Conceptual Schemes

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Conceptual Schemes

 

 

There has been much debate about whether different groups of people diverge in their conceptual schemes (according to some criterion of identity for conceptual schemes). But it has not been questioned that each group has a single conceptual scheme, still less that an individual has one and only one conceptual scheme. It is assumed that we each possess a single conceptual scheme, even if it differs from the scheme of others. That is not self-evident, however: couldn’t a single individual possess several conceptual schemes, more or less harmonious with each other? What about the idea that the conscious mind and the unconscious mind differ in their conceptual schemes? What about a schizoid individual? Could the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere differ in their basic outlook on the world? What if the human brain still housed the conceptual apparatus of our ancestors, going back to fish? What if you just happened to think about the world in radically different ways on alternate days because of some divine mischief?

            I am going to suggest something less exotic, indeed on reflection quite familiar, namely: we already have three commonsense conceptual schemes that fit uneasily together—three very different ways of conceiving the world that coexist in our minds. I will call these the Referential Conceptual Scheme, the Epistemic Conceptual Scheme, and the Ontological Conceptual Scheme (for convenience RCS, ECS, and OCS, respectively). Each scheme is organized by a distinct set of principles and basic categories, which give rise to tensions and quandaries between them. Much of philosophy arises from the uneasy coexistence of the three schemes. It is interesting and illuminating to articulate what these three schemes are and how they relate to each other. We can imagine possible beings that live with only one of them, or possibly two, which would make cognitive life simpler; we, however, move around within and between the three schemes on a daily basis, suffering the intellectual cramps that arise. To put it crudely, the three schemes do not translate into each other; they adopt quite different viewpoints onto reality—perspectives, attitudes. Each can be studied separately and their interrelations mapped: they serve different cognitive ideals or governing concerns, generating different “worlds”, with a tendency to compete with each other for conceptual domination. It is as if our overall conceptual scheme has been designed with three different purposes in mind—a sort of unholy conceptual trinity.

            In Individuals P.F. Strawson undertook to describe our conceptual scheme from a referential point of view: what general categories of things do we refer to and which of them are basic? He is clear that other sorts of inquiry into our conceptual scheme are possible, which may yield different orderings of conceptual priority. Following the referential method, Strawson finds that objects in space that can be identified and re-identified are the “basic particulars”, with events, processes, psychological states, and elementary particles emerging as non-basic particulars. Specifically, demonstrative reference to material particulars is basic in our RCS: we conceive of the world, reference-wise, in terms of such particulars and their relations. Thus we achieve an ordering of particulars, with some more basic than others. Maybe other conceptual schemes would refer to things differently, producing a different ordering; but our conceptual scheme favors persisting material objects in space—the kind of thing that can exist unperceived, has objective reality, and can be known about through perception. This implies that the basic particulars are open to skeptical doubt—their existence is not certain, despite their conceptual (referential) primacy. From the point of view of reference, material objects are primary, though they are not primary from the point of view of knowledge. Semantics and epistemology diverge.

            Consider, then, the ECS: what is primary there? Not material objects but psychological states: the things we are most certain of are our own states of mind—thoughts, sensations, and so on. Here the ordering is based on the concept of inference (not referential dependency): what is basic is what constitutes the infallible foundation of knowledge and what is secondary is what can be inferred from that basis (validly or not). The epistemic ordering inverts the referential ordering: mental things first, material things second. A being that thought only from the epistemic point of view would regard anything inferred as secondary in its conceptual hierarchy, since there would be no competing pressure from the referential point of view to invert the ordering imposed by the epistemic point of view (similarly for a being who used only the referential scheme). But we operate both schemes, so we get a different ordering depending on which scheme we are considering. And isn’t that what generates skepticism? We refer (basically so) to things whose existence we cannot demonstrate. If we made no such reference, we would not recognize the existence of things that cannot be proven, so we would not be confronted with a skeptical problem; while if we made reference to material things, but didn’t think in terms of justification, we would also not face the skeptical problem.  [1] Material objects are basic from a referential point of view but not from an epistemic point of view. Thus the two schemes sit uneasily side by side, committing us to the existence of things that we can see elude (demonstrable) knowledge.

            Now consider the OCS: this scheme deals with questions of constitution, part and whole, what is made of what, ontological dependence. What are the basic constituents of reality? Some say invisible material particles, others say ideas in minds, and others plump for a neutral universal substance. What is basic in this scheme is what forms the basic stuff of reality—what there most fundamentally is. Notice that this question is not constrained by what is basic in the other two senses: the ontologically basic stuff might not be basic with respect to reference or with respect to knowledge. Someone who thought only in ontological terms would not even consider these alternative conceptual structures, so there would be no question of slotting them together: but we think in all three ways, so the question of harmony must arise for us. And what we find is that there is no alignment of categories between the three schemes: what is basic ontologically is not guaranteed to be basic referentially or epistemologically (atoms, say). What the world is fundamentally made of is not what we fundamentally refer to or fundamentally know—and that produces a tension because reference and certainty constitute ideals. It troubles us if we can’t know and refer to what is ontologically basic. Hence we find systems that attempt to integrate and reconcile the three schemes—the most obvious being idealism. Reality is constituted by ideas in minds, and ideas are the most certain things, and they are what language fundamentally refers to (“sense-datum language”). Russell had a view very like this, expressly geared to integrating reference and knowledge. Another type of view might be that reference is unreal and certainty is a chimera, but reality is thoroughly material (Quine)—we simply dispense with anything that fails to jibe with our ontology.  [2] The trouble is that these monolithic systems do violence to our conceptual scheme, as it spontaneously exists—and which does generate real tensions. We have three different formats for representing reality, and they don’t agree on their conceptions of primacy. They privilege different things.

            Persons have some claim to concentrate the unease most acutely: we refer to persons (they are basic particulars, according to Strawson), but we have trouble knowing that they exist (other minds) and trouble explaining what constitutes them (the mind-body problem and the problem of personal identity). They are primary in our scheme of reference, but they are not primary in our scheme of knowledge or our scheme of ontology: they are a matter of shaky inference and their nature is to be dependent (as well as obscure). Thus we make confident reference to things whose existence is uncertain and whose constitution is problematic. We conceptualize persons according to three different conceptual frameworks with nothing uniting these frameworks—no overarching conceptual structure. The question of whether selves exist at all results from these tensions: we proceed referentially as if they do, but when we look into the epistemology of the self it is elusive at best (Descartes, Hume); and no one can explain how selves are grounded in more basic facts about the world. We feel that we are firmly committed to selves by our RCS, but our ECS fails to ratify that conviction, and our OCS offers no help. If we conceived of persons in just one of these three ways, we wouldn’t feel so confused; it is the combination that gives rise to tension and puzzlement. Why are we so blithely referring to things whose existence we can’t demonstrate and whose nature we can’t explain?  [3]

            Sensations also illustrate the disharmony: they are primary for knowledge, but not for reference and ontology. Some go so far as to suggest that they cannot be objects of reference (qua private objects: Wittgenstein), and some flintily maintain that they cannot exist at all (eliminative materialists): they have a clear place in the ECS, but not in the RCS or the OCS. We are trying to think of them in three different ways simultaneously: as what is immediately and subjectively known, as what can be referred to in a public language, and as genuine constituents of objective reality. The attempt produces tension, discomfort, and intellectual cramps—the three schemes are not designed to dovetail neatly together. Each scheme has its peculiar point and use, and is harmonious within its own confines, but taken together we face a heterogeneous mishmash. It is as if the schemes come from different sources having little regard for anything outside of their own purview. Suppose that were so: suppose each scheme evolved at a different time in response to different adaptive needs—semantic, epistemic, metaphysical. We wanted to talk about things to each other, we wanted to describe our knowledge of things, and we wanted to think of things constitutively: so we separately evolved restricted conceptual schemes that would serve these diverse purposes. There was no attempt to regulate the contents of the three schemes in relation to each other; there was no grand design intended to harmonize them. They arose separately (genetically or culturally) and henceforth were required to coexist, easily or uneasily.  [4] Philosophy attempts to organize a sort of truce between them, a way to harmonize them, but the task is not easy and always seems to produce procrustean results.

            Thus we live with three conceptual schemes—or equivalently, one conceptual scheme with three distinct parts. They structure reality differently, as shown in the orderings they generate, and they are geared to different concerns—yet they are directed to the same world. Primordially, we are faced by experiences-of-things (the given): the three schemes each attempt to make sense of this basic fact. Thus we have reference to elements of reality, knowledge of reality, and what reality is intrinsically. Each has its own proprietary conceptual apparatus. What is basic within one scheme is not basic within the others, but we feel a pressure to reconcile the different orderings. It would all be so much easier if they happily coincided: if what was basic referentially was also basic epistemologically and ontologically. Then the things we knew best would be the most basic things in reality and also the things to which we referred most naturally—there would be perfect conceptual alignment (hence the appeal of idealism). As it is, however, there is mismatch and conflict—a kind of squabble between divergent viewpoints. The human mind is the scene of that squabble. We conceive of things from three contrasting viewpoints. Different philosophers choose to emphasize one viewpoint over the others (linguistic, epistemic, and ontological).

 

  [1] Not that there would be no such problem; rather, it wouldn’t arise for us—it wouldn’t occur to us. It arises for us only because we have the concept of justification.

