Disertación Juicios Objetivos y Subjetivos
Disertación Juicios Objetivos y Subjetivos
Disertación Juicios Objetivos y Subjetivos
1.0 Introduction
Examples of questions of application include (but are not limited to) the
following. Is it possible for science to be objective, or are the claims of science
inextricably bound up with subjective points of view? If science is indeed objective, is
there anything that escapes its grasp in virtue of being essentially subjective (as some
have claimed for consciousness)? Are the things that comprise the subject matter of
scientific and folk theories things that exist objectively or are they instead the subjective
results of the way our ways of thinking and talking carve up the world? Must all physical
things exist objectively and vice versa?
Examples of questions of constitution include (but are not limited to) the
following. Is objectivity an unachievable ideal that can only be approximated by degrees
of intersubjectivity? How deep is the common analogy between objectivity and
subjectivity on the one hand and the literary conventions of third person and first person
points of view on the other? Are subjectivity and objectivity ways that things exist (minddependently vs. mind-independently) or are they ways of representing things (from a
particular perspective or point of view vs. from no particular perspective or point of
view)? If subjectivity and objectivity are ways of representing, then what are the proper
roles of notions of truth and indexicality in a theory of objectivity and subjectivity?
difference hinges on truth. Objective judgments are absolutely true, whereas the truth of
subjective judgments is relative to the person making the judgment: my judgments are
true for me, your judgments are true for you. You and I can each utter vanilla tastes
great but in your mouth this may constitute a truth and in my mouth it may constitute a
falsehood. Subjective judgments are subject relative. Some philosophers have noted an
analogy between this kind of subject relativity and a kind that obtains for indexical
expressions. You and I can both utter I am here and thereby express different
propositions. Some philosophers have construed indexicality as an instance of
subjectivity and some others have even gone so far as to argue that subjectivity just is
indexicality.
I will postpone taking sides on these issues, but let me spell out further what I
take the importance of the above remarks to be. I call attention to the practice of labeling
judgments (and beliefs etc.) objective and subjective. In this discussion, it is
representations that have propositional or sentential structure that are the first and
foremost instances of objective (and subjective) things. The question arises, then, of what
it is about these representations that makes them subjective. One suggestion is that the
subjective/objective distinction marks a distinction in ways of assigning truth values to
these representations, ways that are relativist and absolutist, respectively. Another
suggestion is that the subjective/objective distinction marks a distinction in ways of
assigning representational content to these representations, ways that are indexical and
non-indexical, respectively. Yet another approach seeks to classify representational
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schemes in terms of the degree to which they reflect a particular perspective or point of
view in the literal sense that pictorial representations represent the visual appearance of
objects from a point of view. On this suggestion, pictures are the prototypically
subjective representations and objective representations are to be defined in contrast.
Among the issues to be sorted out in considering the truth, indexical, and picture
suggestions are those concerning whether they constitute distinct viable alternatives, and
if so, whether they are compatible. Such sorting will have to wait. Ultimately, however, I
advocate a combination of the truth and picture approaches.
specification of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the correct application of a
term and (ii) captures all of the pretheoretic intuitions regarding the meaning of the term,
then there are embarrassingly few analyses. (Even the old standby that bachelor analyses
into unmarried male has its counter-examples: the pope is an unmarried male, but it
seems unintuitive to proclaim him a bachelor.) However, successor subjects to
conceptual analysis have arisen. I have mind two: What Quine (1960, pp. 258-260) calls
explication and what Rawls (1993, p. 8) calls reflective equilibrium.
process of adjusting the principles and the judgments so that they are brought into accord
is the method of reflective equilibrium. Any first principles arrived upon by this method
count as justified, even though they were not deducible from any other principles. Rawls
notion of reflective equilibrium need not apply only to moral matters. Viewing concepts
as principles regulating the applications of terms allows viewing reflective equilibrium as
a successor to conceptual analysis. Reflective equilibrium as a successor to conceptual
analysis involves comparing a proposed definition of a term to intuitions regarding proper
use and evidence regarding theoretical utility. If a definition is theoretically useful and
comports with many pretheoretic intuitions, then residual pretheoretic intuitions that
cannot be accounted for may simply be disregarded. Viewed this way, there is little if any
difference between the methods of reflective equilibrium and Quinean explication.
Many people, philosophers and non-philosophers alike, hold the following view
of matters of taste. Judgments of taste are subjective. If you judge the Mona Lisa to be
beautiful, and I judge the Mona Lisa to be ugly, we can both be right. Such a view of
matters of taste is oft expressed by the slogan beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I
mention this view of matters of taste not to assert its truth or falsity, but because its
familiarity helps to focus attention on a common use of the terms objective and
subjective. On this use, objectivity and subjectivity are properties of judgments.
Another familiar view is the view that judgments in mathematics and the natural sciences
are objective. If you judge a sample of gold to weigh five grams and I judge the same
sample to weigh six grams, then at least one of us is wrong. Unlike our differing
judgments of the beauty of the Mona Lisa which can both be right, our differing
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judgments of the mass of a sample of gold cannot both be right. The same sort of thing is
held to apply to mathematical judgments. If you judge the sum of two numbers to be
1,082 and I judge the sum to be 1, 083, then at least one of us has to be wrong. If we
disagree on the result of adding two numbers, we cannot both be right. I mention the
view that judgments of mathematics and natural sciences are objective not to take a stand
on the view, but instead to direct the readers attention to a familiar use of the terms
objective and subjective.
Its worth noting, however, that while Lycan explicates subjectivity in terms of
representations that have indexical components, it is not clear that he intends to explicate
objectivity in terms of representations lacking indexical components. Indeed, sometimes
when he uses the word objective, he is referring to things that are not representations,
indicating that while he is using the word subjective in its epistemic sense he is using
the word objective in its metaphysical sense. It may not be accurate then, to describe
Lycan as an indexical theorist of epistemic subjectivity and objectivity, since it is not
clear what his views on epistemic objectivity are. I will continue, however, to classify his
view on subjectivity as epistemic.
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At the heart of the notion of metaphysical objectivity is the notion mindindependent existence. Metaphysically objective things are those that do not depend on
minds for their existence. In contrast, metaphysically subjective things do depend on
minds for their existence.
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Roundness and redness, on the Lockean story, are metaphysically objective and
subjective, respectively. Berkeley famously rejected this part of Lockes story by arguing
that no distinction between primary and secondary properties can be drawn. Berkeley
argued that so-called primary properties were just as perceiver dependent as so-called
secondary properties. Thus Berkeley defended the metaphysical position of Idealism, the
view that everything that exists either is a mind or depends for its existence on being
perceived (or at least thought about) by minds. Everything, according to the Berkeley
story, is metaphysically subjective.
them to be states of nervous systems. These sorts of considerations have lead some
people (including Kripke) to argue for the non-identity of pains and states of nervous
systems. If pains are necessarily experienced (that is, metaphysically subjective), and
states of nervous systems are not necessarily experienced (that is, metaphysically
objective), then pains allegedly cannot be identical to states of nervous systems. The
question of whether these sorts of arguments are sound will occupy large portions of
chapter 3 (where I argue that they are not sound). I mention them here only to direct the
readers attention to uses of the notions of metaphysical objectivity and subjectivity that
have relatively widespread currency in the philosophical literature.
The above examples of metaphysical objectivity and subjectivity are drawn from
the philosophical literature, but the notion is not totally alien to the non-philosopher.
Many readers will be familiar with the adage that Nothing is good or bad but thinking
make it so even if they do not recall that this was said by Hamlet in Shakespeares play.
To agree with Hamlet is to hold that whether something instantiates moral properties is
relative to someones beliefs and opinions. For example, perhaps killing your uncle is
wrong only insofar as someone thinks that killing your uncle is wrong. If so, then the
property of being wrong is metaphysically subjective: it depends on minds for its
instantiation. This is not a universally held stance on moral properties, but it is
undeniably one with which many people are familiar. It is a familiar version of a claim
that something is metaphysically subjective. Insofar as we understand these sorts of
claims, then we also understand their denial, that is, we understand what it would be for
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The epistemic and metaphysical distinctions are orthogonal. They do not simply
map on to each other. A major difference between the metaphysical and epistemic senses
of objectivity/subjectivity has to do with what sorts of things are either objective or
subjective. The metaphysical sense of the distinction applies to everything whereas the
epistemic sense of the distinction applies only to things that exhibit intentionality. Since
everything that exists either depends for its existence on minds or does not, then
everything is either metaphysically subjective or metaphysically objective.
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Another way of seeing that the epistemic distinction is not the same as the
metaphysical distinction is to see how the distinctions may cross-classify things. For
example, things that are metaphysically subjective may be either epistemically objective
or epistemically subjective. As mentioned above, judgments may be either epistemically
objective (like maybe the judgment that the moon has no atmosphere) or epistemically
subjective (like maybe the judgment that the moon is beautiful on an autumn evening).
But judgments are metaphysically subjective. There are no judgments unless there are
minds to do the judging, thus, in depending on minds for their existence, judgments are
metaphysically subjective. It is now time to turn to the question of how things that are
metaphysically subjectivethings like judgments, thoughts, and beliefscan differ in
being either epistemically objective or epistemically subjective.
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In discussing the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder I described it in
terms of epistemic subjectivity. I illustrated the idea in terms of differing judgments
people might form in viewing the Mona Lisa. One person may judge the painting to be
beautiful and another may judge the painting to be ugly. A common view of aesthetic
judgment allows that neither judgment is false, and I (for purposes of illustration, not to
take a particular stand on aesthetic judgments) called both of the judgments epistemically
subjective. Another way to unpack the maxim that beauty is in the eye of the beholder is
in terms of metaphysical subjectivity. On this account, the painting instantiates the
property of being beautiful, but its doing so depends on the reactions of certain people
people who like or otherwise have some positive attitude toward the Mona Lisa. And the
Mona Lisa also instantiates the property of being ugly, but its doing so depends on the
reactions of certain other peoplepeople who (unlike the first group mentioned) dislike
or otherwise have some negative attitude toward the Mona Lisa.
There are thus two ways of telling the story about the subjectivity of beauty. The
epistemic story is told in terms of differing but non-contradictory judgments as to what is
beautiful. The metaphysical story is told in terms of different mind-dependent properties
instantiated by the Mona Lisa, properties that depend for their instantiation on different
minds. The two kinds of storythe metaphysical and the epistemicare not in
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competition with each other. They are consistent with each other. Further, one of them
may be explained in terms of the other, more specifically, the epistemic story maybe
explained in terms of the metaphysical story. The explanation I offer is the
correspondence theory of objectivity: something is epistemically objective insofar as it
corresponds to something that is metaphysically objective and something is epistemically
subjective insofar as it corresponds to something that is metaphysically subjective.
in virtue of which the truth-bearers are either true or false). In my toy-example, the truth
bearers are sentences such as Bill Clinton is a mammal and Grass is green and the
correspondents are states of affairs (construed as instantiations of properties and relations
by objects) such as the state of affairs of Bill Clintons being a mammal and the state of
affairs of grasss being green. For simplicitys sake, let us consider only unquantified
atomic sentences with monadic predicatessentences of the form a is F. A sentence
of the form a is F is true if and only if (1) there is some individual a referred to by the
singular term a, (2) there is some property of being F picked out by the general term is
F, and (3) a instantiates the property F. The relation of correspondence obtains between
the sentence a is F and the state of affairs of as being F when and only when
conditions 1-3 are satisfied.
The basic picture can be extended to account for the truth of beliefs and
judgments in addition to sentences by redescribing conditions 1 and 2 in terms of the
singular and general concepts /a/ and /F/instead of the singular and general terms a and
F. The questions of what exactly concepts and terms are (e.g. Are they types or
tokens? Discrete or vague?) and what the relations between them are (e.g. Are concepts
just knowledge of how to apply terms? Are concepts themselves terms in a language of
thought?) , are both, like much else in philosophy, matters of intense debate. Involving
myself in these particular debates is something I hope to postpone indefinitely. I cannot
assure the reader that nothing in the present account depends on how these debates
ultimately turn out. But I do think it relatively safe to say that I presuppose nothing
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agreed to be false by the majority of the debaters. I will proceed, then, by assuming the
existence of both concepts and terms, and assume also that in the following account of
epistemic objectivity, nothing hinges much on treating terms and concepts (and sentences
and judgments) as interchangeable.
There are certain elements of the above correspondence theory of truth that may
be pressed into the service of constructing a theory of objectivity. Just as there are truth
bearers, there are objectivity bearers. Just as truth involves a relation between the bearers
and the world, so will objectivity involve a relation between objectivity bearers and the
world. The key difference between truth and objectivity will be what the ultimate bearers
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are. The ultimate bearers of truth are sentences. This is not to deny that one does not
speak only of sentences as being true, but of true theories and true stories. But this does
not make them the ultimate bearers of truth. The truth of theories and of stories is
explained in terms of the truth of sentences, not the other way around. Nothing smaller
than a sentence, for instance, a singular or general term, can be a truth bearer (can be true
or false). This is where objectivity departs from truth. As I shall argue, the ultimate
bearers of objectivity are general terms (and concepts). This is not to deny that one also
speaks of entire sentences as objective. Likewise for theories and stories. But general
terms and concepts are the ultimate bearers of objectivity: the objectivity of sentences is
explained in terms of their constituents, not the other way around.
First I want to address the question of why it is not entire sentences that are the
ultimate bearers of objectivity. Consider the following, and ultimately incorrect, way of
cashing out the correspondence theory. This theory defines as epistemically subjective
anything that represents a metaphysically subjective state of affairs. On such an account,
the sentence a is F is epistemically objective just in case the subject term and the
general term both pick out things that are metaphysically objective.
This comports with the intuitions that the sentence Jane is a mammal is
epistemically objective while Jane is beautiful is epistemically subjective. However,
this version of the correspondence theory has the unintuitive consequence that the
sentence Beauty is a subjective property is epistemically subjective. This seems
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unintuitive because it violates the truism that while beauty may be in the eye of the
beholder, whether beauty is in the eye of the beholder need not itself be in the eye of the
beholder. Call the project of explaining why whether something is in the eye of the
beholder need not itself be in the eye of the beholder the problem of the eye of the
beholder.
This problem of the eye of the beholder may be solved by treating certain subsentential components as the ultimate bearers of objectivity and subjectivity.
Immediately, two options for the bearers present themselves: singular terms and general
terms. The singular term option may be eliminated due to the following consideration.
The difference between John Smith is ugly and John Smith is a mammal in virtue of
which the former is epistemically subjective and the latter epistemically objective does
not consist in the fact that the individual named by the subject term is metaphysically
objective, since the cases do not vary in that regard. I offer, then, that the proper
explication of a correspondence notion of objectivity requires only that the predicate
correspond to something metaphysically objective. Metaphysically objective objects need
not be referred to in singular sentences. Instead, I offer, what makes a singular sentence
of the form a is F epistemically objective is that the property F named by the predicate
term F is metaphysically objective. Thus I call the correspondence theory of epistemic
objectivity that I advocate the predicational theory of epistemic objectivity. Below I
sketch how the predicational theory deals with singular and quantified sentences and the
corresponding propositional attitudes.
