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Our Knowledge of Other Minds

June 3, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

Our Knowledge of Other Minds

How do we know the contents of other people’s minds? By what method do we know about other minds? The options are the following: by sense perception, by inference, by introspection, and by a priori reasoning (I exclude telepathy, at least as the standard method). We can rule out the last two: I do not introspect your state of mind, only my own; and I do not know your mental state as I know mathematical truths, i.e. without recourse to experience. So there appear to be two possible theories: by direct perception and by indirect inference. Both views have been maintained. The perceptual view assimilates knowledge of other minds to our knowledge of the world of material things: just as I know by looking that there is a tree in front of me, so I know by looking that you are in pain or are deep in thought. I simply see that you are in pain, as I see that there is a tree yonder. My eyes are directed towards your body and your body expresses your pain—makes it manifest to my senses. Such a view goes naturally with philosophical behaviorism, since states of mind are identified with episodes of behavior (or dispositions to behavior). By contrast, the inferential view denies that we can perceive other people’s mental states, supposing instead that they are to be conceived as theoretical entities, posited to explain observed behavior, rather like atoms and fields of force. Then our knowledge of other minds is like our knowledge of the unobservable things that we postulate to make sense of what we observe. We know other minds by means of something like inference to the best explanation. This view goes naturally with a causal conception of mental states: they are unobservable causes of observable effects (episodes of behavior). Again, there is nothing special or distinctive about our knowledge of other minds—we know about them as we know about unobservable material entities. I see your behavior and I infer that it is caused by mental states of specific kinds, as I see meter readings and infer that atoms are the cause. Thus, if there is a skeptical problem concerning other minds, it is not peculiar to the case of other minds. It is just a special case of a more general skeptical problem—the problem of perceptual error and the problem of knowledge of unobservable entities, respectively. The other person might give a misleading perceptual impression of being in pain and not be in pain, or he might not in fact harbor the theoretical entity I posit to explain his behavior. This kind of assimilation doesn’t solve the skeptical problem, but it does give it a name: it tells us what kind of problem we are up against. The problem of our knowledge of other minds is essentially the same as the problem of our knowledge of the external world.

Neither of these familiar views is satisfactory: we don’t see pains in people as we see colors and shapes in objects, and we don’t we infer pains as we infer atoms or fields. But I won’t go into why; instead I will offer an alternative. We should not attempt to reduce our knowledge of other minds to some other paradigm of knowledge. We need, rather, to identify what is distinctive of knowledge of other minds—what sets it apart. And what sets such knowledge apart is the role of self-knowledge in generating knowledge of others. Neither perceptual knowledge nor inferential knowledge (of the standard scientific sort) rests upon a basis of self-knowledge, but knowledge of other minds does. I know other minds by knowing my own mind. So I will contend.

Self-knowledge includes a number of different things. Suppose that I am now thinking about playing tennis: what kind of knowledge do I have about that mental state? I know (a) that I am now thinking about playing tennis, (b) what this thought consists in, and (c) what kinds of things this thought inclines me to do. The first kind of knowledge is episodic (what is happening in my mind now); the second is constitutive (what it is that I am undergoing); and the third is dispositional (what dispositions to action I have in virtue of having the thought in question). Focusing on (c), we can say that for any mental state M that I know I have I also know the dispositions associated with M—I know what I might do in virtue of having M. If I know that I am in pain, say, then I know that I might complain about the pain or wince or cry out. How I arrive at this first-person dispositional knowledge is an interesting question: do I know it by observing correlations between my inner mental states and my outer bodily behavior, or do I know it innately by having the knowledge programmed into my genes, or is it in some sense a type of conceptual knowledge? I won’t go into the question; I will just assume that we have such knowledge in our own case. So we have knowledge, not just of what occurs inside of us mentally, but also knowledge of how this inner thing might be expressed publicly—we know our dispositions to behavior. I know that I’m in pain now, I know what pain is, and I know what pain makes me do–I know the bodily expression of pain. This dispositional knowledge is part of my self-knowledge. I could have it whether or not I knew anything about other minds.

Then the thesis is that we use such self-knowledge in acquiring knowledge of other minds. The way we obtain knowledge of other minds is quite straightforward (which is not to say simple): we first observe another person behaving in a certain way; then we note that when we behave that way we are in a particular mental state; we then attribute that mental state to the other. So we put together two premises: (1) that the other person is behaving thus and so, and (2) that in our own case dispositions to that kind of behavior go with our having a certain mental state. We then conclude that the person has the mental state in question. That is, we generalize from our own case. Our only basis for the attribution we make is that in our own case a certain association obtains. We know it in our own case and we assume it for the case of others. If we did not have this kind of self-knowledge, then we would not be able to have knowledge of other minds. We rely on our self-knowledge to generate other-knowledge. This is not how it works according to the other two theories, in which self-knowledge plays no essential role in our knowledge of other minds—as it doesn’t in perceptual knowledge and knowledge by scientific inference.

It is important to see what this account is meant to achieve and what it is not meant to achieve. It is meant to explain what is special about our knowledge of other minds—how such knowledge differs from other types of knowledge. We don’t reason in this way when forming beliefs about the external world: we don’t use our self-knowledge as a premise, assuming that what is true in our case must be true more generally. The reason is simply that in other cases we are not trying to gain knowledge of other minds, so we don’t use any premises comparing our mind with other minds. In perceptual and inferential knowledge (of the scientific kind) we don’t make any comparison between the object of such knowledge and ourselves. We don’t presume that ordinary material objects have a mind like ours! (Nor do we assume that other bodies resemble our own—we just have a look at those bodies.) We only do this kind of thing when aiming to acquire knowledge of other minds. So the present account sets knowledge of other minds apart from the run of empirical knowledge. What the theory is not intended to do is provide a reply to skepticism. In fact, it underscores skepticism about other minds, because this method of knowing is vulnerable to skepticism on several fronts. First, we are generalizing wildly from our own case, which is just one case among many, and there is a question whether we are entitled to draw such far-reaching conclusions from so slender a basis (it looks like a rash type of induction). Second, it may be that the association that holds in our case between mental state and behavior does not hold in the case of others—maybe the same disposition is associated with a different mental state (as in inverted spectrum cases). Third, how do we know that there is an association even in our own case? Maybe we have no body at all or make mistakes about how behavior and mental states match up. There is plenty of room here for the skeptic to stick her oar in. But replying to the skeptic was not the intention; indeed, I might even say that doing justice to skepticism about our knowledge of other minds is part of the point of the theory. According to the perceptual and inferential theories, we just get a version of the usual kinds of skepticism that afflict perceptual judgments and inference to the best explanation: but there is surely something special—and especially troubling—about other minds skepticism. We really are on shaky epistemic ground here—which is why mistakes about other minds are so frequently made. And other minds are surely hiddenin a unique way, not merely as atoms are hidden. We are compelled to reason from what is true in our own case to what is true for others—a risky move. We have only one mind to go on, our own, and we are forced to rely on it to provide knowledge of indefinitely many other minds. This is not an epistemologically happy situation; but it is the way things are and the way they must be. The world, after all, does not owe us an epistemological living. We are lucky we have the self-centered method I have sketched—we might have had no method at all.

