Externalism and Psychological Explanation

A lo largo del texto se hace una exposición detallada de temáticas y argumentos necesarios para ejecutar un análisis crítico en torno a los contenidos de varios artículos acerca del experimento “ Experimental rejection of observerindependence in the quantum world”. Dentro del apartado (3) se exponen brevemente algunas de las problemáticas elementales que presentan los artículos que son objeto de crítica, asimismo en (3.2) se halla una tabla organizada con los fragmentos específicos que se van a tratar de los mencionados (...) artículos. En el aparatado (4) se lleva a cabo una exposición detallada de las implicaciones epistemológicas y ontológicas que surgen como consecuencia de las afirmaciones de la tabla en (3.2) y se argumenta su inviabilidad. En este orden de ideas, a partir del punto (5) se hace una caracterización y claridad en torno a la noción de “loreal” tomando como referente un texto del filósofo Ian Hacking, esto con el fin de contraargumentar ante la manera artesanal y mal empleada del término “realidad” en los artículos divulgativos expuestos a crítica. En el punto (6) se expone resumidamente el contenido del paper original. Con todo lo anterior, a lo largo del punto (7), que cuenta con 4 subtítulos, se detallan descripciones y explicaciones referentes a los detalles técnicos de la mecánica cuántica que deben tenerse presentes, para entender, interpretar y reflexionar adecuadamente el problema específico en torno al cual se desarrolla la malinterpretación de los artículos divulgativos; además, cumple el fin de ofrecer al lector un recurso teórico más profundo del tema y generar claridad conceptual. Este apartado cuenta con detalles técnicos de suma importancia para la construcción final del argumento acá desarrollado. Finalmente, en el apartado (8), se desarrolla una explicación que sintetiza los aspectos principales de los ejes epistemológico y físicotécnico en los puntos anteriores, así expone el problema y su contraargumento de una manera más global, para pasar con claridad a la discusión y conclusiones del punto (9). (shrink)

The extended mind thesis claims that some mental states and cognitive processes extend onto the environment. Items external to the organism or exploratory actions may constitute in part mental states and cognitive processes. In Clark and Chalmers’ original paper, ‘The Extended Mind’, this thesis receives support from the parity principle and from the active externalism. In their paper, more emphasis is given to the parity principle, which is presented as neutral regarding the nature of cognition. It would be advantageous to (...) maintain that extended mental states and processes do not require a reform of our pre-theoretical view of cognition. In the present paper, I submit that we should give more emphasis on the active externalism, which, I argue, is not neutral regarding the nature of cognition. Cognition is viewed as successful adaptation to a specific task. Although this move may seem at first disadvantageous, it is necessary for the correct understanding and justification of Otto case as an example of extended mental state. Additionally, the parity principle cannot handle Weiskopf’s criticism that information registered in Otto’s notebook is not responsive to reasons. In order to address this criticism, we need to appeal to active externalism and its corresponding view of cognition. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that several recent ‘wide’ perspectives on cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, and distributed) are only partially relevant to the study of cognition. While these wide accounts override traditional methodological individualism, the study of cognition has already progressed beyond these proposed perspectives towards building integrated explanations of the mechanisms involved, including not only internal submechanisms but also interactions with others, groups, cognitive artifacts, and their environment. The claim is substantiated with reference to recent developments in the (...) study of “mindreading” and debates on emotions. We claim that the current practice in cognitive (neuro)science has undergone, in effect, a silent mechanistic revolution, and has turned from initial binary oppositions and abstract proposals towards the integration of wide perspectives with the rest of the cognitive (neuro)sciences. (shrink)

