Freedom Within Necessity

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Freedom Within Necessity

 

Suppose the compatibilist is faced with the following objection: human actions can’t be free because movements of the body are not free. More fully, if we consider the nature of bodily movements, we see that they have sufficient physiological causes and that from the point of view of physiology no freedom can be discerned therein. If we examine a bodily movement as such, we find nothing that could suggest the idea of free will; but human actions are such movements; therefore, there is no free action. My arm going up is not a free action, but then the act of raising my arm cannot be free either, since it is that movement. The body is a machine with not a hint of freedom in it, but that is not consistent with supposing that we act freely, because actions are movements (not counting omissions). If we are trying to describe a body, we will not have any use for the concept of freedom; but that rules out the idea that we act freely, given the role of the body in typical human action. Bodily actions can’t be free if bodily movements are not.

            We can imagine different responses to this argument. One response would be to give up the compatibilist position: human actions are not free after all. Another response would be to insist that bodily movements are free, odd though it may sound to say so (“My arm going up was a free action”). Here I want to recognize the possibility of a third response: actions are not movements. This allows us to hold that actions are free but movements are not free—which looks like the intuitive thing to say. My raising my arm was free but my arm going up was not, because these are not the same thing. That is, identity is not the relation between actions and movements. What the relation is precisely is not easy to say, but let us stipulate that the movement is a constituent of the action, not the whole of it. In addition to the movement we might include an act of will or a trying or a decision—something psychological. Then Leibniz’s law will not compel us to transfer freedom to the body or deny freedom to the will. The will is free, and so in consequence is action, though action is partly constituted by a bodily movement that is not free. The arm rising was a constituent of the arm raising and is indeed not free, but the arm raising brings in other psychological factors that render it free (it was prompted by a certain desire, say). Thus we reconcile the freedom of the agent with the un-freedom of his body, by distinguishing actions from movements (even when the action involve the movements).

            We must beware of an ambiguity in the phrase “movements of the body”. It is clearly true that I can perform the action of moving my body in a certain way, and this act can be free (for a compatibilist)—in this sense actions just are bodily movements. I can obviously move my body freely, as when I raise my arm. But this notion is not the same as that of a bodily movement in the non-agential sense, as when my body moves because of a muscle spasm or the wind. That is my body’s movement not my movement—my will played no role in its production. It is movements in this sense that are not free, even when they are part of a free action. Muscle contractions and efferent nerve impulses are not free, even though they make up an essential part of a free action. Actions are not bodily movements in this sense.

            We thus arrive at the following position: actions can be free even though they are composed (partly) of movements that are not free. No movement of the body (in the second sense) is free, despite the fact that the actions of agents are free. For actions can be in accordance with the agent’s desires, rendering them free, despite the fact that movements are the body cannot be in accordance with desires. Of course, we can transfer or extend the concept of action to the movements that compose actions, saying that they are derivatively free; but that is consistent with supposing that strictly speaking no bodily movement is free. What is interesting is how much this position concedes to the traditional incompatibilist without accepting his conclusion that human action is not free. For it allows that no movement of the human body (in the second sense) is ever free while insisting that human actions are free (or can be). The body can be as “mechanical” as you like, all its movements devoid of anything deserving the name of free, and yet human bodily action is free. This is because actions are not identical with, or reducible to, bodily movements. When I think of myself as a body I can find no room for freedom, but when I shift to thinking of myself as an agent with psychological properties, freedom enters the picture. It is almost as if the very same thing—a bodily movement—is both free and not free: but that contradiction is avoided by scrupulously distinguishing between what I do and what my body “does”. It moves; I act. The incompatibilist was quite right that movements of the human body cannot be free, but he overplayed his hand when he concluded that free action is impossible. Free actions do indeed incorporate un-free movements, so they have an un-free dimension; nevertheless, they are free. The embodied agent has a body whose movements (in one sense) are not free, but he and his actions are still free. The incompatibilist is pointing to an important truth, namely that the human body is not free; but he is wrong to infer from this that actions cannot be free, despite the involvement of the body.

            Some libertarians seek to make the body free in order to make human action free—they postulate some sort of indeterminism in the movements of the body (or brain). This produces absurd results, but their instincts were not completely wrong, because it is easy to move from the un-freedom of the body to the un-freedom of the agent, given the close connection between actions and movement. We can prevent this freedom-destroying step by carefully separating action from movement—raising from rising. Raising my arm is something I do to satisfy certain desires, but my arm rising is something that happens in virtue of physiological events in my muscles and nervous system. The former can be free while the latter cannot—even though the latter is an essential part of the former. It is because I am more than a body that I can be free; the incompabilist is right that the body itself cannot be free. If actions were simply movements, then freedom of action would be impossible; but that is not an identity we are compelled to accept.

            The resulting picture looks like this: the body is thoroughly deterministic and un-free, including all of its movements; actions are also thoroughly determined, both physically and psychologically—and yet actions are free. Freedom exists within necessity not in opposition to it. Freedom for the compatibilist is fundamentally a matter of acting on one’s desires, but that can happen even when encased in a thick shell of determinism that includes even the un-free bodily movements in which freedom is expressed. Nearly everything about us is not free, but not quite everything. To put it as paradoxically as possible: my moving my body is free but the movements of my body are not free. We thus have a new form of compatibilism: freedom of action is compatible with un-freedom of the acting body.  [1]

 

Colin McGinn 

  [1] Of course, the body does not strictly act, the agent does; but it is still true that the body that is essentially involved in action is not free, though the actions are.

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Forms of Analysis

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Forms of Analysis

 

 

Since Plato inaugurated conceptual analysis a certain pattern has recurred. His first stab at an analysis of knowledge broke it down into two parts: truth and belief. To know something you had to believe it and it had to be true. Neither element alone was sufficient (though both were necessary) but the conjunction of them added up to knowledge. We have a kind of conceptual equation: x plus y equals z. But then he noticed that this simple combination wasn’t enough for knowledge; it needed an extra ingredient. For it is possible to have true beliefs that aren’t knowledge, as when you accidentally hit on the truth. So he added a further element: justification. Now knowledge is a triadic concept: x plus y plus j equals z. The sufficiency of this was in turn questioned, but let us stop here for the moment. We could say that Plato discovered that truth and belief had to be coordinated in some way in order to add up to knowledge: you have to believe the truth justifiably (rationally, non-accidentally, for adequate reasons, reliably, etc.). Truth and belief had to be suitably connected not just exist side by side—you must have the belief because of the truth in order to have knowledge. Instead of belief and truth, we need belief because truth. Knowledge breaks into two parts, but the parts don’t just sit there separately; they meld in some way. Knowledge is the kind of belief that results from truth. Thus a structure emerged: the concept breaks into two basic parts joined in a certain way, where this way features as an extra ingredient added to the basic ones. Knowledge is not a simple thing, but it is not a serial thing either; it is a composite thing—parts coordinated. 