It is possible to imagine a being with no self-knowledge who nevertheless has both perceptual and inferential knowledge of the external world, but we cannot (if I am right) imagine a being that has knowledge of other minds but does not have knowledge of its own mind. Given that some minds are not self-aware in the manner sketched, such minds cannot attribute minds to others (this will be true of many animals). But if a creature can form the idea of other minds, then that creature must have self-knowledge: cats and dogs (not to mention apes) would seem to qualify as mind-readers, so they must know their own minds in some way—they must be projecting their knowledge of their own minds into the minds of others. Thoughts of other minds require thoughts of one’s own mind—and many animals give every sign of knowledge of other minds. Animals know how their own minds link to their behavior: a dog knows what growling means in its own case, and it extrapolates this knowledge to other dogs.

It might be said that the self-knowledge theory is itself an inferential theory, because it involves inferring that others are like myself. That is a perfectly correct observation, but it is a special kind of inferential theory, quite unlike normal scientific inference, as noted above. Nor is it a case of inference to the best explanation: it is inference based on observed similarity of behavior, combined with self-knowledge of certain mental-behavioral links. It would not be wrong to describe it as a version of the “argument from analogy”, because it proceeds by noting a similarity between oneself and others and then attributing a further similarity: the other is similar to me behaviorally, so she must be similar to me mentally. The point I am adding is just that self-knowledge plays an indispensable role: first I must know how my own mental states are connected with my behavior; only then can I attribute mental states to others. This is what is characteristic of knowledge of other minds: knowledge of other minds depends on prior knowledge of one’s own mind, i.e. knowledge of how one’s own mental states are expressed bodily. In a certain sense, knowledge of other minds is more “self-centered” than other kinds of knowledge. Whenever I am thinking of the minds of others I am implicitly thinking of my own mind, because I have no other basis for such knowledge than knowledge of my own mind. Introspection is essential to knowledge of other people’s minds, though not because I introspect their minds. There is no escaping my own mind in my thinking about other minds. My mind is the model I use to build a picture of other minds. (If this sounds like a truism to some, or as naively pre-Wittgenstein to others, then I am encouraged.)

There is a strange ambiguity or ambivalence in our knowledge of other minds: at one moment it can seem like the most immediate knowledge in the world, but at the next moment it can seem impossibly remote. Sometimes we think we know just what is on the other person’s mind, but then we reflect that this is really quite hidden from us. Perhaps this oscillation stems from the dual basis of this kind of knowledge: on the one hand, I do know immediately what my mental states are and what they incline me to do; on the other hand, it seems rash to suppose that others are the same way. If I focus on the self-knowledge premise, I seem to be on solid ground (for Iam certainly inclined to yelp when feeling a sharp pain); but if I focus on the analogy-with-others premise, then I seem to be overreaching (maybe others don’t yelp when they are in pain). The fact is that I am partly thinking of other minds as my mind in another body and partly recognizing that other people are genuinely alien subjects. I am torn in this way because the very nature of my knowledge of other minds reflects both (infallible) self-knowledge and (fallible) other-extrapolation. Our entire conception of other minds is frankly a kind of confused amalgam, caused by the epistemological necessity to combine facts about one’s own mind with facts about other minds. I observe the bodily expressions of others, then I reflect on my own mind and its relation to my body, and then I go back and attribute a mental state to the other. Nothing like that happens in other areas of knowledge. Our knowledge of other minds rests on a roundabout method of trying to overcome the fundamental fact that our own mind is the only one we can introspect. It would be so much easier if we could just peer directly into the minds of others, but the metaphysics of mind rules that out; so we have to do the best we can with our self-knowledge combined with some risky extrapolation. We have to work with the epistemic materials we have, feeble and fallible as they may be. That is just the way it is with our knowledge of other minds—we are condemned to play epistemological catch-up. We are trying to overcome a structural problem written deep into the nature of things. On the positive side, we necessarily unite ourselves with others in a common psychological family—we have no choice. Alien minds are unknowable minds, given the way we obtain knowledge of minds other than our own. If another mind broke all the rules of mental-behavioral association that hold in our own case, we could not know its contents. We are trapped in an epistemic corner created by our own psychophysical nature. We seek to resolve the mystery of other minds by reducing them to our own mind. [1]

[1] Surely our primordial attitude towards other minds is that they are a complete mystery, an arena of inextinguishable ignorance. Yet we must make inroads into this darkness because we are a social species; so we make stabs in the dark using knowledge of our own mind as our weapon. The result is hardly complete illumination, more like forlorn speculation. We hope we get things right, but we can never be sure.

Nothing

June 3, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

Do we really have a concept of nothing? It may appear obvious that we do, but I am not so sure. We have the concept of non-existence, but it doesn’t follow that we have the concept of nothing—that is, the concept of nothing at all. When an object goes out of existence it doesn’t dissolve into pure nothingness; it assumes another form. An animal that dies and disintegrates goes out of existence, but what happens is that its material parts lose their erstwhile organization. It is not that the animal vanishes into thin air, leaving no residue. When we get to the basic parts of things the story is the same: either the parts (e.g. electrons) cannot be destroyed, or if they are they simply assume another form (maybe even just pure energy). There is always something left, and conservation ensures that something is never replaced with nothing. In these familiar examples of ceasing to exist we do not employ any concept of nothingness in the strict sense. So we cannot ground the concept of absolute nothingness in the ordinary notion of non-existence.

There is then a question as to what we mean by “nothing” in this very strong sense. What do we mean when we ask why there is something rather than nothing, or try to contemplate the universe before anything existed, or imagine the total annihilation of reality? Have we extended our ordinary concept of non-existence in a direction it cannot tolerate? Have we descended into disguised nonsense? All ordinary attributions of non-existence occur against a background of existence, so what can it mean to speak of absolute nothingness? [1] Perhaps there is nothing we mean by “nothing” when we use it in the strong metaphysical sense.

Here is an argument for that conclusion. Consider ordinary denials of existence like “No dodos exist” or “No fictional characters exist”: these involve the use of a sortal predicate, which specifies what kind of thing is said not to exist (it is the same with affirmations of existence). However, no such statement could imply that nothing exists, since the only thing whose existence is denied is of a specific kind. Take every sortally qualified denial of existence—the conjunction of these will not imply that nothing whatever exists. In order to reach the concept of pure nothingness we need to use a word like “thing” or “entity” or “being”—no thing or entity or being exists. These words are what are known as “dummy sortals”: they provide no criterion of identity and so cannot be used in statements of number (how many things are there on my desk?). But just as we cannot meaningfully say how many things there are in the world, neither can we say that there is nothing in the world. All that could mean is that nothing falls under the various sortal concepts that can apply to the world; but that doesn’t entail that there is absolutely nothing. Even units of energy, volumes of space, and moments of time are sortally described objects. The concept of there being nothing at all—as distinct from there being no F’s or no G’s—has not yet been given a sense. What is it whose existence is being denied? Anything comes the reply: but what does that mean independently of some sortal to tie it down? The metaphysician who wants to talk about pure unadulterated nothingness must be using some other notion of non-existence—not the notion of specific kinds of object not existing. In order to speak meaningfully of non-existence we need to have a sortal concept in mind, but the bare idea of nothing supplies no such concept—it is simply a placeholder for a sortal concept. We can use the word “nothing” in contexts where a sortal term is presupposed, but in its extended metaphysical use it is a pseudo-sortal: no clear meaning can be attached to it.

