Action and Acting

 

Jack gets up, goes to the kitchen, opens the fridge, takes out a beer, pops the cap, and drinks it. Why did he do that? Because he wanted a beer and thought there was one in the fridge. The philosopher says that Jack’s action is explained by his having a desire for a beer and a belief that this course of action will bring about the satisfaction of that desire. The action fits the desire via an instrumental belief. The belief-desire pair constitutes the agent’s reason for acting; some say it causes the action (others deny this but still hold that the action is explained by a belief-desire pair). Isn’t this plain common sense? You want something, you figure out a way to get it, and you act based on those two factors. That all sounds very reasonable and convincing: actions are explained by the agent’s having desires and beliefs that lead to the action in question. This is what folk psychology is all about.

But consider an actor’s actions. John is sitting on a sofa on a stage with an audience in front of him. He gets up, walks across the stage, opens a fridge, takes out a beer, uncaps it, and drinks the contents. Why did he do that? Was it because he fancied a beer and figured the fridge would contain one?  No: he had no desire for a beer, and did not form an instrumental belief about how to satisfy such a desire. So John appears to be a counterexample to the classic story: his action, though just like Jack’s, has no such explanation. Yet it was intentional, intelligent, and motivated. John might even hate the taste of beer; he was merely pretending to desire a beer and acting so as to satisfy that non-existent desire. Pretending to want a beer does not entail wanting a beer (maybe the opposite), so John’s action cannot be explained in the way Jack’s was. Can it be explained by any belief-desire pair? Maybe this one: he desired to give the impression that he desired a beer and he reasoned that by acting as he did he would give that impression. This cannot be quite right, however, because then he wouldn’t be surprised if a member of the audience handed him a beer—after all, he contrived to give them the impression that he wanted one. He pretended to want a beer in a setting in which such a response is contraindicated. We needn’t go further into the precise nature of John’s psychology, noting simply that he was engaged in an act of pretense in which he desired to give a certain impression. The point is that the impression he desired to give is a false impression: he had no desire for a beer. His action is explained (according to the belief-desire model) by another desire—the desire to be perceived in a certain way. Thespian action, then, is different from ordinary action, requiring a wrinkle in the explanatory apparatus. It is governed by a special sort of desire—the desire to be seen in a certain way, as an actor portraying a character. The belief-desire theorist thus breathes a sigh of relief that his preferred model covers the case of the actor’s actions (though there may be a lingering disquiet). The actor just has a funny sort of desire.

Theatrical action is not confined to the conventional setting of the stage. People often contrive to give the impression that they have desires they don’t have (or don’t have desires they do have) for motives both innocent and nefarious, thus inviting an explanation that gets things wrong. I may want you to think that I like you and wish to spend time with you, while all along hating your guts: in such a case my actions are explained by my wishing to give you a false impression of my true feelings. I don’t spend time with you because I desire to but because I want you to think that I desire to. This kind of point has prompted some theorists of human psychology to propound a theatrical view of human behavior in a social context. We all know Shakespeare’s line about the world being a stage and we being merely players on it, and Erving Goffman did much to entrench this view of social interactions. I won’t go into the reasons for holding this view, merely observing that if it is true then a great many of our actions are like an actor’s actions. We perform roles designed to convey a certain impression—dutiful husband, kindly professor, tough guy—without actually having the desires we project. Our actions are a front we offer to the world in order to present ourselves in a certain light, and they may not correspond to our actual desires.[1] Goffman spoke of the “theatrical self”; we may equally speak of the “theatrical agent” performing “theatrical acts”—acts of pretense, simulation, deception. Moreover, the roles we play can become internalized, so that we don’t shed them even when unobserved: your entire personality can be the result of habitual role-playing reinforced by social pressures. Maybe we rarely act according to our true desires (whatever that might mean) but rather act in such a way as to project a desired impression—even to ourselves. Suppose that were so; suppose indeed that there are people who never act on their actual desires in the manner of Jack but always act on theatrical desires in the manner of John. Everything they do is impression management guided by the desire to appear a certain way, never by what they really want. For example, someone might have a longing for beer but live in a social world in which that desire is frowned upon, so they always act so as to give the impression that they hate the taste of beer (sexual desires might provide a more obvious example). The point I am making is that the standard story of human action assumes that it is not thus theatrical, but this is an empirical and contested question. In fact, ordinary action is shot through with such histrionic elements—acts of theatrical pretense. This type of action needs to be included in any general theory of the nature of human action (animals are not similarly histrionic).