  [2] A third type of position asserts that material objects are basic in all three senses: they are basic referentially, but they are also basic epistemologically and ontologically. This is because of naïve realism and scientific anti-realism: we know material objects directly as they are in themselves, not by inference from sensation, and unobservable entities like atoms are mere logical fictions or useful predictive devices. Middle-sized material objects are thus what we primarily refer to, what we primarily know, and what primarily exists. This position unifies the three parts of our conceptual scheme, thus eliminating the tensions: but it does so only at the cost of epistemological and ontological perversity.

  [3] Or as Strawson might ask: how can persons really be subject to skeptical doubt and have a mysterious nature when we clearly can refer to them perfectly successfully?

  [4] The logical order here would be: first referring to things, then asking how we know about them, then asking what constitutes them. These could occur in temporal succession. There need not be much continuity or consistency. Always remember that conceptual schemes are products of nature, mainly of evolution; they can be haphazard and makeshift.

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Attributes of the Self

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Attributes of the Self

 

 

I say that I think and I say that I weigh 150 lbs: I ascribe mental and physical characteristics to myself. But there is a significant asymmetry in what I mean by these attributions: when I say that I weigh 150 lbs I am saying that my body weighs 150 lbs, but when I say that I think I am saying that I think. If I weigh 150 lbs, that is only in virtue of the fact that my body does (I would wear approximately 2 lbs if I became a brain in a vat). But it is not in virtue of something else that I think—as it were, the real subject of thinking. You might wonder whether I think in virtue of my mind thinking, as I have a weight in virtue of my body having that weight, but it is surely a category mistake to say that my mind thinks: my mind is not another entity that really does the thinking—it is more like the thinking itself. The Cogito does not read: “I think with my mind, therefore my mind exists”. Nor do I say, “My mind has been thinking hard all day”, which might provoke the retort, “And what were you doing?” Thus the self is the proper subject of mental attributes: I think and see and feel and imagine and will. But the body is the proper subject of physical attributes: my body weighs 150 lbs, my body has a certain shape and size, my body contains a heart and kidneys. I can only be said to have these attributes derivatively, by dint of possessing a certain body. We can use the word “I” loosely to include the body, but strictly speaking it is the body itself that has the attributes predicated. Similarly, we sometimes use “I” even more inclusively, as when one driver says to another, “I almost crashed into you then”; but it would be quite wrong to insist that the referent of “I” here has automobile characteristics (“I have four wheels”). We can register this asymmetry by saying that I have mental attributes directly while I have physical attributes indirectly.  [1]

            I am inclined to conclude that sentences like “I weigh 150 lbs” are actually false when taken strictly and literally, though we take such falsehood in our stride, since we know how to correct for it—as in “My body weighs 150 lbs”. And that is not because I have a different weight, such as the weight of my brain; it is because I don’t have any weight. I am not identical to my body, so its weight is not automatically mine; the only sense in which I can truly be said to have weight is that I stand in a certain relation (the “having” relation) to a material body that has weight. For what weight do I have—the weight of my whole body, the weight of my brain, the weight of the part of my brain that generates my mental life? Attributing weight to selves is just a convenient but false way to talk: the referent of “I” is really weightless. But attributing mental characteristics to selves is perfectly fine and proper: the referent of “I” does think, feel, etc. Ordinary language is somewhat misleading, but the deceptive appearance is not deep—we can easily paraphrase the misleading appearance away. According to the paraphrase, it is the body that is the subject of predication; the self comes into it only via the “having” relation. So the self does not instantiate physical attributes in the immediate way that it instantiates mental attributes: I don’t have weight, shape, and size—though I do think, feel, and imagine. I perform mental acts but I don’t perform digestive acts—my body does (though I can say, “I have indigestion”).

            This commonsense conclusion has a philosophically startling consequence: the self is not a physical thing. The self could only be a physical thing if it had physical attributes, but it does not—it has exclusively mental attributes (intrinsically, inherently, non-derivatively). That is why it is conceptually easy to detach the self from the body—by brain swaps, partial brain swaps, and more exotic forms of self-transfer. We recognize that the self does not have the attributes of the body: it is not a physical thing, despite its close involvement with a physical thing. To be sure, we can ascribe physical attributes to the self in the vernacular, but it is false to suggest that the self is thereby a psychophysical entity, directly possessing both mental and physical attributes—as if it were physical in logically the same way it is mental.  [2] But to repeat, it is the body, which is numerically distinct from the self, that bears physical attributes. Nothing like this is true of mental attributes—they attach directly to the self (not to the mind). The thing that thinks is not the thing that digests—I think but I don’t digest. This is not to say that the self is an immaterial substance in the classic Cartesian sense (though we can rightly say that the self is not material); indeed, much the same argument could be given against such an idea, since there will be properties of the immaterial substance that also cannot be attributed to the self (whatever recondite properties they may be). The point is just that it is a category mistake to attribute to the self, qua the self, physical attributes. The self has a psychological nature, reflected in its psychological attributes, but it does not have a physical nature, reflected in its (sic) physical attributes.  [3]

            Perhaps this will not seem so surprising, rooted as it is in commonsense conceptions, but it has a further consequence that bites deeper, namely that it undermines materialism about mental states. Suppose we agree that selves don’t have physical attributes: then we have grounds for constructing a reductio of classic type-identity theory. For if mental attributes are identical to physical attributes, then selves will have physical attributes, since they have mental attributes and these are identical to physical attributes. For example, if pain is identical to C-fiber firing, then a self in pain will also be a self that instantiates the physical attribute of C-fiber firing. Or again, if I am thinking and thinking is identical with a physical attribute, then that attribute will be attributable to me in just the way thinking is, i.e. directly. But selves don’t have physical attributes in this direct way. Therefore type-identity theory must be false. If we call the physical attribute X, then we should be able to say that I X just as we say that I think—since Xing just is thinking. But that is either nonsense or a misleading way of saying something like this: “My brain is Xing”. Here we appeal to the “having” relation between self and body, rather as we say, “I am digesting, i.e. my gut is digesting”. But now the alleged identity is not between being in pain and C-fiber firing but between being in pain (an attribute of the self) and having a brain that contains C-fiber firing (also an attribute of the self). I have the attribute of having a brain that contains a certain physical state, and that attribute is what the identity concerns—not the attribute of C-fiber firing itself. I don’t have the latter attribute–my brain does–so that attribute cannot be identical to the attribute of having a pain, which I have. In short: mental attributes belong to selves, but physical attributes do not, so the former cannot be the latter. Mental and physical attributes are instantiated by different things—selves and bodies, respectively—and hence cannot be identical (by Leibniz’ law).

            But what about a revised form of materialism that identifies mental attributes with the complex attribute of having a brain containing a certain material state? That is not the way materialism is typically formulated, but at least it is meaningful to attribute such an attribute to the self—I do have a brain that contains C-fibers. However, it is unappealing to identify a relatively simple attribute like pain with the complex relational attribute of having a brain that contains C-fiber firing: we are introducing a relation between self and brain in order to specify the nature of the simple (monadic) attribute of pain. Moreover, this relation itself is left unexplained: for what is it for a self to “possess” a brain? Is this a physical relation? It seems not to be, since no physical account has been given of the self or of the “possessing” relation. There was a pleasing simplicity to the idea that pain is just a brain state, but it turns out that this view violates the principle that selves don’t have physical attributes. And it is plain nonsense to attribute brain states to the self in the way that we attribute mental states to the self: I am the subject of thinking, but I am not the subject of whatever brain state underlies thinking—my brain is. For type-identity materialism to work we would need to identify the self with the brain, so that whatever is true of the brain is thereby true of the self; but such an identification runs into well-known problems of its own.  [4] Perhaps we could say that materialism about mental states can work only if materialism about the self can, which is doubtful. What is true is that I have a brain with those attributes, just as I have a heart with other physical attributes: but states of that brain are not states of me any more than states of my heart are states of me.

            What I have been opposing is a kind of double aspect view of the self: the reference of “I” has both a mental and a physical nature captured in the range of predications we make employing personal pronouns and names. It is quite true that I can be said to think and to weigh 150 lbs, but on closer examination these predications have very different analyses: the former is direct predication while the latter is indirect predication. I can be said to weigh 150 lbs only in the sense that I have a body with that weight, rather as I can be said to be worth X amount of money only in the sense that my possessions are worth X amount of money (I am not worth M). These physical attributes are extrinsic to me as an individual self and they can be shed without loss of identity. By contrast, my mental attributes belong to me inherently, not in virtue of some further entity associated with me, as it might be my mind. I have a mind, but it is not my mind that thinks, feels, and so on: I do these things. Thus I am connected to my mental attributes more intimately than I am connected to my (so-called) physical attributes. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have no physical attributes: I do not weigh 150 lbs, though I am close to something that does. No doubt it is this logical fact that underlies flights of imagination in which the self floats completely free of all physical embodiment, whereas no one supposes that the self can escape its psychological nature. In the imagination there can be disembodied selves, but there cannot be “disemminded” selves—there cannot exist a self without mental attributes of any kind, even in the most extravagant fiction. Thus my inner nature is to be mental, but it is not in my inner nature to be physical. Simply: I am not a physical thing.  [5]

 

Colin McGinn            

 

 

  [1] What about bodily actions—aren’t they attributes of the self and yet physical? Yes I perform actions as much as I think or have sensations, but no they are not physical attributes: actions are intentional events and hence partake of the directness proper to all mental attributes.