            This structure is not confined to knowledge. What is perception? It consists of two parts: experience and object. In order to see an object you have to have an experience (a “sense-datum”) and the experience must be veridical, i.e. there is a suitable object answering to it. You seem to see a table and there is a real table in front of you: neither is sufficient for seeing but if you combine them the upshot is seeing. There are two sides to seeing, as there are two sides to knowing–an internal side and an external side, a subjective side and an objective side. Seeing is a two-factor state, as we can see from conceptually analyzing it. But on further examination we see that seeing must be more than that, because these two conditions are not sufficient for seeing: there needs to be some connection between experience and object; they can’t just be accidentally joined, as when you hallucinate a table but there happens to be a table just where you seem to see one. Thus it becomes natural to require that the two elements be causally connected: the object has to cause the experience. Again, this triadic analysis itself runs into problems of sufficiency, but let’s not be detained by that: what we must note is that perception breaks into two parts and the parts must be properly coordinated. Perception is experience because of object. There is an internal side and an external side, along with a relation of dependence. The form is: x because of y equals z. This is beginning to sound like a kind of law of conceptual analysis—a recurrent pattern. And further inquiry confirms that diagnosis: for the same thing is true of memory. To remember a past event is to have both a memory impression and for the past to be a certain way: neither alone is sufficient for remembering but together we get memory. Mind and world supply the necessary ingredients–internal and external, subjective and objective. But again, the two elements cannot merely be conjoined, since you don’t remember something simply because you have a memory impression of it and it actually occurred—that could be so and yet you have completely forgotten the past event (the memory impression has some other source). You have to have the impression because of the past event (if you have it because someone randomly stimulates your brain, you don’t really remember). Once again, the concept has the form: x because of y equals z. Memory impression because of past event equals memory. Again, problems of sufficiency can be produced, but we won’t go into that. What we can say is that we now have three important concepts whose analysis follows the same pattern—quite an impressive record for the enterprise of conceptual analysis. Our putative law, in brief, then is this: Epistemic concepts break into two coordinated parts. Their analysis has the form: x because of y equals z, where x is subjective (internal) and y is objective (external).

            Emboldened by this result we might wonder whether other concepts follow the same pattern. In the history of the subject this claim has not been ventured, but I propose to extend the pattern into other areas of the mind. First, and somewhat familiar, there is the concept of action: an action consists of an internal component and an external component, both necessary and (on the face of it) sufficient. To perform an action it is necessary (a) to will it and (b) for a bodily movement to occur, as when I open a car door. I don’t open the door if I merely will it and my body doesn’t move, and similarly if my body causes the door to open but not because of any decision or intention of mine (a sudden spasm, say). Action is willing plus moving—subjective and objective, inner and outer. The concept bifurcates into two. But again, these conditions need to be augmented to deal with a familiar problem, namely that both elements could occur and yet I don’t act. What if I decide to open the door and my body is caused to open it by some accidental event? Then we can’t say that I opened the door: I performed no action, though I tried to and my body did what I was trying to do (because of some random outside stimulus). Again, the cure for this is to require that the agent’s body moved because of the internal willing: the willing has to cause the moving. Now the causation is going from inner to outer instead of outer to inner, but the structure is the same: x because of y equals z. Moving because of willing equals acting. Again, there are going to be problems of sufficiency (deviant causal chains and so on), but we won’t worry about that here. The important point is that yet another concept falls under our generalization: the concept of acting emerges as a composite concept consisting of two elements, internal and external, joined by a coordinating factor. The mere conjunction of the two elements is never enough; we always need to add the extra ingredient. Is this perhaps the general form of psychological concepts? That would be an interesting discovery in conceptual science, would it not?

            One might suppose that it could not be the general form of psychological concepts: for consider belief itself. Is that concept triadic in the way described? Where are the two elements here, and what might coordinate them? We now venture into virgin territory, but not without some prior preparation. Here is an analysis of belief with respectable credentials: For a subject X to believe that p is for X to stand in a certain relation R to a sentence s and for s to mean that p. Intuitively, the subject assents to a sentence in the language of thought that means the content of his belief. For me to believe that the sky is blue is for me to internally assent to the sentence “the sky is blue” (or some synonym) and for that sentence to mean that the sky is blue. Thus belief is assent plus meaning: it is assenting to sentences with propositional content. These are two distinct conceptual elements that together add up to the concept of belief (we are supposing). One is psychological; the other is semantic. If you assented to a meaningless sentence, that would not be a belief, while the mere fact of a sentence meaning something confers no beliefs on anyone. Belief requires both things. But now comes the big question: do we need in addition a coordination condition? Is the mere conjunction enough? That would spoil our generalization (though not entirely), so we anxiously inquire whether our law can be preserved in this case. I think it can be preserved, happily, because the conjunction is not enough, and in a familiar way: you could assent to a sentence that means that p without thereby believing that p because you might not know what that sentence means. Suppose you are in a foreign country and hear the natives talking: you might accept what they are saying as true, and their sentences certainly have meaning, but you don’t know what they mean, and hence don’t believe what they say. You have to accept what they say because of what the sentences mean, not merely because the speakers look like a reliable bunch. You have to understand the sentences, not merely assent to them independently of understanding them. So the conjunction of assent and meaning is not enough.

But what if the sentence occurs in your very own language of thought? Here we must wax more recherche: suppose you have a psychological disability that prevents you from understanding the sentences coded into your genes, yet you have a credulous tendency to assent to these sentences anyway (maybe you think they wouldn’t occur in your mind if they were false, given the ways of natural selection). The sentences have meaning (inherited from your ancestors) but you don’t grasp this meaning—yet you blithely and blindly assent. If that were possible, this would be a case in which assent to sentences in your own language of thought would not suffice for having the corresponding belief; and conceptually there is clearly daylight here. What is needed to plug the gap is that your understanding of these sentences should play a role in your assent to them: that is, your assent must be because of their meaning (among other things). The two factors can’t just operate independently; they must be connected in the right way. Maybe we will find ingenious counterexamples even when this extra condition is added, but again that is not to the point—we have uncovered the same basic pattern in the case of belief too (given the suggested analysis of belief). Belief is assent because of meaning, to put it simply. (This means, of course, that the two-factor concept of knowledge embeds the two-factor concept of belief; or three-factor if we include the coordinating condition.) Belief might have struck us initially as logically simple, but upon analysis we see that it exhibits the same kind of structure that Plato long ago uncovered in the concept of knowledge (it only took us two thousand years). There are two parts to the concept, psychological and semantic, and a condition on their combination; put together we have the composite whole that is the concept of belief (and belief itself). Perhaps we reach conceptual bedrock with the concept of assent, or perhaps not, but there seem to be many ordinary psychological concepts that break down in the way described.    [1] Just to have a grand label for our would-be law, let us call it “The Law of Coordinated Duality”, or more colloquially “The Mixed Doubles Law”. It is a law about how psychological concepts are constituted (or some of them), which is to say how the mind is constituted.

            What about purely mental actions? Bodily actions divide neatly into two, inner and outer, but what about actions that go on entirely within the mind? Again, we need to get imaginative if we are to discern a comparable structure. Consider mental calculation—calculating in the head. Since this is an action, it is willed—you intend to perform a certain calculation and proceed to do it. But there is also the event of calculation: symbols going through your mind. Someone observing these processes could use them to arrive at the same result you arrive at. So there is a willing and an execution of this willing. You perform the mental act of calculation if both things go on; thus mental action has the same fundamental structure as bodily action. But could there be a case in which the two elements are not properly connected, so that it is false that the person did the calculation? Imagine an alien scientist who uses your brain as a calculator: he punches in questions and recruits your brain circuits to perform calculations, thus sparing himself the trouble of doing them himself. From the inside you experience symbols passing through your consciousness, but no feeling of willing the process to occur. You feel, as we say, alienated from the calculation, because the alien is willing it not you (compare his causing mental images in your mind against your will). A calculation was occurring in your consciousness, but it wasn’t an action of yours. This is the analogue of the externally imposed bodily movement of opening the car door. Now suppose we add to this scenario your willing to do the calculation, but this willing is not the cause of calculation itself—the cause is still the alien. Intuitively, you still didn’t do the calculation: you willed it and it was done, but you didn’t do it. It just so happened that the alien caused the calculation immediately after you willed it yourself. The two together don’t add to your doing mental arithmetic—the calculation wasn’t your action. What is missing, obviously, is that the calculating didn’t occur because of your willing it, but because of the alien. So we need to amend the simple two-factor account by adding that the mental event of calculation was caused by the mental event of willing it. Calculation because of willing equals performing the mental act of calculating. Suppose that the calculation would not have occurred if the alien had lost interest in it, despite the fact that you willed it (maybe your brain’s executive functions are down); then you wouldn’t have done any actual calculating. Adding the alien-caused calculation doesn’t change this; you still didn’t perform the calculation. So again we have the two-factor analysis supplemented with a coordination condition. If you perform a calculation partly in your head and partly on paper, this result is more intuitively obvious, because now we can clearly separate the two side of the action: logically, inner calculating is just like outer calculating. It’s mixed doubles in the head.