When we try to frame the idea of pure nothingness—the absence of all existence—we fail to come up with a genuine concept. But we fail to realize this because we employ a concept of non-existence that applies in contexts that do not envisage complete nothingness, as with the ceasing to exist of an animal or city or mountain. Fictional objects don’t exist, but the minds of their creators do; dodos don’t exist, but their atoms do; persons cease to exist, but their bodies go on: none of these varieties of non-existence add up to the complete absence of everything. We really don’t know what such a state of affairs would consist in. We don’t have a clear and distinct idea of absolute nothingness (no space, no time, no logic, no truth, no empty set). It is not clear that there is a possible state of affairs in which nothing exists—what would it even look like? [2] It may be true that there is nothing such that itnecessarily exists, but it might yet be true that necessarily something exists—some sortal or other is exemplified. At the least the onus is on the believer in the concept of nothingness to demonstrate how such a concept is possible—that metaphysical uses of “nothing” are more than empty words. Why is there something rather than nothing? Maybe it’s because there is no coherent notion of nothing for the existence of something to negate.

Colin McGinn

[1] Sartre’s use of the concept of nothingness in Being and Nothingness is instructive: he holds that the essence of consciousness (the for-itself) is nothingness, but all consciousness is conceived by him as directed to being (the in-itself)—so nothingness can only exist against a background of being. Sartre is not using the concept of absolute nothingness, i.e. the complete absence of all existence; for him, nothingness presuppose being.

[2] Is there a possible world in which nothing at all exists? But wouldn’t that world itself exist? There is a world in which there is nothing. It is harder to expunge all existence than we suppose. Don’t possibilities exist? In a non-existent universe wouldn’t there exist various possibilities? If they are real possibilities, mustn’t they have being?

Mysticism and Matter

June 3, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

Mysticism and Matter

Consider a community of disembodied minds cut off from material reality. Not only are they immaterial themselves, they have no contact with matter, not even space. Their perceptions are purely abstract and psychological. They communicate with each other about things that interest them, but there is no talk about matter. We can suppose that they do occasionally speculate about a world beyond their common experience—they wonder if their immaterial world is all there is. Perhaps this is a matter of scientific and philosophical controversy, with some declaring themselves open to the possibility of such a world, some opting for agnosticism, and some rejecting the idea outright. But this is all speculation, since no one has ever seen or touched a material object; indeed, they have very little conception of what such a thing might be. They characterize the conjectured reality in purely negative terms—what is “not-spiritual”—and form fuzzy images of it. There are those who doubt that such talk is meaningful. They don’t doubt their own existence and feel clear about their own nature, but as for anything different and beyond—they regard the possibility as fascinating but fantastic.

But suppose that one day a prophet arises—a seer, in the most literal sense. This individual, Marie, undergoes a strange and unexplained alteration whereby she gains the sense of sight: she sees the first material object ever beheld by anyone in our disembodied community. What does she see? She sees a tomato, red and plump, splendid in its materiality. She is much amazed by this object, so different from anything encountered in her experience hitherto. At first she is afraid, so alien is the tomato, so brimming with alternative being—as if it might pounce on her. But it just sits there, not moving, reveling in its volume and solidity. Marie immediately grasps the concept of extension (she is among the most brilliant of her people), and she is suitably astonished—nothing in her life has prepared her for such a thing. She becomes a believer, given the evidence of her eyes: she now knows that there is an extended reality beyond the wispy immaterial world of spirits and thoughts—matter really exists!

Marie feels she must spread the news—her revelation must be made public. But she is shrewd enough to realize that this isn’t going to be easy: there will be understandable skepticism. Still, she has a solid (!) reputation for honesty and acuity, so some people will credit her report. She begins to tell of her strange experience. As predicted, some people reject her story outright, but many are convinced by her vivid description of the tomato, though they only dimly grasp its content. Thus there emerges a new creed—the creed of “Materialism”. Marie is accorded great reverence, and her vision of the tomato goes down in history. The world is much stranger and more magnificent than they ever thought. And maybe there is more where that came from—maybe the material world consists of many tomato-like objects! Doctrines arise and sects are founded, surrounding questions of the composition of the material world, which Mary has but partially glimpsed. An anthropologist would say that a religion of the material world has taken hold (though there may still be dissenters). And indeed Marie really did witness something remarkable, given her habitual mode of experience—something anomalous and unprecedented. She was right to be impressed. In due course others mysteriously acquire the gift bestowed on her and are also astounded by their visions: not just tomatoes, but apples and oranges, bits of coal, mud. There is a whole world of matter out there! It is so various, so pulsing with reality, so marvelously concrete. What is its nature, where does it come from, what does it mean? Is there perhaps a super-material god, large and heavy, that created it in his own image?

What is the point of this parable? Not to prove that immaterial beings are possible or that matter is supernatural, but to suggest that perhaps we take matter too much for granted. We find it familiar and boring, as common as dirt, nothing to get worked up about. But that attitude is the result of the force of custom, which dulls us to the miracle of matter. Matter is ontologically remarkable, an object of wonder. Extension in space is itself an amazing fact of nature. Like my immaterial beings, we are conditioned by what confronts us every day—to what constitutes our very bodies—but that is just a psychological fact, not reflecting ontological triteness. Matter is not intrinsically boring; it is gorgeous and fantastical. We need to develop, or recover, our sense of its ontological singularity. We need to see it with Marie’s fresh eyes, difficult as that may be for us. [1] It is what our universe is made of, after all, and so deserves our attention and appreciation, even our reverence. Maybe we should become Materialists—not in the sense that we think everything as is boring as matter but in the sense that we recognize how special matter is. Matter has its own charm and fascination, its own majesty.

[1] I can report occasionally feeling a sense of how remarkable matter is (and not because of discoveries in physics), by patiently gazing at a chunk of the stuff. Drugs might aid in the process. Mystics might sense it naturally.

Metaphysics and Philosophy

June 3, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

In the Epilogue to my book The Character of Mind (1982), entitled “The Place of the Philosophy of Mind”, I wrote: “It would be misguided to infer from the points we have been making that the philosophy of mind is the most basic area of philosophy: probably no part of philosophy can claim that title (except, though trivially, metaphysics).” I will reflect on that parenthesis: Why did I say that metaphysics is trivially (obviously, undeniably) the most basic area of philosophy?