Much discussed but still unresolved is whether a subject's internal physical structure is a sufficient condition for his beliefs and desires. The question has sometimes been expressed as a question about microstructurally identical Doppelgänger. Imagine two subjects who are identical right down to the ions traversing the synapses. Their senses are stimulated in all the same ways, their bodies execute the same motions, and identical physical events mediate between the sensory inputs and the behavioral outputs. Must they have the very (...) same beliefs and desires? Let us call the thesis that they must, internalism. The internalist may hold that a physical similarity less complete than this will also guarantee identity in beliefs and desires, but certainly, he holds, perfect identity of internal physical histories will suffice.Internalism will be opposed by those who sense that the nature of mentality is closely tied to the nature of explanation in terms of mental states and that in explaining a subject's behavior we cannot abstract, even in principle, from the character of the environment in which the subject is embedded. This essay offers a partial articulation of this point of view and shows how it conflicts with internalism. A consequence of the view to be described is that our attributions of belief must reflect the probabilistic regularities in the subject's environment. As we shall see, this consequence conflicts with internalism in two ways. The first conflict turns on the fact that there is no limit on the possible variety of such regularities. The second conflict turns on the fact that two subjects might by chance have the same micro-structural history though different probabilistic regularities obtain in their respective environments. (shrink)

One of the leading exponents of W's ideas on the language games of inner and outer (the `Two Selves' operation of our personality or intentionality or EP etc.) is the prolific Daniel Hutto (DH). His approach is called `Radical Enactivism' and is well explained in numerous recent books and papers (see my review of Radicalizing Enactivism) and a new one is appearing as I write (Evolving Enactivism). It is a development of or version of the Embodied Mind ideas now current (...) and, cleansed of its jargon, it is a straightforward extension of W's 2nd and 3rd period writings (though Hutto seems only intermittently aware of this). Unfortunately in 2006 Hutto had not yet arrived at his Radical Enactivism, so much time is wasted on McDowell and Brandom and of course none of them to this day have totally digested the later W and his prescient analysis of automatic behavior-so fully in tune with contemporary research. Nor is there any discussion of Searle's groundbreaking and completely Wittgensteinian (unwittingly) disquisitions on the Construction of Social Reality. Thus his chapters 5 and 6 on Realism and Idealism etc., though superb for 2002, need a complete rewrite from a modern two systems viewpoint and I provide a start on that in my review. Much time is wasted on Davidson and Williams, etc. but one can endure them for Hutto's brilliant analyses and the frequent quotes from W. The last chapter gives his critic Rupert Read the counterblast he deserves and permits a slight update to 2006. Overall a lovely book and I eagerly await the third edition which I hope will ensue. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

The philosophy of mind has long been dominated by the view that mental states are identical with, constituted by, or grounded in brain states. Lynne Rudder Baker has been a persistent critic of this view, developing instead a theory grounded in a larger metaphysical outlook called Practical Realism. This volume is the first critical book-length evaluation of her views and criticism; leading philosophers answer her challenges and explore the consequences of Practical Realism, and Baker herself provides thoughtful replies to elaborate (...) her own position. (shrink)

The main topic of Jerry Fodor’s The Elm and the Expert,1, and the title of the first chapter, is “If Psychological processes are computational, how can psychological laws be intentional?” I focus on the first and second chapters; The first is devoted to setting up the question, the second to answering it.

Two very different forms of externalism about mental states appear prima facie unrelated: Williamson’s (1995, 2000) claim that knowledge is a mental state, and Clark & Chalmers’ (1998) extended mind hypothesis. I demonstrate, however, that the two approaches justify their radically externalist by appealing to the same argument from explanatory generality. I argue that if one accepts either Williamson’s claims or Clark & Chalmers’ claims on considerations of explanatory generality then, ceteris paribus, one should accept the other. This conclusion has (...) implications for philosophy of mind, epistemology, and cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper concerns the dialectal role of Frege Cases in the debate between Concept Cartesians and Concept Pragmatists. I take as a starting point Christopher Peacocke’s argument that, unlike Cartesianism, his ‘Fregean’ Pragmatism can account for facts about the rationality and epistemic status of certain judgments. I argue that since this argument presupposes that the rationality of thoughts turn on their content, it is thus question-begging against Cartesians, who claim that issues about rationality turn on the form, not the content, (...) of thoughts. I then consider Jerry Fodor’s argument that ‘modes of presentation’ are not identical with Fregean senses, and argue that explanatory considerations should leads us to reject his ‘syntactic’ treatment of Frege cases. Rejecting the Cartesian treatment of Frege cases, however, is not tantamount to accepting Peacocke’s claim that reasons and rationality are central to the individuation of concepts. For I argue that we can steer a middle course between Fodor’s Cartesianism and Peacocke’s Pragmatism, and adopt a form of Pragmatism that is constrained by Fregean considerations, but at the same time denies that concepts are constitutively tied to reasons and rationality. (shrink)

