Externalism Re-Formulated

 

 

There is quite a deal of debate about whether externalism is true but not much about what it means. We know the thought experiments (Twin Earth etc.) but how should we formulate their conclusion? Putnam puts it by saying that meanings are not “in the head”—and by extension mental content is not “in the head”. But that is too crude: what if the brain was not in the head and yet content supervenes on brain states? The brain is in your chest instead, but it fully fixes everything you think and mean. Is that externalism? Obviously not. So should we say that externalism is the view that mental content is not in the brain? But that would be agreed to by a dualist for non-externalist reasons; and besides do we really want to commit the externalist to holding that there is anything mental that is literally in the brain? That sounds like a materialist speaking not an externalist: it isn’t that the externalist holds that some of the mind is in the brain and some isn’t—he or she may reject such spatial talk as a category mistake. Similarly, we don’t want to say that externalism holds that the mind is spatially external to the body and brain—as it might be, over there. Nothing in the intuitions surrounding the usual thought experiments implies that mental content is distributed over the spatially remote, still less that the mind extends over space. Space doesn’t come into it. We can accept externalism for mathematical thought without supposing that numbers exist at some distance from the thinker’s body. Likewise we can defend an externalist position for psychological concepts without supposing that minds are located in space: other people’s mental states may be said to fix my concepts for those states without assuming that the states in question occupy space. For example, there may be two types of mental illness on earth and twin earth that can’t be distinguished by the people there and yet the term for these two types has different reference (say, schizophrenia and twitzophrenia). We can stipulate this kind of case without assuming that states of mind are spatially located.

We might try saying that externalism is the view that causal relations to the environment enter into content determination: but this presupposes that all externalist content is caused by what it is about (what about thoughts concerning numbers?), and what is to be meant by the “environment”? Are platonic forms in the environment? What about other people’s mental states? Doesn’t the physical environment start just where the skin stops, i.e. well short of things like water? A better approach would be to advert to introspection: externalism says that introspection doesn’t reveal the full nature of one’s mental contents. That applies to natural kind cases like H2O and XYZ, but it also applies to any mental state whose nature is not given to introspection, like abilities and traits of character. Just because my psychology is not fully known to me by introspection doesn’t imply that my mind is fixed by something “external”. Nor will the concept of the physical help us, as in “Mental content is fixed by the physical world”. That is clearly not sufficient since brain states are physical if anything is, but it is also not necessary. Suppose you are an idealist a la Berkeley: you hold that everything is an idea in the mind of God. Then twin earth is an idea just like earth, so that what fixes the meaning of “water” in the two places is something mental, viz. God’s ideas of H2O and XYZ. Thus you can be an externalist about “water” while accepting that nothing physical is involved: idealism and externalism are logically compatible.

I think the best we can do is the following: externalism is the doctrine that the phenomenology of a mental state does not wholly fix the content of that state but that something not identical to the state must be invoked. Thus our phenomenology of water (and “water”) does not fix the meaning of that word but something not identical to what has that phenomenology does, viz. water. Here we make no reference to location, space, externality, causation, the environment, or the physical—we merely speak of phenomenology and identity. Something not identical to anything in the state that has a phenomenology enters the individuation of the state. Numbers, natural kinds, individual objects, and other minds are not identical to anything in the state of mind that has a certain phenomenology, yet they fix at least part of the content of that state (“wide content”). The essence of the doctrine, then, is that the mind is not individuated purely phenomenologically, even when dealing with states that have a phenomenology (and have it essentially). It is a form of anti-subjectivism in one sense of “subjective”. This says nothing about supervenience on brain states, or the causal impact of the physical environment, or spatial separation; it is purely a point about phenomenology and what it doesn’t fix. To cover the full range of cases we use the abstract topic-neutral concept of identity not relations like spatial separation or causation or non-supervenience on brain states. That is the real logical thrust of the doctrine labeled “externalism”: we could say that it invokes something extrinsic to phenomenology—“external” in that non-spatial sense. Instead of saying “meaning isn’t in the head” we can say, “meaning isn’t in the phenomenology”, where the “in” here is not spatial. Intuitively, what confers content is not identical to the mental state on which content is conferred—it could be a number, a natural kind, a type of mental phenomenon, or an individual object. It stands outside (careful!) the representational state and yet it fixes that state’s content. In particular, it is not identical to the phenomenological character of the state. The thesis is really about the relation between phenomenology and meaning with all the other formulations more or less misleading. This is why we focus on how it seems to the speakers on earth and twin earth—for the question is whether the identity of seeming implies identity of meaning. Whether their brains are in the same state is beside the point, as is the question of what kind of thing earth and twin earth are (whether material objects or ideas in the mind of God). We do better to formulate the thought experiment by specifying that speakers on earth and twin earth are phenomenological twins and leave it at that.[1]