            Finally, we reach the hardest case: having an experience. Does this break down into two separable components coordinated together? It may not; it may just be primitive (something has to be). At first sight two logically separable elements may be discerned: the experience and the having of it. To have an experience e is for eto exist and for you to have e. Experiencing is an experience and the having of it. But in this case there seems no logical gap between the experience and the having of it: one entails the other. There is no separating the components, as there is in all the other cases. However, consider this strange scenario: your brain is hooked up to someone else’s brain in such a way that when he has an experience you automatically do, irrespective of what else is happening in your mental life (you know this is the set-up). For example, you have an experience as of a green truck because this other guy sees a green truck (you are at home lying in bed and think, “Oh boy, here we go again!”). The experience occurred in your consciousness but was it your experience? One wants to say that it was his experience intruding on your consciousness; you endured it but you didn’t have it—it didn’t belong to you. That may sound wrong, because you certainly were the subject of an experience as of a green truck, but the question is whether it was your experience. The case is rather like possession: you are the subject of experiences that belong to the possessing demon, but it doesn’t follow that these experiences are (experienced as) yours—they are the demon’s experiences occurring in you. If it is logically possible for someone else’s experience to occur in you, then we have a possible case in which the experience occurs in you but isn’t had by you in the relevant sense. That would be the logical analogue of truth without belief or object without percept or past event without memory or bodily movement without willing or mental calculation without mental calculating. Conceivably the mind of a baby is like this: experiences occur in its consciousness, but we can’t say that it has the experiences, perhaps because a self has not yet fully formed. So there could be experience without the possessing relation holding between it and the subject.    [2] Conceptually, it looks as if there is a logical chink here separating an experience occurring and its being possessed by a subject. No doubt this is all very obscure and difficult to pin down, but there is some sense of the kind of structural duality I have discerned. In any case, the matter is worth considering further if we are to determine how far our law of analysis extends. It is possible that the same basic conceptual architecture exists in this case but that it differs in significant ways from case to case. That would certainly be an interesting finding of conceptual science—a kind of structural universal found across a wide range of psychological concepts. Knowledge would then not be a unique case but simply one instance of something much more general. Two factors in combination would be a general feature of mental life.

 

Colin McGinn     
  

    [1] We might say that members of this family of concepts have the same body-plan, to borrow a term from biology—the same architecture, the same geometry.

    [2] Could the possessing relation exist without the experience? That would be the logical analogue of belief without fact or percept without object, and so on. It seems hard to make sense of, since it would be the mind shorn of all experience. But maybe it does correspond to some sort of psychological reality in that the mind presumably has a pre-existing capacity to host experiences of different kinds—something like a blank slate. Whether it could exist in a state of pure possessing without anything possessed is hard to contemplate, but conceptually it seems like a distinction exists here. There is the experience and there is the fact that I have it.

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Feeling the Brain

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Feeling the Brain

 

 

You can feel your heart. It beats perceptibly in your chest. Before you ever knew what a heart was you could feel it in there. When you learned about its anatomy and physiology you had no trouble recognizing the thing you knew about before: you didn’t doubt that they were one and the same. The identity was informative, given the different modes of presentation, but it wasn’t a matter of dispute. No one argues that the organ discovered in the chest is not the organ you feel thumping when you run hard—there are no heart dualists. No one thinks the heart he feels is an immaterial substance distinct from the heart described by anatomists. The anatomist simply informs us about the nature of what we feel inside. But none of this is true of the brain: you don’t feel your brain working and recognize that the organ described by the anatomist is what you feel. You don’t have sensations of your brain as it goes about its business: you don’t feel your brain transmitting nerve impulses and regulating your bodily functions, or perceiving, thinking, and feeling. That is, you don’t feel that your brain is doing these various things—this is not the content of any cognitive or sensory state of yours. You say “I can feel my heart beating” but not “I can feel my brain transmitting” or “I can feel my brain thinking”: your brain is not an intentional object so far as ordinary experience of the body is concerned—though it can become an intentional object by external perception of the body. You can feel your heart and also see it (in principle), but you can only see your brain not feel it. Your body awareness does not extend to your brain.

            It is a question whether this is true only of the brain among bodily organs. Certainly we feel most of the organs of the body, particularly the muscles (of which the heart is one). Arguably we feel the bones, which are tightly interlocked with the muscles; also the stomach and intestines. But what about the liver, the kidneys, the spleen, and the pancreas—do we feel them? We can feel pain in these organs, but in the normal course of events we don’t feel their activities. Yet we sense the presence of a congeries of organs within the abdominal area, though indistinctly. I am prepared to allow that these are objects of awareness in an attenuated sense. But the brain is in a class of its own: no pain receptors and no afferent nerves leading from itself to the sensory centers. From a phenomenological point of view, it is as if it is not there at all. If you concentrate your attention on your head and face, you can make out your nose, ears, lips, eyes, forehead, back of head, cheeks—but you can’t get any sensation of your brain. It is simply not an object of awareness. The inside of your skull is a complete phenomenological blank, a sort of proprioceptive blind spot. If you turned out to have to have an empty cranium, nothing in your experience would be thereby refuted. You feel yourself to have a heart (etc.) but you don’t feel yourself to have a brain. It’s almost as if your brain is so much dead tissue so far as your self-awareness is concerned. You know your brain is in there—you have heard about it in school and maybe seen a brain or two—but you don’t have any basic proprioceptive sense of its existence, still less its nature. There is a gap in your proprioceptive field where your brain should be.

            This doesn’t seem like a necessary truth. You could have been aware of your brain (maybe Martians have elaborate brain awareness). Suppose your brain contained pain receptors as well as afferent nerves connecting it to itself. Then you would feel pain in injured parts of it (“I have a dull pain in my hippocampus”) and you would have sensory experiences as of states of your brain, e.g. feeling that your occipital lobes are unusually active, or that the nerve impulses in your hypothalamus are sluggish. You might sense your brain’s gross anatomy, or the rate of cerebral blood flow. Just as you now say, “My heart is beating fast” you would say, “My brain is in a state of high excitation”. For some reason, evolution saw fit to keep us in proprioceptive ignorance of our brains—nearly all animals have no knowledge of their brain at all, though they sense their other bodily organs—but that seems like a contingent fact; we could have had basic first-person knowledge of our brains. Instead of coming up blank in the search for proprioceptive awareness of the brain, we might have had it at the forefront of our attention, a vivid pulsing presence in our phenomenal field. As it is, however, the contents of our cranium are hidden from self-awareness. Things would be different if the brain were a muscle. To be sure, we experience the effects of the brain, physical and mental, but the origin of these effects is omitted from awareness. We only sense the brain when we open the head and see it skulking in there, like a tortoise without its shell. It comes as a startling discovery, like discovering a new continent, not the ratification of what we earlier observed from the inside. We didn’t see thatcoming.

