum sentence was caused in this way by the action of a substance; in our case, the collapse of the hut was caused by the boulder smashing it. In such a case, one way of explaining the effect is to exploit this model of causal action. And if the explanatory value of mentioning the cause is to be derived from the model of causal action, then the explanatorily relevant properties will be those which make clear how the production of this effect by this cause was an instance of the causal action of a substance in bringing about an effect. If a description of the cause does not allow us to see how cause and effect instantiate the model of causal action, we have not yet gained any illumination. From this perspective, then, the test of an explanatorily relevant property is this; if you know that the cause was an F, do you thereby know what model of causal explanation is yielding illumination, and how to apply that model to make

322

The importance, and primitiveness, of this model is stressed by Strawson (1985) ; see especially § III.

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intelligible the occurrence of the effect? If you do, F-ness is explanatorily relevant; if you do not, it is not explanatorily relevant. For example, if you are told that the hut collapsed because of something grey, or because of something which had been photographed by Jones, or because of something that happened on a Tuesday, you have not been given an explanation of why the hut collapsed. None of these characterizations of the cause is sufficient to show you what model the destruction of the hut exemplifies, or, therefore, what model of causal explanation to use in accounting for it. Even if you are given the right model of explanation—‘Something grey fell on the hut’—you do not have a satisfactory explanation; a thing's colour gives no purchase to the model of causal action, for there is no way in which grey things characteristically enter into mechanical interactions. By contrast, if you know that the hut was hit by a falling rock, you can apply the model of mechanical action, seeing this interaction as a case of a familiar type in which the mechanical action of a substance brings something about. The suggestion, then, is that where an explanation is an instance of the model of the mechanical action of a substance, reflection on that model allows us to understand the distinction between explanatorily relevant and explanatorily irrelevant properties. And two types of property have a role in the model of mechanical causal action. First, there are sortal properties, properties which mark out an individual as one of a particular kind. These are explanatorily relevant because each member of a kind has the same general sorts of dispositions to act and react causally: boulders tend to exhibit the same general kinds of action and reaction; grey things, by contrast, tend to act in very different ways, depending on whether they are grey boulders, grey feathers, grey mice, and so on; that is to say, ‘boulder’ is a sortal, and ‘grey’ is not. One reason why sortal properties are important is that knowing what sortal x falls under tells us what kind of mechanical causal action to expect from it. Another involves the fact that the simple model of mechanical action is a model of observable causal action; that is what makes it a simple, or primitive, model. Now if the model is a model of observable causal action, then, in order to apply it, we must have a description of the cause which something can be observed to instantiate. And, notwithstanding the complexity of

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the observational—theoretical distinction, it is clear that something's being a boulder, or falling, can characterize the content of experiences of it in a way that its having been photographed by Jones, or its falling on a Tuesday, cannot. Correspondingly, ‘A boulder crushing a hut’ can be the unreflective report of an observed causal interaction in a way that ‘Something photographed by Jones crushing a hut’ could not. Second, there are other, non-sortal properties which affect the way in which one thing acts mechanically on another. So, the model of mechanical causal action gives a place to the size of the boulder, and to the speed at which it tumbles down the mountain. Again, given the sort of thing that x is, its size and the speed of its motion will be connected in more or less regular ways to the way in which it will act mechanically on other things. So far, then, we have the following picture. There is a simple model of causal action—the action of a substance in mechanically bringing about an effect. Where we apply that model in giving an explanation, the explanatorily relevant properties will be those which allow us to see how and why the model applied in this case. And where Φ-ness is an explanatorily relevant property, the following will be true. (i) Having Φ affects a thing's causal powers (in ways relevant to causal action of this sort).323 (ii) There are counterfactuals linking Φ-ness with causal behaviour in other similar circumstances. For example, if the hut had been built slightly differently, but the boulder had still weighed what it did, it would still have had the same sort of effect. (iii) We can formulate rough but reliable generalizations about action of this sort by things which are Φ. For example, falling boulders tend to crush small structures lying in their paths. None of (i)–(iii) is true for properties which are explanatorily irrelevant.

5.2. Supervenience The proposal so far has been that we can explain the explanatory relevance of a property in terms of its role in a primitive model of

323

The parenthesis is needed for the following reason. Φ-ness may be explanatorily irrelevant to one sort of effect, but relevant to another: e.g. the fact that a boulder is (dark) grey does not help to explain why it flattened the hut; but it does help to explain why it became hot in the sun. Being grey affects x 's causal powers; but not in ways which affect the way it acts mechanically on other things.

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causal explanation: that proposal led on to the related ideas that explanatorily relevant properties figure in counterfactuals and in rough generalizations, and that possession of an explanatorily relevant property systematically affects a thing's causal powers. A different starting-point would be the idea that we can illuminate the distinction between explanatorily relevant and explanatorily irrelevant properties by reference to a relation that explanatorily relevant, but not explanatorily irrelevant, properties bear to lower-level physical properties. The proposal may be made in an ambitious or a modest form. The ambitious claim is that there is some relation R such that it is necessary and sufficient for a property's being explanatorily relevant that it bears R to relevant low-level physical properties. The modest claim says only that its bearing R to low-level physical properties is a necessary condition for a property's being explanatorily relevant. We can develop the idea in the following way. Physical things are constituted of physical matter; and one way of describing things is in terms of their minute physical constitution. That level of description has been thought of, variously, as the level of ‘ultimate’ or ‘basic’ physics; as the level at which there are regularities which come as close as possible to being strict and exceptionless; or as the level at which we can describe those properties of things which metaphysically determine their causal dispositions. Call the properties discerned at this level ‘microphysical properties’ (‘micro’ to contrast with those properties—being a boulder, or being fragile, for example—which are intuitively physical, but do not belong to this basic level). The fundamental idea behind the present proposal is that microphysical properties have a special role in accounting for causal relations—that they are, as we might say, causally basic.324 One way of expressing this intuition is to say that the causal powers of c and e are metaphysically determined by their microphysical constitution; so the properties which are causally basic to c's causing e are those microphysical properties of c and e which metaphysically determine the causal powers exhibited in that interaction. Another is to say that the causally basic properties of c and e are the microphysical properties which would have to be mentioned in a full account of the detailed causal

324

This idea corresponds to what I said was an unobjectionable sense in which we might say that it is an event's (or a substance's) microphysical properties which are causally relevant (see § 3 above).

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processes involved in c's causing e. Using those criteria, we can pick out those microphysical properties of a thing or event which are causally basic to its producing a given effect: x's causally basic properties are the microphysical properties which figure in an account of what metaphysically determines x's having the causal powers it exhibited in this case; or in a detailed account of the causal mechanisms and processes involved; or (on another view) in laws covering the production of this effect. Then the general form of the ambitious claim is that a property of x is relevant in explaining some effect if and only if it bears some specified relation to x's causally basic microphysical properties. And a first shot at a specific suggestion would be this: a property of x is explanatorily relevant if and only if it strongly supervenes on x's causally basic microphysical properties.325 The proposal has some intrinsic plausibility. We know that the fact that x is a boulder is relevant in explaining the destruction of the hut, and that the facts that x had been photographed by Jones, or that it fell on a Tuesday, are not. The property of being a boulder does supervene on those microphysical properties which determine x's causal powers; anything just like this boulder in all those physical respects must also be a boulder. But it is obviously not true that anything just like this boulder in all those physical respects must also have fallen on a Tuesday, or have been photographed by Jones. And that can seem to make a supervenience criterion of explanatory relevance independently appealing. But is the suggestion about supervenience really adequate? It faces a number of questions. (i) What reason is there for thinking that explanatorily relevant properties which fit the primitive model of causal action must supervene on things' causally basic microphysical properties—microphysical properties which would be mentioned in a detailed account of causal processes, or which metaphysically determine things' causal powers? (ii) Is supervenience on causally basic microphysical properties really necessary for explanatory relevance? (iii) Is such supervenience really sufficient for explanatory relevance? (iv) Is supervenience a strong enough relation to do the work required? (i) It may seem perverse to ask what reason there is for thinking

325

For an account of strong supervenience (and the way in which it differs from weak supervenience), see Ch. 2 §3.