The word “metaphysics” can mean several things, but the meaning that best captures its use in mainstream academic philosophy is “the study of the main kinds of things that there are, and of their interrelations”. If the world is the totality of facts, then metaphysics aims to provide an inventory of these facts, or of the main types of these facts, and to describe or explain how they are related to each other. Thus “metaphysics” is more or less synonymous with “ontology”—the study of being. Slightly more ambitiously, we could say that metaphysics attempts to analyze the various types of facts—to delve into their essential nature—and to provide a theory of how the facts are related. It is thus very broad and all encompassing, unlike special branches of philosophy like philosophy of language or ethics. It covers not just this or that part of reality but the whole of it.

It is difficult to see how there could be any objection to metaphysics as so characterized. The various branches of knowledge all seek to identify what exists and to describe its nature (atoms, molecules, organisms, persons, societies, etc); metaphysics just proceeds at a more general and abstract level. Don’t facts come in different types with systematic interrelations between them? If so, can’t we try to say what these are? Of course, there may be bad metaphysics, but how can there not be metaphysics of some sort? The correct metaphysics might be irreducibly pluralist and non-explanatory—there are hugely many kinds of fact and there are no general principles linking them—but that is still metaphysics (to be contrasted with various kinds of monism or dualism). If there is such a thing as what there is (and how could there not be?), there must be truths about what there is, and these truths might be knowable.

Yet metaphysics has been questioned, and is often regarded as an optional part of philosophy—as if we could stop doing it and leave most of the subject intact. On the contrary, metaphysics is indispensable and pervasive—it is the air that philosophy breathes. It is philosophy. Even the most vehemently anti-metaphysical philosophy is really metaphysics, though just of a different type from other kinds of metaphysics. Consider logical positivism: it declares itself to be against metaphysics—but is it? It subscribes to two central metaphysical theses: (a) that necessity is the same as analyticity, and (b) that meaningfulness consists in verifiability. These are metaphysical theses about the nature of necessity and meaning: they are not pieces of empirical science, verifiable by experiment and experience, and they are rivals to other metaphysical theses about necessity and meaning (truth in all possible worlds, truth conditional theories of meaning). Similarly with such positivist doctrines as emotivism in ethics or instrumentalism in the sciences: these are ontological doctrines, on a par with other ontological doctrines. In the same way a general scientism is a species of metaphysics: the only kinds of facts there are, and the only acceptable theories of those facts, are those discoverable by the empirical sciences. Such a doctrine is not the result of scientific investigation, to be justified by observation and experiment; it is a metaphysical claim about the general content and structure of reality. It is as much a metaphysical doctrine as theistic idealism (though it may be a superior metaphysical doctrine—or not, as the case may be). Positivism and scientism purport to be against alltypes of metaphysics, but in fact they are opposing one type to others (rightly or wrongly). They thus contradict themselves, revealing the unavoidability of metaphysics. Even to say that reality is not susceptible to a metaphysical theory is to say something metaphysical—though of a negative nature.

Nearly all of traditional philosophy is overtly metaphysical in one way or another: from Plato and Aristotle onwards (Spinoza, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Locke, Berkeley, Kant, the German idealists and materialists, Hegel, Moore, Russell, early Wittgenstein, Ryle, Quine, Kripke, Strawson, Lewis, Husserl, Sartre, et al). It might be thought there is one clear exception: ordinary language philosophy and the later Wittgenstein—surely they were both against metaphysics and also not guilty of engaging in it covertly. But this is wrong: they were doing metaphysics too, though in their own style. They were doing it by paying special attention to ordinary language, not by logic or science or pure metaphysical intuition. They had views about persons, knowledge, intention, sensation, causation, truth, free will, mathematics, ethics, and so on. It is just that they derived these views (or purported to) from an examination ordinary language. Moreover, they held metaphysical views about meaning: that meaning is use; that not all speech acts are assertions; that the meaning of an utterance can be split into an illocutionary force and a locutionary meaning. None of this is empirical science or history or art criticism: it is theorizing about what is at a very general level. They also held various negative metaphysical opinions: that logical atomism is erroneous, that perception does not involve sense-data, that physical objects are not constructions from experience, that necessity is not in the world, and so on. They didn’t reject metaphysics as such; they just rejected older metaphysical views they didn’t like. Their overall metaphysical position, broadly speaking, was to endorse common sense (not merely describe it, as with “descriptive metaphysics”), and they tended towards ontological pluralism. They distrusted grand unifying systems such as materialism and idealism; their metaphysics emphasized distinctions and variety. Perhaps we could say that they preferred metaphysical modesty–but a modest metaphysician is still a metaphysician. Indeed, their overarching metaphysical position—itself quite ambitious–was that reality does not conform to simple categories and dichotomies. Theirs was a metaphysics of the Many not the One (or even the Two): they held to “multiplicity metaphysics”.

So metaphysics is pervasive, even when officially repudiated, but is it basic? Is it trivially basic? What about the idea that metaphysics is, or should be, based on philosophy of language? Doesn’t that make the study of language basic? Actually, no, it doesn’t. First, we have to know that language exists, and one can imagine metaphysical views according to which it does not (it’s all an illusion that we ever say anything). Even granting that ontological doctrine, we have to assume that language is meaningful: but according to some metaphysical views meaning is indeterminate, or a creature of darkness, or simply unreal. How could we base metaphysics on language if the whole idea of meaning is shot through with confusion and error? So we would need to combat the eliminative metaphysics of meaning with a metaphysics that finds meaning to be in good order. But now, even once we have got meaning off the ground, there are different metaphysical views about the nature of meaning: Platonism (Frege), psychologism (Grice), behaviorism (Quine), and others. We also need to have some sort of theory of meaning in place, say a truth conditions theory or a verification conditions theory: but these are substantive (and controversial) metaphysical claims about the nature of meaning. We need a metaphysics of meaning before we can use meaning to deliver metaphysical results beyond language. We can’t deduce a metaphysics of time or material reality or mind from considerations about meaning without having some prior view about the nature of meaning. We need to know what kind of thing meaning is.

It is the same with philosophy of mind: we need a metaphysics of mind before we can hope to use considerations from philosophy of mind to adjudicate metaphysical questions, say about ethics or modality. We need to know that minds exist to begin with, what their contents are, and how these contents should be analyzed: specifically, we need a theory of concepts. But this will involve us in the metaphysics of mind: what it contains, the nature of what it contains, the relations between these contents and other things (notably objects outside the mind). We can’t make a given branch of philosophy, either philosophy of mind or philosophy of language, anterior to metaphysics because that branch is itself a type of metaphysics, or essentially includes metaphysics. How could an analysis of concepts be the basis of metaphysics in general, given that there are different metaphysical theories about concepts? If someone tried to make ethics into the basis of metaphysics, they would face the question of what theory of ethics they subscribed to—which would require some sort of meta-ethics. But meta-ethics just is the metaphysics of morality, so we cannot hope to find in ethics a standpoint outside of metaphysics for pursuing metaphysics. Similarly for language and mind.