  [2] P.F. Strawson’s famous treatment of the self in Individuals is an instance of this type of view, except that he prefers to speak of the “person”. I don’t think this terminological decision changes the issue, and for various reasons I find the concept of a person unhelpful in these discussions.

  [3] If I exist as a brain in a vat, is my physical nature determined by the physical attributes of my brain? But do Ihave such attributes at all—am I really gray and wrinkled and soggy? No, I merely have a brain with these attributes.

  [4] Should it be the whole brain or just the parts that underlie mentality? What about brain bisection? How much of the brain can a person lose and survive? What if we gradually replace the cells of the brain with artificial components?

  [5] This is not to allow that disembodiment is really possible, but the necessity for a body is not a point about the attributes a self can be said literally to instantiate. The self is not a physical thing precisely (and only) in the sense that it has no physical attributes, but only mental attributes. Yet it might still require physical embodiment in order to exist.

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Appearance Without Reality

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                                                Appearance Without Reality

 

 

Is it possible for everything to be an appearance? Might there be nothing in the world but appearances? Granted, there may be many appearances for which there is no corresponding reality (of the kind that we normally suppose), but could this be universally true? Is the pure-appearance world a possible world? I think not, for two reasons. First, appearances must be appearances to someone: there cannot be appearances that float free of a subject for whom they are appearances. Nor can a subject be an appearance of a subject—for who is that appearance an appearance to? Second, appearances must have causes outside themselves: they cannot be self-causing or entirely uncaused. Not all realities need to have a cause (say, the first cause), but appearances cannot come to exist causelessly. This is because they must be appearances of something, and that something cannot itself be an appearance. The logical form of appearance statements is: “A is an appearance of x to y”. That is the structure of appearance. So every appearance has a non-appearance cause. An appearance may be caused by an external object in the standard way, or it may be caused by the state of a brain existing in a vat, or it may be caused by God’s magic touch: but it has to be caused by something. The epistemological problem of appearance is that we don’t know for certain what the nature of the cause is—hence skepticism. We know that there has to be some cause, but we don’t know what cause. We know that our visual experiences, for example, are caused by something, and we may even have an exhaustive list of all the possible causes, but we cannot definitively select a particular item from the list. The appearances underdetermine their specific cause, but they necessarily have a cause—and that cause must be sufficient to bring about the appearances with their specific character. But appearances are not of such a nature that their cause can be read off them. That’s the trouble with appearances qua appearances. Still, we know that they must have some sort of non-appearance cause; so the world cannot consist solely of appearances. There must be a reality that appears and a reality that appearances appear to—there cannot be appearances alone. It cannot be appearances all the way down.

 

Col

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Anti-Referentialism

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Anti-Referentialism

 

 

I introduce the neologism of the title to refer (!) to a particular type of philosophical position—namely, one which contests whether a particular class of expressions is genuinely referential. It is supposed that there is apparent reference for the class in question but the position denies that such apparent reference is genuine reference. Thus we are subject to delusions of reference—or there is illusory reference. Reference occurs more narrowly than is generally assumed; it is harder to bring off than we tend to suppose. Reference is demanding and its demands can fail to be met, even when we naively think they are met. Here are some examples: reference to the non-existent, reference to abstract entities like numbers, reference to elementary particles and other unobservable entities, reference to selves (“I”), feature-placing sentences (“It’s raining”), definite descriptions (Russell), predicates and properties, logical connectives (Frege), any referring terms at all (Quine), ethical terms (expressivism), mental terms (eliminativism). In all these cases it has been supposed that the conditions for reference to occur are not satisfied—thus we have anti-referentialism (compare anti-realism).  [1]

            Let me distinguish three types of reason for claiming anti-referentialism. The first is simply that we cannot have reference without the existence of what is referred to: if a speaker refers to an object x, then x must exist. Thus whenever the existence of certain entities is denied we have anti-referentialism: fictional names, numerals and numbers, denials of the existence of the self or particles, denials of the existence of mental states. The expressions in question would be referential if the entities existed, but they don’t. By contrast, we have a second type of view: there is no question that the denoted entity exists, but the term for it is not really semantically a singular term. Thus, according to Russell’s theory of descriptions, there is a queen of England but “the queen of England” doesn’t refer to her—because it is simply not a genuine referring term. It quantifies, not refers. This is a bit like the “it” in “it’s raining”: it looks syntactically like a referring device, but that appearance is misleading—the word merely enables us to form a complete sentence without having any reference in itself. There is also the view that abstract singular terms, like  “triangularity”, are not referring terms, being mere shorthand for the corresponding predicate (“triangular”). Third, we have the view that the necessary conditions for a word to refer to an entity are not met, even though the word is name-like and the entity exists. Thus you might have a name for a person and there are persons (including that one) but you cannot fulfill the conditions for achieving reference to that person, because you don’t have enough identifying information to single the person out from all others. Or it might be held that numbers exist and we have names that purport to stand for them, but the absence of causal relations between speakers and numbers precludes our referring to them, granting the correctness of a causal theory of reference. There is nothing wrong with the entities ontologically and our putative names are really names, but it is just that the conditions that enable reference are not met—we can’t refer to those entities with those names.

            I am particularly interested in the third type of reason for anti-referentialism. We can envisage several types of rationale for adopting such a view, none of them uncontroversial: in addition to the two just mentioned (problems of identification and problems of causation), there are empiricist worries (we need sense experience of the entity) and worries about ostensive definition (we can’t point to the entity). Then too we have more radical and general worries, such as Quinean indeterminacy of reference and Kripke-Wittgenstein skepticism about reference—no reference is possible. What we need is some clear and uncontroversial theory of reference so that we can decide whether a particular case meets the conditions for genuine reference. I don’t have any such theory, but I do think it is important to distinguish two possible sorts of theory: restrictive theories and liberal theories. Restrictive theories will make reference difficult to achieve, so that only in certain special cases will we have genuine reference; while liberal theories will make reference easy to achieve, so that reference is virtually unlimited. The first type of view is typified by empiricism—as in Russell’s position that only entities with which we are directly acquainted can be genuinely referred to (“logically proper names”). The second type of view would allow that any entity of any type can be referred to, no matter how remote temporally or spatially, no matter how unobservable, no matter how causally inert, no matter how elusive to pointing, no matter how private. According to this liberal view, anything can be referred to and all reference is on a par. We might compare the two views of reference to two similar views of truth: a restrictive view and a liberal view. According to the restrictive view, truth only applies to limited and select subject matters, say the physical world of observable bodies (not to sentences about atoms or values or modalities, etc). According to the liberal view, truth is completely promiscuous and applies to every subject matter you care to mention—fictional truth, moral truth, mathematical truth, aesthetic truth, etc. Of course, in both cases—truth and reference—we can envisage intermediate positions, depending on theoretical predilection.

            The case of reference to the mind is especially interesting because it is so unobvious what to say. First, let me make clear that I am not considering anti-realism about the mind—I am assuming realism but wondering about referentialism. Granted that we really have sensations, thoughts, feelings, and so on, can we refer to them? Are the conditions for reference satisfied in this case? It is natural to suppose that they are, but the question still needs to be asked. Wittgenstein poured cold water on the idea, preferring to view psychological utterances as expressive; but there is a question whether he put his finger on what is really problematic about such putative reference. So let us ask how (alleged) mental reference differs from other kinds of reference. Consider demonstrative reference to a particular animal, e.g. a cat—as in “that cat is stealthy” said while observing a cat about to pounce. What is notable is that such reference occurs in a context in which many other referential viewpoints are possible: referring from different angles, at different distances, with varying clarity of view, with the cat half-concealed—an indefinite number of referential perspectives. Yet a single animal is successfully picked out, despite all the variation. There is constancy of reference but variability of perspective. When we have the ability to pick things out like this we have the power to pierce through variation and home in, arrow-like, on singularity. We can also track the animal as it moves through space and time, preserving referential constancy. Reference is invariant under transformations of position and perspective. But notice that all this is lacking in cases where philosophers have doubted reference: obviously so in the case of things that don’t exist, but also for abstract entities, values, atoms, etc. We don’t have the multiple perspectives, the variations in context, the tracking through space and time, the singularity amidst diversity. And when such things are lacking we are apt to feel skeptical about whether genuine reference is occurring. That is not to say that we are right to reject reference in these cases; it is just to explain certain philosophical tendencies. These are the features that correlate with our comfort level about attributions of genuine reference; and they are not particularly doctrinaire, nor wedded to some sort of theory. They form our paradigm of reference.