Once this point is acknowledged doubts arise about the standard scheme. Is it really true that the average human desires to give certain impressions to others? Maybe the professional actor does, but what about someone who acts so as to cover up perfectly acceptable desires that other people happen to disapprove of? In the bad old days, did homosexuals really want to act like heterosexuals? Did they have a yearning to present themselves as other than there are? Did they come home after a long day of acting straight and feel happy about their day, feeling that their desires had been satisfactorily met? The truth is that they judged their actions to be in their best interests all things considered–their true desires notwithstanding. It is simply a misuse of language to say that they desired to act straight. They desired to act according to their own sexual preferences, not according to how they were expected to act. Pretending may sometimes be socially necessary, but it is not always enjoyable. The case of Jack gives a quite misleading impression of the general nature of human action, as if we always act so as to satisfy our real desires; but often we have to dissimulate, suppressing what we really desire in order to manage social interactions. We do what we think will serve us best (though with understandable lapses) not according to what we really want. This gives a very different picture of human agency from what the standard model implies. It is not so much desire that prompts our actions as social necessity (often internalized). Action is all about maintaining self-image not the free flow of appetite. The standard model forgets that we are social beings whose actions must be tailored to fit with the demands of others.[2] That can be a strain not a release—the denial of desire, not its free expression. We often act contrary to our desires, not from them

It is fair to say that this perspective represents human motivation as more cognitive than appetitive. We must think about how we are perceived and act accordingly, not just go with the flow of internal desire. The actor is always thinking, calculating, reflecting. Hamlet is nothing if not a thinker: not for him the spontaneous expression of desire. The gay man must be constantly vigilant, constantly monitoring his behavior, for fear of exposure (in the bad old days). Our lives are burdened with such thoughts: we can’t act without thinking about appearances most of the time. Intelligent social judgment is required of us (perhaps this is why people often need to “let their hair down”). So the correct model is not unmediated desire spilling out into action but tightly controlled judgment about what is best socially. This makes a cognitivist view of moral motivation less exceptional—more the standard case. True, moral action is not like going for a beer when you feel like one; it is more like judging what would be best for you from a social point of view. Genuine desire can be the cause of action, but very often the cause is something more cognitive and ratiocinative. Value-directed reasoning is the normal case. Self-control is the rule, given that we are actors on a stage, not giving vent to what we happen to be feeling (the professional actor must often suppress his actual feelings on the night in order to turn in a decent performance). Action is rarely desire made visible, but more desire filtered and disguised. Even Jack as he heads for the fridge is wondering what his mother would think of all his drinking, resolving to put on a good show of sobriety when next they meet; perhaps he even pictures seeing her in his mind’s eye and stays where he is on the sofa (he’s already had a few). He must play the part of a responsible drinker not someone who simply can’t resist the booze (alcoholics are notoriously fine actors). Even Jack is a skilled thespian, the rival of John (“No thanks, Mum, I’ve had two already”). Do we everact on a desire and not wonder what people might think of us? Our social role is always part of our practical reasoning, even when acting alone. That was the insight of Shakespeare and Goffman: we are inescapably social beings assiduously managing our image. We are not solitary creatures free to act on whatever we feel like without considering the opinions of others. The standard belief-desire model is unrealistically utopian, picturing us as isolated beings free to express whatever desires we may have. In reality our actions are always socially mediated, even if only notionally. It’s always: how would this look?

There is another respect in which the standard model is unrealistic. When Jack goes to get his beer he performs a large number of actions: his action of getting a beer consists of a series of sub-actions, such as putting his hand on the fridge door. How far down this subdivision can go is an interesting question, but let’s stop at the relatively molar level. Now does Jack have sub-desires corresponding to these sub-actions—did he desire to put his hand on the fridge door? Well, this is an action that could have occurred outside of the sequence of actions Jack performed in obtaining his beer, so presumably there is a desire that corresponds to it. That is the standard model: for each action there is a desire-belief combination corresponding to that action. But did Jack really desire to put his hand on the fridge door? He might have been indifferent to it, or he might have been actively opposed to it—perhaps he is abnormally sensitive to cold. In general friend Jack doesn’t like making an effort at anything, including getting a beer inside him. It is true that he judges that it is necessary to achieving his goal that he should put his hand on the fridge, but it is a stretch to say that he desires to do this. In general it is not plausible to suggest that we desire to do every part of the means we employ to obtain a given end. Means are just undesired necessities. People don’t generally want to study; they do it because it is a necessary means to obtaining an end that they do want. But then it is not true that every action is explained by a corresponding desire. These sub-actions are explained by a cognitive state to the effect that this is a necessary part of the means to a desired end; they are not themselves desired. You might try saying that Jack’s action of clutching the fridge door is explained by his desire for a beer, but that doesn’t explain the specific character of the sub-action in question. Desire may initiate the process and explain its whole existence, but it doesn’t explain the details of the process—belief does (or something like it). But then there are actions that are not explained by a desire, since the overall desire can’t explain them. We simply don’t always desire what we intentionally do, though we may judge that the action is necessary in the circumstances. Don’t we often desire not to do what we do, though deeming it necessary given our other goals? If you ask a person digging a hole whether he wants to dig a hole, he will likely say no, but then point out that it is necessary if he is to reach the water hidden underground. He wants to get the water but not to the dig the hole that exposes it. Jack may in fact think it’s a pain in the butt to go to the fridge, but how else is the poor man to get a beer? Indeed, Jack may not really want a beer at all (!) but rather thinks it is a necessary means for relieving his indigestion (my own mother used to drink Guinness in order to put on weight not because she liked Guinness). Lots of the time we act so as to achieve distant goals without desiring to perform the actions necessary to achieve them. Shall we say that we desire to stay alive (or experience pleasure) and this explains all our actions when combined with suitable instrumental beliefs? That would be a reductio of the standard model not a vindication of it. The attraction of the theory is that it offers to explain each action by means of a distinctive belief-desire pair, but this breaks down for complex actions. We don’t desire to do an awful lot of what we in fact do.