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perception that P is due to my possessing and deploying a predicative concept that picks
out a metaphysically objective property.
I want to take some time here to briefly remark upon the superiority of the
correspondence theory over its competitors: the indexical and consensus theories. Much
of the dissertation is taken up with my case against competitors, but I want to make some
brief foreshadowing remarks here.
The first issue to consider is how (and whether) the three theories account for the
subjectivity of cats are funny. Both consensus and correspondence theories do well
here, but the indexical theories immediately run into trouble. Cats are funny is third
personal, not first personal. It is devoid of any obviously indexical/demonstrative terms
such as I or this.
Now, the indexical theorist may respond that perhaps funny is itself indexical.
It may be viewed as indexical insofar as it picks out different things when used by
different people: it may mean something quite different in my mouth than in yours.
When I say cats are funny that is equivalent to cats amuse me. When you say cats
are funny you dont mean that cats amuse Pete Mandik, but instead that cats amuse you.
Thus insofar as funny has meaning determined in part by context, it is indexical. The
problem with this kind of response is that it can be used to show that just about any
representational state is indexical, and thus subjective, since for any term there is a sense
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in which its meaning depends on context. Cats are mammals turns out to be indexical
insofar as the meaning of mammal is indexed to Engish speakers in the actual world. It
is possible that there is another language (or an alternate English) in which mammal
means what we mean by vegetable. Allowing the notion of indexicality to be so widely
applicable is bad for the indexical theorist considering their primary motivation for
adopting the indexical theory, namely, constructing a physicalist response to the
knowledge argument. Indexical theorists want to allow that there is a meaningful if not
crisp objective/subjective distinction whereby statements in natural sciences such as
physics turn out to be objective. But detecting subjectivity wherever there is context
sensitive meaning is antithetical to such a project. As I will discuss at further length in
Chapter 3, much of the superiority of the correspondence theory of the indexical theory
hinges on issues surrounding the knowledge argument and the subjectivity of
consciousness. Similar considerations also count against the consensus theory, since it is
absolutely silent on such issues.
experiences are subjective, material bodies are objective. In both traditions, there is a subtradition of formulating accounts of subjective things in terms of accounts of objective
things. In both traditions, an informal paradox arises, I call it the paradox of
subjectivity. The crux of the paradox begins with a definition of subjective properties in
terms of objective properties and ends with a conclusion that something is both objective
and subjective.
In the case of secondary qualities, the seeds of paradox are sown as follows.
Primary qualities of objects include the way objects occupy and move through space: the
shapes and motions of objects. Any qualities definable in terms of the occupation of and
movement through space were also considered primary, and thus objective. Thus
velocities, accelerations, attractive and repulsive forces all fall under the heading of
primary. What room, then, is there for the secondary qualities? The classical
conception of secondary qualities is as of the powers in objects to cause certain reactions
in observers. But powers exercised by one body on another are as primaryand thus as
objectiveas shape and motion. Taking color as a paradigm of secondary qualities, the
informal paradox may be formulated as follows:
Premise 1. Barneys being purple is subjective
Premise 2. Barneys being purple is just Barneys having a disposition
to cause certain a reaction in observers.
Premise 3. But whether Barney has a disposition to cause certain
observers to represent him as purple is entirely objective
Conclusion: Barneys being purple is objective
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Note what reference to observers may conceal or assume, namely, that being an
observera subject of sensory experienceis something reducible to primary properties.
Perhaps what separates powers to cause reactions in observers from powers to cause
reactions in other entities is that observers have conscious experiences. Perhaps what is
primal to the subjectivity of secondary qualities is not merely that they are dispositional,
but that they are dispositions concerning the effects on conscious experience. Perhaps
conscious experience is the prototype of subjectivity and secondary qualities are
subjective only derivatively. It is still open to such a view to hold that experiential
properties are reducible to physical properties. Mention of the physicalization of
experience leads to the second version of the paradox of subjectivity.
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terms of the supposition that anchovy ice cream instantiates the secondary property of
being disgusting yields the following.
Premise 1. Anchovy ice creams being disgusting is subjective
Premise 2. Anchovy ice creams being disgusting is just Anchovy icecreams having a disposition to cause certain a reaction in observers.
Premise 3. But whether Anchovy ice cream has a disposition to cause
certain observers to represent it as disgusting is entirely objective
Conclusion: Anchovy ice creams being disgusting is objective
The dissolution of the Paradox for Secondary Qualities involves restating the key points
about objectivity and anchovies as follows.
1. Anchovy ice cream is disgusting is epistemically subjective
2. Anchovy ice cream is disgusting is epistemically subjective is
epistemically objective
3. Disgusting-ness is metaphysically subjective
4. The property-of-being-metaphysically-subjective is metaphysically
objective
1-4 are consistent. This consistency is enabled by both (i) distinguishing between
epistemic and metaphysical objectivity/subjectivity and (ii) recognizing that properties
and predicates are themselves bearers of metaphysical and epistemic objectivity,
respectively. These remarks on how to dissolve the paradox of subjectivity support the
advantage of treating the ultimate bearers of epistemic objectivity as predicates and
metaphysical objectivity as properties. I postpone until chapter 3 discussion of the
paradox as it relates to the subjectivity of conscious experience.
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In the remainder of this section I discuss a possible objection to the account given
so far. 1 Brains and brain states, many suppose, count among the objective things. Some
brain states may also be mental representations, on many physicalistic accounts of mind.
Mental representations, let us assume, are individuated by their representational contents.
Assume further that some representations are about themselves: This sentence has six
words in it though false is about itself. Magrittes painting Ce nest pas une pipe is
about itself. A carpet sample is about, among other things, itself (Goodman 1976, pp. 5759). The dictionary definition of definition is about, among other things, itself. Mental
representations can be about themselves too. If you sincerely attempt to form an answer
to the question What are you thinking about? then you will have tokened a mental
representation about itself, since you have thought a thought about itself. If you wonder
to yourself how many neurons are in the supervenience base of your occurrent mental
state, then you again token a mental representation about itself.
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In this chapter I have initiated an inquiry into the ways in which representational
states may be objective or subjective, more specifically, how they may be either
epistemically objective or epistemically subjective. I unpacked and began arguing for an
account of epistemic objectivity: the correspondence theory whereby epistemically
objective things represent metaphysically objective things. I argued for a particular
version of the correspondence theory whereby predicational representations are the
ultimate bearers of epistemic objectivity and subjectivity. Much of my argument in favor
of the predicational theory centered on the way in which it is able to dispel certain
paradoxes of subjectivity. Further support for the theory will be marshaled in subsequent
chapters. In the next chapter I discuss the objectivity of representation against a
backdrop of naturalized accounts of representation.
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2.0 Introduction
In the previous chapter I began arguing for the view that epistemic objectivity
arises when a representation represents something metaphysically objective. I want now
to spell out this account within the context of the naturalization of representation. Some
caution needs to be taken, however, with what exactly the naturalization of representation
amounts to. For many philosophers, the project of naturalizing representation involves
attempting to analyze the concept of representation into necessary and sufficient
conditions stateable using only the vocabulary of the natural sciences (paradigmatically,
physics). This is not the notion of the naturalization of representation that I am
particularly interested in. In section 1.1. I eschewed analysis in favor of the Quinean
notion of explication. Another Quinean notion that I am fond of is the conception of
philosophical naturalism not as a special brand of conceptual analysis, but instead as the
view of the relation between philosophy and the natural sciences as one of continuity.
Naturalizing representation, then, will involve leaning heavily on scientific uses of the
notion of representation, especially as it is used in cognitive science and neuroscience.
My allegiance to this vision of naturalism does not mean that I hold no regard for the
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results of the conceptual analysts: indeed, many of their insights are worthwhile and
workable, even if their larger program is not one I have a lasting interest in.
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There is a less literary and more literal way of understanding perspective and
point of view. This sense also has more promise for neuroscientific research and for
dealing with the knowledge argument, as will be discussed in chapter 3. This other way
representations may be from a point of view would be in the rather literal sense that
pictorial representations embody a point of view. To see how pictorial representations
embody a point of view consider two photographs of the same object taken from two
different angles. Compare, for example, two photographs taken of a persons face: The
first may be head-on, the other may show the head in profile. The camera that produced
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the photos occupied two different points of view with respect to the persons head. Let
us, for convenience, describe possible locations of the camera around a horizontal plane
in terms of clock positions and distances from the center of the persons head. So, the
full frontal photo would be from the twelve o clock position at a distance of 6 feet, where
the profile shot would be from the 3 oclock position at a distance of 6 feet (see figure 1).
Figure 1.
Cameras occupy literal points of view with respect to their subjects.
The different positions and orientations of the camera specify the points of view of the
camera with respect to the subject. The representational contents of the photographs
produced include content about these points of view. This is why we can tell, for
instance, by looking at the photographs of face profiles, whether the camera was at the
three oclock or nine oclock positions. See figure 2.
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Figure 2.
Pictures have as part their representational content relations that
the viewer would bear to the subject. This is why we can tell, e.g.
the position of a camera with respect to the subject just by looking
at the photographs.
Note that the pictorial sense of point of view is rather literal but not totally literal. Few
imagistic representations contain enough information to specify a particular point of
view. For example, a typical map of Chicago presents a birds eye view of the city,
but abstracts away from any information that would specify a point of view positioned
over the Sears Tower as opposed to the Hancock Building. This is not to say that the map
abstracts entirely away from point of view: it does contain enough information to specify
that one is viewing the city from above it rather than below it and that one is viewing the
city from a location over a part of the United States as opposed to a location over Japan.
For another example of how images may embody a point of view without specifying a
literal point of view, consider drawings in oblique perspective as opposed to drawings in
vanishing-point perspective (see figure 3).
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figure 3a
figure 3b
figure 3c
Drawings in vanishing point perspective represent parallel lines that are not perpendicular
to the viewers line of sight as converging on one or more points (the vanishing-points).
Figures 3a and 3b are drawn in vanishing-point perspective. The vanishing-point in
figure 3a is located at the peak of the first house from your left, and in figure 3b, at the
peak of the central house. In oblique perspective, parallel lines not perpendicular to the
viewers line of sight are parallel in the drawing, but drawn at non-right angles to the
lines that are perpendicular to the viewers line of sight. Figure 3c is drawn employing
oblique perspective. Drawings employing oblique perspective abstract away from the
position of the viewer more than do pictures employing vanishing point perspective.
Figure 3a specifies a point of view in front of the first house and figure 3b specifies a
point of view in front of the second house. Figure 3c, drawn in oblique perspective,
abstracts away from which of the three houses the viewer is in front of, since, unlike in
figures 3a and 3b, the sides of the three houses occupy equal portions of the picture plane.
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Nonetheless, Figure 3c does not abstract away entirely from point of view as is evident
from the fact that we can see only the front, top, and one side of each house.
include relations between the things pictured and the viewer. Extending this account of
perspective to mental representations yields the thesis that some mental representations
include in their contents relations between the representing subject and that which is
represented. Thus such representations are egocentric (self-centered) since they represent
relations that things bear to the representer. I turn now to the case that there are such
mental representations.
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Much psychological research in the past several decades has concerned the nature
of mental images and speaks to the issue of the existence of perspectival representations.
A classic example is due to R. N. Shepard and his colleagues (Shepard & Cooper, 1982).
These researchers had subjects look at simultaneously presented pairs of objects. The
second member of each pair was either the same as the first or a mirror image. Further,
pair members could differ from each other in their rotations in depth and in the picture
plane. The researchers found that the time it took for subjects to make same or
different judgments increased monotonically with increases of rotational displacement
between pair members. Shepard et al. took this reaction time data as evidence that
subjects were rotating mental images to see if they would match the stimulus. The
evidence that Shepard et al collected also serves as evidence for the existence of
pictorially perspectival mental representations. A mental image at any given stage of a
rotation constitutes a perspectival representation because at each point in rotation, the
image represents what the object would look like from a particular point of view.
Some theorists have postulated that mechanisms similar to those postulated for
image rotation may be at work in visual object recognition. Humans recognize visually
presented three-dimensional objects with only two-dimensional projections on the retina
as a guide. Somehow, we are able to recognize objects seen from unfamiliar viewpoints,
that is, based on unfamiliar projections onto our retinas. Certain studies of the accuracy
and reaction times in visual recognition tasks implicate perspectival representations.
Such studies typically examine the reaction times and accuracy of recognition judgments
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of objects seen from unfamiliar viewpoints. In such studies, average length of reaction
time and judgment accuracy varies monotonically with the degree of rotational deviation
(in depth or on the picture plane) from familiar views of an object. These correlations are
taken as evidence for the hypothesis that visual object recognition is mediated by a
normalization mechanism. The stored representation of an object is one or more encoded
views that encode only two-dimensional information based on previous retinal
projections. Recognition of familiar objects seen from unfamiliar viewpoints involves a
match between a stored view and the perceptual view via a normalization mechanism
which compares the views (e.g., Blthoff & Edelman, 1992; Shepard & Cooper, 1982;
Ullman, 1989). For example, this might involve mentally rotating an image (Shepard &
Cooper, 1982). Object recognition, as well as imagery, may involve perspectival
representations.
water maze was set up such that rats had to swim to a platform visible during training
trials, but occluded by the opaque water in the testing trials. Varied visual stimuli were
positioned around the maze to serve as orientation cues. The experimenters trained intact
and hippocampal-system damaged rats to swim to the platform from a given start
location. During test trials, both the intact and damaged rats were able to swim to the
platform if they were started from the same location as in the learning trials. However,
the performances of the intact and damaged rats diverged widely when they were started
from novel locations in the water maze. During test trials, intact rats were able to
navigate to the platform from novel start locations, whereas the hippocampal damaged
rats required much longer to find the platform, and sometimes never found it during the
test trial.
although the stimulus had not moved, it projected to a different part of the monkeys
retina. Cases in which activity in neurons was still maximally responsive to stimuli in that
location regardless of what part of the retina the stimulus projected to were regarded as
allocentric representations of that spatial location. In contrast, neural activity maximally
responsive to a spatial location defined relative to the site of retinal projection is regarded
as an egocentric representation of that location. Feigenbaum and Rolls (1991) report that
the majority (but not all) of the cells in hippocampus that they investigated were
allocentric representations of spatial location. Where hippocampus has been widely
implicated as the locus of allocentric representations of spatial locations, many kinds of
egocentric representations of space (including, for instance, head-centered and shouldercentered representations) have been localized in regions of the posterior parietal cortex. 2
However, questions of where egocentric representations are are not as interesting as
questions of what egocentric representations are. I propose to explore such questions
against the backdrop of naturalistic theories of representational content.
See Stein 1992 and Milner and Goodale 1995 for general discussions of egocentric
44
carrying information, a function that may be had by something even in cases in which it
fails to perform its function, and thus, misrepresents.
stimulus, and (ii) have the function of indicating the presence of a stimulus of that type.