What is striking is that in the case of supposed mental reference we also lack these features, quite conspicuously. Take “this thought” or “this pain”, where these purport to refer to mental states of the speaker. The assumption is that these terms refer to thoughts and sensations in just the sense in which “that cat” refers to a cat. But all the characteristic marks of a paradigm case of demonstrative reference are lacking: there is no variation of spatial perspective, no perceptual presentation, no possibility of concealment, no tracking through space and time. What we appear to have is a bare unmediated confrontation between a speaker and an inner state: the subject is aware of the inner state and simply utters the words in question, purporting to pick it out. But as Wittgenstein asks, what makes this reference and not merely mouthing a sound when you experience something inside you? Surely it is not sufficient to refer to an inner state that one utters a sound in its presence, or else a parrot could perform such reference simply by making a noise. What is needed to achieve reference is a whole background and context within which reference can intelligibly occur. It doesn’t occur by magic or sheer will. My suggestion, then, is that the features I gestured at (they need refinement and supplementation) are what are lacking in cases of apparent mental reference—and that is why attributing reference to mental words strikes us less than straightforward.  [2]We find ourselves uneasy with the concept of reference in this case, not quite sure what to say. It seems like a degenerate example of reference, or reference by courtesy. We can’t form a clear conception of what it involves, as we can for reference to ordinary material objects. It feels somehow “queer” (to use Wittgenstein’s word). I try to focus on a passing thought and intone the words “this thought” hoping thereby to ensnare that elusive particular: but do I stand in any intelligible relation of reference to my mind when I perform this ceremony? Could I go on to name the thought in question? Why don’t I have names for my mental states?

            What should we say about this? We might decide to get tough with ourselves and declare that mental reference simply does not exist and is impossible, since the necessary conditions of reference do not obtain in this case. That seems clear enough and not without motivation: extreme, though understandable.  Or else we speak of weak and strong reference, or some such irenic philosophical terminology. Or we airily suggest that nothing hangs on the question, that it is purely verbal, that it doesn’t matter: we can say that we refer to our inner states if we like, so long as we acknowledge the very different forms that reference can take (much the same can be said about truth). I won’t attempt to adjudicate between these responses; what I have wanted to do here is articulate the issue and explain the intuitions that people have had about reference. In our “craving for generality” (Wittgenstein again) we are apt to assume a greater uniformity in our concepts than is warranted by a careful consideration of the facts, and it can be salutary to point to differences in the conditions under which they are applied. No conceptual revision may be called for in the end, just greater sensitivity to variety; we can keep talking the same way but cultivate a keener awareness of differences. Sameness of word does not imply sameness of nature. We use the word “refer” in application to many areas of language, but it may not possess the unity we assume. We tend to picture reference as something like a beam of light or a cord connecting word to object, but it may have no more unity than the various moves in chess—lots of different ways to achieve a goal (winning the game or saying something true).

            Here is one area in which these reflections might be helpful: the question of identity statements linking mental and physical terms, as in “pain is C-fibre firing” or “this pain is that C-fiber firing”. If we took the tough view, these would be declared meaningless, since one term is not a referring term at all—no true identity could be asserted by such a sentence. It would be like saying, “the true is identical to the beautiful” where “the true” is taken to denote the truth-value True (Frege). If we took the more deflationary view, then we would be coupling a word that refers in one way with a word that refers in another way: that would account for the oddity of this kind of identity statement. It would be misleading to compare it to a statement like “water is H2O”, where both terms are clearly referring terms. A better analogy would be, “I am this body”, in which there is real doubt about whether that is an identity statement, because of the peculiarities of “I”. The point is that we should be careful in trying to understand what such sentences express, given the uncertainties attaching to mental reference. Just because an expression looks referential doesn’t mean that it is referential. The philosopher’s term “reference” is a term of art and covers all manner of cases (or doesn’t, as the case may be). Our very idea of the mental may be shaped and distorted by the assumption that mental terms function like standard referring terms: they may be referential in only the most minimal and trivial sense (they allow us to “talk about” certain subject matters). There is really all the difference in the world between “that cat” and “this thought”: the relations between word and object are totally different in the two cases. Calling both “reference” without qualification is bound to invite misunderstanding.  [3]

 

Colin McGinn

 

 

  [1] Just as with anti-realism, we can have local anti-referentialism and global anti-referentialism: the local kind is selective, the global kind denies reference of any kind.

  [2] I am well aware that I am by no means being original in stating such a view, though the point has not been used in the context of a general discussion of anti-referentialism (that I am aware of).

  [3] I have tried to remain neutral on the question of mental reference, being content merely to set out the issue, but I must confess to an urge to reject the whole idea outright. I am acquainted with my mind, to be sure, but I don’t denote anything in it. However, I will resist this urge, purgative as it may be.

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Anti-Realism Refuted

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Anti-Realism Refuted

 

 

How would we talk if anti-realism were true and we knew it to be true? We would talk as if it were true, presumably. For example, we would utter hypothetical statements about sense-experience, not categorical statements about material objects, assuming we knew phenomenalism to be true. We would speak of dispositions to behavior, not internal mental states, if we accepted behaviorism. We would refrain from reference to elementary particles, if we thought that there were no such particles to refer to. We would speak only of words and other symbols if we thought, as convinced nominalists, that no abstract entities exist (numbers, universals). We would restrict ourselves to overt expressions of emotion if we rejected the idea of moral values as objective entities, saying, “I approve of generosity” not “Generosity is good”. That is, if we were real anti-realists, as a matter of unreflective common sense, and had been forever, we would talk in the indicated manner. We would not talk misleadingly, as if realism were true, but accurately, reflecting our anti-realist convictions. We would talk in the way we now talk about things that we are anti-realist about—witches, ghosts, the ether, and the gods.

            But that is not the way we actually talk. We talk as if realism were true: as if material objects were independent of experiences, as if mental states lie behind and cause behavior, as if elementary particles were tiny invisible bits of matter, as if numbers were different from numerals, as if moral values exist independently of human emotions. That is why anti-realism is always understood as a revisionary doctrine, not a purely descriptive one. We are natural realists—naïve realists, in the usual phrase. The anti-realist suggests that our normal and spontaneous realism is mistaken—so that we must change our views, and even our language. The anti-realist therefore sees himself as a critic of our ordinary ways of thinking, as they are expressed in our ordinary language. Thus we would (and should) speak and think differently, once we embrace the anti-realist’s position.

            This means that anti-realism is always an error theory: there is some sort of mistake or distortion or sloppiness embedded in our usual discourse. The anti-realist about witches finds error in the discourse of those who speak uncritically of witches, and the anti-realist about material objects finds error in the notion that objects are distinct from sense experiences. Hence anti-realism is felt as surprising and disturbing. It would not be felt in that way if we were habitual anti-realists from birth till death. There would be no need to urge anti-realism on us if we already accepted it: in that situation it is realism that would be perceived as revisionary.

              But if anti-realism is always an error theory, then it must account for the error. Why we do we make mistakes about ontological matters? Human error can arise in a number of different ways: perceptual illusion, indoctrination, prejudice, carelessness, random interference, etc. Thus we can explain errors in astronomy by perceptual illusions, errors in politics by prejudice, errors in morality by indoctrination. There are no inexplicable errors—errors that come from nowhere, for no reason, even if it is just random neural firings that are responsible. Much human error is temporary and quickly corrected, as with simple errors of fact, e.g. errors about the time of day, though some may take decades or centuries to be rectified. In all cases the error has some kind of intelligible explanation. But what is the anti-realist’s explanation of the errors that she detects? On the face of it, none—she has no explanation. She supposes that human beings have made enormous metaphysical errors, persisting over millennia, which have not been corrected in the usual ways: but nothing much is said about how such errors might have arisen. And the usual kinds of explanation for errors don’t seem to apply: no perceptual illusions or indoctrination or prejudice or hastiness. Many people have no doubt been browbeaten into accepting certain erroneous moral attitudes–at school, in church, and in the home–but surely no one has ever indoctrinated a child into being a moral realist or a perceptual realist or a Platonic realist (or if they have, it would be very rare). We don’t accept these realist positions because we have been coerced into them at an early age, still less because we are subject to perceptual illusions that suggest them; we just find ourselves holding realist opinions. We are not victims of relentless realist propaganda or a misfiring of the senses, being pushed towards a realist position we would naturally reject. So why do we commit the errors attributed to us by the anti-realist?

            Some have suggested that ordinary language is to blame. Our perception of language is misleading as to its true nature—or some such. It is as if we gaze languidly at language and it actively produces metaphysical illusion in us—the illusion that realism is true. Thus it might be said that moral words look a lot like words for material objects, so we transfer realism from the latter to the former. But that would assume realism for material objects—so how do we explain the error that anti-realism detects in that area? Also, this kind of error theory is surely massively implausible: how could we be so easily bamboozled by the surface forms of our language? Why did no one point out the illusion centuries ago? Isn’t it just silly to suppose that the subject matter of a piece discourse should mirror the syntax of the discourse itself? Is it really remotely plausible to suppose that our habitual realism is the result of committing bizarre non-sequiturs from language to reality? And why is language so defective to begin with, given the truth of anti-realism? Would it be reasonable to claim that people believed in witches because of the way the word “witch” looks? Ordinary language, as we normally experience it, just doesn’t have the power to generate the kinds of metaphysical error that the anti-realist alleges.

            So it appears that (a) anti-realism is an error theory and (b) it has no workable theory of error. Realism, by contrast, is not an error theory, and can simply claim that our commitment to it reflects the truth. If anti-realism has no explanation of the error it imputes, and if no such theory can be plausibly produced, then it must be itself erroneous. We thus have good reason to reject it. More strongly, anti-realism, in so far as it is an error theory, is a false theory—there is no such error in our ordinary thought and talk. Hence we should accept realism; and not just realism in this area or that, but realism across the board, since the problem with anti-realism is general and systematic.