 

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[1] After all, nobody really thinks that brain states alone can distinguish the two meanings of “water” independently of their impact on phenomenological state. That is, no one is a non-psychological internalist, holding that purely physical brain states on earth and twin earth can force a distinction of meaning. It was always about whether subjective facts are the sole determinant of semantic facts, not internal facts more generally.

 

 

Communication and Language

 

 

It is commonly supposed that the use of language in communication is its primary use. There is either nothing else that is language or anything else is an internalized version of outer speech. But in fact communication itself presupposes that language exists in another form and is not self-sustaining. First, communication is precisely the conveying of thought from one person to another, but this thought must exist in some symbolic medium, so it is required that sender and receiver share a language-like cognitive structure. Suppose I am thinking about a problem, talking to myself the while, and eventually I decide to communicate my conclusion to you: I say out loud “We had better take a left”. I have a thought and I attempt to transmit it to you, causing you to have the same thought; but this thought is in both cases a representational entity. Communication is the communication ofsomething, and that thing has to have properties that are encoded in communicative speech. It can’t be just unrelated to the speech act that conveys it; it must map onto the speech act, intelligibly so. Often, of course, it simply is an internal act of speech. The case is not like saying “I’m in pain” because that is not a case of communicating pain—I am not causing you to share my pain. But in communication I am causing you to share my thought, so my method must capture what is constitutively true of the thought; it must recapitulate the thought in some way. But what could this recapitulation be except a sharing of form? So a speech act of communication presupposes a prior instantiation of language in the mind of the speaker in the form of a thought. No communication without thought transmission, but also the transmitted thought must be alike in nature to the means of transmission; otherwise it is not communicated. If we regard language as primarily an instrument of thought, this is easy to understand: the internal language is simply translated into external language in acts of communication. But if we insist that outer speech is the only linguistic reality, we have trouble even explaining what communication is. For what precisely is it that gets communicated?

Second, speech acts require speech intentions. If I say, “It’s raining” I do so by forming an intention to say those words, just as if I raise my umbrella I form an intention to act in that way. So I have the intention to say, “It’s raining”. Acts of communication require intentions to make certain utterances.[1] But those intentions embed a reference to language: you intend to say the words “It’s raining”—this is the content of your intention. That implies that language exists in your mind prior to the act of external utterance, so it cannot be the product of your external speech. Speech acts require speech intentions, but speech intentions make reference to language, so the former cannot be the basis of the latter. In order to learn to communicate with language we have to learn to have linguistic intentions, but those intentions are already steeped in language, so communication cannot be prior to linguistic intentions. To put it differently, communication requires linguistic plans, but linguistic plans involve the ability to use language internally, so we can’t hope to base internal language use on external language use, let alone deny the existence of any language use other than overt communicative language use. Even if language were primarily used for communication, that would still require that language exists in another form—in this case as embedded in intentions. And since communication is precisely the communication of thought, the alleged primacy of communication would still require that language exists in the form of thought. Thus we cannot derive from the primacy of communication thesis the claim that language has no other form, or that whatever other forms of language exist they must depend on the outer form. The far more natural thesis is that language is not primarily a means of communication, still less is it identical to outer speech acts, but that it has an existence that is independent of such public expressions of language. That is, there are inner instantiations of language, in both thought and intention, and these get expressed, contingently so, in acts of outer speech. Outer speech is consequential not constitutive.[2]

 

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[1] If you blanch at the word “intends” here, we can always replace it with something more neutral and sub-personal such as “directs” (cf. Chomsky’s “cognize”): the essential point is that the vocal system will include a preparatory phase of internal processing leading up to the actual utterance of the words determined on inwardly. Also, the usual strictures about implicature apply to using the familiar word “intends”, which I prefer: just because we don’t normally say that someone intends to say what they actually say doesn’t mean that it isn’t true.