Metaphysics has always been with us, it has never gone away, and it will always be with us as long as philosophy exists. Even when officially shunned it operates in the background—indeed, it powers its own supposed repudiation. Different kinds of metaphysics wax and wane, and different methods are proposed (science, conceptual analysis, ordinary language, formal logic), but metaphysics is inescapable. Some views may seem more extravagant than others, metaphysically, but even the least extravagant views are still recognizably metaphysical (e.g., there are only sense data, there are only electromagnetic fields, there are only texts). Even someone who believes in nothing but his own current experience is a metaphysician, just a very abstemious one. And for such a thinker his negative metaphysical views are apt to be quite wide-ranging. So, yes, metaphysics is the most basic area of philosophy, trivially so.

Knowledge of One’s Own Existence

June 3, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

Knowledge of One’s Own Existence

Alice dropped the fan “just in time to avoid shrinking away altogether. ‘That was a narrow escape!’ said Alice, a good deal frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence”(Alice in Wonderland, p. 23). There is something conceptually peculiar in the idea of finding oneself to exist (as Lewis Carroll was surely aware), as if this could be any kind of discovery; the knowledge that one exists is not knowledge one acquires or picks up or happens upon at some particular time. It makes perfect sense to speak of being glad to find out that someone else is still in existence, but not of finding out that you yourself are still in existence. For how could you not know that you exist?

This raises the question of how I know that I exist, if not in the discovery way. Let us assume both that I exist and that I know with certainty that I exist; the question then is by what means or method I have come to have this knowledge—how do I come to know my own existence? We can begin by asking how I come to know that other things exist. The short answer is that I notice them. Things appear to me perceptually, and I form the belief that these things exist (rightly or wrongly). It looks to me as if there is a tree in front of me, and I form the belief that there is. The same is true of other people: people appear to me, and behave in certain ways, so I form the belief that they exist. I notice things in the world, as it appears to me, and I form existential beliefs with regard to these things. But is that the way I form the belief that I exist? Do I perceptually appear to myself? Of course, I can and do perceive my own body; but that is not how I come to know that I exist, for familiar reasons (I could know that I exist without ever observing my body, or even without having a body). It is not that I notice myself among other appearing objects and then venture the opinion that I exist. Nor does anyone inform me that I exist (though they may inform me that Colin McGinn exists). I have non-observational knowledge of my existence; and I can’t be wrong. Even if I did appear to myself, or observe myself, or notice myself, that could not be the basis of my knowledge that I exist: for I can only be appeared to if I exist. Just by being a subject of appearances I exist, so it can’t be that I ground my knowledge that I exist on the fact that I appear to myself: even if I didn’t appear to myself, I would know that I exist, just by the fact that I am appeared to at all—by any kind of entity. I am unique among empirical particulars in that I know myself to exist independently of appearing to myself.

But how then do I know that I exist? Here is where things become difficult, because nothing obvious suggests itself. The Cartesian line is that I infer my existence from the fact that I think (“I think, therefore I am”), but surely my knowing that I think presupposes that I exist—it is not the ground of that existential belief. I don’t form the belief that I exist by noticing that I think and then making an inference to a new piece of knowledge. I know that I exist before making any such inference. It does not seem that I infer my existence from anything—I just know it. Did Descartes really not know that he existed until he formulated the Cogito? Is that how children come to know they exist? Is there even a specific time at which people come to know that they exist (this is not the same as the question of when they first say they exist)? Other existential knowledge has its time and place of origin, but was there ever a moment at which you realized that you exist? Was it when you first noticed yourself thinking? Were you in the dark as to your existence beforehand, full of doubts? We don’t, to paraphrase Alice, find ourselves one fine day pleasantly surprised to discover that we exist, like a diamond buried in the garden: our existence does not occur to us or dawn on us or come to us as a revelation. By contrast, my knowledge of the existence of other people, though long possessed, did have a time of origin. But I never found myself wondering if I exist and then coming upon evidence one day that I do. I don’t need any evidence to know that I exist. I just know it.

We might conclude from this that knowledge of one’s own existence is not a posteriori—we don’t know it “by experience”. That seems right: we know the existence of other things and people by experience but not the existence of ourselves. Is it then a priori? Well, it is not much like mathematical knowledge, and it doesn’t arise from some sort of rational deduction. It is evidently sui generis–neither a posteriori nor a priori. It belongs in a class of its own. Not all knowledge falls neatly into one of those two broad traditional categories. We don’t know it by means of the senses (including introspection), and we don’t know it by means of rational intuition. We know it, apparently, by no means at all—except by being the thing that is known. It is like one’s knowledge that one is a person: I don’t know that I am a person by sensing or inferring that I am a person, but neither do I know it by rational intuition—I know it by being a person. Once I am able to think of myself as a person, I know that I am a person, because that is what I am—a thing that knows that it is a person by being a person. Similarly, to be a conscious reflective being is to know that one exists; no further conditions need to be met, such as having evidence for one’s existence. I know that I exist, not by being presented to myself as myself, but by being something that must exist in order to be presented by anything: in being presented by a tree I must exist in order to be so presented—whether the tree itself exists or not. I don’t know that I exist by being, or becoming, acquainted with myself, as Russell would say, but by being acquainted with things other than myself—while recognizing that a precondition of this is my own existence. I therefore know that I exist in a way that I know nothing else to exist. Knowledge of my own existence is a unique kind of knowledge: it doesn’t involve detecting anything.

Knowing that I Think

June 3, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

Knowing That I Think

What is it that I know when I know that I think? One view is that I know of myself that I have the attribute of thinking: I recognize that I (a self) instantiate a certain property. This requires that I must know of my existence in order to know that I think. The knowledge that I think therefore presupposes knowledge of the proposition that I exist, which precludes it from serving as a premise in the Cogito, on pain of circularity. It also raises the question of how I know that I exist, if not by knowing that I think: is this existential knowledge somehow primitive and independent of my knowledge of my mental states? Do I just perceive my existence directly? Yet (as Hume pointed out) I don’t seem to have any impression of myself as such. I seem to be referring to myself and predicating a property of that self, but my knowledge of the referent is puzzling. Do I really know the truth of a subject-predicate proposition in which the subject refers to myself and the predicate ascribes a property to that self?

A famous response to the Cogito insists that I am only entitled to claim knowledge of the proposition that there are thoughts going on, from which it doesn’t follow that I exist as an entity over and above my thoughts. But we need to be more specific than that if we are to capture the import of the proposition in question: it is thinking in me that I know to exist, not thinking happening anywhere to anybody. But then we are back with the self and the problems that arise with that. You might think we could fix the problem by invoking the indexical expressions “here” and “now”: what I know is that there is thinking going on here and now. But again this doesn’t give us any distinction between my having thoughts and someone else having thoughts. How do we tie the reference down without invoking the self as thinking thing? I suggest we appeal to the demonstrative “this consciousness”: what I know is that there is thinking going on in this consciousness. When I say that I know that I think I am saying that I know there is thought occurring in this consciousness, where the demonstrative refers to a certain consciousness (mine). The consciousness in question may be quite brief—perhaps the duration of the thought—and it may also contain other mental states, such as perceptions and emotions. What is important is that it is not identical to the self: I have a state of consciousness but I am not that state of consciousness. I may persist for longer than it does, and I am not a state but a thing—the bearer of a conscious state. The concept expressed by “this consciousness” is far less committal than the concept expressed by “I”: it is simply that which currently exists as a particular state of consciousness. I can refer to this overall state, and when I attribute thinking to myself that is what I do. The proposition that I know is thus equivalent to the proposition that this state of consciousness includes thinking—which makes no reference to a self at all. There is thus something peculiar and misleading about the use of “I” in expressing what I know: the self is not really being referred to at all–the word “I” is not occurring as a “referring expression”. The sentence paraphrases out into a sentence about a state of consciousness.