Examples of such stimulus-types for visual feature detectors include high-contrast edges,
motion direction, and colors. A favorite feature detector among philosophers is the
alleged fly detector in the frog. Lettvin et al. (1959) identified cells in the frog retina that
responded maximally to small shapes moving across the visual field. The inference that
such cells have the function of detecting flies and not just any small moving thing is
based on certain assumptions about the diet and environment of frogs, thus satisfying (ii)
as well as (i). Using experimental techniques ranging from single-cell recording to
sophisticated functional imaging, neuroscientists have recently discovered a host of
neurons that are maximally responsive to a variety of stimuli. Among these are neurons
that are particularly sensitive to the spatial locations of stimuli. In some cases the
neurons are responsive to locations relative to the subject, thus giving rise to perspectival,
or egocentric, representations of spatial locations. In other cases, the neurons are
responsive to locations independent of the relations between the location and the subject,
thus giving rise to non-perspectival, or allocentric, representations of spatial locations.
representation R of X if (but maybe not only if) R has the function of causally covarying
with X and relations Z1-Zn S bears to X. In the case of spatial representations, on which I
will focus for now, the relations in question will be spatial relations. Later I will
generalize this definition of perspectival representation to non-spatial sensory modalities.
One class of spatial perspectival representations is provided by neurons with retinocentric
receptive fields. Such a neuron, whether in cortex or in the retina itself, demonstrates a
pattern of activity maximally responsive to the occurrence of a specific kind of
electromagnetic radiation in a certain spatial location defined relative to the retina. It is a
plausible and widespread assumption that activity in neurons with retinocentric receptive
fields represent (or encode or code for) luminance increments in retina-relative
spatial locations. If this assumption is correct, then we can see how such neural
representations conform to the account of perspectival representations. In this example R
is a certain kind of activity in a certain neuron in Ss nervous system, X is a luminance
increment and Z1-Zn include the spatial relations X bears to S (especially spatial relations
to Ss retina). For another example, consider neural activity that represents goal locations
for saccades. Analogous to the receptive fields of sensory neurons, motor neurons have
what we may call effective fields. The effective field of a neuron may be a region in
space that an organism may move or reach toward in response to activity in a particular
neuron. There are neurons that control saccades that have as effective fields headrelative spatial locations. If it is correct to speak of activity in such neurons as
representing, encoding or coding for head relative spatial locations, then we have
another instance of perspectival representations. Activity in such motor neurons
47
represents the movement of the eye toward a location in space defined relative to the
subjects head. Such neural activations do not simply causally covary with the movement
of the eyes to a certain location, but the movement of eyes to a certain location defined
relative to the subject, and in this instance, relative to the subjects head. And if these
activations have the function of causally covarying with these subject-relative locations
then they constitute perspectival representations of spatial locations.
A brief word needs to be said about the compatibility of mental imagery and the
causal covariational account of representation. Some researchers favor an account of
imagery whereby images represent in virtue of resembling that which is represented (See
Kosslyn 1994). There is much literature on this issue, and suffice it to say, few agree that
resemblance is necessary for representation, even in cases where the representations are
images. To illustrate the point, consider finding a creature inside of which we found
something that looked like this:_/\/\/\_. Suppose that we wondered whether this
constituted a representation of something. It resembles a mountain range. Might it be a
representation of a mountain range? It also represents saw-teeth, a row of evergreen trees,
and abandoning visual resemblance, we may say that it resembles a noise with a certain
waveform. Which does it represent? Resemblance, as many have pointed out,
underdetermines representation, and even in cases in which representations do resemble
what they represent, functional causal covariation may be called in to do the job of
disambiguation. For instance, a photograph of Joe equally resembles Joe and Joes
48
identical twin Moe. But the photograph is a photograph of Joe and not Moe in virtue of
Joes position in the causal chain that led up to the creation of that photograph. These
points about the role of causal covariation in determining the contents of imagistic
representations are consistent with a common analysis of mental imagery. According to
this analysis, imagery is the off-line utilization of perceptual (and perhaps motor)
processes that are typically used on-line (see for example, Grush 1997). Since that is all
there is to imagery, imagery need not resemble what it is an image of. Such a view
allows for imagery in non-visual modalities such as olfaction, where the possibility of
resemblance between the representation and the represented seems obscure. I mention
these points not to settle any ongoing controversies regarding mental imagery, but only to
show that the existence of imagistic mental representations is neither necessarily nor
obviously incompatible with accounts of representation that make having the function of
causally covarying with X sufficient for representing X.
Grush may be correct that the event of imagining does not carry information about the
relations between S and the Eiffel Tower. On a particular occasion one may be caused to
imagine the Eiffel Tower by something other than the Eiffel Tower, and thus that
particular imagining would not carry information about the Eiffel Tower. However, on
the account of imagery sketched in the previous paragraph, the event of imagining
involves a state that has the function of carrying information about the relations between
S and the Eiffel Tower. Imagining involves running off-line what is run on-line during
perception: states that are supposed to carry information in the perceptual case may also
be pressed into service for off-line imaginings. Thus the off-line states employed in
imagining the Eiffel Tower owe their representational content to the information they are
supposed to carry in the on-line perceptual case.
I call the analysis of perspective I offer pictorial in order to contrast it with the
analysis of perspective offered by Lycan (1996) and others in terms of indexicals and the
literary convention of first-person point of view. Pictures are the prototypical instances of
representations with pictorial perspective, but it is important to emphasize that they are
not the only instances. Pictures of a car from two different points of view may be
encoded as bitmaps, which may themselves be translated into strings of ones and zeros or
sentences describing the occupants of every cell in the bitmaps two-dimensional array.
One may find it natural to suppose that such resulting strings of numerals and sentences
may retain the representational content of the pictures from whence they came without
themselves being pictures. This is not to say, however, that bitmaps have all and only the
50
content of the images they encode. There may be some differences in the representational
contents of the images and the bitmaps. However, despite possible differences of
representational content, there are also considerable similarities. If a bitmapped
photograph represents a car, then the corresponding numerical string does too. After all,
the picture of a car is recoverable from the bit string. And if the bitstring retains the
representational content of being about a car, then there seems no reason to deny that the
bitstring also retains the representational content of being about a car as seen from a
particular point of view. Thus, if a picture is perspectival , then its corresponding
bitstrings are perspectival, even though the corresponding bitstrings are not pictures.
Bitstrings are not the only instances of representations with pictorial perspective
that are not pictures. Activations in neurons with retinocentric receptive fields are
another example. Such neural activations (are thought to) represent the occurrence of
stimuli at spatial locations defined relative to the retina. I take it as obvious that the
activation of a single neuron is not a picture even in cases in which such activation may
be a spatial representation. Below I will discuss the possibility of perspectival
representations of temperature, thus giving yet another example of representations with
pictorial perspective that are not pictures.
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Representations with pictorial perspective are not necessarily pictures. Nor are
they necessarily indexical. Above I mentioned that I intend the pictorial analysis to
contrast with indexical analysis, but have not shown that this is indeed the case. The
reason why representations with pictorial perspective are not necessarily indexical has to
do with particularity. Indexicals necessarily involve particularity in a way that nonindexicals and egocentric representations do not. The representational content of the
utterance I am here now picks out a particular individual at particular location at a
particular time. Even when indexicals and demonstratives are used to pick out
universals, as in saying this shade of red while holding up a chip of paint, reference to
the universal (the shade of red) piggy-backs on the particulars that secure the indexical
content: the particular paint chip held by the particular individual at a particular time. In
contrast, a picture can exhibit perspectival content without picking out any particular. A
drawing of the 1991 Chevy Cavalier may be used not to represent any particular 1991
Chevy Cavalier. It may instead be used to represent a corresponding universal, say, the
general category that all and only 1991 Chevy Cavaliers belong to. Nonetheless, the
picture, in being a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object,
represents the car from one or another point of view. For instance, the picture may show
the front of the car but not the back. Of course, the conventions of photography may have
an indexical element: a photo represents me and not my twin in virtue of being
appropriately caused by me, not my twin.
1991 Chevy Cavalier need not have its representational content determined in the way a
photo of a particular 1991 Chevy Cavalier would. But both would be perspectivalboth
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The objection that so-called egocentric representations are mere motor responses
and thus non-representational derives most of its force from contemplating the role that
such representations are alleged to play in rat navigation. Rats thought to be lacking
allocentric representations, such as those in the maze learning study of Eichenbaum et al
(1990) described above, exhibit a minimal memory of previous trials. But they are able
to find their way to goal locations only be retracing their steps, so to speak. This leads to
the suggestion that maybe what the rats are representing isnt a goal location, but merely
remembering a previous pattern of motor responses to a given stimulus. Indeed, even
those who are disinclined to deflate the notion of egocentric representation in favor of
53
motor response are still inclined to see motor response as a constitutive aspect of
egocentric representation (e.g. Milner and Goodale, 1995 and Kirsh 1996). My aim in
the present section is to spell out how egocentric representation may be closely related to
motor response without caving into the objection that so-called egocentric representations
are mere (non-representational) responses.
As mentioned above, typical causal accounts of representation rely on the notion
of information. I want to contrast the informational story with what I shall call a
procedural story: a story whereby representations can be about their effects instead of
their causes. I will say more about the details of the procedural story in the next section.
For now let me just flag the following. I think that the informational story is plausible for
some mental representationsI just do not think that it will be the truth about all
representations. I think that some representations will best be handled by a
representational story that has procedural as well as informational components. I focus on
mental representations as they figure in our perceptual experience of spatial properties.
Our senses of taste and smell seem not to have much to do with the spatial
properties and relations of physical objects. In marked contrast, our senses of hearing,
touch, andmost of allsight, present us with richly structured spatial manifolds. We
hear sounds as coming from various directions in relation to our bodies. And most
notably and importantly for fans of stereophonic recordings of music, we can hear sounds
as coming from either the right or left sides of the spaces our bodies occupy. Our senses
54
of touch and sight allow us to discriminate the shapes of objects, as well as detect the
various distances between each of the objects.
stimulators worn on the subjects back. After only a few hours of training with the device,
subjects could utilize the tactile stimulation fed to the surface of their skin by the camera
to recognize distal faces and objects and read printed words that the camera was focused
on.
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Representationalism about sensory experience gets its strongest foothold for any
case in which we can point to a distinction between vehicle and contentbetween the
experience itself and that which the experience is an experience of. The content/vehicle
distinction gets a pretty good grip when we consider our sensory experiences of space.
The experiences themselves, most will suppose, are (or at least token identical to) states
of the brain. I can experience something as being far from me without the experience
itself being far from me. I can experience something as being much larger than me
without the experience itself being larger than me. The clearest way to explain the
difference is by saying that experiences of spatial properties and relations represent those
properties and relations and need not have those properties and relations in order to do so.
The introspectible properties of spatial experiences are thus the contents of
representations.
57
58
We now have the gist of Tankys environment and his basic survival goals.
Everything that we need to know about Tankys outer anatomy is exhausted by
mentioning his two motor organs and his one chemoreceptor sensory organ. We must
turn now to Tankys inner anatomy. We are especially interested in finding out how it is
that Tanky knows where he has been and figures out where he is going. The way Tanky
knows whether he is in a region that is good, bad, or neutral is in virtue of afferent signals
from his chemoreceptor. If we give Tanky the representational resources to have sensory
experience and memory, then the psychosemantics will for his chemical representations
will clearly be informational. Let us turn from his chemical representations to his spatial
representations. Let us turn now to consider how Tanky might go about figuring out how
far it is between, say, here and the next nutritious square (his next square meal one
might say).
If Tanky has been traveling in a straight line, passed over a toxic square, and
traveled through four neutral squares before encountering a nutritious square, how might
60
he come to know this? Let us consider two possible design solutions to this problem, one
informational, and the other procedural.
On both of the solutions we may assume that Tanky does not slip and slide in his
travels, and no one ever picks him up and carries him to a different location. All of his
travels across the plane are due to self-initiated turns of treads with good traction. On
both solutions, then, Tanky has all of the efferent and afferent connections to his world he
could need to give his memory and computational modules what they would need to
compute his previous, current, and possible future locations. On both solutions, Tanky
61
has the representational resources for representing a nutritious and a toxic region as
being, say, four tank tread distances away from each other.
The difference between the two solutions hinges on the different semantics of
Tankys spatial representations. On the informational solution, Tankys spatial
representations are triggered by afferent signals from his tread sensors. On the
procedural solution, Tanky lacks tread sensors and his spatial representations are instead
triggered by efference copies. On the informational solution, the spatial representations
represent tank tread speed and direction in virtue of being caused by activity in the treads.
On the procedural solution, the spatial representations represent tank tread speed and
direction in virtue of causing activity in the treads.
The result of the Tanky thought experiment is to show that under certain
conditions, procedural as well as informational representations can serve the needs of
spatial representation. Informational representations do not have to be the only game in
town. The thought experiment makes salient the possibility of the procedural solution to
the problem of spatial representation. The thought experiment reveals the happenings in
a possible world. The next question is: how is it done in the actual world? What solution
did Mother Nature opt for us and our evolutionary relatives? Below I argue that the
procedural solution is realized in actual cases. The points I raise below are conceptual
and empirical considerations showing that motor differencesthat is, efference
differencescan give rise to differences in spatial experience.
62
63
Bach-y-Rita notes that the major portion of the first few hours of the subjects
training is occupied by learning the techniques of camera manipulation, including
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controlling the operation of the zoom lens, the aperture and focus, and also the direction
of the camera towards regions of the subjects immediate environment (1972, pp. 3-4).
Bach-y-Rita further notes that subjects with a high degree of manual dexterity acquire the
ability to see through the prosthetic vision devices more quickly than those with a low
degree of manual dexterity (1972, p. 7).
In discussing the case of the subject who raised his hands to protect his head in
response to an unanticipated activation of the cameras zoom control, Bach-y-Rita writes:
The startle response described above was obtained by a well-trained
subject who was accustomed to have camera movement, zoom, and
aperture under his control. (1972, p. 99)
Further, Bach-y-Rita writes, when subjects receive tactile array inputs from a static
camera, they
. . . report experiences in terms of feelings on the skin, but when they
move the camera their reports are in terms of externally localized
objects (1972, p. 99).
That the subjects be able to control the camera seems to be a necessary condition
on the tactile stimuli on the back becoming transparent and giving rise to the devices
functioning as a prosthetic distance modality. Indeed, this is the hypothesis advocated by
Bach-y-Rita:
[E]xternal localization of percepts depends critically on such
movements and. . . a plausible hypothesis is that a translation of the
input that is precisely correlated with self-generated movement is the
necessary and sufficient condition for the experienced phenomena to be
attributed to a stable outside world. Conversely, in the absence of such
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Plausibly, the necessity of motor control for sensory projection can be extended
beyond the prosthetic vision case to the other instances of tactile projection I discussed
above. Consider, for example, the case of the stick held in the hand. When one holds the
stick in the hand and taps and rubs the end over textured surfaces, one feels the sensations
at the end of the stick. Imagine, however, that the same information was delivered
through the stick to the hand, but without your being able to control the rubbing and
tapping of surfaces against the end of the stick. Imagine that you are blind-folded and
strapped into a chair with your hands and arms restrained. A stick is placed in your hand
and an experimenter taps and rubs the end of the stick with, say, a rough rock. It is not
implausible to suppose that your tactile sensations would not project to the end of the
stick, but instead would be perceived as occurring entirely within your hand.