 

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Alien Skepticism

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      Alien Skepticism

 

 

 

Suppose you are brought up to believe that you are a brain in a vat supervised by intelligent machines. Long ago humans abandoned their frail bodies for a safer life as a detached brain (it had something to do with global warming—bodies getting too hot and so on). Everyone you talk to believes this story, and you believe it implicitly. Your experience is really dream experience, with no veridical perception at all. You firmly believe that your life is a dream conducted in a vat. And let us suppose that the story is true (though we could also suppose it to be false but you still firmly believe it): you are a dreaming brain in a vat and that is precisely what you believe. You take yourself to know all this—just as we take ourselves to know that we are not brains in vats dreaming our life away. You never suppose that what you are experiencing is real, and it never is. In fact, the question has never even occurred to you.

            Now suppose you go to a philosophy class (i.e. you dream about being in a philosophy class) and the teacher introduces you to what she calls “skepticism about the dreaming world”. She invites you to consider a possibility that has never occurred to you before: that you are not a brain a vat but something else entirely—an awake, embodied, perceiving, mobile animal that is constantly confronted by what she calls an “external world”, i.e. a set of real objects that match the content of your experience. This strikes you as an implausibly exotic hypothesis, hard to take seriously; it seems decidedly hokey. The teacher then presses the following question: how can you rule out, on the basis of your experience, that you are not a “brain in a head”, i.e. the aforementioned kind of being. You cite what you have been taught from birth—the truth that you are a safely ensconced-in-a-vat dreamer. You might even try to argue that you can tell from internal features of your experience that it must be a dream: but the teacher patiently points out that what she calls “waking perception” could be just like a dream from the inside. Thus it is logically possible that you perceive an external world (as she puts it), even though you have always believed, quite truly as it happens, that you are non-stop dreamer, without even a body. The idea that you have a body strikes you as particularly bizarre, especially given the obvious problems associated with such entities (breakdowns, diseases, etc). The professor then announces her devastating conclusion: you don’t know that you are a dreamer in a vat—for all you know, you are this weird thing “a veridical perceiver”. You find this disturbing, mind-boggling even, but you are gripped by the argument; you decide to spend your life trying to refute this kind of skepticism. You set out to prove that there is no external world of the kind hypothesized.

            Here is another scenario of the same type. You are brought up to believe that most of the people around you are zombies, enjoying no inner life. A disease has prevented their brains from producing minds. When you look inside their heads you see signs of brain damage, which are not present in those who never had the disease. So you believe that some people are zombies and some are not, and that you can tell the difference; moreover, suppose all this is true. You therefore take yourself to know that there are no other minds in the case of certain people—despite their behavioral similarity to those with minds. You can interact with them and even talk to them, but you know that there is nothing going on inside. This is just part of common sense so far as you are concerned. Now you go to a philosophy class and are invited to consider another possibility: that the so-called zombies have been misdiagnosed—they have minds after all. The teacher argues that you cannot logically rule out that hypothesis, since nothing in their behavior or neurological condition entails that they are zombies. Your supposed evidence for their lack of a mind is compatible with their really having a mind. So your confident belief in the absence of other minds in their case is misplaced. This, the teacher says, is called the “problem of other zombies”: how can you demonstrate that these people are zombies? Your belief to this effect may be a true belief, she points out, but it is not a justified belief, since all your evidence is compatible with an alternative hypothesis—that these people actually do have minds. You are being irrational if you deny this hypothesis by insisting dogmatically on the hypothesis you grew up believing. Again, you are gripped by the argument and resolve to spend your life trying to prove that the people who are usually regarded as zombies really are zombies.

            Or suppose you are brought up to believe that the world was created five minutes ago, and in point of fact it was (something about God and his designs for us). Then you are confronted with the skeptical hypothesis that the universe is billions of years old, with many millions of years of biological evolution. You find this a bizarre and incredible story, but you are asked what proof you can give that it is false. This is called “skepticism about the short past”. Again, you find yourself stumped. Or suppose you are taught that emeralds are grue, so that they will all turn blue in the year 2050; and suppose this is a true belief, since nature is not in fact uniform. Still, your philosophy professor asks you how you know that emeralds are not really green and thus will remain green after 2050. She asks how you can prove that nature is not uniform, i.e. how you know that induction yields false beliefs about the future. The skeptical hypothesis here is that induction rests on the uniformity of nature: how can that hypothesis by excluded?

            The lesson I want to draw from these suppositions is that the confidence of the aliens is no more unjustified than ours. We are epistemologically on a par: the cases are perfectly symmetrical. They have true beliefs about their situation, but the skeptic can produce alternatives that call their usual justifications into question; and so do we. It is just that we invert each other’s natural beliefs and skeptical alternatives. Just as we regard their natural belief system as strange, so they regard ours as strange: our skepticism is as alien to them as theirs is to us. Nor does it really change the case to suppose their natural beliefs are false: they will still find it hard to accept that they are not brains in vats even if that is their situation, as we find it hard to believe we are brains in vats even if we are. The truth will seem strange to both of us, given what we have been brought up to believe. What seems exotic to one set of believers will seem banal to the other set. Thus belief in the external world, other minds, the past, and the uniformity of nature will strike our alien believers as radical and outrageous, just as we think their habitual beliefs are radical and outrageous.

            We can make the same point by considering our own dreams and waking experiences. Suppose the skeptic insists that what we call our dreams are really veridical perceptions and that our putative perceptions are really dreams. How can we refute this inversion? We think our waking experiences are not dreams, but the skeptic says they might be; and we think our dreams are pure fantasy, but the skeptic says they might be accurate perceptions. The alien skeptical professor suggests that the dreams of the brains in a vat might be veridical perceptions—and the same point could be made about the subset of our experiences we call dreams. It is natural to us to believe that the experiences we have at night while asleep are merely fantasies, but can we really rule out the possibility that they put us into contact with a real world? The usual skeptical dream hypothesis is that all our putative waking experience could be but a dream, but there is also the hypothesis that our putative dreams might be veridical perceptions. This flies in the face of what we naturally assume, but it is hard to see how the possibility can be refuted. The alien dreamers are us writ large—even when we really are dreaming, how can we know we are? What counts as skepticism depends on what you come into the seminar room believing.

 

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A Quick Argument for Property Realism

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A Quick Argument for Property Realism

 

 

Property realism is the view that objects instantiate properties independently of mind or language. A standard argument for this view is that objects could have properties in the absence of mind and language. The anti-realist about properties must deny this, and sometimes he is sanguine in that denial. If there is nothing more to property talk than concepts and predicates, then objects have their properties in virtue of the existence of concepts and predicates—which depend upon psychological subjects. The anti-realist accepts a kind of idealism about properties: they are, if they are anything, projections from psychological and linguistic reality. Being square, say, is satisfying the concept square or falling under the predicate “square”. Must we conclude that there is a stalemate here, given that an idealist view of properties seems viable?

            No, because there is this point: concepts and predicates themselves have properties. A concept has psychological properties and a predicate has linguistic properties. So the anti-realist is suggesting reducing properties to things with properties. A concept has properties like intentionality and compositionality; a predicate has properties like shape or sound (or whatever exactly a word is). The question must then arise as to what it is for such properties to be instantiated, and there is an obvious dilemma: either these properties are possessed in virtue of concepts and predicates or they are not. If they are not, then we have abandoned conceptualism and nominalism for these properties; but if they are, then we need another concept or predicate to which they reduce. But this too will have properties of some sort, so the same dilemma will arise again. There will be an infinite regress of properties and concepts (or predicates) as we move to a new concept (or predicate). Every new concept or predicate we introduce will have its own properties that cry out for reduction. So it can’t be that every property is possessed in virtue of a concept or predicate, because concepts and predicates also have properties. And if they have irreducible properties, then why should properties of objects be any different? If an object is square in virtue of the applicability of “square” to it, then in virtue of what does “square” possess six letters? Not in virtue of the predicate “has six letters” applying to it, because the same question arises with respect to that predicate—in virtue of what does that predicate consist of thirteen letters? And so in turn for the predicate “has thirteen letters”.

            Thus conceptualism and nominalism about properties have to be wrong. Some properties must be irreducible to concepts and predicates. This kind of idealism is therefore impossible.  [1]

 

Colin McGinn                

  [1] There is no problem with an idealism that declares all properties to be psychological; the vicious regress arises when we try to explain psychological properties in terms of concepts or words, since these just introduce further properties.

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A Multimodal Theory of Film Experience

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A Multimodal Theory of Film Experience

 

 

Films come in many varieties, and they have changed significantly since their inception. There are comedies and dramas, horror flicks and science fiction, love stories and Biblical epics, dance movies and action movies, cartoons and crime thrillers. Some films are short and some are long. They come from different countries and were made at different times. At the outset, they were silent and black and white; then came the talkies, though still in black and white; later color arrived, with better cameras and projectors; 3D popped up, then disappeared, and has lately had a renaissance.  But is there any unity to all this variety? Is there something in common to the experiences had by viewers of movies of all these types? And is this commonality distinctive of movies? When a person watches a film there is obviously something going on in his or her mind, but what is it exactly and does it occur only when watching films? By “mind” here I mean all levels of what we call the mind, from the most conscious to the least conscious: so my question is whether there is a unique and specific mental configuration—at all levels—that characterizes the experience of film. What is the phenomenology of the film experience as such, and what are its more elusive and covert characteristics?