            If we did sense our brain that would change the way we greet the discovery of it by external means. We would respond by saying, “Ah, so that’s what you look like, just as I pictured you (but I’m surprised at all the ridges)”. Our experience would have anticipated our discovery: we would be ready to accept that what we experienced before just is that thing now before our eyes. We knew about our brain’s existence from the inside and now we know about it from the outside—two modes of presentation of the same entity. As things stand, however, we greet the brain with something like incredulity: who would have thought that was lurking in there! We feel alienated from it, as if it is more like an intruder than an old friend. Hence our attitude to our brain differs markedly from our attitude to our other bodily organs (most if not all). And given the centrality of the brain to our own identity, this must seem like a remarkable discovery, and not a very welcome one. We had no idea what the organ of the self was like, nor even that there was such an organ sitting in our head, but now we see that it is thisunprepossessing thing. We are not disappointed by the heart, whose objective nature is close to how we anticipated it to be; but the brain strikes us as both unheralded and bathetic. If we had prior proprioceptive knowledge of it, we would have been prepared for the reality: an elevated (and erroneous) view of ourselves would have been preempted.

            Someone might say that we are acquainted with our brain because we are acquainted with our mind, and the mind is just an aspect of the brain. As we feel our heart beating, so we feel our brain thinking. That is not a fatuous thought–indeed, it might even be true—but it doesn’t restore the analogy to the heart. For we don’t experience the fact that our brain thinks: maybe it does, and maybe we experience the thinking, but it doesn’t follow—and it isn’t true—that we have experiences as of our brain thinking. We don’t take our brain as an intentional object and attribute to it the property of thinking; it may have that property, but we don’t experience it as having it (we don’t experience it at all). By contrast, the heart has the property of beating and we experience it as having that property—we attribute that property to the organ in question. That is, we don’t, in thinking, attribute thinking to the brain that enables thinking. We just have the thoughts without predicating them of the brain. So our cognitive relation to the brain is quite different from our cognitive relation to the heart, even if thinking is a property of the brain that we are aware of. The thoughts are possible intentional objects, but the brain in which (allegedly) they exist is not (for us). So the brain maintains its peculiar status as a phenomenal blank: it never comes into view except as an object of external perception. It is not a felt reality of the body. It is the basis of all inner feeling, but it is not an object of inner feeling. We are aware of our nature as a muscular being, because of primitive self-awareness, but we are not similarly aware of our nature as a neural being; yet we are at least as much neural as muscular. We might never have known of the brain’s existence but that heads occasionally pop open to reveal it. And doesn’t that adventitious knowledge change our feelings about ourselves? It reveals something quite unexpected. What if we had never discovered it?  [1]

 

Colin

  [1] What branch of science does this essay belong to? Phenomenological physiology perhaps: the science of bodily awareness.

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Father Time

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Father Time

 

 

I liked it best when only I existed. That was a simpler time, a purer time. Good times. I stretched out to infinity in both directions with no beginning and no end. Nothing troubled me; nothing disturbed my peace. Moments, epochs, and eons—these were my units. Oh, I was beautiful! I passed the time silently and serenely–uniform, measured. I was not a god, but I was the next best thing. I was perfection, even if I say so myself.

            Then space arrived on the scene—from whence I cannot say. Space with all its size as far as the eye can see (no eye can see me). It boasts of its extension, its sheer volume. To me space is obese. It’s the sheer vulgarity of space that bothers me–so attention grabbing, so full of its own importance. And so pointlessly static: it just hangs there without forward movement, going nowhere. I am ceaselessly active; space is passive to the point of indolence. Unemployed. Why should I have to share reality with such an aimless emptiness?

            As if that wasn’t bad enough, space made something else possible—matter. Matter boasts extension too, but it also boasts solidity. Solidity I say! That made collision possible, smashing and clashing. The thuds in the night were terrible. Matter would cruise about space, on the prowl for who knows what, and then bash into other bits of matter, shattering and destroying. Pure anarchy. Matter always seemed to be itching for a fight, and it was noisy. Ugly too—all chunk and hunk. And with a horrible deadness, like so much congealed space past its sell-by date. Its main interest seems to be preventing other bits of matter occupying its location.  Above all, it wouldn’t leave me alone and in peace: material events kept happening, and for that matter needed my assistance. Things happened inme, through me—and without so much as a by your leave. Where’s the respect?

            But that wasn’t the end of it—oh no. Next life came along, and with it mind. Before long there were intelligent conscious beings. I wasn’t so opposed to consciousness as such—it reminded me of myself—but I took exception to some of its so-called ideas. These finite little specks insisted on trying to describe and understand reality—matter, space, and time. They weren’t so far off the mark with the first two—nothing too challenging there—but with me they were at a complete loss. No idea! They attempted to measure me: to take my measure. They compared me to a river—a river. They invented clocks, as if a mechanical device could do justice to my sublime nature. Clocks, with their ticks and tocks, their breakdowns, their lifeless flat faces: they are not as I am. I am nothing like a clock. But in their puny little minds they reduced me to clocks. Some even maintained that nothing could be true of me that was not true of clocks. There were those who declared me relative, and questioned my simultaneity. But I am all about simultaneity! I stand magnificently apart from space and matter; my nature has nothing to do with theirs. Nor is light a guide to my nature (though I have nothing against light—it is quick). But this is a subject too painful to consider—and beneath my dignity. Suffice it to say that the callow and callous beings that demeaned me thus are not worthy of a moment of my time.

Anyway I have to share reality with space, matter, and consciousness, spoiling the view, polluting the atmosphere. No doubt they think they add value to reality, but to me they are just so much litter and dirt. Life was so much sweeter before—before the barbarians broke down the gates. I have one hope and I believe this hope will come to fruition: all this chaos is temporary. It will soon be over. Tranquility will return. The days of conscious beings are clearly numbered, because matter is not cooperative. And matter too is by no means secure: once it was not and it could easily revert to nothing. Even space is not woven into the basic fabric of reality—not as I am. I have all the time in the world. I can wait. Reality will one day be mine again, for all eternity.        

 

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Falsehood and Meaning

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Falsehood and Meaning

 

 

In a famous paper entitled “Truth and Meaning” Donald Davidson argues that meaning is constituted by truth conditions. A recursive theory of truth for a language in the style of Tarski is thus a theory of meaning for that language. Understanding a sentence consists in grasping its truth conditions.  The meaning of a word is its contribution to determining truth conditions. Truth is the central concept of semantic theory. Davidson says nothing about falsity in relation to meaning; that concept has no place in the theory of meaning. Perhaps the reason is obvious: falsity conditions are not what a sentence means. Suppose we say, evidently correctly, that “snow is white” is false (in English) if and only if snow is not white—the falsity condition is given by inserting negation into the sentence whose meaning is in question. Then clearly it would be wrong to say that “snow is white” means that snow is not white—it means the opposite of that! So falsity conditions don’t constitute meaning. I will return to this point, but at present I merely observe that falsity is not the concept chosen to characterize meaning, by Davidson or by the many others who have seen meaning as residing in truth conditions. I propose to argue that this is a mistake—that falsehood is as closely intertwined with meaning as truth.