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If the considerations examined above are correct, then it follows that the natures
of the qualities of phenomenal consciousness associated with stimuli in various
modalities are determined not only by the nature of the information transduced by the
nerve-endings in the sensory organs, but also by what types of subsequent motor activity
that information is employed in. In the case of Bach-y-Ritas prosthetic vision
experiments, the difference between perceiving skin stimulation as disturbances on the
skin and seeing through the disturbances to a display of objects located in a threedimensional egocentric space entailed differences in the kind and degree of motor control
that the subjects were able to exert on the dynamics of the sensory input.
For another line of evidence linking efference and spatial qualia, consider what
happens when one attempts to move ones eye when the eye muscles have been
paralyzed. Gallistel (1980, p. 175) describes the following interesting phenomenon. A
person may have their eye muscles paralyzed by curare. If a person with curare induced
paralysis in her eyes attempts to shift her gaze to the left, the whole world will appear to
her to have jumped to the left. This change in the visual scene is not due to any actual
movement of the eye, nor has there been any change in the pattern of light on the retina.
Gallistel (1980, p.175) writes that what has happened is that the typical expected
association of efference copy and afference has been interrupted.
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I interpret the case of the paralyzed eye as follows. Usually when one moves
ones eyes to the left, the visual image moves to the right with respect to the eye. This
typical association between the efferent output and afferent input is used to construct a
representation of the world as a stable sceneeven though the visual image is moving to
the right with respect to the eye, the world is not seen as leaping to the right. But when
the efferent command to shift is not accompanied by the afferent signal indicating the
change of light on the retina (flowing to the right), the whole world is perceived not as
stable, but instead as leaping in the direction indicated by the efferent command to shift
to the left. Again, efference has had an effect on the introspectible properties of spatial
experience.
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We can easily imagine constructing Tanky style systems that would replicate
results analogous to those in the kitten experiment. Imagine two procedural-style Tanky
69
creatures attached to the spindle, with one being allowed to actively move while the other
was dragged along (with efferent signals to its treads blocked). Visual stripes on a wall
would be replaced with chemical squares on the floor. Only the active tank would be
able to develop certain efferent/afferent associations, associations like those discussed
above in connection with the case of the paralyzed eye. The results of the kitten
experiment show yet another connection between efference and perception and the Tanky
analog to the kitten experiment helps show the point of entrance for a procedural
psychosemantic interpretation of the kitten experiments. The passive tank would be
subject to certain chemorecpetive inputs but be unable to correlate those with the effects
that motor activity has on the pattern of inputs. Thus the passive tank would be unable to
represent the spatial locations of the sources of the chemical stimuli.
One may question the relevance of the kitten experiment to the issue of the
introspectible properties of sensory experience. It is not clear how we could have any
idea as to what, if anything the kittens introspect. At least in the discussion of the
paralyzed eye and the prosthetic vision devices, human subjects were involved, and we
had their introspective reports as evidence of efferent-sensitive changes in spatial qualia.
The kitten experiment is relevant, then, insofar as it may be considered as evidence that
similar results would be obtained if humans instead of kittens were subjected to similar
conditions. Such an experiment conducted on human children would obviously be
unethical. So we can never be certain what would result from such an experiment.
However, the kitten data, considered in light of the paralysis and prosthetic vision data,
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lends further support to the proceduralist hypothesis about the nature of the
representations in the experiences of spatial properties.
I turn now to show how the notion of perspectival representation applies to nonspatial representations. The point of showing this is two-fold. First, in the next chapter I
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argue that the notion of perspective developed here will be sufficient to account for the
subjectivity of conscious experience, especially as that notion arises in discussions of the
knowledge argument against physicalism. Since that notion of subjectivity applies to
experiences of non-spatial as well as spatial qualities, the notion of perspective developed
here must be general enough to fit the bill. Second, the issues raised in this section are of
significant interest apart from their contribution to discussions of consciousness. In
particular, they constitute a continuation of the discussion of whether action-involving
mental states may be representational. Of particular interest here is Akins (1996) claim
that the mental states involved in thermoreception are non-representational actioninvolving states. I argue that such states are indeed representational, but must be viewed
as perspectival representations.
perception. Prior to submerging your hands in a bucket tepid water, hold one hand in a
bucket of ice and the other hand in hot water. The water in the bucket will feel hot to the
previously chilled hand and much cooler to the previously heated hand. Both the
differing concentrations of receptors and the dynamic response functions give rise to a
many-to-one mapping of temperature sensations and temperatures. A sample of water of
a given temperature will give rise to many different sensations depending on the
concentrations of receptors and the level of their previous activity. These many-to-one
mappings are arguably and plausibly part and parcel of the proper functioning of
thermoreceptors. A given temperature may be more hazardous to tissue in one part of the
body than another, and thus, a more sensitive alarm system may be accomplished by
varying receptor concentrations. Dynamic responses may be adaptive since a rapid
change of temperature can be damaging to tissue even if it occurs in a range of
temperatures that would otherwise be harmless.
not just represent a temperature of a region on or near the skin but represents
temperatures as being of varying degrees of hazard or harmlessness to the subjects
tissues. Thermoreceptors dont simply represent temperature, but include in the
representational contents of their outputs relations that the temperatures bear to the
representing subject, much in the way that retinocentric representations of spatial
locations represent locations defined relative to the subject.
Akins offers arguments against the kind of move I favor, but I find her arguments
wanting. The proposal under consideration may be described as Akins describes it: the
proposal that thermoreceptors do not represent temperature but instead temperatureinvolving narcissistic properties. Thus, the output of a thermoreceptor in response to a
given temperature does not represent a given temperature per se but instead whether the
given temperature is, e.g., too hot, too cold, or just right. The property of being too hot
cannot be defined independently of answering the question too hot for whom? and the
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I propose to grant Akins the falsity of the Detection Thesis, since such a
concession leaves unscathed the proposal I favor. For convenience I will call the proposal
the narcissistic representation proposalthe proposal that thermoperception represents
narcissistic properties. Akins misconstrues the logic of the situation in asserting that the
narcissistic representation proposal depends on the Detection Thesis. Contra Akins, the
Detection Thesis is not a necessary condition on the truth of the narcissistic
representation proposal. The narcissistic representation proposal plausibly has as a
necessary condition the truth of the thesis that at least one sensory system functions to
detect properties. But it is not at all obvious how it could have as a necessary condition
the claim that each and every sensory system functions to detect properties. And for my
immediate purpose, the purpose of establishing the plausibility of non-spatial
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representations that nonetheless have pictorial perspective, the detection thesis may be
disregarded as irrelevant.
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3.0 Introduction
78
the problems that beset the indexical account. This account explicates the subjectivity of
experience in terms of the notion of pictorial perspective developed in the previous
chapter.
This can be restated to more closely resemble the paradox of subjectivity as I have
formulated it. First, note that the contraposition of (10) is:
(10) if phenomenal states are causally relevant, then phenomenal states
are broadly physical states.
Next note that the contraposition of (8) is:
(8): If phenomenal states are either identical with, or realized by
objective physical types, then they are not perspectivally subjective
Let Tyes assertion of the falsity of (11) be:
(12)
Again, an attempt to physicalize subjectivity (this time by way of causal relevance) leads
to a conclusion that states of phenomenal consciousness both are and are not subjective.
The conflict between thinking of experience as subjective and its physical basis as
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The gist of the knowledge argument is as follows. Mary has never seen red. She
nonetheless knows all the physical facts. Upon seeing red for the first time, Mary learns
something new: what it is like to see red. Prior to seeing red, Mary knew all the physical
facts; thus in learning a new fact upon having a red experience, Mary learns a nonphysical fact. Thus the subjectivity of experience is non-physical (Jackson 1982).
hurts I am referring to my leg, and only I can refer to my leg by using that utterance.
You may use a syntactically similar construction: you may utter the words my leg
hurts, but in doing so, you would be representing your leg, not mine. Analogously, only
I can represent my first-order states by the introspective application of self-referential
indexical concepts. And this, according to Lycan, is the ultimate explication of
subjectivity.
The indexical response to the knowledge argument is one of the many responses
to the knowledge argument that hinge on the notion that there may be multiple modes of
presentation of a single physical fact. This kind of response grants that Mary learns
something new but only in the sense of learning to apply a new mode of presentation to
an old fact. This kind of defense of physicalism falls prey to the objection that in learning
to apply a new mode of presentation to an old fact, the subject learns a new fact, namely,
that the new mode of presentation applies to the old fact. Given the presupposition that
the subject already knew all of the physical facts, this new fact must be non-physical
(Alter 1998).
what it is like to be Cheri. If Mary and Cheri were physical and experiential
doppelgangers (though numerically distinct individuals) they could each know what it is
like to be the other person, regardless of whether their numerical non-identity entails
divergence of the contents of their indexical thoughts. As such, then, Mary and Cheri
would be subjectively identical, in spite of being indexically distinct. Thus indexicality is
inadequate to account for subjectivity.
This point about what Mary and Cheri know needs to be stated carefully, for the
point is consistent with the fact that for all Mary knows, there is nothing at all it is like to
be Cheri. The point is that if there is something it is like to be Cheri when Cheri is
having experience of kind X, and if Mary knows what it is like to have experience of kind
X, then Mary knows what it is like to be Cheri. This is analogous to knowing what the
Mona Lisa looks like without knowing that one has ever seen the Mona Lisa or that there
even is such a painting as the Mona Lisa.
Another way to state the point that I am after is that if Mary and Cheri where
physical and experiential doppelgangers (though numerically distinct individuals) they
could each know what it is like to be the other person, regardless of whether their
numerical non-identity entails divergence of the contents of their indexical thoughts.
What Im denying is that any two individuals necessarily differ subjectively. This does
not require a blanket reliance on a problematic distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic
qualities. All it requires is that things can be identical in some respects while differing in
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others. Consider the question of whether any two books necessarily differ in the plots of
their stories. Arguably, they do not: two copies of Moby Dick may be identical with
respect to their plots. Analogously, intuition tells us that two individuals that are spatiotemporally distinct may nonetheless be identical with respect to the subjective aspects of
their experiences.
In the chapter 2 I have proposed that some mental representations exhibit pictorial
perspective. In the present chapter I need to tie this into consciousness. Do states of
consciousness possess this kind of perspective? And what about the so called
knowledge argument that has figured heavily in discussions of the subjectivity of
consciousness?
Regarding whether conscious states exhibit this kind of perspective, the answer
seems a resounding yes. The thermoperception examples are all examples of conscious
sensations that vary independently of actual temperature: what enters into sensation
includes relations of the temperature to states of the subject. Water of a given temperature
may feel colder on the head than on the hands. Likewise, the remarks about the
phenomenology of visual experience lead naturally to finding pictorial perspective in
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On the alternate response to the knowledge argument that I favor, the first premise
of the argument is false: it is false that the subject could know all the physical facts
without having an experience of red. I favor the view that there are both objective and
subjective physical facts. What a subject can learn only by having an experience of red is
a subjective, yet nonetheless wholly physical fact. Thus, while Mary may know all the
objective physical facts without seeing red, what is left out until she learns what it is like
to see red is a set of subjective yet nonetheless physical facts. Similar views have been
defended elsewhere (see for example Deutsch (unpublished) and McGinn (1991). Indeed,
Nagels (1974) original aim in drawing attention to what it is like to be a bat was not to
defeat physicalism, but instead to argue that the objective did not exhaust the physical.
However, previous accounts along these lines give very little detail about what such
subjective physical facts might consist in or why such facts deserve to be regarded as
physical. By accounting for subjectivity in terms of perspectival mental representation, I
provide remedies to such problems.
representations that they depend on. Thus, such physical facts are subjective in the
classical senses of being first, mind-dependent, and second, knowable only by a restricted
mode of access. These notions may be briefly characterized by reference to imagistic
representations.
restricted mode of access, that is, physical facts that may only be represented by specific
sensory experiences.
This latter point may be further unpacked in terms of the theory of mental
representation mentioned earlier. On that theory, the process of representation is
constituted by certain causal relations obtaining between a state of an organism (the
representation itself) and an environmental state (that which is represented). Objective
facts may be cashed out in terms of environmental states that are capable of entering into
many kinds of causal interactions in addition to those in virtue of which they are
represented. So, for instance, not only does water causally interact with my
representation of water, water also causally interacts with the mountains it erodes, the
crops that it irrigates, and so on. Many causal chains lead to water thus providing for
multiple routes of epistemic access to watermultiple ways of knowing about water. In
contrast, subjective facts may be cashed out in terms of things that are able to enter into
causal interactions only with the mental states that represent them. Such states do not
admit of multiple chains of causal interactions leading to them and thus do not permit of
multiple ways of being known. In causally interacting only with representations of them,
such states are knowable only in virtue of being represented, as, for example, under the
description that which I am experiencing now and cannot be known through other
means. As such they are subjective facts, knowable only through restricted modes of
access. But we may be confident that such facts are nonetheless wholly physical, since
their possibility is provided for by a wholly physicalistic account of mental
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4.0 Introduction
In previous chapters, the primary topic has been the distinction between the
objective and the subjective. Perhaps surprisingly, the topic of spatial representation has
surfaced on several occasions. Surprising or not, the philosophical connection between
objectivity and space has a long lineage.
For several centuries and in many areas of philosophy various species of the
distinction between the objective and the subjective are expressed in a spatial idiom.
Philosophers alternately worry about and shrug off the problem of the external world.
They wonder whether anything exists outside of the mind. Metaphorical articulations of
the notions of subjectivity and objectivity exploit the spatial idiom of seeing things from
a point of view. What can be seen from only one point of view is more subjective and
less objective that what can be seen from any point of view. The maximally objective
view is, to use Thomas Nagels (1986) phrase, the view from nowhere.
Space and objectivity are associated in doctrine as well idiom. For Kant, space is
the form of outer sense. The association of space and objectivity is particularly strong in
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Cartesian dualism whereby whatever is objective is physical, that it, has spatial
magnitude, whereby whatever is subjective is nonphysical, that is, lacking in spatial
magnitude.
Philosophers like Thomas Nagel (1986) have worried that the subjectivity of
conscious experience bars the possibility of giving a physicalistic explanation of
consciousness. Colin McGinn (1995) explicitly targets the non-spatial aspects of
consciousness as rendering them recalcitrant to physicalization. The classical distinction
between primary and secondary properties, i.e., the distinction between objective
properties of objects and those in the eye of the beholder properties fell along
spatial/non-spatial lines. Primary properties, that is, objective properties, of objects were
cashed out in terms of the occupation of and movement through space (Evans 1985, pp.