This analysis has a desirable result from the point of view of the Cogito: it allows it to escape triviality. For now we don’t have to accept that the premise presupposes the conclusion by referring to the very thing the Cogitoseeks to establish. The Cogito should read as follows: “There is thinking going on in this consciousness, therefore I exist”. Here the premise does not contain the conclusion; it is a substantive step from the presence of thinking in a particular (state of) consciousness to the conclusion that there is a thinking self. The self (Descartes’ thinking thing) is what has states of consciousness—or what is conscious; it is not consciousness itself. (The Cogito does not read, “I think, therefore my consciousness exists”.) In order to know the premise of the Cogito we have to know that two things exist—thoughts and the consciousness in which they occur. But neither of these logically presupposes the existence of the self. The self comes in via the principle that consciousness requires a bearer or a subject or an underlying substance (as it might be, the brain or an immaterial entity). Of course, that principle can be questioned (and historically has been), but at least the Cogito cannot be convicted of roundly begging the question, under this interpretation of it. And that seems intuitively right, because we don’t react to the Cogito by immediately complaining that the premise presupposes the conclusion; we naturally interpret the premise in such a way that the conclusion is a substantive extra step. All it is really saying is that a certain consciousness (this one) contains a certain attribute, with no reference made to a self as such. The Cogito may be a non sequitur, but it is not a tautology.

The expression “this consciousness” is a very peculiar demonstrative, which only comes into use in attributions of self-knowledge; it has little to no public use. We use the word “I” when we want to talk about ourselves in the presence of others—referring to a certain person—but the words “this consciousness” refer to something invisible to others and not of their concern. Each person uses it to refer to his or her own private inner awareness as it evolves through time; it is the hook on which to hang self-attributions of mental states. When we think that we think we think something of the form, “There is thinking going on in this consciousness”—which we logically could do without ever using the word “I”. We refer thereby to an immediately given reality: our total phenomenological state at a given time. No doubt this entity is obscure and elusive (we are talking about consciousness after all), but it is what encompasses or grounds our more specific mental states. I would not wish to say that it is simply the set of all my current mental states (the “bundle theory” of consciousness), preferring to view it as a unitary mental reality—a kind of field of awareness. But we needn’t enter into the metaphysics of consciousness in order to recognize that the demonstrative “this consciousness” has a referent and that this referent plays a role in self-knowledge. Whenever I know something mental about myself I tacitly employ the demonstrative “this consciousness” in my thought. The logical form of “I think”, as it is used in the Cogito, is an existential quantification over thoughts combined with a locative designation of a specific field of consciousness: “There are thoughts located in this field of consciousness” (similarly for doubts, pains, etc). Thus I am not logically required to know of the existence of the self in order to know that I think, only of the existence of thoughts and consciousness. So we don’t need to postulate some kind of direct non-inferential knowledge of the self in order to explain my knowledge that I think.

The Word “Is”

June 3, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

The Word “Is”

The standard view is that “is” is ambiguous between the “is” of predication and the “is” of identity (we might also add the “is” of composition, as in “this statue is bronze”). Thus we have, “the cup is red” and “Hesperus is Phosphorus”, where the two occurrences of “is” have different meanings. To claim that “is” has the same meaning in both occurrences would produce absurd consequences. If the “is” in “the cup is red” expressed identity, then the sentence would mean that the cup is identical to redness, which is false and absurd. If the “is” of “Hesperus is Phosphorus” expressed predication, then the sentence would mean that Hesperus has the property of Phosphorus, which verges on the meaningless and is certainly not true—“Phosphorus” is not a predicate but a singular term. So “is” must be ambiguous between the two cases, sometimes meaning identity and sometimes meaning predication. That is a serious failing in natural language, requiring linguistic reform: our language systematically confuses two very different concepts.

But this conclusion is too hasty; there is no need to adopt the ambiguity thesis in order to account for the meaning of “is”. For first, it is not difficult to construe the “is” in identity statements as simply the predicative “is”, by expanding such statements in the obvious way, viz. “Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus”. Here we have a predicate expression, “identical to Phosphorus”, coupled with the “is” of predication, so that the sentence is saying, “Hesperus has the property of being identical to Phosphorus”. We don’t need a separate meaning for “is” to account for its use in identity statements; we just need to fill out the predicate in the obvious way. Clearly “is” cannot express identity in the expanded version, or else the sentence would be saying that Hesperus is identical to identity with Hesperus, which is nonsense. The point is even clearer if we add a sortal term to statements of identity, as in “Hesperus is the same planet as Phosphorus”: here “same planet” carries the attribution of identity, with “is” just acting as the predicative copula. When we use “is” alone in an identity statement this is just a shorter version of the explicit expansion that employs the identity concept (“same”) directly. There is no distinctive “is” of identity.

Can we enforce uniformity of meaning from the other direction? That is, can we claim that “is” always expresses identity? It would certainly be difficult to do that if we read the sentences in question naively, as saying (for example) that the cup is identical to redness; but a simple paraphrase can resolve this problem. What if we rephrase “the cup is red” as “the color of the cup is (identical to) red”? That is a straightforward identity statement, and it is straightforwardly true. The same trick can be applied to all predicative uses of “is”, as in “the species of Felix is cat” or “the job of John Smith is philosopher”. Put in stilted philosopher’s language, we are paraphrasing “ais F” as “among the attributes of a is F-ness”, where “is” expresses simple numerical identity. We can take this as a quantified statement along the following lines: “there are attributes G that a instantiates and one of these G’s is identical to F-ness”. Thus: “there is a (unique) color C such that the cup has C and C is identical to redness”. This sounds rather ponderous, no doubt, but it corresponds quite well with the intuitive meaning of the original statement, more colloquially expressed as, “the color of the cup is red”.

So there is nothing compulsory about finding ambiguity in “is”; in fact, it is quite easy to provide paraphrases that employ “is” in one meaning for all sentences that contain “is”. And surely that is the preferable position, since it is hard to believe that natural language could harbor such a disreputable ambiguity—why not simply have two words for such very different concepts? There is the question which of the two theories we should prefer, given that both appear adequate. I incline to a mixed position, combining both types of paraphrase. The second type offers a convincing expansionary analysis, spelling out the underlying meaning of the sentence; but the first type makes it clear that the so-called “is” of identity is really short for “is identical to” or “is the same as”, which contains the “is” of predication. Thus “the cup is red” has the same meaning as, “the color of the cup is identical to red”. We turn the original sentence into a statement of identity, but that statement itself contains in its expansion a predicative use of “is”, with identity conveyed by the attached predicate “identical to red”. Predicative sentences turn out to be identity sentences, but identity sentences turn out to contain the “is” of predication. So in the final analysis “is” is always predicative, though ordinary predicative sentences are equivalent to identity sentences.