Some experimental studies have recently claimed to undermine semantic externalism about natural kind terms. However, it is unclear how philosophical accounts of reference can be experimentally tested. We present two externalistic adaptations of psychological placeholder essentialism, a strict externalist and a hybrid externalist view, which are experimentally testable. We examine Braisby, Franks, and Hampton's (1996) study which claims to undermine externalism, and argue that the study fails in its aims. We conducted two experiments, the results of which undermine internalism and (...) the hybrid theory, and support strict externalism. Our conclusion is that lay speakers' natural kind concepts involve a belief in an external category essence, which determines reference. (shrink)

I scrutinize the argument for why externally individuated mental content might not be causally efficacious in the explanation of an individual's physical movements. I argue that even though externalististically construed mental content might not explain an individual's physical movements, it might nonetheless explain his or her behavior on a componential view of behavior according to which an individual's physical movement is a component of his or her behavior.

Reduction has long been a favourite method of analysis in all areas of philosophy, but in recent years there has been a reaction against it. The contributors to this volume examine the motivations for such anti-reductionist views and assess their coherence and success in a number of fields.

Sven Bernecker presents an analysis of the concept of propositional (or factual) memory, and examines a number of metaphysical and epistemological issues crucial to the understanding of memory. -/- Bernecker argues that memory, unlike knowledge, implies neither belief nor justification. There are instances where memory, though hitting the mark of truth, succeeds in an epistemically defective way. This book shows that, contrary to received wisdom in epistemology, memory not only preserves epistemic features generated by other epistemic sources but also functions (...) as a source of justification and knowledge. According to the causal theory of memory argued for in this book, the dependence of memory states on past representations supports counterfactuals of the form: if the subject hadn't represented a given proposition in the past he wouldn't represent it in the present. The book argues for a version of content externalism whereupon the individuation of memory contents depends on relations the subject bears to his past physical or social environment. Moreover, Bernecker shows that memory doesn't require identity, but only similarity, of past and present attitudes and contents. The notion of content similarity is explicated in terms of the entailment relation. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that externalist accounts of cognition such as Clark and Chalmers' (1998) “active externalism” lead to an explosion of knowledge that is caused by online resources such as Wikipedia and Google. I argue that externalist accounts of cognition imply that subjects who integrate mobile Internet access in their cognitive routines have millions of standing beliefs on unexpected issues such as the birth dates of Moroccan politicians or the geographical coordinates of villages in southern (...) Indonesia. Although many externalists propose criteria for the bounds of cognition that are designed to avoid this explosion of knowledge, I argue that these criteria are flawed and that active externalism has to accept that information resources such as Wikipedia and Google constitute extended cognitive processes. (shrink)

This article examines one argument in favour of the position that the relational properties of mental states do not have causal powers over behaviour. This argument states that we establish that the relational properties of mental states do not have causal powers by considering cases where intrinsic properties remain the same but relational properties vary to see whether, under such circumstances, behaviour would ever vary. The individualist argues that behaviour will not vary with relational properties alone, which means that they (...) don’t have causal powers. Four replies are presented which all reject the premise that under such conditions behaviour can never be different, and each of these are refuted. The article concludes by arguing that knowing about the relational properties of mental states gives no predictive advantage over (and, in fact, is predictively worse than) knowing about the intrinsic properties of mental states plus context. (shrink)