            The theory I am going to propose is that film experience is highly multi-modal, incorporating a number of distinct sensory and cognitive channels. It is a synthesis of many parts, themselves quite disparate. I want to emphasize both concepts in the theory: there are many disparate parts and they are synthesized—unified, integrated. There is irreducible diversity and there is undeniable unity. Thus, according to the theory, an important feature of film experience is that it generates a unified mental state on the basis of quite heterogeneous elements. The human mind is creating something seamless from distinct and separable components—and this in itself is a remarkable feat. No other mind on the planet is capable of such a synthesis, and we might wonder whether extraterrestrial intelligences could achieve it. Yet the human mind is effortlessly capable of this impressive cognitive stunt, apparently without coaching.  [1]  

What then are the basic elements of the total film experience? The first and most obvious is vision: the viewer is seeing things. The kind of seeing that is involved is not a simple matter (I explore it in The Power of Movies).  [2] It is not the same kind of visual processing that is involved in seeing ordinary objects in one’s environment; it involves seeing a representational medium—the optical image on the screen—and interpreting what one sees there. It is a kind of imaginative seeing, a “seeing through”, and hence recruits the power of the human imagination. The mind’s imaginative eye and the body’s recording eye both work together in watching a movie. Still, despite the visual complexity, we can confidently say that seeing is centrally involved in film experience—that surely is a datum. We go to the movies in order to have a visual experience (by contrast, we don’t read a book in order to have a visual experience, though we have one). It is not like listening to the radio, in which the eyes idle. But the experience is not limited to vision, of course—even in the early days there was a sound track, though it might just be someone playing the piano in the movie theater. And the experience would have been lacking without such a sound track (it would be more like looking at paintings in a silent art gallery). Moreover, speech was not altogether excluded, since characters could move their lips and speech acts would appear in captions; so the audience could hear voices in its head corresponding to those moving lips (not so with static portraits).

 Once sound recording progressed the visual medium could be augmented with audible speech and music, and audiences welcomed the enrichment. We now have an auditory component to the film experience that must be integrated with the visual component. Adding speech was no great cognitive challenge for the viewer, since we look at people speaking all the time; but the addition of music requires a cognitive leap, since ordinary life is not usually accompanied by music. The mind has to adjust to the presence of music, not just call upon its old resources. And so we have the first major act of cognitive synthesis: integrating seen action, heard speech, and accompanying music. Two-dimensional images on the screen give the appearance of producing spoken sounds and, improbably enough, music is synchronized with the movements of these images: the audience has to make sense of all this. Centrally, the emotions of the characters are conveyed by the music, as well as the words spoken. We are so used to this act of synthesis that we take it for granted, but it is really quite remarkable—why don’t we ask, “Where is all that music coming from? I don’t see an orchestra anywhere”? Nor is it quite like opera, in which the words are sung to musical accompaniment; in film the music is simply superimposed, seemingly emanating from nowhere. Yet we experience the music as contributing to a seamless whole, not as a distraction to viewing the film (as if we wanted to shout, “Keep the noise down—I’m trying to watch a movie here!”). Alien sounds, issuing from elsewhere, are woven into the film experience as if they were the most natural things in the world. We look into the heroine’s eyes, hearing the swelling violins, and feel no sense of dissonance—but when does that happen in real life? We certainly don’t wonder whether the heroine can hear the violins too. We mentally merge the incongruous, uniting the visual and the musical. In fact, we hardly notice the music, which functions as background to the action—though if it stopped we would be brought up short.

            If we consider the matter from the point of view of the brain, then we can say that different parts of the brain are co-activated and some sort of synchronizing mechanism is brought to bear. The visual cortex is stimulated in complex ways, as is the auditory cortex. The language centers and musical centers are simultaneously activated. Then something has to integrate these far-flung cerebral events or else we would just experience a meaningless barrage. Clearly a lot is happening in the brain as you sit silently and motionlessly in the dark—you may be passive but your brain certainly isn’t. And this is just the beginning, because other mental faculties are invoked too, as we shall soon see. Your stimulated brain is already firing on many cylinders, even at this elementary stage of the proceedings.

In The Power of Movies I emphasized the kinship between movies and dreams, a fairly common theme in theorizing about film.  [3] Unlike the points I have made so far, however, this suggestion is not obviously true and requires quite a bit of argument to support it. It is quite controversial. I won’t be re-defending it in this paper; my aim is rather to incorporate it into a broader theory—the multi-modal theory. The dreaming capacity of the human mind is just one component of the total experience of watching a film, though it is quite crucial. There are a number of respects in which the experience of dreams matches the film experience, which I will merely list: sensory-affective fusion, in which the image is shaped to fit the emotion; spatial and temporal discontinuity, as the viewer or dreamer is taken abruptly from one place and time to another, without traveling continuously through the intermediate space and time; montage, whereby thematic unity is maintained without obedience to the laws of nature; the intricate mixing of reality and fantasy in both dream and film; the way people’s minds are put into the foreground in both types of experience; the prevalence of pronounced or extreme bodily movement in dreams and films, often movement not found in ordinary life; the way dreams and films engage with some of our baser fears and desires; the high degree of mental absorption characteristic of dreaming and film viewing. The general point here is that the mental apparatus that is operative during dreams is also operative during the film experience: the apparatus of dreaming—its vocabulary and modus operandi—is brought to bear in the interpretation of the movie image. It is as if we were dreaming. Thus the dreaming part of the mind—the dreaming module–is activated by films, so that we go into a dreamlike state while watching a film. But we do not enter a state exactly like dreaming—we are not asleep for one thing. Rather, fragments of our dream life, its grammar and affective charge, penetrate the film experience, which itself already contains other non-dreaming components. The dream psyche is just one component of the total film experience, though an important one. The viewer is dreaming in addition to consciously seeing and listening. That is not the usual state of affairs: when we dream at night we do not also consciously look and listen (we are unconscious). The hybrid state of dreaming-looking-listening is peculiar to film experience: an odd combination of usually disparate elements, running together concurrently.

            And it is not just that a dream-like state accompanies a state of consciously looking and listening; the multiple mental streams are integrated, forming a synthetic unity. To use a film metaphor, they are spliced together. It isn’t that we have, on the one hand, conscious looking and listening and, on the other, a concurrent dreaming state; the dreaming and the perceiving are unified and fused. We engage in “dreaming perceiving” or “perceiving dreaming”. The dream is up on the screen in front of us, as it were, and we perceive the screen. A film is like a perceived dream—while a typical dream is not perceived by the senses. If I am watching The Wizard of Oz, say, I am sinking into the dream state suggested by the film (which has many markers of dreams in it), but I am also consciously seeing the images and hearing the soundtrack (I am not actually falling asleep), and these all form a single thematic unity. The tin man is a creature of my dreams, but he is also seen and heard by me. To enter into this peculiar state one needs a capacity to integrate dreaming experience and waking experience. This is not like merely recalling a dream while awake and perceiving the world, since dreaming and perceiving have to be brought synthetically together in the movie theater. Without the ability to dream our experience of film would be drastically impoverished, but without the ability to synthesize discrete things the activation of the dream apparatus would just lead to mental confusion—we would be left with a disjointed amalgam of perceiving and dreaming. What we need to recognize is the existence of the “dreamy gaze”: a condition simultaneously perceptual and dreamlike. We perceive the filmic world as if we were in a dream. Sometimes we subliminally perceive an external stimulus while asleep and incorporate an element into the dream derived from that stimulus—as when an external car noise is experienced in the dream as the roar of a lion, say—but in watching a film this process is much more systematic: each element of the perceived film is injected into a dreamlike narrative, so that we are effectively dreaming what we see. We are thus suspended deliciously between sleeping life and waking life. Seeing and dreaming become inextricably joined.  [4]

We have, then, additional multi-modal synthesis, with the brain now firing on a further cylinder. The dream centers of the brain are also lit up, but they are yoked to the visual and auditory (including musical) centers. Usually when the dream centers are activated the perceiving centers are quiescent, and vice versa, but in watching a film both are activated together. The brain is then lit up like a Christmas tree, with everything furiously firing at once. The result is a heightened state of consciousness, unlike any other. As psychologists say, movie watching is a massively parallel process, tying together disparate elements into a higher unity. It is a new and intoxicating form of human consciousness, not existing prior to the invention of cinema.

But is that all there is to the film experience? What about the so-called higher cognitive functions? Don’t we also respond to movies aesthetically, morally, and intellectually? In reading a novel or attending a play we certainly engage our highest mental faculties, and watching a film is surely akin to those activities. So isn’t there an extra layer of film experience in addition to perceiving and dreaming? There is also what we may as well call thinking—reflecting, contemplating. We understand the action in psychological terms; we make moral evaluations of the characters; and we respond to aesthetic aspects of the film—its beauty, originality, and truthfulness. The sophisticated regions of the cerebral cortex light up too (though perhaps with a less garish glow).