268-281). In the philosophy of mathematics, there is a pervasive unease about attempts to
cash out the objectivity of mathematical knowledge in terms of reference to non-physical
objects (Benacerraf (1965) and (1973), Dummett (1975), Field (1989), Quine (1980), and
Wrenn (1998).)
chapter 1). Strawson is especially interested in arguing that this condition holds of
objective particulars, that is, particulars that are conceived to be neither states of
ourselves nor dependent on states of ourselves (Strawson 1959, chapter 2). (These are
particulars conceived of in terms of what I have called metaphysical objectivity in my
chapter 1.) The general form of Strawsons arguments to this conclusion proceeds by
attempting to show that any creature incapable of representing spatial properties would
thereby be incapable of representing objective particulars. Strawsons student Evans
(1985) presents different arguments for similar conclusions. One way of reading
Strawson and Evans arguments is as arguing for the conclusion that any creature able to
have epistemically objective representations must be capable of representing objects as
having spatial properties. On another reading, the conclusion of their arguments are even
stronger, namely, that any epistemically objective representations must represent objects
as having spatial properties.3 If this stronger conclusion is true, then the account of
It must be noted that the textual evidence for the stronger reading is not univocal. For
example, Strawson asks is the status of material bodies as basic particulars a necessary
condition of knowledge of objective particulars? (1959, p. 61) indicating that his aim is
to show only that material bodies are basic elements in acquiring knowledge of objective
particulars, not that they are the only particulars about which such knowledge may be
had. Even though Strawson here may be read as contradicting what I am calling the
strong reading, it is not clear that his arguments are in strict accord with Strawsons
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statement. And even if they were, it is another question entirely whether Evans
arguments are so restricted. I will have more to say about these points below.
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Colors and sounds may vary along dimensions (e.g., hue and pitch) but these are not
genuine spatial dimensions as those involved in varying your location from Chicago to
New York. The distinction between dimensions that do and dimensions that do not satisfy
the sufficient conditions for being space is the distinction between real space and merely
quasi-spaces. I hereafter will simply call real space space.
What sense then, can we make of the claim that objectivity requires space? I offer
three interpretations of the thesis at stake. Space will count as a requirement of
objectivity only if at least one of the following sentences are added as theorems to the
predicational theory of objectivity:
There is no doubt that this short list fails to exhaust the multifarious ways one
could disambiguate the claim that objectivity requires space. I justify the meager length
of the list on the following grounds. First, adding more items on the list while giving
them the attention that they deserve arguments that follow would bring this discussion to
an excessive length. Second, I justify the inclusion of SO1 on the grounds that it is the
most relevant to concerns arising over the notion of allocentric cognitive representations
discussed in previous chapters. If something like SO1 is true, then the notion of
allocentric representation cannot be extended to apply to representations that do not
represent objects as shaped or located in space. Third, I justify the inclusion of SO2 and
SO3 on the grounds that these are very close, if not identical, to theses that Strawson and
Evans argue for under the heading of a defense of the spatial requirements of objectivity.
More specifically, one of Evans arguments concerns SO2, while two of Strawsons and
another of Evans concern SO3.
Note that given the predicational theory of objectivity, SO2 entails and is entailed
by SO1. SO3, however, is logically independent of SO1. Strawsons and Evans
arguments for SO2 and SO3, if sound, would require the inclusion of SO1, SO2, and SO3
as theorems of my predicational theory of objectivity. If my arguments below are sound,
however, then Strawson and Evans do not supply compelling reasons for the inclusion of
SO1, SO2, and SO3 in the predicational theory.
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Below I examine and critique two arguments of Strawsons that objects (or
particulars, to use the term that Strawson favors) must have spatial properties and
relations in order to be metaphysically objective. I shall call these arguments The
Reidentifiability Argument and The Elsewhere Argument. Evans offers an argument
regarding the metaphysical objectivity of objects and I follow Strawson (1980) in calling
the argument The Simultaneity Argument. Evans also offers an argument that may be
construed as an argument for the spatiality of any metaphysically objective properties. I
follow Strawson in calling this latter argument The Causal Ground Argument.
At the heart of all four arguments is Strawsons thought experiment from his
Sounds chapter (chapter 2) of Individuals. In this thought experiment Strawson invites
his readers to attempt to imagine a subject that does not experience things as having
spatial properties or relations. The point of this thought experiment is to see if it is
conceivable that such a subject be able to grasp the concept of objectivity. According to
Strawson,
the question we are to consider, then, is this: Could a being whose
experience was purely auditory have a conceptual scheme which
provided for objective particulars? (p. 66)
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(For ease of exposition, Evans called Strawsons imagined subject Hero. I follow this
practice and also shall, for ease of exposition, call the imagined purely auditory world
Auditoria.)
Strawson sets out to see if Hero can make sense of and have a use for a
concept of objective particulars (1959, p. 69). Toward this end, Strawson sets out to see
if Hero can make sense of the notion of particulars, postponing their objectivity for the
moment. According to Strawson, in order to get a decent concept of particulars in
Auditoria, one must (i) get identifiable, in the sense of distinguishable, sound-particulars
(1959, pp. 69-70) and (ii) get identifiable, in the sense of reidentifiable, sound-particulars
(1959, pp. 70). For Strawson, having an auditory perception is sufficient for the
identification of a sound particular, and the auditory experience of continuity and
discontinuity is sufficient for distinguishing sound particulars. A C# (C# names a
universal here) that plays (gets instantiated for a duration), stops, then plays again, gives
an example of two distinguishable tokens of the same type, and if the note played did not
stop and start again, there would be just be one token. But for the reidentification of
sound particulars, more than continuity and discontinuity of sounds is needed. According
to Strawson, spatial criteria are needed. Below I describe why Strawson thinks space is
needed for reidentification, but for now I describe what Strawson thinks reidentification
is. According to Strawson, a particular is reidentified if and only if it is perceived for
some continuous period that ceases, and perceived some second time and identified by
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the perceiver as the numerically same particular perceived earlier. Thus a particular is
reidentifiable only if it can be perceived twice.
There are, then, two key stages to Strawsons argument, both of which I call into
question. The first is the argument from the metaphysical objectivity of particulars to
their reidentifiability. The second stage is the argument from reidentifiability of
particulars to the necessary employment of spatial criteria for their reidentification.
xthe numerically same xagain at t+2. And, if you can see x twice, then you could
identify x twice, that is, identify x and then reidentify x.
time. A nihilon may exist unperceived, but once perceived, its existence is terminated at
the end of an episode of perceiving it. Any reidentified entity would not be a nihilon.
Since Strawsons inquiry concerns the structure of our conceptual scheme, and since
nihilons are clearly conceivable, then the conceivability of objective particulars seems not
to require their reidentifiability. Strawson is committed to the claim that for any object
that we can conceive of perceiving and also conceive of existing unperceived, we can
further conceive of perceiving on more than one occasion. Thus, he is committed to the
claim that nihilons are inconceivable. But clearly they are conceivable. At least Chase
Wrenn and I can conceive of them.
Strawson takes himself to have shown that objectivity entails reidentifiability. His
next move is to show that trying to get reidentifiability into Auditoria will require treating
one of the dimensions of Auditoria as an analog to spatial dimensions in our conceptual
scheme. According to Strawson, some non-temporal dimension in Auditoria must be
sought to go proxy for the absent spatial dimensions. This proxy dimension will provide
subsidized housing for unperceived yet enduring sound-particulars.
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Auditory candidates for this dimension include timbre, pitch, and volume.
Strawson dismisses timbre immediately for its lack of obvious systematic ordering of
different timbres. (I suspect this to be due to the fact that any plausible ordering scheme
for timbres will be multidimensional.) Strawson prefers pitch. So be it. Experiences in
Auditoria will have the following structure. Items in Auditoria are sounds and sound
sequences like pieces of music. Items are accompanied by continuous back-ground noise
known as the Master Sound. The pitch of the Master Sound is going to be Auditorias
pseudo-spatial dimension. The location of a particular sound or sound sequence is that
pitch of the Master Sound that is contemporaneous with the sound sequence instance.
Suppose that particular sound sequence is a particular playing of Ode to Joy (a dated
occurrence or tokening of the song type/universal Ode to Joy). This instance of Ode to
Joy is heard by Hero over a finite duration. At a particular instance, the pitch of the
master sound is, say, C#. Imagine hearing the pitch of the Master Sound increase while
Ode to Joys volume decreases, and eventually, at some pitch of the Master Sound, Ode
to Joys volume is inaudibly low. Imagine further that the increasing pitch of the Master
Sound, accompanied by the decreasing volumes of Ode to Joy is also accompanied by the
increasing volume of some other sound sequence instanceJesu: Joy of Mans Desiring.
All this is reversible too: as the pitch decreases, returning to C#, Jesu: Joy of Mans
Desiring gradually quiets down while Ode to Joys thunder swells. Thus, during duration
d in which the pitch of the Master Sound is going up and down, Ode to Joy is maximally
audible while contemporaneous with one pitch of the master sound, whereas Jesu: Joy of
Mans Desiring is maximally audible while contemporaneous with a different pitch of the
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master-sound. The intuition being urged here is that these two different sound sequence
instances, Ode and Jesu, exist during the same duration d, but at different locations i.e.,
different pitches of the Master Sound.
One might object here that in this imagined case it is hard to pretend that there is
anything like a fact of the matter about such questions of numerical identity. I interpret
this objection as the worry that what constitutes the conditions of numerical identity for
sound particulars is more a matter of a judgment-call on our part and less a matter of a
discoverable and mind-independent fact. I suspect that Strawson might respond by
agreeing that it is indeed more a judgment-call on our part. But, I think Strawson would
add, the point of the project is to investigate what kinds of experiences would allow for
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us to have uses for and make sense of certain kinds of judgment-calls. (This is the sense I
make of Strawsons use of the phrases make sense of and have a use for with regards
to certain concepts that may or may not be admitted in Heros repertoire (1959, p. 69).)
Suppose that we introduce by stipulation the term blorg. The proper use of the term,
since stipulated, will constitute a judgment-call on our part. But only if we have certain
kinds of experiences will we be able to have a use for certain stipulations about the terms
applicability to experience.
The Master Sound need not be a set of sounds ordered along some dimension like
pitch or volume. The Master Sound could be a set of the following sounds: the sound of a
washing machine, the sound of a saxophone, and the sound of a baby crying. If at one
time, Hero hears Jesu accompanied by the baby cry and at another time, Jesu
accompanied by the sound of washing machine, those would count as two different
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instances of the same sound type. If instead, both times Hero heard Jesu being played
along with baby crying, that could count as hearing the same instance at two different
times. Hero, need not, in this case, recognize any ordering to the Mater Sounds. There
could, of course be a case in which he did, that is, in which the three Master Sounds were
a saxophone playing a C, a C# and a D. But the point here is that Hero need not recognize
any ordering of the Master Sound in order to identify and reidentify an instance of Jesu
with respect to it.
Now one might object, in a way suggested by Evans (1985, p. 253), that such a
move does not employ any real notion of numerical identity as distinct from a notion of
qualitative identity, since if occasions of Jesu are distinguished in virtue of co-occurring
with different Master Sounds (a baby cry and a saxophone blast), then the auditory
experiences in question are qualitatively distinguishable. Thus reliance on the Master
Sound seems not to be a reliance on genuine criteria of numerical identity.
As a response against Evans, I note that this problem arises only by treating the
experience of the Master Sound at a given moment and the other, non-Master, sound
heard at that moment to be blended into a single particular. Allowing that this need not be
the case, that is, allowing that Hero can distinguish between the Master Sound at a
moment and a non-Master-Sound at the same moment resurrects the possibility of the
application of genuine criteria of numerical identity. Perhaps the Master Sound and nonmaster sounds are distinguished by timbre: the master sounds are a perfect sine-wave, and
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a perfect saw-tooth wave, whereas the non-master sounds are saxophone performances.
By treating the perfect sine wave and saw tooth wave tones and saxophone performances
as different particulars, Hero can make sense of qualitatively identical but numerically
distinct saxophone performances. This is not to say that Heros experience is such that a
concept of the numerical/qualitative distinction may be derived from it, but instead that it
supplies materials out of which Hero may stipulate criteria for the employment of such a
concept. One might object, as Grush does (personal communication) that such criteria
nonetheless fail to provide for full blown numerical identity, since Hero would be
distinguishing particulars based on perceptible qualitative differences. I take it that this
objection amounts to asserting that numerical non-identity is compatible with total
indistinguishability. My reply to this sort of objection is that such a notion of identity
seems of little use in support of Strawsons thesis regarding space, since even spatial
criteria are incapable of supporting the existence of absolutely indistinguishable nonidenticals.
It seems, then, that Hero can apply criteria of particular reidentifiability without
conceiving of the particulars as being ordered along any dimension. And insofar as
dimensionality is necessary condition for spatiality, reidentifiability does not require
space.
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Before leaving this section I want to consider some further possible objections
against me. It may be objected that I have, in discussing space and reidentifiability,
overlooked a way that Strawson characterizes space and thus not done justice to his
Reidentifiability Argument. Strawson and Evans both characterize space as that in virtue
of which different things can simultaneously exhibit a system of relations over and above
those which arise from the definite (intrinsic, non-relational) character of each (Strawson
1959, p. 79; Evans 1985, p. 253). They say little to flesh out this sparse characterization.
Nonetheless, this characterization, with or without flesh, is insufficient to characterize
real space. Below I show that this characterization can be satisfied by a system of nonspatial relations.
Strawson and Evans do not unpack the over and above characterization but I
think that the idea is essentially the following. In Heros theory of the world, he
subscribes to some statements the predicates of which are monadic. To these correspond
the intrinsic properties of objects. Other predicates in Heros theory are binary: to these
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correspond the relations. To unpack the notion of relations over and above those which
arise from the intrinsic character of the relata, I propose the following. Let us suppose
that in Heros scheme, he has only the following kinds of predicates: monadic predicates
for pitch and timbre, and the binary predicates x has a higher pitch than y and x is
louder than y. Heros theory contains theorems regarding the x has a higher pitch than
y predicate that make its application depend on the applicability of the monadic pitch
predicates. For example, it may be a theorem for Hero that if x is a C and y is a C#, then y
has a higher pitch than x. Thus, relative to Heros conceptual scheme, the relation of one
sounds having a higher pitch than another is a relation that arises out of the intrinsic
characters of the sounds. In contrast, Hero has theorems regarding which sounds are
louder than others, but the application of the relational predicate x is louder than y is
not contingent on what pitch or timbre the sounds happen to be. Thus the relation of one
sounds being louder than another, as conceived of in Heros scheme, is my best guess as
to what Strawson and Evans might mean by relations over and above those which arise
from the definite (intrinsic, non-relational) character of each. This is not to say that I
endorse this or any account of the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties.
But I propose to grant Evans and Strawson the distinction and focus on a different aspect
of their account.