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that properties like being a boulder or weighing a ton supervene on the microphysical properties which determine the causal powers of the falling boulder. Surely it is just obvious that something like this boulder in all those microphysical respects must also have those properties. It may well be; but it is important to understand why; we cannot just help ourselves to a thesis of supervenience. Suppose F-ness is some property which is explanatorily relevant in virtue of its role in the model of mechanical causal action. There is the following reason for thinking that a thing's being F supervenes on the microphysical properties which determine its causal behaviour. We saw that if F-ness is an explanatorily relevant property, then the question whether or not x is F is inseparable from the question how it tends to interact causally in mechanical transactions with other things; if x and y differ in point of F-ness, they must differ in their actual or potential causal behaviour. But x's causal powers depend ultimately on its microphysical constitution; if x and y differ in their causal dispositions, they must differ in those microphysical properties. Correspondingly, if x and y are indiscernible in respect of their microphysical properties, they cannot differ in their causal dispositions; and if they cannot differ in causal dispositions, they cannot differ in respect of F-ness. And that is just the claim of supervenience. (ii) The microphysical properties which determine x's causal behaviour in mechanical transactions are properties of its constitution and context. (Context cannot be ignored, for it is only if we look beyond x's internal constitution that we introduce such explanatorily relevant properties as x's weight, or its velocity relative to its surroundings. And more than immediate context is relevant; whether x is on the Moon or the Earth affects our expectations of its causal behaviour.) Now, intuitively, the fact that something is a billiard ball is relevant to an explanation of certain effects; if you know that a billiard ball was thrown at the window, you understand why the window broke. But the property of being a billiard ball does not supervene on the microphysical properties which account for its causal powers. For it is at least arguable that something is only a billiard ball if it was designed and produced for playing billiards; if we found naturally occurring objects, physically indiscernible from billiard balls in all intrinsic respects, they would not be

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billiard balls.326 Should we say, then, that the property of being a billiard ball is not explanatorily relevant in cases of mechanical action; that only some lesser property, which does supervene on the relevant microphysical properties (namely, ‘having the physical constitution of a typical billiard ball’) is really relevant? I think there is a real issue here. But it is an issue which arises more acutely in the case of psychological explanations; so I postpone consideration of it until discussing the mental case. (iii) Is the sort of supervenience on microphysical properties that I have described sufficient for causal explanatory relevance? Can we really sustain the ambitious claim, or should we retreat to the more modest claim, that this sort of supervenience is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for explanatory relevance? One suggestion for a counterexample to the sufficiency claim would be colour: the causal-power-determining property of a billiard ball is its overall physical constitution; and the colour of a billiard ball supervenes on that microphysical property (if this ball is red, then any ball with an exactly similar physical constitution must also be red); yet the colour of a ball is irrelevant in explanations of why it acted on another ball in the way it did. However, with care about what it is that explanatorily relevant properties are claimed to supervene on, I think we could deal with this case. In outline, the idea would be this. The microphysical property of a billiard ball which is causally basic in mechanical transactions is its overall constitution: that is what determines the causal powers it exhibits in mechanical action and reaction, or what would figure in the most basic account of causal processes. And colour does, indeed, supervene on overall physical constitution. But, intuitively, what we want to capture when we talk of the supervenience of colour on the physical is a relation between colour and a set of physical properties which are relevant to, or determinative of, x's being the colour it is. With that in mind, a more specific and enlightening supervenience claim is that x's colour supervenes on the physical properties of its surface. But the microphysical properties of x's surface do not exhaust the

326

Such examples need to be treated case by case; if there were enough of the impostors, and they had been accepted as billiard balls for long enough, the verdict might be that there were two types of billiard balls—natural and manufactured—rather than that the naturally occurring objects were not billiard balls at all. But there are cases for which the description in the text is appropriate.

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microphysical properties which determine its causal powers in mechanical transactions. So we could deal with the problem of colour by tightening up the supervenience criterion; we might say, for example, that a property is causally explanatorily relevant if and only if the claim that that property supervenes on a thing's causally basic microphysical properties is the maximally specific true supervenience claim relating that property to microphysical properties. In that way, we could show that colour does not in fact meet the supervenience criterion for causal explanatory relevance.327 No doubt that account would need to be tightened up and refined. But I shall not consider the merits of the proposal, for there is a more serious worry about the possibility of formulating a sufficient condition for explanatory relevance in terms of supervenience. That more serious worry concerns cases with this structure: two different properties of x supervene on the same set of causally basic microphysical properties; but one of these properties is relevant in explaining an effect, the other is not; so supervenience on causally basic microphysical properties cannot be sufficient for explanatory relevance. Here is an example from Ned Block. Consider a setup in which a metal rod connects a fire to a bomb. So long as the thermal conductivity of the rod is low, not enough heat is transferred from the fire to the bomb to cause an explosion. But if the thermal conductivity of the rod is increased enough (say, by altering its composition), then the heat from the fire will explode the bomb. Now there is a law—the Wiedemann–Franz law—linking thermal and electrical conductivity under normal conditions. (The same free electrons carry both charge and heat.) Hence for this setup, rising electrical conductivity, together with other things being equal, is sufficient for an explosion.328 If the composition of the rod is changed, and the bomb explodes, we want to say that the increase in the rod's thermal conductivity causally explains the explosion; the increase in its electrical conductivity, on the other hand, is explanatorily irrelevant. But the rod's electrical conductivity supervenes on the microphysical

327

There may, of course, be cases in which x 's colour is explanatorily relevant: consider an explanation of the readings on a spectrometer. But those will be cases in which the physical properties of the thing's surface do determine x 's causal behaviour in the case at hand. In those cases, therefore, colour will pass the revised supervenience test of explanatory relevance.

328

Block (1990) p. 147.

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constitution which determines its thermal conductivity: given the law relating the two conductivities, if x and y are alike in thermal-conductivity-determining properties, they must be alike in respect of electrical conductivity. So if we accept a supervenience criterion of explanatory relevance, how can we avoid the unwanted conclusion that the rod's electrical conductivity is explanatorily relevant to the bomb's going off? There are two possibilities. The first would be to supplement the test of supervenience with some further constraint in an effort to find a condition sufficient for explanatory relevance. But I am content to give a second response—that we should give up the ambitious attempt to locate a relation sufficient for a property's being explanatorily relevant, and rest content with the more modest proposal. On the modest view, supervenience on causally basic microphysical properties is not sufficient for explanatory relevance. The point of insisting on supervenience is not to give a selfstanding criterion of explanatory relevance, but only to show how it is intelligible that a property could be causally explanatorily relevant, given the role of the microphysical in determining causal behaviour. So the fact that F-ness supervenes on causally basic microphysical properties cannot show that F-ness is explanatorily relevant if there is not already a reason for thinking that it is, on the basis of its role within a working model of causal explanation. (iv) Suppose we have only the more modest ambition—of finding a relation between explanatorily relevant properties and microphysical properties which will make it intelligible how those properties could be explanatorily relevant. It is sometimes said that supervenience alone is too weak a claim to achieve that end, or, more broadly, to capture our intuitions about the relations between explanatorily relevant properties and the microphysical. For example, it is said that supervenience alone does not account for the idea of the ontological priority of the microphysical: the mere fact that, where there is a difference in explanatorily relevant properties, there must be a difference in microphysical properties does not capture the idea that it is in virtue of having the microphysical properties it does that a thing has the explanatorily relevant properties it does (and not vice versa). Or again, as we have seen, explanatory relevance requires the truth of counterfactuals of the following form:

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(a) if x had not been Φ, it would not have behaved causally in the way it did; (b) if other things had been slightly different, but x had still been Φ, x would still have behaved causally in the way it did. To make it intelligible how Φ-ness can be an explanatorily relevant property, we need to see how those counterfactuals can be true. But all that supervenience gives us is the mere fact that, had x not been Φ, it would have had different causally basic microphysical properties. And that does not guarantee that the difference in microphysical properties would have been such as to bring about relevantly different behaviour; for all that a bald claim of supervenience establishes, the difference could have been so small as to have had no impact on x's causal dispositions.329 But we can deal with these worries if we recall the motivation for the supervenience claims we have been making. It is not the fact of supervenience alone which is supposed to be illuminating, but the position as a whole, including the motivation for the claim. Concerning the first objection, recall the motivation for the supervenience claim: explanatorily relevant properties are associated with typical patterns of causal behaviour, and causal behaviour is determined by microphysical constitution. So the position does capture the intuition that the microphysical is ontologically basic; for it depends on the thought that a thing's possession of whatever explanatorily relevant properties it has is metaphysically determined by its causally basic physical properties. Second, and relatedly; it is no coincidence that, had x not been Φ, its microphysical properties would have differed in just the way required to bring about relevantly different behaviour. For x to be Φ is for it to have certain sorts of causal disposition; and x has the causal dispositions it does in virtue of having the microphysical properties it does. Correspondingly, for x not to be Φ would be for x to have different causal dispositions; and to have different causal dispositions would be to have different microphysical properties. It follows that a difference in microphysical properties sufficient to mean that x was not Φ would automatically be a

329

For worries of this sort about the adequacy of supervenience theses for an understanding of explanatory claims, see Charles (1992) §2. See also Blackburn for the related thought that ‘supervenience is usually quite uninteresting by itself. What is interesting is the reason why it holds’ ((1984) p. 186).

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difference sufficient to guarantee relevantly different behaviour; for a thing's microphysical properties determine whether it is Φ or not by determining its causal dispositions.

5.3. Conclusions We have been discussing causal explanations which invoke the mechanical action of a substance in bringing about an effect. The question we started with was, ‘How can properties be explanatorily relevant without figuring in strict laws, or belonging to basic physics; how can they be explanatorily relevant without themselves being microphysical properties?’ I have been examining two ideas. There is the idea of a primitive model of causal explanation, and a range of properties which are explanatorily relevant because of their connections with that model; those properties are related to characteristic patterns of causal behaviour, to counterfactuals, and to rough generalizations. And there is the idea of supervenience on causally basic microphysical properties—those microphysical properties which would be mentioned in a detailed account of low-level causal processes, or which metaphysically determine a thing's causal powers, or which instantiate relevant laws. In understanding explanatory relevance, we need both ideas. Explanatory relevance as understood in terms of the model of causal action needs to be supplemented by considerations which show how properties which figure in the model can be associated with certain general patterns of causal behaviour, and how they can figure in the relevant counterfactuals, given the links between causation and the microphysical; those considerations come from what can be said to support the claim that those properties supervene on the microphysical. Similarly, the fact of supervenience is not itself sufficient for explanatory relevance; it needs to be supplemented by reasons for thinking that the supervening property figures in explanations; and those reasons are supplied by the primitive model of mechanical causal action. Now explanations which exploit the model of mechanical causal action are but one class of causal explanation. Boiling water over a flame, attracting iron filings with a magnet, turning on a light by flipping a switch, for example, all involve causal transactions. And in each case the question of explanatory relevance arises: how must we characterize the cause if mentioning it is to give us an

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explanation; and which properties of the cause, and of the various substances involved, are explanatorily relevant? But in none of these cases is there an instance of one thing mechanically, and observably, bringing about another. So what I have been saying about the role of that primitive model of causal explanation has no direct application. But it can be extended, in a fairly straightforward way. I suggest that each of these cases exemplifies a different simple model of causal interaction; and that each of those models can be exploited in a model of causal explanation. No doubt the model of mechanical action plays an especially fundamental role in our causal thought; that comes out in the fact that, when we seek further understanding of these other forms of causal interaction, ‘when the theoretical search for causes is on’, ‘we look for causal “mechanisms” ’.330. But though these other models are less fundamental, it remains true that assimilation of a new case to one of these familiar models will help to make that case intelligible. Just as the properties which have a home in the model of mechanical action are associated with characteristic patterns of mechanical causal activity, and thus with counterfactuals and rough generalizations, so the ordinary everyday properties which have an explanatory role in the models of heating, magnetic attraction, electrical current, and so on are associated with more-or-less regular patterns of causal behaviour, and with corresponding counterfactuals and rough generalizations. And, sustaining those features, will be the same relations of strong supervenience, and determination, between the properties which figure in everyday causal explanations and the microphysical properties which account for things' having the causal powers they do. The detailed account I have offered for the case of mechanical action—an account of which properties are causally explanatorily relevant, and why, and of the relation between those properties and microphysical properties—has direct parallels for each of these other cases.

6. Causal Explanation and Mental Properties The question we formulated in § 2 was, ‘How can mental properties be causally explanatorily relevant given the anomalism of the

330

Strawson (1985) p. 124.

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mental, and given the quite general environment-dependence of the mental?’ In approaching that question, we can apply some of the lessons of the non-mental case. A starting-point will be the idea of another simple model of causal action, the model of an agent's acting for a reason, with its corresponding model of causal explanation, the explanation of an action by citing the agent's reasons. And, as before, the discussion will have two strands: an account of the model and the way it licenses certain properties as explanatorily relevant; and an account of the relation between two levels of description of agents. Someone might think it misconceived to attempt to show how psychological properties can be causally explanatorily relevant by developing an analogy with the explanatory relevance of certain sorts of physical property. For, they might say, the mental is fundamentally unlike the physical: for example, the anomalism of the mental is of a different order from the anomalism of such everyday physical properties as being a boulder, or being fragile; and rationality plays an essential role in common-sense psychological explanation in a way which has no parallel in physical explanation. In response, I would emphasize two things. First, the model of acting for a reason plays a role in my account which is parallel to that played by the model of observed mechanical action. But I do not suggest that everything we say about the case of mechanical action applies to the case of rational action. For example, it would be absurd to suggest that we see a reason mechanically bringing about an action in something like the way that we see a falling boulder smashing a hut: it is important that the model of rational action can figure in our observations of the world; but observation of the world can be more than observation of mechanical actions. Or again, the model of rational action is not a model of merely causal explanation; there is an additional dimension to be accommodated. Second, whilst it is right to stress the distinctiveness of psychological and physical explanations, we must also show that there is some point of contact between the two. If we accept that psychological explanation is a mode of causal explanation, we will want to see some parallels between the psychological and physical cases; if there were no parallels at all, there would be a real question why both were to be thought of as models of causal explanation. Philip adds yeast to the dough. Why did he do so? He wanted to make the bread light and airy, believed that adding yeast would

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make the dough rise, and so on. His believing what he did and desiring what he did will figure in a causal explanation of his action. But how must we characterize his attitudes if mentioning them is to explain his action; which properties of the agent are relevant in explaining his acting as he did? Amongst explanatorily relevant properties will be ‘believing that adding yeast will make the dough rise’; amongst explanatorily irrelevant properties would be ‘believing something true’, ‘believing something believed by Jones’, or ‘being in neural state N’. What can we say about the difference between those properties which are causally explanatorily relevant and those which are not? There are, again, two lines of thought.