The creative aspect of language use provides a set of phenomena that a science of language must explain. It is the “central fact to which any signi- ficant linguistic theory must address itself” and thus “a theory of language that neglects this ‘creative’ aspect is of only marginal interest” (Chomsky 1964: 7–8). Therefore, the form and explanatory depth of linguistic science is restricted in accordance with this aspect of language. In this paper, the implications of the creative aspect of language (...) use for a scientific theory of language will be discussed, noting the possible further implications for a science of the mind. It will be argued that a corollary of the creative aspect of language use is that a science of language can study the mechanisms that make language use possible, but that such a science cannot explain how these mechanisms enter into human action in the form of language use. (shrink)

SummaryAgainst an externalist view popularized, among others, by Evans and McDowell I shall show fiat object‐dependent thoughts are psychologically spurious. This version of externalism is contrasted with the picture that thoughts are object‐independent. It is argued that object‐independent thoughts are perspectival and context‐sensitive and that these perspectival thoughts, unlike object‐dependent thoughts: deal with delusion in an intuitive and elegant way; support psychological generalizations in a straightforward way; do not need to be fully articulated and, as such, fit with an economical (...) rule governing our thinking activity. To state my point I shall mainly concentrate on perceptual thoughts and emphasize how they are contextually related to the external world. (shrink)

The dispute between individualism and anti-individualism is about the individuation of psychological states, and individualism, on some accounts, is committed to the claim that psychological subjects together with their environments do not constitute integrated computational systems. Hence on this view the computational states that explain psychological states in computational accounts of mind will not involve the subject''s natural and social environment. Moreover, the explanation of a system''s interaction with the environment is, on this view, not the primary goal of computational (...) theorizing. Recent work in computational developmental psychology (by A. Karmiloff-Smith and J. Rutkowska) as well as artificial agents or embedded artificial systems (by L.P. Kaelbling, among others) casts doubt on these claims. In these computational models, the environment does not just trigger and sustain input for computational operations, but some computational operations actually involve environmental structures. (shrink)

This paper takes issue with Tyler Burge's claim that intentional states are nonindividualistically individuated in cognitive psychology. A discussion of current models of children's acquisition of semantic knowledge is used to motivate a thought-experiment which shows that psychologists working in this area are not committed to describing the concepts children attach to words in terms of the concepts standardly attached to those words in the child's community. The content of the child's representational states are thus not individuated with reference to (...) linguistic environment in the manner that Burge's nonindividualistic view requires. The paper concludes that the explanatory states of cognitive psychology are sometimes individualistically individuated. (shrink)

The existence of object-dependent thoughts has been doubted on the grounds that reference to such thoughts is unnecessary or 'redundant' in the psychological explanation of intentional action. This paper argues to the contrary that reference to object-dependent thoughts is necessary to the proper psychological explanation of intentional action upon objects. Section I sets out the argument for the alleged explanatory redundancy of object-dependent thoughts; an argument which turns on the coherence of an alternative 'dual-component' model of explanation. Section II rebuts (...) this argument by showing the dual-component model to be incoherent precisely because of its exclusion of object-dependent thoughts. Section III concludes with a conjecture about the further possible significance of object-dependent thoughts for the prediction of action. (shrink)

This paper argues that an ecological approach to psychology of the sort advanced by J. J. Gibson provides a coherent and powerful alternative to the computational, information-processing, paradigm. The paper argues for two principles. Firstly, one cannot begin to understand what internal information processing an organism must accomplish until one understands what information is available to the organism in its environment. Secondly, an organism can process information by acting on or manipulating physical structures in its environment. An attempt is made (...) to show how these principles can be extended to cognition as a whole. It is suggested that these principles may have a foundation in evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Individualists claim that wide explanations in psychology are problematic. I argue that wide psychological explanations sometimes have greater explanatory power than individualistic explanations. The aspects of explanatory power I focus on are causal depth and theoretical appropriateness. Reflection on the depth and appropriateness of other wide explanations of behavior, such as evolutionary explanations, clarifies why wide psychological explanations sometimes have more causal depth and theoretical appropriateness than narrow psychological explanations. I also argue for the rejection of eliminative materialism.