[2] The idea that human language is identical to outer speech is well nigh universal in recent philosophy of language, though seldom explicitly stated, no doubt as a result of the prevalence of behaviorism. Yet it seems fairly easily refuted by the points made above. It is amazing what a stranglehold behaviorism has had despite its obvious weaknesses: it qualifies as an ideology and not merely a rational doctrine.

 

 

The Certainty Principle

 

 

The Uncertainty Principle in physics comes as no surprise to a skeptic. We can’t know the position and velocity of a subatomic particle—so what? We can’t know a lot of things, including the position and velocity of an elephant. We think we can know that—or we think it when we are not thinking—but elementary reflection quickly convinces us that no such knowledge is possible for human beings. Newton’s physics is as uncertain as Heisenberg’s once we get critical about knowledge. Knowledge is basically an effect of the world, and the world does not affect us in such a way as to reveal its full nature. That should not surprise anyone according to the skeptic. Everything is subject the Uncertainty Principle—the truism that we can’t be certain of anything.

But wait: is that principle universally true? Can’t I know the intensity and quality of my present sensations? It is not that knowledge of the one automatically rules out knowledge of the other, or that there is some insuperable barrier to knowledge here. Indeed, I can be certain of the properties of my consciousness, so that skepticism gets no purchase: it is laid out before me, fully and transparently. True, the unconscious is subject to an uncertainty principle, like the body, but the conscious mind is subject to a Certainty Principle—the principle, namely, that I know with certainty the present state of my consciousness. I can’t know my brain in this way, but I can know the consciousness that depends on my brain. So consciousness possesses a remarkable epistemic property—it admits of certain knowledge. The physical world is subject to the Uncertainty Principle, both in physics and more generally, but the mental world is subject to a Certainty Principle. Amazing! How could anything in reality produce effects on us that guarantee knowledge of that thing? How does consciousness manage to convey its inner nature so perfectly? That seems contrary to the very nature of knowledge and yet it is apparently true. It even has an air of paradox about it—real yet fully known.

It doesn’t normally strike us that way because we are so familiar with consciousness, but a simple thought experiment makes us see how strange the situation really is. Suppose we were brought up knowing all about quantum theory: Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is second nature to us, as familiar as elementary arithmetic. Moreover, our teachers have placed this principle in the context of general skepticism: we are thoroughly versed in skeptical thought and take it for granted in our daily lives. Epistemic limits are bread and butter to us. However, no one has ever said anything to us about consciousness—that subject has been off limits, possibly to discourage undue introspection. But this has not prevented a group of renegade thinkers from investigating the topic: they want to find out the truth about this aspect of nature. They have made some interesting discoveries about consciousness such as that it has intentionality and subjectivity and that it varies in certain ways with facts about the physical world. So far, though, no one has broached the question of the epistemology of consciousness, so ingrained is the acceptance of epistemic modesty. But one intrepid thinker takes the revolutionary step of questioning the general belief in Uncertainty and announces that there is something in the world that admits of complete Certainty. This is shocking, maybe even paradoxical, because the relation between reality and our epistemic faculties is generally believed not to admit of such a thing, and yet upon examination it turns out that consciousness is an exception to the general rule. Naturally the scientific world is in an uproar, but people have to admit that this brave thinker is onto something: the Certainty Principle gradually gains acceptance, despite some initial resistance. We have discovered that nature contains pockets that can be known with certainty—we can even know the intensity and quality of a sensation simultaneously! The Certainty Principle is added to the Uncertainty Principle as a pillar of science—though some people find it hard to accept the new paradigm, stubbornly insisting that it is simply not possible for any knowledge to escape the Uncertainty build into all human knowledge (so called). There must be some error in the reasoning that leads to that conclusion, or experiments are cited that purport to show that contrary to appearances error can creep into self-knowledge. Actually whenever someone takes himself to know both the intensity and quality of a sensation he is always a bit wrong about one of these properties. However, this is a minority position, with most people accepting the newly discovered Certainty Principle. A Nobel Prize eventually ensues.[1]

 

[1] Motto: what counts as a surprising discovery depends on background belief.