6.1. A Model of Causal Explanation: Rational Action The first line of thought starts with a model of causal explanation, the model of rational action, which we use when we explain an action by saying why it made sense (or seemed to the agent to make sense) to perform it. We have already seen (in Chapter 3 § 1) why the model of acting for a reason is a model of causal explanation. Now, like the model of mechanical action, the model of acting for a reason is acquired in connection with cases where it manifestly applies, and may then be used to provide explanations in other cases where its application (or the way in which it applies) is not manifest.331 Cases where the model manifestly applies will involve both one's own case and others': we can act in full awareness of our reasons for doing so; and the reasons for another's action may be immediately apparent. Equally, cases where it is not clear how (or whether) the model applies can be both first and third person; I can puzzle over my own reasons just as I can puzzle over yours. In explanations which work by applying the model of rational action, which properties are explanatorily relevant? As before, we need descriptions which allow us to see how to apply the explanatory model to make what happened intelligible. In this case, the descriptions will be descriptions of the agent, or of her attitudes. Now the model depends on seeing that an action was reasonable in the light of the agent's attitudes. So to apply it, we must

331

Cf. the references to Wittgenstein given in Ch. 1 n. 49.

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describe the agent and her attitudes in terms which allow us to see what was reasonable in the light of those attitudes; and that means describing them as the type of propositional attitudes they were, with the contents they had. So, ‘believing that yeast makes dough rise’ is relevant; knowing that description allows us to see what makes sense in the light of that belief. But ‘believing something believed by Jones’ has no explanatory power; it leaves open the question of why it made sense for the agent to act as she did. We saw, in the non-psychological case, that properties which had a home in the model of mechanical action were associated with characteristic patterns of causal behaviour and, thereby, with counterfactuals and rough generalizations. And something analogous is true in the psychological case. That a person believes that p is inseparable from certain characteristic styles of causal disposition. If S believes that p then S has certain causal powers—powers to act and react in ways which make sense in the light of the belief that p, given S's other attitudes. Just as evidence that a thing lacked certain causal powers would, ceteris paribus, be evidence that it was not a billiard ball, or did not weigh a ton, so evidence that a person lacked certain causal powers would, ceteris paribus, be evidence that she did not believe that p. And to say that propositional attitudes are associated with patterns of causal behaviour is to say that they enter into counterfactuals and rough generalizations. Suppose S Φ-d because she believed that p: ceteris paribus, if she had not believed that p, she would not have Φ-d. And a counterfactual like that expresses some general knowledge about S and her causal powers. So the model of rational action exhibits features parallel to the model of mechanical action. But there are important differences. In particular, the model of rational action is not a model of merely causal explanation. Reason-giving explanation is distinguished from merely causal explanation in two ways: (i) the fact that rationality has an essential role to play; in the light of the explanans, the explanandum is revealed as something which makes sense; (ii) the fact that reasongiving explanations are essentially environment-involving. Now actions involve bodily movements (or refrainings from bodily movements). And, given the assumptions I have been taking for granted, movements of bodies can be completely causally accounted for by reference to internal microphysical events and

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properties. That makes it tempting to assume that explanations of action, being causal explanations, should really concern themselves only with these interior goings-on. The mental, on this view, is what causes behaviour; since what causes behaviour are these interior goings-on, psychology should deal only with what is literally internal. (That is an expression of the third worry about the relevance of mental properties in causal explanations—which I described in § 2 above.) Now if we did view psychology in that way, our explanations of behaviour would be merely causal: they could tell us nothing about why her behaviour made sense to the agent. Such explanations would, by the same token, be wholly different from reason-giving explanations. (That is not, of course, to say that there would be anything wrong with these explanations, in their own province. It is just to say that they would be very different from common-sense psychological explanations.) Why should explanations of behaviour in terms of literally internal states and events be thought to be so different from common-sense psychological explanations of actions in terms of beliefs and desires? I want to make four points. First, the merely causal idea that c was the cause of e, that it was the reason why e happened, does not capture the idea, central to psychological explanation, of one thing's being a reason for S to do, or to believe, another. Merely causal explanation altogether misses out the idea of a person for whom the considerations we rehearse are reasons, and who thinks of those considerations as reasons.332 Second, as I emphasized in Chapter 2, psychological explanation constitutively involves the norms of rationality. But the norms of rationality cannot be mirrored in any set of physical constraints on physically-characterized states. So a merely causal explanation of behaviour, in terms of internal physical states, could not be an account governed by the standards of rationality. Similarly, psychological explanation reveals the structure of reasoning which explains an action; but the structure of reasoning, even on an occasion, is not something which can in general be reflected in the causal interactions of a series of states picked out in non-intentional terms. Third, the most that a merely causal explanation could explain, confining its interest to internal goings-on in the head of a person,

332

See Ch. 1 § 2.

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would be bodily movements. But an explanation of a bodily movement is a very different thing from an explanation of an action, where we think of actions in ordinary, environment-involving terms: a person's picking up a mug of coffee, flipping a switch, signing her name, and so on. One difference is that, as agents, we think about and understand our own behaviour in environment-involving ways: what I want to do when I want to sign a cheque is to write my signature; I have no detailed beliefs about the sorts of bodily movements that will be involved in doing so. But common-sense psychology has to do with the personal point of view; it explains actions by showing how they made sense, or seemed to make sense, to agents. So it must conceive of behaviour in the ways in which agents, and interpreters of agents, conceive of it; if we want a psychological explanation to reveal why the agent's behaviour made sense to her, we must employ the sorts of concepts employed in her own thought about that behaviour.333 Finally, we have just seen one way in which merely causal explanations of behaviour are environment-independent; the behaviour they explain is described in environment-independent terms. But there is another way in which they are environment-independent; they make no assumptions about the character or stability of an agent's environment, or about her integration within it. From the point of view of a purely causal explanation, all that matters is what impinges on the agent's surface. So our explanations can proceed without reference to any facts about the environment beyond that surface: the form of those explanations makes no assumptions about the agent's relation to her environment; so, amongst other things, it would be entirely unaffected by any dislocation in the agent's relation to her environment. But common-sense psychological explanation, by contrast, essentially depends on assumptions about the environment and about an agent's integration within it. For example, an account of what determines the contents of attitudes makes essential reference to their normal causes: and that means that psychological explanation is applicable only where there actually are sufficiently regular and reliable environmental causes; an environment which was constantly in

333

For more on this, and related points about the conception of behaviour involved in common-sense psychological explanation, see Hornsby (1986).

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flux, with no regularity in the causal relations between things and their environments, would be an environment in which the attribution of attitudes, and hence the explanation of behaviour in terms of beliefs and desires, did not make sense at all. And, more generally, psychological explanation depends on the assumption that an agent is nonaccidentally successful in its environment. (It is natural to suggest that, in standard cases, what underpins a subject's success in her environment is a combination of learning about (and pre-rational drilling in) that environment, and inheritance from others who have learnt about, and been exposed to, it.) Now someone might dispute the claim that the applicability of psychological explanation depends on assumptions about the agent's integration in her environment, and therefore dispute the contrast between psychological explanation and merely causal explanation. For, she may say, psychological explanation is demonstrably unaffected by even the most wholesale shifts in environment. ‘Imagine a Twin Earth case of the usual kind; the Twin Earth environment is, to ordinary observation, indistinguishable from our actual environment, but there are systematic differences between the physical natures of things on Earth and their counterparts on Twin Earth. Now imagine a person actually transported from Earth to Twin Earth. Immediately after the switch, at any rate, the subject's attitudes will retain their original Earth-directed objects; when she sees a cup of twin-water she will believe that there is a cup of water, when she reaches out and takes a twin-apple she is acting on her desire for an apple, and so on. But our explanations can proceed just as before; we explain her picking up a twin-apple by citing her desire for an apple. So psychological explanation is unaffected by the change. That shows that any context-dependent features of her attitudes (like the difference between a desire for an apple and a desire for a twin-apple) are irrelevant to explanation; what is relevant is only what supervenes on internal microphysical properties and is causally involved in producing behaviour.’ But the Twin Earth example does not show what the critic wants. Of course, being transported to Twin Earth would not at a stroke rob a subject of attitudes; the transported subject's behaviour is susceptible of psychological explanation. But the form these psychological explanations take is crucially affected by the shift in environment (unlike the form of the merely causal explanations of bodily movement, which really can proceed just as before).