The picture that emerges is that judgment plays a far greater role in human action than has often been supposed. It is not that existing desires trigger actions with a little help from beliefs; rather, judgments about what is best are the main determinants of action. This is true for actions geared to social relations as well as for actions that make up sequences of actions aimed at achieving certain ends (the ends might not be desires either but value judgments). Desires can play a role but they are generally mediated and filtered, suppressed and dissembled, not given free rein (or reign). As agents we are much more cognitive creatures than appetitive ones (though these categories are themselves rather too simple); thought is the main engine of action. We think about how our actions will be perceived by others, and we think about what we must do in order to achieve our aims—neither of which has much to do with our actual desires. Action is more embodied thought than embodied desire (in humans anyway[3]).

 

Colin

[1] Even when we are acting on our actual desires, say when eating lunch, we are conscious of the impression we make on others (though they might not be present), so there is always the influence of an accompanying higher-order desire to create a good or passable impression. You desire that your desires not be expressed repulsively or awkwardly or embarrassingly. You monitor your desire-satisfying actions for their social impact. Hell, as Sartre remarked, is other people. Or, as Freud observed, all our actions are subject to criticism from an internalized parent: we are acting a part to gain parental approval. We must always please a demanding audience.

[2] Can we imagine creatures that literally never act on their desires but always shape their behavior to fit social expectations—pure politicians, as it were? They are always insincere, dissembling, repressing their real desires. So do they never eat or relieve themselves? Suppose this is done for them so that no action on their part is necessary: then it seems that their behavior could be entirely governed by other-regarding desires to the effect that they create a good impression. It’s wall-to-wall theater from morning till night, pure pretense. This is a far cry from the standard model. These creatures have desires, perhaps very much like ours, but they never ever act on them. Their actions are never explained by their desires (save the desire to create a good impression in others—which may not be a real desire anyway but simply arise from fear). It is logically possible never to do what you want but to act nonetheless.

[3] My pet African lizard, Ramon, agrees, seeing a stark contrast between his reasons for action and those of his keeper. He just bites at his lettuce whenever he feels like it without regard for what anyone else might think of him, whereas his keeper has to consider how his actions will be perceived by others. Ramon is no actor; I perforce am. Do I wish I had his freedom of action? You bet I do.

 

 

Rigidity Revisited

 

A rigid designator is one that designates the same object in every possible world. Thus “Plato” designates Plato in every world; in no world does it designate anyone else. We must hasten to add that names are only rigid with respect to a language, i.e. under a particular assignment of meaning; no name is rigid in virtue of being the sound or mark that it is. Words are conventionally attached to meanings, so that they only contingently denote whatever it is they actually denote. Clarity might be served by saying that the meaning of a name is what is properly rigid (similarly the meaning of a description is what is properly non-rigid). The meaning or sense of a name rigidly designates its reference. It doesn’t follow that the mode of presentation associated with a name is rigid, if that concept it taken qualitatively, i.e. how the reference seems to the speaker. And that would not be a plausible view given that numerically distinct objects can appear the same way. Nor do the ideas in the speaker’s mind rigidly designate (this is one reason description theories of names run into trouble). Names have a special kind of meaning that ties them to their actual bearer across possible worlds. The standard view of this is that the meaning of the name is its bearer, so that constancy of meaning guarantees constancy of bearer, by virtue of strict identity. If the meaning of “Plato” is Plato, then of course it designates the same person in every world, since the meaning just is the reference: this is like saying that Plato is Plato in every world. The statement “The meaning of ‘Plato’ is identical to the reference of ‘Plato’” is true, and identities hold necessarily. Nothing like this can be said of definite descriptions, so they fail to be rigid. We could say that the general terms forming the description rigidly designate the properties they actually designate, but not that the description rigidly designates the object that contingently satisfies it.

So far, so orthodox: but now I want to raise the question of what kind of necessity is in play here. We could rephrase the concept of rigidity as follows: names have the property of necessarily denoting what they actually denote. It is part of the essence of “Plato” (its meaning) that it denotes Plato; in no world does it denote anyone else. So names have essences just as objects have essences: Plato is necessarily a man and “Plato” necessarily denotes this man. The name “Plato” has other essential properties (remember we mean its meaning) such as that it is a name or is part of language or is not identical to the name “Aristotle”: meanings have essences too. It is part of the essence of the meaning of “Plato” that it designates Plato—but it is not part of the essence of the meaning of “the teacher of Aristotle” that it designates Plato, even though he did teach Aristotle. So we can say that the same notion of necessity is used to characterize rigidity as is used to characterize the essence of objects—good old metaphysical necessity. We say that a person necessarily has the parents she actually has, and we can equally say that a name necessarily refers to what it actually refers to; while a person does not necessarily attend the school she actually attends, and does not necessarily satisfy the descriptions she actually satisfies. Semantic properties can be essential (or contingent) properties too. Languages are bearers of modality just as non-linguistic reality is. Rigidity is just another species of necessity.