 

A Theory of Language

 

In A Theory of Justice Rawls suggests a thought experiment designed to rid us of biases in our thinking about justice, labeled the Original Position. We find ourselves occupying a certain position in society, perhaps an unfairly privileged one, and we need a way to prescind from this contingency, so we imagine ourselves not to have knowledge of the facts of our actual position. In this way we can gain an impartial perspective on what constitutes a just distribution of resources. I want to suggest something similar in the philosophy of language: we are familiar with certain concepts and perspectives on our language that arise from the contingencies of our linguistic history, but these may give us a biased view of the real nature of language, so we need a way to prescind from such contingencies. We need to imagine ourselves not possessing our customary knowledge, stripped down to the basics of linguistic life; then we can start from scratch in producing a theory of language. That theory might be quite revisionary of our ordinary conceptions, as Rawls’s theory is quite revisionary of common assumptions about justice. He was trying to get to the very heart of justice; we are trying to get to the very heart of language—by suspending common assumptions (the method is also similar to Husserl’s epoche). So: what does our commonsense theory of language look like and where might it go wrong?[1]

Our commonsense understanding of language invokes a range of concepts familiar to philosophers of language: meaning, reference, sense, ambiguity, communication, intention, convention, speech act, assertion, command, question, grammar, logical form, use, word, sentence, speaker, hearer, implication and implicature, truth conditions, translation, and others. These make up the tacit theory we bring to bear on language, which are then converted into theoretical terms of an overall theory. They belong to a semantic meta-language. Maybe we acquire this meta-language in the course of our linguistic upbringing, maybe it has an innate component: in either case it comes to us naturally and spontaneously, without any self-consciously explicit theory construction. So let’s imagine that we do not acquire this set of concepts in the way we do but rather reach linguistic maturity without developing any such self-understanding: we speak an object language (say, English) but we don’t speak a meta-language about it—we have no thoughts at all about the nature of the language we speak. We don’t even have the concept of meaning. Perhaps animals that use symbolic systems—whales and dolphins, say—are in this cognitive situation: they speak and listen but they don’t theorize at all. They just act and react. Then the question is what account of language might we develop starting from this position of complete ignorance. Would it resemble the theories we currently espouse? Would it employ the concepts we employ now? We have no folk semantics to rely on, so what would a properly scientific semantics look like? If we could wipe the slate clean, what would we write on it starting from scratch? Would everything from our folk semantics survive, or just some, or none? In particular, are there any biases built into our existing theories, arising from the contingencies of our history?

Certainly there have been philosophers (and linguists and psychologists) who have detected such biases and recommended rejecting them. Quine, say, recommends rejecting most of folk semantics as irredeemably unscientific: meaning, reference, intention, synonymy, etc. He proposes replacing this obsolete theory with a behaviorist theory: the central concepts of scientific semantics are stimulus and response, stimulus meaning, holism, indeterminacy, and radical translation. Wittgenstein attacked the idea, supposedly part of common sense, that every word functions as a name, which he attributed to a natural human failure not to make distinctions; and he proposed replacing concepts like denotation with the concept of use. Others have rejected sense or meaning as anything over and above reference. Still others have expanded folk semantic concepts to include revisionary theories of language, as with Frege’s semantic theory (e.g. sentences denote truth-values construed as objects). The idea of criticizing our habitual thinking about language has not been off the table, but it has not been as radical as the sort of criticism we see in physics or biology (except perhaps in the case of Quine). And it has not been suggested that we are prone to systematic error because of a historical contingency regarding language, making us miss the essence of language. The contingency I have in mind is that we happen to use language for communication, but this is not the primary or original manifestation of language. We might never have used language to communicate, but we have shaped our understanding of language through consideration of this contingent expression of linguistic mastery. To put it directly: the use of language as a tool of thought is the primary manifestation of language, and it is not subsumable under the kinds of concepts we bring to language used as a vehicle of communication. If we had started by considering this kind of internal language, we would have arrived at a very different understanding of the essence of language; as it is we have been biased by the contingent circumstance that we use language to communicate. For various reasons communicative uses of language are salient to us, and certainly they require their own treatment, but they are not the only or the central uses to which language may be put. They are, in fact, derivative and parasitic, reflecting more about the human sensory-motor system than the inner workings of language as such.