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Explanations of the transported subject's actions will take something like this form: S wanted an apple; she thought that x was an apple (though that thought was false); so she picked it up and ate it. That explanation essentially involves a false belief. But, of course, standard explanations of apple-directed behaviour, in terms of beliefs and desires about apples, do not. So the context-dependence of content does affect the form of explanations of behaviour in which it figures. And the presence of a false belief in the explanation casts doubt on the idea that what sort of thing it is about could generally be irrelevant to a content's explanatory power. Can we really make sense of the idea of a subject all of whose actions had to be explained by reference to false beliefs?334 The conclusion is this. If all there was to psychological explanation were merely causal explanation, then it would indeed be true that extra-individual, contextual differences were irrelevant to psychology. But reason-giving explanations are not merely causal; learning that someone acted in the light of such-and-such a reason tells us something more, and something different, than learning about the internal causes of her behaviour. And, correspondingly, the context-dependent features of propositional attitudes are essential to their explanatory power.

6.2. Supervenience I have described the model of causal explanation which we employ in the psychological case, used it to motivate and explain the distinction between properties which are explanatorily relevant and those which are not, and examined the sense in which reason-giving explanations are not merely causal explanations. But we now face a question parallel to the question which arose at the corresponding point in our discussion of the non-psychological case. If mental properties are causally explanatorily relevant, they must be associated with causal powers and counterfactuals; but since the causal powers of things, including people, are determined ultimately by their microphysical constitutions, there must be some relation between a person's explanatorily relevant mental properties and their causal-power-determining microphysical properties. What is that relation? In the non-mental case, we saw, a suitably

334

If we can make sense of the idea, it will certainly be as an abnormal case.

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motivated thesis of supervenience seemed adequate to capture the relation between different levels of description or explanation. Can we say something parallel for the mental case? An attempt to account for the explanatory relevance of mental properties in terms of their supervening on relevant physical properties of people will face the same questions that arose in the physical case. (i) What reason is there to believe that mental properties do supervene on physical properties? (ii) Can supervenience provide a sufficient condition for explanatory relevance? (iii) Can it provide a necessary condition? (iv) Does supervenience really explain how mental properties can be explanatorily relevant? In Chapter 2 § 3 I discussed the claim that mental properties strongly supervene on physical properties. I argued, first, that that thesis can be motivated; second, that it poses no threat to the idea that the mental is constitutively governed by norms of rationality; and third, that it is compatible with the claim that there is no system of strict psychophysical laws on the basis of which mental phenomena could be precisely predicted or explained. So, in answer to the first of our questions, there is a reason for accepting some thesis about the supervenience of the mental on the physical. But is it a thesis which we could use to explain how it can be that psychological properties have the features they must do given that they are explanatorily relevant: namely, being associated with typical causal powers, and with relevant counterfactuals? As before, there will be an ambitious and a modest proposal: the ambitious proposal aiming to give necessary and sufficient conditions for explanatory relevance; the modest proposal aiming only at a necessary condition. And, as before, there will be an objection to the claim that supervenience could provide a sufficient condition for explanatory relevance. Suppose that S's believing that p supervenes on some physical property of S, Φ: anyone else who is Φ must also believe that p. Now it is plausible that other mental properties will also supervene on Φ: anyone who is Φ will not only believe that p, but also have certain other attitudes. (Indeed, if I am right that we cannot match up particular mental properties of an agent with particular physical properties, it is bound to be true that any Φ sufficient for an agent to have the belief that p will be sufficient also for her to have other attitudes.) But we would not want to say that those other attitudes figured in an explanation of every action which her believing that

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p helped to explain. So supervenience on the physical cannot suffice for explanatory relevance. I cannot demonstrate that there are no further conditions which could be added to supervenience to give a sufficient condition for explanatory relevance. But it seems unlikely that any such condition could avoid more-or-less direct appeal to a property's role in the model of rational action, and its associated pattern of counterfactuals and causal powers; so such a condition would not give us an independent criterion of causal explanatory relevance. I think, therefore, that we do better to focus only on the more modest supervenience claim. On this more modest view, we insist that there are, independent of any considerations about supervenience, reasons for thinking that certain mental properties are causally explanatorily relevant—for mental properties play an essential role in a working model of causal explanation. The point of the appeal to supervenience is to make it intelligible how mental properties can have the features they do, features which mark them out as being explanatorily relevant. There are two worries about the proposal as it stands, worries expressed in questions (iii) and (iv). The first is this. The microphysical properties which determine a person's causal powers are her internal properties. But a person's mental properties do not supervene on her internal microphysical constitution, for the mental is environment-dependent; the supervenience thesis which we motivated in Chapter 2, recall, was the thesis that mental properties supervene on physical properties (including contextual properties), not that a person's mental properties supervene on her internal physical properties. So it seems that, contrary to the proposal, supervenience on the microphysical properties which determine a person's causal powers cannot be necessary for causal explanatory relevance. We can address that worry if we recall the motivation for the general claim that mental properties supervene on physical properties. The motivation was this. A person's mental properties are answerable to facts of two sorts: facts about her actual and potential behaviour, physically described; and facts about the physical, social, and historical context of that behaviour. Differences in either sort of fact require physical differences. So there could be no mental difference without a physical difference. Given that motivation, we can say the following. If context is held constant,

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a mental difference requires an internal physical difference; for, with context held constant, a mental difference requires a difference in behaviour or behavioural dispositions; and a difference in behavioural dispositions must have an internal physical cause. (Similarly, if behaviour and behavioural dispositions are held constant, a mental difference requires a difference in context.) In other words, we can supplement the general supervenience claim—‘A subject's mental properties supervene on her physical properties’—with a more specific claim: ‘Within a context, a subject's mental properties supervene on her internal microphysical properties.’335 Now when we consider the causal explanatory relevance of mental properties, we are considering counterfactuals like this: if S had not desired that q, she would not have Φ-d. So we are asking what would have been the case if things had been by and large as they were, but S had not desired that q. And in asking that, we are asking what would have been the case if the context had been held constant and S's attitudes had been different. But we have just seen that, within a context, a subject's mental properties supervene on her internal physical properties. So we can answer the worry raised in the previous paragraph; we do have reasons for saying that, if S had not desired that q, there would have been a difference in her internal physical properties. But now the second worry arises—the worry expressed in question (iv) above. Suppose we agree that, within the context of explanation, S's attitudes supervene on her internal physical properties. That guarantees only that, if S had not desired that q, there would have been some internal physical difference or other; it does not guarantee that there would have been a difference of just the sort needed to produce the relevant difference in behaviour. But we can reply to that worry in the same way as before: what is supposed to explain the causal explanatory relevance of mental

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That raises a question about contexts: within what context does a difference in mental properties require a difference in internal physical properties? On one view, contexts are individuated by the nature and identity of the particular things they contain: so two situations which contain numerically distinct, though physically indiscernible, things count as different contexts. On another view, contexts are individuated by the nature of the things they contain, but not by their numerical identity. (For more on the distinction, see the discussion in Ch. 5 § 2 of the difference between the disjunctive conception of experience and the hybrid conception.) But for present purposes we can safely abstract from that question. For, as I say in the text, the cases we are considering are cases in which, however finely we individuate contexts, we must say that context is held constant.