Now I can raise the following heterodox question: is the necessity involved in rigidity reducible to other categories of necessity? Kripke gave us four categories of necessity: identity, kind, constitution, and origin. Is the rigidity of names a special case of one of these categories? The alternative is that it is not but is a sui generiscategory of necessity that we need to add to our inventory of categories of metaphysical necessity (“necessities of reference”). I am going to suggest that rigidity is reducible to the necessity of constitution plus the necessity of origin: a name’s having a certain reference essentially is the upshot of a particular type of necessity of constitution plus necessity of origin. Thus we can explain these necessities of language in terms of more general types of necessity applicable to the non-linguistic world. This may sound strange, but on reflection it is quite intuitive, once we understand how general the notions of constitution and origin are. Suppose we say that the meaning of a name is constituted by its bearer; and we compare this to saying that this table is constituted by a particular piece of wood. In the latter case it is right to say that the table is essentially so constituted—in every world in which the table exists it is made of the same piece of wood as in the actual world. Similarly, in the former case, if the meaning of the name is constituted by its actual bearer, then it is so constituted in any world, since constitution generates necessities. If x is made of y, then you can’t have x without y. Of course, you can have something that is like x that is not made of y, but not that very thing—a table that looks like x, say. Likewise, you can have a meaning that resembles the meaning of “Plato” and it not be constituted by Plato, but you can’t have that meaning without Plato. Thus two speakers may be exactly alike physically and mentally and use a name “Plato” but refer to different people by that name, because the meaning is constituted by different references in the two cases. Two meanings can seem the same but not be the same because of a difference in actual constitution—just like two tables. According to the direct reference conception of names (the “Millian” view), the meaning of a name is constituted by its bearer; but then it is necessarily so constituted, by the necessity of constitution, in which case it will be rigid. We could say metaphorically that the table “rigidly designates” the piece of wood it is actually made from, just as a name literally rigidly designates its actual bearer: the necessity of constitution is at work in both cases. And don’t object that this latter must be metaphorical because only physical objects have constitutions: clearly the concept of constitution can be applied outside of the physical realm, for example to states of mind and to mathematical entities (emotions and geometric figures, for example).[1] Identity can be applied with this kind of generality (and is often invoked to express the Millian view), and there is no metaphysical reason to restrict the idea of constitution to material objects (the Constitution is not wrongly named). Thus the referential rigidity of names falls out as a consequence of the necessity of constitution: the former follows from the latter.

How does the necessity of origin enter the picture? First we must note the generality of that notion; it isn’t just parents and children but any generative historical relation. Clearly it applies to any organism and its ancestors: each organism necessarily has the ancestors it actually has, going back to the origin of life on Earth. But also historical events fall under the necessity of origin as well as human artifacts: WWI (that war) could not exist in a world in which its actual antecedents do not exist (though there could be a war similar to it but differently caused), and no one other than Leonardo could have painted the Mona Lisa (that very painting).[2] We can’t completely change history and leave the identity of the objects and events intact. In the case at hand, a name has a certain history originating in the initial baptism of a particular object (say, baby Plato): then a chain of linguistic events connects this origin to later uses of the name. Let us then say that the name “Plato” has origin O: accordingly, it (that name) could not exist without O. The name (its meaning) owes its identity to its actual origin: just as Plato has to come from his actual parents, so the name “Plato” (with its actual meaning) has to come from baby Plato in an act of baptism. If we substitute another baby in a possible world, we get a different name (a different meaning), despite any resemblance of baby—just as we get a different child if we substitute different parents, despite resemblance of progeny. If so, rigidity follows from origin: the name could not refer to anyone not at the origin of the causal chain that exists in the actual world, i.e. the one culminating in baby Plato.  If the origin of “Plato” is baby Plato, then it could not have had any other origin, by the necessity of origin; but then the name must designate the same person in all worlds. That name requires that origin, so there is no world in which that name exists but is anchored to a different origin (as it might be, baby Aristotle). Nothing like this is true of descriptions, of course, since they are not individuated by origin at all: they don’t refer in virtue of a causal chain leading back to an object’s baptism. Accordingly, descriptions are free to be non-rigid, as flexible as the occasion demands. But names are strictly tied to their historical antecedents in babies, baptisms, and the like. If so, rigidity follows from the necessity of origin, and is a special case of it.