This piece criticizes Fodor's argument (in The Elm and the Expert, 1994) for the claim that Frege cases should be treated as exceptions to (broad) psychological generalizations rather than as counterexamples.

Robert Wilson (1994) maintains that many interesting and fundamental aspects of psychology are non-individualistic because large chunks of psychology depend upon organisms being deeply embedded in some environment. I disagree and present one version of narrow content that allows enough reference to the environment to meet any wide challenge. I argue that most psychologists are already this sort of narrow content theorist and that these narrow content explanations of psychological phenomena meet Wilson's criteria for being a good explanation better than (...) any wide explanation of the same event. (shrink)

Millikan and Wilson argue, for different reasons, that the essential reference to the environment in adaptationist explanations of behavior makes (psychological) individualism inconsistent with evolutionary psychology. I show that their arguments are based on misinterpretations of the role of reference to the environment in such explanations. By exploring these misinterpretations, I develop an account of explanation in evolutionary psychology that is fully consistent with individualism. This does not, however, constitute a full-fledged defense of individualism, since evolutionary psychology is only one (...) explanatory paradigm among many in psychology. (shrink)

This paper argues that Twin Earth twins belong to the same psychological natural kind, but that the reason for this is not that the causal powers of mental states supervene on local neural structure. Fodor’s argument for this latter thesis is criticized and found to rest on a confusion between it and the claim that Putnamian and Burgean type relational psychological properties do not affect the causal powers of the mental states that have them. While it is true that Putnamian (...) and Burgean type relational psychological properties do not affect causal powers, it is false that no relational psychological properties do. Examples of relational psychological properties that do affect causal powers are given and psychological laws are sketched that subsume twins in virtue of them instantiating these relational properties rather than them sharing the narrow contents of their thoughts. (shrink)

The Burge-Putnam thought experiments have generated the thesis that beliefs are not fixed by the constitution of the body. However, many philosophers have thought that if this is true then there must be another content-like property. Even if the contents of our attitudes such as the one in ‘believes that aluminum is a light metal’, do not supervene on our physical makeups, nevertheless people who are physical duplicates must be the same when it comes to evaluating their rationality and explaining (...) their actions. I argue that the considerations motivating this view are best handled with just the ordinary ‘that’-clause contents. (shrink)

The social, behavioral, and a good chunk of the biological sciences concern the nature of individual agency, where our paradigm for an individual is a human being. Theories of economic behavior, of mental function and dysfunction, and of ontogenetic development, for example, are theories of how such individuals act, and of what internal and external factors are determinative of that action. Such theories construe individuals in distinctive ways.

A major obstacle to formulating a broad-content intentional psychology is the occurrence of ''Frege cases'' - cases in which a person apparently believes or desires Fa but not Fb and acts accordingly, even though "a" and "b" have the same broad content. Frege cases seem to demand narrow-content distinctions to explain actions by the contents of beliefs and desires. Jerry Fodor ( The elm and the expert: Mentalese and its semantics , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994) argues that an explanatorily (...) adequate broad-content psychology is nonetheless possible because Frege cases rarely occur in intentional-explanatory contexts, and they are not systematically linked to intentional laws in a way that demands intentional explanation. Thus, he claims, behaviors associated with Frege cases can be considered ceteris-paribus exceptions to broad-content intentional laws without significantly decreasing the explanatory power of intentional psychology. I argue that Frege cases are plentiful and systematically linked to intentional laws in a way that requires intentional explanation, specifically in the explanation of why certain actions are not performed. Consequently, Frege-case behaviors cannot be construed as ceteris-paribus exceptions to intentional laws without significantly eroding the explanatory power of intentional psychology and reducing the rationality of the agent. Fodor thus fails to save broad-content psychology from the prima facie objections against it based on Frege cases. (shrink)