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properties is not the bare fact of supervenience, but the whole account of the relation between mental and physical which motivates the thesis of supervenience. A subject's possession of propositional attitudes is systematically related to her causal powers —to the ways in which she behaves and would behave in various situations. For S to desire that q is (amongst other things) for S to be disposed to behave in ways which make sense in the light of that desire, given her other attitudes. Correspondingly, for S to lack the desire that q is, given the context and S's other attitudes (and amongst other things), for S to be disposed not to Φ. She has that disposition, like any other, in virtue of having the microphysical constitution she has. But now, given (i) the constitutive relation between having a desire and having certain dispositions, and (ii) the metaphysical determination of dispositions by internal physical properties, it is no mystery that, if S had not desired that q, there would have been an internal physical difference of just the right sort to bring it about that S would not have Φ-d. For, in these circumstances, for S to lack that desire just is for her to be physically organized in such a way that she is not disposed to Φ. That explains why the counterfactuals required for the causal explanatory relevance of mental properties are true. And it explains it without violating the doctrine of the anomalism of the mental. What we need for the explanation is the idea that mental properties are determined by physical properties (subject to various forms of indeterminacy and vagueness); and, as we have seen (in Chapter 2 § 2), we can say that without giving up the thesis of anomalism. The same considerations can be used to answer two related objections which were raised in § 2. The critic suggested that if we accept the doctrine of the anomalism of the mental, we must acknowledge: first, that ‘it is a complete accident’ that a subject has the combination of mental and physical properties she does; and, second, that an agent who Φ-s because she believes that p and desires that q would still have Φ-d even if she had not believed and desired what she did. But, given the sort of supervenience claim I am defending, we need not accept either suggestion. In the first place, it is not ‘a complete accident’ that a subject has the combination of mental and physical properties she does; for, within a context, a subject's internal physical properties actually determine her mental properties, by determining her causal powers.

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Second, when S Φ-s because she believes that p and desires that q, we must allow (a) that we could in principle give a physiological explanation of her bodily movements without reference to her attitudes; and (b) that, in a different context, a bodily movement of the same physical type could occur, without being explicable by a similar set of attitudes. But that does not imply that, with the context as it was, S would have exhibited the same bodily movements, with the same physical causes, even if she had not had the attitudes she did. That is just what is ruled out by the supervenience thesis: if, in a given context, S has the mental property M and the maximal physical property P*, then any subject in that context who has P* must have M; given supervenience, it is not true that, in the context she was in, S could have exhibited exactly similar behaviour, with exactly similar causes, without having the attitudes she actually had.

7. Conclusions We have travelled the following route. Intuitively, people's mental properties are causally explanatorily relevant: they are indispensable elements in reason-giving explanations of action, and reason-giving explanations are causal explanations. But, according to the critics, the idea that mental properties are relevant in causal explanations is threatened by the doctrines that mental properties do not figure in strict laws, and that mental properties are not intrinsic properties of people (in Lewis's sense). I distinguished between causal relevance and causal explanatory relevance. Concerning causal relevance, I accepted that, in one sense of ‘causal relevance’ (the sense in which causally relevant properties are those which must be mentioned in a detailed account of minute causal mechanisms), mental properties are not causally relevant; but, in that sense, we should not have expected that they would be. I also pointed out that it was never part of the causal theory to claim that mental properties were relevant to the obtaining of extensional relations of causation. And I raised a doubt about how well we understand that idea. Turning to the idea of causal explanatory relevance, I started with the non-mental case. I challenged the idea that only properties which figure in strict laws could be causally explanatorily

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relevant; suggested a different understanding of causal explanatory relevance, in terms of the part that properties play in simple models of causality and causal explanation; and, by developing an account of the relation between explanatorily relevant properties and microphysical properties, I explained how a property could have the features which mark it out as being explanatorily relevant without itself figuring in strict laws. For the mental case, I first gave an account of explanatory relevance, in terms of the role that mental properties play in a model of causal explanation. In this case, we also needed the distinction between causal explanation and merely causal explanation; by seeing how the context-dependence of the mental is essential to the force of reason explanations, we were able to see why we should reject the charge that only what supervenes on a thing's internal physical composition can really be relevant in a causal explanation. Then I explained how mental properties can have the features which mark them out as causally explanatorily relevant, even though they do not figure in strict causal laws. Using the psychophysical supervenience thesis developed in Chapter 2 § 3, we can vindicate, or make intelligible, the following claims: possession of a particular propositional attitude affects S's causal powers, or patterns of causal behaviour; where S Φ-d because she believed that p and desired that q, there are true counterfactuals involving the mental—for example, that, if S had not desired that q, then, ceteris paribus, she would not have Φ-d; and it is not true that, had S not had those attitudes, then the same physical causes could still have operated, to produce the same physical behaviour.

8. Strict Laws and Anomalous Monism: A Concluding Note The worry about explanatory relevance which I have been addressing is a general worry. But, as we saw in § 2, it has frequently been introduced as a particular problem for anomalous monism. Though I have not been primarily concerned to defend anomalous monism, it is worth asking how that position stands in the light of my discussion. My conclusion on that question is this: anomalous monism is an internally consistent position, and there is no need for it to deny the explanatory relevance of mental properties;

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but some elements of the position seem hard to motivate, in a way which emerges from my defence of the explanatory relevance of the mental. My defence has stressed the distinction between causal explanation, on the one hand, and causation, on the other. And I have emphasized the role played by ordinary models of causal explanation at the level of observation: mechanical transactions, the heating of fluids, magnetic attraction, and so on, as well as the model of an agent's acting for a reason. These models of causal explanation employ vocabularies which do not permit the formulation of strict regularities; and when we single out events and substances in those vocabularies, the things we refer to are not the things which would be mentioned in the strict regularities of the physical sciences. That notion of causal explanation can mesh with the idea of extensional causal relations; where there are explanatorily related facts there are causally related events. All this is entirely in keeping with Davidson's picture. Indeed, to talk of a distinction between the vocabulary employed in our primitive, everyday causal explanations and the vocabulary of the physical sciences is another way of making the distinction which Davidson himself makes, when he talks of a distinction between the sort of rough generalizations available in psychology and other explanatory schemes (generalizations which make essential use of ceteris paribus clauses), and the strict generalizations to which we aspire in the physical sciences. However, there is an important part of anomalous monism which is not included in the picture I have been developing: the idea that causally related events must themselves instantiate strict causal laws.336 And when we stress the centrality, in our ordinary causal thought, of primitive models of causal explanation (or, in more Davidsonian terms, when we stress the centrality of the rough generalizations of common-sense psychology), it becomes unclear what motivates the requirement that causally related events should instantiate strict laws. There is, of course, a way in which causation has to do with laws; questions of causation and causal explanation go hand in hand with questions about the difference between causal regularities and accidental regularities, of projectability, of counterfactuals, and so on; and

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I take it that the idea that causally related events must themselves instantiate strict laws is to be distinguished from the idea that causally related events are composed of microphysical events which instantiate strict laws.

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those are just the sorts of questions which arise in the discussion of laws. But one might think that, given that psychological explanations support counterfactuals, the characterizations which we get at the level of our everyday models of causal explanation already embody all the elements of nomologicality which are necessary for us to make sense of there being causal relations here. According to that suggestion, causation does require laws; but what it needs are only the rough-and-ready ‘laws’ available at the level of everyday observation.337 In the light of that thought, we should ask whether there is really any motivation for requiring that causes and effects instantiate strict laws, of a sort which are not formulable in the vocabulary of everyday observation, and which can be found only at the level of ‘the ultimate physics’. If there is not, then, though we can see how it is possible to combine an account of causal explanation which emphasizes our primitive, everyday models of explanation with the belief that causation requires strict laws, that combination of views seems unmotivated and, to that extent, unstable.338 If we give up the idea that causal relations must instantiate strict laws, we lose the motivation for another central feature of anomalous monism: its monism. Event monism followed from the strict nomological character of causation, the causal character of the mental, and the mental's anomalism.339 But if singular causal

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Davidson (1976) might be read as conceding essentially this point. In that article, Davidson argues that causal explanations must introduce some element of generality; and says that there are (non-strict) ‘laws . . . implicit in reason explanation’; namely, ‘the generalizations embedded in attributions of attitudes, beliefs, and traits’ (p. 274). Generalizations are embedded in these attributions because ‘no single action can prove that a disposition like a desire or belief exists; desires and beliefs, however short lived, cannot be momentary, which is why we typically learn so much from knowing about the beliefs and desires of an agent’ (p. 274). On this account, when we give a psychological explanation, we have given a causal generalization—and a generalization which operates at the level of the everyday mental vocabulary. Strict, exceptionless laws have no obvious role in this picture.