            The first point to make is that understanding a sentence involves knowing under what conditions it is false. If I understand “snow is white” I know that this sentence is false if and only if snow is not white—just as I know that it is true if and only if show is white. I know its truth conditions and I know its falsity conditions. It is perfectly true that we cannot replace “is false if and only if” with “means that”, but this doesn’t imply that knowing falsity conditions isn’t part of understanding a sentence. For the same thing is true of many sentences in relation to truth: we can’t replace a statement of truth conditions for indexical sentences with a “means that” clause either (“I am hot” uttered by me doesn’t mean that Colin McGinn is hot at the time of utterance), and most sentences of a natural language are at least implicitly indexical. Similarly, a biconditional for “Shut the door!” employing the concept of obedience doesn’t license the proposition that the sentence means such a condition (the sentence doesn’t meanthat the addressee shuts the door in response to the command to shut it). And there is really no reason to suppose that what constitutes grasp of meaning should be susceptible of statement in the “means that” form.  [1] It is just an accident that this holds for truth conditions in the case of context-independent sentences (actually it doesn’t even hold for “snow is white” because of the indexicality of tense). If you say that meaning is use, you are not saying that a given word or sentence means anything about use. In any case, it is not an objection to a claim about meaning that it won’t go over into the “means that” form; and intuitively it is a platitude that to understand a sentence (in the indicative) one needs to know under what conditions it is false. You wouldn’t understand “snow is black” unless you knew that the circumstance of snow being white renders that sentence false. We could test someone’s grasp of meaning precisely by asking her whether the sentence would be true or false under such and such conditions.

            But is it possible to give a Tarski-type theory of falsehood analogous to his theory of truth? That was certainly part of the appeal of a truth conditions theory of meaning for Davidson: it permits the employment of Tarski’s powerful and rigorous theory of truth. If falsehood cannot be treated in this way, then it lacks one the most attractive aspects of the concept of truth in semantic theory. To my knowledge neither Tarski nor anyone else has investigated this question, so mesmerized are they by Tarski’s formidable apparatus; but the question is easily answered in the affirmative—falsehood is just as amenable to recursive formal treatment as truth (which is just what we should expect). I will run quickly through the basic clauses for falsity; it is really a routine matter. For any sentence s, s is false if and only if not-p (where p is a sentence of the meta-language translating s). A conjunction “pand q” is false if and only if either p is false or q is false (not if and only if p is false and q is false). A disjunction “p or q” is false if and only if p is false and q is false (not if and only if p is false or q is false). Notice how disjunction is used in the meta-language to give falsity conditions for “and” and conjunction is used to give falsity conditions for “or”, instead of the usual alignment of connectives for truth conditions. A universal quantification “For all x, Fx” is false if and only if something x is not F. An existential quantification “For some x, Fx” is false if and only everything xis not F. Again notice the inversion of the quantifiers compared to the standard clauses for truth. With these clauses we can construct a recursive theory of falsity entirely parallel to Tarski’s construction for truth. The analogue of a satisfaction clause will simply be: an object x counter-satisfies F if and only if x is not F, where “counter-satisfies” means the converse of “false of” (alternatively, “dissatisfies”). We can then speak of “Convention F” which specifies that a definition of falsehood should entail all instances of the schema, “s is false if and only if not-p”; and even define falsehood as “dissatisfaction by all sequences”. There would be F-sentences as well as T-sentences. The apparatus is exactly as for truth but with suitable amendments. Tarski could have written an appendix to his famous 1944 paper  [2] with the title “The Concept of Falsehood in Formalized Languages” and said much the same things as he said about truth. It would be surprising if he couldn’t, given the close connection between the two concepts—it would constitute an important theorem!

            So we now add a Tarski-style theory of falsehood to a Davidson-type theory of meaning to produce a theory of falsity conditions for sentences of natural language (or disobedience conditions for the case of imperatives). This will be part of our theory of meaning for the language. It joins with a theory of truth conditions to give (allegedly) a complete theory of meaning. Both theories are necessary and neither is sufficient by itself. A speaker of the language grasps both the truth conditions and the falsity conditions of the sentences of that language. Thus I know that “snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white and that “snow is white” is false if and only if snow is not white. These are separate pieces of knowledge concerning distinct properties and employing different concepts (notably negation in the case of falsity). We can imagine possible beings that embrace one sort of knowledge while eschewing the other—they might be softhearted relativists that reject the notion of falsity altogether or stern skeptics about truth that recognize only falsity—but in our case we have and embrace both sorts of knowledge. Our understanding of sentences includes both truth-conditions knowledge and falsity- conditions knowledge. This implies that a theory of meaning is based around two central concepts, truth and falsehood, not a single concept—which is not what we have been traditionally taught. Word meaning is now geared to two concepts: this is not truth-theoretic semantics but truth-value–theoretic semantics. Truth and falsehood play coordinate roles in the overall theory. Linguistic understanding has two parts or aspects. We could say that a meaning is a location in logical space that comprises both a positive condition and a negative condition: both snow being white and also snow not being white. Meanings are both inclusive and exclusive.

            This opens up some interesting perspectives. Suppose you are a hardboiled Popperian: you don’t think truth can ever be established, but you do think falsehood can be. You hold that “all swans are white” cannot be confirmed as true, but can be falsified by observing a single instance of a non-white swan. You believe the concept of truth is irrelevant to science, but you think the concept of falsehood plays an important role. Verification is out of the question, but falsification is the engine of progress. Suppose you even go so far as to believe truth should be eliminated from our conceptual scheme, while retaining falsehood. You accordingly don’t accept that meaning is constituted by truth conditions (any more than you accept that scientific progress is the accumulation of truths) or by verification conditions (there are no such conditions): but you do believe that sentences can be false and can be established to be false. Then you may well find yourself attracted to a pure falsity conditions theory of meaning: the meaning of “all Fs are G” is given by the condition that this sentence is falsified by the fact that an F has been observed not be a G. That is, we understand a sentence by constructing its falsification conditions, which embed its falsity conditions, and truth conditions be hanged. You thus don’t much care for Tarski’s definition of truth—for what use is the concept of truth?—but you do fancy his implied definition of falsity. It enshrines your general “critical epistemology”—your dedication to the notion of falsification. You embrace falsity-theoretic semantics done in the general style of Tarski, as adopted by Davidson. This seems like a coherent position, however radical or misguided it may be. It serves to bring out the change of perspective that results from taking falsehood seriously in semantics.  [3]

            Falsity and negation go together—notice how often I used negation in explaining falsity conditions semantics. Similarly for Popperian epistemology: we are always discovering that theories are not true (i.e. false). So negation plays a critical role in the theory of meaning (and in Popperian epistemology): we don’t know the meaning of a sentence unless we know under what conditions it is not true. The concept of negation thus enters into our understanding of any and every sentence, even when the sentence doesn’t contain negation. Hence negation is integral to meaning as such. I doubt that so-called animal languages incorporate negation in this way, even if the animal in question possesses the concept of negation. We might then speak of negation-theoretic semantics—theories that emphasize the role of negation in constituting meaning. This makes a better understanding of negation desirable, and indeed I think negation is an underexplored topic (not counting Sartre’s Being and Nothingness).  [4] Would a good analysis of negation shed light on the nature of meaning?       

 

Colin

  [1] It is worth noting that there is a simple rule for deriving assignments of meaning in the “means that” form from a statement of falsity conditions: just drop the negation operator. Also worth noting that falsity is as disquotational as truth, though it clearly doesn’t generate homophonic biconditionals.

  [2] “The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages”.

  [3] There is also the position that the concept of falsity is more basic than the concept of truth, which derives from it. According to this position, falsity conditions semantics is the basic kind.