I am not going to defend the cognitive view of language here—the idea that language is primarily a tool for thinking.[2] I will merely observe that a huge amount of language use goes on outside of any communicative context, being “in the head”. We talk to ourselves constantly and use language to help us solve problems (as well as being a resource for contemplation). A person can lack the ability to speak and hear and yet still employ language internally. A reasonable hypothesis is that language evolved initially as a cognitive aid and only later become adapted for communicative use (about 200,000 years ago by most estimates). It became integrated with our sensory-motor systems, thus inheriting their architectural features. Prior to that it functioned very much like our imagination—another human faculty that evolved as an aid to thought and which exists primarily as an internal system. We may suppose that language and imagination coexisted in the human mind for a considerable time quite cut off from any direct behavioral expression; they were not initially designed as communicative systems. Today imagination is still in this condition, but language was partially repurposed as a means of communication while preserving its cognitive function. Both imagination and language are essentially combinatorial systems with infinite potential, and this confers great utility on them in solving problems; but whether this structural feature becomes expressed in vocal speech is entirely contingent. We can imagine imagination achieving public expression in somewhat the way language has by coopting a sensory-motor system that reveals imaginative acts as they occur—say, by displaying visible images on the body of the organism—but as things stand this adaptation has not occurred. Likewise language could have remained internal and performed its cognitive function without the evolution of a sensory-motor system that embeds it in acts of communication. It seems to me entirely possible that many animals employ an internal symbolic system in their cognitive lives—a language of thought essentially—without ever transitioning to spoken language.[3] That is just an entirely different biological system with a different function and morphology (sounds, gestures, larynx, ears). The human species has been using internal language for its entire history, reaping the cognitive benefits, and only lately began incorporating it into their communicative repertoire. Presumably a mutation (or combination of them) led to this ability long before any thought of communication entered the picture: language has been aiding thought, solving problems, enabling contemplation, for lo these many years, well before overt speech took off. If speech were to cease tomorrow by some catastrophe, language would carry on performing its vital cognitive function. Of course, internal language use is inaudible and invisible, while external language use is noisy and visible (consider sign language), which may give salience to the latter compared to the former; but in point of biological priority, functional utility, and sheer pervasiveness internal language surely has the edge. We talk to ourselves all day but only occasionally do we open our mouths (and what an effort it is!). Internal language is woven into our entire conscious life (even when sleeping). Without it our minds would be much diminished.

The point of urging this perspective on language is to expose the parochial character of our current theorizing about language—the bias built into it, the skewed perception. Suppose we had never developed the ability to speak externally, confining ourselves to inner speech: what would the theory of language look like then? The entire apparatus of folk semantics for outer language (better, outer expression of language) would be redundant in so far as that apparatus is directed to communication. Two epistemic features of communicative speech may be noted: uncertainty about what the speaker has in mind and uncertainty about his or her truthfulness. We often don’t know who or what the speaker is referring to (has in mind) and we don’t know how reliable she is. Thus we must bring to bear the concept of reference and the concept of truthfulness. There is an epistemic gap between speaker and hearer—the hearer can’t read the speaker’s mind—and that gap must be negotiated in acts of communication. But no such gap obtains between the user of internal language and the recipient of such use. So there need be no concerns about what the speaker has in mind or whether he is being truthful. These reasons for bringing in the concepts of reference and truth do not exist for the internal use of language—so what purpose do they serve in the theory of internal language? The first thing we would light upon in theorizing about this use of language is its combinatorial structure, because that is what powers its central function—creative thought, problem solving. If we did come up with the concepts of reference and truth it would be an afterthought not a central concern, as it is for public language. Problem-solving potential would be the central concept, and this would lead us to focus on the constitutive structure of language—on syntax, basically. Grammar, recursion, infinite scope, embedding, transformations—these would be the properties to engage us. These are what drive the cognitive engine, making language apt for its function.