There is a question, then, about which of these two necessities is basic in the modal semantic of names. We need not take a firm stand, but I am inclined to think that origin is basic: it is because names are introduced in the way they are that their meaning is constituted in the way it is. Having that origin determines what constitutes the name’s meaning: there is nothing else for the meaning to be given that names originate as they do. Tracing back to a particular object is what fixes their meaning (not a cluster of associated descriptions), and hence we say that the meaning is constituted by the object. So origin is primary, though both are equally correct as modal claims. The important point is that semantic rigidity is not some new type of necessity but is a special case of necessities already recognized. We don’t have Kripke’s four categories and the necessity of reference as an additional primitive category; the latter is an instance of the former. It is what the necessity of constitution and origin look like when manifested in language. This is good because it is not clear what else referential necessity might be given that we seem to have covered the bases with the four categories.[3] Rigidity is a type of essence found in language, but what other types of essence are there other than the big four? They seem to exhaust the field, in which case linguistic essence needs to emerge as a form of one of more of those. Clearly the concepts of constitution and origin apply to language, and are so employed quite spontaneously by theorists, so it is in the cards that we can explain referential necessity by appeal to these concepts. Referential necessity thus arises from a combination of the necessity of constitution and the necessity of origin.[4]

 

Colin McGinn

[1] It can also be applied to phrases and sentences: a string of words is constituted by the individual words that compose it. As a consequence, we can say things like, “The sentence ‘snow is white’ is necessarily constituted by the words ‘snow’, ‘is’, and ‘white’”. The same applies to thoughts and their constitutive concepts.

[2] We can also define the notion of rigid portrayal: a painting rigidly portrays a certain individual if it portrays the same individual in every possible world. The claim that paintings are sometimes rigid portrayers is plausible: the painting must portray the same individual in any world in which it (that painting) exists—no Mona Lisa no Mona Lisa painting (her twin will not do). This is different from a painting just happening to fit a certain individual. In this kind of case the origin theory of the necessity seems very plausible; so the Mona Lisa painting needs both Leonardo and Mona herself in order to exist in any world.

[3] It might be said that there are strictly five categories: in addition to constitution by a particular object we need to recognize the type of the constituting object. Thus we can say that this table is necessarily made of wood not just this piece of wood (as is the piece itself). The analogue for names would be the fact that the meaning of the name is necessarily of the human being type: the name “Plato” must refer to a human being and not (say) to a goat, in addition to necessarily referring to Plato (who is himself necessarily a human being). But this isn’t to accept that there are irreducibly semantic types of de re necessity. The name itself might be necessarily composed of certain sounds, which are necessarily sounds. We just have iterations of the same metaphysical necessities we had before we got to the de re necessities of language.

[4] If we choose to say that predicates rigidly designate their corresponding properties, we can give the same type of explanation of this semantic fact, namely that the properties denoted form the constitution and origin of (the meaning of) their denoting predicates. The property of being red constitutes the meaning of “red” and is the origin of that predicate (in its actual meaning): hence “red” rigidly designates the property red. The meaning of “red” could not be constituted by any other property or originate in any other property.

 

 

On Mind-Brain Relations

 

 

Various relations between mental events and brain events have been (and could be) posited: correlation, causation, simultaneity, supervenience, spatial coincidence, composition, part-whole relations, and identity. It is fair to report that these relations are first found outside of the mind-brain relation and then applied to that relation; we don’t come up with them by considering the mind-brain relation itself. That is, they stem from the physical world not from the psychophysical world: we transfer them from their original home in the physical world to the special case of mind and brain. Hence analogies are often drawn between the psychophysical case and physical cases—for instance, “pain is C-fiber firing” is like “heat is molecular motion”. This is already suspicious, since we are not deriving the relations from direct inspection of the mind-brain nexus: we are not examining that nexus and concluding that a particular relation is the right one to characterize it. Rather, we are extrapolating the relation from elsewhere and postulating that it applies, not observing that it does. Thus there is a big difference between our knowledge in the two cases: we can experimentally establish that heat is molecular motion, for example, but not that pain is C-fiber firing. Or, to take a more transparent case, we can observe that Superman is Clark Kent simply by seeing Clark Kent change into his Superman clothes and fly off; but we can’t do anything comparable with the claim that mental events are identical to brain events—we can’t witness the transformation. Instead we postulate an identity; we don’t discover it. It is the same with all other ordinary identity statements: we empirically discover that these identities hold. So it is not a mere theory that a is identical to b; it is an established fact, known by empirical means. By contrast, the identity theory of mind and brain is a speculative theory, a bold conjecture, not something we have empirically established to be true. And similarly for other theories of the relation between mind and brain, such as that mental events are composed of physical events or are spatially coincident with them. True, we can empirically establish correlations, but the step to identity or composition is always a move away from observation—a philosophical theory rather than a piece of empirical science. We apply relations drawn from elsewhere, but we don’t carry over the methods that are generally used to assert their existence. Thus the theories remain controversial (but no one seriously disputes that Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus or that water consists of H2O). The justification for asserting the theories tends to be abstract and general—isn’t it more parsimonious to assume identity, and good to avoid the absurdities of dualism? It is never stated that we have simply discovered by observation that pain is the same as C-fiber firing—by looking at it from different angles or by using a microscope or by tracing it over time. We discovered that butterflies and caterpillars are the same organism by observing the chrysalis stage; we didn’t just posit the identity on the grounds of Occam’s razor or fear of butterfly-caterpillar dualism.