The next question to ask is the following. Can volume underwrite a set of
relations between things (sounds) that arise over and above those that are due to the
intrinsic natures of those things? Let us suppose that Hero conceives of the intrinsic
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properties of sounds as those of pitch and timbre. Suppose also that Hero conceives of
different sounds as bearing louder than relations to each other that are over and above
those that arise from the intrinsic character of each. Contrast these relations to those such
as x has a higher pitch than y, which, in Heros conceptual scheme, do arise from the
intrinsic character of each. Hero can do all of this without conceiving of the sounds as
instantiating real spatial properties and relations, that is, without utilizing genuine spatial
predicates in his theory of his world. Thus the over and above characterization is
insufficient to distinguish real space from quasi-spaces and any argument that does not go
beyond the over and above characterization of space is insufficient to show that real
space is a requirement for objectivity.
discussion of the first part of the reidentifiability argument, the part concerning whether
objectivity requires reidentifiability, the question addressed within the context of
Auditoria is whether the objectivity of particular sounds requires the reidentifiability of
soundsthe very same particulars, not, as the weaker reading would have it, the
reidentifiability of some other (non-audible) particular. Further, when Strawson takes
himself to have provided for criteria of reidentifiability by providing the Master Sound,
again, the very same particulars that are to be reidentified are the ones whose spatiality
and objectivity are called into question. The actual structure of Strawsons arguments in
chapter 2, especially the reidentifiability argument, conform to the strong reading, not the
weaker readings suggested by remarks Strawson makes in chapter 1.
there exist sounds that I do not now hear is this: that there are places at
which those sounds are audible, but these are places at which I am not
now stationed. (1959, p. 74)
Strawson considers and dismisses the following non-spatial alternative. Perhaps a subject
can think of unobservable existence as a function of the failure of sensory powers.
Strawson dismisses this suggestion on the grounds that such an alternative cannot allow
for being able to distinguish the failings of sense from the fading of the world. According
to Strawson, the application of such a distinction requires spatial criteria. Unperceived
particulars must be elsewhere.
I offer, contra Strawson, that we are able to conceive of objective things without
conceiving of them as being elsewhere. I can conceive of myself as existing unperceived.
I can conceive of myself as being knocked unconscious and locked in a darkened cellar.
It is quite conceivable that several hours could pass without my being perceived by
anyone, not even myself. And certainly I cannot help but be where I am. As Buckaroo
Bonzai says: Where ever you go, there you are. Thus there is at least one thing I can
conceive of as existing unperceived without that thing being elsewhere: me. The
Elsewhere Argument goes nowhere.
to exist unperceived depends on having spatial concepts, then this would certainly help
Strawson. But it must be noted that it has not been shown. Neither, of course, has its
negation been shown. But something else can be said against this line of objection. This
line of objection takes a form that is much too strong to be useful in defending
Strawsons position. Strawsons arguments concerning objectivity take the form of
showing that space is necessary because such-and-such is inconceivable. Putative
counterexamples that such-and-such is conceivable are countered on this line of objection
by asserting that such-and-such is conceivable only because we already have spatial
concepts. But any situation in which we are to evaluate Strawsons arguments will be
one in which we have spatial concepts. If it is admissible to doubt counterexamples to
Strawsons arguments on the grounds that we already have spatial concepts, then it is
likewise admissible to doubt Strawsons arguments themselves on the same grounds.
Any claim about what may or may not be conceivable to a creature lacking spatial
concepts may not be adequately evaluated by creatures such as us that already have
spatial concepts. One begins to wonder, then, what the point of Strawsons exercise is. If
it is granted that we already have spatial concepts, how could it be shown that they are
necessary for certain things if we cannot meaningfully contemplate lacking spatial
concepts? Strawsons own methodology demands that counterexamples to his claims be
taken seriously in spite of being generated by creatures that already have spatial concepts.
Barring independent argument that such-and-such is conceivable only because we have
spatial concepts, the bare suggestion should not give us further pause.
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113
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Evans point concerning the blind is not that the tactile experience of the parts of a large
object never afford the application of simultaneity concepts, but instead that they do not
afford the direct application of such concepts.
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legitimate to allow for two different objects, one red and one blue, to occupy all and only
the same spatial locations, as opposed to admitting a third kind of object, a purple one,
into the ontology. Again it must be stressed that this is not a claim about anything but
admissible judgment-calls that may be made, a point dealt with above. The co-perception
of a red object and a blue object need not be a perception of the objects as being located
at two different places. To make the same point in terms of the sounds thought
experiment, consider the following.
Suppose that, until today, Hero has been listening to a series of alternating
HONKs and DINGs. Imagine that the HONKs are bass blasts from a baritone saxophone
and that the DINGs are tinny tones from a diminutive xylophone. Hero is hearing the
following series: HONK DING HONK DING HONK DING. Suppose that one day Hero
hears a sound that is qualitatively identical to what we would hear if a DING and a
HONK occurred simultaneously. Now it seems that Hero could interpret this occurrence
in one of two ways, one of which involves the application of a concept of simultaneity,
the other does not:
The Simultaneity Option: I (Hero) just heard two different features
simultaneously: a HONK and a DING
The Non-Simultaneity Option: I (Hero) just heard a (third) feature that
Ive never heard before: a DONK.
Now, according to Evans, Hero is barred from the simultaneity option. But this invites
the following question: Why should Hero conceive of todays experience as a DONK
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rather than as a simultaneous occurrence of a HONK and a DING? Evans take on this
issue has not been argued for, nor does it seem obviously correct.
evidence does not support this line. The key passage concerns Evans comparing blind
humans to Hero. The blind, while lacking opportunity for the direct application of
simultaneity concepts, may nonetheless be situated to apply them indirectly. Describing
the blind, Evans writes that
it must be supposed that they are equipped with the appropriate
concepts and that they interpret or synthesize their sequential
experience in terms of them. This is independently plausible in the case
of the blind; but appears to have no independent plausibility in the case
of the subject of a purely auditory experience, who similarly, and
indeed far more certainly, lacks any opportunity for direct application of
simultaneous spatial concepts. (Evans 1985b, p. 276).
Here it is quite clear that Evans aim is to deny Hero any opportunity for the application
of the requisite concepts to experience. Evans is not merely denying that experience
could constitute a source of such concepts, a font from which such concepts necessarily
flow.
This argument represents a departure from the previous three in that Evans
attention is turned from the metaphysical objectivity of objects (i.e. particulars) to the
metaphysical objectivity of properties.
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Evans argument can be seen as having two parts. The first part is the suggestion
that we cannot conceive of the sensory properties as being instantiated unperceived
without supposing that they instantiate these properties in virtue of instantiating some
other properties. The second part is the suggestion that these other propertiesthe causal
ground of the sensory propertiesmust be spatial properties.
The two parts open the argument to two lines of attack. The first is to question the
necessity of supposing unperceived sensory properties being co-instantiated with some
other properties. I pursue this line of attack at some length below. The second line of
attack questions the need for these other properties to be spatial. Even if Evans is correct
that sensory properties must be conceived of as having a causal ground, why must this
causal ground be thought of as consisting of spatial properties? I do not pursue this
second line of attack beyond pointing out here that Evans seems not to have argued for
the necessity of the spatiality of the causal ground. I am more interested in pursuing a
third line of attack, namely, to point out an incoherence in the way Evans describes the
objectivity of sensory properties. In the remainder of this section I offer two arguments
that flesh out the first and third lines of attack, respectively. First, I argue that the
objectivity of so-called sensory properties does not require them to have a causal ground.
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Second, I argue that Evans characterization of sensory properties renders incoherent the
suggestion that we conceive of them as objective properties.
unperceived. And further, this causal ground must be comprised of spatial properties.
What I want to do in this section is block the very first move that Evans makes in this
argument, that is, block the move that sensory properties by themselves cannot be
imagined to be instantiated unperceived.
Evans argues that it is quite difficult to see how an object as we see it can be the
same as when we do not see it (Evans 1985b, p. 272-274). Suppose that I am seeing an
apple as red. How can it be red when no one is seeing it, when, say, it is locked in a dark
cellar? Evans contends that this is inconceivable (Evans 1985b, p. 274). Evans writes that
All it can amount to for something to be red is that it be such that, if looked at in the
normal conditions, it will appear red (1985b, p. 272). Evans contrasts this view with one
that tries to make sense of the idea of a property of redness which is both an abiding
property of the object, both perceived and unperceived, and yet exactly as we experience
redness to be(1985b, p. 272). Evans objects against this latter view that it would be
quite obscure how a colour-as-we-see-it can exist when we cannot see it, and how our
experiences of colour would enable us to form a conception of such a state of affairs
(1985b, p. 273).
I want to defend this latter view by suggesting that the obscurity alleged by Evans
arises due to a concealed ambiguity in sentences employing phrases like as I see it.
Once such phrases are properly disambiguated, it becomes quite clear how a color as we
see it may be the same when it is not seen.
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I begin by considering sentences employing phrases with the form x as I am Fing it. Consider the sentence
The chair as I am standing next to is the same as when I am not
standing next to it.
There is a reading of this sentence whereby it is quite clearly contradictory. On such a
reading the sentence expresses the claim that a chair stood next to is a chair not stood
next to. This is contradictory on the supposition that a chair cannot be both stood next to
and not stood next to at the same time. Suppose, then, that we were to read the following
sentences along similar lines.
The chair as I see it is the same as when I do not see it.
On such a reading, Evans would be correct that it is quite obscure how the chair as I see it
can be the same as when I do not see it. There is a difference between the chair as I see it
and the chair when it is not seen by me, namely, in the first case I am seeing it and in the
second I am not. And on the supposition that the chair cannot be both seen and unseen at
the same time, the sentence under consideration expresses a contradiction.
Evans detects obscurity and unintelligibility in the supposition that a colour-aswe-see-it can exist when we cannot see it (1985b, p. 273). I suggest that the supposition
is clear and intelligible if read representationally. If we explicate perception as a
representational affair, then
The chair as I see it is the same as when I am not seeing it
is no more a contradiction than the representational reading of
The chair as I am describing it is the same when I am not describing it.
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I may describe a chair as being Swiss and it can continue to be Swiss during periods
when it is not described. Likewise, I can see a chair as being brown and it can continue to
be brown during periods when it is not seen.
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What room is there for Evans to defend the Causal Ground argument by denying,
as Grush (personal communication) does, the truth of the representational account of
perception? There is little, if any room, for Evans to make such a maneuver. Note first
that the logic of the situation is something like this. Evans claims, not possibly P and I
counter, possibly P because representationalism is possibly true. Now, someone may
attempt to save the Evansian line by denying the possible truth of representationalism.
But Evans would not. The whole project of providing for the objectivity of perception
presupposes that perceptual states are representational states: The notion of there being
things that we perceive that may exist independently of our perceiving them is asked
within representation milleu, within a context that presupposes that perceptual states are
representational states. Further, evidence may be gathered showing that Evans actually
does buy into representationalism about experience. In Evans 1982, perception has
representational content, though Evans famously allows that in some cases that content
may be nonconceptual and illustrates the case in terms of colors. Evans famously asks
Do we really understand the proposal that we have as many colour concepts as there are
shades of colour that we can sensibly discriminate? (1982, p. 229) thus launching the
cottage industry of non-conceptual content studies. Now one may want to suggest, upon
comparing this remark to the causal ground argument, that Evans didnt think there was
non-conceptual content after all, in spite of being historically credited with introducing
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the notion into contemporary discussions. Pursuing such a grand project goes way
beyond my purposes at hand, namely, to show that the causal ground argument does not
force upon the predicational theory of objectivity any destructive consequences.5 I turn
now to my second problem with Evans Causal Ground argument.
can be given sense apart from representationalism. Say I chop a stone in two. The way
Ive chopped it (in two) is a state of affairs that may have obtained without (that is,
independent of) my chopping, it may have been struck by lightning or simply fell apart
into two pieces.
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prototypical instances of the metaphysically subjective. Thus the problem that Evans sets
for himself in his Causal Ground argument is the problem of trying to figure out how it is
that we conceive of subjective properties as being objective. But if we are prepared to
admit that they are subjective, then it seems that we have lost interest in trying to
conceive of them as objective. If sensory properties are not really objective after all, then
they are an entirely useless platform from which to launch a defense of the spatial
criterion of objectivity.
I should note that there is something unfair about my complaint as waged against
Evans. Evans analyses colors as depending on a disposition to be experienced, but does
not equate them with a property that is instantiated only when experienced. Evans notion
of objectivity in the Causal Ground Argument is no more than that of a property that can
be instantiated even when unperceived. Both Evans and I allow that secondary properties
may be instantiated unperceived. But unlike me, Evans does not regard secondary
properties as subjective, but instead, objective. In fairness, the remarks in the current
section should not be regarded so much as critical of Evans, but instead as a way of
showing that, as I use the terms objective and subjective, secondary properties cannot
serve as a platform upon which to erect an argument for the spatial criteria of objectivity.
I have argued for the failure Evans and Strawsons arguments that the objectivity
of objects (particulars) and properties requires them to be spatial. Evans and Strawson
thus do not provide compelling reasons for amending the predicational theory of
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Before leaving the discussion of Strawson and Evans, I want to consider one final
objection to the line of argument in this chapter, namely, that the notion of objectivity
that I have been primarily concerned with is orthogonal to that which is the focus of
Strawson and Evans arguments (Grush, personal communication). What is the alleged
contrast? Strawson writes:
The limit I want to impose on my general question is this: that I intend
it as a question about the conditions of the possibility of identifying
thought about particulars distinguished by the thinker from himself and
from his own experiences or states of mind, and regarded as actual or
possible objects of those experiences. I shall henceforth use the phrase,
objective particulars as an abbreviation of the entire phrase,
particulars distinguished by the thinker &c. (1959, p. 60).
Thus, Strawson is interested how it is that we conceive of particulars existing
unperceived. Is this different than what Ive been interested in all along? Grush (personal
communication) urges that the contrast between Strawsons target and my own is that I
am interested in particulars that exist independently of perception and Strawson is
interested in particulars conceived to exist independently of perception. I think, however,
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that Strawson and I are not talking past each other. Recall that the project I set for myself
in chapter 1 included explicating the concept of objectivity, which involves unpacking
what it is to conceive of things as existing unperceived, or more broadly, existing mindindependently. Strawson and I may diverge over what the phrase objective particular is
shorthand for, but ulitmately we are interested in the same thing. We are interested in
what it means, relative to the conceptual scheme of humans, for there to be a distinction
between our experiences and the mind-independent objects of experience.
One might urge an even stronger claim here, one that even Strawson would be
prepared to accept, namely that there really is no difference between exists independent
of us and relative to our conceptual scheme, exists independent of us. All claims that
we can evaluate or even consider are claims relative to our conceptual scheme. Does
such a concession threaten realism, or any hope for genuine objectivity? Such will be the
focus of the next chapter.
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5.0 Introduction
131
One of my key motivations for writing the current chapter is to ward off a kind of
response that I have encountered often in discussing earlier versions of the above
material. This general kind of response sees my project as attempting (and failing) to
defend classical philosophical positions, like realism or anti-skepticism. While there is
much continuity between the language and issues of the current work and these classical
debates, taking up these classical causes it outside the limit of what the naturalist may
accomplish or even care about. My goal instead is to show, relative to a scientific
viewpoint, the utility of treating some things as mind-dependent (in the idealist sense)
and some things and mind-independent (in the realist sense). The questions to be
addressed here are: assuming a scientific view how would you know what is real and
what is ideal?
simpliciter but a realist about entities in some restricted domain of discourse. One may
find someone who is a realist about electrons, but an anti-realist about aesthetic
properties. Despite the varieties of realism and antirealism correlative with the varieties
of domains of discourse, there is a common logic to realist/anti-realist debates. This
general logic may be illustrated with the following example. Being a realist about
electrons involves committing to a two part claim: (i) that electrons exist and (ii) that
electrons exist mind-independently that is, independent of whether anyone talks, thinks,
or theorizes about electrons. Given that the realist thesis is twofold, anti-realists are of
two kinds.