How then should we analyze “Hesperus is Phosphorus”—what is its underlying logical form? It turns out to mean the same as, “Among the attributes of Hesperus one of them is that of being identical to Phosphorus”. We quantify over attributes and declare one of them to be identical to identity with Phosphorus—where “is” occurs in its predicative meaning. Thus: “There are attributes that Hesperus has and one of them is identical to identity with Phosphorus”. This sentence expresses an identity proposition concerning the attribute of identity with a given object, but in order to state that identity we need to use “is” predicatively. Given that the “is” in an identity statement so clearly means, “is identical with”, this is just what we would expect on the assumption that identity is at the root of all predication. All propositions are really identity propositions, on this view, formed by quantifying over attributes or properties. The recipe for constructing the underlying identity proposition is simply to refer to a property and declare it one of the properties an object has, as in “the color of the cup is (identical to) (the color) red”. Second-order quantification plus identity therefore enter even into ordinary subject–predicate sentences—which is not what we have been taught to expect. But, as we know from Russell’s theory of descriptions, language can be more complex than it seems on the surface when it is properly analyzed. [1] First-order logic really embeds second-order logic (with identity) in underlying logical form. Still, “is” remains uniformly a device of predication, even as it occurs in second-order identity sentences. The impression that “is” is ambiguous disappears once we carry out the requisite analysis.

Colin McGinn

[1] Any believer in conceptual or logical analysis fully expects ordinary language sentence forms to have expansionary analyses, even complex and taxing ones. See my, Truth by Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Is Language Necessarily Fregean?

June 3, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Colin McGinn

Is Language Necessarily Fregean?

Frege’s distinction between sense and reference gains much of its intuitive plausibility from certain often-rehearsed examples. Thus we have the cases of Hesperus and Phosphorus (the planet), Afla and Ateb (the mountain), Superman and Clark Kent (the person). Citing this type of example Frege invokes the notion of a “mode of presentation”, inviting us to consider the fact that a single object can be presented to us in many different ways; these ways are said to correspond to the sense of a name, so that two names of a single object can have different senses. The intuitive point is that we can have many visual perspectives on the same object as we view it from different angles and in different conditions. And it is not always obvious that it is the same object we are seeing from these different viewpoints. Thus senses are held to be constituted by (or supervenient on) perceptual aspects—in these cases visual aspects. This sounds all very straightforward and plausible, and so the theory of sense is launched on apparently solid foundations. Once it is extended beyond these initial examples to include sense and reference for predicates, connectives, and whole sentences the theory tends to lose its intuitive appeal; but in the case of names of perceptible material objects it looks to be on firm ground.

This raises the question of whether the Fregean picture can be applied to any language. Are there types of language to which it does not apply? Is it only proper names for perceptible material objects that exemplify the theory? That would be a serious limitation. In particular, do all singular terms carry with them a mode of presentation that fixes their sense? The obvious problem concerns language about mental states—about sensations, thoughts, “I”, etc. Suppose I refer to a pain in my knee: does this pain offer me a variety of perceptual perspectives? Clearly, it does not—I do not see, hear, touch, smell, or taste my pains. Can we introduce two different names for the pain that are associated with two modes of presentation, analogous to visual perspectives on a material object? We certainly have no such names as things stand, and it is hard to see what the distinct modes of presentation might be. I don’t sense my pains from different perspectives. Russell would say that it is possible for me to have logically proper names for my sense data, where the meaning of the name is identified with the reference; but the idea that my sense data can be presented to me in different ways, according to my viewpoint, seems manifestly absurd. I don’t have perceptual relations to my inner states. Maybe we can try to cobble together some analogue of visual mode of presentation here—say by bringing in third-person reference to my inner states—but then we are trying to save a theory, not motivate it. The beauty of the usual examples is that they appear to give the theory a strong intuitive foundation (which then gets stretched to breaking point as it is generalized), but we cannot obtain this result by invoking mental language—here the idea of two modes of presentation of a single mental state looks contrived at best. I couldn’t perceptually encounter a single pain of mine in two different ways and then be surprised to find that I have encountered the same sensation twice. So mental language looks distinctly non-Fregean. Just as it is hard to extend the Fregean apparatus beyond the initial examples to include predicates and whole sentences, so it is hard to extend it to words for mental particulars (including the self). So it would seem that only a fragment of natural languages fits the Fregean model—names of people, places, and things. We might then speak of a Fregean theory of names, where this linguistic category is quite narrowly circumscribed, with no attempt to be more general. At least the theory is correct for the initial examples—or so it might be thought.

But is it? Note the heavy emphasis on visual modes of presentation in describing the motivating examples: for example, the way Venus looks in the morning and the evening. Here we have a clear conception of two appearances of a single entity—the way a planet can appear differently in the visual field. There can be variations of brightness, apparent size, position, relation to other celestial bodies, color of sky, etc. We also have a clear conception of tracking a single object visually through time and space. Vision supplies us with well-delineated perceptual aspects, both distinct from each other and yet clearly of the same object. It is ideally suited to getting Frege’s theory of sense and reference off the ground. But what about blind people: can’t they use and understand ordinary proper names? Evidently they can, and yet they associate no visual mode of presentation with those names. If Frege tried to motivate his theory by reminding blind people of how they see objects, he wouldn’t get very far. So is his theory limited to proper names as used by sighted people? That would surely be a grave limitation.

It might be suggested that blind speakers can exploit their sense of hearing to arrive at suitable modes of presentation. Thus they might detect planets by the use of an instrument that converts information contained in light into audible clicks: they apply the names “Hesperus” and “Phosphorus” on the basis of this instrument (there could be blind astronomers). They might then discover that what produces one pattern of clicks is the very object that produces another pattern. The sense-determining mode of presentation is identical to the pattern of clicks, it may be said. Accordingly, what these speakers mean by “Hesperus” and “Phosphorus” is not what sighted people mean, since they associate different sensory modes of presentation with the names in question.

It is certainly possible to construct Fregean modes of presentation this way, but it is striking how unintuitive the resulting theory is—patterns of clicks caused by an object don’t seem much like visual aspects of the object. The clicks are evidence for the planet in its two different appearances, but they hardly constitute aspects of the planet. We see objects, but we hear only the sounds that objects make, not objects themselves. Doesn’t it seem peculiar to claim that the clicks constitute what the blind speakers mean by their names? “What do you mean by ‘Hesperus’?” we ask; “I mean the following sequence of clicks…” they answer. Is this what the blind speakers expresswhen they utter the name? It is the same with names for people: a blind speaker might hear the same person talking on different occasions and not realize it is the same person, but is it plausible to suggest that (say) “Superman” and “Clark Kent” mean these different vocal sounds? Are these different modes of presentation of the same man, suitable for conversion into senses? And what if a speaker is both blind and deaf—are we then to suppose that his modes of presentation are tactual or olfactory? And what if he has no senses at all? Must his names then be meaningless, devoid of sense?