It would obviously be better to arrive at a theory of the mind-brain relation by examining the case directly. After all, it may be that physically based relations of the familiar kinds do not apply in this case—maybe there is a special kind of relation that connects the mental with the neural. So shouldn’t we concentrate our attention on the specifics of the mind-brain nexus and work from there? The trouble with this is that nothing suggests itself. We don’t get even a hint of what the relation might be by introspecting our pains and observing our brains; we find only correlations not a theory of the connection between the correlated entities. Maybe they are identical, but nothing in what we observe suggests as much; they don’t even seem similar. At least we can see that Hesperus and Phosphorus are both planets, and that Superman and Clark Kent are both men, but we can’t see that pain and C-fibers are both anything (except maybe events); there is not even a hint of the possibility of identity (or composition, etc.). If the relation is that of identity, this remains hidden from us, not something that reveals itself to diligent observation. Why? Why does the mind hide its true relation to the brain, and hide it so well? If it is true that pains are composed of strands of C-fiber, then why is it that nothing in our experience suggests that? Why can’t neuroscience prove it? Physics proved that heat is molecular motion, chemistry proved that water is H2O, biology proved that the heartbeat is a pumping muscle, and astronomy proved that Hesperus is Phosphorus; but neuroscience is incapable of proving that pain is identical to C-fiber firing. Is that perhaps because it isn’t? Does it bear some other relation to the correlated brain events, some relation we don’t know about, or can’t even imagine?

It is possible that we are thinking about this all wrong. We shouldn’t be hunting for relations drawn from outside our area of interest—the mind-brain connection—and then postulating that such relations capture that connection. We should instead focus on the case at hand and try to forge a theory of the psychophysical nexus that respects its special character. Don’t think, look! The problem is that nothing comes to mind: we look, but we don’t find. The psychophysical nexus just stares blankly back at us, elusive and enigmatic. Here the pain, there the brain: but where the linkage? There must be some sort of intimate relation, since the two are not just accidentally joined, but for the life of us we can’t figure out what it is. Let me introduce some neologisms: let’s say that the brain state “mentalizes” and the pain state “physicalizes”—that is, they each do something that leads to the other. This doesn’t tell us how they do these things, only that they do. Then the question is what these peculiar relations involve: what theory of them is correct? Pain is such that it physicalizes itself as C-fiber firing, and C-fiber firing is such that it mentalizes itself as pain: now the question is how that happens. A formidable question indeed, and one formulated by using a pair of murky neologisms; and yet it at least points us in the right direction—what is it to mentalize and physicalize? We know what it is for Phosphorus to “Hesperusize”—to follow the same path through space and time as Hesperus does—but what is it for C-fibers to mentalize (specifically painize)? That is the question; and we will not seek to answer it by borrowing concepts drawn from somewhere else. We need concepts tailored specifically to the case at hand. Whether we can find or devise such concepts is another matter. Mysterians remain doubtful: we simply have no viable way to infer the relation from the relata. There might be identity for all we know, but the usual paradigms of empirically discovered identities provide no guidance in this alien territory, being mere impositions from outside. All we can claim is that the relation must be close, intimate, and transparent (not brute). It must be such that it takes the enigma out of the connection, and makes it something other than a mere conjecture, backed by nothing but Occam’s razor and dualism-phobia. It must be like the empirical discoveries that underlie ordinary assertions of identity (“I saw Clark Kent put on his Superman clothes and then fly off”). As things stand, however, we have no clue about how to do any of this, but merely struggle with concepts borrowed from areas less intractable, as in “You know what identity is from the case of Hesperus and Phosphorus; well, mind and brain is just like that”. But it is not just like that because we can’t apply the methods used to establish the former identity to establish the latter (putative) identity. What I tend to believe is that the psychophysical nexus is nothing like the standard paradigms, just in a different league or galaxy; and that it is completely misguided to employ the usual types of relations in an effort to understand it. It is not so much that the identity theory, say, is false as that it provides no illumination at all, because the standard cases of identity are so far removed from the case at hand. We need a completely new way of thinking if we are to get anywhere in grasping the true nature of the mind-brain connection; and it is a real question whether this new way is available to us. What is certain is that we will never achieve it if we lazily rely on concepts designed for a quite different purpose. It is as if we are trying to understand electromagnetic phenomena solely on the basis of traditional mechanics instead of recognizing that something completely different is afoot, calling for a new conceptual apparatus.[1] The very idea of using concepts like identity and composition, explained by way of the standard paradigms, is hopelessly wide of the mark, signaling desperation rather than insight. We should forget all such paradigms and start afresh, always being aware that there is no guarantee of success. But failure is better than complacent illusion.[2]

 

[1] Actually this analogy understates the case, but you get my point. We don’t just need a paradigm shift but a complete conceptual reboot, a new mind almost.

[2] I can put the point very simply: it is no use trying to construct a theory of the psychophysical nexus by comparing it to cases in which nothing mental is involved. This is merely the triumph of wishful thinking over honest toil.

 

 

What is Nature?