I now want to explain this more cognitive aspect of film experience by reference to some ideas of Plato, because I think his system provides a valuable way to conceptualize what is going on when we engage intellectually with a film. It has been said that Plato’s parable of the cave provides a good parallel to the movie watching experience. Shadowy images are projected onto flat walls from a fiery background, which is unseen by the denizens of the cave. These denizens are immobile and their entire experience of the world is confined to the two-dimensional images cast before their eyes. They believe this is reality in its entirety. Their situation is thus like that of the moviegoer, who also sits still while two-dimensional images are projected in front of her. If one were to be placed in a movie theater from birth and allowed to see nothing but movies, one would be in a position rather like that of Plato’s cave dwellers. Clearly this would be epistemically confining: one’s knowledge of the world would be very limited, and also distorted. Shadows on a screen are not real things. Plato then envisages one of these restricted cave dwellers leaving his impoverished prison and ascending to the outside world, where he would experience nature as it really is, in glorious 3D, and eventually see the Sun in its splendor. The analogy is to the world of Forms, with the Sun as the Form of the Good. This world, for Plato, is more real than the empirical world of perceptible particulars, consisting as it does of abstract universals, which are eternal and unchanging. The individual liberated from the cave would thus achieve cognitive enlightenment, a higher state of knowledge, and with it an expansion of the self. He would understand that the perspective from inside the cave is severely limited and distorted, not a true depiction of reality at all.

            The analogy to movie watching, therefore, is that we are likewise limited to the flickering two-dimensional image while ensconced in the movie theater—it is not reality that we see up there on the screen. Compared to the reality outside the movie theater, what we experience inside it is impoverished, desiccated, and unreal. To be confined only to such images would be to miss out on the true nature of reality. Thus watching movies is held to be detached from reality, a mere substitute for contact with reality—a film is a kind of weightless simulacrum. It is not like perceiving and holding actual solid objects.

But is that the best way to understand the film experience? Is it as impoverished as this way of thinking suggests? I want to argue, to the contrary, that we should invert this way of thinking completely. The parable of the cave, remember, is just an analogy, not a literal description of our epistemic predicament: our experience of the empirical world is like seeing two-dimensional images, within Plato’s overall scheme. Indeed, the mode of experience enjoyed by the escapee from the cave is precisely the same as our ordinary mode of empirical experience—which Plato holds to be epistemically impoverished.  [5] For Plato, insight into the world of Forms does not come from sense perception but from intellectual apprehension—so it is quite unlike the experience of the escapee. What Plato is giving us is a metaphor, not a literal account of the epistemic faculties needed to grasp the reality of Forms. So we should not woodenly interpret the movie experience as necessarily limited, as the cave dwellers’ experience undoubtedly is (as Plato characterizes it). My suggestion, then, is that it is our experience of the empirical world outside the movie theater that is analogous to Plato’s cave dwellers (as he himself supposed), and our experience within the movie theater is analogous to the escapee’s experience outside the cave. That is, we gain a special insight into reality by watching movies that we don’t obtain by means of our ordinary empirical experience. To put it in Platonic terms, we can gain access to Truth, Goodness, and Beauty by watching films—they give us a conduit to those “higher” realities. Let me state the position with maximum boldness: the movie screen is a window onto a transcendent level of being. It is the portal to Plato’s world of Forms, or something like it. So it is superior to ordinary perception as a way of knowing reality—it penetrates beyond the veil of appearance, i.e. the world as it is revealed by our limited and unreliable senses. As Plato would put it, in watching movies the soul makes contact with transcendent realities, which it does not do in ordinary perception of spatiotemporal particulars. The movie screen displays a deeper reality to us, thus engaging our highest mental faculties. It provides an escape from the cave of quotidian life.

            No doubt that sounds all very pompous and overblown, not to say mythical, but consider what it really means. Let me use The Wizard of Oz as an example, hardly a film about the philosophy of Plato. Plato speaks always of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty as essential to the world of Forms; but aren’t these ideas fully present in that exemplary film? Beauty is on display at every moment in the film (at least once monochromatic Kansas has been left behind)—visual and musical beauty. It is a treat to the eyes and ears. Good and evil are registered with singular force in the shape of the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch, as well as in Dorothy and her worthy companions. This is a film centrally about virtue, among other things. And truth comes in for special attention, mainly through the deceptions and illusions of the Wizard, the truth about whom is revealed when a curtain is pulled aside (he is really a tubby little man trying to puff himself up with trickery). As we watch the film the mind plays about these ideas, presented to us in imagistic form, so that we become saturated in them. They are given to us with all the force of artistry and film technology. We experience them in crystallized form–sharply, clearly, and cleanly. I distinctly remember seeing this film as a child—I believe it was the first full-length feature film I had ever seen—and it felt like being introduced to another world, another level of being. I felt very stirred and moved by it—by its visual beauty, the fear of evil and love of good, and the shock of the Wizard’s deception. It lit my mind up powerfully. Was this my young Platonic self, resonating for the first time to the world of Forms? I had read books before and been entranced by them, but this was another level of experience altogether—it felt like direct access to another plane of reality, existing alongside the ordinary world of sense perception. It felt like liberation not confinement, enlightenment not ignorance. I was outside the cave! The cave was the quotidian world beyond the theater—a small provincial town in the south of England circa 1958.  [6] That world consisted of insubstantial shadows–distracting, confusing, and chaotic. Truth, Goodness, and Beauty existed in the world of the screen, not in the gloomy grotto of daily existence. To go into the screen world was to escape the cave, not to enter it. The screen seemed designed to present these higher realities, unlike the world outside: it brought them up close.  [7]

            Then there is the question of color. Plato’s universals are not just Truth, Goodness, and Beauty; they include universals of all kinds, including colors. In The Wizard of Oz there is the transition from the black and white world of Kansas to the startling Technicolor world of the Land of Oz—and what a world of color is that world! The red ruby slippers, the yellow brick road, the green of the Wicked Witch’s skin: these colors all register very forcibly on the viewer. Never have colors seemed so pure, so deep, and so animated: they leap out at you, with a kind of feline luster, asserting their full chromatic identity. These are colors as they populate Plato’s incandescent heaven, before they are diluted and compromised by the world of tawdry particulars. In general, color in movies achieves a degree of salience and vividness that is hard to find in the three-dimensional world. Thus we become more intimately acquainted with colors in their essence in the movie theater than we do in ordinary perception. It is rather like gazing at the rainbow: here we see colors in their pure form, unencumbered by material objects, almost as if the universal has come down to earth in its original pristine incarnation. And, of course, Oz exists somewhere “over the rainbow”—though soaked in its sparkling hues. Isn’t that also where Plato might locate his world of Forms? It is the dream of a better, purer, more perfect world.

            As it is with color, so it also is with shape. In black and white movies well-defined shapes move stealthily across the screen, in a kind of geometrical dance. Plato himself was entranced by geometry, holding that in it we have deep knowledge of one important kind of Form. Of course, we also perceive geometrical forms in ordinary life, but they are not arranged as they are in the movie image—composed into a geometrical tableau—and they do not achieve the same degree of salience as they do on the screen. On the screen the pure shapes themselves are sensed and grasped, because of the two-dimensional nature of the medium—rather like with painting, but with movement added. The abstract geometry of objects is highlighted. It would be much the same in Plato’s cave, where two-dimensional shapes would also be salient to the cave dwellers—and Plato would no doubt allow that these otherwise limited beings could have a thorough knowledge of Euclidian geometry (though only in two dimensions). Geometrical universals are prominently displayed in both the cave and the cinema, in all their abstract glory, and hence made available for our contemplation. Euclid would have loved it.  [8]

This displaying and contemplating is different from our ordinary engagement with the empirical world, as we sense it and move through it. The ordinary world is primarily a practical world from the human point of view: it consists of threats and opportunities, and we must carefully negotiate it if we are to survive and prosper. Contemplating it is a luxury, never wholly free from practical concerns. But the world of films is not a practical world for us: it does not consist of threats and opportunities (as other works of art also do not). We are therefore free to contemplate it in serene safety—attending to its non-practical aspects. For example, we can apprehend colors and shapes as such, without regard for their practical significance. Thus the screen makes reality available to us in a contemplative mode, which aids the Platonic perception of things. In the movie theater we enjoy a kind of God’s eye view of reality, in which we view it as if from high, without a care in the world. The screen displays reality to us in a form fit for contemplation, not practical action; and this allows us to adopt a more calmly Platonic perspective on what we see. We do not attend to the world-as-it-affects-us but to the world-as-it-is-in-itself. We can attend to appearance qua appearance—not qua threat or promise. Similarly, when Plato contemplates his Forms, his state of mind is not practical—the objects of his contemplation are neither threats nor opportunities. He gazes at the world of universals in an attitude of calm receptivity and disinterested appreciation.