According to explanatory individualism, every action must be explained in terms of an agent's desire. According to explanatory nonindividualism, we sometimes act on our desires, but it is also possible for us to act on others' desires without acting on desires of our own. While explanatory nonindividualism has guided the thinking of many social scientists, it is considered to be incoherent by most philosophers of mind who insist that actions must be explained ultimately in terms of some desire of the (...) agent. In the first part of the paper, I show that some powerful arguments designed to demonstrate the incoherence of explanatory nonindividualism fail. In the second part of the paper, I offer a nonindividualist explanation of the apparent obviousness of belief-desire psychology. I argue that there are two levels of the intelligibility of our actions. On the more fundamental (explanatory) level, the question "Why did the agent do something?" admits a variety of folk-psychological categories. But there is another (formation-of-self) level, at which the same question admits only of answers that ultimately appeal only to the agent's own desires. Explanatory individualism results from the confusion of the two levels. (shrink)

This paper points to some problems for the position that D.M. Walsh calls "alternative individualism," and argues that in defending this view Walsh has omitted an important part of what separates individualists and externalists in psychology. Walsh's example of Hox gene complexes is discussed in detail to show why some sort of externalism about scientific taxonomy more generally is a more plausible view than any extant version of individualism.

Belief and Meaning is a philosophical treatment of intentionality. It offers an original, logical and convincing account of intentional content which is local and contextual and which takes issues with standard theories of meaning.

Philosophical Psychology, Volume 0, Issue 0, Page 1-4, Ahead of Print.

This is a response to three critical discussions of my book Memory: A Philosophical Study (Oxford University Press 2010): Marya Schechtman, Memory and Identity , Fred Adams, Husker Du? , and Sanford Goldberg The Metasemantics of Memory.

This paper evaluates the prospects of harnessing “anti-individualism” about the contents of perceptual states to give an account of the epistemology of perception, making special reference to Tyler Burge’s ( 2003 ) paper, “Perceptual Entitlement”. I start by clarifying what kind of warrant is provided by perceptual experience, and I go on to survey different ways one might explain the warrant provided by perceptual experience in terms of anti-individualist views about the individuation of perceptual states. I close by motivating accounts (...) which instead give a more prominent role to consciousness. (shrink)

Externalism cannot work as a theory of concepts without explaining how we reidentify substances as being of the same kind. Yet this process implies just the level of descriptive content to which externalism seeks to deny a role in conceptual content.

I suggest several ways that externalism could influence psychological theorizing. Externalism could just capture our everyday intuitions about concepts and meanings. More profoundly, it could enter into psychology through evolutionary theory, guide our hypotheses about conceptual abilities, and, most significantly, it could influence our accounts of learning and conceptual change.

M any philosophers who otherwise have disparate views on the mind share a fundamental assumption. The assumption is that mental processes, or at least those that explain behavior, are wholly determined by properties of the individual whose processes they are.' As elaborated by..

It starts to rain and I open the umbrella or, if I don"t have one, I ask my colleague, who is walking with me, if he has an umbrella in the bag. Why do I do so? There are many ways to answer this question, but if I adopt the strategy to explain the causes of my acting or speaking by looking for the reasons that I have for doing it (for instance, I notice that it is raining and I (...) don"t want to get wet), I commit myself to an explanation of a psychological kind (Davidson 1980). The following discussion tackles an internal problem of psychological explanations concerning the taxonomy (or categorization) of intentional contents. Intentional contents define what beliefs, desires, hopes, etc., are about. One believes that something is so-and-so (for instance, one believes that it is raining); one desires that something is going to be so-and–so (that tomorrow it isn"t going to rain), etc. The content of intentional states is the object of those so-called that-clauses: "it is raining" is, for instance, the content of the belief that it is raining. (shrink)