What about meaning? Would we make a point of assigning meaning to internal language? The word “mean” has two uses: applied to speakers and applied to words. The OED gives this for “mean”: “intend” and “intend to convey or refer to”. The primary meaning of the word is in application to agents who mean things, linguistically as well as otherwise. Words mean things in so far as people mean things by them (this connection is articulated in Grice’s account of meaning).[4] But this use of “mean” does not apply to internal language: a user of an internal sentence does not intend to convey information to anyone, still less to harbor Gricean intentions. We don’t mean things by the words we use when we engage in inner speech (that word itself is dubious—is this any kind of speaking?). But if internal language is not meant, does it mean? Is our inclination to say that it is meaningful a kind of projection from outer communicative speech? Would someone in the original linguistic position, with no spoken language to deal with, reach for the concept of meaning—our concept of meaning—in describing internal language? Maybe some notion of linguistic significance would be invoked, possibly the notion we apply to non-human languages, but would we say that our internal sentences have meaning? Who to and for what purpose? Who cares about what the sentences mean so long as they do their job—aid in problem-solving thought? I need to know what you mean in order to get information from you, but do I need to know what I mean when I am trying to solve a problem? My purpose is not to mean things by my inner sentences but to employ them in a cognitive task. So the concept of meaning seems irrelevant to internal sentences; maybe they have meaning, but who cares? What we are concerned about is their ability to facilitate cognitive functioning, which is a matter of their inner architecture and functional properties: syntax not semantics, roughly.

And so on down the line: speech act, intention, language game, convention, use, communication, assertion, command, and question—none of this is relevant to internal language. It is relevant to only one expression of language in acts of overt speech, which involves a sensory-motor apparatus extrinsic to language itself as a cognitive structure.[5] Just as vocal speech is not integral to communicative language as such (consider sign language), so overt speech in general is not integral to language as such—not part of its core. It is a relatively recent evolutionary step, not prefigured in the origins of the language faculty. Making outer speech the focus of language studies is like making those external signs of the imagination I mentioned earlier into the focus of imagination studies. What is called philosophy of language, as practiced by analytical philosophy heretofore, is really philosophy of one-expression-of-language, and not even the most central expression. It’s like focusing on writing while ignoring speech and calling that linguistics. Internal language has a far stronger claim to be basic and original. The mind consists of various faculties—mathematical, scientific, moral, imaginative, and linguistic (among others)—and the last item is no different from a locational point of view. True, we can manifest these internal faculties in external form by engaging our senses and motor capacities, but none of them is rightly seen as constituted by such exterior manifestations—including language. The theory of language must accordingly recognize that fact and shape its concepts appropriately. That will involve at least a shift of emphasis, possibly large-scale revision, in which some familiar concepts recede and others seize center stage. To put it bluntly, syntax will take over from semantics, at least as semantics is currently conceived. We have been bedazzled and distracted by the noises we make when accessing our internal language faculty and by our feeble attempts at interpersonal communication, when all along language was purring along inside us doing its vital work.[6]

[1] In physics and astronomy the analogue of position in society is position in the universe. We live on the surface of a small planet and our view of the universe is shaped by this contingency (e.g. the sun looks to rise); to do physics and astronomy correctly we need to prescind away from this and form a conception of the universe that excludes such factors. We need to replace the science we naturally assume given our contingent position with a science that gets to the heart of objective facts. We need to do this in physics and astronomy but also in theories of justice and in theories of language.

[2] Chomsky defends it in Why Only Us (2016) and What Kind of Creatures Are We? (2016).

[3] These symbolic systems might be as species-specific as human language is, so that internal discourse varies dramatically from species to species.

[4] Here is an interesting fact: we say “John means ‘unmarried male’ by ‘bachelor’” but not “John means ‘bachelor’ by ‘unmarried male’”, where we could paraphrase “means” by “intends”—despite the synonymy of the two terms. Likewise it is right to say “’bachelor’ means ‘unmarried male’” but it sounds wrong to say “’unmarried male’ means ‘bachelor’”—again despite the synonymy. This shows the affinity between “means” and “intends” and also the close connection between speaker meaning and word meaning.

[5] Ambiguity and the arbitrariness of sound-meaning pairings are properties of external speech, creating genuine problems for speakers and hearers, but they don’t trouble internal language users: we are not in doubt about which meaning we had in mind, and whatever arbitrariness there is in internal symbols poses no problem of inward interpretation. Internal language is peculiarly transparent.

[6] The conception of language I am working with will no doubt sound completely alien to the typical contemporary philosopher of language, but close students of Chomsky’s work will find it comfortably familiar. Time to get some reading done.