Abstract
In the past few years, a number of philosophers (notably, Siewert, C. (The significance of consciousness. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Horgan and Tienson (Philosophy of mind: Classical and contemporary readings, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 520–533); Pitt 2004) have maintained the following three theses: (1) there is a distinctive sort of phenomenology characteristic of conscious thought, as opposed to other sorts of conscious mental states; (2) different conscious thoughts have different phenomenologies; and (3) thoughts with the same phenomenology have the same intentional content. The last of these three claims is open to at least two different interpretations. It might mean that the phenomenology of a thought expresses its intentional content, where intentional content is understood as propositional, and propositions are understood as mind-and language-independent abstract entities (such as sets of possible worlds, functions from possible worlds to truth-values, structured n-tuples of objects and properties, etc.). And it might mean that the phenomenology of a thought is its intentional content—that is, that the phenomenology of a thought, like the phenomenology of a sensation, constitutes its content. The second sort of view is a kind of psychologism. Psychologistic views hold that one or another sort of thing—numbers, sentences, propositions, etc.—that we can think or know about is in fact a kind of mental thing. Since Frege, psychologism has been in bad repute among analytic philosophers. It is widely held that Frege showed that such views are untenable, since, among other things, they subjectivize what is in fact objective, and, hence, relativize such things as consistency and truth to the peculiarities of human psychology. The purpose of this paper is to explore the consequences of the thesis that intentional mental content is phenomenological (what I call “intentional psychologism”) and to try to reach a conclusion about whether it yields a tenable view of mind, thought and meaning. I believe the thesis is not so obviously wrong as it will strike many philosophers of mind and language. In fact, it can be defended against the standard objections to psychologism, and it can provide the basis for a novel and interesting account of mentality.
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Notes
Hence, such theories seek to naturalize the mind, not by nominalizing mental contents, but by giving naturalistic explanations of the expression relation between mental representations and their contents. (Cf. Fodor 1990a, b, “The asymmetric dependence story is up to its ears in Realism about properties, relations, laws, and other abstracta … naturalism, as I understand the term, needn’t imply materialism if the latter is understood as denying independent status to abstract entities” (1990, p.132, note 6).).
A reductive representationalist would say that what it is like to experience pain is constituted by its representing a particular tissue-property. Needless to say, I am not a reductive representationalist. (Thanks to Declan Smithies for reminding me of reductive representationalism in this connection.).
Whether or not thought contents on this view could be propositions will be discussed below.
Some readers will be put in mind here of Husserl, whose general view of mental content as phenomenal seems to be very close to the present one. The second way of construing the relation between phenomenology and thought content was (arguably) held by Husserl in Logical Investigations (thought contents as species), whereas the first way was (arguably) held by him in Ideas (thought contents as noematic Sinne).
There is controversy over whether or not sensory states have representational content in virtue of their sensory phenomenal content—so-called “non-conceptual” content. Supposing that they do not, the difference between cognitive and sensory phenomenal content would be that the former is representational/intentional whereas the latter is not. Supposing that they do creates a prima facie problem for the view developed here, to be addressed below.
It is also a form of internalism, in that it maintains that the intentional content of a thought is determined by its intrinsic phenomenal properties, not its relational properties. My teachers will be very disappointed in me.
Note that the constitutive view is consistent with giving non-psychological abstracta (sets of worlds, n-tuples, etc.) a role in third-person characterizations of individuals’ thoughts. One could maintain either that phenomenal content is “narrow” or that “wide” content really is not mental content at all, but a coarse-grained approximation to it that is useful in some circumstances. (I am inclined toward the latter view. Cf. Balaguer 2005.).
Frege’s objections to psychologism may be found in Frege1884/1953 (pp. 26–27), 1891/1952 (p. 79), 1893/1964 (pp.11–25), 1894/1979 (passim), 1906/1980 (66–70), and 1918/1997 (passim). It is a fact perhaps underappreciated by analytic philosophers that Husserl offered his own powerful critique of the kind of psychologism Frege attacked (in the “Prolegomena to Pure Logic” (passim), first volume of Logical Investigations). It is, moreover, not entirely clear that Husserl ever espoused psychologism in the form that Frege criticized. (See, e.g., Bell 1990, pp. 59–62; Findlay 1970, pp. 12–13; and Simons 1995, p. 113).
