Is Meaning in the Head?

Is Meaning in the Head?

Learned readers will recall those halcyon days of trips to Twin Earth and the outer reaches of meaning when we discovered that meaning isn’t situated in the head.[1] We learned that no meaning is an island; there are bridges of meaning linking one piece of land to another. We called this “externalism” and reveled in our connectedness to the world outside. No more the isolationist doctrine that meaning resides wholly in the brain, snugly ensconced in the skull, like a coconut in its shell. Meaning radiates forth like a tentacle or light ray. But the time has come to take stock and assess the significance of these marvelous discoveries: are they as profound as we thought, or possibly profounder? Did we take the measure of them?

One kind of question concerns whether we defined internalism narrowly enough. For the brain is a complex object made up of parts, some inside others: what about the doctrine that meaning is located in a part of the brain not the whole brain, say Broca’s area? This is where language is represented not (say) the hypothalamus; so, meaning is in that region and is not distributed more widely. It is internal to the internal. That sounds like a colorable doctrine, but it raises questions about the role of the sensory and motor parts of the brain, not to mention the prefrontal cortex. Where does meaning end and other mental functions begin? It seems a bit narrow, needlessly exclusive. One might prefer a more externalist picture in which other parts of the brain also play a vital role. Maybe we need a notion of narrow meaning close to syntax and a wider notion of meaning linked to reference; language is partially in Broca’s area and partially in other cerebral areas. That seems a debate worth having—about strengths or degrees of internalism within the head cavity. Are there twin earth cases involving Broca’s area—keeping it constant and varying the rest of the brain, etc.? Is meaning supervenient on Broca’s area or is it not?

But that is not the question I want to focus on—I want to ask whether we were overly timid in our externalism. Are there other sources of externalism that we missed? What about the body: does it act to determine the nature of meaning? It is outside the head, so it counts as external relative to that organ. The question is no sooner raised than an affirmative answer indicated: of course the body operates to fix meaning! Human meaning will differ from octopus meaning, for example, if octopuses mean. If an octopus could speak, would its language translate into ours? Surely its anatomy and physiology would play a big part in its semantics. If it had a word for a certain fish that we also refer to, it’s a good bet that the two words would differ semantically, reflecting our different ways of living and relating to the environment. Body and meaning intersect. Or imagine a linguistic being made purely of light. Different body, different conceptual scheme and semantic scheme. The brain of each creature will doubtless reflect its body; it isn’t some isolated unit formed autonomously. You can’t just plonk a given brain into any old body and expect the two to mesh. Brain and body coevolve. Meaning and body don’t develop separately. This is not a very contentious form of externalism. Meaning embodies body.

We get more adventurous if we expand our horizons, though the results are scarcely earth-shattering: aren’t speech acts outside the head and body? I don’t mean mere utterances but the type of illocutionary force of the speech act—assertion, question, command. For these categories concern linguistic interactions between speakers; they exist only in linguistic communities. They are community concepts. Yet they involve meaning: the distinctions are semantic and they pertain to groups of speakers; there is no point in them in a solitary individual. The community may be virtual, but it is still essential to the nature of such speech acts. Illocutionary force is not in the head, a matter of the solitary encapsulated individual. It refutes what may be called “semantic insularism”. This may remind us of Wittgenstein (and similar theorists) with his private language argument and social conception of meaning. No meaning is possible without the normative dimension provided by other speakers: the concept of correct use requires the existence of a linguistic community (allegedly). Thus, semantic normativity requires an external force or agency—other people. Meaning is only possible within a community of language users. Rule following in general is essentially social and hence external to the individual. Meaning isn’t in the insulated head but in the linguistic community. We can envisage a social twin earth: varying the linguistic community while keeping the individual constant. Meaning only exists in the context of an external linguistic society, according to this way of thinking. I mean, therefore a community of speakers exists.