 

What falls under the concept of nature and what does not? What does the concept include and what does it exclude? The OED defines “nature” as follows: “the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, and the landscape, as opposed to humans or human creations”. The Cambridge Dictionary gives us: “all the animals, plants, rocks, etc. in the world and all the features, forces, and processes that happen or exist independently of people, such as weather, the sea, mountains, the production of young animals or plants, and growth”. Construed as analyses of the concept, or even as descriptions of the common use of the word “nature”, these attempts at definition leave much to be desired. First and most glaring, they exclude human beings from nature: human nature is not taken to be part of nature. This is totally arbitrary and flagrantly pre-Darwinian: didn’t we descend from apes, and aren’t apes part of nature? Even if you think humans contain a divine spark—an immortal soul—you surely accept that some aspects of human nature belong to nature (respiration, digestion). What would Martins think if they visited earth—that those funny-looking featherless bipeds are not part of nature? What then are they a part of? Second, the OED explicitly, and the Cambridge Dictionary implicitly, excludes minds from nature: it is the phenomena of the physical world that are said to constitute nature.[1] So minds are not deemed part of nature, even though the organisms that have them are. How is that defensible? Minds evolved, have a genetic basis, and function to aid survival—all the marks of life on earth: they are surely as much a part of nature as bodies. Third, the creations of humans are declared not to be part of nature either. What does this include? Dwellings, weapons, spoken language, culture, and roads would seem to be creations of humans—are they not parts of nature? Aren’t animal nests, hives, burrows, bowers, webs, and tools part of nature? But if so, why are human artifacts declared external to nature (not to mention footprints and prepared food)? Finally, there is no mention of things traditionally supposed outside of nature, particularly the supernatural. Presumably this is intended by implication, since God, angels, and ghosts are not usually thought of as “phenomena of the physical world”, but the point bears emphasis: the concept of nature is supposed to contrast with what is beyond nature—what transcends it, flouts its laws. Heaven is not a department of nature and God himself is not an inhabitant of nature; part of the meaning of “nature” is that these items are not elements of the entity denoted. Nature is what is not supernatural—what is of the earth, sublunary, tangible, non-miraculous, and perishable.

So can we do better? In fact the concept is difficult to define explicitly, ubiquitous as it is. One might even be tempted to wax family resemblance about it. But I think two points are relatively clear: (a) nature is not supernatural and (b) nature is not fictional. As to (b), fictional worlds don’t belong to the realm of nature: for it is at least a necessary condition of being in nature that the thing in question exists. Horses are in nature but unicorns are out, Shakespeare is in but Hamlet is out. You can’t be a part of nature unless you are real. Of course fiction itself can be part of nature—written texts, oral traditions, inner stories, dreams—but not the things fiction talks about. Putting these two points together, then, we can say that nature is what is real and not supernatural: intuitively, it is what exists here, in this world with us, alongside animals, plants, and rocks. It is not otherworldly or purely imaginary. But this still leaves a lot of latitude and unclarity. Are laws of nature part of nature (e.g. the law of entropy)? What if there is a soul in man and a vital spirit in animals? What if atoms don’t really exist? To these questions I think we should answer as follows. Laws of nature are part of nature, since they are inseparable from it, simply being very general. Even if humans and animals contain a part that is not of nature, they contain parts that are, so they do belong to nature (as well as to something outside of it perhaps). If indeed atoms are fictions, then they do not qualify as inhabitants of nature, since what is fictional is not part of nature. This third point should be emphasized: fictionalism about a class of entities is incompatible with counting them as parts of nature. According to Berkeley, material objects are not a part of nature, since matter is a philosopher’s fiction (though not tables, chairs, etc.). According to positivism, the unobservable entities of physics are “logical fictions” that don’t really exist, so they are not elements of nature. Nature might be composed solely of mental entities with nothing “physical” at all; nature is not by definition coterminous with the physical (whatever exactly that word means). Maybe nature consists entirely of consciousness in the manner of panpsychism. This is a matter of what your metaphysics happens to be not of the very meaning of “nature”. In Berkeley’s system nature consists of ideas in the minds of finite spirits and in the mind of the infinite spirit, with matter deemed fictional. For a materialist nature consists of matter as described by physics, while anything not of this kind lies outside of nature, possibly in an immaterial realm. The concept of nature is strictly neutral between these possibilities. That is why I defined it as what is non-fictional and non-supernatural.