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It is, in fact, not at all clear why Davidson himself thinks that causation requires strict laws (or, more correctly, laws of a kind that can only be found within the minute physical sciences, which could be indeterministic (see (1970a) p. 208 n. 3)). He says that he finds it an attractive possibility about the form of causal laws, on the assumption that ‘from them and a premise to the effect that an event of a certain (acceptable) description exists, we [can] infer a singular causal statement saying that the event caused, or was caused by, another’ ((1967) p. 158). And he has said that he ‘plan[s] to argue for [the idea that there is a close connection between strict laws and causal connections] in print one of these days’ ((1985) p. 247). But, as far as I know, he has not yet done so.

339

See Davidson (1970a) p. 224 and (1974a) p. 231.

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relations need not instantiate strict laws, there is no reason why, when one of the relata is a mental event, it must also be a physical event.340 And, one might think, this is just as well; for, as we saw in Chapter 2 § 5.2, there are reasons to doubt that mental events could be identical with physical events. Now someone might seek to link causation to strict laws in the following way, whilst still giving a central role to the primitive models of causal explanation I have been insisting on. Consider an ordinary causal explanation: ‘The glass broke because it was dropped on to a stone floor.’ Staying at the level of observation, we can derive from that explanation a claim about causally related events: the glass's hitting the stone floor caused its breaking. Now if x caused y, we think, then x necessitated y, or at least, it made y very much more probable than it would otherwise have been. And that thought underpins the general principle, ‘same cause, same effect; different effect, different cause’.341 Applying that principle, we assume, when causes which seem alike have different effects, that there was some difference between them; and we attempt to isolate the difference. Initially, the differences in causes needed to account for the difference in effects will be describable in the terms of ordinary observation; the glass which broke was dropped from a greater height, or on to a harder floor, than the glass which did not. But at some point the process of distinguishing between similar causes with dissimilar effects will abandon the language of everyday observation. The closer we get to strict regularities, the further we are from the vocabulary and ontology of everyday observation—the vocabulary and ontology which figure in our models of causal explanation. The concept of causation contains within it a pressure to find exceptionless regularities; but to yield to that pressure is simultaneously to move away from our ordinary, pre-scientific ontology.342 If this is right, then there is a line of thought which leads from the concept of causation, via the principle ‘same cause, same effect’, to strict regularities. But that does not show that we can,

340

See Hornsby (1980–1) and McDowell (1985) pp. 397–8.

341

In the case of indeterministic causation, there will come a point where there are differences in effects without differences in causes. But the presence of indeterminism does not invalidate the principle ‘different effects, therefore different causes’ as a methodological tool; we will expect to apply it in reaching the point where exactly similar causes differ in their effects.

342

The considerations of this paragraph echo Strawson (1985) § VI.

§ 8. STRICT LAWS AND ANOMALOUS MONISM

221

after all, motivate anomalous monism's claim that the concept of causation contains the idea that causally related events must instantiate strict laws. For, on the position I have just sketched, as we move towards strict regularities, we move away from the events which figure in our ordinary talk of causal explanation and causation—including our talk of mental causes and effects. As we pursue the search for strict, exceptionless regularity, we must focus on neural events (or physical events on a still smaller scale), and leave ordinary mental events behind. The problem with anomalous monism, then, is not that its anomalism rules out the idea that mental properties are explanatorily relevant. It is rather this: the defence of the explanatory relevance of the mental stresses everyday causal talk at a level where strict laws are not formulable; that raises a question about the motivation for the requirement that causal relations instantiate strict laws; and though there are, certainly, natural ways in which to move from an interest in causally related events to an interest in strict laws, the events with which the strict laws deal are not the ordinary mental events implicit in our everyday psychological talk. Once we see how to explain the explanatory relevance of mental properties, we cast doubt on the strictly nomological character of causality; and if we cast doubt on that, we lose the motivation for the thesis that mental events must be physical events.

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Index action explanation; causal conception of 91–2, 95–100, 121–7, 130–2, 178–92, 204–17; non-causal conception of 93–100, 168 see also reason-giving explanation aesthetic properties 65 n., 68, 72 anomalism of the mental 4–5, 56–89; argument for 56–68; and causal/causal explanatory relevance 183–92, 204–5, 215–17; and functionalism 78–80; and indeterminacy/ determination 68–73; and supervenience 74–8, 212; and token identities 81–7 anomalous monism 112, 183–4, 190–1, 217–21 Anscombe, G. E. M. 103, 107 n., 114, 120 n., 124 n., 166 n. Aristotle 58 Blackburn, Simon 146 n., 202 n. Block, Ned 41 n., 45 n., 189 n., 200 Blockhead 44–6 blocking conditions 165–7 Braithwaite, R. 48 Burge, Tyler 69 n., 153 n., 170 n. Campbell, John 19 n. Cartesian view of experience, see experience Cartesian view of mind 2–3, 31, 119–23, 152 causal action of substances 103, 107, 193–204 causal dispositions, see causal powers and dispositions causal explanation; and action, see action explanation; and anomalous monism 184, 186–7, 217–21; and mental properties 204–17; merely causal explanation 208–10, 217; and non-mental properties 192–204, 216–17; and relation to causation 100–10, 123–6, 155–6, 162–4, 178–83; and simple models of explanation 103, 107, 193–5, 201, 203–7, 213, 217–18; and supervenience 195–204, 211–17; and vision 155–6, 162–4 see also causation causal explanatory relevance; of mental properties 120, 128–9, 183, 186–8, 190–2, 204–17; of non-mental properties 191–204, 216–17 see also causal relevance of mental properties causality and content 90, 130–1, 136–9, 142–3, 147–9, 169–77, 209–10 causally basic properties 196–7, 200–3 causal powers and dispositions 190–2, 194–9, 202–4, 207, 211–17 causal relevance of mental properties 120, 128–9, 183–6, 188–90, 216 see also causal explanatory relevance causal theory of action, see action explanation, causal conception of causation:; as categorial notion 100, 109, 126; independence of causes and effects 117, 157–60; and laws 218–21; as

natural relation 100–10, 125–6, 188–90; piecemeal causation 162; relation to causal explanation 100–10, 123–6, 155–6, 162–4, 178–83 see also causal explanation charity, principle of 8, 49 n. Charles, David 74 n., 77 n., 192 n., 202 n.