  [4] Sartre puts negation at the heart of the mind—consciousness itself is described as incorporating a negative mental act (consciousness “is what it is not and is not what it is”). Wittgenstein in the Tractatus might be construed as implicitly introducing negation into meaning because he takes meaning to divide up logical space, thus excluding certain states of affairs. And even in model-theoretic semantics we employ functions that generate extensions and counter-extensions—what does not fall under a predicate.

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External Conditions on Thought

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External Conditions of Thought

 

 

The idea of the singular proposition is that propositions can contain particulars as well as universals as their constituents. If I think that that bird is pretty, my thought’s content contains both a particular bird and the general property of being pretty. Thus a singular thought has conditions of identity and existence that depend on objective particulars—birds, cities, planets, other people, etc. No such particular, then no such thought; and thoughts are distinct in virtue of the distinct particulars they contain. It is not often remarked that the same thing is true of the properties that constitute the other half of the proposition (so to speak): they too supply the identity and existence conditions of the thought (or the meaning of the corresponding sentence). The property also sits inside the proposition, alongside its partner, the particular. Propositions offer hospitality to both sorts of entity.

Given this general picture, we can formulate a kind of transcendental argument for the existence of particulars, as follows. If we accept that singular thoughts exist, then the world must contain the particulars that form them—both those particulars in particular and also particulars as a category. That is, there is no possible world in which singular thoughts exist and particulars don’t. The particulars don’t have to be material objects or events but could also be mental particulars; so the transcendental argument doesn’t disprove idealism. What is required is just that some particulars exist—specifically those that form the singular propositions that constitute the content of singular thoughts (and meanings). We know, then, that the world cannot consist solely of universals. That would not follow if propositions were invariably general as to content; then those propositions could exist in the absence of particulars. If description theories of reference were true, perhaps accompanied by Russell’s analysis of descriptions, then the existence of particulars would not be a precondition for the existence of propositional contents; so the world could be void of particulars and those thoughts would still be available to be thought. This is a straight consequence of the theory of singular propositions: singular thought is impossible in the absence of particulars, so if there are singular thoughts there are particulars. The theory of thought thus implies a certain kind of metaphysics—one that accepts particulars as real. And it is certainly an interesting point that thought should be capable of having such metaphysical consequences. I might put it by saying that the distinctness of thoughts depends upon the distinctness of the particulars they concern.

            Interesting, but perhaps not startling. More startling, however, is the analogous thesis in respect of universals: that there is a similar transcendental argument proving that universals exist. For thoughts also have general content, carried by concepts corresponding to properties, and this content depends for its existence on the existence of the properties it concerns. Without those properties general thoughts would not be possible. Just as the mind cannot from within its own resources generate singular thoughts—it needs the contribution of objective particulars—so the mind cannot from within its own resources generate general concepts—it needs the contribution of objective universals. Since the proposition contains properties, it depends on properties for its existence; but then there are no thoughts in a world without universals. Thus a certain type of metaphysics is implied: reality must contain universals, in addition to particulars, which serve to make thought possible. It is hard to see how these universals could be creatures of the mind, inventions of some sort, because invention depends upon thought, and hence presupposes the existence of general propositional content. Nor could properties reduce to sets of particulars, on pain of making thoughts about properties into thoughts about sets. I don’t have all these particular things in mind when I think that a certain bird is pretty; I simply have the property of being pretty in mind.  [1] So we need to countenance a robust ontology of general properties (universals) given the nature of thought: no universals, no thoughts. Thus we can deduce ontology from psychology, world from mind.

            The root reason for this dependence lies in an essential feature of universals: their ability to bring things together. They allow for similarity among diverse particulars. If particulars spread universals around, by giving them multiple instantiations, then universals round particulars up, by determining their similarities. So the following thesis sounds plausible: General concepts need objective universals in order to provide the groupings that general thought delivers. The mind could not manufacture the groupings that record similarities without the aid of objective universals that constitute these similarities. Picture the mind trying to find similarities among particulars without appeal to the objective basis of similarities—it would flounder in the dark. No, it needs to latch onto the external objective grounds of similarity, viz. universals. You can’t think about the class of square things without representing the objective property of being square (or if you do you will need some other subsuming concept). So the basis of mental classification is grasp of the objective respects of similarity, i.e. properties or universals. The mind can’t just make this stuff up itself—it needs outside help. It needs objective universals as much as (or more than) it needs objective particulars. That is, singular propositions really do contain particular objects and general properties of them—and this presupposes a certain kind of ontology. You can’t separate semantics from metaphysics, meaning from reality, thinking from being. In this respect, there is no logical gulf between the subjective and the objective, the inner and outer. Metaphysics shapes psychology. The external world of objects and properties is the foundation of the internal world of individual concepts and general concepts. It is not possible to hold the world of thought constant while varying what reality contains in the way of ontological categories. This is the most general lesson of what has come to be called “externalism”. There cannot be a thinking mind without an objective world to mirror.  [2]

 

C

  [1] This raises the question of whether direct reference theory applies to thoughts explicitly about sets: can propositions contain sets of particulars as well as particulars? That would seem to involve overpopulating the content of thought with all the members of a given set. The alternative would be to suppose that thoughts about sets have descriptive content, as in “the set consisting of all F’s”: here the thought would contain a general concept applicable to a given set and not the set itself as a particular object. 

  [2] According to traditional “Fregean” thinking, there is no overlap between thought (meaning) and reality, since propositions do not contain anything that belongs to the world of reference (particulars and their properties). But according to direct reference theory propositions contain worldly entities, so there is an overlap between world and mind: the constituents of the one are also constituents of the other. Thus it is that we can deduce ontology from psychology (and vice versa). 

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Explanations of Life

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Explanations of Life

 

 

Suppose we encounter life forms on another planet unrelated to ours and possibly quite unlike ours. Still, there is evident adaptive complexity, so that the laws of physics and chance cannot explain what we observe. What possible explanation might be given for this complexity? How might it have come to be?

            One possibility is intelligent design—not by God, to be sure, but by scientifically advanced aliens. These organisms might have been synthesized on a Life Production Machine. They are in effect artifacts of another civilization, so the explanation of their existence matches the explanation for the existence of artifacts in our civilization: intentional intelligent design. We can’t rule this explanation out; it is a matter of empirical fact whether it is true (just as it is for life on earth). We might well gather further information that rules out the hypothesis (there is no such advanced civilization in the vicinity), but as a matter of principle the hypothesis is a theoretical possibility—it cannot be excluded a priori. Alternatively, the life forms might have arisen by ordinary natural selection with no intelligent intervention. But there are also mixed cases: the organisms might have been subjected to guided breeding after a period of natural evolution, or they might be genetically engineered and then left to natural selection. Conceivably they might be selectively bred from an initial batch of bacteria, so partly the result of natural design and partly of intelligent design. There is an indefinite range of possible combinations of natural evolution and guided evolution, varying between species and planetary fauna—for instance, the mammals have been left to natural selection while the reptiles have been intensively bred for intelligence or strength. Maybe elsewhere in the universe all the possibilities have been tried—as is partially the case on earth where humans have artificially bred certain species but not others.

The traditional theoretical dichotomy between intelligent design and natural selection may be quite parochial where advanced civilizations have developed, because there is ample scope for partial intervention into the process of generating life. Selective breeding and genetic engineering can certainly speed up the evolutionary process considerably, taking decades to achieve what natural selection would take millions of years to achieve. When intelligent life forms take evolution into their own hands the sky is the limit. Naturally evolved life might be the most primitive form of life, vastly outclassed by the kind of life created by life itself, i.e. designed by life forms with the intelligence to change the course of evolution. No need to wait for that lucky chance mutation; just create whatever mutation looks promising and then subject the result to rigorous test. Just as bacteria look very primitive in the light of later evolutionary developments, so naturally evolved life might look very primitive compared to the kind of life that intelligent designers can contrive. If the secret to the origin of life is ever discovered, it could be used to re-start the entire process, producing untold wonders by creative intervention. All of life could come to be intelligently designed.