The question that particularly interests me once we have these definitional issues out of the way is this: do logic and mathematics (and also ethics) lie within nature or outside of nature? I have never seen this question discussed, but I think most philosophers would be inclined not to include these domains within nature: for they are too abstract and ethereal (“non-empirical”) to belong with animals, plants, rocks, and landscapes (or even human organisms). Ethics, in particular, is not part of nature, being steeped in things called norms—you can’t derive an “ought” from an “is”, and obligations are not natural entities like hearts, livers, and atoms. Now this decision might be grounded in fictionalism: if you believe that logic, mathematics, and ethics are all about fictional entities, then you won’t be inclined to include them in an inventory of the contents of nature. Nature abhors the non-existent. But that is not the majority view—so the question is where these areas fall according to other views. If we adopt subjectivism or psychologism about logic, mathematics, and ethics, then we assimilate them to the psychological—and then they belong to nature along with other psychological realities. Mathematics becomes a human creation, an artifact of sorts, and so falls within nature alongside other human artifacts, material and mental; and similarly for logic and ethics. The tough case is realism in these three areas: does Platonism or moral realism exclude mathematics, logic, and ethics from nature? I find myself inclined to dispute this—I tend to suppose that numbers and values are part of nature. I already think that nature includes human creations, including art, science, politics, and philosophy—these are all parts of nature, as that notion is properly understood—but I also think that other realities belong there too. They don’t belong with the supernatural (if such there be), despite their distinctive character; they belong with the rest of nature. They are part of what exists without any supernatural backing or miraculous infusion. Nature is what is real and not supernatural—and this description applies to logic, mathematics, and ethics (understood realistically). So the concept of nature has nothing intrinsically to do with the physical (again, whatever that means), nor indeed with the psychological—it includes even what has traditionally been regarded as “non-empirical” (a priori). Norms and numbers are thus as much part of nature as wings and mountains.[2] Where else would you locate them? Not in the fictional world (if you reject fictionalism) and not in the divine world (if you believe in such a thing), so nature seems the natural place to locate them. Why not locate them there—isn’t it just a prejudice to keep them outside of what we call nature? After all, they are closely intertwined with things already admitted to nature—the world of physics, the process of reasoning, and human action—so why insist on extruding them from the world of nature? Why try to make another world for them to live in? If this requires an expansion of the usual assumed extension of the concept, then so be it—we need to expand well beyond the dictionary definitions anyway. Hasn’t human thought already expanded the concept of nature well beyond its initial range by extending it to human and animal minds, so why stop at the logical, mathematical, and ethical? Let them in, you will feel better for it. For the notion of nature has acquired a strongly honorific connotation: it is good to be part of nature—a member of the naturalist’s club—and vaguely disreputable to linger at the gates unable to gain entrance. We need to be more inclusive with the concept of nature, less snooty and hidebound. So I suggest welcoming logic, mathematics, and ethics into the fold—they too can be proud members of the Nature Club (with all the perks attaching). We needn’t refashion them in order to make them eligible; they can come as they are, in all their glorious singularity. You can be as Platonist as you like and still be greeted as a fully paid up member. We can’t let you into the Nature Club if you are a figment or a deity—we have to keep up standards—but logic, mathematics, and ethics are neither, so they can be happily admitted. The expanding circle includes them without strain or solecism.[3] Mother nature has a wide embrace. Perhaps indeed with the passage of time these new members might be taken as exemplars of their class, not only members in good standing but respected and senior representatives of the Nature Club. They might be listed first in the roster of honorable members. Wouldn’t it be splendid if ethics were to become President of the Society of Nature? In the book of nature ethical norms might stand out for their authenticity, their natural claim to the title. If you want to know what nature is, you need look no further than ethics—though other items no doubt belong to nature too (e.g. atoms and squirrels).

There are other terms that vie with “nature” for its inclusive exclusiveness such as “the universe”, “the cosmos”, “Creation”, “the world”, “reality”. To belong to the extension of these terms is a mark of distinction, distancing you from the merely fictional and (dubiously) divine. But we can hope to bring logic, mathematics, and ethics under such umbrella terms along with “nature”, thereby securing them ontological respectability. Norms and numbers are thus constituents of the universe, elements of Creation, inhabitants of the cosmos, creatures of the actual world, as real as anything—yet they are what they are and not another thing. They shouldn’t be left out in the wilderness, shunned even by the fictional and supernatural; they should be accepted as bona fide parts of nature. Let’s not multiply worlds unnecessarily. If it turns out that there is no supernatural world, then there will only be the natural world left (fictional worlds not being real), and that world is capacious enough to include those hitherto excluded members.[4]

 

Colin M

[1] How the editors of the OED would define “physical” in this context is left unclear, and the difficulties are notorious. Is gravity physical (Newton declared it “occult”)? What about parental behavior in animals? Perhaps they merely mean “non-psychological” (not that the concept of the psychological is free of difficulty).

[2] What applies to numbers applies equally (if not more so) to geometric forms: they too belong to nature, as do space and time. On the other hand, in addition to fictional worlds, nonsense worlds also fail to belong to nature: mome raths and borogroves are not parts of nature, even if non-fictionally meant. Are merely possible worlds part of nature? That’s a tough one, which I leave for homework.

[3] There seems to be a natural (though regrettable) human tendency to restrict honorific concepts more narrowly than is reasonable—witness the concepts person, right, true, physical, reason, rational, and others. The concept of nature belongs to this list: people have a tendency to restrict it to certain preferred examples or exaggerate certain alleged paradigms (mountains, rivers, pretty birds). When people say they are “nature lovers” this is primarily what they have in mind, so that mathematics, logic, and ethics don’t get a look in. Truly enlightened nature lovers, however, adopt a more inclusive stance.

[4] Is philosophical ethics part of nature? Is moral realism as a theory part of nature? Is Platonism as a doctrine part of nature? The answer to all three questions is yes, since they are aspects or expressions of human nature (language and belief being part of human nature). Secularism leads naturally to the hegemony of nature. The less real the supernatural seems to you the less likely you will be to compare exceptional cases to it; thus nature swallows up the real in proportion as it replaces the supernatural. In the days when the supernatural seemed everywhere it was easy to assign mathematics, logic, and ethics to a place at least adjacent to the supernatural realm; but once that world was eclipsed these areas needed a new home–and nature seems the natural place to put them. Reality thus merges with nature in a secular age.