            Here I think it is important to stress the beauty of films. Films are beautiful. Beauty shines forth from them. Plato assigned beauty a key role in the world of Forms—they are themselves deemed beautiful. In watching a film we are flooded with beauty (at least if it is any good). The people, the scenes, the landscape, the composition of the image, the narrative, and the music—all are bearers of beauty. Thus films convey us with unique power into the world of beauty, and hence into Plato’s higher plane of reality. The screen is a window onto the beautiful, and—as Plato also taught—we love beauty. I like this quotation from Roland Barthes on Greta Garbo: “Garbo offered to one’s gaze a sort of Platonic Idea of the human creature, which explains why her face is almost sexually undefined, without however leaving one in doubt… The name given to her, the Divine, probably aimed to convey less a superlative state of beauty than the essence of her corporeal person, descended from a heaven where all things are formed and perfected in the clearest light.”  [9] This is obviously highly Platonic language, even using that word to describe the actress’s face: a quasi-divine being has descended from another more perfect realm and intersected with an actual human individual. I would add that it is not just faces that achieve this kind of sublime ontological elevation but also simple shapes and colors—they too appear as Platonic Ideas through the scintillating medium of film. And in so doing they reveal their intrinsic beauty more clearly and forcibly to us. Film is an art form, after all, and so it is properly concerned with that most central of aesthetic concepts, viz. beauty.  [10]

            In The Power of Movies I stressed the way the movie screen acts like a window, through which things are seen. We don’t look at the screen but beyond the screen. The screen is just a visual steppingstone, not the visual destination. This fits nicely with the Platonic theory I am developing, for we can now say that the screen enables us to look beyond it into the world of Platonic universals—Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, as well as shape and color. It acts as a conduit to apprehension, and what is apprehended is a world of Platonic complexion. It is as if we are gazing into the world of Forms. Plato himself is notoriously silent on what direct apprehension of the Forms would actually be like, though he supposed that it occurred some time before birth; and indeed it is difficult to envisage quite what he had in mind. Can we really apprehend the essence of color, say, without using our senses? And what does it feel like to gaze directly at The Good? It is all very well to speak of “intellectual apprehension”, but what does that really mean? Perhaps the existence of cinema can help to fill the theoretical gap: it gives us a tangible model for what it would be like to transcend the ordinary perception of things. The movie image provides us with a new perspective on the world, in which Platonic realities are made salient—they come to us in a form that reveals them more clearly than in ordinary sense perception. The artistry and technology of film provide another way to apprehend reality, directing our attention to things not normally experienced, or not experienced so clearly and distinctly. And why should we suppose that the contingent human senses provide a privileged take on what objective reality is like? The cinema gives us a view from somewhere else, one that seems better geared to revealing the abstract world behind the world of particulars.

            Part of what is going on here relates to what I called the “dematerializing” power of film in my book.  [11] The screen image takes solidity away from objects, rendering them immaterial (all we have is the play of light on the screen). The human body, in particular, is dematerialized in this way. But the Platonic world is itself a dematerialized world—it is removed from the world of mass and matter. So the screen is an apt medium for depicting Platonic realities: it is a dematerializing medium. Greta Garbo’s face is perceived as hardly material at all but as a kind of weightless abstraction—a pure geometrical form. In order for me to produce an adequate idea of the shade of red I see before me, as it exists as a universal, I need to perform an act of dematerializing: I have to conceive the color as it might exist independently of the material particular in which I now perceive it. I have to conceive of it as an abstraction, not as a concretely realized entity. But the screen image already does this job for me, by removing the concrete particular from the color, so that the color is presented naked, as it were (or at least closer to its pure unencumbered form). The concrete world must be stripped away in order for the abstract world to shine forth. Film achieves this stripping by virtue of its dematerializing power. Plato could have used film as a teaching aid in his Academy, at least as an approximation to direct apprehension of the Forms.  [12]

            I used the word “abstraction” just now, but I think this word can be misleading in the present context. Platonic universals are often described as “abstract” or as “abstractions”, but this makes it sound as if they are less real than concrete things—or worse that they are abstracted from concrete things. But Plato thought universals were the most basic constituents of reality, making empirical reality possible. In the context of the Platonic theory of film experience we need to remember this point: when we watch a film we are not experiencing abstractions—as we might be when doing mathematics or philosophy. What we see on the screen is quite “concrete” in a way—it is visible after all. These terms, “abstract” and “concrete”, are inadequate to the task; but they are such an entrenched part of the philosophical tradition that it is hard to manage without them. The point I would make is that a broadly Platonic conception of reality should not be made hostage to these traditional terms, which is why I largely avoided the term “abstract” up until the last paragraph. We should certainly not make the mistake of supposing that the phenomenology of film watching is like the phenomenology of mathematical thought.

            One further Platonic notion should be mentioned: what is sometimes called “Platonic mysticism”. In some moods Plato speaks as if apprehension of the Forms is a kind of mystic vision—a spiritual experience of some sort. The Forms themselves are conceived as perfect timeless entities that ground all beauty and value, so the apprehension of them might be expected to have particular spiritual resonance—as the mystic has traditionally supposed for other types of mystical experience. The only point I wish to make about this is that a parallel claim has sometimes been made about the experience of film, especially by people we might call “movie mystics” (Martin Scorcese comes to mind). These are people who are spiritually moved by films, profoundly so, and movies become a religion and a vocation for them. I am not that extreme myself, but I think I understand what these movie mystics are talking about. In so far as movie mysticism is a genuine phenomenon, we can see it as confirming the Platonic picture here defended: movies can produce the kind of mystical experience of which Plato spoke, precisely because they provide access to the sublime world of Forms.

            I began this paper by saying I would defend a multi-modal theory of film experience. I cited the perceptual aspects of the film experience, both visual and auditory, and then I added the dream theory of movie watching. I emphasized the importance of synthesis in this multiplicity. Latterly, I have introduced a further component into the picture, thus complicating it considerably: the notion that film experience incorporates something like a Platonic dimension—the apprehension of Forms. This latter brings in “higher” cognitive functions—higher than perceiving and dreaming. So now we have three basic elements to the film experience, all integrated into a grand synthesis: a sensory element, a dreaming element, and (for want of a better word) an intellectual element. Now we can see that the movie watcher’s brain is lit up all over the place—a great many mental faculties are simultaneously activated. We might describe the total experience as “a perceptually driven dreamlike apprehension of Forms”, just to put the complete theory into a concise formulation. There are therefore several constitutive elements to the film experience, of very different kinds, and yet these several elements are organized by the mind into a synthetic unity. Hence we do not feel psychologically fragmented as we sit there in the dark.  With so much going on inside a person’s head as she watches a film it is not surprising that people find it a uniquely stimulating experience. An enormous amount of mental machinery is brought to bear. There is not much in the mind that is not activated by film.  [13]

 

  [1] A natural analogy is our understanding of language: when we hear a sentence and understand it we must synthesize elements corresponding to the words in the sentence, which are of different grammatical and logical types, as well as figure out the illocutionary force of the utterance, the intentions of the speaker, and other facts about the speech act. We do this effortlessly and without explicit coaching, though it is a remarkable feat of complex information processing. In processing a film we likewise engage in multiple sub-tasks that must be synthesized into a unitary experience. Just as we succeed in hearing what the speaker meant, so we succeed in grasping the full import of the cinematic event we are witnessing—smoothly and naturally.

  [2] Random House: New York, 2005, chapter 2.

  [3] Chapters 4-6. I still accept the dream theory, but in this paper I am going to add to it substantially.

  [4] This can be compared to daydreaming while observing one’s surroundings. The sensory stimuli may elicit mental imagery that is then woven into a daydream, and there may be interplay between inner and outer. This is a trancelike state in which perception and imagination merge and cooperate: we enter a state of dreamy seeing. Similarly, movies dig deep into our dream life, with perception eliciting the imaginative resources of the dream.

  [5] This is a defect of Plato’s analogy: he is equating a state of enlightened cognition with the very thing that he deems unenlightened. He actually thinks that seeing the Sun in the normal way is precisely the kind of thing from which we need to be liberated, not what the ideal state of knowledge is like (i.e. apprehending the world of Forms). The underlying problem for Plato is the difficulty of explaining what the ideal state of knowledge of the Forms would even look like. He resorts to an analogy that in fact gets things exactly the wrong way round: what the escapee sees outside the cave is just what we normally see, which Plato takes to be fundamentally illusory.  

  [6] The town was Gillingham, Kent, and the time was postwar Britain. It was probably a gloomy rainy day on a Saturday morning—so the world depicted in Wizard would have struck me as a vividly glittering world apart.

  [7] Of course film, like other art forms, is designed to present the Platonic trio of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty—these being what art is all about. We may glimpse them in daily life, but in art the whole idea is to present them more clearly and distinctly, without distraction.

  [8] This is particularly true of cartoons, because they are composed as two-dimensional geometrical images. There is no mass and solidity to these images; shape is all. But even when ordinary three-dimensional objects are filmed the result has mass and solidity nullified: there is just the two-dimensional image on the screen, rendered as a pattern of light. Movies are geometry animated, at the primitive perceptual level.

  [9] Roland Barthes, “The Face of Garbo”, in Mast, Gerald, and Marshall Cohen, eds, Film Theory and Criticism (Oxford University Press: New York, 1985), 650-1.

  [10] Because movies are a popular art form, the traditional language of aesthetics may be withheld from them, being reserved for works of “high art”. But surely that is misplaced elitism: even mass-market films have their patina of beauty, even if it is concentrated in the faces and forms of the actors. It is not only “art films” that invite aesthetic evaluation.  

  [11] The Power of Movies, chapter 3.

  [12] It is not necessary to accept Plato’s metaphysics as the sober truth about reality in order to sympathize with my Platonic theory of film experience. You just need to accept that Plato was drawing attention to a genuine aspect of our thinking about things—so that we resonate to his metaphysics. His theory of Forms taps into something deep in our psyche, even if we ultimately find the Platonic metaphysics philosophically questionable.

  [13] No doubt it is the capacity of film to engage the whole mind that explains its appeal as a means of escape: we can become “lost” in a film, with our normal concerns left behind. When fully absorbed in a film there is no room left in the mind for other things to seize the attention. One is seeing, hearing, imagining, dreaming, feeling, understanding, and contemplating—all at the same time.

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