232

INDEX

classical empiricism 135–6, 138 Cohen, G. A. 74 n. compatibilism; about vision 155–64, 172–3, 176–7; in philosophy of mind 4, 119, 129–31, 136, 139, 177 constitution 85, 87, 160 content, see causality and content context-dependence of thought 42, 69–70, 183, 188, 204, 209–11, 213–14, 217 Dancy, Jonathan 58 n., 154 n. Davidson, Donald; and anomalism of the mental 56–65, 68 n. , 77 n., 89; and anomalous monism 112, 117 n., 183, 218, 219 n.; and causal theory of action 91–2, 95 n., 98 n., 124 n., 132; and causation/causal explanation 101 n., 104–5, 106 n., 108–10, 157 n., 185 n., 189 n., 192; and compatibilism 2, 121; on content and causation 136, 170; and decision-making 84 n.; and epistemic intermediaries 131 n., 135 n., 147 n.; and indeterminacy of interpretation 70–3; and interpretation 11–13, 78 n.; and interpretationism 1 n., 4; and nomological character of causality 219 n.; and physical events 88 n.; and supervenience 74–5; on thought and interpretability, 23–6, 30, 32–4, 42–3, 49 n.; on thought and language 13–23, 52–3; and veridicality of belief 137–9 Dennett, Daniel 1 n., 14 n., 15, 17, 34, 43, 50–2, 54 n., 113, 120, 123, 128 determination; of causal powers by physical constitution 189, 191–2, 196–8, 202–4; of the mental by the physical 68–73, 211, 213–15 Deutscher, M. 114 n. Deutscher, Isaac 186 n. disjunctive conception of experience, see experience Dummett, Michael 12 n., 59 n., 170, 173 Edwards, P. 135 n. Eliot, George 58 n. epiphenomenalism 127–9, 183–8 Euthyphro 48 Evans, Gareth 14 n., 15–16, 19 n., 42 n., 43 n., 69 n., 142, 146, 150 n., 151 n., 174 n. Evnine, Simon 75 n., 121 n. experience; Cartesian view 140, 152; disjunctive conception 6, 140, 143–55, 158–61, 164, 173; highest-commonfactor/non-disjunctive conception 143–9, 152–3, 171–2, 174; hybrid conception 147 n., 153 external world, problem of 3, 38, 122, 135, 147–9, 152, 161 Feyerabend, P. 66–7 first-person awareness 34–5 Fodor, Jerry 110 n., 111 n., 120 Føllesdal, Dagfinn 129 n., 184 n., 186–7 Foster, John 170 n. functionalism 52, 79–80, 178 Ginet, Carl 100 n. Grice, H. P. 141 n.

highest-common-factor conception of experience, see experience Hinton, J. M. 140 n., 158 n. Honderich, Ted 184 n. Hornsby, Jennifer 3 n., 80 n., 88, 95 n., 113, 124 n., 126, 209 n., 220 n. Hyman, John 2 n., 122 n., 143 n. identity theory, see type-type identity theory; token identity theory incompatibilism; in philosophy of mind 2, 119–32, 139; about vision 155 indeterminacy; of interpretation

INDEX

70–3; of measurements of temperature 71–3; of the mental 69–73, 120, 126–7 instrumentalism 127–9 see also epiphenomenalism interpretability 24–6; whether constitutive of thought 47–55; whether necessary for thought 23–39; whether sufficient for thought 40–7 interpretation 7–13, 59; indeterminacy of 70–3; and language 13–23 interpretationism 1–55, 119–30; and anomalism of the mental 56; and arguments for necessity claim 32–9; and causalism 120–9; circularity/self-defeatingness 53–5; constitutive versus non-constitutive 47–55; and experience 140, 151–2; and instrumentalism 127–9; linguistic 13–23, 32–3; metaphysics of 123–9; non-linguistic 13–14; pure versus supplemented 40–7; and strength of necessity claim 26–32 see also interpretability; interpretation intrinsic properties 187–8, 191, 216 Jackson, Frank 189 n., 192 Johnston, Mark 184, 185 n. Kant, Immanuel 142 Kantian argument about vision 142, 167–8, 175–6 Kim, Jaegwon 74, 186 n. Kuhn, T. 66–7 language of thought 111 see also representational theory of mind laws; in aesthetics 68; and causal explanatory relevance 186–7; and causal relevance 184–6; and causation 184–6, 218–21; physical 61, 63–4, 67; psychophysical and psychological, see anomalism of the mental; of special sciences 62–3 Lennon, Kathleen 184 n. LePore, Ernest 192 n. Lewis, David 79, 92 n., 104–5, 106 n., 162, 185 n., 187 n., 191 Lipton, Peter 67 n. Lloyd-Morgan, C. 43 Loar, Brian 128 n. Loewer, Barry 192 n. Macdonald, Cynthia 192 n. Macdonald, Graham 192 n. McDowell, John 3 n., 21 n., 37 n., 58, 63 n., 64 n., 65 n., 80 n., 83 n., 131 n., 135 n., 139 n., 140 n., 144, 146 n., 147 n., 149 n., 220 n. McGinn, Colin 24 n. Mackie, John 107 n. Malebranche, N. 170 Martin, C. B. 114 n. Mellor, D. H. 106 n. mechanical action see causal action of substances memory 90, 114–17, 121, 180–1 mental causation; mentalist view of 110, 113–14; physicalist view of 110–13, 115–18 see also action explanation; causal explanation; causal explanatory relevance; causal powers

233

and dispositions; causal relevance of mental properties; memory; vision mentalism; about mental causation 110, 113–14; about vision 156–9, 162–4 see also physicalism Moore, G. E. 18 Mothersill, Mary 65 n., 68 n. narrow psychology 188 Newton-Smith, W. 65 n., 67 n. nomological character of causation, see laws non-conceptual content 150–1 non-disjunctive conception of experience, see experience normative stories 130–4

234

INDEX

objective truth, grasp of concept of 16–19, 22–3 occasionalism 170, 173–6 other minds, problem of 3, 122, 152 Papineau, David 116 n. paradigm change 66–7 Peacocke, Christopher 41 n., 43 n., 44 n., 95 n., 116 n., 117 n. Pears, David 152 n. photograph model of mental representation 174 n. physicalism; about mental causation 110–13, 115–18, 159; about vision 156, 160–4 see also mentalism Pettit, Philip 189 n., 192 private language arguments, first and second 152 n. psychophysical correlations 78–89, 111–13, 120, 179–83 Putnam, Hilary 26 n., 40 n., 69 n., 88 n. Quine, W. V. 33 n., 115 n. Ramsey, Frank 79 rationality 8, 56–61, 64–8, 74–6, 79–81, 85, 89, 208 realism 129–39 reason-giving explanation 83–6 see also action explanation representational theory of mind 111, 178 Ricoeur, Paul 94 n. Robinson, Howard 150 n., 154 n. Robinson, W. 113 n., 181 n. Rorty, Richard 131–7 sceptical questions and anti-scepticism 132–3, 135, 137–9 Searle, John 158 n. Sellars, W. F. 149 n. singular thought 146 Smith, Peter 151 n., 190 n. Snowdon, Paul 74 n., 140 n., 141 n., 143 n., 150 n., 152 n., 154 n., 155 n., 161 n., 162 n., 167 n., 168 n. Socrates 48 sortal properties 194–5 Sperber, Dan 69 n. Stich, Stephen 70 n. Stout, Rowland 108 n. Stoutland, Frederick 2 n., 88 n., 93, 120 n., 122 n., 124 n., 129 n., 165 n., 183–4, 185 n. Strawson, P. F. 19 n., 36–7, 135 n.; on causation and causal explanation 100 n., 101 n., 107 n., 109, 192, 193 n., 204 n. , 220 n.; and perception 142, 167, 173 supervenience; of causally explanatorily relevant properties on the physical 195–204; of the mental on the physical 74–8, 211–17 Teller, P. 77 n. thought; and interpretability, see interpretability; and language 13–23, 32–3; of an objective world 132–9; radically epistemic and radically non-epistemic conceptions 26–30, 38–9 token identity theory; for events 87–9, 112, 160, 178; for states 81–7, 178 triangulation 20–2

Trotsky, L. 186 truth 133–5 Turing, A. 25 n. Twin Earth 40, 42, 153, 210 type-type identity theory 111, 178 uncodifiability 58–68, 79–86, 89 Urmson, J. O. 135 n. virtue 58 vision; causal theory of 90, 121, 140–3, 154–77; non-causal conception 164–6, 168–70 von Wright, G. H. 120 n. White, Alan 169 n. Wiggins, David 58 n., 66 n., 83 n. Williams, Bernard 37 n. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 12 n., 21, 28 n., 33 n., 35–7, 42 n., 59 n., 69 n., 71 n., 114 n., 120, 121 n., 122 n., 126 n., 152 n., 174 n., 206 n.