Someone wedded to the Fregean scheme might insist that this is all really perfectly intuitive—the use of visual aspects was not essential to getting the theory off the ground. It is equally plausible when we shift to other senses. Then consider a further sensory deprivation: the speakers suffer from blindsight and analogues of blindsight for the other senses. Can’t they still have names for material objects, even though they experience no conscious modes of visual (or other) presentation for those objects? They can detect the presence of objects by use of their eyes, but there is no conscious visual seeming, just a sensory blank. How then could the sense of the names be derived from their visual (or other) experience? It might be replied that they harbor unconscious visual modes of presentation, and that these constitute the senses of the names. But how can a speaker’s consciousunderstanding of a name be constituted by an unconscious state of his mind or nervous system? The unconscious information delivered by the eyes in cases of blindsight cannot be what the speaker consciously means by her words; it surely plays no part in forming the speaker’s linguistic understanding. It is neither grasped nor expressed, existing merely at an unconscious level. There is absolutely nothing intuitive about the claim that the meaning of names for speakers with blindsight is made up of unconscious information buried deep in their brains. And the same is true for “deafhearing” and the like: unconscious auditory data, pertaining to clicks or voices, is not going to cut it as a candidate for modes of presentation. And yet meaning goes on in such cases. Perceptual aspects of things are simply not necessary to the use and understanding of names, even when those names denote ordinary material objects. They seem, in fact, quite irrelevant. It is perfectly true that we, as we are constituted, experience perceptual aspects of things, notably visual aspects (if we are sighted); but this is not a requirement of meaning—it is not essential to language as such, not even to naming.

Here are a couple of supplementary points. Your visual modes of presentation of a given object, say a person you are talking to, will vary over time, as you move, your interlocutor moves, the light varies, and so on. These will probably number in the thousands even within a short period of time, given the sensitivity of vision. Are we to suppose that the name you use for your interlocutor varies in its sense as the mode of visual presentation varies? That would mean that the name has thousands of different senses as the conversation continues. But doesn’t it have the same sense over the entire period? Is it really as fluid and ever changing as your visual experience? Secondly, animals and preverbal children see the world under visual aspects—they experience visual modes of presentation—and yet they do not understand language. Clearly vision is not ipso facto a linguistic matter—no sense is grasped just by seeing an object from a particular angle. So how can senses be identified with perceptual aspects? At the least something would need to be added—but then that will be what constitutes meaning, not the perceptual aspect itself. Sensory modes of presentation are at too low a cognitive level to constitute linguistic sense.

At this point it might be conceded that the motivating examples are flawed, mistaking the parochial for the general, but there is still the question of solving Frege’s puzzle. If we reject modes of presentation, aren’t we stuck with reference alone, and hence will be unable to distinguish “a = a” and “a = b”? At least we can understand how identity statements might be informative if we invoke the apparatus of perceptual aspects, because it is clear that we can discover that two visual aspects belong to the same object. But it doesn’t follow that this kind of identity knowledge is what is expressed by identity statements; it might merely be collateral knowledge, not part of the semantic content of the statement in question. Here we need to state an alternative theory, so that we can see that Fregean modes of presentation are not necessary for solving Frege’s puzzle. Consider this theory: “a = b” means “the denotation of ‘a’ = the denotation of ‘b’”. Here we get a difference of meaning because each definite description contains a reference to a distinct name. This is not a Fregean theory (in fact Frege explicitly rejects such a theory) because, despite the use of definite descriptions, it is not a theory that invokes modes of presentation of objects—Venus does not present itself to us as the denotation of “Hesperus”. This is a meta-linguistic theory, not a mode of perceptual presentation theory. I won’t defend the theory here, merely noting that it provides an alternative to Frege’s official story, as well as giving us an invariant meaning for names used by different speakers (sighted and blind, people with blindsight, and across varying perceptual encounters). Modes of perceptual presentation are thus not part of the meaning of sentences containing names, even names of people we see every day; and the proposition expressed by an identity statement is not identical to a proposition concerning perceptual aspects coinciding in a single object. I can indeed learn that two perceptual appearances are appearances of the same planet, but that is not what I learn when I learn that Hesperus is Phosphorus—instead I learn that the planet called “Hesperus” is identical to the planet called “Phosphorus”. This is the self-same proposition that is learned by the sighted, the blind, people with blindsight, and anyone else who understands the name; it is not that these varying individuals all learn something different, depending upon their contingent perceptual peculiarities.

Frege came up with a novel theory of meaning, centered on the distinction between sense and reference, which has had a profound influence. When students are first presented with the theory they are schooled to reflect upon Hesperus and Phosphorus and the like; they are enticed to consider the different modes of presentation we can have of those objects. This all seems very intuitive and commonsensical; they are therefore easily persuaded of the fundamental correctness of Frege’s theory. To be sure, doubts set in when Frege attempts to generalize the theory, and few have followed him the whole way. Still, it is felt that he was definitely onto something with ordinary proper names: sense, reference, mode of presentation, cognitive value—they all make perfect sense. But if what I have argued in this paper is right, that is all an illusion, borne of tendentious examples. Frege’s theory is defective from the ground up—even for the cases thought most favorable to it. Basically, it is too narrow, because too geared to visual perception. [1] Not only is language not necessarily Fregean, as witness mental language; no fragment of actual language is Fregean either, not even “Hesperus” and “Phosphorus”.

[1] The vision-centered character of Frege’s thinking about sense and reference is evident in his well-known analogy with the telescope. He compares the subjective idea to the retinal image, the reference to the distantly seen moon, and the sense to the optical image on the lens. A telescope is obviously a visual instrument. Thus the entire scheme is shaped by the existence and nature of vision. But there is no necessary link between vision and meaning, as blind speakers make abundantly clear. If we abandon the visual examples and analogies, simply equating the sense of a name with a definite description that is not tied to any sensory system, we sacrifice a great deal of the intuitive force of theory: no longer can we speak of modes of presentation, but also we are simply claiming synonymy between names and descriptions. We don’t have a theory of what the differences of sense between descriptions consist in, as we do when we invoke modes of perceptual presentation. At the very least a theory with the structure of Frege’s theory needs to be expounded and motivated without reliance on perceptual perspectives. Sense can’t be identified with “mode of presentation” but only “mode of description”. He is then merely proposing a description theory of names, not a general theory of meaning rooted in our basic awareness of the world. A sense might be construed as a mode of conception but not as a mode of presentation—and we can’t elucidate the former by means of the latter. We can certainly set up a structure of the kind Frege recommended, but we can’t motivate it in the way he did; we can’t make it look self-evident by appeal to perceptual examples.