            Interestingly, the possibility of intelligent design depends upon antecedent natural design: not every life form in history could be the result of intelligent design, since an intelligent life form has to come from somewhere. No universe could create intelligent life ab initio: the long and painful process of natural selection has to create the first form of intelligence, since intelligence cannot depend upon other intelligence all the way down. But once a form of intelligence has evolved that is capable of selective breeding and guided evolution, it can produce new life forms without reliance on the old machinery of blind random mutation and natural selection. Then the explanation for the design of organisms will involve intelligent design not natural design. Most of the life in the universe might be of this kind: whole galaxies could be inhabited by intelligently designed organisms. Geological time is vast but cosmological time is much vaster, so the possibility of intelligently designed life coming to dominate the universe can’t be ruled out. We might be just at the beginning of the history of life—the short initial period in which life evolved naturally. Already we are beginning to change the course of evolution; genetic engineering could accelerate this process enormously. Other intelligent species elsewhere might be much further along in imposing their will on nature.

If a Charles Darwin is born on a planet that has been subject to intelligent design, he will hit upon the correct theory of evolution for that planet, namely evolution by intelligent design.    [1] Maybe life was seeded naturally by the accidental arrival of bacteria, but then intelligent creatures stepped in to guide the course of evolution, creating whatever organisms took their fancy. A rival theorist who hypothesized natural selection as the explanation would be mistaken; there was, on this planet, an intelligent designer responsible for the adaptive complexity on display. Natural evolution could have ended millions of years ago, with all life now the result of intentional intervention. The traditional Darwinian theory used to be true, but it is no more: everything is now carefully monitored and cultivated. This is what is taught in biology classes these days, and it is entirely correct. All genetic alteration is brought about by scientific intervention, so that nothing is left to chance; then certain strains are chosen for reproduction and others rejected. It is as if the old religious creationist story were true, only it is not a divine being calling the shots but a super-alien. On our planet now Darwin’s theory is the true theory, but on other planets the theory of intelligent design may be the true theory (and may come to be the true theory on our planet). There might come a time when none of the species inhabiting the galaxies evolved by natural selection. That was just the early phase in the history of life, and destined to be superseded by intelligent design. Evolution will cease to be blind.    [2]                                                                                         

 

Coli

    [1] His book On the Origin of Species defends the view that all life results from the intentional actions of a mighty intelligent designer. This Darwin might not know the identity of the designer—that was not discovered until space travel became a possibility centuries later—but he was brilliant enough to see that no other explanation could be true given the facts. Organisms were just too well designed for this to be a matter of blind variation and mindless selection! He considered the alternative theory but found it wanting—and he was entirely right in his conclusions and reasoning.

    [2] Just to be scrupulously clear, this essay is not intended to provide succor for creationists about life as it evolved on planet Earth; I am speaking of imaginary planets and imaginary ways of shaping life.

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Existence and the Cogito

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Existence and the Cogito

 

 

The Cogito strikes most people as intuitively valid, but it has been trenchantly criticized. How exactly the inference is supposed to work still excites controversy. Here I will consider a line of objection that I have not seen pressed before. The natural way to interpret the inference is that it moves from a premise about instantiation to a conclusion about existence: I know with certainty that I instantiate the property of thinking, so I must exist as the subject of this property. We might expand the argument as follows: “I have the property of thinking; if something has a property, that thing must exist; therefore I exist”. My thoughts exist (as I know with certainty), and they must be instantiated in some object; this object is not identical to my thoughts; so we can infer that there exists an object (viz. myself) that is not identical to my thoughts. Thus we can move nontrivially from the existence of thinking to the existence of a thing that thinks. But consider the analogous argument concerning unicorns: “Unicorns are horses with one horn, so unicorns instantiate the property of having a horn; but there has to be an object that instantiates this property; therefore unicorns exist.” Or: “Santa Claus has a beard, so he instantiates the property of having a beard; but then he must be an object that instantiates a property; therefore Santa Claus exists”. The premises seem true but the conclusion is false, so the argument must be invalid—but where does it go wrong? Meinong would give the following answer: it does not follow from the fact that an object instantiates a property that the object exists—it might only subsist. In more recent terminology, these objects might be merely “intentional objects” not real existent objects; and so instantiation does not imply existence on the part of the instantiating object. Applying this point to the Cogito, what is to rule out the possibility that the self is a merely intentional object that instantiates the property of thinking but does not exist? We can see that objects are able instantiate properties without thereby existing, so why can’t the self be one of those? To be sure, the properties exist—they are real entities all right—but it doesn’t follow that anything that instantiates them is itself real. Fictional objects are a counterexample: the property of being a detective is a real property, but the fact that Sherlock Holmes is a detective doesn’t make him real. Likewise, thinking is a real property that things can have, but it doesn’t follow that anything that instantiates this property is itself real—after all, Holmes also thinks. Maybe the self is like Holmes.

            How might we respond to this objection? One possibility would be to appeal to the certainty of the premise that I think, holding that this is what sets the Cogito apart. But am I not also certain that unicorns have one horn, that Santa Claus has a beard, and that Holmes is a detective? The fact that an object certainly instantiates a property does not automatically confer existence on that object (it is certain that the Golden Mountain is a mountain). Another possible way out would be to question the whole ontology of subsistent or intentional objects, insisting that there are no objects but existent ones. This flies in the face of the seemingly obvious fact that some things don’t exist and yet have properties; but also, from the point of view of the Cogito, it gives up the certainty of the inference—for now we have to accept that the validity of the Cogito depends on the rejection of Meinongian metaphysics. Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn’t, but we don’t want the fate of the Cogito to be tied to that metaphysical issue. No one hearing the Cogito for the first time thinks, “Well, it depends on your view of Meinong”. Descartes surely did not take a stand against Meinong-style ontology when he enunciated the Cogito. The validity of the argument should not depend on whether or not you entertain Meinongian predilections. It isn’t as if those with such predilections are prohibited from accepting the Cogito; at any rate, that’s not the way the question presents itself.

            A third suggestion is that there is an asymmetry between unicorns (etc.) and thinking selves, namely that you can hallucinate unicorns but you can’t hallucinate thinking selves. Thus it can seem to you as if there is a unicorn in front of you without there being one, but you can’t hallucinate having thoughts without actually having them. That asymmetry must be conceded—beliefs in unicorns are not epistemically necessary but beliefs in thoughts are—but it doesn’t help to salvage the argument: for all we get from this is that the existence of thoughtsis certain, not that the existence of thinking selves is. True, we can be certain that thoughts exist, but we could still be in error about the existence of a self that has them. There might be nothing except thoughts in the vicinity. We might be under an illusion about the self, as we might be under an illusion about unicorns. We might be misinterpreting a collection of thoughts as a self that has them. Compare seeing a swarm of bees in the distance and mistakenly thinking there is a single big organism there. Maybe we hallucinate a unitary self when we introspectively encounter a swarm of thoughts. Who knows what might be going on? We can’t hallucinate the thoughts, but we could be under an illusion about what they signify, i.e. an underlying unitary self. Similarly, when we hallucinate a unicorn we are not hallucinating its component properties—they are real enough qua properties (though their present instantiation is illusory). Anyway, even if it is somehow impossible to hallucinate a self, why should the existence of a self be entailed by the existence of individual thoughts? We still haven’t justified the step from the existence of thoughts to the existence of a thing that has them (the Gassendi-Lichtenberg objection).