Mark Balaguer, in conversation.
It might not be the doctrine Frege, Husserl and those they criticized were discussing; but that is a historical, not a conceptual point.
Cf. Frege 1918/1997, 334–335.
Indeed, without the assumption of a shared mentality, psychology would be impossible. Science seeks generalizations; but generalizations require a domain of individuals with shared characteristics. If we were not of the same psychological kind, we would not comprise such a domain. (A familiar Fodorian point.)
Of course, there are well-known variations in perceptual phenomenal content among humans (due to age, race, etc.). But the fact that these differences are known is further confirmation of the claim that intersubjective knowledge of phenomenal content is not impossible.
I recall Jerry Fodor once remarking that though Skinner was wrong that our utterances are stimulus-automatic (one does not say “Chalk-chalk-chalk-chalk-chalk-chalk- …” whenever one sees some), he got it right about at least some of our mental states (we do seem to be constrained to think ‘chalk’ (once or twice, anyway) when we encounter some).
“Ouch!” mommy says; “I bet that hurts!” when you walk into the kitchen with the stick in your eye, because she believes, quite reasonably, that you are experiencing what she would experience in the same unfortunate circumstances. So you learn to apply the words ‘ouch’ and ‘hurts’ (etc.) to the same types of experiences and thoughts she applies them to.
The question of the very existence of a distinctive phenomenology of cognition is a case in point. Some claim that it is obvious that there is such a thing, others that it is equally obvious that there is not. I try to provide an argument for the claim that there must be in PC, and an explanation for why it is not obvious to everyone in another (unpublished) paper, “Cognitive Acuity.”
I am indebted here to conversations with Charles Siewert and Uriah Kriegel, and to their reports from the trenches at the summer 2005 SPAWN conference at Syracuse University. (See also Kriegel 2007.).
One way to account for this involves distinguishing direct and indirect forms of Dretske’s (1969) epistemic seeing, and assigning the perception of change to direct epistemic perception and the perception of constancy to indirect epistemic perception. One (indirectly) sees the thing on the spindle as constantly circular by (directly) seeing the changes in its apparent shape. Given the background assumptions (a) that objects do not change shape just because they are moving and (b) that the thing on the spindle is rotating, we know that its apparent shape would not change in the way it does unless it were circular; hence, we see that it is constantly circular by seeing that its apparent shape changes in ways it would not change unless it were circular. One sees both that there is change and that there is not, without inconsistency. (This is analogous to seeing that a thing is white by seeing that its apparent color is green, in conditions under which it would not look green unless it were white, or seeing that an apple is rotten by seeing that it is brown and wrinkled. See PC 11, 25–26 for more discussion.).
(It might be objected that the work of this account is being done, not by the distinction between direct and indirect epistemic perception, but by that between apparent and actual shape. But this is not the case, since change in apparent shape is not inconsistent with change in actual shape.).
See Siewert 2007 for such a defense. I am much indebted in the next few paragraphs to conversations with Siewert.
Such factors are also relevant to examples such as the difference between experiencing the front of a building as part of a larger structure and experiencing it as a mere facade (or seeing the facing side of a coffee cup as part of a whole cup whose back one cannot see and seeing it as half of a cup), and the differing senses one has of a particular place (a neighborhood, an intersection) before and after one is familiar with adjacent places and their specific relations to it.
It is, moreover, far from clear that empirical methods cannot be brought to bear on phenomenological disputes (though of course the present objection is that introspective investigation cannot yield decisive results on its own).
According to non-bad analytic functionalism, it is not conceptually necessary that a given pain state be caused by tissue damage, but only that it be a token of a type whose function in the organism is to occur in response to tissue damage. Thus it is possible for pain to occur in the absence of tissue damage—something bad functionalism precludes.