The first kind of antirealist denies (i). For example, they deny that that there are
any electrons. This kind of antirealist is a nihilist. Hartry Field is a nihilist about
numbers and Bas van Fraassen is a nihilist about electrons (Field, 1989; van Fraassen,
1980). Quine is neither a nihilist about numbers nor electrons (Quine, 1980). This is
insufficient, however, to make him a realist about them, since the question about mindindependence remains undressed.
The second kind of antirealist denies (ii). Thus, whether there are horses, for
instance, is said to depend on whether anyone talks, thinks, or theorizes about horses.
The second kind of antirealist is an idealist. George Berkely, Immanuel Kant, Nelson
Goodman, Richard Rorty, and Hilary Putnam are all idealists. Berekely famously
remarked that to be is to be perceived. Thus whether horses exist depends on whether
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horses are experienced by some mind or another. Equally famously, Quine remarks that
to be is to be the value of a bound variable. Thus he seems to assert that whether horses
exist depends on whether horses are quantified over in some theory or another. Thus
Quines ontological relativity is a kind of idealism insofar what exists is relative to what
is said to exist. These are of course matters of interpretation. What matters is not the
correctness of the interpretations, but the illustrative purposes they serve.
For the sake of simplicity, I will discuss realism and idealism about electrons,
although I intend my remarks to apply to realist/idealist debates about, say, horses or
numbers as well. Also for simplicitys sake, I will express the idealist thesis in terms of
the mind-dependence of electrons. Various versions of idealism about electrons will
differ over what electrons are dependent ontheories, languages, perceptions, thoughts,
and cultures are just a few of the considered options. I use mind as shorthand for these
options. In this section I am much more concerned with the notion of dependence at play
in these debates than the notion of mind.
investigation of the real and ideal will have to avail itself of means of expression that
outstrip extensional language, and utilize instead, the language of causal and
counterfactual dependence, topics best explored in a naturalistic mind-set and taken up in
the next section. If the realists and idealists disagree, then the idealist claim cannot simply
be the material conditional statement that if there are electrons then there are minds. Nor
can the realists claim simply be the denial of the truth of this material conditional. Let
us begin by supposing it were otherwise. Suppose, say, that the idealist tried to express
her thesis using
(1)
(
x)(Ex) (
y)(My)
(2)
~[(
x)(Ex) (
y)(My)]
A problem arises, however: (1) and (2) are inadequate to capture the disagreement
between the realist and the idealist. This is because the realist as well as the idealist
assents to the truth of (1). To see why, consider that material conditionals are false only
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if their antecedents are true and their consequents are false. But the realist and idealist
each grant the truth of the antecedent and consequent of (1). They agree that, as a matter
of fact, it so happens that there are electrons and minds.
What the realist and idealist disagree about goes beyond the mere coexistence of
electrons and minds. The idealist insists that in order for there to be electrons there must
be minds. According to realist, on the other hand, there could have been electrons even if
there were no minds. As I will argue in the sections that follow, the idealist and the
realist rely on modal notions to express their respective theses. The idealist asserts
(3)
[ x)(Ex) (
y)(My)]
which reads Necessarily, if there is something that is an electron, then there is something
that is a mind. The realist asserts
(4)
~ [(
x)(Ex) (
y)(My)],
which is equivalent to
(5)
~[(
x)(Ex) (
y)(My)]
and
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(6)
[(
x)(Ex) & ~(
y)(My)].
The realist, then, believes it possible that there be electrons without minds where
the idealist holds that if there are electrons, then that there are no minds is impossible.
One of the clearest modern idealist arguments is due to George Berkeley (1710, 1713).
Of Berkeleys arguments for idealism, the one that he regarded as central to his system6 ,
and the one that has come to be called his master argument (Pappas 1995 p. 73) is the
following. If one can conceive it possible that the objects one thinks about may exist
without the mind, then it is necessary that [one] conceive them existing unconceived of
or unthought of, which is a manifest repugnancy (Berkeley 1710, 23). The argument is
echoed in the persona of Philonous, Berkeleys spokesman against the realist Hylas in
The three dialogues.
Hyl.
Phil.
How say you, Hylas, can you see a thing which is at the same time
unseen?
Hyl.
While Berkeley has other arguments for his idealism (e.g. the argument from perceptual
relativity) he is content to put the whole upon this issue (1710, 22).
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Phil.
Hyl.
It is.
Phil.
The tree or house therefore which you think of, is conceived by you.
Hyl.
Phil.
How then came you to say, you conceived a house or tree existing
independent. . . of all minds whatsoever?
Hyl.
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Everything that we think about is thereby thought about. Who could deny that?
Everything that exists is thought about. Thinking the thought expressed by the previous
sentence makes it the case that everything that exists is thereby thought about. Are these
remarks sufficient to establish idealism? Are they sufficient to establish that what exists
depends for its existence on being thought about? No. All they establish is the material
equivalence of that which exists and thoughts about it, which is something already
granted by the realist.
What, then, can the realist respond to the idealist? The realist cannot give an
example of anything that is not thought about, because as Philonous would be quick to
point out, any attempt would be self refuting.
The first step of any realist response will be to point out that at best the idealist
has shown that any electrons we have thought of have been thought of. And this is a
matter of fact with which the realist has no quibble. The realist thesis goes beyond this
simple fact. The realist will grant that the only reality that we conceive of or talk about is
thereby a reality conceived of or talked about. But, the realist will insist, this is
insufficient to make it the case that reality must be conceived of or talked about.
The realist has only three options for expressing his thesis, as far as I can tell. I
call these three options the essentialist option, the counterfactual option, and the possible
worlds option. And for each of these three options, the idealist has a corresponding way
of expressing his opposition to the realist. I discuss these three pairs of options below.
139
(7)
Of the essential attributes of electrons (e.g, having a negative
charge), cohabiting the universe with minds is not one of them.
(8)
(9)
(10)
140
(11)
(12)
See Schmitt (1995, pp. 40-46) (a realist) for a discussion of the debate between realists
suspected of something. Likewise for the property of being seen. Nothing is seen unless
it is visually perceived, and thus represented. In contrast, lovely properties are defined in
terms of their dispositions to elicit mental responses. Someone may be lovely even
though they lived in isolation their entire life and were never perceived to be lovely.
Dispositional properties may be instantiated without being actualized: that is, something
can be breakable without being broken. Dispositions defined in terms of representations
thus do not need to actually be represented to be instantiated. Someones being lovely is
defined in terms of dispositions to elicit a certain response in a certain class of perceivers.
Where the property of being seen is suspect property, the property of being visible is a
lovely property. Dennett writes:
Particular instances of lovely qualities (such as the quality of loveliness)
can be said to exist as Lockean dispositions prior to the moment (if any)
where they exercise their power over an observer, producing the
defining effect therein. Thus some unseen woman (self-raised on a
desert island, I guess) could be genuinely lovely, having the
dispositional power to affect normal observers of a certain class in a
certain way, in spite of never having the opportunity to do so. But
lovely qualities cannot be defined independently of the proclivities,
susceptibilities, or dispositions of a class of observers. Actually, that is
a bit too strong. Lovely qualities would not be definedthere would be
no point in defining them, in contrast to all the other logically possible
gerrymandered propertiesindependently of such a class of observers.
So while it might be logically possible (in retrospect one might say)
to gather color property instances together by something like brute force
enumeration, the reasons for singling out such properties (for instance,
in order to explain certain causal regularities in a set of curiously
complicated objects) depend on the existence of the class of observers.
[. . .]
Like Lockean secondary qualities in general, they are equivalence
classes of complexes of primary qualities of those states, and thus can
exist independently of any observer, but since the equivalence classes of
different complexes that compose the property are gathered by their
characteristic effect on normal observers, it makes no sense to single
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causal interactions only with the predicate that expresses it.) An objective property is one
that enters into causal interactions other than interactions with representations.
It may be worth while mentioning the kinds of causal interactions that may relate
a predicative representation and the property it denotes. (Something very like the
following catalog may be found in Fodor (1998, pp. 78-80)). The first and most
noteworthy is perception. If one is able to mentally represent dogs, that is, predicate is a
dog of some individual, then one is typically (perhaps necessarily) able to apply the
representation in perceptual situations, in situations in which one is able to perceive the
presence of a dog. One may, in a certain conditions, if presented with a dog, be able to
perceive that it is a dog. Many different philosophers engaged in many different projects
may wonder what conditions one has to be in. But, as will eventually become apparent,
that does not matter here. What does matter is the truth of the following widespread
assumptions: (a) Perceiving a dog involves representing a dog and (b) perceiving a dog
involves being caused by a dog to token a representation of a dog. Precisely what kinds
of causal mechanisms relate percepts to perceived things, I do not know. What matters
here is only that there are some. It is worth pausing to preview how this might relate to
some topics to be covered later, topics like publicity and objectivity. Consider the causal
mechanisms that perceptually relate Helen Kellers dog-representation to dogs and
another set of mechanisms that perceptually relate my dog-representations to dogs. In my
case, the typical conditions in which I find myself perceptually representing dogs will be
those conducive to vision: good lighting, etc. Such conditions will be quite irrelevant to
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Helen Keller. For her, the conditions will involve those conducive to smelling and
touching dogs. People with very different sensory abilities, myself and Helen Keller, for
example, can nonetheless perceive dogs as dogs: there are multiple kinds of conditions in
which the presence of a dog can causally elicit a representation of a dog. This is because
there are multiple kinds of causal interactions that relate the property of being a dog to
dog-representations. A fortiori, then, there are multiple kinds of causal interactions that
the property of being a dog enters into. This is a necessary condition on a propertys
being objective, and being public. This will be explored in more detail, but I mention it
now to give the flavor of where this is going. Entering into multiple causal interactions is
a road to objectivity. And entering into multiple interactions relating a thing to
representations of it is the road to publicity. I return now to cataloging the many kinds of
causal interactions that may relate representeds to representations.
Perceptual mechanisms do not supply the only kinds of causal chains that may
link a dog to my coming to token a dog-representation. Among the other kinds of linking
mechanisms, I will briefly mention three more: Theoretical Inference, Scientific
Instruments, and Testimony. Theoretical Inference. I may infer that there was a dog in
my kitchen based on seeing muddy dog prints on a kitchen floor. Scientific Instruments. I
may build a dog detector. Such a device may have a video camera and a computer on one
end, and a green light on the other and be rigged up in such a way that the green light
comes on when and only when there is a dog in front of the camera. I may see the green
light, but not the dog, and nonetheless come to believe that there is a dog in front of the
146
camera of the detector. Testimony. A friend of mine may be stationed at the coffee house
down the street sees a dog and calls me on the phone to tell me about it.
I have examined the debate between realists and idealists for the purposes of
getting a bead on what the strength of dependence is that is at stake in arguing over minddependence. For realists and idealists to have anything to disagree about, the notion of
dependence in question must be something stronger than mere material dependence. I
have discussed two kinds of dependence stronger than material dependence. The first,
which I called strong dependence, is counterfactual dependence. The second, which I
called weak dependence is dispositional dependence. I redescribed these notions in terms
of causal interactions. A property is strongly mind-dependent if there are causal
interactions between it and minds, such that the property would not be instantiated unless
there are minds. A property is weakly mind-dependent if the property, while being
instantiable independently of minds, enters into casual interactions only with minds.
5.2 The side-ways view: Scientific Room for Idealism and Realism
147
McDowell is wrong. We can view the relation between mind and world from
sideways on. We wont, of course, do it by stepping out of our minds to get a different
view: we wont be able to see anything without thereby seeing it. But we can get a
sideways on view of mind and world in much the same way an optometrist gets a
sideways view of eye and chart: by viewing someone elses eye. Eyes are no less objects
of empirical study for being among the things we use in our observations. Likewise for
minds.
In this section I address the empirical and scientific warrant for positing both real
and ideal kinds, that is, properties that are and properties that are not mind-dependent.
This chapter is dedicated to shedding some light on the question of how you know when
something is objective or subjective. The answer I offer is: you do the science. This will,
of course require much unpacking. Among the many problems that such a project faces
is the philosophical prejudice that such questions are necessarily beyond the grasp of
science, that they are necessarily metaphysical in the pejorative sense of the term
introduced and deplored by the logical positivists. Positivist resistance to realism, for
instance, manifests itself as the belief that nothing can be added to an existence claim by
asserting in addition that the entities in question are real. My approach to such claims
begins by seeing issues of metaphysics as continuous with issues in the natural sciences.
All I mean by metaphysics is the investigation of what things are. In this sense, then,
scientists are in no less the metaphysical business than David Lewis or Jaegwon Kim.
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Recasting things in this way, even what is really real is something that can
meaningfully be talked about. And it can be shown to be distinct from being accidentally
true, and it is something that we can have genuine confirmation of. Just as we can know
whether frogs depend on nitrogen or the other way around, so we can know whether frogs
depend on thoughts about frogs or the other way around. We have genuine access to what
the representations are, and what things do and dont depend on being represented for
their existence. Whether something is an objective or a subjective is something that we
can have knowledge of: scientific knowledge.
My aim below is to present arguments that there are scientific grounds for
positing that creatures represent mind-independent properties as well as mind-dependent
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properties. Further, I argue that these are quite compatible situations, that is, that the
reasons for thinking e.g., that creatures represent mind-dependent properties are not so
strong that we must posit that those are the only properties that creatures are able to
represent. Much of the burden of showing that mind-dependent properties are represented
by organisms was taken up in chapters 2 and 3. Here I am especially concerned to show
that these are not the only properties that organisms need to represent. I begin by
considering arguments that a scientific view of the representational capacities of
organisms leads to anti-realism. In this section I want to begin by discussing empirical
considerations that are alleged to count against realism. The first is an old insight. It
begins with noting the enormous amount of processing and mechanism that mediates
between the distal stimulus and the eventuating of a percept. It is then portrayed as a
small step from this insight to begin boggling at how we can come to perceive reality at
all, it being so far away. Huw Price describes the position as
We should be cautious about claims about the rabbit having no immediate access
to the world out side of its skull. What would it take for it (qua rabbit known to theorist)
to have immediate access to the world outside? Would it count to take the brain out of
the skull and, say, smearing it up against a pile of carrots? I worry that Grush (and
perhaps Price) is moving from the fact that we access the world in virtue of representing
it to a view that our representations some how get between us and the world, and thus
prevent us from having immediate access to the world. But why shouldnt being
representation producers and consumers be precisely the same thing as having immediate
access to a world, at least part of which is mind-independent? Whatever access to a world
amounts to, it should be something for which a distinction between mediate and
immediate access at least makes sense. In order for the denial of immediate access to
make sense, that which it denies must make sense. But the idea of the immediate has not
yet been given a sense.