What about grammar? It too points outwards in so far as it is prescriptive: you are only speaking a particular language if you obey its grammatical rules, say Italian. You can’t speak Italian unless you arrange your words in a specific way; you can’t just make up your own rules and hope to be speaking that language. Thus, Italian grammar is not in the individual’s head but in the Italian speech community, particularly the experts (I am not speaking here of the universal innate human language faculty, if there is one). Correct grammar is a community affair. The case is like rule following in playing a game: you can’t play football unless you go by the rules of football. Football is an institution, a social practice, and so it involves a community—like chess or scrabble. So, in sum, meaning (language) is external in virtue of reference, the body, normativity, and grammar. No doubt it is also internal (even very internal), involving Broca’s area and whatnot; but it has external components or necessary conditions. It is multidimensionally external. Twin earth was the tip of the iceberg not an exceptional case; it is one kind of externalism among several. It was rearguard action not a singular revolution. Not banal, to be sure, but by no means a lone effort. Even the extension of externalism to the mind had its comrades-in-arms, because concepts and beliefs are also held to be subject to constitutive external forces, particularly normativity. Conceptual schemes are not in the head either, if we follow referential and social conceptions of thought and language. The mind-world nexus is the foundation of meanings and concepts, not mind considered as a splendidly isolated island. Hence, causal theories of content and the like. There is really a family of anti-internalist positions not just the twin earth type.

We may also consider the past and the future: is meaning a present individualistic fact? Is it internal to the present or does it extend to the past and future? Here again, Wittgenstein puts in an appearance, because he insisted that meaning is spread out in time, like use. What I mean now is partly determined by what I did in the past and will do in the future (dispositions to future use). We can call this temporal externalism—time as something extending beyond the present, external to it. An isolated time slice of me will not fix what I mean. Wittgenstein maintained this because of the temporal spread of use, but we can also construct a temporal variant of the twin earth thought experiment. I call this “historical twin earth”: instead of different planets, we consider different times on the same planet, varying the environment over time while keeping the internal facts the same. Thus, suppose we keep varying the chemical kind associated with “water” from one time to another—now H2O, now XYZ, now ABC, and so on. These are different natural kinds with the same sensory appearance, thus preserving internal states. What does “water” refer to? There is no reason to pick H2O over the others, since all have the same duration in the sun; we do better to say that “water” varies in its reference and meaning from time to time, according to what chemical kind is in the environment. So, it has a different meaning at different times, despite the identity of internal states over time (they are the same as they would be if only H2O occurred in the environment). But there may be a time lag before the new meaning kicks in, because the past exerts a semantic influence on the present; and it may also be influenced by what the future environment will contain. So, meaning is not wholly determined by the present state and causal relations of the speaker, in somewhat the way Wittgenstein contended with respect to use. Meaning is sensitive to what the environment contains over time, not just what obtains at the present time. We could have run a twin earth case without leaving earth, by considering time; and if we do, we also discover that meaning extends beyond the present internal state of the speaker into the past and possibly the future. Meaning isn’t just a matter of what is in the head now. Meaning can depend on what is elsewhere in space and time. Meaning occurs when the head teams up with the world—the inner with the outer. So a determined externalist will contend (I am not saying I personally agree with all of this). Externalism comes in several varieties not just the twin earth variety.

I can’t resist making some brief remarks about morality: is it in the head? You might think so if you hold certain views about the basis of morality, to the effect that morality comes from an inner voice, an individual conscience, a subjective decision. Morality is then determined by facts internal to the individual (perhaps a part of his brain). But this is not the only possible view: you might think morality comes from society or God or Platonic heaven. Then it will be external to the individual; the individual has the morality he has in virtue of an external link to entities outside of him. This is moral externalism. It was the dominant view until fairly recently (Freud, Marx, Sartre, et al). It parallels the case of meaning. If twin earth contains a different form of the Good, towards which we stand in cognitive relations, then “good” will refer to that Good not to ours; so, the content of morality will be different there. It might even suggest different actions in certain rare circumstances. Again, I am not saying any of these moral externalisms are correct; I am only saying there is an intelligible dialectic here—a philosophical issue. So, the case of meaning is not alone; the debate between internalism and externalism applies also to morality. If you go for one, you might also go for the other: you might be a general insularist or a general relationalist. The classic twin earth type of externalism is not the only party on the block.[2]

[1] Putnam, Burge, McGinn, and others.

[2] Clearly, we should be externalists about knowledge, since knowledge requires truth (fact). So, we need to recognize epistemic externalism as well as semantic and moral externalism. I don’t mean recognize them as true, though I see the merits of that position; I mean recognize them as possible philosophical viewpoints. Knowledge is not (wholly) in the head, nor is morality (on some views), nor is meaning (according to certain theories). The self may or may not be in the head, or bodily sensations, or aesthetic responses, or emotions, or personality traits. The question is quite general. Maybe the only things fully in the head are neurons…