It might be maintained that for one type to “entail” another just is for it to be impossible to token the one without tokening the other. I think this reverses the order of explanation. The fact that a token figure cannot be a triangle without being a trilateral is due to the nature of the types (properties) themselves, not vice versa. That a figure cannot have one property without having another is due to the nature of the properties; our intuitions about tokening are in fact intuitions about type-relations. In any case, the suggestion is of no help in the present context. It implies that since it is possible to think that p without thinking that (p or q), the content that p does not entail the content that (p or q); and that since it is not possible to think that (p or q) without thinking that p and thinking that q, the content that (p or q) entails the content that p and the content that q.
Charles Siewert and John Searle independently suggested this response.
Analytic entailment need not present a problem for the constitutive view, since the claim that one cannot think a thought without thinking its analytic entailments is (at least) defensible (since the analytically entailed thought is part of the entailing thought).
This position is sometimes called “non-reductive representationalism” (see, e.g., Chalmers 2004), and is contrasted with the view that the phenomenal character of experience is reducible to its representational properties. (Similar claims, on both sides, can also be made for introspective experience.)
Unfortunately, the term ‘content’ is used both for intrinsic properties of mental representations and for the mind-independent objects they express. The content of a thought, for example, may be said to be a mind-independent proposition, but the term ‘non-conceptual content’ is used to describe non-conceptual representations themselves. The thesis that there is non-conceptual content is (on its most common version) the thesis that there are mental representations that are not concepts but which nonetheless express the same abstracta as conceptual representations.
I owe the objection to Mark Balaguer, in conversation.
And no state with a phenomenology different from that of a maximally determinate sensation of pain could be a pain of that maximally determinate type.
Balaguer objects that “feeling like this” is constitutive of our concept of pain, whereas “seeming like that” is not constitutive of our concept of thought, and, hence, that the analogy with pain phenomenology is inapt. I would argue, however, that in fact the concept of phenomenology really is constitutive of our concept of thought, given that it is constitutive of our concept of conscious states in general. (See the argument on pp. 2–3 of PC.) The further result that leads to our having to accept that what is true for pains and other sensations is true of conscious thoughts as well is the individuative nature of cognitive phenomenology.
One might also worry that if phenomenal types are properties of conscious experiences, then the constitutive view implies an incoherent “sentientism” about propositions: it requires that propositions be conscious, and, further, that they be conscious to an experiencing self; but it is absurd to say either that abstract objects are conscious or that selves are abstract objects. I do not think this is a real problem, either. It may be that (though I do not believe this), necessarily, phenomenality is instantiated only by token conscious states, and that any such state presupposes a self; but it follows neither that phenomenal types themselves are conscious nor that they must be experienced.
Note that since the type-token relation is assumed by both accounts, the constitutive view’s dependence on it is not a relative liability.
Cf. Galen Strawson’s view in Mental Reality, and the “phenomenal intentionality” thesis of Horgan and Tienson 2002. Reductive representationalism, which assimilates in the opposite direction, pursues a uniform relational account of mental states and their contents. Given the economic considerations just offered in favor of the constitutive view, however, assimilation to the phenomenal has advantages over assimilation in the opposite direction. (Not to mention the serious problems that arise in giving a reductive representationalist account of phenomenal character.)
Introspective knowledge has had a hard time of it lately. (See, e.g., Schwitzgebel 2008.) I am not convinced that it has been shown that there is no, or only very little, such knowledge, however.
No matter what external states of affairs bring about the occurrence of S. What makes my thought that there is a baboon in the living room about baboons, and not orangutans or gorillas-in-the-mist, is not what causes it (or has caused it, or would cause it, or should cause it, or …), but its introspectable phenomenology. (Cf. Searle 1987. See PC, 11–13, 25–26, for an argument for the parenthetical claim in the text.)
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Acknowledgments
I have had helpful exchanges on the issues discussed herein with Mark Balaguer, Alex Bundy, David Chalmers, Justin Fisher, Brie Gertler, Terry Horgan, Sean Kelly, John Searle, Eric Schwitzgebel, Susanna Siegel, Charles Siewert, David W. Smith, Declan Smithies, Gerardo Villaseñor, and an anonymous referee for this journal. Thanks to all.
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Pitt, D. Intentional psychologism. Philos Stud 146, 117–138 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9247-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9247-8