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More can be said, of course, in favor of the kind of position that Grush alludes
toone in which empirical considerations concerning the relations of organisms to their
environments leads to thinking of their represented worlds in idealist anti-realist terms. I
turn now to examine further arguments that an empirical understanding of the relations
between organisms and their environments leads naturally to viewing them as not
representing a mind independent world, but instead, constructing a world of their own.
In a recent article, Anthony Chemero (1998) argues against realism. The crux of
Chemeros argument moves from ideas about selective representing to the anti-realist
conclusion that different ways of representing bring about the existence of different
worlds that are represented.
radically different ways. A gibbon may represent the world as having good branches to
swing from whereas whatever goldfish represent surely doesnt include swinging from
tree branches.
There are two initial ways in which Chemeros argument goes wrong. The first
way involves the supposition that the different ways of representing the world are in
conflictthat they somehow constitute disagreement. Let us suppose that organism X
represents only varying temperatures and that organism Y represents only varying
concentrations of sulfur. The organisms are not disagreeing. It is not like X represents the
presence of temperature and Y represents the absence of temperature. And since X and Y
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are not in disagreement, it is entirely consistent to maintain that both X and Y represent
the way the world really is.
Now there is a way to import disagreement into the situation of X and Y, but such
a way is entirely illicit. One may attempt to redescribe the situation by saying that X
represents the world as containing only temperature and saying that Y represents the
world as containing only sulfur. Thus X and Y are representing the same thing in
contradicting ways. The key point here is that such simple organisms simply are not
equipped to represent the world as a whole and predicate of it the presence of only
varying degrees of sulfur. They simply do not have the conceptual resources to pull this
off. Instead the situation is akin to one person saying that dogs are furry and another
person saying that dogs have four legs. While each person is saying different things, the
situation need not be one of disagreement, thus it is entirely consistent to maintain that
both people represent the way dogs really are.
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concepts of existence and negation. Chemero does not adequately guard against such an
illicit move. Chemero writes:
Because the needs of one type of animal can be are so [sic] different
from those of another, the perceptual systems that result will constitute
the world in very different ways, as full of barbecues and highways and
myriad other things for humans, but, for example, as containing only
three thingswhat we see as butyric acid, pressure and temperature
changesfor ticks (see von Uexkull, 1934, p. 10). (paragraph 15)
In the above passage, the assertion that ticks represent the world as containing
only butyric acid, pressure, and temperature changes is unwarranted and may not be
inferred from the mere fact that the only aspects of the world ticks are capable of
representing are butyric acid, pressure, and temperature changes. It is one thing to say
that ticks represent only X, Y, and Z. It is an entirely different thing to say that ticks
represent the world as having only X, Y, and Z. The latter case is what is needed for the
ticks representations to be in conflict with ours. But the former case is all that the thesis
of selective representing is committed to, and the former case is consistent with realism.
The second way that Chemero goes wrong is by a fallacious supposition of the
exclusivity of functions. The fallacy is to infer from the premise that the function of
organisms representational schemes is to get by, to the conclusion that the function of
organisms representational schemes is not to represent the way the world really
objectively is. Chemero writes:
[G]iven the way evolution works, we should not think of the perceptual
systems (or any parts of animals) as ideal solutions to problems posed
by the environment. Instead, animals that survive and reproduce are
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those that do well enough to find food and so on. So, there is no reason
to assume that any particular animals perceptual system gets the world,
as it is independently of thought, just exactly right; they all do only well
enough. ( paragraph 15)
Continuing on this theme, and drawing on Clark 1997, Chemero writes:
Consider that Clark argues that higher thought, the kind exhibited in
mathematical and scientific theorizing, depends on the scaffolding
provided by public language. He also suggests (pp. 211-13) that
language is adapted to the way our brains worked pre-linguistically;
human language, that is, is adapted to and built upon action-oriented
representations. But, as we have seen, these representations are biased
by pressures to fulfill human needs throughout evolutionary history.
And if the foundation on which language is built is biased, it is
overwhelmingly likely that language itself is similarly biased. So if
physics and other sciences depend upon our language-using abilities
(and Clark argues that they do), they have no claim on being reflections
of the world-in-itself. (paragraph 19)
Chemeros passages echo suspicions that have been around for a while. For
example Patricia Churchland (1987) urges Looked at from an evolutionary point of
view, the principle function of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should
be in order that the organism may survive. . . . Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the
hindmost (pp. 548-549).
may represent just what it needs to get by: concentrations of butyric acid etc. But this is
entirely compatible with representing the way things really are: as being concentrations
of butyric acid, etc.
The rhetorical device Chemero employs and that is worth pointing out is the way
that he moves between the phrases The way X represents the world and Xs world.
This rhetorical device paves a smooth passage for anti-realism for it makes it seem that
there is a world for each way of representingthat different representational schemes are
different ways of world-making. Admittedly, such language is encouraged by the
introduction of appealing to Umwelts in the first place. Nonetheless, one must avoid the
view that makes idealism rest on the following tautology: the only world that we
represent is a world that is represented by us. Now, of course, the world represented by us
is representation dependent in at least this sense: it depends on being represented by us
for its being represented by us. But, as discussed in section 5.1, this cant be what the
realist and anti-realist are disagreeing about. I mention this point not attribute it to
Chemero, only to point out the dangerous proximity between the tautologous version of
anti-realism and the rhetoric employed in these discussions.
posited. Part of the scientific understanding of the ticks Umwelt includes the notion that
the sorts of things that the tick is responsive totemperature and butyric acidare the
sorts of things that exist independently of ticks responsivity. The scientific story licenses
saying that the tick is responsive to stuff that would be there even if the tick were not.
Chemero wonders what reason the scientific realist has for supposing that human
Umwelten capture the way the world really is. The reason the realist provides is the same
reason for supposing that tick Umwelten capture the way the world really is: the world
really does contain concentrations of butyric acid and ticks are responsive to those
concentrations.
In advocating this kind of picture, a picture in which not just human scientists, but
lowly ticks are capable of representing the way the world really is, I do not intend the
case to exhaust the scientific options for describing the Umwelten of various creatures.
While it may sometimes be the case that a creatures mind is in touch with aspects of a
world independent of its mind, there are also instances in which the creatures Umwelt
includes mind-dependent properties, as argued in chapter 2.
the business of detecting the objective property of temperature was actually in the
business of detecting some creature-dependent property? Answers to these sorts of
questions were discussed at some length in chapter 2. In addition to the sorts of examples
given there, another class of examples of subjective contents comes from the literature on
Gibsonian/ecological approaches to psychological understanding. The gist of these
examples will involve psychological states that have as their contents things that depend
on the organism itself. For instance, if I see something as too large for me to eat, there is
a real sense in which the property I attribute to that object depends on me. Whether
something instantiates the property of being too large for me to eat depends on facts
about memy size and metabolism etc.
Gibson 1979 gives several examples in which the organism itself, or parts of the
organism, or properties that depend on the organism figure in the contents of visual
experience. (Compare the discussion of Tanky from chapter 2.) In a discussion of these
points, Bermudez 1998 calls such contents self-specifying information.8 The first
example in which self-specifying information shows up in the contents of visual
experience concerns the boundaries of the visual field. In the case of humans, the visual
field contains less than half of the viewers visible environment. The boundary of the
visual field constitutes a boundary between the seen and unseen world that is movable at
will and supplies information to the viewer about her location in and trajectory through
that world. Parts of the viewers body (especially the nose and cheeks) define the
boundary of the visual field, and some parts, the nose in particular, is itself seen in the
visual field. The occlusion of other seen objects by the nose supplies information about
degrees of proximity of objects to the viewer. Another important proximity clue involves
the amount of the visual field an object occupies: as objects move away from the viewer,
the occupy less of the visual field. This fact allows for an interesting way of visually
distinguishing between parts of the subjects body and the rest of the seen world. The
viewers hand or foot can only move so far from the viewer, being typically and
hopefully attached to the viewer, and thus there is a limit on how little of the visual field
it can be restricted to. In contrast, other objects, being unattached, may move indefinitely
far away from the viewer and thus occupy an indefinitely small portion of the visual field.
This difference may also facilitate a clue as to what objects, though not a part of the
organisms body, are at least attached to it or grasped by it. A stone held in my hand
cannot occupy an indefinitely small portion of the visual field. Only if it is let go may it
shrink into the distance. Another source of self-specifying information is optical flow.
As a subject moves forward, the shapes in the visual field flow from the center to the
boundaries. The center from which the flow emanates specifies the direction in which
the subject is moving. These examples drawn from Gibson constitute rich sources of
information available to the perceiving organisms. The step from the availability of this
information to subjective representation is a small one. If we suppose that organisms
have states that function to carry that information, and that information includes
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information about the relation of the environment to the subject, then we have on our
hands representations that are perspectival/egocentric/subjective.
162
thoughts and experiences are private: only I know what, if anything, I am thinking and
feeling. Thus the problem of other minds becomes especially acute: how can I know that
other individuals are hosts of any mentality whatsoever and not merely mindless
automatons? Attributing privacy to sensory qualities leads to the problems surrounding
the knowledge argument discussed in chapter 3.
164
determining the sublimity of experiences. Thus are the notions of publicity and
consensus alleged to go hand in hand.
representation of F, R2. Suppose that the only laws that F entered into were those that
related it to the representations R1 and R2. F would be subjective. But there would be
agreement on F. Thus agreement is not sufficient for objectivity and objectivity is not
necessary for agreement. Suppose, however, that there is a property that is maximally
subjective, that is, it enters into only one causal interaction and that interaction relates it
to one representation. If a property is maximally subjective, then it will be private.
I turn now to flesh these ideas out further. Common scientific practice has it that
lines of converging evidence are indicative of the truth of a hypothesis. The more lines
of evidence that converge, the more likely the hypothesis. This point holds not only at
the level of theory, but at the level of data. How does one go about deciding that a
putative datum is not just an artifact? For example, if using one kind of microscopy, one
observes a bulge in a cell wall. One may wonder whether that bulge is just an artifact of
the particular preparation. One tries multiple preparations to see if the bulge appears in
more than one of them. (For an extended discussion of precisely this sort of issue as it
arises in cell microscopy, see Bechtel 1994.)
166
Let us presume that with respect to frogs, flies are mind-independent: with respect
to our science, at least, flies are frog independent, so lets just grant that. Let us also
presuppose the old story about the fly detector (Lettvin et. al. 1959 ): that there is some
event type that occurs in the frogs brain that is relatively well correlated with the
presence of flies. Call that brain event B. Following Godfrey-Smith (1998, p.250) let us
call the conditional probability that a fly is present given B reliability and the
conditional probability that B will occur given the presence of a fly sensitivity. We can
define the frogs hunger as the amount of time that has elapsed since it last ate a fly.
Observing the frog and its brain activity, we note the following. The frogs sensitivity to
flies increases as a function of its hunger. The conditional probability that the presence
of a fly will activate B is much higher when the frog is hungry.
flies in virtue of brain activity B, the frog is even more sensitive to FWAFIHs. And
arguably, what matters to frog survival is not so much the detection of flies simpliciter,
but instead detecting flies when its hungry. Is it so large a leap to think that the frog is in
the business of detecting FWAFIHs?
Maybe it is. Having the function of detecting flies when a frog is hungry is
distinct from the function of detecting the presence of fly-when-frog-is-hungry. But how
to draw the distinction? How would one go about deciding over fly or fly-when-frog-ishungry? A handle on this question can be gotten by deciding an analogous question asked
regarding scientific instruments instead of sensory systems. Let us return to the example
of thermometry discussed in chapter 2. How would one decide that an instrument, say a
thermometer, were detecting an objective property temperature instead of the
thermometer-dependent property temperature-of-thing-thermometer-is-in/near?
The key is noting which properties are explanatory, and which count among what
needs to be explained. If what needs to be explained is why a thermometer has a certain
reading when it is in a substance, then the elements of an explanans that are restatements
of what was said in the explanandum are strictly superfluous. Circularity is the death of
explanation. Grass is green because grass is green is so obviously unexplanatory
because it is so obvious that the properties picked out in the explanans are all and only
the properties picked out in the explanandum. Moliers famous and funny example of
explaining the fact that opium makes people sleepy in terms of positing a dormative
168
virtue of the opium is both famous and funny because citing a dormative virtue of opium
only restates what was known already: that opium makes people sleepy. What needs to be
explained is the why the thermometer goes up when its placed in a substance. Invoking
the property of temperature is a candidate explanation. But consider the property
temperature-of-substance-thermometer-is-in. Note the overlap between the explanans
and the explanandum. We already know that the thermometer is in the substance.
Invoking the thermometer dependent property bears no explanatory load over and above
that born by the invocation of the thermometer independent property. We are interested in
the property that explains why, when the thermometer is in the liquid, the mercury goes
up. We abstract away from the instrument. When you have a fever, you instantiate a
property that is detected by the thermometer, and, let us grant, a property that depends on
thermometers, but these are not the same because of the differential explanatory statuses
of the two properties.
These remarks allow us to see why consensus has more bite in understanding
objectivity on the correspondence view. The agreement of instruments only makes sense
on the supposition that they are in the business of detecting properties independent of the
instruments. Likewise, using one instrument to calibrate another (and how else can
instruments be calibrated?) only makes sense on the supposition that the two different
instruments are tapping into something independent of the two instruments. If what each
instrument was in the business of detecting was a property dependent on that instrument,
then each separate instrument would be detecting its own separate property and there
169
would be no common measurement that they could be said to be agreeing on (and there
would be no room for the notion of calibration to get a grip).
This argument is distinct from the common one that treats the objectivity of what
is measured as an inference to an explanation of the agreement of the instruments. The
common argument assumes agreement, and then posits the objectivity of what is
measured as an inference to a best explanation of why there is agreement. What I am
proposing is different from this common argument. What I am proposing is that the very
notion of agreement itself presupposes objectivity (in the sense of instrumentindependence of the properties measured). If what is measured is instrument dependent,
then the notion of agreement cannot grab hold because where there are different
instruments, then there are different instrument-dependent properties that each is
tracking.
Thus we have a sketch on how one might go about deciding in the favor of the
realist option for attributing contents to the states of the frog. What I mean by realist
in this context is the option of deciding that the property some detector (or instrument)
detects or measures is a property that is instantiated independently of the detector. The
sketch shows how notions of objectivity hook up with notions of consensus or agreement
without being identical to those notions. Indeed, part of the notion of agreement
between, say, measuring instruments presupposes a metaphysically objective thing for
them to be in agreement about.
170
There is a very real sense in which the one piece of the Jell-O box depends on
another, the one piece would not have turned out this way if the other hadnt turned out
that way. There is a counterfactual dependence of the one on the other. There is also an
analogue of the weaker sense of mind dependence of the one piece on the other: the
property of being that piece brings with it no other properties except those had by the
other piece. We can treat one piece as a detector of the other. There is a nice analogy
between the Jell-O-box pieces thought of as involved in the process of detection and the
notion of an experimental artifact: in both instances, what is detected is in part a product
171
of the process by which it is detected. We can also imagine that there are
representational states that match their representeds in the way that the Jell-O box pieces
match each other. The properties detected by such a sensory system could not be
detected by anyone else lacking such a system and would thus be effectively private for
the owner of the sensory system.
172
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