            Fourth, we might hope to find something in the specific nature of thought that guarantees an existent thinker, where this something is not present for properties in general. Maybe having a single horn doesn’t prove the existence of what has the horn, but thought might be such as to necessitate an underlying existent thinker. This would be the analogue of the ontological argument: most properties indeed fail to guarantee existence, but the property of total perfection does guarantee it, because of its specific nature. Instantiation by that property entails the existence of the instantiating object (according to the ontological argument). There has been a strong intuition (notably voiced by Frege) that mental states necessarily require a bearer—something that has them, a subject. But it is far from clear how this can help the Cogito: Meinong could agree with this point while insisting that the bearer is a merely subsistent entity. Fictional mental states logically require a bearer too, viz. a fictional character, but they lack existence. The notion of a subject of predication—an object of instantiation—is too weak to deliver the conclusion of the Cogito: we might be predicating thought of a non-existent object. But also: does the intuition hold for all kinds of mental states or only thoughts? And does it apply to unconscious mental states as well as conscious ones? Is it true of the bodily sensations of jellyfish or worms? And is the point any different from the claim that any kind of state needs something for it to be a state of, including the state of being electrically charged or the state of the weather? We really need an argument, analogous to the ontological argument, showing that thinking inherently and uniquely calls for an existent subject that can be the reference of “I”, but what this argument might be remains elusive. Could it be that the capacity to think requires the capacity for the self-attribution of thoughts, and hence for a self? But what could establish that, and how would it guarantee the reality of the self in question? Descartes never argued anything of the kind, and it would certainly undermine his claim that the Cogito is primitively compelling. So there is nothing comparable to the ontological argument showing that it is in the nature of thought to bring with it an existent bearer, let alone one with the characteristics of the self as normally understood.  [1]

            But perhaps there is an intuition lurking in this unsuccessful argument that might have more cogency: namely that there is a contradiction in the idea of existent thoughts occurring in a non-existent object. Fictional thoughts can occur in a fictional object, but non-fictional thoughts require a non-fictional object. Thoughts are particulars not universals (token not types) and existent particulars need existent objects to inhere in. Properties can exist and be properties of non-existent objects, but events and processes can’t both exist and also inhere in non-existent objects. What would it mean for Sherlock Holmes the fictional character to have an existent real thought? Wouldn’t that make him real? So there is a metaphysical assumption at the heart of the Cogito: those thoughts whose existence is evident to us must exist in a being that is itself existent, since real events need real objects as bearer. Real mental particulars need real mental substances to inhere in—they can’t exist in an unreal substance. In Meinong’s language, existent events cannot inhere in merely subsistent objects. If there is real thinking going on, then this requires a real entity to do the thinking; and we know for sure that real thinking is going on—hence we know for sure that we exist. If the thinking was fictional, the subject of it would or might be fictional too; but granted that the thinking is not fictional, neither can he thinker be. Thus I know that I am not a character in fiction (or a “logical fiction” or an hallucination). Compare the bodily counterpart to the Cogito: “I have a body, therefore I exist”. We could not object to this that the premise could be true and the conclusion false, because the body, not being fictional, cannot be had by something fictional: something must non-fictionally exist if my body non-fictionally exists (whether it is the reference of “I” is a further question). We can infer from the existence of the body that something exists. To be more precise, if I know that I have bodily states, then I know that something exists in which those states occur—for example, if I digest there must exist something that digests. The inference is solid because it is compelling to claim that physical states require a physical bearer—a physical thing that has them. If I know there are physical states, then I can deduce that there are physical objects, because states must be states of something. And it would be absurd to suggest that existent physical states could exist in a non-existent object—a merely intentional object. If Holmes is in real physical states, then he must be real himself—fictional characters can’t have real indigestion! The difference from the classic Cogito is just that the premise here is not certain (not an epistemic necessity): I don’t know for certain that I am in physical states or even that I have a body. So this is no use for Descartes’s purposes, though the connection between premise and conclusion is the same in both cases, viz. a metaphysical principle precluding unreal bearers of real states. As we might put it: we can’t mix the existent with the subsistent, the real with the imaginary, the factual with the fictional.

            Where does this leave the Cogito? It allows it to struggle on, to retain a semblance of cogency, but it leaves it vulnerable to skeptical doubt. Descartes was working with a scholastic metaphysics of substance and accident—his evil demon was not supposed to call that into question. Against this background the Cogito is relatively smooth sailing. But a dogged opponent might protest that this metaphysics is not immune to doubt, and if it is doubted the Cogito will not go through. Why should we accept that there are substances at all, material or immaterial—why not make do with an ontology of states, events, and processes? Later philosophers indeed did advocate such a low-calorie ontology (e.g. Russell) and so there is no substance in the world for thoughts to inhere in anyway. Thoughts may form sets or aggregates, according to this point of view, thereby gaining a sort of collective unity, but they don’t inhere in substances. So there is no valid metaphysical principle licensing the move from the existence of states to the existence of substances that support them. That may be wrong as a piece of metaphysics, but in the context of the Cogito it would need to be addressed.

More subtly, however, there is this problem: the prima facie persuasiveness of the Cogito seems not to be hostage to the kind of principle I have invoked to bolster it. Is this what someone is thinking who accepts the Cogito? Possibly, but it would have to be in some subliminal or tacit manner, since the requisite principle is hardly laid bare in the usual presentations of the Cogito. It takes work to come up with it and it is not entirely self-evident, even if you accept it. So it is not clear it can explain the felt cogency of the Cogito; indeed, it renders it much more wobbly than we might initially have supposed. Once it is fully articulated in this way its appearance of self-evidence starts to fade, and yet it is routinely hailed as the surest of philosophical theses. The resourceful Meinongian has produced a new threat to the Cogito, and the suggested repair to the argument lacks transparent cogency, even if it is ultimately correct as a piece of metaphysics. So we are left in a rather unsatisfactory position: the argument is not clearly valid but not clearly invalid either. I would say that it can be salvaged more effectively than might have seemed possible once the Meinongian objection has been formulated; for that objection looks formidable at first sight and it takes some ingenuity to forestall it. Hume’s kind of critique of the self, which takes the self as a type of fiction (at least on some interpretations of Hume), was evidently alien to Descartes and quite inimical to the Cogito(we can’t deduce the existence of a substantial self merely from the existence of ideas encountered internally). And yet it is hard to deny that the Cogito has all the appearance of self-evidence, whatever its final analysis may turn out to be.  [2] This philosophical gem thus remains as tantalizing as ever.

 

  [1] Not that the ontological argument is really any good in the end, but it is at least an argument that needs to be contended with.

  [2] What we are entitled to assert on the basis of the Cogito is that the certain existence of thoughts proves the certain existence of something that has them. That is, thoughts need a bearer because they must be instantiated by something other than themselves; but this bearer could be anything, even a non-existent fictional entity. Call this the weak Cogito: it doesn’t deliver a substantial self with the intuitive characteristics of the self, and is quite compatible with a Humean view of the self, but at least it shows that there is something that can’t be doubted (in addition to the existence of thoughts themselves). If we employ a particular quantifier shorn of existential import, we can say that the weak Cogito allows us to assert the following proposition: “I think, therefore there is something that thinks”—where the quantifier can range over even purely intentional objects that lack existence, or any kind of existent object, physical or non-physical. The strong Cogito, by contrast, asserts that we can prove that a substantial existing conscious self underlies the existence of thoughts (there is also room for intermediate strengths).

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